Tumgik
#because yes i must edit images even for joke posts what about it
khaleesiofalicante · 11 months
Text
My Type - A TLND Mavid Ficlet
“You’re trending again.”
Max doesn’t even bother looking up from his laptop. “What else is new?”
“I mean you’re trending properly,” his secretary hums, leaning against his office door. “Across all platforms.”
“Yuri, I started trending the day I was born,” Max chuckles. “My family is made of celebrities. This is not news. And I should be trending. London Fashion Week is coming up and some of our latest pieces are the best ones we’ve created yet.”
“Right,” she says slowly. “This is not really about Edom.”
Max looks up from his laptop then. 
Maybe it’s about David - or even the boys. People are always making fan edits of his family. 
It’s cute. Sometimes. 
“It’s about Ms. Jung, sir,” his secretary informs him. “The PR team wants to issue a statement for damage control.”
PR teams and statements and damage control. 
The words sound too familiar as Max picks up his phone and types his own name on Twitter. 
Oh. 
“Maybe if you could post a picture of your family,” Yuri suggests carefully. “A selfie of you and your husband.”
“I don’t need to post shit. This is not real!” Max points at the image on his phone. “Why would I kiss Shinyun?”
“It’s AI, sir,” Yuri informs him. “But it looks real, doesn’t it?”
Max sighs. 
His phone pings again. A message from bapak asking him to ignore it. 
Max knows bapak and dad had their fair share of struggles with social media. God knows they still do. Max had been naive enough to hope that things will be easier in the future. But sometimes, it feels like the future only gets worse. 
He stares at the photo of him and Shinyun kissing. It makes him want to throw up. But he is too stunned by the authenticity of it to do anything else. 
He dismisses Yuri and calls Shinyun. “You saw?”
“Yes,” she replies calmly. “Makes you look like a terrible kisser. Just like your bapak.”
“Gross,” he replies. “Look. Yuri says we need to issue a statement-”
“We don’t have to do anything,” she interrupts. “Fashion Week is coming up. All eyes are on Edom, Max. This is good.”
“How are you not bothered by this?” he demands angrily. 
“Not my first time being falsely romantically linked to a Lightwood-Bane,” she replies coolly. “Does it bother you?”
Max doesn’t respond to that. “Can we find out who made this?”
“Is it really worth the time and effort?” she counters. “Probably just some kid looking for followers.”
“It’s not fair,” he sighs tiredly. 
“Hey, listen to me,” she says, her voice firm. “Do not let them get to you. I know it’s hard. But you should pay them no mind.”
“I know,” Max sighs. “I just-No. Never mind.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” Max manages a smile. “I’ll see you in London soon?”
“Bring the boys.”
“They’ve already packed their bags,” Max chuckles. “Although David is not thrilled about attending another fashion show.”
“How is he feeling about the photo?” Shinyun asks him. 
Ah fuck. 
He didn’t even think about that. David must be freaking out. 
“He doesn’t know, does he?” Shinyun asks out loud. “You know what? Maybe it would help to post a picture of the two of you.”
“That’s what Yuri said.”
“Best hiring decision you made,” she chuckles. “It’s not a bad idea, Max. God knows the two of you are always attached at the hip.”
“You sound jealous,” Max points out. “Is this because I only kissed you through artificial intelligence?”
“Kindly go fuck yourself.”
Max chuckles as he puts the phone down. He sighs. “Yuri. I’m going home.”
“You should buy flowers on your way home,” Yuri suggests. “Just in case he is mad.”
“Good idea,” Max grins at her. “You’re the best.”
By the time he leaves office and goes back home, he has already scrolled through countless tweets about the situation. 
They are all “I knew it” and “bisexuals be like” and “David deserves better” and a bunch of freudian jokes Max doesn’t really care about. 
But he keeps scrolling. He keeps looking for the tweets that support him and believe in him. 
He knows it doesn’t matter because the photo isn’t real. But he seeks the validation of these strangers anyway. 
Tell me you know this isn’t me. Tell me you know I’m good. Tell me you know I would never. Tell me you know David is my everything. 
Old habits die hard, huh?
“Daddy!” his little one yells when he arrives home. He is running towards Max all the way from their estate, all barefoot and big smiles. “Look what Lelyaas found!”
“What did Lelyaas find?” Max smiles and kneels down next to the toddler. 
“A grasshopper,” Arthur says in a low voice, like it’s a secret. “I named him Bunny.”
“You named the grasshopper Bunny?” Max chuckles. “Why?”
“Because it hops!” Arthur says simply. “Like a bunny.”
Max chuckles again. “Did you eat?”
The boy nods. 
“Did you have dessert?” Max asks. 
“Not yet,” the child replies. “Papa is in a bad mood. Lelyaas said we should leave him alone. He’s in the library.”
Ah. Fuck. 
David has a habit of reading everywhere but in the library. 
He reads in bed. He reads in the kitchen. He reads in the bath. He reads in the garden. He even reads inside the car. 
He only reads in the library when he wants to be left alone. 
But surely these silly rules don’t apply to Max…Right?
“Okay. You play with Bunny. I’ll check on papa,” Max presses a kiss to the boy’s curls. He walks into the château and unbuttons his shirt as he enters library carefully. “Babe?”
David is sitting on the sofa, his legs crossed over each other, as he is glaring at the newspaper. 
Why is he even reading that shit? Nothing good ever comes out of it!
“Can you believe this?” David waves the paper around. 
“It’s already on the newspaper?” Max winces. 
“Of course it’s on the bloody newspaper,” David rolls his eyes. “But why does it have to be on the front page? Do these people not care about my feelings at all?”
“I’m sorry,” Max says gently as he sits down next to him. “Babe. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. It’s not your fault,” David sighs and puts the paper away. “It was bound to happen anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Max frowns. “David, I know we are used to this, but this is not normal. We should never expect this as normal.”
David frowns too. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?” Max asks in confusion and grabs the newspaper, turning to the front page. “The fuck is this?”
“Taylor Swift lost best album at the Grammys,” David grumbles. 
“That’s what you’re mad about?” Max laughs. 
“Is there something else for me to mad about?” David raises an eyebrow. 
“Um. There is a picture,” Max swallows. “On Twitter. It’s-”
“You and Shinyun,” David finishes. “Oh, yes. I did see that.”
“You’re not mad about that then?”
“Max, there are pictures of you kissing a different woman every other week,” David rolls his eyes. “If I started to care about those, I would be in a perpetual state of fury.”
Max chuckles tiredly. “This one is weird though.”
“It is,” David admits. “Is there something we should do? Post a picture together?”
Max shakes his head. “I hate that. I hate that I have to my prove my love for you.”
“You don’t have to prove anything,” David says gently. “We could just ignore it, love. You know it doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know,” Max says quietly. 
“Hey,” David whispers as he takes Max’s hand in his and gives it a kiss. “What is it?”
“I’m trending,” Max explains. 
“Aren’t you always?” David smiles.
“Not for the right things,” Max shakes his head. “David, I worked so hard for our displays at the London Fashion Week. We worked with the best designers and we found the right people and it was just so beautiful and diverse and original and it’s just…I’m so fucking proud of it. But no one’s talking about that. No one ever cares about how hard I work and the difference I’m making in the world.”
“Max. The internet doesn’t care about our values. It only cares about our actions,” David tells him. “I know no one is talking about it. But that doesn’t mean people don’t care. You hired really young designers from diverse backgrounds. You hired people who are unlikely to get a chance like this. They know what you did. And trust me, they care.”
“I know, babe,” Max manages a smile. “I just…Sometimes I feel like things haven’t changed all that much, you know.”
He’ll always just be Max. The boy who is only known for causing drama. And they will only ever care about who he is kissing and who he is fighting. 
Nothing more and nothing less. 
“Things have changed a lot actually,” David hums and stands up. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”
Max is tired. But he follows after the other man anyway. 
“We’re not going to the bedroom?” Max pouts as they walk past the staircase. 
“Making out with Shinyun wasn’t enough for you?” David asks over his shoulder. 
“Ugh! Gross!” Max groans and slaps David on the shoulder. 
David laughs as he drags Max further into the house, right towards the left wing. 
Oh.
“Darling,” David knocks on the door gently. “I’m coming in.”
They walk into Lance’s room together. Their oldest is lying on the bed, still wearing his school uniform, and bopping his head to music with his Batman headphones on.
Max carefully taps him on the shoulder, so not as to startle him. “Lance.”
“Dad?” the boy removes his headphones immediately. “You’re home early.”
“Hm-hm,” Max smiles and gives him a hug. “Why are you still in your uniform?”
“I’ll take it off in a little bit,” the boy replies. “Is papa here too?”
“I am,” David replies and sits down on the edge of the bed. “Lance. Will you tell daddy what you told me when we drove home from school?”
“What did I say?” Lance frowns. 
“You said something about daddy and Edom,” David elaborates. 
“Oh,” Lance says. “Daddy. Papa thinks you work too much and you should quit and be a house husband.”
“I did not say that!” David blanches. “Although, yes, you do work too much.”
Max sticks out his tongue at the man and looks at the boy. “I would make an awful house husband, buddy. Then your papa will divorce me and get married to a music producer who will buy him tickets to Taylor Swift concerts.”
“That does sound appealing,” David hums and earns a glare from Max. “Lance. I meant what you said about Fashion Week.”
“Oh,” Lance says again. “Papa told me your inspiration for London Fashion Week is Egyptian fashion?”
“That’s correct,” Max nods. “I met this really cool lady called Samar who lives in Egypt and she designs beautiful clothes inspired by her culture. So, I told her to design our pieces for Fashion Week.”
David looks at him proudly. 
It’s not a big deal. Giving people opportunities shouldn’t be a big deal. We should do it more often really. 
“That’s really cool,” Lance tells him. “Good job, dad!”
“Oh,” Max whispers. “Really?”
“We learned about Egyptian Civilization in school. Did you know they wore really cool jewellery but didn’t wear shoes?” Lance asks him curiously. 
“I do know that,” Max nods with a smile. “That’s why none of our models will be wearing shoes during the runway at London Fashion Week.”
“That’s amazing!” Lance gasps. “Will they shave their heads too?”
Max chuckles. “Not all of them. But there is one guy from Cairo who shaved his head, except for like a plait at the side of the head.”
“Can I pull it?” Lance whispers. 
“No,” David says firmly. “But you can talk to him and ask him more about his culture.”
“Cool,” Lance shrugs. “Can we have dessert now?”
“Yes,” Max presses a kiss to his face. “Change out of your uniform and come to the kitchen, okay?”
David leads him back to the kitchen with a soft smile and pushes him against the counter. “I told you. People do care. You just need to look for it in the right place.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,” Max murmurs and kisses his husband on the jaw. “Sorry I got overwhelmed by my constant need for external validation. It makes me overlook the support systems that are actually accessible.”
David pinches his side. “What did I tell you about memorising what your therapist tells you?”
“It’s very sexy of me?” Max grins. 
“I’m sorry about the awful people in the internet,” David tells him and cups his face gently. “But I see you. I see how hard you work and how much you care. And I too think you’re very cool.”
“Yeah?” Max whispers and leans into the touch. “I love you.”
“I love-Arthur! Why are you carrying three cups of ice cream?” David yells. 
“One for me. One for Lelyaas. One for my grasshopper,” Arthur replies as he carefully balances three cups of ice cream. 
Max laughs at that. 
David glares at him. “Elyaas doesn’t eat ice cream. Put it back.”
“Really?” Max chuckles. “You’re okay with the grasshopper?”
“I don’t know if grasshoppers actually eat ice cream,” David whispers to him. 
“Fair point,” Max nods. “Also Arthur is already gone.”
David groans tries to run after the child. But Max pulls him back by his arm. “You’re sure you’re not mad about the photo, right?”
“No,” David shakes his head. 
“Didn’t even suspect me for a second?” Max grins. 
“I know how you kiss,” David whispers against his lips. “What I saw in the paper was nowhere close to that.”
“How do I kiss?” Max smiles. 
“With your heart,” David replies and Max rolls his eyes fondly. “Besides, she isn’t your type.”
“Really?” Max asks. “And what’s my type?”
“Me.”
“Blonde hair and blue eyes?”
“No,” David corrects and pulls him in for a kiss. “Me. David. I’m your type. No one else stands a chance.”
“No, they don’t,” Max agrees and kisses him back. 
83 notes · View notes
laufire · 2 years
Text
if I had a nickle for every time Jedidiah Goodrace put on a varsity jacket and played a character whose goal was to seduce a high school girl with nefarious purposes as per the orders of his vampire sire seeking revenge, I’d have two nickels. which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice! 
Tumblr media Tumblr media
[Caption: the first image is an screenshot from Supernatural where Henry, the character played by the actor, stares at Alex, touching her face while they’re in a clear of the woods. The second one shows him as Roman on The Originals,  holding Hope’s hands while he gazes into her eyes, the two of them in a library.]
39 notes · View notes
subspencer · 3 years
Text
Neighborly Favors
baby!spencer x fem!reader
based on this request from @spencergubler
spencer discovers what his neighbor does for a living, and she offers to give him a show EDIT: i realized after posting i switch from using third person/‘she’ to second person/‘you’ halfway through. my excuse is i was sleep deprived. hope you can overlook the error!
wc: 2.3k. cw: none
He's only ever seen his neighbor in passing, catching the flash of her coat as she enters her apartment while he's leaving his, or seeing the top of her head as she's walking by on the street when he looks down from his window. Most people don't take enough interest in their neighbors to care to get to know them, and normally Spencer wouldn't care either. Except this neighbor plays some pretty interesting music, which he can hear through the thin walls connecting their apartments.
He's not exactly sure what she's doing when she's playing her music loudly, but it doesn't sound like she's with anyone. And not that he's trying to invade her privacy, but he also doesn't hear anything happening that's remotely as sexual as what the music is. It kind of sounds like she's working out? He's not sure.
What little information he has on her only inspires his mind to think of her more often. To solve the mystery of his next-door neighbor, who comes home just as he's leaving for work, who he thinks always looks pretty despite never having seen her face.
Unfortunately, his sweet, innocent mind doesn't consider what most would think is the obvious answer. He has to find that out himself after he finally sees her, properly, in the hallway, trying to break into own apartment by picking the lock.
"Are you locked out?" He manages to speak calmly even though his mind is racing looking at her. She has on a short coat that stops just above her knees, and a pair of heels that look incredibly tall. All he he sees between are long, bare legs.
"Yeah.” She sighed, dropping the bobby pin she jammed into the lock. “Can I wait in yours until the maintenance guy comes?"
And he has no idea how he doesn't just pick up his feet and start running, but he actually lets her in, and now it's just the two of them sitting on his couch, multiple feet apart as they try to find conversation to fill the awkward silence.
"So... what do you do for work?"
"I'm a dancer."
"Oh... like ballet or-"
She looks at him like he's grown a second head and laughs, "I'm an exotic dancer."
"Oh."
He folds his hands in his lap and is suddenly extremely red. From the embarrassment of looking stupid in front of her, for one. And a bit because now he's thinking about her, in those exact high heels she has on, dancing in a dark room.
"These aren't the shoes I wear for that."
His head snaps up at her, terrified he’d said those thoughts out loud. He must not have realized he'd been staring down at her shoes for a moment too long, and that given her profession, she can tell when a guy's looking at her a certain way. Lucky for him, she finds his bashful innocence to be endearingly cute.
"They're a lot taller than this. I just wear these to get to and from work. You can see them sometime," she shrugs. Too coolly offering to show Spencer what she looks like when she dances.
He really doesn't know what to say, it probably should not have been what he ended up saying, "So the music from your place then?" He blinks at her, hands holding his knees so he has something to do with them. When she doesn't answer right away, he offers his signature frog smile, feeling incredibly awkward still.
"Sorry, didn't realize it was so loud." She looks genuinely apologetic, and it makes him feel bad for saying it like that.
"No, I mean- I mean is that like, the music that..." She knows what he's trying to ask, but it's just so much more fun watching him squirm trying to figure out how to word it in a tactful way. "Is that what you listen to at work?"
God, he's so cute, managing to find the most unassuming way to ask that. "It's what I dance to, at work, yes."
"Cool." He has no idea why he asked that. Or where to take the conversation from there. Now he's just sitting in that silence again, staring pointedly at his floor as he ignores the new mental image of her next door, kept apart from him by only a paper thin wall as she practices her routines in her living room.
Spencer's not a creepy guy, he's really not, but he feels like one when he's picturing his neighbor naked while she's sitting right next to him.
And who is she helping when she takes off her coat (because Spencer's apartment is eighty degrees)? Certainly not Spencer, who is half-expecting her to be wearing her uniform underneath. He's relieved when it's actually just a dress. And then he hates himself for thinking it wouldn't be.
She’s too sharp to not catch the look that flashed across his face as she took it off. Curious, excited. Maybe a little lustful. Nervous, for sure. But curious is what she was going to cling onto.
“Do you at least like some of the songs?” She said behind a devilish grin.
“I uh... I haven’t heard any of them, before-”
"What's your favorite?"
Spencer let out an airy chuckle, shrinking under the pressure that she wouldn't let up. He can't answer that question without incriminating himself a little bit. It was easier to laugh and brush it off like she was joking.
"Spencer, I know you have a favorite," she pressed, scooting a tad closer. Her chin rested on her hand, propped up by her elbow resting on her crossed-over knees. "If you tell me I might show you the routine."
The lump in his throat is visible as he swallows, Adam's apple bobbing up and down. He wipes his sweaty palms on his knees before suddenly you're grabbing them, calling his attention as you stand up in front of him.
"I was going to practice anyway. I'm working on a new routine." His eyes can't get wider as you pull him up from the sofa and drag one of his dining room chairs to the center of the living room. "Maybe you can tell me if it's good."
As you queue up the song on your phone, Spencer does the only thing his mind is capable of doing. To sit down and wait for what's coming. Music starts playing softly from your phone speakers, and you move to the light switch in his living room, gesturing to ask if it's alright as you hit the dimmer.
Even in the dim light, Spencer can see how beautiful you are. He can make out the features of your face if he trains his eyes hard enough, and that's exactly what he's doing. Trying to watch your face, even as you're sauntering towards him, hiking up the hem of your dress.
"You okay?" Your tone was playful and light, two things Spencer did not feel capable of being right now. He felt completely serious as you placed a hand loosely on his shoulder, dragging it along his body as you circled the back of his chair, across his back and bracing his neck. Cupping under his jaw so tenderly before letting go. It lit up each nerve ending that came across your path.
You were behind him again, sliding both your hands down the front of his chest with soft pressure, dragging them down as your lips came to ghost near his neck. Your face just barely touched his skin, grazing it in a feather-soft way that made him tickle.
Each cell in his body came to attention under your touch. His eyes almost drifted shut to succumb to the feeling, but then you stood in front of him, swaying your hips gently as you sunk down towards the floor, bracing your self with a hand on each of his knees
As you came up, your hands slid up his thighs, using him as a brace to bring your body closer to his, diving towards him with your chest to his face. You moved slow on the way up, giving him time to appreciate the cleavage revealed by the skimpy dress as you did.
His eyes were still locked on yours, cowering under the attention and to nervous to look anywhere else.
"I-I don't know what to do with my hands," he chuckles, blushing hard.
You hum, turning around and taking a seat on his lap, pushing your hips slowly back until they met his crotch. You gave him a soft grind before letting your back fall to his chest, wrapping one arm around his neck. Taking his free hand into your own, you placed it gently around your thigh before trailing it up your body, allowing him to push the hem of the dress further up as your hands travelled towards your chest. You let his fingers toy with the lace edge of your panties for a second before ghosting them over the swell of your chest, skimming just briefly and teasingly, before dropping his hand back to his side.
Lifting up from your hips, you suspended your body over his, rolling in slow motion just above his lap, barely making contact with his body as he watched you. Still using his chest to bear your weight with your arms hooked around his shoulders, able to crane your neck to the side and place soft kisses on the shell of his ear before sighing deeply into it.
On instinct, his hands fly up, gripping your waist and bringing you back down to him against his hard dick. Immediately, he dropped his hands, feeling suddenly rude for being so forward and demanding. Instead, he was rewarded with a gracious bounce of your ass against him, a few times before grinding deeply against him.
Just as a groan fell from his lips, your fingernails scraped against his shoulder, ducking under the collar of his shirt to feel the bare skin. His hips buck up in reaction, and he's quickly embarrassed again.
"It's okay," you coo, running your hand through his hair. He follows your fingers as they run through the strands, chasing after them, so you provide him with a gentle tug. He bites back a moan and you tug harder, determined to make it fall from his mouth.
He lets out a surprised gasp and his arm wraps over your waist, weighing you down so you couldn't move too far from him. You almost want to tease that clients are never allowed to touch the dancers like this, but you fear that then he might stop. So, you don't.
Just for his benefit, you give him a deep, exaggerated moan right in his ear as you roll against his dick, allowing your free hand to wrap over the arm gripping your waist so tightly. When he starts subtly shifting in his chair, you can feel him getting closer.
He starts rolling his hips in time with yours, pushing them into you as you shift yours back, pressing your bodies ever closer. His eyes flutter shut as he bunches up the fabric of your dress, knotting it in his hands as he tries to hold himself back.
You break another rule when you wrap your lips over his earlobe, sucking it softly into your warm mouth before releasing, "It's okay."
It's all the permission he needs, both of his arms now pinning you against him. He gasps as his hips jut up, staggered and out of rhythm, a few times before he lets out a strangled moan, spilling his release inside his trousers.
It was never your intention to let it get this far, but you're so glad it did when you see his face, covered in a light sheen of sweat and pupils blown with lust. His naturally plump, pink lips are red and swollen from biting down so hard. That slicked-back hairdo he had before is now tousled up from your fingers knotting through it. He looks nothing like that shy, innocent boy who opened his door to you just thirty minutes ago. He's something else entirely, panting for air as he comes down from his climax.
When his eyes open again, they still look at you as softly as they did before. With the same admiration, and maybe now a deeper level of want.
You've never been one to be at a loss of words, but you truly don't know what to say now that you've seen your very cute neighbor come undone under you. And that he looks at you so sweetly despite what's just transpired. You keep it light and playful just as before as you climb off of him, searching for your phone and purse while he excuses himself to the bathroom to clean up.
While he's gone, you hear the maintenance guy coming down the hall, and you have no reason to stay. Just as you go to leave, he comes back out, and he hides his disappointment poorly because you look like you're making a quick escape. But when you see him, your hand leaves the doorknob and you turn to say goodbye.
His long legs carry him across the length of the room quickly, stopping just short of you, and you notice just how tall he is as he towers over you. His eyes flicker between yours and your lips, wanting to kiss you, but unsure where the boundary lies.
You lean forward to kiss him, the gap between you narrowing and your eyes drifting closed.
"Can I take you out?" he stops you in your tracks. He starts panicking internally, taking your stunned silence as a rejection. "Like, on a date? Is that... is that okay?"
Then you finally lung forward, crashing your lips over his as you bring him down to you by his neck, pulling him closer. His mouth chases yours as you separate, and you leave a trail of sweet pecks over his lips and chin, smiling at him and nodding, "It's okay."
-
-
form to be on my taglist: (for both this blog and my main cm blog @wheelsup)
@suburban--gothic @ssa-sarahsunshine @mercy-burning @reidspurple @mediocre-writer @honeyboysteezy @calm-and-doctor @drayshadow @s1utformgg @you-sunshine @altsvu @reidtheprettyboy @goose-eats-god @sonnydoesrandomshit @rigatonireid @muffin-cup @amoeebaa @reidingmelodies @reidyoulikeabook @seasonfivereid @anaagraceeberr @spencerreid9 @sonnydoesrandomshit @luvofyourlifeliv @averyhotchner @spencerreidat3am @honeynico @realismisanexcusefornotbelieving @gubeskneescrew
677 notes · View notes
feelingofcontent · 2 years
Text
DNP Rewatch: Dan and Phil Video Bloopers 2017!
Tumblr media
Date video was published: 01/10/2018 (X)
DNP Main Channel Rewatch: 368
The first 2018 video! Though it’s mostly clips from 2017, haha. They had done the blooper video for DAPG not too long before this, so Phil probably had that in mind when he thought of this.
0:03 - poor Phil. he often seems to get sick in early January after the holidays
Tumblr media
0:15 - so much shaky cam
0:24 - weird to see clips from back at the old apartment! this is from Phil’s first video of 2017, 2017 WANTS ME DEAD
0:26 - pretty good at getting back into it after laughing at himself
0:28 - love that Phil does not know the line he himself must have written 😂 ...unless Dan wrote it. which is possible
0:41 - they find themselves so funny; I love it
Tumblr media
0:49 - and from the Interactive Introverts announcement
0:51 - “the sitting” haha. works though!
0:53 - back to 2017 WANTS ME DEAD. that one was minor enough I’m surprised he didn’t just leave it in
1:01 - and from My DNA Test Results. Phil has more bloopers from scripted content than not, it seems
1:10 - LMAO, the nonsense that he than made even weirder in editing from Why I can’t go back to the gym..
Tumblr media
1:25 - adore Dan singing out of nowhere. this is from filming My Evil Piano Teacher. they were so done with that apartment by then
1:45 - he did leave most of this in the actual PREDICTING MY FUTURE! video
1:49 - more II announcement. Phil with his off-camera voice there
1:57 - “you’re doing a lot of this.” “good. I love finger guns” I love it
Tumblr media
2:01 - and back to 2017 WANTS ME DEAD video again. he had a lot of clips from that one! maybe because it had a lot of skits
2:04 - is Dan really helping or is he just there to make Phil laugh. god 🥺
Tumblr media
2:10 - and piano video. that is a scary Dan face
2:14 - actually shocked there weren’t more bloopers from Viewers Pick My Outfits! but maybe they weren’t YouTube suitable
2:17 - and DIY GLOW IN THE DARK FLUFFY SLIME! I feel Phil with just not being able to speak some days
2:25 - they do not like that bright light at all...Phil put that clip in solely for dramatic-Dan I think
2:27 - and this one! 😂
2:31 - and some DAPG bloopers too! from after they released that blooper video. Love the insight into getting a thumbnail image; so strange though!
Tumblr media
2:39 - and What NOT to do at University. this is quite the set-up for a 5-or-so-second clip in the video
2:57 - more of this! so many takes.
3:06 - and from the other Truth Bombs video. I wonder if they recorded two games and then chose which one to use.
3:10 - love Hazel’s deadpan read of that 😂
3:28 - this whole conversation is fantastic
3:33 - Phil’s decisive yes after Dan talking about his laptop, yikes
3:40 - DNP will go back and forth on a joke for forever and apparently other people being there just makes it worse
Tumblr media
3:56 - “my face hurts” ahahaha Phil
4:08 - cute ending there
4:22 - slowly slouching further down on the couch
Love this because it is funny and like a “2017 videos year-in-review.” I wish Phil would post more bloopers as Shorts or something now!
52 notes · View notes
troquantary · 3 years
Text
Edward Cullen: That Boy Ain’t Right
So I was doing a reread of @therealvinelle 's collection of Twilight metas, as one does, and in "Edward, Denial, and a Human Girlfriend" she mentions that she doesn't believe Edward is sane. I thought, "ha, yeah, he's definitely not," and also, "but wait, what does that mean exactly, please say more about that." But since she's already inundated with asks, I've decided to use my own head-muscle and explore this idea. (TL;DR: I start out more or less organized, synthesize some points Vinelle has made across several posts (and have hopefully linked to them all where relevant but please tell me if not), touch a little on narcissism, then take a hard left into the negative effects of being a telepath.)
Just a couple things to note at the outset, though. Theses have been written already (probably) about Edward as an abuser. Edward being insane doesn't negate that at all; he's definitely an asshole and just...a disaster of a human being. (I find it more funny than anything, but YMMV.) I'm also going to try to avoid talking specifically about mental illness and how it relates (or doesn't relate) to abusive behavior -- that's territory I'm not really equipped to discuss, like at all. My starting point is "Edward has a deeply warped perception of reality," not "Edward has X disorder."
So: deeply warped perception of reality. The evidence? Goes behind a cut, because my one character trait is Verbose.
Vinelle provides a great example of it in the post linked above, which I'll just quote because she does words good: "[Edward] keeps acting like his romance with Bella is a romantic tragedy, and all the cast of Twilight are actors on a stage making it as sublime as possible." Edward's the one to pursue Bella, but he does so with the full belief, from the very beginning, that it will never last; Bella will "outgrow" him, go on her human way, and he can spend the rest of eternity brooding magnificently over his too-short romantic bliss. [Insert premature ejaculation joke.] Turning her is never an option, even though Alice, Noted Psychic, says that romancing Bella will either end with her dead (exsanguinated) or dead (vampire).
This framing, where he's a dark anti-hero in love with -- but never tainting! -- the pure maiden and eventually leaving her in a grand, tragic sacrifice to preserve her soul? It's fucking bonkers. Bella isn't a person to him in this scenario. As Vinelle points out, Bella's never really a person to him at all; he falls in love with his own mental construct, cherry-picking from what he observes of her behavior and her responses to his 20 (thousand) Questions to convince himself that she is the ideal woman.
Bella's not the only one who gets the projection/cardboard-cutout treatment. Edward sees everything and everyone through a highly particular, personalized lens. He filters his entire reality, which we all do to an extent, but the thing with Edward is that he starts with his conclusions and then only pays attention to the evidence that supports those conclusions. Often that evidence consists of what he admits in New Moon are only "surface" thoughts -- but recognizing that limitation doesn't keep him from taking those thoughts as representative of what people are. Edward then becomes absolutely convinced by his own "reasoning" and won't be swayed from what he has decided is Objectively True. It's obvious with Bella; it's also painfully obvious with Rosalie. (Vinelle explains this and brings up Edward's raging Madonna/Whore complex in the same post, so refer to that again -- she's right.)
He also catastrophizes. Everything. Bella's just vibing in her room, rereading Wuthering Heights for the 87th time? She's gonna be hit by a meteor, better sneak into her room while she sleeps. Bella's going to the beach with the filthy mundanes their human classmates? She's gonna fall in the ocean. Jasper's cannibal pals are stopping by for a visit, but know not to hunt in the area? DISASTER, DEFCON 1, ALSO FUCK YOU JASPER FOR EVEN EXISTING IN MY AND BELLA'S SPHERE YOU UNSPEAKABLE BURDEN. Edward must believe that Bella is vulnerable and in near-constant peril, to support the reality he has created in which he is the villain turned protector and maybe?? hero??? (!!!) for his beloved. So when the actual, James-shaped danger arrives, he goes berserk, snarling and flipping his shit and generally not helping the situation. His fantasy demands that Bella remain human, so instead of doing the very thing Alice, Noted Psychic, assures him will neutralize the threat (and not just a threat to Bella, either, but to Bella's family and any other human James might decide to include in the "game"), he vetoes it immediately, no discussion. Bella Must Not Turn, and he sticks to those guns despite James nearly reducing her to ground beef, despite leaving Bella catatonic with depression (but human! success!) in New Moon, despite Aro's order and his family's vote and, let's not forget, Bella's clearly and repeatedly stated desire to be a vampire. It's going to happen. But he doesn't accept it until Renesmee busts out of Bella like the Kool-Aid man and the poor girl's heart finally, unequivocally stops.
Sane people don't behave this way. I don't want to slap labels on Edward, but I can't help but note that he comes across as highly narcissistic. He's the only real person in his universe, the lone player among us NPCs. That probably has a lot to do with him being frozen in the mindset and maturity of a seventeen-year-old boy, but I think it's also just...him, on some fundamental level. His failure to connect with others and recognize them as full, independent beings with their own wants and priorities isn't like Bella's failure -- she's badly depressed. Edward is...something else, and I get the sense that his sanity has been steadily deteriorating over time. And a cursory google of narcissistic traits turns up some familiar-looking stuff. He's self-loathing, yes, but also grandiose; he hates himself for the monster he is (and hates most vampires besides Esme and Carlisle for their monstrosity, too) but still feels superior to humans, to the extent that he felt entitled to human blood and resented Carlisle for depriving him of his "proper" diet. He eventually returns to Carlisle, but he's far from content -- the beginning of Midnight Sun finds him in a state of ennui, bored and dismissive of (if not outright disgusted by) everyone around him, that has apparently persisted for years and years. He doesn't play the piano, he doesn't compose, he doesn't enjoy anything...at least until Bella comes along and then he becomes obsessed to a disturbing degree with her and his new, romantic tragedy spin on reality.
[Next-day edit: I’m not sure where else to fit this in, but the way Edward casually contemplates violence against people who have, at best, mildly annoyed him is...chilling. I have a hard time writing off his strategizing how to murder the entire Biology class as a result of bloodlust -- it’s so calculated, nothing like the blackout state of thirst Emmett describes when he encountered his own “singer,” and that is probably the default for when a vampire is extremely thirsty. But even ignoring the Biology class incident, Edward still does things like consider, with disturbing frequency, how he might grievously injure or kill Mike Newton, all because...Edward considers him his romantic rival (despite Bella barely giving the kid the time of day). He thinks about slapping Mike through a wall, which might be an amusing slapstick image, except as a vampire Edward’s actually capable of turning this boy’s skeleton to a fine powder. So it’s, y’know, kind of sick when you think about it.
But even worse than that, when Bella tells Edward about how she flirted with Jacob to get at that sweet, sweet vampire lore, Edward chuckles and then, after dropping Bella home, flippantly observes that now that the treaty’s broken, why not genocide? I’m not even kidding, it’s right there in Midnight Sun; he seriously thinks about the fact that he’d be technically justified now in wiping out the entire tribe because a teenager tried to impress a girl with a spooky story. That is fucked. Remember, Edward was there with Carlisle when the treaty was first established. He knows how remarkable it is that they even came to a truce in the first place, that it was only ever possible because Carlisle is...well, Carlisle, and that it marks a pretty significant moment in supernatural history. He doesn’t care; he doesn’t respect it, or he’d never think something like “Ha ha, if I went and killed them all, I wouldn’t even be wrong. I mean, I won’t do it, but I’m just saying, I wouldn’t be wrong.”
Again: not the thought process or behavior of a sane person. (Or a person that respects life in general -- sorry Carlisle, big L.)]
Finally, whether he's a narcissist or not, I think the fact that Edward has constant, unavoidable access to everyone's thoughts is a powerful contributing factor to his instability. He can tune out the mental noise to an extent, but he can't stop it -- so he comes to rely on it like another sense. This causes issues with disconnect and lack of empathy, of course, but there's another facet to this shit diamond: he's basically experiencing a ceaseless flow of intrusive thoughts. His narration in Midnight Sun suggests that he "hears" the words people think, can "see" what they visualize in their mind's eye, and can sense the emotional "tone" and intensity of their thoughts. Therefore, perceiving Jasper's thirst through his thoughts makes Edward more aware of his own, "doubling" the discomfort. This would be a lot to deal with even from just his immediate coven members, but Edward gets all of this pouring into his head like a firehose on a day-to-day basis because the Cullens live right alongside humans. I know Meyerpires have galaxy brains or whatever, but that's a ton to process.
Besides the compounding effect on his own thirst when he "feels" the thirst of others, Meyer never suggests that Edward has difficulty separating his own thoughts from other people's; even when he was newly turned, he recognized Carlisle's "voice" in his head as Carlisle's. That would create a whole different host of issues around identity, but it looks like Edward's escaped that particular torment. However, I can easily imagine that what he does experience is just shy of unbearable nonetheless, with an eroding effect on his sanity over decades. He can't sleep to escape it; he's on a dishwater diet and probably (like the rest of his family) experiencing a perpetual, low-grade physical discomfort due to his thirst never being fully satisfied; and he's around far more people than is the norm for vampires -- even discounting all the humans, his own coven is unusually large -- meaning more noise.
Honestly, it would be weirder if he were all there, considering.
And even though I feel like I lost a sense of structure around where I started ranting about telepathy, I've written like 1.5k words about Edward fucking Cullen and I think that's enough for one post.
309 notes · View notes
issaxcharlie · 3 years
Text
Owen hosts Couple tag
Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x Artist Fem Reader
Summary: We play pretend world guys✨ (I missed them, I’m SoRryyyy.) So, Charlie wants some reassurance after starting to prepare his proposal to Y/N and makes this “genius” plan with Owen to find her answers without being suspicious. (She totally knows tho) also a lot of friendship fighting between Owen and Y/N because I had to, I made myself laugh a lot so I’ll hope at least makes you smile🤧🤣Anyways, have fun!
This is also my weird and nonsense way of doing sweet @marvel-ousnesss request of the we play pretend couple to do a couple buzzfeed quiz 💖
Tumblr media
The blonde takes a deep breath before picking up his phone and heading to the living room, where his couple of friends and roommates are on the couch. Charlie is lying down watching television and Y/N is lying on top of him with her face snuggled into his neck, he hugging her around the waist while gently running his fingers down her skin.
The plan was simple, to help Charlie plan the perfect proposal and give him an idea of what she expects from her wedding, they were doing a “Couple tag” video. That way the questions wouldn’t be as suspicious. Of course, there are easier ways but we are talking about Charlie. They convinced Kenny to call her and tell her that it was to promote the second season that is currently being filmed, and she agreed.
Charlie mentioned many times that someone else had to ask her the questions because she reads her boyfriend like an open book, so his improvisation had to be perfect to keep his best friend’s clever girlfriend out of the hook.
He decided to start the live from his room so as not to give the singer the opportunity to think much about it, so he sits in the living room and focuses the image on his friends who are not affected in the least by their positions. After all, everyone already knows that they are a couple and that they live together.
“Hello, I’m Y/N Y/L! And yes, that sexy, beautiful, adorable and talented man is my boyfriend, Charlie Gillespie.” He blushes as the memory of their first night back as a couple invades the mind of the Canadian, who had his girlfriend in exactly this position when she was, as she said, 'practicing' her introduction. Sadly, this time it will not end like that night because his best friend and about 500,000 people are watching.
“Welcome to my first edition of the Couple tag everyone! Here's my first guest couple, I know it’s not much, but I promise to find someone worthwhile next time, this is just for practice." Charlie laughs but looks nervous. Instead, his girlfriend sits down and rolls her eyes.
"I can't believe you chose him over a puppy or a hamster." The girl says to her boyfriend while laughing at her friend's offended reaction.
“I'm going to write that down in my long enemies list, but for now I have a live to lead. Okay guys, so basically I will ask them questions and I will also choose who answers them because I’m the only one hot enough to call the shots here."
She laughs and sticks out her tongue. Charlie sits down too and she takes his hand to fiddle with it. She keeps arguing for a few minutes with Owen but shows no signs of not wanting to play the game so he starts before she regrets it.
“Okay, first one is for Charlie. How did you guys met? This is actually a good one because a lot of the fans think you met on set and are like this really intense couple who started to date the very first week without even knowing each other’s last names.”
They both start laughing at the comment. The truth is that they have seen multiple posts and comments online from people judging their relationship and how fast they were going, especially when they did that last interview together and Y/N said that Charlie was taking his sweet time to ask for marriage, since for the fans they only have one year and months of knowing each other.
“We have known each other since forever. Our moms were best friends and we were born only a few weeks apart so we've always been together. We grew up as best friends and were dating before Y/N moved to New York to play Daniela on Stardust." Charlie tries to shake off the memory of the last tearful kiss before Y/N got on the plane. Hopefully he’ll never have to part from her for so long again. Sometimes he can't even understand how he managed to get through those 5 years.
"So no, we don't know each other for just one year, but 22." She adds, kissing his nose.
"Y/N, honey. I didn't ask you, don't be rude and wait for your turn." Owen says teasingly, the girl laughs and throws a pillow at him.
“Okay, rude again. Y/N, What is the first thing that he ever gave you?”
“Oh my, this beautiful valentines card! We were like eight I think. The paper is red, and it is filled with gold and silver glitter stars. Inside is a big star that has written in the middle, “My bright star, happy valentine’s day. I love you. And a lot of doodles of my favorite things, like my guitar, a microphone, chocolate, and a little Charlie. Just adorable, I still have it and to date it is one of my favorite gifts.”
The emotion with which she responds makes Charlie's heart melt. That was the first time he called her bright star, and he kept saying it to her during every audition, every performance, every practice. The exact reason not even she knows, but maybe one of these days he'll tell her.
“Rude and a liar. The 22-year-old Charlie's handwriting is horrible, the 8-year-old Charlie handwriting could only be close to a squiggle, nothing more. Oh, and probably only you had the ability to read it. I very much doubt that was beautiful."
She opens her mouth in surprise and wrinkles her nose, feigning annoyance. “I liked you more when you had a crush on me. You were nicer.”
Owen's eyes widen and he turns to see Charlie looking for help but he just starts laughing. “Wh- What are you talking about, mean girl?”
“Oh c’mon, you totally did, Ohio.” She smiles at the camara while showing a superiority face.
“Really? I already told you a thousand times, I'm from Oklahoma. But hey, how funny, forget about Stardust and audition for Funny Girl!”
“Jokes on you, I would nail Fanny Brice.”
“Man, defend my honor!”
“Bro, I can’t. You totally did, I even got worried for a second there.” It is incredible to think about how their friendship has grown and matured over time. They went from Owen fangirling every time he saw her to being really good friends. All these fights are more of a show than anything else, the truth is that when nobody is recording they tend to be very cool around each other and the three of them have quite a pleasant dynamic now that they are living together for the show.
“I won, Idaho. Now, please continue.”
“Well, my friends embarrassed me on my own live. I can already imagine the headlines tomorrow. Anyways, Charlie, Would you let yourself in danger to save her?”
Charlie starts laughing as he drops his head on the girl's shoulder. "I think she's not going to let me lie, I always have and will continue to do so. For me it's always her safety first."
"Which has given me more than a scare but he's so freakin stubborn." She adds while looking stressed and Owen can't help but imagine all the situations Charlie must have put himself in before.
“I prefer you scared than in danger, beautiful.” He grins and kiss her lips, her facial expresions relaxing at his touch.
“Gross. Y/N, do you prefer a small wedding or a big wedding?” She can feel Charlie tense at the question, so she leans her body back to support it against him and give him a lowkey reassurance.
“I hadn't really thought about it, but I know that my almost mother-in-law has been planning it all her life so you should check with her.”
His mom. Y/N is right, as always. His mom is their biggest shipper and the wedding is probably something she’ll want to be an importart part of, maybe way more than with his brothers since she adores the girl as much as her own kids, and the fact that his girlfriend is even more aware of that fact than him makes him smile.
“Do you love it when someone refers you as ‘her boyfriend’?”
“Always. Especially if it's her. She has that little knack of saying it whenever she can and it’s the most adorable thing in the world.”
“Oh I thought she was just showing it off to me because she was intimidated by our chemistry. I don't feel so special anymore.” Charlie chuckles and sends a secret air kiss to his friend, who just smirks and fakes to blush.
“How would you handle it if you thought another man was hitting on her?” Owen asks the guitarist raising an eyebrow.
“She usually takes care of that situations, her method is to take me by the shirt and kiss me hard on the lips. I’m never going to complain about that.” Charlie says smirking and blushing.
“We are a celebrity couple, for better or for worse. I’m not having him in a fight when I can just kiss that beautiful lips and solve the problem.” Charlie smiles as he wraps his girlfriend in his arms, so she can't see his face with the next question.
“What do you dream of your marriage? Mmm, let’s go with Y/N.”
“Anything will be perfect if I spend it with the man of my life. My Char is my everything and my biggest dream is to live my whole life laughing by his side.” Owen pretends to vomit as Charlie fills her with kisses under the ear, clearly moved by her answer.
“Let’s get to someting less cheesy because I really can’t with you both anymore. Has anyone ever tried to break your relationship?”
Charlie rolls his eyes and thinks for a moment. “Yes. We were like seventeen, and this guy from hockey had this big crush on her, so he tried to flirt with her many times even though everyone knew she was my girlfriend, until one day that he made her too uncomfortable and things escalated between him and me. Luckily my brothers intervened before something else happened because he was much bigger than me. I would have totally lost.” He chuckles while his girlfriend turns to see his face and gives him another sweet kiss on the corner of his lips.
“Yes guys, they are this annoying all the time. How do I survive? A lot of yoga. Next question, If three guys are standing, and you have been blindfolded, then how would you recognize him? Guys we actually did this like three days ago on set.”
“It was awesome! We put my bandana on her eyes and since it had my smell she couldn't be guided by that to choose.” Charlie explains excited.
“We got the three of us, first Jeremy then Charlie and then me in front of her, then she began to lightly touch Jer's hand. Then she went to Charlie's, it didn't take her a minute to recognize him and she took him from the hair and draw him to her lips, it was actually a pretty smooth and risky move, I’ll give you a point for that, prodigy brat.”
“Char's body inadvertently reacts to mine. It was pretty easy to tell the difference, especially after touching Jeremy's hand.” She turns her head to give Charlie a soft kiss on the lips and then Owen starts laughing like crazy and telling her to come see a specific comment.
She gets up and goes to sit next to him, Owen changes the camera so that now they are the ones in the image and she begins to read aloud. “Charlie I could give you my... Oh my god!” Owen continues laughing, resting his head on his friend who simply watches the screen in shock.
“Thank god Charlie doesn’t know how to read.” Owen, who was just recovering from his giggling fit, laughs again as Charlie giggles and sticks his tongue out at his girlfriend.
"Who needs to read when you look this hot with sleeveless shirts." He jokes while winking at his partner, which seems to melt in front of the camera that is still pointing directly at her.
“The man has a point. Okay, Y/N move your ass back there I’m still in charge of this show. Would you prefer a silver or gold ring?”
She makes sure to move off the screen and sticks her middlefinger at Owen before heading back to her place with her boyfriend. “Good and really random question.” She smirks, not making contact with her boyfriend. “I don't have a preference, but I would love Char to design it. Obviously with the correct guidance, but yeah he choosing every detail and then explaining to me why he choose it would be the dream.”
Charlie smiles. He was already imagining something like this after so many years of gifting and has already been visiting the jewelry store several times to make sure he designed the perfect ring for his girl, a slight feeling of pride filling him.
“Which series does she thinks resembles your relationship?”
“She loves Boy Meets World and see a lot of us in Cory and Topanga. I can totally see it too, after all they too have known each other their whole lives and have a bond as strong as ours.”
“Well that explains why she’s always telling me ‘Life is though, get a helmet’ instead of actually help me.” She grins at the memory of Charlie’s last prank on Owen a couple of days ago, it was really good since she secretly helped him plan it.
“Man, It wasn’t personal. I do the same with Char. I’m not going to be known for being the one ruining prank war. Take it to the end of the road, if you need me to take you idiots out of jail I totally will... eventually.”
“My girl, everyone. Isn’t she awesome?” He watches her adoringly and she blushes in response, buring her head on his neck.
“She always has this enormous energy and personality but all it takes is for you to see her for her to melt, that’s... kind of cute actually. Okay next question Stardust, What about If Charlie tells you to marry him tomorrow?”
For the thousandth time that night Y/N can feel Charlie stressing out. The fact that he planned together with Owen and Kenny all of this just to make sure he was on the same page with her is the most adorable thing in the world.
“I’m pretty sure he knows I would always say yes. He could have gotten on a plane when we were 18 and told me ‘I don't want to be without you, let's get married.’ And I would have said yes. He’s my person, I have nothing to think about, I have always known it’s him."
Now it's Charlie's turn to melt, and Owen himself can't help but smile.
Charlie's confidence in what he has planned is higher than ever, and the day when he can finally make it official is near. He has been dreaming of this day with his Y/N for years and he will finally get it.
“Well guys, that was it, give it up to my favorite couple of dumbasses and please stop asking obvious questions. Will I be Y/N’s maid of honor? Of course I will. Oh, and tune in next week to see me becoming Kenny’s new favorite after I challenge Y/N in a dance duel with I got the music. Golden star is GOING DOWN."
Thank you for reading✨
NEXT PART HERE
Taglist: @writerinlearning, @ghostofmgg @strangerthanfanfiction713, @thebloodthirstyvampress @kinda-really-lost, @kcd15, @magnet-girl, @aliandthephantoms, @stxrkspidey, @pinkrockstar19, @s0uz4s, @shycupcakealissa @cookiebuba, @fangirlangioma, @sageellsworth05, @twist3dtinkerbell, @sunsetcurvenotsunsetswerve, @caitsymichelle13 , @ifilwtmfc, @luckylouiebug, @bibliophilewednesday, @totomoshi, @siennanoelle01, @lunashadow6955, @bookfrog247, @morganayennefertyrell, @kiss-themoongoodbye, @rachelle3musicals, @imsydneywalker, @really-dont-forget-it @agentstarkid @talksoprettyjjx @kaitieskidmore1 @lukeys-giggle @katie-navarro @crybabyddl @cocopuffs0211 @marvel-ousnesss @blackhood5sos @dpaccione @tuttigunner
634 notes · View notes
everythingsinred · 3 years
Text
Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 18)
Hiya! I'm posting late, on account of my job. Editing these takes about an hour depending on the post and inserting the images takes a little more, but I didn't have a solid block of time to work on it, so I worked on it in pieces and I only just now finished.
This arc highlights Natsume's powerlessness. He's distancing himself from Mikan to protect her, but by doing this, he leaves her defenseless at times. He wants to be there for her but can't because of the corner he's been pushed into, and in his desperation he turns to anonymity.
Tumblr media
Chapter Eighty-One
Hotaru, Natsume, and Ruka are running after them, but are caught by Tsubasa, who asks them what their plan is, exactly. Ruka turns to Natsume, who turns to Hotaru, who pretends she was just practicing her running for the Festival and then the boys started following her for no reason. This comic relief is a badly-needed break from all the bullying and blackmail of the arc so far.
Tumblr media
This arc is full of fun comic relief, but the main plot is so depressing and frustrating that sometimes the comic relief is not enough.
In any case, all three of them know that the others are all working to take care of Mikan, even if she doesn't know it. They're all looking out for her in their own ways, even Natsume who seems to have publicly turned against her. At least Hotaru and Ruka can see the truth: he's still quite concerned about it, but he's in something of a bind now.
The next we see of Natsume, he’s walking with Tsubasa, being spied on by both Hotaru and Ruka. It’s here that we discover that Tsubasa has been transferred to the DA class, but is keeping this secret from Mikan. Moreover, he and Natsume are on a mission to locate Yuka, and they’re both aware that Mikan is her daughter. It’s interesting to know just how much information the DA class has on the other students that the other kids have no clue about. Hotaru and Ruka are shocked by this information, but for us as readers, it also demonstrates just how much work Natsume--and Tsubasa--are putting into protecting Mikan.
All this information is stuff they have to consider on their missions. They want to protect Yuka, because she’s Mikan’s mother, but they have no choice but to pursue and chase after her with raids and attacks. On top of that, Tsubasa is keeping his new ability class a secret, and Natsume has to hurt her with this Luna farce. It’s a lot to put on two kids, not that the ESP or Persona have much issue putting pressure on kids.
For Natsume in particular, it was fun while it lasted, being close to Mikan. He had relished and enjoyed it, and now he has to change pace. He’s willing to, because that’s how he can keep her smiling and having fun, even if he’s not on her team and can’t even be in her inner circle anymore. He’s willing to sacrifice anything for her, but we can see that it’s not any fun for him. Mikan is suffering in sadness, yes, but so is Natsume.
The next thing he has to do only makes things worse.
He confronts Mikan about the rumor Luna made up, about Mikan showing her underwear to the Fuukitai to avoid punishment. It’s obviously bogus: Mikan would never even think to do that, let alone actually do it. He knows that too, because Natsume knows her very well. He asks because he has to.
Mikan avoids answering, brushing it off as none of Natsume’s business, because she is also under Luna’s watchful gaze. So they end up having an argument in front of everyone, both not saying what they really mean, and instead doing as Luna commands, to keep everyone safe. Mikan points out that she isn’t his partner--or anything--anymore, so he should mind his business. Natsume then asks if that means his concern is a bother, and she confirms: yes. It’s a big fat pain.
Tumblr media
It's heartbreaking and frustrating in equal spades.
It’s almost as if Natsume was testing something. Now he knows that Luna must have threatened Mikan in the storeroom. Something sinister happened there, and now Mikan is different, dishonest, mean. That’s not what she’s actually like, and now he’s concerned. Luna’s shadow is spreading and it’s threatening to encroach on Mikan’s light.
Chapter Eighty-Two
Natsume walks off, having heard all he needs to hear.
Luna is causing mayhem and strife to punish Mikan and Natsume specifically for their misbehavior on New Year’s. She wants Mikan to be isolated from Natsume in particular because he’s her number one protector. If there’s a wedge between them, Mikan is easier to target. After all, Mikan’s purpose at the academy is to lure in Yuka, and the more danger she is in, the more likely Yuka is to try and save her daughter. If Natsume is around, threatening Mikan becomes tricky. He’d never allow anything bad to happen to her, hence his desperation and sacrifice in this arc. In order to fulfill their goals regarding Yuka, they need Natsume out of Mikan’s picture.
Of course, despite Natsume’s secret intel being superior to Ruka or Hotaru’s (and definitely to Mikan’s), he’s still not entirely in the know. Yuka being the main target, for example, is information Natsume is not privy to, and couldn’t even imagine. This is a game Natsume is unaware that he cannot win. If he doesn’t distance himself from Mikan, she’ll be threatened, but if he does, she’ll be threatened. In reality, there's no way he can win this round.
Chapter Eighty-Three
Anyway, the Sports Fest doesn’t slow down for the kids’ drama. The athletic meets have begun, and now there is a relay race.
Ruka and Natsume are on different teams for the relay, and this has inspired Ruka to beat his best friend, so he can be number one in Mikan’s eyes for once.
I will talk way more about the “love triangle” aspect of NatsuMikan and the question of choice, autonomy, and agency in Mikan’s essay, because when it comes to Natsume's side of things, he's very much resigned to losing every romantic game, every relay race, every competition. It's no contest. He's not competing. He's withdrawn from the race, now more than ever. He will not participate. He is destined to lose, after all, so why even bother?
And so Ruka wins the actual relay, and Natsume watches as everyone has fun without him, something that he’s been accustomed to before. It hurts more now, undoubtedly, because for a time, he was actually a part of the group. Knowing what it feels like to fit in and have fun with everyone makes it even worse when it’s gone again. He used to separate himself from the rest and suffer all on his own, but now he’s returned to that state.
He hasn’t quite let go, either. His effort and commitment to the Sports Fest, despite all the drama with Mikan and Luna, demonstrate just how much he actually wants to participate. It’s not about having his friends around him. He actually likes being able to have fun, and be allowed to take part in an event with everyone else, even if he isn’t technically by his friends’ sides.
His bad feelings are only exacerbated by Luna, who shows up to taunt him. He shouldn’t worry about Mikan and Ruka, because they’ll be torn apart eventually. Whatever happiness they find right now is temporary. It won’t last, and Luna will make sure of it.
But Natsume loves both Mikan and Ruka, and that does not reassure him at all. He’s selfless, would rather they be together anyway. In a perfect world, maybe she could pick him, and it makes him sad that the world isn’t perfect and he can’t have what he wants, but he’s always at peace with losing. So he’s not at all comforted by the idea that the happiness his loved ones have found will dissipate in no time.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Luna then giggles, because whether or not Ruka and Mikan’s being split apart will result in Natsume’s happiness is another question entirely. She wants to rub it in that even if Ruka is out of the picture, he can never be with Mikan. Joke’s on her though, because Natsume has already come to terms with this the moment he fell in love with Mikan. He hasn’t been humoring ideas of love confessions and weddings and living happily ever after. It’s outside the realm of possibility, because his circumstances do not allow him much happiness at all.
The future seems bleaker than ever, and knowing that Ruka and Mikan are being kept under watch by the school, Natsume keeps an eye on them too. He’s feeling sad and heart-broken too, of course. He’s not perfect. He can’t erase feelings of jealousy or the ache of unrequited love just because he feels it’s his duty to make peace with them. It hurts, but he’ll carry through. That’s what he’s always done.
But people are gossiping about his presence, putting his position in jeopardy. Luna can’t know he’s still hanging around Mikan, even if Mikan herself is clueless to this. Before he can be discovered, he steals someone’s mask, the mask of a boy named Kusami whose hairstyle looks an awful lot like Natsume’s.
Tumblr media
If only he could be allowed to just steal people's identities and not have to face any consequences for it. Alas.
Unfortunately for Natsume, the Borrowing Race is about to begin, and Kusami was arranged to be a participant. He put the mask on to avoid responsibility for his spying, but it’s bit him in the butt now.
Kusami benefits from this, indirectly, since kids who call him moron get the cold shoulder from Natsume, who doesn’t have the same easy-going personality.
It seems nobody actually wants to participate in the Borrowing Race. It’s very personal and vulnerable: you have to borrow a person or item you’d least want to borrow, as dictated on a small piece of paper assigned to you. It’s then judged by some mind-reading alices to test the validity of the borrowed items. The concept of the race functions around embarrassing and humiliating people, so naturally nobody would want to participate.
Natsume has gotten himself into trouble here. He can’t even make a run for it, though he really wants to, because for some reason people are hell-bent on Kusami competing. He’s in the second round, and starts running as he--or Kusami--is supposed to. He gets his paper and although we don’t see what’s written on it quite yet, we can see a focus on Mikan in one of the panels, so we can tell his first thought is to borrow her.
Tumblr media
To confess anonymously in front of the whole school or to not confess anonymously in front of the whole school--that is the question.
And then in a few pages, emboldened by the mask he’s wearing, Natsume runs toward Mikan and grabs her wrist. He’s decided he will borrow her, because maybe she’ll never find out his true identity, and he can be selfish just this once. This could be his only chance ever to be honest about how he feels. He's had to lie and hide it for so long that it makes sense he'd take the first opportunity available to go for it. This is quite possibly the most selfish thing he’s done. If he gets caught, he’ll be entirely exposed.
Unlike Ruka, Natsume can't really win this race. He won't be number one in Mikan's eyes, ever. He can't ever tell her it's all for her. The very best he can do is compete with a mask on. Ruka can try his hardest and impress Mikan and Natsume feels he never will. It's not much of a competition when one person cannot and will not compete.
He runs, despite her confusion and obliviousness, or perhaps because of it.
And just as the fireworks displaying his prompt start going off in the sky, he lets her go and walks away resolutely. There. He’s participated.
“The person you love.”
Mikan is chasing after Natsume, but he can’t be caught. Being caught would ruin everything, and would make his selfish act even more selfish. He shoves the mask back into Kusami’s face, and takes off.
Tumblr media
You'd think he'd be a bit happier to have finally confessed his feelings but he just looks miserable.
Natsume has been very selfish now. He didn’t have to grab Mikan. He could’ve borrowed anybody and lost. Does it matter if he wins? He’s not Kusami. He could’ve just gotten the race over with and run away, but instead he played along, because he wanted to confess. He’s never been so honest in his life. He wants her to know he loves her, even if she doesn’t know who “he” is. And if he gets caught, then Mikan will know for a fact that Natsume Hyuuga loves her, and everything he’s done so far--hyping up Ruka, distancing himself, being cruel to protect her, allowing Luna to cling to him--will have been for nothing. She’ll know it was all a ruse, and then she’ll be open to all sorts of dangers. But he risks it, because he just can’t hide it anymore. He always has to hide, always has to pretend, always has to sacrifice his own feelings for the sake of others. This time, he’ll say exactly what he means, made all the more easier by the fact that there’s a mask on his face.
He’s done something like this before, particularly when he kissed Mikan on Christmas.
And the Christmas kiss is nothing compared to this: an actual love confession. The kiss was just that, and he had plenty of excuses for why he’d kiss her. It wasn’t because he loved her, no way! It was because she kept saying the other one didn’t count. Or maybe he just wanted to know what it felt like. That’s all. The excuses were just another mask to hide behind.
What excuse could he possibly give for a love confession that a panel of mind-reading judges corroborated? If he’s caught, she will know.
All his tiny instances of selfishness are smaller examples of the same idea: he lets himself be affectionate for once. He can say he prefers her with her hair down, or hug her during the SA class labyrinth, or cuddle with her when he’s having a nightmare, just this one time, and then he’ll give up for good. She won’t notice. It won’t have an effect. It won’t have consequences. He’ll give up for good after; he’ll just do this one selfish thing and then never again. But he can’t give it up, and eventually Christmas happens. He kisses her, unloading so much affection into one action, as if he’s trying to just get it over with. He’ll just get all his love out with one kiss and then he’ll be okay to watch her fall in love with anybody else but him.
But he can’t. He can’t stop doing these little selfish things. He can’t suffocate his love and leave it to die, hidden and smothered like a skeleton in a closet. Despite his every attempt to kill it, to hide it, to pretend like it’s not important, it has only grown stronger. He loves her more and more everyday, and the more he loves her, the harder it is to pretend like he doesn’t care if he never gets what he wants.
He wants to be with her. He wants to kiss her and protect her openly. He wants to sit next to her in class and smile with her. He wants to spend time with her and be on her team for school events. He wants to hold her hand and tell her he loves her.
He doesn’t want to give it all up and wreck his own chances.
The longer he’s loved Mikan, the harder it’s been to be selfless like this. The yearning has only gotten stronger, and now it takes all his power to be cruel to her. What used to come naturally, like being cold and distant and insulting her, has become difficult. What comes naturally to him now is to confess his love or hold her hand or be around her.
Despite the fact that Natsume was the only person who seems to have borrowed the correct person for the race, the White team still loses, on account of him not actually being Kusami.
At the end of the chapter, he sits alone, brooding in a tree.
He hasn’t been caught, so his actions have no consequences for now. He can sit there and mourn what could have been. He can’t be with Mikan, let alone confess his feelings. This was just an excuse to live out a fantasy. He wants to be loud about his feelings, not muffle them. But this is Natsume we’re talking about. He never gets what he wants. And in his opinion, he shouldn’t because Ruka deserves a happy ending way more. And Mikan would never love him back anyway. Ruka would be better for her.
This is just another instance of Natsume promising himself that he’ll do one more selfish thing before he gives up forever. But we know he’s bad at keeping his word, and this is no exception.
Chapter Eighty-Five
Before Mikan can confront Natsume about the borrowing race, Luna steps in, covering for him, claiming she was watching with him from the bleachers during the race. She clings to his arm and drags him off, spurring even more rumors that he and Luna are an item.
Tumblr media
She's so violent with him for really no reason.
He tells her to get off, but she reminds him that she’s just done him a favor (though it’s really just a favor to herself). She grabs his hand and holds it tight, and again people get the wrong idea. It’s interesting how such physically painful things come across as romantic to the people around them, who think that Luna is simply holding his hand. Natsume’s persistent look of misery and apathy doesn’t deter people at all from rumors that he’s dating her. After all, Luna is clinging to him with a smile on her face and he’s not doing anything to peel her off, so it must mean they have feelings for each other. Natsume has been so good at hiding his feelings, that nobody--not even the girl he really loves--knows what it looks like when he’s loving and affectionate to somebody. They think he's into Luna, and can't see that what he really needs is help.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Luna has just arranged a terrifying fall for Mikan, knowing she’d use her alice as a knee-jerk reaction to save herself, thus causing others to think she did it for the attention. Mikan could’ve been seriously injured, or worse, and is definitely in trouble now, so Natsume is furious.
He confronts Luna, and the only thing stopping him from hurting her is that he could put Mikan in even more danger by doing so. But Luna is remorseless, giggling that she had no choice but to threaten Mikan. After all, she’s just doing what the principal said they’d do. Mikan should have been put in Persona’s custody in the DA class immediately following the Hana Hime party incident, but Natsume’s sacrifices have allowed her to skate by. Luna is there to observe and punish what she perceives as bad behavior, and anything less than abject misery from Mikan is bad behavior to her.
She warns Natsume: if he really wants to protect Mikan, then he’ll make sure she’s hated. That way, she won’t be in danger.
Tumblr media
Powerlessness.
Natsume can’t go around confessing his love to her with a mask on anymore. He needs to sacrifice their relationship entirely in order to keep her safe. And so he does.
He’s sitting on a bench, surrounded by his classmates. Permy is adamantly defending Mikan. These rumors that Mikan fell on purpose for the attention are obviously stemming from Luna, who has the whole class wrapped around her finger. She turns to Natsume, looking for back-up, but Natsume has been told clearly what to do in order to really protect Mikan, and it has nothing to do with standing up for her against these rumors.
Instead, he says that it’s best not to be involved with Mikan anymore. He doesn’t want to see her or hear about her anymore, and he doesn’t want to associate with anyone who associates with her. He tries to give off the impression that he hates her, that he’s disgusted by her.
Then he sees that she’s been there all along, listening.
This is almost like the scene where he tells her he hates everything about her. He’s doing the hard thing to protect her. He’s lying, willing to hurt her, willing to be the villain, if it means she’s in the light and out of the dark.
But this is different.
Mikan could take it before. She yelled back that she hated him too, just as much, and even though that was a lie, it was still something she was able to say. She could argue and fight. This time she crumbles and runs away.
And he’s different too. Before, he could walk away, resolute and determined. Knowing that she’ll be better off this way was enough for him. He didn’t even look back. This time, he can’t leave things like that.
After all, last time was easier. He didn’t think she actually liked him back then. It would really only hurt him. He knows better now. Mikan cares about him, and it doesn’t matter what shape that care takes. It only matters that hearing Natsume call her worthless brings her to tears now, and that’s enough for him to feel way more conflicted.
This time, he apologizes.
Tumblr media
He doesn't say he's sorry, but he's saying he's sorry.
He finds Kusami, steals his mask once again, never saying one word to a kid who has been generously keeping his secret for him. He runs after Mikan, and when he finally catches up to her, he hugs her.
Wearing the mask while hugging her is like wearing a raincoat in a hurricane. It won’t change anything or protect him at all. In fact, all he’s doing is giving her confirmation that it’s him, but he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t want her to think he hates her. He can’t stand it anymore. He’s sorry and he didn’t mean it.
He hugs her and this is different from his selfish hugs during the RPG or when he was having a nightmare. Those were little stolen moments for him to remember. He could take them from Mikan and cherish them as precious memories, even if she never thought of them again. This one is different. This one is for her, to comfort her, to apologize.
It’s all the things he can’t say. I didn’t mean it. Sorry. I have to do this. I really do care about you, I promise. It’s not real. Luna’s making me do this.
But before she can turn around to look at him, he leaves again.
He knows, because of Luna’s warning, that Mikan’s life will only get harder. He wants to help her, but by helping her, he’s placing himself further from her, making it harder for him to protect her in the future. If he’s distant from her to keep Luna at bay, then he’s not around to protect her from Luna in the storeroom, or during the cheerleading competition.
It’s what one might call a Catch-22. No matter what he chooses, he loses. And the worst part is that so does Mikan.
Conclusion
Natsume isn't an active participant in the last few chapters of this arc, so this is how I'll wrap the meta here. In the next arc there will be much to say about him. The Sports Fest went deep into Natsume's love for Mikan. It's not surprising that his love inspires selflessness. Natsume will always put others in front of himself and the more he loves someone, the more fervent he is about self-sacrifice. The truly beautiful thing about Natsume's love for Mikan is that it inspires selfishness too. And I never mean selfish as bad when I'm talking about Natsume. His love for Mikan is special in that it makes him want things for himself too.
I'm having doubts about being able to post tomorrow, so I apologize for only two posts this week. Expect normal posting next week at the very least! This essay is probably more than halfway through already, though I can't say for sure how much is left. Where I am now in terms of essay-writing is already deep in the Time-Travel Arc and as a result there's entire chapters I've skipped. Like. Seven in a row at times. Yikes. So basically we're pretty far in!
<- Previous Next ->
48 notes · View notes
gay-otlc · 3 years
Text
Keepers Of The Chaos (3)
Summary: Tam, Linh, Dex, Keefe, Biana, and Fitz are part of the tiny fandom for Keeper of the Chaos, and Tam and Linh’s podcast convinces some of their other friends to watch it as well. The group finds themselves strangely invested in this show, where students at Tumblr High School who work together to write about an elf named Sophia, cause incomprehensible chaos, and fight their rival Pinterest High School.
Content warnings: Cursing, religion (Jewish Vackers), and Amsterdam (just in case, I know that was stressful for some people).
Word count: 1621
Notes: Most of the episodes are just events stolen from Lynn's roundup, Dex's memes are here
(Read on AO3)
The life of an amateur meme maker on dumbles dot com was a strange one, that was for sure. After finishing xyr favorite show- Ze-Ra: Monaerchs of Powhir- for the third time, Dex had searched for another show to fill the void in xyr soul. Biana recommended this show called "Keepers of the Chaos" and described it to xem. Xe was doubtful at first, but after watching the first episode, xe was hooked.
Xe used to not have many friends at xyr school, so xe did what every neurodivergent queer teen would do- made an account on dumbles dot com. People seemed to like xem- or at least, they liked dizznee-plus's memes and edits of Ze-Ra characters. Even after Dex befriended xyr squish, Fitz, thons sister, Biana, and aer girlfriend, Sophie, xe continued making content on dumbles. Around that time, the Ze-Ra fandom started dying off, and xyr memes started getting fewer note
In a sudden, two am burst of inspiration, Dex made edits of some of xyr favorite characters, like Ref, Akki, and Rose, with their respective pride flags (all of them bi) over them, and captioned it "we must be gay." The post blew up, or at least, what could be considered blowing up in Keeper of the Chaos's tiny fandom, and that was how Dex found xyr calling as an amateur meme/edit maker for KOTC.
History had been repeating itself, with the KOTC fandom starting to die off, until it was revived by an announcement from creator Saturn Nolastname- a season two would be released soon. Frantically, Dex made a meme about season one episode two, with the car salesman meme. Xe edited "chaos keepers" onto the car salesman, "the rarelynoticed" on the car, and "this bad boy can fit so many stripper outfits into it."
That had been... an interesting episode, to say the least. The chaos keepers had been talking about the antagonists of "Sophie and the Dark Duck"- a rebel group called the Rarelynoticed. In the information packet they'd been given, it was confirmed that the Rarelynoticed wore black cloaks and armbands, but no other clothes had been mentioned. Somehow, the chaos keepers came to the conclusion that the Rarelynoticed really wore neon pink leotards and green stripper heels, then drew this idea.
Needless to say, the Tumblr staff did not let them write that into the book. Nor did Lynn, the unofficially chosen leader of the group. Unfortunately for her, this didn't stop the chaos keepers from drawing more of these- or the fandom from making a ton of memes. In addition to the car salesman meme, a post with Drake saying no to "wearing normal fucking villain outfits" and yes to "leotards and stripper heels" gained popularity within the small fandom.
Though nothing could match the absolute shock of seeing the Rarelynoticed stripper outfit for the first time, Dex decided to rewatch the episode anyway- it was funny to see the chaos keepers freak out, and maybe xe could get some good screen captures. The good Saturn Nolastname indulged xem, and xe captured an excellent scene of most of the chaos keepers either laughing or screaming at the Rarelynoticed stripper outfits, with Kimber- one of xyr favorites- sitting on the side, explaining to Juno and Kaitee why Bianca Cracker was bisexual.
Xe went over to dumbles, posted the picture, added an image description, and captioned it "Live photo of me not caring when my friends talk about sex/romance." Xe chuckled to xemself- this really was how it felt to be aroace. Xe tagged it as aromantic and asexual as well, since dumbles added flag colors. Smiling, xe went to go check xyr notifications.
Xyr jaw dropped when xe saw that @lordofthesnuggles- Fitzroy (Dex didn't know thons middle name) Vacker thonself had liked and reblogged all three of xyr memes, even adding compliments in the tags! Xe'd had a bit of a platonic crush on Fitz for... a really long time, but xe always felt too awkward to talk to thon, so it was nice to see that thon appreciated xyr humor.
Feeling energized- and excited to procrastinate on xyr math homework- Dex went to watch the next episode: Dark Duck Is Jewish Now. Being Jewish xemself, this was a really funny episode to xem.
Lynn had been writing a sort of spinoff- it would be called fanfiction, but it was for her own story- about some of the Dark Duck characters celebrating Christmas, and added a throwaway line about Bianca and Finn Cracker celebrating Hanukkah. Then, her fiance, Shai, had taken that idea and run with it, writing a list of ideas about what would happen if the Cracker family was Jewish. Hir friend Sam had jumped on the idea, and soon they had abandoned writing the actual Dark Duck in favor of writing a story about Jewish Dark Duck characters. Some of the other Jewish chaos keepers, like Ref and Cat, helped out.
To be honest, it kind of surprised Dex that no one had made a joke about the Jewish Crackers just being matzah, so xe supposed xe would have to be the first.
Xe posted that observation, quickly getting a like from Fitz- which made xem smile. After a few minutes, Dex posted another meme: Shai and Sam standing in front of a door with a sign that read "elves don't have religion," and them saying "This sign won't stop me, because I can't read!"
It was accurate.
While that episode was great for Jewish representation, and funny, the Banana Noir episode was just plain weird.
It focused less on the Dark Duck than most of the other episodes, and was more about the crazy interactions of the chaos keepers. The episode was named for Banana Noir, who was really Cat Noir, but in a banana suit. Banana Noir was the son of Mellie, who looked like a shark, and Nora, who had platonically married faer. The mothers tried to arrange a marriage between him and Akki, who loved the side characters of the Dark Duck series. However, Akki wanted to marry Amelia. After a lot of shit that basically no one understood, Banana Noir's attempts were thwarted, and Lynn officiated the wedding between Akki and Amelia.
Yeah, Dex had no idea what the fuck was going on either. Xe'd watched an episode of Twins of the Chaos and a youtube video by arsonpog analyzing the Banana Noir chronicles, as it had been dubbed by the chaos keepers, and both expert opinions seemed to agree that Saturn Nolastname and the rest of the writers had probably been on crack when they made that episode.
The next episode made slightly more sense, though it was a low bar. After taking a break from the "official" Dark Duck story, the chaos keepers began collectively writing a Cinderella story about the characters Sophia and Bianca. People weren't allowed to be queer in the official story, but the chaos keepers still wanted to have fun with their obviously gay characters.
Even to the viewers of the show, who only received secondhand information about the Dark Duck characters, knew there was no way any of them, let alone all of them, were allocishet. The exact identities weren't entirely clear- when Dex had made edits of the characters' official art and xyr headcanons for their pride flags, a few people had disagreed- but both the chaos keepers and the fandom knew that despite what Shannon said, Sophia and Bianca were in love, and their Cinderella story should have made it in to the official Dark Duck story.
While excerpts of the Cinderella story were quoted in the show, most of it was left unclear, so Biana had taken it upon aerself to write aer own version of it. Dex was expecting an update later  that day, actually, or maybe the next. Ae wasn't always 100% reliable with aer update schedule. Still, Dex looked forward to when it eventually did come.
After the brief calmness from the Sophianca Cinderella episode, season one episode six, Amsterdam, exploded back into chaos. A few of the chaos keepers decided to discuss a fake scene in the book in which crazy shit went down, with the scene supposedly being located in Amsterdam. It had never been written and was never going to be, but everyone discussed it like it was real. Some of the highlights involved all the Dark Duck girls having swords (and the chaos keepers being gay for them), and a speedboat chase scene through the canals. Fitz had a popular theory that the chaos keepers would actually travel to Amsterdam in order to commemorate this crazy part of their lives. Almost as popular as that was a meme Dex made, with a man labeled "chaos keepers discussing amsterdam" and gesturing feverishly to a wall covered in papers and red string.
Of course, episode seven (Dark Duck Disney) was chaotic too. Everything was chaotic with this group, it was in the title. Shannon announced that the winning Dark Duck story would be adapted into a Disney movie. After past experience with terrible book to movie adaptations, the chaos keepers panicked. They panicked so much that it became major news within their school, which until then, had been largely ignoring the chaos keepers. Once the discussion about the movie settled down, they talked a lot about how in awe they were that their Dark Duck shenanigans were trending within the school.
But of course, none of that compared to the last episode of the season...
Dex changed xyr profile picture to include an ominous pair of teal eyes and sighed.
31 notes · View notes
vaguely-concerned · 3 years
Text
The Mandalorian Chapter 14 reactions: HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME BUT ALSO I’M CRYING edition
- the good good din characterization is back after all the weirdness last episode!!!! that soft way he says ‘no, no, I’m not mad at you’? THAT’S din djarin, he would not be fucking impatient with his son having just been informed and seen for himself that he is terrified, go away mr filoni I know you’ve got all of canon memorized but you don’t get this lol. this feels much more right in how din being conflicted and still thinking he should give the baby away for his own good plays out too  
honestly every line of dialogue for him in this one was perfect I was just whispering ‘I love this awkward clueless wonderful man just doing his best’ to myself any time he said anything. “...does this look Jedi to you?” sir I adore you more than words can describe
- we got din chuckling. asjdklfhsdkafghsdafsadhjkfsdahjkfh. fskahfksjad. side note: I can’t believe my joke post about din desperately trying to Force home school the kid with the one (1) jedi trick he knows about and the baby being delighted by it over and over anyway -- listen to his expectant excited laugh when din takes the ball and sets up the game!!!! -- was canon all along. and then the baby & mando music kicking in when he gently put the silver ball into the baby’s hands again and tells him he’s special (because he IS special. to din)? hmng. hmmmmnnnnn  
they opened on the height of softness so we would all crumple under the weight of the rest of the episode and that was very mean of them in a way I sincerely appreciate 
- nothing to see here... just a dad trying to walk through the literal manifestation of the unassailable underlying forces of the universe to get to his baby again and again........ the desperation in that, the love, the foolhardy devotion................... shit
- okay so I might be a dumbass, but I’d never noticed this before -- the silver ball has a blue spot on the top, like so: 
Tumblr media
and in addition we get the room where the baby goes full darth grogu (I have to laugh so I don’t cry okay) on those storm troopers, and there’s a red light in there dominating the room (and it did even more in the concept art):
Tumblr media
in star wars blue means light side and red means dark side (it’s very sophisticated that way), meaning the visual storytelling here is that there’s a battle for the baby’s soul and gideon and all his nonsense (and the trauma bb’s been through in the wider sense) is pulling towards the dark, while grogu and din’s connection leads him towards the light. just... the image of the baby looking at his own reflection in the symbolic representation of his relationship to din? the way children find their sense of self through being safely reflected and held by their caretakers? god help meeeeeee I will go in there and fistfight gideon myself for disrupting that in any way  
the smaller light seems to be blue too, like there’s still the presence of light even if it’s dimmed and small in that shitty horrible room, which is a change from the concept art!
- FENNEC SHAND SURVIVED BITCHES!!! I even called that she’d be back with new shiny robot parts back in season 1, could not happen to a cooler lady, I hope we get more backstory and interaction from her the next episodes -- sounds like she’s basically sworn herself to boba’s service in gratitude for saving her life, I wonder if that’s a cultural thing of whereever she comes from? does she live aboard slave 1 now too?? because that would be hilarious and amazing, it must be like two strange cats trying to get used to sharing the same space   
- everything I could ever hope for about boba fett in this series came true, they went down the much more interesting and nuanced route with jango and boba’s identities as mandalorians, he looked cool as fuck and made din as a character shine rather than overshadowing him... amazing beautiful yesss 
(I did 100% not anticipate just how ‘cool uncle boba here to help you fuck shit up’ he was going to be but I am delighted to get it anyway. uncle points deducted for getting someone to point a gun at the baby, but the main point still stands lol) 
the power and brutality of his hand to hand fighting too... a w e s o m e , I enjoyed the action scenes a lot in this one
- they even recanonized him actually wearing jango’s armour. what more could I ask for. I’ve had confused parent & child feels about these two since I was like eleven and here we fucking go again. and jango fighting in the mando civil wars too!
- so I’m grieving the razor crest (and I always will be, rip you magnificent jalopy, always in my heart) but also there’s the grim satisfaction that my reading on it was sort of true -- it is (...was. oh god it’s going to take a while to sink in huh) a symbol of din’s self and life, and at this point when they take the baby it tears everything else to pieces. the only thing that’s left in the ashes is the beskar and the thing that connects him to the baby. and there’s... a strange solace in seeing that that’s all he needs to keep going? he’s fucking obliterated from orbit but he still has his love for the baby and the beskar and that can keep him going until he finds something new, everything else can be replaced?????? weirdly healing, though he is probably going to have a solid breakdown at some point after they get the kid back (shut up they are getting the kid back) and the cold distant fog lifts 
Tumblr media
also this scene/shot feels like it carries some Meaning, doesn’t it? I’m on record several times saying I never want din to be mand’alor and that’s still true, but there’s something about the framing of this and the way boba looks at him that’s like... hm. I’m not sure I have the words for it. there’s something heightened about it, anyway, for a moment he looks like something mythic there in the wreckage 
(something I would be much cooler with is our clan of two growing a little bit and those new people rallying behind him, actually, that might be neat. imagine if a force user does show up for the baby and gets adopted into the clan somehow??? so many possibilities.) 
- from the way he picks up the silver ball... din djarin is on his way to straight up murder some people huh
I think part of what reassures me about this scene is the music -- this mando flute is not distant, is not beaten, is not despondent, it’s clear and determined and strong.
Tumblr media
I love this. I love when we get explicit baby POVs, it makes it feel so real and intimate and... like home. (I especially loved baby’s point of view inside the razor crest, which just made me tear up again. baby lost the closest thing he’s had to a home in a long long time on top of it all. everything is suffering)
-
Tumblr media
Emotionally Significant Thumb Grabbing tm; the show
- din djarin looking for the ‘on’ switch on a magic rock fhsdakjfhsadlfhsdjah I can’t breathe
 “Well, this is the seeing stone. Are you. Seeing anything?” fsafkdsajhfsa sdhfksjalhfkjsdahfkjsdhf
- the energy around the baby as he’s, in ahsoka’s words, ‘choosing his path’ is blue, and the force sort of works across time and space, right?? so there’s definitely still hope for our lil green bean to not have to come up with a really dumb unsubtle sith name for himself, as is regrettably yet delightfully tradition. darth babbu should never come to pass (I do like how they’re interrogating the normal dark/light side dichotomy in this series, seeing as this is a literal baby who can’t really be responsible for that stuff himself yet and has such capacity for both.)  
- listen. listen, the way din says ‘can you please hurry up’ with no sarcasm or real impatience whatsoever, more like a harried worry, to his force-meditating son as he jogs off to make sure no one’s trying to kill them. is hilarious and also YES this is what the character is!!! weirdly and incongruously polite under stress sometimes and with a slightly odd reaction pattern to things!!! he’s not just quiet and badass, he’s a little strange sometimes and it’s so good!  
- a friendly opening volley warning shot from boba there
also din uncertainly asking BOBA FETT if he’s a jedi... now this is the dramatic irony I’ve been looking for haha 
I guess neither shand nor boba actually know din’s name after this either. baby you gotta start introducing yourself at some point it gets real confusing when there are two mandos on screen 
oh the long weary sigh going through din’s frame when boba says he wants ‘the armour’ and he thinks it’s just someone trying to peel the beskar off his corpse again. sorry the galaxy’s so shitty dad   
- “But fate sometimes steps in to rescue the wretched” is a killer line well done mr favreau. I like that boba actually offers din a good deal as well and seems to intend to deliver on it from how things are going. 
- din using his beskar-covered bod to cover someone he’s fighting alongside!!! literal moving cover haha. also I love fennec’s costume design  
- I don’t know where din got more whistling birds from and I don’t care, it was really cool haha 
-
Tumblr media
wow haha um so anyway -- 
(cue all the ‘who wore it better’ with cobb vanth’s ‘spiderman’s first home made costume’ look on one side and ABSOLUTE UNIT DADDY boba fett on the other side posts lol)
- aaaghh the music almost like a stunned desperate fluttering heart beat as din watches the razor crest be destroyed 
- for someone who has willingly worked for them in the past boba sure sounds less than thrilled about having the empire back in any capacity 
- oof the deadness in din’s voice when he says “The child is gone”. ooooh no that got me  h e l p 
- guessing next episode is at least partly a ‘gathering old allies and preparing the assault’ step before the grand finale, then! they cannot go for the season ender cliffhanger with this, I will fucking riot. anything can be up in the air except baby and dad being separated, I will not allow it
it would be very funny if the force user baby called out to comes stumbling into the middle of all this like the troy entering the room with pizzas meme too 
- the music in the darth grogu scene is partially a dark mirror of the baby & mando music :’( is nothing in this world sacred
also from how he reaches out for it baby might have used a light saber before in the past with the jedi? ngl the idea of baby wielding the dark saber not when he’s all grown up but in like two episodes -- with all the chaos a toddler holding a laser sword would involve -- is all that is keeping me sane here 
‘liable to put an eye out with one of these’ well gideon you sure have doomed someone to lose an eye with that one, here’s to hoping it’s you, for full dramatic payoff 
he is a deliciously smug awful force with great musical cues tho, you have to give it to him
- okay so this
Tumblr media
is obviously awful and horrible and it makes me so sad... but it is undeniably also very very very funny in how it’s framed. you know what? after all this bullshit baby grogu can have a little dark side tantrum, as a treat, we’ve all been there right
(forget finding a jedi, we need to go out there and find a child psychologist who can help him deal with this without adding the fear that he’s on the path to become a two foot tall evil space sorcerer to the mix Y_________Y) 
- rip the razor crest except for the second time :’’’( gone but never forgotten
- the last thing din tells the baby is “I’m gonna protect you; I’ll be back soon”. and I hope that stays with the kid somehow and that it actually comes true, that din will be back for him as soon as humanly possible and all this pain and fear can be repaired. ggggghhhhh my emotions are too big for my dumb human body 
115 notes · View notes
btsnewsworlds · 3 years
Text
[🎤 INTERVIEW] V: “I have a desire to perfect one cool thing about myself”
Tumblr media
BTS Butter album release interview
2021.07.29
As he’s being interviewed, V speaks his mind at a relaxed pace. But there was one moment where he kept on speaking without taking a breath. Look for that moment in the interview below.
You listen to a lot of old music on vinyl. Has any particular artist’s music excited you since your last interview with Weverse Magazine?
V: I was listening to Louis Armstrong’s music again. And I picked up some albums with a pretty jacket that’s also got a lot of really good hits on it.
How do you feel when you’re listening to those classics?
V: I feel like I’m beginning to relax a bit. If I listen to a song when I’m feeling depressed and then really get thinking, the things that are frustrating me disappear, and I can feel myself becoming more peaceful. And it makes me picture things in my head. For example, some songs might make me think of seeing something in front of me while walking down the road somewhere at night when I listen to them. I think setting the mood for listeners is the most important thing. The mood will presumably be different for everyone, but for me, those songs are the ones that are good at setting a really beautiful mood in the moment.
You said that you got inspiration from artists of the past like Sammy Davis Jr. for your performance in “Dynamite.” Was there any artist who inspired you for “Butter”?
V: Well, there was Billy Joel. When I shoot a music video, I think of a movie more than any one artist. And when I perform on stage, for some songs I think of the way movies like Reservoir Dogs look. For “Butter,” I watched a lot of teen movies. And musicals. After that I randomly ended up seeing a video on YouTube of some scenes from an old teen movie Johnny Depp did [which turned out to be the movie Cry-Baby]. The image I got from that was really intense. That’s the look I used in “Butter.”
“Butter” felt like a teen musical to me and now I know why.
V: I did it like a teen musical, just like you say. When we shot the “Butter” music video, I really, really tried to shoot the part in the elevator so it would feel like a teen movie. Although a lot of takes were edited, so not all of it’s there. (laughs)
What kind of feeling do you get from that kind of teen movie that you find so charming?
Tumblr media
V: For me, teen movies show a youthfulness that’s appropriate for the age. I think there’s an appropriate mix of emotion, energy, and a completely different and peculiar mood that everyone necessarily experiences at that age. If you watch teen movies, they’re overflowing with energy and full of sunny emotion, but behind it all they’re not as bright as they seem. They are really bright, but the color itself almost feels like some kind of filter. They feel like they have a different filter than other movies, so I tried thinking of teen movies when we shot the music video and put on performances.
That teen movie feeling seems to be divided in two between “Butter” and “Permission to Dance.” By the looks of the thumbnails for the fancam focus videos uploaded to the BANGTANTV YouTube channel, “Butter” seems to showcase a really cool character, while “Permission to Dance” is more teenagers smiling brightly for children.
V: The teen movie vibe in “Butter” and “Permission to Dance” are different from one another. We showed the sunny image people usually think of when they think of teen movies in “Permission to Dance.”
Do you think that going with the teen movie vibe influenced your vocals to be the new style that you used? In “Butter,” you still had your signature vocals but without the deep notes, giving them a new feeling.
V: That’s because, when we’re given a concept, we have to come up with vocals that fit with the concept. I think my singing style matched up with the concept, so I feel relatively satisfied. There was nothing majorly difficult about actually changing the style itself, since unlike changing your voice, you only have to change your vocal technique. Having said that, even though the notes in “Butter” were high for me, I still hit them! (laughs)
I guess hitting the high notes was your assignment this time around as a vocalist.
V: I’ve been working a long time to make up for my weak points. For example, I thought I was weak when it comes to high notes because I sing low parts a lot and I tend to sing in a flowing way. But I had trouble when we were recording “Dynamite” and I had to sing the high notes during the chorus. I got so mad (laughs) so I practiced a lot.
How does it feel to see the results you’re seeing with “Butter” now after all that effort?
V: I’m just trying not to rest on my laurels. Like instead of savoring the feeling, I feel like I should go to bed early for everything I have to do the next day? Getting back in tiptop shape quickly is what’s important, so I haven’t really had time to bask in the joy very much. I’m just working hard at the work I had like I always do.
In your New Year’s greeting on YouTube, you said you regretted not being able to put on the show for ARMY you wanted, and that your 2021 resolution is to “follow my own pace and pattern” when you work on music. Do you think your personal pace and your professional pace are in step this year?
V: No. [My professional pace is] fast, so fast. (laughs) We have a lot we have to get ready for since we’re always promoting. It can be challenging sometimes, but in a way, I think it’s also given me a good opportunity to become a little stronger.
I imagine it’s meaningful to do the work for your own songs, because you can slip into your own world. You also made “Blue & Grey” when you were having a hard time, and it consequently became a song that allowed you to empathize with many people and vice versa. Looking back now, what kind of song do you think “Blue & Grey” will be remembered as?
Tumblr media
V: I think with “Blue & Grey” I just wanted the song to let people know how I was feeling, and how we were feeling, at that time a little better. Obviously everyone was having a hard time, but I think I wanted to share those emotions with ARMY as-is, including the pains we went through in our growth process. And, to put it another way, I think I just felt like making it obvious. (laughs) I thought it was okay to be that obvious, seeing as I couldn’t put those feelings into words. I just hope people could understand how I was feeling; it’s okay if it becomes forgotten later on.
In the “BE-hind Story” interview on YouTube, you talked about the first line of “Blue & Grey”: “Where is my angel?” You explained how, when you have any kind of issue, you close your eyes and wish for your angel to come and think. Are there times when it seems like your angel understands your feelings, as you just mentioned?
V: I get a ton of answers by doing it. I’m not religious, but whenever I have some kind of issue, I close my eyes and think about it. Is this right, the way I’m thinking about this, or not? They’re just yes or no questions, like, Does my outfit look good today? Instead of just worrying about what you should do, if you tackle it in the form of a question, you get a response with the answer.
I guess it could work when you’re looking for inspiration in your life, but what about for your music? In your previous Weverse Magazine interview, you said you make a note whenever you feel something.
V: I write in my diary in hopes that it’ll help with writing lyrics and so I don’t forget those feelings. I do it constantly—I open up my diary whenever something comes up. I copy melodies that pop up in my mind, lyrics, and other things from my diary to my notes app temporarily, and when I’m taking a break or I get the urge to work, I open my notes and say, Let’s try this out today, and run over to the studio.
You released “Snow Flower,” featuring Peakboy by V, on Christmas Day. Is that another song you ran to the studio to work on after the feeling came to you?
V: For that song, when I was drinking with some older musicians, we were talking about doing a song together, and then we were like, Well, do you think we’ll have time to do that? So we decided to do it right then since everyone was available. My mixtape was delayed, so I at least wanted to play a different song for ARMY, and I thought, since I’m a bit tipsy (laughs) I thought I should try writing something. So I made the song really quickly. In maybe three hours.
Even though you made it quickly, the composition is somewhat complex and it has the same unique atmosphere that “Blue & Grey” did.
Tumblr media
V: There’s times when I’m, like, in the zone (laughs) and can make a song all in one sitting, but when I’m not feeling it, I end up revising it more and more. And I don’t want the composition to be too obvious, so I try to change up the way the melody flows.
With that kind of sharp image coming to you almost immediately, what were you imagining for that song?
V: You might think “Snow Flower” is about a type of snowflake, but I was actually thinking about snow and flowers separately. I started hoping that flowers wouldn’t wither away and just keep on blooming on snowy days. But in reality, when it snowed, all the flowers were crushed, the world became blanketed in snow, and I felt like the flower buds turned into snow flowers. I wrote that song about how I felt after watching that happen.
It must be important to feel things intuitively when you’re trying to express yourself through song.
V: If it sounds pretty to me: approved. (laughs)
On the other hand, as a member of BTS, you have a job where you have to deal with a packed schedule and keep various situations in mind. How does that make you feel? When you celebrated your Billboard Hot 100 win on V LIVE and the topic of your clothes came up, you joked that you wore them to give off an idol vibe.
V: It’s fun. It’s fun, but I could also say it’s hard. The performances are fun. I think idols should shine in a way that’s suitable for their age, and it’s important to do lots of things for fans like ARMY. Not just performances, but also posting pictures, having conversations on social media, making content. We’re artists and idols, so we think each and every one of those things is important. That sentiment won’t change just because we’ve achieved so much success.
You recently held an impromptu event on Weverse for ARMY.
V: I’m sure there’s lots of ARMY out there who are tired of not being able to see us in person. But since the only thing we can do for them is to be on stage and stuff, I was worried that we’re not doing enough for them. And I love being able to talk with ARMY so much that now it’s like a habit that I read their posts. I have a thing today. I have a test today. I’m moving today. Somehow I feel better when I hear their stories. When I end up reading things like about how ARMY are living or what kind of lives ARMY have, I can’t help but write a response, and because of that ARMY respond, so I try to become friendlier in a more fun way, too. I want us to be more than the Billboard number one Bangtanies—I want to be ARMY’s partner, their best friend, the friend who’s always by their side when we’re not on stage. It feels like business when I talk about communicating with ARMY. (laughs) I just want to talk with a close friend. I wanna talk with a close friend—that’s exactly how I feel. It’s been a long time since I could see my friend, ARMY. Usually when friends can’t see each other they keep in touch all the time. I can talk about all kinds of things like that with ARMY thanks to the Weverse platform, and because I can hear all about their lives, I think I was able to go on Weverse and hold that kind of event.
Read the rest of the Interview HERE
Tumblr media
19 notes · View notes
jay-and-dean · 4 years
Text
Firefly Chapter 7 : Eighteen and twenty-eight years old
Tumblr media
By Roonyxx and Jay-and-dean
Pairings : future Dean x reader ?
Summary :  40 years in Hell, but he didn’t spend all this time all alone, he had her.
Prepare to know what happened during those years Dean never talks about. To immerge yourself in Hell, only lit by the mysterious kid growing here…
And to see some of your favorite villains again : Crowley, Lilith, Lucifer… And also Sammy and Jack…
Serie Warnings : Hurt!Dean, Hell (torture, even if we tried to not give it graphic descriptions, creepy demons, blood, violence), swearing, angst, future fluff and smut.
This story is in both Reader’s POV and Dean’s POV
Wordcount : 4330
Note : This is our second collaboration. We can’t both edit the same post, so we decided we would post 1 chapter/2 each, like we did for Same.
We both worked as much on this story and it’s the result of both our brains but also both our hearts.
Please, if you want to show love for this story, don’t forget we were together in this.
This story will be around 10 chapters and we intend to edit it every Saturday if nothing delays it.
Firefly Chapter 1
Firefly Chapter 2
Firefly Chapter 3
Firefly Chapter 4
Firefly Chapter 5
Firefly Chapter 6
Jay’s Masterlist
Roonyxx Masterlist
——————————————————————————
She wasn’t moving at all. Sitting on the bench in the middle of this ocean of life, she watched people walk by. The sun had gone down now, after moving from building to building, making giant shadows change the whole city constantly.
She was overwhelmed, unable to move at all. Her eyes were drinking the world like new born baby’s ones. None of her muscles moved for hours, her fists clinging at her dress, her heart bleeding in silence for Dean.
A few people stopped to ask her if she was okay, but she couldn’t answer, her voice locked in her lungs…
But she finally got up.
After days of hiding in alleys, and walking on boulevards, escaping weird men yelling at her in the dark of night… It started to rain. A heavy, pouring storm rain that made her dress heavy and washed the dust out of her. And that warm loud summer rain somehow woke her from her torpor.
She had to live, and learn everything about life because that’s what Dean wanted for her… But Dean wasn’t here, and he will never be. So she came back to that bench, soaked and shaking, and started to cry for him. She had to be happy for the man she loved, and couldn’t without him… 
Her tears only calmed with the rain that day. And even when her eyes stopped crying, her heart never stopped weeping for Dean a single second.
Not when she got up from that bench to find a map of the city on the subway station, not when she found clothes, and ripped that stupid dress of her body… It was still weeping when she first found people in the street and asked her where to find food. It was screaming inside her during her first night in a foster home for homeless people… When she fought for the first time to escape men again. 
Her heart was weeping for Dean the first time she laughed, seeing cartoons in a TV store front, when she found out about drugs and abuse, cheating, wealth... when she started to be hungry, when she fell of exhaustion in an alley…
And even if her eyes stayed dry, her soul kept crying when the demons attacked.
Lilith had sent them after her as soon as the Queen noticed Y/n was no longer in Hell. She was hiding in an abandoned building when dozens of demons attacked her, she fought with teeth and nails to get them off and she won, but that wasn’t the end… Lilith kept sending more minions and, exhausted but determined to live, Y/n had only one option left.
She faked her own death. With the help of her powers and some research in the nearby library and in the maze of knowledge she had memorized over the years, she tricked the demons into believing she was dead, and used a certain pattern of sigils to hide herself, cloaked from every supernatural being.
Finally she was free.
So things went easier. After a little while, she met her own little angel : Sue. An older lady who offered Y/n shelter when she caught her dumpster diving her diner. Sue found Y/n a little odd at first, everyone thought that of her, but just as with every person Y/n had met on her way, Sue liked the happy girl she always seemed to be, enthusiastic about the very simpler things ; so she offered Y/n a job as a waitress in her diner.
_____________
 Y/n’s window was rolled down as the loud music blasted through the speakers of her raven black 1967 Ford Mustang as she drove to work, still the same job at Sue’s diner. And she was smiling wide on her way, because she loved every single thing about this job. 
She parked her car in the lot and made her way inside to take her light blue apron.
“Morning Y/n! How are you doing today sweetie ?” Sue asked.
“You know, same old same old.” Y/N shrugged.
Tying her apron on her, Y/n smiled kindly. She looked so different from what Dean had known, and hopefully different enough so no demon passing by ever recognized her. Her hair was tied together and no longer falling on a waterfall in her back. No more fancy dresses but only jeans and all the t-shirts she liked, with rock bands on it, or her favorite movies posters... 
Sue sighed and put her hand on Y/n’s shoulder.
“Are you still working on freeing Prince Charming ?” she asked Y/n with an apologetic smile. 
“Yes, I promised I would get him out and I won’t stop until he is” she said determinedly. 
When Sue had just found Y/n she kindly offered her to stay at her house until she could get on her own feet. Y/n dreamed a lot about Dean, some dreams worse than the others, so after the third night of her guest screaming Dean’s name, Sue had asked her who he was. Y/n couldn’t tell her everything so she said he was the love of her life and was wrongly imprisoned, and that she had promised to get him out.
“He’s a very lucky guy to have you, Y/n” Sue told her.
“Yeah, I just… I miss him so much…” Y/n said as she made the last knot on her apron.
“I know sweetie, but if you truly love him, he’ll come back, just wait and see” she smiled with that protective expression she always had when it came to her protégée, even if she seemed sometimes perplexed about all those stories she told.
She gave her her note book to write down the orders.
“Yeah I hope so” Y/n clicked on her pen and made her way into the diner to take up the orders of all the customers. 
It was a quiet day, she loved this little diner, the food was amazing and it even had a little jukebox she often used. It had given her a shelter, money to live, but also an identity and friends. A life.
Her smile faded like it did sometimes, Dean would have loved this diner too… She thought back to all the things she discovered on Earth.
She did everything Dean had told her about : She went to the movie theater, she learned how to drive (thanks to Sue), she had a date or four, went to a party, she got drunk a few times. She danced alone and with others, kissed a girl and travelled a little. Her appetite for life was never ending, so she had driven to the ocean and dived, she had smoked weird things once and ran in the forest, she had woke in the middle of the night to go buy ice-cream, she had sang in the shower and stayed home for an entire weekend crying while watching bad tv shows… And she even lost her virginity to a sweet boy. But nothing could get her mind off Dean, calm her weeping heart or divert her from her goal.
Every night she looked up at the stars and imagined him by her side, she could use her power to create an image of him that existed out of a million little stars, well more like a million little fireflies.
A lot of time had passed since she last saw him, her heart broke at the thought of him down there for so long. He must have forgotten her by now, if his soul even survived those many years.
A throat being cleared pulled her from her daydreaming. She turned to find a man smiling at her.
“Oh my apologies, what can I get you, sir ?” she asked the man, there was something unpleasant about him, he had dirty blonde hair and she didn’t like the way his blue eyes were traveling her up and down.
“Are you on the menu ?” he asked her with a sly smile.
Y/n sighed deep, why were a lot of men on Earth such… pigs ?
“No sorry, I was just joking” the man began. “I’ll take a coffee with some pancakes.” 
Y/n wrote his order down and left with a forced smile. 
He was the only customer today so Y/n handed the paper to Sue so she could make it and sat down at the little bar. She was watching the man in the mirror that hung on the other side of the counter. She couldn’t shake the eerie feeling she got from the man, he looked normal, but she could feel something… something powerful radiating off him.
The bell pulled Y/n out of her haze as she took the coffee and pancake to the man.
“Here you go sir, enjoy your meal” Y/n said as she dropped the food at his table.
“Thank you.” 
She was starting to leave when his voice stopped her.
“Can I ask you a question, miss ?” he asked as he took a bite from the pancake.
“Yeah, of course” Y/n shrugged.
“You haven’t been here for long have you ?” he said as he looked at her.
“Uhm no, not very long. Are you from around here ?” Y/n asked, he was just a normal guy, it was impossible for anyone to find her anyway. 
“Oh no not at all. But i didn’t mean this diner...” he kept on eating nonchalantly, he swallowed. “I meant Earth.” 
Y/n’s eyes went wide, she turned and ran towards the exit only to bump into the man who was just sitting at the table behind her half a second ago. 
“Who are you” Y/n asked as she stepped back from him
A deep sigh left his mouth.
“It hurts me that you even have to ask that, Y/n” he blinked and his irises turned to a fiery red.
Y/n ran towards the kitchen to get Sue. She pulled open the door and shrieked as her dear friend fell on her with her eyes burned out.
Dead.
“No ! Sue !” Y/n started shaking, cupping her friend’s face. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER ?” Y/n screamed to the man walking in casually.
“She put too much milk in my coffee, so I ended her” he shrugged nonchalantly.
Y/n stood up, her eyes a flare as she widened her arms to unleash her powers. Two fiery tentacles wrapped around the man’s legs.
“You’ll regret this” she said, her voice sounding like a thousand people at once.
The man gave her a sly smirk and snapped his fingers, her powers stopped immediately. She thrusted her hands forward to him, but nothing happened. Fear shone in her eyes as she looked at him in disbelief.
“It’s time we should head home, Y/n” he stepped closer to her, his fingers tilting up her chin.
“We have a family to start” he whispered against her lips with a dark chuckle.
“L-Lucifer” she gasped. 
 His arms wrapped tight around her and before she could blink she was back in Hell.
The suffocating smell of sulfur and blood made her cough, her whole body started to shake as she started to desperately gasp for air, her lungs crushed by the most powerful anxiety she ever felt. Her arms reached to her enemy in a pleading scratch, like he was strangling her…
“Home sweet home, baby” he cruelly cooed in her ear, his breath heavy on her skin. 
She pried her arms between them to push out of his embrace. He chuckled as he let her go and she fell backwards, scrambling away from him.
“Stay away from me!” she finally managed to yell at him, her eyes flaring back to life as she was losing control over her powers.
He tilted his head at her as he watched her, his steps following her every move.
“You are such a pretty thing, I see some potential too. But I was told you were,” he hummed in thought “a pain in the ass. And I’m starting to see why.”
Her eyes were scanning everything, the bloody walls, the frozen air all around her, the never ending screams, the smell of fear and fire. 
No she couldn’t be back in Hell…
With a turn of his wrist she was lifted up in the air, she tried to fight his power, but he was too strong… She couldn’t take on the Lord of Hell…
“Y/n, I’m only going to tell you that only once : You will obey and be helpful” he said with every step until he stood nose to nose with her, his eyes drinking her in.
She gave him a sweet smile before she spat in his face.
“Never” she told him.
His hand came up to wipe her spit away, he licked his hand clean, humming at her taste. 
“As you wish, Y/n. Then my little slave needs chains...” he sneered.
Iron ropes wrapped around her as soon as the word left his lips, they burned into her flesh making her scream in pain. She fell heavy to the ground at his feet.
“For eternity” he finished as he sat down on his throne.
“No p-please, no chains… everything but chains” she begged him.
“Oh no baby, I know what you used to do when you’re set loose, but forget about that, he isn’t here anyway, no reason to go wandering. Jeal told me all about you and your little lover.” he said as he crossed his legs over each other.
“H-he isn’t ? H-How” she asked, suddenly able to ignore the pain of the iron digging in her flesh. 
How was that possible ?
“He got out, Heaven’s plans. Now stop asking or I’ll gag you too” he sighed, looking at her. “I’ll make you your own little cage, like they did for me. No way you’ll get away from this one. And don’t think your daddy will help, he still thinks you’re dead. Everyone does.”
She whimpered in silence, only one thought on her mind. He was free… 
Dean Winchester was alive.
________________________
Dean’s Pov 
  Dean woke up in a little painful whine, he opened his eyes and wiped the sweat off his face and neck, watching the ceiling, trying to focus on the contour of his body, the sheets and the pillow. He took a deep breath to calm his heaving chest. 
Another nightmare.
And this one wasn’t the violent surviving of Purgatory, it wasn’t the burning guilt of old fights with John, the crushing pain of seeing Sam die ; it wasn’t the despair of losing Mary again, the disturbing memories of being a demon… It was the worst : Hell.
And among the worst, the tortures and the screams, tonight’s nightmare had to be about the cruellest idea demons ever came up with : fake hope.
In his dream, he was laying on the floor of his cell, barely able to breath because of the blood drowning his lungs, and he felt her hand, her tiny soft fingers wrapped around his wrist to ease his panic. She whispered sweet things to him but when he lifted his eyes to see her face, only Alastair was there, laughing loud and sharpening knives. 
Dean stretched and shook his head, like he could get rid of those memories like that. He couldn’t let nightmares get to him, and he couldn’t let his past crush him. 
With his guts still aching from the dream, he forced himself to get up. Staying in bed only made the memories clearer, and the trauma cut deeper. He knew only another hunt could ease the pain. 
Maybe, just maybe, if he saved enough people, he would finally expiate.
The bunker was silent, even Sam was still sleeping so early in the morning. Walking to the kitchen, he frowned : His knee was still hurting and the bruises on his face and collarbones too. 
Damn demon.
He turned to enter the kitchen and jumped a little.
“Hi Dean, sorry I scared you” Jack said, looking up from his bowl of cereal, his big eyes going to the hunter’s wounds quickly. “How are you ?” 
“I’m fine. What are you doing up so early ?” Dean grunted, going straight to the coffee in his long grey robe. 
“I have trouble sleeping lately” the boy answered, frowning in confusion like he often did. 
“Try whiskey” Dean muttered low in a sleepy grunt.
“Alcohol is really not a solution to my problem I think” Jack turned to him, even more confused.
“I was kidding” he sighed, sitting in front of the young boy.
Sometimes Jack really was Castiel’s son…
The hunter scratched his scruff and took the cereal to plunge his hand in the box, eating some while reading the joke behind it.
“I hear a voice in my head” Jack sighed. 
Dean looked up, ready to make a mocking joke but he noticed a genuine worry on the boy’s face.
“A voice ?”
“Yes” Jack searched Dean’s face. “At first I thought maybe I overheard something on the angel radio, but… It seems different.”
“What does it say ?” 
“I don’t really understand it” Jack shrugged.
“Understand what ?” Sam asked, scratching his head while entering the room with his hair in every direction and the left side of his face still swollen and bruised. “Wow, everyone is up early this morning ! What am I missing ?” 
“Jack says he hears a voice” Dean repeated, getting up to get coffee now it was ready. “But he doesn’t know where it comes from or what it says” he groaned slightly. 
Please don’t let that be bad news again…
Dean sat heavily, rubbing his tired eyes while his brother interrogated Jack. How long had he been hearing the voices, were there several, was it constant… The boy only had a very few answers.
“We need to find where it comes from, Dean” Sam states, making his brother grunt again in his coffee mug. 
That didn’t sound like a good old fight and kill hunt, it sounded like trouble.
_____________________
  Dean pushed the heavy metal door and went down the stairs, overhearing his brother, Jack and Castiel talking in the library. 
Reaching them, he almost threw the bag on the wooden table, not daring to ask any question seeing the three too serious faces looking at him.
“I guess no good news” he mumbled deep in his throat looking down to grab a beer from the bag.
“Dean” Castiel started with his worried voice, making the hunter look instantly slightly annoyed. “The voice comes from Hell.”
“Hell” Dean repeated casually, taking a sip of beer to wash the word from his mouth. “There are a lot of voices in Hell, it’s pretty loud down there.”
When his eyes fell on Sam, a shiver roamed his back. He had the face, Dean hated that face, the “you’re not going to like it” face. So he put his beer down on the table and sighed.
“What is it ?” he finally asked.
“The voice, Dean” Jack said. “It’s calling you.”
“Me” Dean’s eyes widened. “There can be another dude named Dean in Hell !”
“Dean…” Sam sighed. “Who could be calling you ?”
Dean’s first thought went to Bobby. They had freed him from Hell a few years ago, he was supposed to be in Heaven, and Crowley had decided differently… Maybe someone they lost ? An innocent locked in Hell by mistake ? But Rowena was on the throne now… Would she do that ? 
“How can you hear a voice coming from Hell ?” he shook his head. “Do you hear them all ?”
“No” Jack said. “Only this one.”
Dean sat and took a deep breath, realizing this would mean that he would have to visit Hell... again. After those break in, the nightmares were always worse, and last time he had to deal with a panic attack in the shower. 
“Okay” he stated. “What is the plan ? And how do we know it’s not a trap ?”
_____________________ 
 “So your plan…” Rowena frowned from her throne, her long dress nonchalantly falling on the floor. “Is letting the boy follow a voice like a dog on a leash ?” 
Dean’s face was stern, his arms tense, his heart a little compressed in his chest.
Each time he smelled that horrible sulfur mixed with blood smell, it was like he could feel the chains and the needles and hear Alastair’s voice all over again. Then he had two choices in his mind : Either he accepted it, and stayed with the demon’s croaky voice in his head for days, or focused on what had made him hold on for years back then : the secret girl’s soft touches ; but then the fear was replaced by the crushing feeling of despair and sadness, at knowing he had been fooled that bad, into believing innocence exited.
“More or less” his brother answered. “Rowena, you have to admit it’s something new… And if there are leaks in Hell…”
“Yeah yeah…” the witch sighed. “But don’t come crying when your little baby angel comes back traumatized. This is not a place for kids.”
Oh the irony.
“It’s not there” Jack cut them with a frown, looking around.
“What do you mean it’s not there ?” Dean grunted. “You were sure it came from Hell !”
“It does…” the boy stated. “Just deeper.”
“Deeper ?” Sam shook his head, but turned to Rowena, immediately trusting Jack as always. “Is there a basement in Hell ?”
“A basement ? Hell is a multi-dimensional…”
“Answer him” Dean cut her, losing patience.
Rowena got up and demons entered the room. She gave orders about getting the records, about the cage, and all. After a few very long minutes, a demon in an old man vessel came closer to the Queen, whispering something in her ear.
“Oh really ?” Rowena said. “Why am I not aware of all this ?”
“Because they’re all empty, your Majesty” the demon shrugged. 
“What is ?” Sam insisted with a flustered move of his hands.
Rowena sat again.
“There are cages, like the one that held Lucifer once. Smaller ones, but for all we know, they are all empty.”
“For all you know ?” Dean raised his voice a little. 
“No one uses them” Rowena shrugged. 
“They held an angel during the war between Heaven and Hell” the demon spoke, his voice shaking a little, obviously uneasy in front of the Winchesters. “I-in the dawn of time, but the angel was killed by Lucifer before Michael locked him in the cage… We kinda forgot where they were.”
“Take us to them” Jack ordered Rowena with this frown of his.
Rowena looked to the demon that didn’t move, his eyes on Dean, like the hunter could suddenly decide to kill all of them.
“Merihem, take us to those cages” Rowena called him. “Chop chop.” 
____________________
The light of Hell’s fire didn’t reach that deep in the pit, like the sun in the deepest ocean.
Dean was holding the torch like it was his lifeline in this vertiginous nightmare of deafening silence. Everything was threateningly pitch black, a perfect representation of the fear of dark, a big cold lonely nothingness… With stairs in the middle. 
“I didn’t know there was anything deeper than Lucifer’s cage” the Queen’s voice echoed weirdly in the void.
Suddenly, the stairs stopped and Dean banged into metal bars. He lifted his torch to see what was behind it, but the cage was empty.
“It’s here” Jack whispered. “I can feel it.”
Sam opened the empty cage, his arm hair ruffling at the touch of the same metal that held his soul for so long.
“Nothing” he said, holding back his own trauma probably as hard as Dean did.
“Dean…” a weak voice made them all jump, coming from the dark.
“Who is this ?” the hunter grunted, taking a few unsure steps to the next cage, firmly holding his torch in front of him with an almost trembling arm.
“Dean…” the voice now whined.
Sam put his hand on his brother’s shoulder to make him wait for him. They looked at each other, using silent words and joining their flames to fight the pitch black ahead of them. 
Even used to all kinds of nightmares, Dean wasn’t so reassured in the deepest of Hell, called by a weak and plaintive voice coming from the darkest of darks.
Something moved in the cage in a deafening metal noise, a shadow fleeing the light. The brothers both let out a shaky breath, moving closer with the demon and Rowena way behind them.
Dean swallowed, finally distinguishing a body, hunched in the opposite corner of the cage, shaking. Extremely long hair was falling around the pitiful form, chained heavily even inside the cage. 
“Who are you ?” he asked again. “You’re calling me, why ?”
No answer.
“Who is this ?” Sam turned to the demon that had guided them.
“I-I have no idea” it answered. “No one came here in years !”
“Dean ?” the voice seemed to struggle thinking straight.
“Jeez” Sam muttered. “For how long has she been there ?”
She ? Dean thought, realizing now it was indeed a woman, her thin delicate hands were clinging to the floor.
His heart was racing in his chest, from being in Hell, from the fear of what he would find, and from something else, something confusing, like an emotion flying in the air around him.
The girl finally lifted her face to them, teary eyes frowned at the light of the flame, her shaking hand open in front of her to soften the burning of the torch.
Dean felt hit violently in the chest, his breathing stopped in a strangled gasp as everything he certainly knew started to crumble in the back of his mind. He opened his mouth but nothing came out… After swallowing twice, he finally managed to speak.
“Firefly ?”
Next Chapter on @roonyxx​‘s blog
________________________
_Feedback is what makes the stories live_
Forever Tags : @parinarain @animegirlgeeky @mogaruke @masterof-agony @rainflowermoon @tftumblin @deans-baby-momma @roonyxx @thefaithfulwriter @vicariouslythruspn @emeow1496 @daryldixonandfrogs @holylulusworld  @cocklesbelli @sandlee44 @screenchingartisancashbailiff @donnaintx @stormchasingchick32 @akshi8278 @magssteenkamp @sister-winchesters99 @neii3n  @lyss-dw79 @im-a-shrub @sadwaywardkid@hopelesslydevotedtoyou1912 @slyqueenj @i-love-superhero @waywardsisterandpie @sunsetsandbooks @fangirlxwritesx67 @mrspeacem1nusone @stylesismyhubs @deanwanddamons @jawritter @peridottea91 @chelsea072498 @chocolateheart @vicmc624 @teresa-67 @jessie-michael @doctor-hp-mcu @hawkerz12​
Firefly Tags: @waywardsistersandpie @jessica-marsh09​ @teller258316 @busy-bee-angel-misska @theatrechic26 @lovelyrocker @couldabeenamermaid​
261 notes · View notes
tatertotthethot · 4 years
Text
The Doms Next Door 2.0
THIS IS A TEMPORARY REUPLOAD FOR THIS CHAPTER CUZ TUMBLR IS RAN BY A BUNCH OF BOTS. 2.1 HERE
Warnings/AN: frequent, casually cursing; comical, gay Jimin; insecure reader; steamy flirting; tattoo/sexualized Tae 🙃. Enjoy~ (TAEKOOK EDIT ABOVE IS ARTKOOK DONE BY NONCONMAN ON INSTAGRAM)
copyright © 2018 all rights reserved
_________________________________
Your tires came to a stop outside of the tattoo shop you've seen online— a brick building, covered in spray paint and street-style art. A sign buzzed over the awning of the entrance doors, with the built-in UV lights and graffiti-styled font displaying the name of the place in neon-red letters. Kink For Ink! The name alone was what first caught your attention last week, when you Googled "Tattoo shops near me" and it pulled up a list, with "Kink For Ink" being the first option. It just seemed so uncanny and fitting at the time, considering the previous run-in you just had with the sex-crazed neighbors a couple nights before. You couldn't help but to click the link to their Instagram.
A profile came up with 53.4k followers, which immediately blew your mind... but you quickly saw why. Every tattoo and piercing, no matter the body-placement, skin-type, or quirky design, was vividly appealing— certainly done by the articulate hands of certified experts. Even in the comments of the piercings that were posted, people were praising them for the "minimal" amount of pain they experienced, despite the fact that some of piercings were done in places you couldn't even fathom the thought of having a needle jammed through.
It said in the bio that the shop is owned by the two artists that work there— Kim Taehyung and Jeon Jungkook. You couldn't find out much about them, all their pictures showed was their work. You even went back to search for a personal account of their own, but nothing came up. You then went back to the bio and clicked a link to the official website, hoping to find out something, but you were met with a disclaimer rule at the top that automatically deemed your chances of even getting your piece done by them, slim-to-none.
• No walk-ins allowed.
• Every request/idea must be sent in through the DMs of our Instagram page. You will only be accepted only if it spikes our personal interests.
Yikes; You were instantly discouraged by this. The piece you wanted was something so common and cliché, that you actually got the image out of a child's coloring book.... It was the cartoon layout of the glass vase and enchanted rose, from the Beauty and the Beast movie. Cheesy, yes. But it was something of personal, nostalgic value. You remember when you were little— roughly around 3 or 4 years of age— when your parents started fighting and would spend all day screaming and throwing things at each other, putting you in a constant state of anxiety. But then you'd go to bed at night and pop the VHS tape, and the movie never failed to put you in a peaceful state of mind— a hopeful one. It's remained as your all-time favorite love story throughout the years. Which, is ironic, considering that the relationship itself was different, but almost as dysfunctional as your parent's. However, the fact that even the Beast was capable of change, and everything wound up so perfect and happy in the end, makes your heart happy. And even now, at age 19, it still puts you in your feelings. The previous remake of a movie is what actually inspired you to get the enchanted rose as a tattoo, after seeing it in 3D not too long ago. But you're only willing to shell out up to $200 for it, at most. You've just started college, and even though Jimin's parents own the house and let the two of you live there, rent free, you're still responsible for half the utility bills from month to month. Blowing every bit of money you have saved up, right at the start of the semester, would just be irresponsible. But $200 was manageable, and you're looking for anything that'll give you a little extra "oomph" to break you out of this introverted shell you've always known. Pushing it off would just delay it, and you were ready for change. The nose piercing you want is just a small little thing that'll hopefully add a bit of flare to the features of your face. These two guys could probably do the piercing/tattoo with a blindfold on and a hand tied behind their back. So, if it meant that you'd be able to get these things done in confidence, without having to worry about the outcome, you figured it wouldn't hurt for you to at least ask, even if they straight-up ignore you. So, after spending an unnecessary amount of time overthinking the wording of your text, you finally constructed a message in your notes and DM'd it to business page, after sending them a small, simple outline of the cartoony rose, and pressed send.
• You: Hello! I've been wanting to get this tattoo done for a very while now, and was hoping one of you will be willing to do it for me... along with piercing my nose? I know it's a very mediocre and cliché piece, and a nose piercing can be done anywhere. But I'm new to the area and I've never gotten a tattoo/piercing done before and I haven't really checked out any other places either because I found this page first. And from what I can see, you guys are pretty efficient and CRAZY talented. So, I trust it'll get done right.... only if you want to! I'm willing to pay $200 for this, but if it costs that much for just the outline I've sent then that's fine as well. But I understand if neither of you want to do it cuz that is really cheap compared to the ones I've seen lol. But either way, thx for ur time 😁
A few minutes went by and you had just unlocked your phone to check the message again, when the word "seen" popped below the message. You held your breath for a second— but seconds turned to minutes, and time went by with no reply, what-so-ever. You figured maybe you sounded a little too immature to take seriously; kind of like a prepubescent 12-year-old asking someone out for a dance... and you blew it. Which was disappointing, but predictable. So fuck it. Maybe it's a sign; you shouldn't get it after all.
11pm rolled around, many hours later. You were now hiding beneath your covers, beginning your "amateur threesome" exploration on PornHub. You were ready to see what this whole "2 guys, 1 girl" thing was all about. But just when you were about to type it into the search bar, you were interrupted by an Instagram notification dropping down from the top of your screen.
"KinkForInk sent you a message."
You audibly gasped, eyes turning to saucers as you clicked on the notif and switched over to the Instagram app.
• KinkForInk: Hi (Y/N). This is Tae, one of the artists of the shop. The tattoo you sent in is worth roughly $100... but I want to run an offer by you in hopes that you'll be interested.
— Your brows scrunched in oddity, stomach fluttering. An offer? For you?
• You: Okay, sure. What's that?
• KinkForInk: I've been looking for someone willing to showcase the custom design I've come up with, specifically for a much more... exclusive version of the Beauty and the Beast tattoo you sent. And if you'd be down for letting me and my partner put it on you, it'll be free. No charge. BUT you'll also have to sign a contract saying that you'll do a little bit of modeling for us once it's done. You think you'd be in to doing something like that, even if you get it?
— Your head spun for a second, reading the message over and over again until you could fully wrap your mind around what he was saying.
• You: Hold on... YOU wanna put a tattoo on ME so that I model for you? And it's FREE? Are you sure about this? I'm not even model material lol.
• KinkForInk: Yes, yes, and yes, you are. You'd be perfect for this.
• You: How do know that? Is it a face tattoo? Cuz I only have 6 selfies on here and you can't see anything past my shoulders.
—"Seen" came up as soon as you hit send, but a couple of minutes rolled by with no reply to the message, nor was he even typing. Maybe you came off a little rude. But it was already sketchy and it was a logical question.
— An image suddenly popped up: a screenshot of your Facebook profile. Then another— and much to your horror, it was the photo Jimin tagged you in last week, when the two of you were swimming at a local community pool. You were wearing a simple two piece, sitting at the foot of the lawn chair Jimin was also sitting in, as his legs were visible on either side of you and his lap was practically framing your ass. The photo was at an upward angle and looked so scandalous— but really, you had just asked Jimin to put sun screen on your back and he didn't want to stand up because the pavement was too hot against his bare feet. But you actually liked the picture at the time; it was just a silly joke and your ass actually looked quite nice from that angle. Plus, everyone knows nothing sexual actually goes on between the two of you, for obvious reasons. But Taehyung doesn't, so you couldn't help but dreadfully cringe when you saw the caption of the screen shot.
"Babymama 💦🍆"
• KinkForInk: Is this you??
• You: Yes, that's me. The caption is a joke tho... pay no mind to that. But this is like, really happening? You really think it'd look good on me?
— Why that picture though? You couldn't help but wonder.
• KinkForInk: Yes. Like I said, you're perfect for this piece. Are you down to at least see what the tattoo will look like? We don't expect you to be experienced with modeling or anything, but if you listen to us and cooperate, you'll do just fine.
• You: Yes I wanna see, and I'll do the best I can if I decide to get it... I'm just a bit shy, is all.
• KinkForInk: You'll be in good hands. I promise.
• You: Okay... are you going to show me??
• KinkForInk: Can't send it over a message, I don't want it plagiarized or the concept stolen. But the piece itself isn't necessarily crazy or anything, just more creative. I'd be more than happy to show you at my shop some day this week, if you'd be willing to swing by.
• You: Yeah, I can do that. When should I come?
• KinkForInk: Are you available after 5 tomorrow?
• You: I am, I get off at 4:30.
• KinkForInk: Great. Be here by 5:30, and make sure you've eaten in case you like the piece and wanna get started. It's pretty big for a first timer and gonna take a lot of time and patience. It'll have to be done in sessions but I hope you have a fair enough pain tolerance to at least get the outline of it done first.
— It can't be any worse than a bikini wax, you thought, shivering at the memory. That a story for another time. You decided on an alternative scenario.
• You: I give blood from time to time... but that's easy and doesn't really hurt that much. I think I can handle it though... maybe. I honestly don't know lol, I'm sorry 😣. But I can try my best. Can I ask where it's supposed to go?
• KinkForInk: That's okay, I'll work with you. It's supposed to go down the middle of your back. Starts between the center of your shoulder blades, and trails down the length of your spine to your lower lumbar. You'll see how it looks once we transfer a template on your back. But if you don't like it, there will be no hard feelings from my end. I can still do the tattoo you want if that's the case, free of charge just for your time.
• You: Oh no, you don't have to do that! I'd still pay!
• KinkForInk: Not if I don't accept your money. Trust me, I'm not worried about it. The nose piercing is gonna be $30 regardless, though. JK isn't so lenient.
• You: Of course. Will I have to take my shirt and bra off for the tattoo?
• KinkForInk: Yes, and for the pictures once it's done.
— Your mind blanked at that; thumbs froze over the keypad. He was typing again.
• KinkForInk: Don't let that discourage you. Again, you're in good hands. You can bring something to cover your chest. And the pics will be if your back as well.
• You: Okay, I can handle that. So 5:30 tomorrow?
• KinkForInk: Yes, please don't flake on us!
• You: Lol, I won't. I'll be there.
"They're gonna knock us the fuck out and sell our organs to the black market," Jimin declared. He had parked next to you outside of the shop, and was now sitting in the driver seat of his car with his door locked and windows all the way up, refusing to get out. You were standing right outside his door, still having to talk on the phone. "And is this Tae-guy an AllState representative or something?"
Jimin is petty. You wanted him here for moral support— which he's usually reliable for— but this time, he's just plain salty right and doing everything he can to remind you of that. Reason is, he's been begging you to get a matching tattoo with him ever since your 18th birthday, and you've always refused because of what he wanted to get.
Cupcakes. Jimin wanted to get matching cupcake tattoos... in honor of Cupcakke the legend. Sorry, but H E L L no.
You rolled your eyes, growing frustrated. He only has enough time to pop in and confirm that these two aren't gonna kill you, and then he's gotta head home to get ready for work. You were already supposed to be in there. It was 5:33pm, 3 minutes past the time.
"Jimin, you're the one that insisted on coming along! And now you're making me late!" you ranted. "I'm going in without you."
"Hold your horses, hoe! I'm finishing my blueberry slushie," He retorted, sassily bringing the straw to his mouth and loudly slurping it into the phone. He then abruptly flinched away from the straw with a disgusted expression, nostrils flared, body locking up; lips drawing into an air-tight knot that was so extreme and unnatural, it caused an ugly snort to break out of your nose.
He smacked his lips in exaggeration to the taste, face falling back into stone as an eyebrow arched over the top of his aviators; unamused and saltier than before... Like you were at fault for that, too.
"Or... Blueberry-ass, I should say."
That forced another giggle out of you as Jimin stiffly rolled his window down, phone still pressed to his ear and eyes still scowling at you behind the inspector shades. He bit down on the straw and withdrew it with his teeth before dumping the dark-blue contents of the drink out of the window, making it a point to shake the styrofoam cup empty of every drop before tossing it over his shoulder and into back seat. He then spat the straw out of his mouth with an audible "PLUUUUH!" of a French accent, and waited until the window rolled all the way up again, just so he could hang up the phone. You scoffed at this as you shoved your phone back into your pocket, scornfully watching Jimin exit the car and slam the door behind him. He snatched his glasses off his face as his cotton-candy hair swayed in the breeze, revealing his scornful eyes right back at you as he gestured for you to lead the way in exasperated manner— as if you were the one wasting his time now.
"Go on, lead us to the grave," He shooed, a snippy little shit. You sauntered away, walking up the side of the shop, then paused just before reaching the glass entrance door, when you remembered how much of a coward you are. You've never even stepped into a parlor before, and supposedly, this was a famous one. Which makes it more and more surreal when you think about it.
"Are we doing the mannequin challenge now? Is that what we're doing?" Jimin sardonically inquired.
"You go first, I'm nervous!" You whisper-hissed.
"You don't want me to go in there first— I'll show out," he reasoned, simply stating a fact.
"Please don't," you whined.
"Then, again, I'll show out?" He reiterated, as if to say duh. "How else am I supposed to break the ice? I look like Timmy Turner's Fairy-Gay- Parent."
You gave him a wary look... he's right. You sighed, slightly kicking your foot in distracted defeat. Fuck, you hated making an entrance to new places—
"Hold up— is that Drake?" Jimin suddenly blurted, holding his hand up to silence you. You honed in on the muffled track playing from behind the glass door, and Jimin's face soon light up like a Christmas tree before he spun around you, unstoppable.
"Jimin, NO—!"
"KIKI, DO YOU LOVE ME—?!"
It was already too late. The door was flying back behind him as he Milly-Rocked his way into the shop, leaving you no choice but the chase in behind him.
"—ARE YOU RIDING? SAY YOU'LL NEVA-EVA LEAVE FROM BESIDE ME— hello there."
You were panting, coming to a stop right behind Jimin, where you instantly latched on to the back of his shirt as you met the face of the man behind the studio counter. And, as corny as this is gonna sound: the world actually stilled for a solid beat... or maybe you were in the verge of cardiac arrest.
A pair of glossy-Black eyes looked up at the two of you; A series of silver-studded earrings trailed along the outer cartilages, peaking out beneath a head of soft, layer-swept hair. It was a Carmel-tinted blonde in color— thick and shaggy, and neatly spilling in waves around a headband that proudly sported a high-dollar brand-name you've never seen anyone wear in person before. G U C C I, it read— Meaning that the headband alone was probably worth more than some of your college text books, put together. It sat just a few inches above a pair of dark brows, that oddly brought out the shape of his cat-like eyes— irises like polished marbles. His ample lips had a sharp, well-defined Cupid's-bow, and a natural shade of pink that fit the porcelain appearance of his melanin-kissed complexion, to the finest degree.
And here you are, looking like an actual bum. You had just enough time to clock out of work and head straight over here to make it in time. You didn't even have any makeup on, and the only thing hiding your raggedy hair from those captivating eyes is your old baseball cap from high school. It took a second for him to take the bold presence that was Park Jimin— who was also frozen to the spot as he openly checked the guy out. He was hunched over the counter, a v-neck hoodie covering the rest of him with a thin, loose-fitting material. It was Black and allowed a full visual of his tan neck, and prominent collar bones. And it certainly didn't hide the fact that he had a pair of wide-set shoulders, either. A pencil sat in his hand— one that was laced with masculine veins, and lot of decorative ink. There was a silver ring on his thumb.. and a very heavy-looking Rolex watch.
The man cracked a grin at Jimin— a boxy one that dimpled in at the corners.
"Love the hair," he humorously began, twisting a quirky eyebrow at Jimin. You subconsciously snagged the bill of your hat as your eyes went a little wide at how mature the man's voice was.
"Love the watch," Jimin retorted, then reached around and gripped you by the wrist before pulling you into full view beside him. "You wouldn't happen to be Taehyung...?"
"Mhm," the man hummed, absentmindedly moving his wrist at the mention of his watch. His eyes cut over to you, and you swore you could see a minuscule reflection of yourself in his eyes, before they flashed back at Jimin and blinked. "You must be the babydaddy?"
Blood rushes to your ears. It's really him... a guy who looks like a high-dollar model himself, asking you to be his canvas model. Your own conscious didn't even know what to say right now. So you stayed quiet and still as Jimin took charge... which was a mistake.
"She wishes, but no. I'm the best-friend— and a gay one, at that," Jimin replied, and you knew he did that for his benefit. Thot. "I'm just here to make sure you're not gonna sacrifice her to Satan, or anything of that nature. I need her around in case I ever forget the Netflix password."
Taehyung chuckled at that, mouth opening to reveal a row of teeth shinier than Chip Skylark's. But then, you caught something behind his teeth that caused your gut to leap. A silver ball... a tongue ring. Your thoughts clouded over for a second.
"Well, I can assure you, she's safe with me," he said, looking over at you again. You blinked, nothing more. His brow arched at your lack of response, but this time, it was done more handsomely as he was still smirking at you. "Still, you don't look too thrilled to be here... You sure you wanna do this?"
"She's just nervous because you're really fucking hot," Jimin announced, unyielding. "You should feel how sweaty her hand is."
"Don't listen to him— I'm gay too," You lied in panic, trying to defend yourself from the absolute truth Jimin spoke just then. You snatched your hand away from him and jutted a finger at the door, eyes beading and lid twitching as your nerves ran amuck. "Goodbye, Jimin."
"She's a lonesome hetero," Jimin told Taehyung, assuring him with a face that showed no bluff. "One look at her camera roll, and you'd see for yourself—" You were yanking him away by the arm now, in a tug-of-war game that Jimin obviously could've won if he really wanted to. But he figured you suffered enough and eventually let you drag him out of the shop, waving bye to Taehyung before turning to look at you with beading eyes.
"I think he wants to fuck you— text me as soon as you can," Jimin uttered with unmoving lips as before he walked to his car. You stopped for a second, noticing he was actually being serious. How could he possibly think that he wants to fuck you, just from that small encounter? And what is the odd sensation currently coiling in your stomach? Things grew awkward again when you re-entered the shop, coming to a stand at the same spot... only alone now. He was still amused, it seemed. And so calm and cool despite this odd, intense look in his eyes. It gave him a Casanova effect, where all he had to do was give you that look and it'd instantly make you blush.
"He seems like a fun person to be around," he noted, somewhat honestly, but more so making fun of the red-hot appearance of your face.
"He's a pain in the ass," you muttered, trying to conjure up a smirk but hardly even able to speak properly from how dry your mouth was. It felt like there was a white-hot iron expanding in your throat. "I'm really sorry about him."
"Don't be. I'm just glad you're here— thought you'd chicken out." You nervously wiped your clammy palms over the back pockets of your jeans as Taehyung got up from the barstool behind the counter and approached you on the other side of it, a whole head-and-a-half taller than you. He was wearing black cardigan jeans and matching combat boots.. his headband and jewelry the only thing not black on him. And oddly enough, he made it look fucking fantastic.
"Mh-mm," You hummed, not trusting your voice. You've never needed a sip of water so bad in your life— he even smelled expensive.
"Well, It's very nice to meet you," he formerly began, and you mustered up the normality of placing your (dried) hand into his much larger one, as he held his out to you in greeting. And boy, was he close. So close that the heels of your spine itches to lean back from the proximity.
"It's nice to meet you, too. I'm really sorry if I'm acting weird. I'm just nervous." — Your mind struggled to stay focused on your words, arm tensing at the skin-to-skin contact. You were extra-effected by the firmness in his grip. You really wanted to look down at all the bold ink you saw dashing across the veiny surface of his tanned hand, or see if those were images or scripted letters on the knuckles of lengthy fingers... But you were held captive by those God-blessed eyes... And that fucking tongue ring. It was infecting your head in ways that weren't necessarily healthy for your current state of mind, as you saw it peering in and out at certain words.
"And physically shaking," Taehyung pointed out, brows twitching down at your trembling hand in his as if he was concerned for it. But his smirk gave off an odd sense of fascination to the involuntary symptom, like it was cute or something? Hm. He glanced back up at you, causing your dehydrated throat to bob as his other hand came to clasp over the rest of yours, swallowing it completely from the wrist down. "Intimidated?"
"V-Very," you spluttered, a small slither of saliva copulating down your throat as you looked back up at him. He absentmindedly rolled his tongue ring over the button row of his teeth as he watched you with tainted eyes— undoubtably getting cocky with that damn grin of his and proudly teasing you about your reaction to him. It gratified the effortless sex-appeal he had. You were even beginning to imagine that tongue ring elsewhere, and you literally just met him. Then, as you felt the band of a ring move along with the pad of his thumb as gently ran it across your trembly knuckles, chills shot up all the way to your shoulder. Oh... oh wow. You glanced down at his knuckles on reflex this time, and saw a four-letter word scripted in black ink across the bottom row of his knuckles, and another word scripted on the middle section of his fingers. A silver band on his naked thumb. STAY TRUE, it said.
"And why's that?"
"I.. feel like you're a celebrity," you sheepishly admitted, your other hand wedging into your back pocket as you had to stop yourself from reaching for the bill of your hat again. Is he flirting? The words seem too innocent for the way he was making you feel. It was getting so hot in the oven of his massive palms, and he wasn't even squeezing you hard enough to cut off any circulation, but yet your fingers were beginning to tingle.
"Mm, no. Just a little popular, really," he granted, teetering his head a little as he pondered the thought. You could see his vocal chords contract in his sleek neck as they project his smooth, pungent voice. "You still trust me?"
"Mhm," was all you could muster. He'd gotten even closer, to where his hand had gone into a prayer stance around yours. You were aware of how wide your eyes had gone from the awe you... you knew this was just the beginning. He was going to be very handsy throughout this whole process. But in a very twisted way, you were more than okay with that. Even if it meant you were at risk of fainting from actual dehydration. Maybe you were in over your head. But you couldn't will yourself away from this now. And then, just as a wide, heart-stopping smile edged out on that mind-numbingly handsome face, the door at that back of the room swung open, and heavy-metal rock blasted through the quiet vibe of the scenery and caused you to jump a little at the disturbance. Taehyung shot a wicked smile over his shoulder, and his next words nearly knocked you out right then and there as you beheld yet another, breathtaking sight.
"Oh, there you are," Tae eagerly acknowledged, one hand still holding yours as he walked around to grab your with the other, presenting you to the.. hulking presence in the room. "This is (Y/N), our next little experiment."
919 notes · View notes
thejudgingtrash · 4 years
Note
would you class percy as a morally grey character? i’m really interested to hear your input
Anon 2: Would u class percy as an Morally Gray character?
Hey there! Let me write that essay for you about morally gray Percy ^^
It’s not about whether Percy is a morally gray character or not, it’s about he has to be otherwise the story doesn’t make any sense. At least for me it wouldn’t.
Ashley (@gr33kg0ds) said in the tags of my dark!Percy post something along the line of people diminishing Percy’s character because they need him to be pure and fluffy and I wholeheartedly agree with that!
Just because Percy’s twelve doesn’t mean he’s pure and didn’t do unproblematic things. I’ll mostly refer to The Lightning Thief because that book is the Magnus Opus for Riordan and perfectly stands for Percy as a morally gray character from the very beginning of the saga. (Also the only book I’ve recently re-read)
As much as I love fanon with all the amazing artworks, debates, memes and jokes, analysis, cool edits and wonderful fanfics, projecting your version of Percy doesn’t make the image in your head real. Percy in canon is not the fun and fluffy boy you imagine him to be or which social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and yes, also Tumblr) tend to make him to be. He’s a scrawny little sarcastic twerp that was the unpopular kid. He isn’t that cringy dude Tony Lopez doing that fucking weird TikTok dance (side note: I don’t even know who this person is and I don't care, I saw the video and immediately wanted to delete every social media app on my phone, so thanks Tony?), kissing his Yeezys goodnight, vibing to our lord and gay icon Taylord “T. Swizzle” Swift song and flexing them iPhone 11 Max Pros. Percy literally said that going to Burger King with his mother once in a while would be considered a luxury. He’s a poor bastard in literal sense.
Part of the problem with the distinction of Percy’s character and his motives stem from the fact that Percy is a sneaky unreliable narrator and we as the audience (especially if you’re younger) don’t question most of his behavior if you even question some (pretty sure that most of us only picked up weird stuff as adults). Everything seems plausible to you. But does it mean that his behavior is necessarily good? Something that would paint his character as good?
Like I’ve said, let’s take a look at TLT. The very beginning of everything and the wonderful line that gets quoted everywhere: “Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood”. 
The very first line that quoted everywhere or used as in moodboard and edits but its meaning and significance get brushed off for the most part. It immediately sets the tone and the atmosphere for the book and for Percy as a character. A(n in my opinion) morally gray character. The very first thing we hear from Percy is that he doesn’t want to be in this world. He’s an involuntary participant who has been (upon further reading) blackmailed and forced into this world and is only cooperating to get his mother back and said in regards to his father (who also stands for the Greek pantheon) ”well yeah, would be nice to know about my dad but I’ve survived without him the past twelve years so I don’t know, he wouldn’t be missed necessarily I guess?“ That pretty much tells you, it foreshadows, that we will be dealing with someone with grit, someone that fights back, someone that went through shit, someone that isn’t a goody two-shoed character. Does it mean he’s a terrible (in the sense of evil or bad) character from the get go? Not really, but it tells you in nuances that he won’t be the white shining knight you might expect from a fairy tale.
There is so much that little Perseus Jackson has to offer you directly in the first book. So much that paints him as a morally gray character. From the illegal candy stash all the way to tricking Procrustes into his own trap. He knows right from wrong and isn’t innocent by any means. He wants you to think he’s innocent. Yes, he hunts monsters and the book also tells you that some adults (Gabe) can also be monsters, but Percy’s personality is so interesting and full of facets which I love! He’s misleading you on purpose. Deflects, plays events down. He lies in front of you to others but you don’t really doubt it. Instead of questioning it, you understand it.
What distinguishes Percy from other male protagonists in that notion that the author doesn’t try to paint him as particularly good (the reader connects the dots, in reality) is pretty much that. Percy is neither inherently good or bad. He’s in the middle. He does lots of questionable things and his personality adds to it. Something that immediately comes to my mind is his lack of fear of consequences. He thinks in the short term and not in the long term. Of course, he’s caring about those that are close and important to him (Grover, Annabeth and his mother of course. And well. The world not getting destroyed by his weird father and fucking crazy uncle would be a plus). But Percy isn’t really a strategist (yet). Look at the Medusa head thingy. Annabeth and Grover warn him, that he’s gonna get his ass beat and he doesn’t care. That these gods could squish him in the end didn’t matter to him.
The Olympian gods are painted as these unpenetrable huge mighty force and some fuzzy annoyed twelve year old dipshit sends them the severed head of a monster - but not any monster, the monster his father had a role in creating (well, Athena for the most part, but you know what I mean). (Also, I know this kinda reckless behavior gets sorta rewarded but at first, everyone was like ‘NO, NO, NO!’ before Percy was glorious with his attempt). Percy essentially tells these ancient forces that drive the way of his new cosmos how shit‘s gonna work from now on.
Percy isn’t fear riddled and doesn’t think about the possible outcome. He manipulates, he lies, he persuades and all of this as soon as he hits twelve. But probably earlier. Pretty sure he had to become a believable lier in order to trick (survive being around) Gabe. Perseus is angry, he’s agitated. Had Riordan written Percy as a soft spoken, frightened, goody two-shoed kid, almost nothing in TLT and the follow-ups would have made sense. He’s the outcast, but slowly blossoms into the strength and muscles of the group. Of the entire camp. Someone that outsmarts opponents and wins battles. But he didn’t do that by playing nice and being a bootlicker.
TLT would’ve been a perfect standalone book that would have emphasized that Percy is an involuntary person sive) if you skip Kronos, leave a little bit foreshadowing with the prophecy out, tweak the talks with the gods and Annabeth’s first meeting and skip Luke and the scorpion at the end. The ending would’ve been “and so Percy had a first awesome summer vacation and found a group of friends for life” or so (aka PJO movie 1 in less shitty and more cohesive).
The morally gray character shrinks a little bit in the SOM because there lie straighter dangers ahead which dive more into the bigger picture and Percy grows more into the character who takes care of friends and but he does come back with TTC, and definitely BOTL and the St. Helens explosion.
Consequences of Percy’s interactions had people partially dying. There is doubt, there is guilt. But the show must go on. There are battles that have to be won. There is no big giving up, no big overturn for the bad guys.
Also... isn’t it interesting that we start with Percy saying ”look, I don’t want to be in this world“ in TLT and it ends with TLO where he says ”for once I didn’t look back“? The full circle? The way that accepting his fate took five books? To change Percy from being an involuntary participant to becoming voluntary? He didn’t want to be a half-blood, he didn’t want to be the kid in the prophecy, but he actively chose to be in the end. He went from a darker shade of gray to a mayhaps lighter, if you want to say so.
To conclude, I repeat myself again: it’s not about whether Percy is a morally gray character or not, it’s that he has to be.
Thanks for asking me about some meta stuff I really do like diving into these things here and there. Tumblr’s sorta glitchy, I do get notifications but I really don’t see asks, so I’m sorry if my response is mad late ^^
175 notes · View notes
sleepingpatterns · 4 years
Text
“Should I use InDesign to lay out my books?” - A Passionate Guide
Ok, if you are like me, you recently stumbled upon @armoredsuperheavy​‘s brilliant blog about bookbinding and fanfiction, and now you are excited to throw yourself head-first into bookbinding.
This also means that you are about to invest a fair amount of time into figuring out how exactly to lay out books. What you end up getting comfortable with will most likely be what you end up using long term, so it is worthwhile giving it some thought. The question really comes down to this: who's name will you be cursing for the foreseeable future? Adobe? Or Microsoft?
Full disclosure: I only started using InDesign because I was forced to. I worked as an editor at a newspaper, and that was what we used. The beginning was hell. I won’t sugar coat it, it sucks. In the end it was worth it. Once you figure it out, InDesign’s potential far outstrips Microsoft Word (in my opinion).
That encouragement means very little when you open this treacherous program for the first time and see THIS:
Tumblr media
“What?! I will literally give you $100 if you guess what all the buttons on the left are for. How the fuck do I make the margins disappear!?”
So, if using InDesign means figuring out what at least one third of the tools on the left are for, lets talk pros and cons.
Let’s get the cons out of the way.
It is expensive. Adobe is not fucking around. This puppy costs 20 bucks a month (Canadian) to RENT. If this is out of your price range, do you still have options? Yes. Do they range in legality? Also yes. I think I could potentially get in trouble for telling you to find your friendly neighborhood torrenting site and steal this software. I will say, outright, that no one should steal software ever. Got it? I would be very upset if someone were to message me for specifics. As you naturally wish to be law-abiding, there is also the quasi-legal option of repeating the 14-day free trial. My friend works at a professional print studio in Russia, and this is the tactic they use: every 14 days they uninstall all of the software from all of the computers, and reinstall it with a new trial. Every 14 days! At a professional operation! My friend hates working there.
It is not initially intuitive. I’ve covered this, but it bears repeating because it is a serious hurdle. Keep in mind, that with time, InDesign becomes more helpful than other software. Now when I use Word I find myself reaching for keyboard shortcuts automatically, and feeling bereft at the lack of my favorite tools. Nonetheless, expect a time commitment up front learning how to harness this glorious and confusing computer program.
It can run kinda slowly, depending on your computer. Up until two months ago, I had the world’s most precarious laptop. I bought it for $200 in 2015. It once took half an hour to restart. Inexplicably, when it got stressed, it would switch to Spanish. It was literally and figuratively falling apart. And yet, it ran InDesign. Granted, it worked slowly. If I asked it to process too many images at once it would panic (again with the Spanish), but for the most part, it worked. If you have a slow computer and are patient, then InDesign will probably work fine on your computer. If you are not willing to suffer, stick to Word.
You will also need Photoshop (sometimes). Part of what makes InDesign glorious is that it is professional software that is designed specifically to work with print and anything text-heavy. I love that about it. It even manages to do some handy things with images! But, inevitably, you will need to learn some Photoshop to punch up your graphics. I have, admittedly, only learned the bare minimum Photoshop in order to feed my InDesign addiction. It was a pain in the butt. For example, inexplicably, Adobe has not standardized keyboard shortcuts across the suite. As with InDesign, now that I’ve learned the tricks, I adore it. But you should go into this knowing that with Adobe, the fun never ends.
Printing signatures is the WORST. Adobe, please explain to me, in front of God and everyone, why the hell you would make this software specifically for laying out books etc. and not include a method of printing signatures?! I’m livid. This is absolutely where Word wins the day. It is almost worth using Word just to print the signatures so nicely and easily. I’m not kidding. Me—a person who has used InDesign professionally—almost wanted to switch software entirely just because of this. Hands down, InDesign’s biggest goof. Despite this crime against bookbinders everywhere, you have options. You can export your design to a PDF and literally print each signature separately (I am fucking livid) or you can complain enough to your friends that they offer to buy you a lovely program called BookletCreator for your birthday. It costs $20 bucks USD and it was worth every penny. However, Adobe, FOR THE AMOUNT THAT YOU CHARGE FOR YOUR PROGRAM, I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PURCHASE ANY ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE IN ORDER TO PRINT MY BOOK. Did I mention that I am livid?!
But InDesign must be worth something, right?! Otherwise why would I be writing a long post encouraging people to use it? Let’s talk pros:
The horsepower on this baby will blow your mind. Forget what I just said about printing signatures; imagine using software that was literally made for this. You wanna do a thing? InDesign has got you. Are you a perfectionist? This software was designed by people as pedantic and obsessive as yourself. It gets you. Dream it, google how to do it, and InDesign will deliver. This is really the main reason to use InDesign; it is the professional standard for a reason.
There are so SO many resources available to help you learn. Almost everything I’ve learned about InDesign I learned from Google or YouTube. Honestly, if you have a question, I promise that other people have already asked and answered it. The advantage is that because this software is specifically for laying out books, there is lots of information available specifically about how to do what you want to do. (This may also be true for Word, but I’ll be honest, I only used Word for a book layout once, so I can’t say for certain either way.)
Once you figure it out, InDesign will give you back hours of your life. Things like master page spreads, clipping paths, tint, the eyedropper tool, and the one-hundred-percent adjustable text are just... lifesavers. My experience with Word is limited, so my frustration using it was probably due to my own ineptitude, but honestly, when putting together my thesis, the tears I cried trying to get page numbers to format correctly were some of the most bitter text-related tears I have ever shed. I can take care of the whole operation in InDesign in a matter of minutes. Hours. Of. My. Life. Saved.
This is an actual marketable skill. Ok, bear with me here. I have used InDesign for every single job I have had since I worked at the newspaper. That includes working as a bookkeeper and a kindergarten teacher. Hell, I even made my resume to get those jobs in InDesign. There is no job that I forsee in my future that doesn’t include some form of text-based design. Even when my work has absolutely nothing to do with layout (see: kindergarten teacher) I still found some way to use it. My previous boss was actually so thrilled about my InDesign skills that she had me run a 101 seminar for the other employees. (Did any of them end up using it? I suspect not. Did they look at me strangely for being so enthusiastic about design software? Absolutely.) I’ve even managed to use InDesign to branch out from freelance editing to take on design projects as well. In short: if you learn how to use InDesign, put in on your resume. You will be surprised at how much mileage you get out of it.
With Adobe, the fun never ends. I know I joked about it before, but really, I love seeing what this program has in store for me next. For example, thanks to bookbinding, I discovered that InDesign will do a lot of things that I had previously assumed were the domain of Word, such as spell check. I literally stumbled onto a measuring tool today that I wish existed irl to help me glue my covers together. Part of the beauty of this software being so intricate is that there is always something new you can do. I love learning how to harness a new feature, and then watch my design improve over time. Using this program you really get the feeling that the sky is the limit. Look, just the fact that I’ve now resorted to saccharine platitudes about computer software tells you that InDesign is remarkable. Considering that this program has made me suffer so significantly, I have either seen the face of God, or I have Stockholm syndrome. Take your pick.
TL;DR, at long last:
How complicated would you like to go? Either way, for bookbinding you’ve got to learn to use software in a new way.
Do you just want to get your book laid out reliably with little fuss? Word is for you! Are you interested in delving into the details? Do you have the patience of a saint? Try InDesign!
Both work. Both are good. But you can pry InDesign from my cold dead hands because I adore it.
174 notes · View notes
entamesubs · 3 years
Text
Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS Blu-Ray: Episode 4
Google Drive ONLY (for now)
Support us on ko-fi
Blu-Ray episodes will come out one at a time every Friday, until I’m done with the full first season (1-13).
--------------
Please use either MPV or MPC-HC to view the Blu-Ray episodes. I do NOT recommend using VLC.
Please check the post for episodes 1&2 to see why.
--------------
!! This is NOT a final release !!
If there are any corrections you wish to make, please put them through the ask box. This includes any typos, grammar weirdness, or if you have a better way to word a sentence. Once it goes up on Nyaa, the subs will be LOCKED and can no longer be edited. I will consider it the final and best version I can put out.
If you see any mistake at all, please do not hesitate to send me an ask about it.
--------------
Extended Translation Notes
Gakuto’s characterization
RoadRush:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
“I am supposed to be stopping their chaos [...] How could I do such a thing?!”
Original Japanese: 「遊我くんたちの暴走を止めるべき立場にありながら [...] 私としたことが…」
The original RR subs make it seem like Gakuto is appalled at the fact that he’s been going along with the crew, but in reality the original Japanese points to Gakuto being appalled at his lack of responsibility (as in Gakuto himself is frustrated that he, himself, has not done anything despite the fact that he should).
The bolded Japanese from above is what I’m highlighting as the key to understanding him here.
立場にあり = someone in (my) position 私としたこと = someone like me
The translation I decided to use instead, and which I felt conveyed his inner turmoil better, was “I’m someone who should be stopping them, and yet... [...] I, of all people...!”
Gakuto is very concerned with his position and duties, which is the main focus for this episode. He is a character who is hyper-aware of his place and what kind of person he should be (that is, someone who strictly follows the rules and enforces them). The conflict he feels here is because of that hyper-awareness, not (primarily) because of the fact that he’s been “having fun” or “swept away” by Yuuga’s antics, it’s that someone like him shouldn’t be “swept away” in the first place.
I hope this makes sense and that this translation gets across his characterization a lot better.
Further Gakuto characterization
RoadRush:
Tumblr media
“I have to draw the line somewhere!”
Original Japanese: 「きちんとけじめをつけなければ。」
This is actually a translation I liked a lot, with “draw the line” being something very clear and also easily got across his newfound determination. It’s the reason I decided to keep the “draw the line” phrase in my final translation.
However, there is one important part of his sentence: けじめ, which I bolded above. It means “distinction”.
My final translation was “I must be decisive and draw the line somewhere!”
Gakuto uses the word “decide” and “decisive” a lot. You’ll see it the most in his summoning chants, where he keeps “deciding” not to stop, or “deciding” to follow a road, or “deciding” to find something new, or that he alone must “decide” his resolve, etc. At this point, being “decisive” is a huge part of his character and who he is as a person. The main theme of Sougetsu Gakuto is being able to lead, to decide, and, as we see in episodes 24, 33, 50, and 57, to be someone worthy of the Sougetsu name and inheritance by making these “decisions” and having the power to do so.
For this reason, I decided (haha) to put in his keyword here and tie this line further to his characterization in future episodes.
“Yametekudastop”
“Does Gakuto actually say this?” No, but he makes a pun just as bad as this one. This is a great pun to convey just how weird his “Yameruler” pun in Japanese is as well.
Thanks English!
トイレには神様がいますからね “Since a kami is always in the restroom, you should...”
This is a fragment of the full sentence, though its implied that Gakuto is trying to say “[I cleaned the restroom with care,] because a kami is in there”. To make this sound more natural in English, my final translation was the sentence you see above in bold, which adds a “you should” for context.
This sentence may seem strange to a lot of people, even more so if you don’t know what exactly a “kami” is. I wanted to elaborate on that in this translation note, and also the reason why I left “kami” untouched.
A “kami” does not uniformly mean a “god” or “deity”. In some contexts, yes, someone can be referring to such a being. In others, a kami can also be seen as a “spirit”, not necessarily of divine origins, who exists in a myriad of spaces for a myriad of reasons.
The “kami” Gakuto says exists in the restroom is not a god in the way English speakers would see it, but a spirit that has found a home there. However, I felt that the word “spirit” did not really encompass the importance of the word kami and why Gakuto was so careful with it, while the words “god” or “deity” placed too much importance on it.
For further context, I’d honestly just recommend the kami wikipedia article, which goes a lot more into detail than I can here. For heavier reading, and if you’re interested in this sort of stuff, I recommend the books Shinto - A Book of Prayers and The Essence of Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Heart.
黒子 (くろこ) Kuroko / “stagehands”
Wow, Kuroko Tetsuya himself from the acclaimed basketball manga and anime, Kuroko no Basuke! Okay I’m joking.
A “kuroko” in Japanese means a “stagehand”, though they have very a specific job in Japanese theatre that is different compared to what you might know of stagehands in Western theatre.
The job of a “kuroko” is to be invisible, which of course is not a literal thing. This simply means they help move things along on the stage, appearing center at times, while still not being perceived by the audience. This is where the “kuro” part of “kuroko” comes from—traditionally, they wear black clothes and cover their faces with a black sheet on stage, so that when they appear, the audience will not focus on them and instead blend them in with the background.
A kuroko does such things like moving scenery and props as a normal stagehand, however they may also play non-human parts in plays sometimes, being something like an animal or spirit when needed (usually with the help of a minor prop, not with a costume). They are the “invisible stagehands”.
Gakuto’s entire aesthetic themeing with Ranze and Rinnosuke is basically kabuki, a form of Japanese theatre that places more emphasis on aesthetics than on story.
A popular genre of kabuki is known as jidaimono, or historical plays, which dramatize a major historic event (like a war), which is how Gakuto’s various “Rulers” tie into this theme. Of note, Yameruler’s defense position animation is very much like how one in kabuki would try to “disappear” off stage (by holding a fan in front of his face), Kimeruler has elements of kabuki makeup in his design (though heavily watered down), and Semeruler’s summoning animation is a very common kabuki pose for combat.
--------------
For people interested in the raw BDMV vs encoded final video comparisons, click here. (Click the image in the center to swap between “raw BD” and “encoded”).
--------------
Credits
Translation, timing: entame Proofreading: angelthinktank (Yona) Encoding: PelvisBass
Tumblr media
4 notes · View notes
bush-viper-cutie · 4 years
Text
Love Me Roughly: House Hunting
Pairing: Snape x fem!reader
Word Count: 2,220
Rating: M for Mature
Plot:  Severus meets up with the wizard in charge of finding him a place to live. He manages to strike up a deal and purchases his new home.
A/N: This is part 3 of 7 for the week 1 schedule for Snape Appreciation Month!  @snapeloveposts​
DISCLAIMER: I have edited (drawn over the original) the artwork (taken from a 80′s bodice ripper novel) for the purpose of this short series and will post more information about the original work here.
Posted: 6/3/20
                  Chapter List
<– Last Chapter        Next Chapter –>
Tumblr media
~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~
Severus left his motel room, locking the door and placing the key firmly in his pocket. He picked the dog up and walked out of the parking lot, turning a corner, and heading along the outer wall to the back. He figured the center was where he was standing and started walking into the forest, counting out seventeen steps before stopping.
The woods surrounded him shielded most of the sun and made the forest seem eerie. The little dog started squirming so he set it down on some fallen leaves, watching as he shook his fur out and ran as fast as his little legs could carry him to behind a large tree.
He heard rustling and then a very familiar witch walked out form behind, carrying the dog. She wore an open cloak with three buttons clumped at the top and a hood covering most of her hair, and yet, there was no mistaking who she was.
The woman from the airport walked closer and pulled her hood down, “I never would have guessed.”
“Not exactly a compliment,” Severus looked down at the dog, “Do you always make a habit of leaving your animals unattended?”
The woman laughed, “He makes sure our clients are here on time… and also that it isn’t a Ministry trap.”
He looked down at the dog in her arms, somehow doubting this particular one was very good at his job. He approached with caution and stuck out his arm, wanting to get a move on with house hunting. She took it and immediately apparated them out of the forest.
Severus heard a thump and opened his eyes, looking around at the wooden log walls and dark oak floorboards. They stood in the open kitchen of a small log cabin, a lounging area to the left and spiraling stairs directly behind them.
She set the dog down, “This is one of the simpler houses we have available to wizards here. During the winter, the snow mounds for miles and the trees offer much privacy.” She motioned to the stairs, “And the whole of it is so small that it’s easy to set up heating charms in every inch with ease.”
He walked behind the spiral stairs and opened the door to the laundry with a toilet and sink inside. He continued up the stairs to a corridor with three rooms. The first on the left looked to be the master bedroom with a large closet. The second was a smaller bedroom, A study perhaps, right across the way of the second bathroom.
He walked back downstairs and eyed the kitchen and connected room, finding it all surprisingly agreeable. “So, what is near?”
“Well, a short hike down is a corner store and your closest neighbor. A short hike up is a cliff,” she smiled.
He chuckled, these wizards really do know the business. He’d always heard of how well of a job they did, placing would-be convicts, escapees, and celebrities in the perfect homes for their situation. He suspected it had more to do with prior knowledge of the unsuspecting client, however. I always wondered where all the supposed diviners went. Even before the first wizarding war less and less were being found, though rumor had it they were being discovered for other, more appreciated, jobs.
“Well, I think you already know I approve of it.”
She dropped a folded paper on the low wooden dining table for him to take. He opened it and read out the price of the little log cabin.
“Really,” he sneered. “For maybe one twice the size of this one.”
She rolled her eyes, “You expect a well-built cabin, hidden from the noses of the Ministry, requiring no proof of wizard registration or mention of you on any documents for any less?” She laughed and picked up her dog, who had been lying peacefully next to the heater, and extended her elbow for him to take. “Why don’t we find you one worth the money you will have to pay, then?”
He scoffed, “Enough with the theatrics. Is there no discount?”
“Discount? For what? Looking cute?” she winked.
Severus swallowed and looked away quickly, raking his hair forward, “I’m sure the discount for that would be quite pitiful.”
The floorboards creaked under her shoes as she crept forward, “Oh, I’m not so sure about that. I’d give you ten percent off for your eyes alone.”
Severus turned to her, suddenly feeling the air very hot between them. Without thinking he opened his mouth, “And what else is… worthy… of a discount?”
She smiled and came closer still, “Hmm. Ten for those lips, and twenty for that incredible nose of yours.”
His hand went straight to cover his nose as her words replayed in his head, “Very funny.”
“It’s not a joke,” she stepped back glancing at the paper in his hands, “It’s my final offer.”
He looked at her confused, waiting for any clarification but none came.
He nodded, “Deal.”
She snapped her fingers and the numbers on the paper changed to a much more affordable price, “I’ll see you tomorrow then, for the money and to give you the keys.”
She apparated away and he was left alone in the house he would have to make his home now. He smiled to himself at their exchange. His heart wasn’t racing or thumping loudly, it was calm. He wasn’t ‘lusting’ after her like how his book described… but he did find guilty amusement in the fact she had indeed flirted with him. And he flirted back… something that, surprisingly, gave him enough joy to make him smile still, minutes after she had left.
His stomach growled and he remembered what time it was. He summoned his packed trunk and took out the food from it. He made himself a simple sandwich and placed the rest in the small fridge. He noticed the light did not turn on and figured there was no electricity yet.
He shrugged and charmed the fridge with a chilling spell and the freezer twice with the same one. That’ll do for now. He sat at the table and looked around at all the windows, watching the green trees sway with the wind and the occasional bird fly by.
He didn’t want to unpack just yet, not until everything was finalized, but there was one thing he could do. He took out his book from his muggle coat pocket and opened it back up, slouching over the table. He bit into his food and turned the page.
‘Robin turned from Stephano’s outstretched hand, not wanting to believe what his manly lips were saying. How could she believe a man that large, kind, muscly, handsome, and manly wanted such a small, dainty, soft, beautiful, girl like her?’
Severus rubbed his eyes and looked up, surprised to see the sun had set already and it was dark out. He locked the back door with a spell and walked over to the front door, doing the same. He dragged his luggage up the stairs and set it at the foot of the master bedroom’s large bed.
It was dark and he could barely see, cursing himself for not bringing candles. I had so many! Why didn’t I pack them? He imagined them al melted on the floor of his old home. I should have brought my scented ones at least. He fumbled for his night shirt in the dark and changed out of his clothes, unbuttoning everything slowly. He slid one arm in after the next and pulled the night shirt down. He took out his wand and cast Lumos to inspect the quality of the sheets.
They looked fine, recently cleaned even. He shrugged and set the wand down on the floor, hopping into bed and pulling the covers up. It was cold, but nothing compared to the dungeons during the winter. He turned and tried not to think of anything. Not tonight.
. . .
“Mmm, Stop it!” He lifted the hand that had fallen out of bed and was swinging low enough for the puny dog to lick. “Why must you do this? Hmm?”
He rubbed his eyes and looked out the window at the bright blue sky and large green trees. He wasn’t sure of the time, but knew that woman was already here, unleashing her dog onto him. He picked up his wand and cast Nox, extinguishing the light.
He pushed the dog out of the bedroom door and closed it, changing behind the bed and away from the window. He combed through his hair with his hands, wiping them on his coat, and made his way down the spiral stairs. She wasn’t in the kitchen so he turned his head and leaned forward, looking into the living room where she sat on the floor, reading –
“That’s not mine!”
She looked up, laughing, “Oh isn’t it?”
Severus ran into the room, stopping himself suddenly and composed himself. “Of course not… some-someone gave it to me and – ”
“So… it is yours, then.”
“No. It’s not, because I don’t want it. I was going to throw it away,” he coughed and looked away. There was a mirror hanging on the wall and he saw his face was a deep red. He turned his back to her and walked into the kitchen, arms folded.
Stupid! Absolute idiot! How could I leave it there? The cover alone has an image of a near naked woman in the arms of a shirtless man! …And it’s pink! He breathed out to calm himself, No matter. She will be gone forever in a few minutes.
She walked in behind him and set the book on the counter, giggling quietly, “It’s alright if you’re reading it. It seems interesting enough – and quite steamy.”
“No! No, I-I… Here is your money,” he extended his hand and summoned the bag of Galleons he had prepared for her.
She took it. “Well… Here is your key.”
He took the key without looking and put it in his pocket.
“Your water will start running soon… First month is free… after that you’ll need to pay us at the start.”
Severus nodded stiffly but the woman did not leave, “Yes?”
“About our conversation yesterday… I believe I called you cute and complimented your lips.”
He looked at her finally, and noticed she was biting her lip. He didn’t need to use Legilimence to know what she was thinking… and Merlin knows he was now thinking the same thing, though he didn’t believe he could pull it off in the least. He straightened and walked closer, excited to start the conversation up again.
“I do remember. I believe you also complimented my eyes,” he smiled.
“Who wouldn’t?” she stepped closer and touched the black cloth tucked under his shirt, “I love the patterns on your cravat.”
Severus watched her smooth actions, smiling. It had been a while since he had flirted with anyone, let alone had someone so willingly participate. The last time was surely before the Dark Lord’s return and as far as he remembered, it hadn’t gone so well, not on his part.
He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He chuckled nervously, “Forgive me, I-I don’t really know how these things go…”
“Then perhaps you’ll allow me to lead?”
She came closer, forcing him to step back against the wood walls of the kitchen. He couldn’t help feeling so giddy, he wasn’t sure why. He supposed because for the first time he didn’t have to worry about anything else getting in the way of… whatever she allowed to happen.
He leaned his head down and brought his lips to her ear, “I would like that.”
He pulled back and he could see a new fire in her eyes and a mischievous twinkle too. He lowered his head only to have her immediately attack his lips with hers, tangling her hands in his hair. He wrapped his arms around her for a few intense seconds before pulling her away and leading her up the stairs – to his surprise she was following.
It was broad daylight but that hardly seemed to matter, not to him and by the looks of it, not to her. The second they reached his room they continued their intimate embrace, slowly inching closer to the bed. The second their legs touched the mattress they pulled apart and began to undress.
He undid button after button as fast as he could while watching her and the little show she was obviously putting on for him, making him blush. She got undressed and jumped on the bed, watching as he shed layer after layer. He left his wand in the kitchen or he would have used his unbuttoning spell already, but by the look on her face she was enjoying every second of it which made him want her even more.
“Are you sure?” his voice was deep and he could hear his own excitement in it.
She reached out and touched his skin, making it feel hot and electric where she stroked. She stood on the bed and pulled him in by his shoulders and kissed him again, humming and smiling. He touched her skin and felt it smooth and silky, warm, much like herself.
“Extremely,” she giggled.
~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~
                Chapter List
<– Last Chapter       Next Chapter –>
60 notes · View notes