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erensproudsimp · 3 years

Text

One Night Stand

Gojo Satoru x reader

⚠ Sexual Content Ahead ⚠

Summary : Working as a stripper, it was your job to please men for your daily bread until the day you met a handsome man offering to give you a ride back home, naughty things happening along the way.

Word count : 2.4 k

Looking at yourself in the mirror in the changing room all decked up in your glittery lingerie, ready to put on a show for disgusting men. Painting your lips a bright red, you smacked them together to spread the colour. Being a stripper sure brought a lot of money in which made you so happy but the fact that you had to please men for it didn't sit right in you. Taking a deep breath, you exited the room, your five inch heels clacking the surface with your each step. Gesturing your colleagues a 'hi' by waving your hand, you entered the area where the clientele would be.

Electronic music echoing around the entire room, gracefully you walked to your respective pole with the other stripers going to theirs. Prepping yourself up and warming up a little, you made sure you were perfect to earn more money. Led lights falling on your being as you were made among the centres of attraction for people to feed their eyes on your show. Placing your manicured hand on the cold pole, the other on your hip, you waited for people to enter the club so that you could start dancing. Your golden lingerie really brought out your curves and your sex appeal. Sparkling under the stage light, feeling like the bad bitch you are, you could bet your ass that money would be flying like nothing in your pockets.

Once people started entering the club, you started your performance to attract them to you. Gliding your heels on the floor, you split your legs, synchronizing your movements to the beat of the song currently being played, your sensuality bursting into the most vibrant dance. Your legs extended like a primal ballerina as you stood up, brushing your hair off your face before dragging it down your chest to finally grab your pole.

For the most part, you felt as though the front people were your main audience unaware of two bright blue eyes analyzing your every move. As you turned your body, your eyes caught caught a man sitting not far away in the back, him less adept at hiding his gaze than you. He had the kind of face that made you stop in your tracks. One glance at him was enough to make you fall on your knees for him. He dropped his eyes momentarily before looking away, his head tilted on one side supported by his arm placed on the couch, a hopeful smile playing on his lips as he pushed his dark glasses back.

Ignoring him, of course, you continued dancing making old men's pocket hurt. At some point, you became bored with staying on the stage and got off to approach your clients closer. Catwalking nearer to the man who caught your attention, you halted to the couch beside him where a blond man wearing glasses was drinking what seemed to be a glass of whiskey. Licking your lower lip, bending down to drag your index finger on his cheeks, you saw in the corner of your eye, the white haired man staring at you with a frown. More money thrown you, you sat on the man still sneaking peaks at your main interest for the night to see if your actions were affecting him.

Not so long later, you got bored of the blond guy, blowing a kiss at him, you finally went over to your target. Oh lord, to say he was just handsome was an understatement of his true attractiveness. He was beyond gorgeous, having the beauty equivalence of probably a god, he was radiating so much power. Dressed in a tight white shirt half buttoned, his abbs see through, with black pants, he laid on the furniture with crossed arms. However, upon seeing you approaching him, he opened them, placing them on the couch beside his shoulders.

Sitting next to him, you inclined yourself towards him, your hand on his thigh.

"Enjoying this night?"

"Now that you're close to me I sure am enjoying it more," he flirted.

"Oh really, is there any other thing I can do to make your night even better handsome?" you cooed in his ear.

"Hoooo? you'd do anything?"

"A n y t h i n g."

"Well then if you're insisting, please yourself on me, that would make me happy", he smugged.

Something about him was so alluring, from his appearance to his melodious voice, it made you want to know how his lips move in a kiss, how his hands move around your curves.

"As you wish dear sir."

Wasting no time, you hopped on his lap, your legs spread on his each side. Your hands resting on his shoulder playing with his hair from the back, you gazed into his eyes, his glasses falling his nose bridge. Irises so blue, as though containing all the blues of the sky to the ocean spanning the galaxy. Hell, they might even be the definition of a black hole due to their insane gravitational pull though which anyone could be sucked into.

Straddling his thighs, you rocked your hips back and forth, you grinded on him.

Just swaying to the music in the background, you traced his jawline with your tongue. Not even once did the man touch you as he just watched you do whatever you wanted. His smirk was like liquid adrenaline was being injected into your blood stream making your body tingle.

"Look at you, ignoring your work to grind on me, what a dirty slut you are", whispering in your ear he grabbed your hips to lift you and turn you so that your ass was right on his growing bulge.

Raising yourself up and down, you bounced on him. Intoxicated by the alcohol and cigarettes in the air, your vision blurry, hands moving down your boobs to your waist. Twerking on him, you felt him growing bigger. You bent back, your head placed on his shoulder, giving him a subtle smile. His hot breath fanned on your face, he smelt like booze with a faint vanilla. Cupping your breasts with his big hands, you slapped them away as you stood up to sit next to him. Kissing his cheek with your one hand on his other side of his face, you felt something entering your bra; the man was stuffing a bundle of money in.

Wingling your fingers, you waved him bye as you were going in the changing room to freshen up yourself. That was a lot of money he gave you, you thought while counting but there was one odd thing in it.

There was his business card in it. There was his phone number in it. Was this his way of telling you to contact him?

Shrugging your thoughts off, you typed him a message.

You : Hey handsome, so what's up with the business card?

Him: When does your shift ends?

You: Midnight.

Him: Great. You'll see a white limousine outside. Wanna come in for a ride at home?

A gorgeous man offering to give you a lift? Damn you couldn't miss this opportunity.

You: Sure thing, see you later.

After fixing your makeup and adjusting your clothes, you went out to slay the night until your little date. You couldn't wait until then.

When your shift was finally over, you rushed to change into your black mini satin dress you wore coming to work as well as ensuring you looked charming.

Your black handbag over your shoulder, you went outside, the fresh air of the cold night hitting your face. Lungs feeling so fresh, you were excited to see him again.

Indeed there was a white limousine parked at the entrance of the club. Upon seeing you arrive, the man asked the driver to unlock the doors so as to let you inside.

"Thank you so much for this offer, Mr?

" Oh please, name's Gojo Satoru but you can just call me Gojo", he said loosening his tie to remove it. Goodness, that was hotter than the core of the earth mixed with the sun's heat.

"Sure thing, Gojo~", seductively you said while you took a place on a seat beside him.

"Care for some wine?" he demanded while pouring a glass.

"Why not?"

"So, where do you live?" Gojo asked handing you the glass.

After telling him your address, he signaled the driver who understood the message and pulled up the black windshield to leave both of you in private.

The bitter yet sweet liquid warmed your body making you feel more relaxed after a long work. Throwing your head back, you let the wine disperse in all your veins, Gojo watching you while drinking his.

"I loved your lapdance, it was so erotic and you looked so...hot," he complimented scooching closer to you.

Tucking your hair behind your ear, he removed his glasses to place on the counter nearby. He stroke a finger down your throat, making you shiver. Holy shit that felt good.

"Not going to lie but you caught my attention the moment I saw you dancing on the stage. That golden lingerie hugging your perfect curves was enough to make me drool for you", whispering in your ear while his hand was sliding the strap of your dress off your shoulder.

More shivers down your spine.

Leaning in his touch, your hands reached to unbutton his shirt. Lips on your neck. Hot. Sinful. Goosebumps rose up your flesh. Gojo's shirt was on the floor, his chest threatening to make you swoon. It was so hard not to stare at the most beautiful male body you've ever seen.

"Love what you're seeing?" his voice came out husky.

"Very much", you replied before colliding your lips with his.

Big, warm hands stroke up your torso to cup your breasts. You jerked at the bold move, moaned in his mouth.

Feeling his smirk, he pulled back trailing his tongue down your neck to your collarbone before drawing back. As you straightened your back, his hands unzipping your dress.

His eyes went big when he saw that you weren't wearing a bra. His gaze caressed your plump boobs. Wasting no more seconds, he attacked the area with his mouth making you yelp.

"Fuck's sake, you're so gorgeous", he complimented in between sucking your nipple.

Your stomach clenched. Never had you craved a man with such hunger, never had you been more aware of your own femininity so much.

Pulling away, Gojo turned to take something from the table counter behind him. Taking this moment to take a deep breath to calm your quick heartbeats, you removed your hair from your face. Curious to know what he was doing, you tried to sneak a peak until he turned around to face you, in his hand, an orange slice.

Your head was filled with questions.

"Open your mouth", he ordered and you obeyed, of course.

"stick your tongue out."

Doing as he asked, you took it out as he pressed the fruit on it making its juices spreading throughout your mouth, even spilling down your jaw to your neck. The citric acid running down your skin so slowly as Gojo trailed his tongue down chasing all the droplets, his other hand holding your head by your hair.

"Hmmmm"

"You really like me licking you huh?" Gojo smirked.

"Ooooooohhh"

Unbuckling his pants, he slid them down leaving him in his boxers, his hardened dick pressed, like you were in your soaked panties. Unable to resist the temptation, you pulled them down releasing it from its trap. His dick sprung free, Gojo could no longer contain the heat he felt inside of him to bury himself deep in you.

"You don't mind, do you?" he asked before taking off your underwear.

"Why would I after how wet I am for you?"

Loving your answer the man tore the cloth from you revealing your soft folds to him.

"I hope you can handle me, I'm not going to go easy on you~", Gojo warned teasingly placing his member at your entrance.

"Go ahead, let's see if you can wreck me because I'm pretty sure I can handle you", you sneered.

"Heh~ well, we'll see about that in a few", he said before thrusting into you without any warnings.

"Ah!"

Throwing your one leg on his shoulder to gain a better position to fuck you, Gojo was not slow into gaining speed. This man was like an animal, so violently pushing and pulling in and out of you.

Your moans and heavy breaths was so loud, you were sure that the driver was hearing everything but Gojo didn't care about it one single bit. All that mattered to him at that moment was to fuck you into oblivion.

Right before either of you could come, Gojo pulled out to turn your body on the car couch, your boobs pressed against the leather, your ass lifted up as Gojo inserted himself again in you. This time you couldn't help it but let out whimpers.

"What's with the whimpers? I thought you could handle it, didn't you say so?" he ridiculed you.

Lost in a haze, you could barely hear his words, only feel his thrusts deep in you. He didn't seem to be stopping any time soon.

He grabbed your hand and pressed it against your stomach.

"Can you feel how deep I am into you right now? You like it don't you? Being fucked like the shameless whore you are?"

"Ahhh-yes I do, I do."

Feeling your climax getting closer and closer, you gripped the couch for dear life as you were going crazy with this insane anount of pleasure.

"Ah- Gojo-I-I'm-"

"It's okay my love, you can release it, I'm close too."

It wasn't long before you were screaming his name as he filled your insides with his hot fluid. Pulling your hair as he did so, he collapsed on the couch beside with you laying on top of him rubbing circles on his chest.

Remembering that you had to get off to go home, you took your clothes from the floor and wore them while Gojo was admiring you.

You wished that this could last forever but alas it was just a one night stand as Gojo left you at your home saying a final goodbye to never meet again.

End.

Thank you for reading this. :)

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sp00kworm · 3 years

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SIREN (AMMB): Zadok’s Ending

Chapter 1: Meeting the Band

Pairing: Deep Sea Merman (Zadok) x Gender Neutral Reader

Adult Content below the cut. Dom Reader and collar use.

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A lithe looking figure was draped in oversized clothing. Loose cuffed cargo trousers were covered in chains and topped with a large hoodie and a coat which made your own look positively thin. You frowned before you caught sight of the pale, micro-scaled skin underneath. The white scales shimmered with pearlescence as Zadok glanced around behind himself and touched the water pumps attached to his neck, which were then coupled to a small tank fastened like a backpack to him. There was a sense of worry in his posture as he reached for his wallet to order.

“A chai tea please. And an anchovy sandwich to go.” He ordered quietly as the barista noted it down and carefully took his money, trying to avoid staring to badly at the suction cups and tank attached to him. Zadok ignored her look and stood to the side, pulling his hood further over his fins to avoid any more unwanted attention from the customers and staff. It was weird seeing the confident lead singer to upset and shy about being seen in public. Your staring, however, got you caught firmly in the act. With a rush you turned back to your phone, and pretended not to be looking as his white eyes caught you. A huff sounded but he didn’t move to come and say anything. He turned back to the counter and opened his phone, clawed webbed fingers typing across the keyboard.

Sadly, and awkwardly, you turned back to your table and waited for your food, trying to put Zadok out of you mind. He didn’t owe you anything after all, you were just a fan of the band. The barista was quick to make his drink before she packaged and wrapped his sandwich for him in the red and white plaid paper.

“Thank you.” He rumbled as he took the food and paper cup, “Have a nice day.” Zadok’s webbed fingers adjusted the wrapped sandwich before he tucked it into his satchel and placed his wallet firmly back inside. The singer reached upwards, his pale skin flashing with purple light, to adjust the cups over his gills. They didn’t budge, and so he walked away from the line, his hood up and his head ducked as he headed towards the door, leaving with a soft ring of the bell. You ducked over your food as he turned to walk left, past the glass window you were sat next to. He stopped just outside of the door and pulled something out of his pocket as he sipped at the tea in his hand. You realised it was his phone and as he raised it closer to his eyes you ducked back down to avoid being seen, sipping your own drink before your phone vibrated on the table again.

Thinking it was just another text from Tom, you opened the screen with a disappointed sigh, upset that Zadok had ignored you. The screen lit up again and you clicked your tongue at the incessant buzzing. A message, but not from an account that you knew, nor did you follow them. It was a picture of a figure huddled by a cliff as the profile icon, decked in all black and shielding themselves from the wind. The water looked choppy and you saw the faintest hint of waves in the background. With a confused look, you opened the message.

‘Sorry for ignoring you.’

The second message was not twenty seconds after the first.

‘This is Zadok by the way. Don’t start gawking out of the window at me please.’

Slightly rude, you thought as you looked closer at the obscure profile icon, wondering just how the weird, huddled mass of black could be the singer. Your phone buzzed again before you could give it much thought.

‘Meet me by the Elf fountain.’

You looked up from your phone as the Merman tugged his hood a little higher and tucked his hands into his pockets again. You didn’t see him then as he disappeared into the mid-morning crowds beyond your sight. With a rush you finished up your food and took your coffee to go before you made your escape out of the café and into the street. The Elven fountains weren’t too far from the café and you were eager to know just why Zadok had even spoken to you at all. The fountains were fresh water and housed a few species of pond fish, usually Koi kept for decorative appeal in the gardens. A car slammed its horn at you as you dashed across the crossing at the last moment heading towards the park where the fountains were.

It didn’t take you long to weave your way through the streets and it took even less time for you to manage to find Zadok. He was perched on the edge of the fountain, his feet beneath the cool water. You were sure it wasn’t allowed but none of the busy workers seem to be bothered by the man as he trailed them back and forth. His heavy work boots were shoved by the side of the stone, his socks tucked into each boot. You stood by the gate to the little fountain area for a moment before white eyes turned and found you staring. Zadok pulled a hand free from his pocket to give you a small wave, claws flashing a silvery colour in the light.

“Good morning.” he offered as you approached, his voice soft and calm despite your obvious staring from the gateway.

“Good morning.” You replied, feeling awkward and caught out by his kind greeting, “So…”

Zadok chuckled at you as he pulled his feet up onto the stone, perching his head on top of his knees, “So…” he replied.

“Why did you invite me here?” You asked quietly as Zadok brushed water from his webbed feet, avoiding his other filed claws on each of his toes, “You seemed well, pretty gloomy when you walked in.”

Zadok just watched you for a moment, his ghostly eyes staring at you before his mouth stretched to reveal a wide smile full of thin, sharp teeth, “I tend to look like that when Duncan spends his night crushed against me instead of in his own bed.”

Suddenly, it was like the tension dissipated, like a lightning bolt and smashed right through it. Your tension seemed to evaporate, and you returned his smile, “I can see why that would make you upset.”

“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe.” he chuckled, “I’m sorry for seeming like an utter creep, but I don’t…well I don’t much like public places. I get recognised and its just never much fun after that.”

“No, I understand, I’m just confused about how you uh…found my socials.” You asked as Zadok’s eyes widened in realisation.

“Ah. I see now.” he lowered his head and awkwardly played with the tops of his shoes, “I found the pictures. It wasn’t too hard to find considering the show was last night.” he confessed, “That’s my private account for family and friends.” Zadok reached for his phone and showed you the screen of his page, “I wanted to talk, if that’s alright with you?”

You stepped closer and sat down on the side of the fountain with the singer, “What do you want to talk about?” You smiled as you sat down, folding your hands in your lap as you tried to get comfortable against the stone.

“It seems weird now that I think about it.” Zadok confessed as you sat next to him, your drink clutched between your two hands, “I just wanted to thank you for what you said yesterday. It really does mean a lot to have someone feel so strongly about our music.” You watched as he tucked his clawed, webbed hands away in his pockets before looking him in the eyes.

His white eyes were striking, and you struggled to reply immediately, “You don’t have to thank me for being honest. Your music is amazing, just like you’re an amazing singer.”

“It means more than you think.” He insisted as he reached for his own drink, and pushed aside a small plastic bag, “I’ve spoken to a lot of fans, and, trust me, not one of them has spoken like that. Not with such passion about it all.” he laughed softly as he leaned back to take a drink, revealing the water pumps over his gills. He caught you staring, “They’re more to stop me drying out and hacking on everyone. I find I really need them after shows. So much singing hurts my lungs, so I have to revert back a little.”

“I had no idea you had to breathe water too.” You marvelled at the gills again before turning your gaze back to his pale scale-skin face, “Wait…” You held up your hands, “You sing so much it actually hurts?”

“Now don’t worry yourself!” Zadok bumped your shoulder gently, “Its not bad. Just like human singers need rests from growling, I need my own rest and recuperation.” He chuckled again, “But it is much easier to sing with water, but its not something anyone but a Mer can understand well.”

“Is that why you looked like you enjoyed the beginning solo so much? Because its easier to sing in the water?” You asked, curious and eager to pick Zadok’s brain.

He laughed at you before nodding, his hood sliding to reveal the pointed tip of one of his fins, “I��m surprised you noticed.” he held his drink in his lap, wiggling his wet toes in the cool air, “Its not just that its easier to sing, really…I was born in the ocean, even though my parents have long lived with humans. We still spend our early years in the deep black waters before integrating into society. I’ve always just loved the water. Its always brought me peace. Its like a veil on the audience so I can just be myself.”

“That seems like an odd way to start life, but the more I think about it the more I think it must be nice, to be just you and the water.” You sat back, your palms pressed into the rough stone as you looked at the water, “And I bet it made you an amazing swimmer.”

Zadok paused before laughing again, the noise gentle and soothing, like the sound of water in a stream full of pebbles, “It did make me a good swimmer, yes, but it also taught me a lot about our culture. It made me who I am.” he looked at his feet and the water in the tank gurgled quietly.

Silence fell between you both again, and you sat looking at the little goldfish in the fountain as they swam around Zadok’s ankles and disappeared under the lily pads. It was serene. You looked up and soaked in the weak sun.

“I have one more question for you.” Zadok said.

You looked over to him, “What’s that?” You asked.

He looked around and leaned over, “Is there somewhere more, private than this?” he sighed, “I just…I’m sick of being recognised. I ran into a group of fans on my way here and had to sign a few things. I just…”

“Want a day away from it all?” You asked gently, “I think I have a place in mind.”

Zadok smiled at you, “You’re not planning to kidnap me, are you?” he joked as he took another drink of coffee.

“Me? Kidnap you?” You exaggerated, “I think I would have more luck catching one of these goldfish, and that’s a pretty slim chance!”

Zadok laughed gently, like the sound of water over stone, and you stood from the fountain, holding your coffee as you waited for him to shake his feet dry and put his shoes back on. He looked at his socks and huffed before pushing them into his pockets, opting to instead carry his boots and walk barefoot through the grass.

“So, where do you have in mind?” he asked as he followed you, “Will I need my shoes on?”

You nodded at him, “You’ll need your shoes for now. The city might be okay but I’m pretty sure you’ll get glass in your feet if you don’t wear something.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s too fun. I can’t be having a day in the minor injuries unit.” Zadok followed you to the gate before he took his napkin from his coffee and wiped off his feet. He hopped on each foot as he put his sock on and then his boots. Quickly, he tied the laces up before he checked his wrist. A silver watch flashed, and he hummed at the time.

“Have you got somewhere to be?” You asked.

Zadok shook his head as he clicked the sound off his phone, “Nope. Let’s get going.” he pulled his hood back up and hid his face as you exited the park and headed out towards the city’s edge.

“I suggest you keep your stuff close.” You suggested as you both entered into a small, abandoned area of the city. It was overgrown and the small homes here were derelict, with ivy and bushes sprouting out of the windows and collapsed roofs.

Zadok looked up through the trees, “What kind of place is this?” he asked quietly as you both stepped around a couple of mushroom circles.

“It’s a fae pool. A spirit pool of sorts.” You pointed past the houses towards a large clearing where a natural pond glittered with the light pouring through the centre hole of the canopy, “Its protected by the city for small fae and creatures to use and live in. Some species can’t integrate with humans, so these are the result.” You pointed to the rocks where a nymph combed her hair. She turned and saw you both, smiling before she blended into the air and disappeared into a small creek that trickled away from the large pond with a chime of laughter.

“This is amazing.” Zadok breathed as he ran his claws over a rotten wooden fence, touching the ivy which wrapped around them gently, “I’ve never seen something like this before, not unless it was in the actual countryside.”

You smiled brightly as you reached the edge of the water, “Well, its something a lot of people don’t know about. I only know because of the guy I work with. He comes out here sometimes during shifts.”

“Is that the one that was with you last night, the werewolf?” Zadok asked curiously as he laid his bag down by the edge and undid his coat.

“Oh yeah, that’s Tom. He comes with me to a lot of stuff. We’ve been friends for years now.” You answered him, “I saved him a spot at the front since he was just as excited as me to see you guys.”

“He’s a nice guy then.” Zadok smiled, his needle like teeth parted slightly as he turned to sniff the air, “Sounds like a keeper.” he teased.

You shook your head, “Nah. We’re just friends. Tom is like a brother to me. We’ve both been through this before.” You shrugged, “I’m sure I’ll find someone like that though.”

“Yes, I’m sure you will.” Zadok awkwardly added before he changed the subject, “Are we allowed in the water?”

The water was clear enough to see the heavy, dark stones that covered the bottom and you shrugged at Zadok.

“So long as you don’t kiss any Nymphs, I’m sure you’ll be fine.” You joked as you sat yourself next to the water and sipped the last remnants of your drink.

“Oh, I don’t plan on kissing any of them.” Zadok chuckled as he shrugged his coat off and reached for his tanks, “Would you mind…”

“Oh, gosh, sure, sorry.” You rambled before turning around, “Are those tanks hard to get off.

In reply you heard the hiss and click before water glugged and the tank thumped to the floor, “No. It’s not too hard, just a lot of suction cups and water glugging.” Zadok hummed and you made sure to keep turned around as fabric fluttered to the floor, “You can turn back now.” He announced quietly.

You turned back around, clutching your drink between your hands, and looked at the man as he laid on his back and floated out into the middle of the clear water. He was bare of clothes, but nothing was exposed, and you remembered your anatomy lessons enough to know that most Mer’s had slits which hid everything away. Zadok flipped himself backwards and plunged himself deep into the pool. The water swirling was the only sign he was moving, and you walked back to the edge and sat down. Much like he had earlier, you took your shoes and socks off, and plunged your feet carefully into the water. It was quite cool, and you shuddered at the sensation before you wiggled your toes back and forth and swung your feet in the water. A hand grabbed your ankle and you jumped with a squeak until Zadok’s white head appeared. His head emerged and you marvelled at the glittering silver and purple of his bioluminescence. His eyes blinked back their protective eyelids, the third lids sliding to the sides of his eyes as he peered up at you with a grin of needle like teeth.

“Boo.” He whispered before submerging his gills again, his eyes poking out above the water while the slits on his neck and ribcage flared and moved water.

“You’re an ass.” You commented before splashing water at his head.

Zadok flared the fins on his head, the sails on top of his head and one each side shaking in a ripple before they shone with purple light, “You stuck your feet into a pool with unknown creatures in it.” he shot back at you as he laid himself on the incline of the pool, his stomach resting against the stones, keeping his gills submerged.

“Is the water okay for you? Don’t you need salt water since you’re from the deep ocean?” You asked curiously, “You won’t get any infections from it will you?”

Zadok gave you a withering look, “I’ll be fine. If this is a fae pool it will be perfectly clean. They don’t like dirty water.” he wiggled back into the water, “I can breathe fresh water just fine, since this is pure, its even better.”

“That’s great then. I didn’t want to be responsible for making you ill or anything! Considering you have a few more months of touring it would be pretty disastrous.” You smiled with relief.

For a while, you watched Zadok swim and dive. He dipped beneath the surface seamlessly and you marvelled at the glow to his fins and scales as he dove to the bottom of the pond. You could make out the colour of his bioluminescence beneath the surface, glowing through the water as he swam in large circles. As you sat, quiet and still, the sprites seemed to return to the water, and you smiled as a few smaller sprites sat by you in the reeds and grass. A couple of small looking mushrooms rattled together before their small arms and legs appeared and they opened their eyes, trundling over to pick at Zadok’s clothes and shoes before they hopped into his shoe and made happy noises. You laughed at them before a small, hummingbird like fae zipped in front of your face and giggled before settling herself on top of your head to play with whatever she could reach. Zadok surfaced and opened his eyelids as a couple of kelp looking creatures clung to his fins. They flopped back into the water before he could complain but he only smiled beneath the surface, snapping at them with his sharp teeth to scare them away from his fins. He reached and tugged a few of them free of his dorsal sail, the sharp needles tearing a few of them a little, but they didn’t seem to complain as they floated back into the depths of the pond.

“They seem to like you.” Zadok commented as he swam close to the edge, his body bending before he laid his webbed hands in the grass, claws plucking at the strands and snapping them.

“If you come here long enough, they take a liking to you. They just like people who can sit quietly, and who don’t litter.” You replied as you placed your cup into his plastic bag. You hummed as you reached inside and plucked the bottle out, “Did you plan on doing a little more than swimming?” You teased as you shook the bottle of whiskey in front of him.

Zadok plucked it out of your hands and scoffed, “A little more than relaxing…” he muttered, “Something like that. It’s been a rough few weeks, being on tour and all.”

You didn’t know Zadok well, but you found yourself replying before you could stop yourself, “Is it something you want to talk about?”

“No.” he replied brusquely, “Its something at home. Nothing you can really help with.” Zadok hummed, “But some company might be nice?” he asked as he held the whiskey a little higher out of the water.

It was only just past midday, but you smiled at him, remembering that you had the day off work anyway. You checked your phone and nodded.

“Sure. I wouldn’t mind sharing some of that. Its expensive.” You commented as Zadok undid the lid and tossed it into the grass.

He held the drink up before taking a few sips and hissing, “Definitely decent stuff.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” You joked, “As a bartender, I have a keen sense for what makes a good whiskey.” You laughed before taking a mouthful and humming at the burn as you swallowed, “Oh yeah, definitely decent.”

“I’m glad you approve.” Zadok chuckled as he leaned back and floated out into the middle of the pond, his eyes closed as the sun shone through the leaves and hit the skin of his belly. His stomach glittered with blue and purple light from the natural sunlight and you watched the light show in awe before you took another sip of whiskey to dampen the feeling swirling in your gut.

Zadok floated for a while before he dipped below the water and dove to the bottom, the water swirling in his wake. His fins popped back out of the water as he swam to the edge and surfaced, smiling at you before he held out his fist.

“Open your hand.” he insisted, “I have something for you.”

You did as you were told and placed the whiskey down to open your hands for what he had to give you. He opened his claws and dropped a large looking rock. You frowned but span it over to reveal the inside of a geode. It was split some time ago but Zadok’s swimming had cleaned most of the silt from inside of it, revealing a shiny gathering of blue and clear crystals. The sprite in your hair chirped happily before a magpie squawked and landed nearby, eyeing the shiny object up with one beady eye.

“Wow.” You whispered, “Was this at the bottom of the pond?” You asked as you turned the crystals away from the sunlight, so the magpie didn’t decide to dive at you for the object.

“There’s a small cave at the bottom. It probably leads to some fae lair, but the inside was full of rocks and geodes. Its obviously a lair which has been abandoned though, there’s silt all over it.” Zadok commented, “They probably moved along a while ago.”

“That’s amazing.” You replied, “Thank you. Its very pretty.”

Zadok failed to stop his fins from flaring as he puffed with pride, “Sorry.” he grunted, “It’s a natural thing. I can’t stop myself.”

You only laughed at him, “Its fine, don’t worry about it.” You took hold of the whiskey again and held it out for him, “Want some more.”

Embarrassed, Zadok nodded, “Yep.” And took the whiskey as he swam back out into the pond, treading water easily as he sipped whiskey, back and forth across the length of the body of water.

The whiskey was strong, and it quickly got to your head, making you smile as you laid near the edge of the water, talking as you watched the clouds roll overhead. You grinned as Zadok started to cloud watch with you. It was childish almost, but peaceful as you both laid back and watched the day roll past, sipping whiskey before you started on the bread and meat he had shoved into the bag as well, chewing slowly as you listened to the trees rustle and fae giggle. The sun started to dip below the horizon as you both finished off the bottle of whiskey, giggling and slapping water at each other before you flopped back against the bank with your feet swirling back and forth in the water. Zadok dipped below the surface and resurfaced happily, stretching his lithe figure out before he swam back towards you. One of his hands wrapped around your ankle, the black, tapered claws grazing over your skin before he pulled himself out of the water, and grazed them up over your calf, to the point where your bottoms were rolled up your legs. His white eyes continued up your legs, following their own path over your chest before your gazes locked.

His fingers pressed against your skin, softly mapping the expanse of your calf before he trailed his other hand up your other leg, touching the back of your leg in a slow stroke before he heaved his body up and out of the water, resting between your legs as he dripped water over your stomach. Intensity burned in his white eyes as his nose holes flared and his mouth opened, scenting the air. You looked up at him and felt your body go hot. After a moment looking at his perfect, pearl coloured skin, you dared to stroke your hands over his stomach, following the deep purple colours as they zipped up over his shoulders and down his back. A croaking purr escaped Zadok as he pushed his skin against your hands, enjoying the petting as his lips pursed. His gills flared with a sigh before he leaned over and pressed his lips to your own. His second eyelids closed over his eyes, like he was snatching a fish from the water, and he watched you melt against the grass, one of your hands cupping his cheek, stroking at the fin on the side of his head, while your other hand dared to trail down his stomach, stroking the soft, scaled skin before you reached the mound between his legs.

Another soft rumble ran up Zadok’s check before he croaked, the sound accompanied by the soft fluttering of his gills. His eyes were closed as your fingers grazed over the flushed flesh of his slit. You stroked along the centre where the rough scales parted to reveal a peak of his soft, blue coloured flesh.

“Fuck.” Zadok whispered as his arms shook, “Please.” he whimpered in your ear.

“Please, what?” You gasped as your finger dipped into the slit as it grew slippery with a natural lubricant before you kissed him again, stroking the flushed flesh gently as you felt his tongue prod at your lips. The two of you kissed a little deeper, tongues touching before Zadok tilted his head and pulled himself out of the water completely, pressing his wet skin and scales to your front.

The mer shifted against you as your fingers came away from his slit, covered in a thin slime, “Let me…” he croaked again with a purr, “Let me have you.”

You grinned as he pressed his slit to your hips, rubbing the scales against you, “Do you have a room somewhere?” you asked, no louder than a whisper.

Zadok nodded his head as you dragged your nails down his back, shivering before he managed to speak, “The Rouge Bard. We have our own rooms. Everyone is out today.” he added as he blinked and leaned to nip at your lips, his gills fluttering again before he leaned back.

“We best continue this there then.” You stated as Zadok kissed you once more and pulled away, shaking water from his body as he hissed and pulled his clothes back on. The cotton dragged at the swollen flesh of his slit and you drunkenly hummed, looking at his angular ribcage, structured with thin bones and heavy scales. You were admiring him. Zadok smiled as he zipped up his cargo pants, moving the chains out of the way as they linked together and jangled.

“Yes. Let’s.” Zadok shuddered as the wind blew, but quickly covered up before stealing another heated kiss from your lips, his fins flaring as you clicked the water tank breathers to the gills on his neck.

The two of you stumbled from the abandoned homes, stealing kisses and dragging your hands over each other’s skin as darkness settled over the city. You stumbled and laughed with one another as you reached the hotel and he dragged you into the elevator, purring his croaking noise again as he pressed you to his front and stole another kiss, his lips demanding more from you. His tongue slipped into your mouth and you gasped against his teeth as they nipped at you. The elevator pinged the floor and you both collapsed out of it, dragging each other down the hall until you reached his door. You pressed his back against it as he fumbled for the keycard to get in.

A whistle sounded behind you as Zadok opened the door, “Golden boys getting some ass tonight I see.” Senoz purred from across the hall.

“I think I might be the one getting the ass.” You purred as the demon’s tails swung upwards, curled curiously.

“Well, when he’s a disappointment, you know where to find me, sweet thing.” Senoz swiped at your neck and licked the skin before leaving you both to tumble into Zadok’s room.

“Fucking demon.” the merman growled, “I’ll…”

“You better not be all talk. I might get bored and head over to see how good Senoz is in bed.” You countered as his coat fell to the floor.

Zadok was quick to pull the suction cups of his water tank free, wheezing for a moment before he pealed his shirt off, revealing his angular chest and plated ribs again. You leaned back to admire the sight before he grabbed at your own clothes. You let him wrangle your coat and shirt off before you pushed him back towards the double bed. He went with a soft rumble, laying back against the cushions as he undid his trousers. You stood and slid them down over his hips to reveal his underwear. They were wet with lubricant. Pulling them down, you tried not to lick your lips as his slit sat before you, puffy and glistening, the head of his cock already peeking out from the blue flesh. Zadok threw his head back as you pushed your fingers against the soft scaled skin, revealing the v-shaped head of his cock.

“Fuck, please.” he whined again, “Please.” he reached for your neck and leaned up for a kiss, only to be denied as you spotted the jewellery collars on top of his dresser. They were probably from the show the night before. Before he could steal a kiss, you retrieved one of the studded black leather collars and grinned.

“If you’re a good boy, I’ll let you have what you want.” You promised as you slid back into his lap, holding the studs of the spiked collar open.

The merman looked from the collar to your face. His white eyes widened before he nodded, licking at his lips with a blue, pointed tongue. You reached around his neck to click the collar closed before leaning back in his lap to admire the black leather and silver spikes against his pearlescent skin. Bioluminescence trails ran up his arms as you trailed your hands over his scaled skin. It was rough over the tops of his arms and you dug your fingers into the meat of his tricep to enjoy the feeling of the rough skin against your palms. Sitting back on his thighs, you turned your gaze downwards as you looped a finger through the ring hanging from the leather. Zadok moaned quietly as you gave it a soft tug and teased the tip of his cock. It bobbed, stirring between the blue fleshy lips before it extended out of its hole, shining wet with lubricant. His dick was long and curved upwards, with a head that tapered into a v shape. Beneath the head was bulbous, in the shape of an oval, and the bottom was flared with ribs. It was entirely new, and you felt your mouth water slightly at the sight of the blue gradient of the organ. The bottom glittered with silver light at your staring and his cock bobbed upwards sharply as your fingers trailed over his shoulders and down his ribs. Zadok let out another purring croak as you finally reached his pelvis and ran your fingertips along the top of his dick.

“Please, master, please.” he croaked as he flopped back into the cushions, easily falling into a more submissive role as you dragged him up a little by the ring of his collar, “Please touch me.”

You shuddered at his tone of voice, enjoying the soft pleading from a voice which was usually so confident and demanding of attention on stage.

“Are you going to be a good boy and do as you’re told?” You asked as you sat on his thighs, running your fingers over his hips, towards the base of his cock, before you trailed back again, letting the head of his dick leak precum and his slit drip with more lubricant. The clear fluid leaked down over his buttocks and you watched as his face lit up with a blue blush.

Zadok swallowed thickly, “I’ll be g-good.” he promised quietly as you let go of the ring of his collar and stroked the length of his dick.

“Good boy.” You cooed as you stroked him, “We can stop anytime, just pat my thigh twice.” You told him before leaning down to steal a kiss from his lips as you pressed your finger to the sensitive head of his cock.

“Ah!” Zadok cried sharply as your fingers twisted underneath the bulbous part of his cock, “That’s…sensitive.” he whined as you grasped the oval shape again and stroked around it, watching his clawed feet curl into the sheets, cutting slits into the sheets.

“Its sensitive is it?” You asked as you trailed over the bump again.

“Yes.” he cried, “Please, master, I can’t…I’ll cum before…”

Abruptly, you let go, watching his cock bob and throb with a hum. Zadok whined and croaked again before leaning up to kiss you, demanding your attention.

“I think I need a little help before I can fit that in baby boy.” You uttered against his lips, “How about you open me up a little?”

Zadok nodded as you took hold of his hand and looked at his claws, assessing them for a moment before you decided they were clipped enough to not shred your insides.

Zadok croaked before purring again as you sat on your knees, resting above his lap as his hand encompassed your sex, the rough scales on the outside of his fingers grazing against your sensitive skin before they ran back and pushed at your hole. He met with resistance and the mer quickly gathered the natural lubricant from his slit, smearing it over his fingers before he pushed back against your hole. Carefully, he slid one finger inside to the second knuckle, letting you rest for a moment before he eased the rest in. Your inside were warm, and Zadok shuddered at the temperature difference before he crooked his finger and began gently thrusting it in and out. His other hand occupied itself at your chest before his mouth took to teasing your nipples, sucking on the buds until they were pert and sore, his sharp teeth nipping at the skin as he croaked again in happiness.

“You’re such a good boy.” You moaned between the attention of his mouth and hands, enjoying the pleasurable stretch as he pushed another finger into you and scissored the two apart, pressing against your plush insides.

“Anything for you, master.” Zadok purred drunkenly, his pale face flushed with blue blood. You watched his cock bob and weep a pearl of light blue precum, following the fluid as it dripped back down the length and mixed with the lubricant seeping from his slit.

“Zadok, you’re dripping all over yourself. Is this turning you on that much?” You asked breathily as his fingers pressed into a sensitive spot, keeping your composure as he sucked on your nipples again, leaving cool spit over the skin with his blue tongue.

“Mmm. It is.” Zadok hissed as you wrapped your hand around the head of his cock, “Please, can I be inside you?”

“Hmm? What was that? Where are your manners, baby?” You asked as you pulled his fingers from you looking at them before you leaned back in his lap and pinned his hands to the bed. His dick bobbed as you stretched his arms up over his head and you admired the shape of his lithe figure, all bone and sleek muscle. His luminescence burned bright in striped over his entire body, shooting like currents as you nudged your hips against his own, “What’s the magic word?”

“Please, master, I can’t stand it. I need to be inside you.” Zadok moaned as you tugged him up by the collar for a kiss, mashing your tongues and teeth together messily before you reached back and lined his dick up against your hole, “Thank you, thank you…” He uttered incoherently as you sank down on his cock.

A moan tore from you as the bulbous part under his head sank into you, stretching you wide before the ribs along the bottom scraped gently at your insides. A sharp bolt of pleasure ran up your spine as you took him to the base. He was unique, slippery, and textured in ways you had never taken, and you took a moment to admire his face as his second eyelids flicked and blinked back and forth. His hips shifted, jolting you on top of him, and you felt the cool seep of lubricant from where your hips were pressed together.

“You’re just gushing for me, aren’t you?” You teased as you slid up his cock and slid back down, enjoying the wet squelch that sounded as your hips collided. Zadok nodded and croaked again, reaching for his collar as his other hand wrapped around a bed post, anchoring himself as your rhythm took over, rocking his dick in and out of yourself. He struggled to say anything as the bulbous protrusion expanded, squirting something unfamiliar inside of you.

“Did you just….” You paused as he shook his head, and your insides turned into jelly, numb to the swell but tingling with extra pleasure. It was a thin stream of jelly and you sat up on your knees to see it drip out of you thickly, numbing wherever it touched.

“Its for…eggs…” he moaned, “I couldn’t stop myself…”

You moaned as your legs shook, “It’s fine…Fuck its.” You pushed your fingers to your sex and shuddered again.

“It’s an…aphrodisiac and its…” Zadok moaned sharply his hand flying to the bed post again as you dropped on his cock, picking up the pace in a frenzy as your insides throbbed with the need to cum.

“I need to cum, baby, can you do it with me?” You asked as you leaned for another kiss and to tug at his collar, tightening the hold of your hand around his neck slightly as you thrust onto him. The ribs of his cock brushed your insides and you quivered before you came, white hot pleasure burning behind your eyes before Zadok croaked and shot his load. You shuddered at the feeling as you slowly brought yourself off his dick. Light blue cum dripped from you and you flopped against his chest with a sigh, thumbing at the collar around his neck happily in the afterglow of it all.

Tiredly, you roused from your sleepy state as Zadok placed you back against the cushions and tugged the sheets over your body. You hummed against the cushions before the sheets slid back down over your skin.

“You’re not already up for more are you?” You cooed as you peeled open your eyes.

“If only. I’m not that young anymore.” Zadok chuckled as he eased you over onto your back and revealed a warm wash cloth. He hummed as he slid it over your skin, wiping away the cum and jelly like substance which had made your insides tingle.

“I might be able to go for another.” You hummed as he wiped between your legs and tapped at your thigh.

“Well, this one hasn’t got it in him, I’m afraid.” Zadok flopped next to you, clean and relaxed as he laid back against the cushions and reached around the back of his neck.

You reached for the collar for him, “Here. Let me do it.” You kissed the skin of his shoulder and squeezed his shoulder softly before you unclipped the press studs and pulled it away from his neck. You kissed his neck where the leather had bitten into his skin a little and placed the collar on the bedside table before snuggling back against his chest.

Zadok croaked a little before he ran his fingers over your back, running his claws up and down your spine as he laid back and enjoyed the warmth of your skin against his own. He was cool to the touch, and you slid your fingers down over his plated chest, swooping to the side to feel the odd angle of his ribcage before you stopped above his pelvis, remembering that his dick had probably long retracted into his slit.

“Wait you don’t have anything do you?” You asked sleepily.

Zadok thumbed at the bottom of your chin, “Unless you count drug laced jello as having something, then no.” he let out a raspy breath of air before sitting up, easing you off his body, “Sorry. I need to just go and soak a while. Come and join me?”

With a smile, you leaned up on the edge of the bed and kissed him, enjoying the scrape of his scales, “Sure. Give me a minute though, my legs are still a little like jelly.”

Zadok chuckled again before he purred softly and walked to the bathroom.

You watched his backside go before you sat back against the headboard and massaged at your thighs, hoping that the numb, tingling feeling would wear off. It felt like a residual tingling pleasure, and you felt your insides burn with the idea of another round in the posh hotel bathtub. A rumbling sounded from the floor. You perked up at the noise before looking at Zadok’s bottoms on the floor. His pocket lit up with the screen of his phone. Someone was ringing him. It wasn’t polite, and you knew that as you curiously leaned down and plucked the phone from his pocket.

‘Misty Conrad’ it read, and you felt your heart drop into your stomach. Miss Conch. The words rang in your head from the band meet and greet. Senoz had implied that they were together. Suddenly, the mild buzz from the alcohol wasn’t there, and you sobered up as the ringing stopped and the screen went black. You clicked the screen back on and looked at the notifications. Three messages. Ten missed calls. The phone buzzed again with a new message and you clicked it to reveal the short message.

‘I know you’re with that fan. Answer my calls Zadok or it’s over.’

Your eyes burned with tears of humiliation. He was with her. What they had was more than a song recorded together, and you were a fool for not seeing the signs earlier. You let out a small noise as you sniffed and grew angry, the tears siding down your cheeks as you grabbed for your clothes on wobbly legs.

“Was that my phone?” Zadok asked and you turned to face him as he poked his head around the bathroom door. He was dripping with water but his eyes widened as he saw you crying and grabbing for your clothes, “Are you…”

You threw his phone on the bedside table as you tugged your underwear and bottoms on, “You’re a cheating fuck!” You accused, “And you used me! I should have known that this was stupid but… Miss Conch. She’s been ringing you all say and now she knows.” Your brain couldn’t seem to quite catch up with you as you pulled your shirt on and grabbed your bag. Zadok wrapped his waist with a towel, his mouth open as he grabbed his phone from the table and looked. He cringed at the messages and turned.

“Look, its not what you think!” he insisted as he caught your arm, “We’ve not been together seriously for ages and…”

“And nothing!” You threw back at him, “You used me to console your feelings because you can’t bare to deal with her, and you’ve made me into some kind of…”

“I’m not…” Zadok took a breath, croaking as he pulled at his fins, “Look, I’m sorry, I’ll sort this…”

“I…I don’t care.” You tugged your arm free, feeling the tears beginning to burn into your anger again, “You’re a bastard, Zadok, I want you to know that. A selfish bastard.”

Zadok let your arm go as you opened the door and stood with his phone clenched in his claws as you slammed the door behind you. You wiped at your eyes furiously in the hall and took a shaky breath before you turned on your heels.

“Hmm, leaving so soon, sugar?” Senoz purred as he peered out into the hall, “Or did you want a piece of this instead of the fishy boy?” he sniffed and tilted his head, his horns scratching at the frame, “Wait, why are you crying? Are you alright?”

You held out your hand to him, motioning for him to stop as you wiped the tears away, “I’m fine. Leave it. I’ll be going.”

The demon turned his head to Zadok’s door as you left him stood in the hall. As you rounded the corner you heard him knock on the door.

“You know that’s real bad fucking PR to make fans cry after fucking them, Zadok!”

You didn’t hear from Zadok after that. The band continued their tour globally, and you watched the highlights happily, listening to the songs with your usual interest. You smiled at Duncan’s solos and watched the crowd go berserk. It was energy you lived for. Zadok’s performances were stunning. He draped himself over a piano and sang a ballad before he did more singing in his ancient mer language. It was lovely, but it stung a little. It wasn’t long after their tour finished that you turned on the alternative radio station. The ends of a metal song chugged along as you made a sandwich. It was your day off from the bar and you had been cleaning most of the day, enjoying cleansing yourself of clutter and dust. You hummed as you placed two slices of bread on the plate.

“Although we have drama in the metal scene, we’re all used to the usual knucklehead fights between rival bands, or better yet, accusations of plagiarism, but we’ve never quite had some news like this. The frontman of the band SIREN has been caught, if you mind the pun, in a fishing net of accusations. Miss Conch, the mans supposed former partner, has been blowing the lid off his life outside of his band. The accusations range from ritual sacrifice to cheating, and its not something we usually endorse. But, to answer these claims, we have the very man, or mer, with us in the studio right now.”

You dashed for the volume dial and turned it up a little before you moved your plate closer and began to cut up your filling for the lunch.

“So, Zadok, what do you have to say about these claims by Pop Star, Miss Conch?”

“Some are right, but most are wrong. The ritual sacrifice, for starters, is a ceremony done by my people to appease the currents of the ocean. We take a fish and its bones and lay them in art decorations as an offering. Its an old and sacred tradition. The cheating accusations are, in part true, but our relationship was never official, and I had already broken things off by the beginning of this tour. Her more serious allegations…well my manager and lawyer are already dealing with those. They are untrue and slanderous.”

“Are you calling Miss Conch a liar?”

“For the most part, yes, I am. She invaded my private life and failed to see when our relationship was over. I want to be transparent and come out to speak for my side of the story. I’m not calling her obsessed or anything derogatory, I am just justifying what is fact from fiction.”

“That’s understandable and I’m sure your fans appreciate your honesty.”

“Unfounded and untrue.” You scoffed as you slapped your sandwich together, “Next he’ll be telling everyone that he-”

“This drama has gone on long enough and it has hurt people close to me, not just mine and the band’s reputation. I hurt someone I now know I shouldn’t have with this mess and this is my start to fixing that mistake.”

“That he didn’t know where his dick was going…” You whispered as you looked at the radio like it was a person staring back at you. You wondered if he was talking about you as you moved around the island of your kitchen and headed towards your couch to sit and eat your sandwich. The host thanked him before announcing the next song as Burn by SIREN. You listened to the thunderous drums as you chewed, mulling over the words in your head before the guitars wailed and you thumped at the cushions.

“Why do I even think that? He’s the one who just failed to tell me he has a girlfriend!” You grumbled to yourself before pulling your phone out. You sighed as you opened MonstGram. In your inbox, there sat one message.

‘Can we talk? I need to speak to you. I know I’m a selfish bastard but I want the chance to apologise.’

The same image of the figure by the sea. You took a deep breath as you looked at the vague image of Zadok and placed your phone down, the screen black as you finished off the last bits of your sandwich. Contemplation lasted only a moment as the screen lit up and the notification registered. Another message. You looked at the icon and opened it again.

‘I know I’m the last person you want to see but I’m sorry things ended up how they did. I hope my stupid actions didn’t ruin your love of our music. I’ll leave you alone. That’s all I wanted to say.’

It stank of desperation. You looked from the message and back to your empty plate. It wasn’t manipulative. It was honest, and that made you hate how you were feeling even more. You opened the conversation again and stared at the picture of the sea and cliffs. Your fingers danced over the keyboard before you started to type.

‘One chance. Meet me at Full Moon Bar. Friday. I’ll be on shift but I’ll talk to you.’

‘I’ll see you then.’

With a great sigh, you closed your screen and looked up at the ceiling, your head resting on the back of the sofa cushions. It was a leap of faith, you knew that. You were trusting him with your good faith again.

“If he doesn’t show up, Miss Conch will be the least of his problems. I’ll slice him up like sushi and mail him back to his manager.” You spat, and the poisonous words made you feel a little better and hate him a little less. With a smile, you ran a hand over your face and got up to go and put your plate away in the sink for washing later. For now, you had a living area to deep clean, and you headed for the vacuum to try and clean Zadok from your mind for a while.

The bar was quiet on Friday. Thankfully, there was a small group who had a lot of orders to keep you entertained. It distracted you from the nerves brewing in your gut.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you today?” Tom asked as he leaned over the bar, his nose perked as he sniffed at the air, “You smell off as all hell.”

“Get your werewolf nose away from me, Tom. I mean it.” You threatened as you turned to place some clean glasses under the bar, “I’m not in the mood for your meddling.”

“Meddling? Me? Never.” Tom teased gently, “Its like you’re worried though. Talk to me.”

With a great sigh, you turned back to face him, “Someone I’ve not seen in a long time is coming…I just need you to be there in case. Not with me or anything, just around.”

“Of course.” Tom consoled, “I hope this isn’t some abusive asshole, because I swear on the moon I’ll…”

“Don’t worry. Its not. Its just something I need to sort out.” You assured him.

“Okay. What time do you need a minute?” he asked as he opened the bar door and stood next to you. You peered at the clock as the bell on the door rang, and Tom turned to greet them with a smile.

“Evening.” he said before he turned back to you, his eyes wide and his nose flared, “Tell me I’m not dreaming, and that Zadok from SIREN did actually just walk into the bar.”

You stiffened as you peered around him, “You’re not dreaming big guy.” You headed to the door, “So keep your cool. This is the one I need to talk to.”

Tom’s mouth opened like a large fish but he didn’t ask you any questions as you headed over to Zadok.

Zadok ducked into a booth near the entrance, his head low and covered by a large black hood. His water respirator was on and he was wearing a mouth piece over his face. You watched him before finally taking the last couple of steps and sliding into the seat. You slid him a shot of whiskey. Zadok caught the shot glass and looked up, his white eyes locking with your own before he reached for his face and clicked a few buttons. The water drained from the mask and he pulled it free, smiling with needle sharp teeth. He was dressed in his usual baggy combats and a large, long sleeve shirt. The shirt was torn and had a few chains linked across his chest. He tugged off his hood and looked at the shot glass for a moment.

“Look I know that…That I fucked up. What I did was selfish, and I took advantage of you.” he started as he clutched the glass between his hands, “I shouldn’t have I shouldn’t have let you do what you wanted but it happened and I’m sorry.”

You looked at his face and the wetness of his eyes, “You still did it, and that hasn’t changed. I was…I was hurt and upset. I had her message me, Zadok. Spiteful, horrible things. None of that hurt will go away but its fading.”

Zadok cringed over his drink, “We weren’t even properly together. We had sex and a few dates but with the tour, it wasn’t going any further. She messaged me constantly. Harrassed me with phone calls and I was just…I should have told her.” he looked you dead in the eyes, “I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess.”

“It’s a mess, but I appreciate you being so honest with me.” You confessed as he thumbed at his drink before downing the whiskey. His hands looked a little steadier after the strong liquor.

“It’s the least I could do. She’s in the past. She’s tried to file a lot of shit against me. It wasn’t worth it, and I’m…I’m tired. She can have the song rights and royalties. I just want her out of my life”

You didn’t comment but nodded as he ranted a little. You knew about the allegations. It was widely known news to the fans now. Still, his interview weighed on your mind.

“What you said in the interview you did on Metal Talks.” You started, “Is this what you were talking about? You wanted to make this right with me?”

“Yes. I knew…Look I was a fucking idiot, I know that, but I ruined something that I thought was going to be…”

“More?” You added with a small smile.

“Call it stupidity, but…You were just stunning, and I got carried away. The alcohol didn’t help matters but I still think you’re amazing. Your love for the music, for life, it just spoke to me and… Look I can’t change anything, but I can try and sort this out.” He pushed the glass over to you on the table, “We don’t know each other, not really, but would you be willing to know me, in a better way?”

You gut churned as you looked at his pearlescent skin and his beautiful white eyes, chewing the inside of your cheek, “Maybe I would. I thought you were moving, in everything, from the moment I started to follow you all, but that doesn’t change what you did. I need time and space, but I would like to know you, the real you.”

Zadok carefully reached for your hand and squeezed at your fingers carefully as he smiled and ducked his head. The door opened and Tom greeted the next customer. You sat, letting him hold your hand, before you blushed and got up.

“You still have to pay for the drink, but you can stay, if you like? I know Tom is dying for an autograph and a picture. He’s probably your second biggest fan.”

Zadok chuckled and looked up at you, “Who’s my first?”

“Well, you just might have to find that out.”

#merman x reader #merman x gender neutral reader #merman #monster x reader #monster boyfriend #monster bf #monster boy x reader #monster boys #monster reader insert #reader insert #zadok #SIREN #siren: a metal monster band #zadok x reader #monster boys x reader #exo #terato

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vaguely-concerned · 3 years

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The Mandalorian Chapter 15 rewatch thoughts

- mayfeld does hear when the droid talks to him the first time, you can see him pretending not to like he hopes he’ll just go away haha. I also guess he’s had a lot of time to think, picking apart pieces of the large fascist machine he used to be a part of and going over everything he clearly regrets

- hahaha fennec and boba are in the back intensely keeping watch the entire time they’re on the prison planet. I suppose a good two thirds of this crew is uuuuh extremely wanted by the new republic lol

- the thing din’s voice does at the end when he says “but you still know your imperial clearances and protocols. don’t you.” is beyond fucking words, it sends a chill right through me

1) din fiddling with that panel; I think he’s phenomenally nervous behind the helmet here, that’s the sort of keeping his hands busy he does when he’s anxious and 2) why the hell does boba have this many chairs instead of like space for cargo haha does he throw bounty hunter parties in here or what

- ngl boba correctly guessing at a glance what sort of ore they’re mining and informing everyone in his sardonic deadpan voice is Big Sexy

I love how he and fennec are standing together when they’re both present in these opening scenes too, first at the very back when they’re keeping a lookout:

and then in the foreground while they discuss the scan

it’s a nice subtle way to get across that they already have a dynamic, they’re somewhat used to working together as a unit at this point. (she’s also looking over at him when she asks what they might be mining in there, like she’s mostly asking his opinion instead of opening it to the floor. they’re talking the mission out between them before din enters the conversation)

- the inside of slave 1 when the ship’s moving makes me a little bit motion sick, I really love seeing it but I hope we don’t stay in here too often haha

- aaaw the small weary sigh din gives upon realizing none of his bros can go with mayfeld. I’m sorry about basically your entire life buddy

the awkward way din adjusts the helmet like he’s trying to get used to the way it feels ;______;

- ah the distinct implication that mayfeld is needling din about this because he’s actually feeling super uncomfortable being back in empire gear and he needs to transfer that discomfort over onto someone else so he won’t have to feel through it... very psychologically understandable and such a fucking piece of shit asshole character trait to give in to haha

- din’s level of side eye is so epic you can see it straight through the helmet fhaskjfhd

- neat detail: din’s head turns slightly toward mayfeld when he calls mandalorians a ‘race’. (it’s sort of cool that we as the audience know why that bothers him, but mayfeld probably didn’t even pick up on it). also shows that mayfeld doesn’t actually quite understand what he’s talking about, even when he makes decent points he’s caught up in his own myopic nihilistic point of view. ‘we’re all the same’ ------> ‘everyone’s secretly as shitty as me deep down’. (which also betrays a lot of self loathing, since we see later he does have the capacity to NOT be that shitty when he chooses to. rick famuyiwa manages to get a LOT of really interesting nuanced stuff into this character in two short episodes, that’s super impressive)

the bright sunny look on mayfeld’s face when din finally gives in and takes the bait tho fsajdkfhasj he’s awful but that’s very funny

- rip all these excellent dudes who really only wanted to accomplish the noble goal of ruining the empire’s entire day and didn’t know they were also trying to blow up My Dad Who Does Not Deserve Any Of This, it’s honestly just really sad that there’s no moment to talk that out

well at least they blew up the entire refinery on their way out, I’m sure that’s the way they would have wanted their memories honored lol

- the comedy beat of din running out of ammo for the first time ever and the music briefly cutting out for it is so so good for me

hahahaha din seems to actually take a moment to be a little aghast at that dude who ends up crushed under the treads of the tank thing, he’s just sort of staring for a few seconds too long and that’s how pirate nr 2 takes him by surprise and shatters his shoulder armour

- I feel a bit bad -- two of the ‘pirates’ try to hold on to each other for balance and then din punches them apart and off the tank :( I mean it’s not like he could just let them murderate him either but like. ouch I’m guessing this one might haunt him for a while for several reasons huh

(the sequence is actually this guy, let’s call him pirate 3, swings the spear at din and misses, instead hitting his buddy who’s trying to get to his feet, then looks horrified and grabs for him to make sure he doesn’t fall off, and then... mando’s forehead happens to them haha)

- poor fennec and cara just running up that hill while everything’s on fire, they must be wondering what the FUCK is going on (at least cara knows that things blowing up is a sure sign din djarin is in the middle there somewhere)

- everything about carano in real life aside for one second -- I do like that we get this contrast in build between our main female characters of the episode and the way their costume designs enhance it

- awwww the little gesture din does with his hand after he removes it from mayfeld’s chest after stopping him from leaving, it’s just so... sweet. it’s a little bit appeal, a little bit reassurance, it just lightens/softens the tone of what he says a bit (he has quite a lot of like... not conciliatory mannerisms exactly, but small touches here and there that are there to communicate that he’s not angry/aggressive or trying to be a dick about it even when he’s emphatic. I keep wondering how much that is just him being him and how much is him being practiced at settling other people’s hot tempers)

- this shot is just... genius

it’s din seen entirely from the outside, with nothing of what we’ve learned to recognize as him for almost two seasons now in view -- not even his face, which we have at least a tenuous fledgling attachment to from before. it’s like we get introduced to him almost as if anew again and again in this episode, just like he’s getting introduced to new aspects of himself and what he’s willing to do and having to struggle to find ways to have that fit with who he is. his discomfort and stress is our discomfort and stress. it’s so interesting

- I can’t stop cackling at this moment even in all the tension -- you only get a sliver of din’s profile but you can feel the sheer MURDER radiating off him sdhfasjk

- aaaaaaaagh the way you get a whole different view of din’s habitual impassiveness when you can actually see his face... the way he keeps appealing to mayfeld ‘just don’t make more trouble, just shut up’, the way he goes completely silent and watchful and frozen..... those are all really obvious trauma responses, and it leads you to wonder how often he touches into that even when he’s in his element, when he’s got the full armour on. hmngh my heart

- ‘the believer’ is such a galaxy brain title for this episode, because it could be referring to either of the three men around this table or all of them at once. (and crucially the only person whose beliefs aren’t in a living, breathing state of adapting to the world around them is the empire officer, with his horrific inhuman ideology. mayfeld thinks he believes in nothing, and proves himself explosively wrong by the end of the episode, and it’s redeeming for him in some capacity. din is facing a more internal dilemma of different parts of his (and his culture’s) beliefs/values clashing and having to decide which one’s more important, to his identity and to how to exist in the world as a person (and love for the baby wins out supremely in the end. of course it does Y_____Y). the empire dude only sees the same sterile fascist world at the end of his shit rainbow that he’s clearly always done, even when faced with proof that it’s untenable. (I mean he wouldn’t give a fuck that it’s immoral because he’s y’know evil, but he’s not even fazed by the fact that the empire provably FAILED, and failed so quickly) his belief is a dead and deadening thing to contrast the others. man when this show goes off with the themes it goes OFF haha)

- love the triumphant heroic mando music kicking in as we’re finally getting to pick off imps, love that for us

- din’s protective instincts at work again, he helps mayfeld to his feet and makes sure he’s safely on board before going further in himself ;_______;

- fennec’s professional approval at mayfeld’s shot hahaha. well I guess he was supposed to be a sharpshooter back in the day huh

I do Not think she likes mayfeld even after all that, though, the withering look she sends him on her way past... should have killed him stone dead on the spot

- seeing din back in the armour is like a physical relief, I can breathe again haha

- tfw you catch yourself thinking ‘at least when all this is over we can go back to the razor crest and everything will be normal again’ and then you rEMEMBER 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta #honestly I could add a lot more of my boba thirst in this lol (idk din is always Dad not Daddy to me but boba's Doing something for me haha)

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a-small-batch-of-dragons · 3 years

Text

Faded

Averykedavra prompt: okay, first of all, can I be added to your taglist? I love your fics! secondly, if you're open to prompts (apologies if you're not) could you write some logan-centric hurt/comfort? with roman and maybe Virgil comforting him? no pressure, but thanks!! and again your fics are absolutely incredible

Thanks for the prompt babe you’re an icon ^_^

Read on Ao3

Warnings: Logan’s not feeling so great, so self-doubt, self-esteem issues, all that jazz

Pairings: depending on how you want to read it, logince, analogical, possible prinxiety, analogince, or just hella platonic. My aro ass doesn’t know anymore you choose

Word Count: 4237

When a Side's role is disregarded, their door fades from the hallway.

Logan...do the others really need Logan?

Or just Logic?

“Neato! So you're making your little factoids optional this time around.”

Thank Archimedes the little pixelated boxes didn’t allow for much dynamic character interaction.

Logan swallows and tries to keep going, growing more concerned that the lump in his throat would make it impossible to speak. But he can do this. For Thomas, he can do this. He has to.

“Oh, I’ve got this one, guys!”

‘IGNORANT’ flashes up in front of him in big, red letters. Almost immediately he can hear the scoldings of Thomas and Patton followed by Roman’s mumbled apology but it’s too late. The word sears itself into his brain and he can’t see anything other than the choice that they’ve made.

He swallows again. Alright. He’ll speak directly to the audience. Thomas has to listen to them eventually, doesn’t he?

…well, maybe, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting every time he pops up with something and it’s completely ignored. He tries to appeal to Patton’s sense of humor. He tries to give Roman something when he can’t find the right words. He tries to give Thomas something, anything.

Then he gets overexcited and pushes Patton into the blinds.

The second Roman’s sword flashes out and slices him neatly in two a searing bolt of pain spreads to his arms, to his chest, to his throat. He knows logically—he knows everything logically—he can’t be hurt by that. It isn’t him. He is not connected in any way physically to these lowdowns.

So why are his hands shaking?

This is so ridiculous. He is Logic. He should not be working like this, he should not be reacting like this. This is logically the next step, he must simply not be out of the adjustment process yet. Which is ridiculous in and of itself, has he not mentioned several times over that the presence of the others imbeds Thomas’s ability to think rationally and calmly about the issues they have to face? Has he not himself wondered that if he were not so…undone by being in the same room that he finds it difficult to keep going when he needs to? Shouldn’t this be better?

“You know I'm- I'm not doing a really great job explaining this philosophy. Um, Logan?”

Patton? Logan pops up.

Patton smiles—smiles?—at him as the box appears at the bottom of the screen. From this angle, he can’t see Roman or Thomas. What’s happening? Why hasn’t he been paying better attention?

Why can’t he focus?

“What would a real philosopher think about what I'm saying here?”

Oh. Oh, no. This isn’t going to be good, is it?

“Well, Frederich Nietzsche really wouldn't have been thrilled with anything you've had to say, primarily because pity seems to be at the center of your idea of ‘putting good into the world.’”

“Th-that's not what—“

“Nietzsche famously rejected the notion that pity was a virtue.”

“Okay,” comes the quiet mumble that, really, should’ve told him to stop talking now, he wasn’t being useful anymore.

But no. Logan was never very good at being quiet, now was he?

“He once claimed that pity ‘runs counter to the instincts that preserve and enhance the value of life…’”

Last chance, Logan, something in his head whispers as something else flashes in the corner of his vision.

‘Skip all.’

But they would never do that, right? They knew, somewhere, because Thomas knew, that you had to listen to Logic. You had to listen, at some point, because if you didn’t, what did you have? They would shake their heads or grumble in annoyance, or cut him off when he’d been talking for too long or ask him to be quiet, but they’d never skip him entirely, cut him out of the conversation, would they?

Patton’s finger presses the button and something of unyielding cold wraps around Logan’s neck.

He flails as it yanks, jerking back awake with his eyes open, out of the boxes, out of the video, at his desk, staring at the screen as his lowdown program blocks him out.

No.

No!

What happened? Why did they—is he—can he—

Why didn’t they want to listen?

Logan’s fingers fly over the keyboard in front of him, searching desperately for an answer. Maybe he programmed this wrong. Admittedly he’s a little new at programming so he could’ve messed something up that disconnected him. Maybe Patton clicked it by mistake. Why was there even a ‘skip all’ button to begin with? He doesn’t remember programming that. And what was it that wrapped around his throat?

His hand goes to his neck at the mere memory of the horrible thing that yanked him out. He winces when his fingers slide of patches of warm, inflamed skin. It…it actually hurt. It left a mark.

What—

The instant his lowdown pops up with his face, he knows.

It shouldn’t hurt. Really. This shouldn’t hurt.

Now perhaps Deceit could see what it was like to be Logic. Or at least to try and be Logic.

Now perhaps…perhaps he may have someone to talk to.

No.

Deceit was, in fact, far better at being Logic. Within an instant, he’d gotten the conversation to his side, gotten the others to listen, to think about what they were saying instead of just following on blind faith.

Of course.

Because it wasn’t Logic they didn’t want to listen to, was it?

It was Logan.

Logan closes his eyes. Alright. He can adapt to this. He can…he can work with this. He just has to figure out how.

He turns away from the computer, stands, and carefully makes his way across his room to the nightstand, where the emergency first-aid kit sits tucked in the drawer. He will patch himself up, best he can, and then figure out what to do.

He’s too distracted to hear Roman’s terrified shout.

“What have you done with Logan?”

———————————————————

A few hours after filming stops, there’s a very soft knock on Logan’s door. He doesn’t move from his desk, nor does he pause in his typing. False sympathies and empty comforts have never been very appealing.

…and he is just the slightest bit worried that he won’t be able to resist the urge to slam the door in Patton’s face.

Footsteps moving away sound from outside. Good. It’s better this way, isn’t it?

The lowdowns didn’t work. Well, they did…but they worked a little too well, didn’t they? Instead of being less invasive, they just…cut Logan’s contributions out entirely. They let Logan be taken. They were good for Logic, not Logan.

Logan’s head turns to the wall where he has two lists tacked up. Standing, the desk chair scraping behind him, he picks up the marker.

His job is to be Logic. Therefore, if he is failing at that job, he must find a way to be better.

The list on the left has ‘LOGIC’ written in large, block letters. On the right, ‘LOGAN.’ Isolating the key characteristics of each concept will help to shift himself properly into the role he must play. Logan’s eyes scan down the ‘LOGIC’ list.

LOGIC:

Emotionless

Useful

Rational

Necessary

Welcome

The end of the word ‘welcome’ is smeared. Logan looks down at the marker. His hands had shaken so much as he added that last word…why? It was true; logic should be welcome in any conversation, that’s why is it so useful, that’s why it has so many of the other characteristics that it has. Logic should be wanted, regardless of the subject matter, because of what it could do. It had felt so small of Logan to add the word, even when it was the correct course of action. Was it not implied by the others that it should be wanted?

That…that he should be wanted?

Unconsciously, Logan twists the cap of the marker back and forth as his eyes dart over to the ‘LOGAN’ list.

LOGAN:

Irritating

Invasive

Emotional

Easily dismissed

Unwanted

If he had any doubts about whether or not these qualifications were inaccurate, each had cemented their place on this list after today.

Logan’s hand flies to his neck again, grazing over the bandages he’d wrapped around himself, only to stutter to a halt when his fingers met the fabric of his tie.

His tie.

Hadn’t—he’d—he’d been so sure he’d been doing this right. He dressed well, he spoke carefully, he did his research, why—why was it so easy for them to say he was—to think of him as—

…why didn’t they want to listen to him?

He tried. He tried so hard to be what they wanted, what they would listen to, to appeal to each and every one of them to make sure he was still fitting in enough to be heard. Logic had to be heard, that’s one of its most important qualifications.

As his fingers fumble and catch around the knot, it pulls taut and for a moment he’s thrown back into the feeling of Deceit’s crook around his neck.

Oh.

Oh, that’s right…he…Deceit—or, well, Janus, now—didn’t he...he was…Logic isn’t the problem.

Janus’s Logic made them listen. Janus’s logic made them pay attention. Janus’s Logic was wanted.

Logan’s fingers slide off his tie in a numb haze.

His hand falls limply to his side.

He stares at the lists.

Irritating.

Invasive.

Emotional.

Easily dismissed.

There is a reason none of these qualifications have come up when he considers pure Logic.

A wave of cold rushes over Logan. His knees wobble. His hand staggers out for something, anything to grab onto, to hold, to stop himself from collapsing under the weight of what he just realized, to stop it, to stop it, to stop—

He hits the ground with a thud.

The words beat into his head over and over as he lies there, frozen, cold, so cold, curled up by his bed with something wrapped tightly around his throat and his glasses staying stubbornly on his face so the words remain in perfect focus.

It is not Logic that is the problem.

The others can use Logic.

The others can listen to Logic.

The others can want Logic.

They just don’t want Logan.

Logan curls closer around himself as it starts to become very, very cold. That…this can’t be right, he must be missing something. He’s emotionally compromised right now, he’s not any good at being Logic, maybe—maybe that means he’s doing it wrong, he has to be doing this wrong, there’s no way they could—they need him, don’t they? They need Logan, they have to listen to him, they—they—

Unbidden, a whine escapes Logan’s throat. It burns as it rings around his empty, cold room. He covers his face with his hands.

Even his cheeks feel icy cold.

Someone will notice, he tries frantically, someone will notice if I never show up again, someone will notice if I—if—if—

But they didn’t notice. Not today.

Not until it was too late.

Outside, in the corridor, a dark blue door begins to fade into the wall.

———————————————————

“Logan? Logan!”

Bam, bam, bam.

“Logan!”

Frantic hammering against the door jolts him awake. Immediately he winces as something in his neck catches. How—how long has he been like this?

“Logan, please, open the door, we—we can’t open it!”

Oh…the others have noticed…should go open the door.

Wincing again, Logan rights himself, sitting up with his back leaning against the bed, blinking through his fuzzy glasses. Why are they so filthy?

…oh, he must’ve been crying.

How emotional.

“Logan? Logan can you at least say something?”

“I’m gonna break this door down.”

“No!”

Well, yes, Logan does not want his door broken down. Groaning, he stands, making his way over to the door that—wait.

Why…why is his door so…pale?

The knob looks almost translucent as he reaches for it, his pulse hammering as his fingers close gently around where it should be. He takes a deep breath and carefully, carefully, turns it.

“Logan, thank god, I—“ Virgil cuts himself off with a choked gasp as he stares at Logan. “…L? What…what happened to you?”

“What do you mean?” The instant it comes out of his mouth he knows what Virgil means. He sounds like his throat is actively attempting to cut itself off with every breath.

A choked whine comes from behind Virgil. Logan’s eyes dart over to see Roman a sickly pale, staring at Logan, horrified.

“…S-specs? Specs, I—Logan, oh, no, can I—can we—“ Roman reaches for him, only to freeze and quickly pull back his hand.

Another wave of cold settles over Logan and his hand falls through the doorknob.

“Logan,” Virgil murmurs, “can we come in, please? I, uh, we wanna talk to you for a moment.”

Why would you want to talk to me?

“…of course.” Logan steps aside and lets them pass, looking down at his hand.

It’s still a hand, but it looks…thinner. He can tell where it isn’t, if that makes sense.

When has Logan ever made sense?

Virgil sits down on the floor, next to his bed. Roman hovers near the door, wringing his hands together as Logan carefully pushes the door closed.

“I’m sorry, Logan.”

Logan’s eyes widen as his head jerks around to face Roman. Roman gives him what may be the smallest smile he’s ever seen before taking a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, the sincerity making the cold burn in Logan’s chest, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It—it was stupid of me to press the ‘ignorant’ button and it was not my intention to hurt you. And I...slashing your box was wrong too. I just saw Patton get hurt and I—”

He cuts himself off and takes a deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Logan," he repeats, softer this time, "for all that I have done to hurt you. I want to be better about it."

Oh. “…thank you, Roman,” Logan says carefully, “I appreciate your apology.”

Roman gives him a nod. Logan looks at Virgil, whose head still rests against the bed, staring at the two of them.

“Is this what you wanted to discuss?”

“Sort of, but…uh, Logan, you…you’re not looking so great, bud.” Virgil shifts, looking to Roman, who nods and takes a seat on the floor too, leaving a space between them. “Will you come sit with us?”

“…of course.”

Logan sits gingerly between the two of them, his gaze fixed on the outlet in the wall opposite them. He hears the rustling of fabric as Virgil shifts, and sees a little white in the corner of his eye as Roman scoots a tad closer.

“So,” Virgil murmurs after a second, “I guess this video was…hard.”

Roman huffs quietly. Logan nods. “Yes.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Have the others not already told you?”

“I’d like to hear it from you too.”

Logan takes a deep breath, ignoring the way the cold burns the inside of his lungs. “I attempted to implement a new strategy for how I interact with you and the viewers. Instead of appearing in person, I chose to use a series of lowdowns so the information would appear in a non-invasive way.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“…keep going, L.”

“They were…not as well-received as I had anticipated.”

A flash of movement and a stifled noise make him look over. Roman fiddles with the hem of his sleeve right in front of his mouth, obviously having cut himself off. He glances over.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, “I didn’t want to interrupt. Please, continue.”

“I, er…” Logan swallows, something about the movement of Roman’s fingers holding his focus captive. “I hurt Patton.”

From his other side comes a sharp intake of breath. Logan looks away.

“I hurt Patton. I could not do my job properly. I had compromised the conversation. A ‘skip all’ button appeared and…”

“Patton pressed it,” Virgil finishes when Logan doesn’t speak, “he told me.”

Logan doesn’t say anything. The crook manifests around his throat again and he shudders.

“…Logan,” Roman’s worried voice says, even as it sounds like it’s coming from underwater, “Logan, did…what did that do to you?”

“Janus,” Logan croaks, “he—his staff, it—I—“

“Hey, hey,” Virgil croons, reaching for the hands that tug persistently at his collar, at his bandages, when did they get there?— “don’t do that, L, you’re gonna hurt yourself, stop that…”

“Logan, can I hold your hand, please?”

Logan lets Virgil tug his hands away from his neck. It—why—what’s happening?

Why are Virgil’s hands so warm?

Judging by Virgil’s expression, he’s as concerned about the stark difference in temperature as Logan is. Several emotions flit across his face before Logan can name them until they both register Roman’s question. Roman holds his hand out, all but pleading for Logan to let him.

“Please,” he whispers, his hand starting to tremble, “please, Logan, may I…can I just hold your hand?”

“Why are you so worried,” Logan wants to ask, “what is it that makes you so insistent about holding my hand?”

Instead, when his voice is barely about a strangled whisper and his first attempt makes his hand phase completely through Roman’s, the question emerges as a stifled scream.

“Shh, shh,” Roman whispers, moving in as close as he can, trying to curl his hands around where Logan’s should be, “it’s okay, it’s okay, we’ll—we’ll figure it out, Logan, we’ve got you, it’s okay—“

Roman burns.

“R-ro—“

“Easy, Roman,” Virgil mutters from behind him, “take it easy, you’re gonna freak us all out.”

“I know, I know.” Roman clutches the air of Logan’s hand tightly. “Okay…okay, Specs, we gotta…we’re gonna take some deep breaths, okay?”

No, no, it hurts when Logan does that, what’s…

He does as bid. The air whines in protest as he slowly breathes in and out, in and out, focusing on Roman’s thumb rubbing small circles into his hand. Roman seems to calm a little as he watches, bringing Logan’s hand close enough to cradle it in his lap as they breathe.

“Good,” Virgil manages, still clutching Logan’s other hand tightly, his own voice shaking slightly, “okay, now we’re all just gonna calm down, yeah? Just…nice and calm…”

Logan has no idea how long they sit there, on the floor, only that after a few more deep breaths, it no longer hurts. Roman’s hand no longer burns, it’s just warm. Virgil no longer trembles, he’s just there.

“My apologies,” he manages, “I did not mean to be so…inconvenient.”

Roman’s cry of protest is quickly accompanied by: “hey, no, none of that, Logan, you’re not being inconvenient. It’s been a hard day for all of us.”

“But was I not—“

“No,” Roman interrupts gently, “I’m sorry for interrupting, but…no, Logan. Nothing that happened today was your fault. Absolutely nothing.”

“…I’m the one who hurt Patton.”

“That was an accident and you didn’t know it was going to do that,” Roman says firmly, “and it was our fault we didn’t listen to you. So much that you felt that was your only option.”

Logan swallows. “…what about Janus?”

“What about him,” Virgil prompts, “the fact that he…came into the video?”

“It was my lowdowns that enabled him to do so.”

“And we pressed the ‘skip all’ button,” Roman says. “And I’m the one who gave him tips on how to impersonate the rest of us better.”

Roman is right, even as Logan begins to feel cold again. Still, he opens his mouth.

“I…I’m not…I can’t…it…”

“Logan,” Roman says quietly when Logan can’t seem to find the words, “none of us are angry with you. I’m certainly not angry with you, and I’m…I’m sorry about everything that I may have done and have done to give you the impression that I do not hold you in the highest esteem possible.”

Logan’s mouth drops open in shock.

“I think you overdid it a little there, Princey,” Virgil chuckles.

“But it’s true,” Roman insists, still cradling Logan’s hand in his lap, “Logan, you’re…you’re so important. And if I have done anything that makes you think I don’t care so much about you, then I…I will do everything I can to fix this.”

What?

“You…but we..we fight,” Logan manages weakly, “all the time, you…you disagree with me every chance you get, how—“

“I told you on movie night,” Roman says, the corner of his mouth tugging up, “I poke fun at the things I love.”

Love.

Logan’s brain stutters to a pause.

“You’re my family, Logan,” Roman continues, oblivious to the fact that Logan.exe has stopped functioning, please try again later, “and I…you are so clever, so sharp, so good that of course I want to talk to you about things. I respect your opinion so much and I want to hear everything.”

“Yeah, if you ever stop teaching us stuff I might actually start crying and never stop.”

“Virgil!”

“What, like you’re any better?”

“Of course not! I would be devastated!”

“Wait, wait,” Logan mumbles, “you—you what?”

“L,” Virgil calls softly, still chuckling a little as Logan turns to look at him, “L, we care about you so much. We wanted to give you space, especially after today, but…dude, you know we need you, don’t you?”

“You need Logic,” Logan mumbles, “you…of course you need Logic.”

“We do,” Roman confirms as the cold threatens to open up in Logan’s chest again, “but we also love Logan.”

“You have got to stop throwing that word around,” Virgil murmurs, “you’re gonna send him into a full-blown freak-out.”

“But we do, Virgil. We do love him, so much, and if he doesn’t know that…”

Roman squeezes a surprisingly solid hand in his lap.

“…then we have to remind him.”

Virgil huffs, scooting closer. “Yeah, well, that’s easy enough.”

No, no, it very much is not.

Logan’s brain is still struggling to come to grips with the first thing Roman said, about poking fun at the things he loves. He hasn’t come close to tackling the fact that Roman just said they loved him.

And Virgil agreed.

“This…this doesn’t make sense,” Logan says weakly, “this doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense?” Virgil’s hand is a warm weight against his side. “That we love you?”

“…y-yes?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Virgil murmurs, “what makes you so convinced that you’re unlovable?”

“I…I can’t…I am emotionally compromised. I cannot do my job properly. I will not be as useful as you—“

“Do you need to be useful to be lovable?”

“Don’t you?”

“No,” he says firmly, pressing Logan between the two of them, “no, you don’t, Logan. We love you for you, not for what you can do.”

“Don’t leave us, Logan.” The sheer amount of pain in Roman’s voice aches. “Not because you think we won’t want you.”

A horrible laugh bubbles up in his throat. “And here I thought you were going to leave me.”

“Never,” Roman promises, “never.”

“We did threaten to break down your door because it was starting to fade from the hallway.”

“…I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“You don’t need to know right now, we’ll help you.”

“I don’t know how good I’m going to be at this.”

“We’re all working on things, it’s okay.”

“But I—“ Logan swallows heavily— “I don’t know if I can stop believing that I…that it is just Logic you want and not Logan.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Roman calls, squeezing his hand, “I still struggle with that too.”

Logan’s eyes widen. “You what?”

“Believe that you only keep me around as long as I make things that you think are useful?” Roman smiles sadly. “Yeah.”

“But you’re—you—Thomas would not be able to exist without you!”

“Wouldn’t he?”

“No! It’s not just—Roman, you’re so much more than Creativity, if you weren’t here, we…” Logan takes a deep breath and swallows. “Something would truly be lost if you weren’t here.”

He stops.

“…oh.”

“Yeah, Specs,” Roman whispers, “‘oh.’”

“…oh.”

“Come here, sweetheart,” he murmurs, opening his arms and letting Logan fall into his embrace, “don’t you leave us, okay?”

Virgil drapes himself over them, wrapping his arms tightly around Logan’s waist. “We’ll figure it out, L, but you gotta stick around, okay? Don’t—well, try not to worry about whether or not you’re being the perfect Logic. We want you.”

“…promise?”

“I promise.”

“I promise too,” Roman murmurs, letting Logan rest against his chest, “now why don’t we all get into something more comfortable and we can have another look at your neck?”

“Yes. That sounds…good.”

“And Logan?” Logan cranes his head up to look. “If you ever stop teaching us things and telling me about stuff I will start crying.”

Despite everything, Logan smiles.

“Don’t worry,” he says quietly, the chill finally beginning to thaw, “I’m not going anywhere.”

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#sanders sides #fic #dragonbabbles #logan sanders #logan angst #roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders #deceit sanders #logince #analogical #analogince

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path-of-my-childhood · 3 years

Text

Taylor Swift: Pop Star of the Year

By: Jonathan Dean for The Sunday Times Date: December 27th 2020

Rather than hunker down, the singer put out two albums in 2020 and won over new audiences. She’s the pop star of the year.

Taylor Swift met Paul McCartney in the autumn for a big interview in Rolling Stone. The two would have headlined Glastonbury this summer. Who knows if they will do that next year. Anyway, both recorded albums in lockdown, working from home like the rest of us. When they spoke, though, Swift had a secret. As well as Folklore, released in July, she had a follow-up record in the pipeline — Evermore, which was released this month.

Swift noted that the former Beatle was still so full of joy. “Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?” he said. “We’re really lucky,” Swift replied. “I can’t believe it’s my job.” And she is right. Being a pop star is an extraordinary way to earn the living she does. But rather than accepting luxury and letting this tough year tumble on, Swift is also keenly aware what music means. Sad songs soothe, happy songs make us dance, but as fans of most artists waited for something — anything — this year, this 31-year-old released two albums that broke chart records, were critically adored and introduced her to people who once thought that she wasn’t for them.

“I’m so exhausted!” she said to the American chat show host Jimmy Kimmel, laughing, a few weeks ago, when asked if she had a third new album planned. “I have nothing left.” In addition to Folklore and Evermore, she filmed a TV special and even started rerecording her back catalogue, after a volatile dispute over who owns her work. By October I’d just about cobbled together my first sourdough loaf.

A decade ago Swift moved firmly into the limelight thanks to a squabble with Kanye West entirely of the rapper’s own making. In 2009, when Swift — then a nascent country music star — won the best female video award at the VMAs, West stormed on stage, grabbed her microphone and said that Beyoncé should have won. Swift was 19 — West was 32 — and she looked scared. This wasn’t just about her biggest moment yet being stolen, but also about her position in the pop hierarchy being questioned, very publicly, from the off. She stood there as that man bullied her. Apparently she left the stage in tears.

Years later West released Famous, with its infamous lyric “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous.” The alt-folk singer Father John Misty also wrote about sleeping with her. Every time that sort of thing happened, a powerful man in Swift’s industry was reducing a successful, talented, younger female to the level of a sex object. It was back-in-your-box belittling — as it was when a TV host groped her. (She successfully sued him.) While Swift herself would retort to West, as her music became less country, more slick pop, such retorts felt forced and gave the rapper too much of her oxygen. A nod to him on Folklore comes with the “Clowns to the West” line, but it is a sideshow now, not a headline.

Not that Swift’s life is entirely her own. She’s been one of the world’s bestselling female artists for a decade, coupled with curiosities such as a well-orchestrated relationship with Tom Hiddleston that kept her in the spotlight. Like many twentysomethings, Swift spent her youth apolitically, only to receive flak for staying silent during the 2016 US election. This year she endorsed Joe Biden, but what if she had wanted to stay quiet? Would the media have let her? She is under so much scrutiny that, after she made an innocuous hand gesture in a recent TV interview, similar to one women make to draw attention to domestic abuse, this headline ran: “Some people think Taylor Swift is secretly asking for help in her latest interview.”

Like many at the start of the pandemic she felt listless. The world we were used to was a wasteland, and we could only find the energy to watch Normal People. Swift’s ennui, though, was, well, swift. Stuck in LA, she emailed Aaron Dessner of the beloved beardy indie band the National to see if he fancied writing with her. No fool, Dessner said yes and, mere weeks later, the duo — with help from Swift’s regular collaborator Jack Antonoff as well as Justin Vernon, from the beloved beardy indie band Bon Iver — released Folklore. The gang just carried on working and, five months later, gave us Evermore.

Creativity is not on tap. Indeed, this year is not one for judging what others may or not have achieved. However, the silence of many big pop stars is striking because they know that even a single would make someone’s day; distract for a while.

Everyone needed to adjust to working from home, but Swift was one of the only musicians who did and, by eschewing the arena pop of recent albums for something more subdued, organic and folky, she gave the sense that she was letting fans in more than ever. She was at home, like us. This is who she is, and the first single from these sessions was so cosy, it was even called Cardigan.

“I just thought, ‘There are no rules any more,’” she told McCartney. “Because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, ‘How will this song sound in a stadium?’ If you take away the parameters, what do you make? I guess Folklore.”

Maybe it is tedious, for a deft writer with a career of varied, brilliant songs — Love Story, I Knew You Were Trouble, Blank Space — to find respect from some people only when artists who appeal to middle-aged men start to work with her. On the other hand, pop has never been particularly welcoming to many until it sounds like something you are used to and, with delicate acoustics and gossamer-like piano, Swift’s two new albums recall, sonically, Nick Drake or Kate Bush. Thematically, lyrics seem to come from anywhere. Daphne du Maurier, for one. Even the Lake District and its poets.

Some songs are personal. She is dating British actor Joe Alwyn, and on one track she sings, “I want to give you a child.” Make of that what you will. But these records’ highlights are not about herself, but others. “There was a point,” she told Zane Lowe on Apple Music, “that I had got to as a writer, [where I was only writing] diaristic songs. That felt unsustainable.” Instead, she does what the best writers do and mixes subjective with objective. The Last American Dynasty is a terrific piece of writing about the socialite Rebekah Harkness, who lived in a Rhode Island house that Swift bought and was, by all accounts, a bit scandalous. Swift tells her story almost with envy. Imagine, she seems to say, that freedom.

“In my anxieties,” she said in Rolling Stone, “I can often control how I am as a person and how normal I act. But I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and if they follow our car and interrupt our lives.”

Then there is Epiphany. The first verse is about her grandfather, who fought in the Second World War; the second about frontline workers in hospitals now. Sung in a high register, it is suitably choral. Marjorie, on Evermore, is even better. It is about her grandmother, an opera singer who died in 2003. “What died didn’t stay dead” is the repeated line, and it is eerie, gorgeous. Swift sings how she thinks Marjorie is singing to her, at which point some vocals from the latter’s recordings waft in. Touching, but the real power is in Swift writing about vague memories of a relative who died when she was young. “I complained the whole way there,” she sings. “I should’ve asked you questions.”

In person she is warm like this, and funny. When Kimmel told her there were far more swearwords on Folklore and Evermore than previous records, she replied: “It’s just been that kind of year.” She is also odder than people realise. In the way pop stars should be. Obsessed by numerology, she wrote, on the eve of her birthday when announcing Evermore: “Ever since I was 13, I’ve been excited about turning 31 because it’s my lucky number backwards.” When I turned 31 I just wished to be 13 again, with all that youth, but then, maybe, she is just joking. “Yes, so until I turn 113 or 131, this will be the highlight of my life,” she said. “The numerology thing? I sort of force it to happen.”

Swift, of course, is far from the first pop star to become public property, or have a close bond with fans. This year, however, she was one of the few to show that such adoration is not one-way. She is, simply, a fan of her fans — from planting secrets in her artwork and lyrics, to recording two albums of new music as a balm for them when real life became too deafening.

“One good thing about music,” sang Bob Marley. “When it hits you, you feel no pain.” The 80.6 million who streamed Folklore on its first day will attest to that idea. So will the four million who bought it. Swift is pop star of the year, no doubt — leaving her peers in her wake, on their sofas, rewatching The Sopranos.

#thanks to anon who brought this to my attention!#🖤#taylor swift #the times #article #about taylor #folklore album #folklore era #evermore album #evermore era #twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1342959069792002050

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nad-zeta · 4 years

Note

Hii! How would Nobunaga, Masumi, Sasuke, and Kenshin react to an Mc or s/o who lost her right eye in a fight??

Hi, there love! Hope you are doing well <3. Here is ya HC love hope you enjoy it dear ^o^❤🔥

Content warning: Violence 🐇😱

Headcanon: MC losing an eye in fight feat; Nobunaga, Masamune, Sasuke, and Kesnsin

Nobunaga

You and Nobunaga had been working so hard lately and needed to take a bit of a break and get away from all the busy castle

One night as the two of you were drinking sake and snuggling on the balcony of your shared room, Haguro came swooping down and landed gracefully on the ground next to the two of you ∩(·ω·)∩

“Seems he too needs a break, perhaps we should go on a falconing trip tomorrow, just the three of us.”

You smile an excited smile up at Nobunaga, even Haguro screeched in agreement and excitement (/◕ヮ◕)/

The two of you were off on your adventure to your favourite falconing spot

The two of you were having the best time hunting little mice in the field with Haguro

When all of a sudden a bunch of bandits appeared from the tree line (・.・;)

Nobunaga fought to protect both of you, he tied up the bandits and just as the two of you just started celebrating your victory over them

（ ^_^）o自自o（^_^ ）

One of the bandits shone a light in your eye, attracting his own falcon to attack you. (l'o'l)

Nobunaga killed the bird but not soon enough, as you had lost your eye in the attack.

Nobu just saw red, he swiftly killed the bandit’s friends, and sent the man who called upon the bird to injure his beloved, to be locked up and tortured by Mitsuhide. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

Nobunaga pulled out his clean hand towel and held it over your eye, he then picked you up and placed you on the horse racing the two of you back to Azuchi

He took you straight to Ieyasu to evaluate the damage

He paced outside Ieyasus room, Hideyoshi was there trying to calm him down. (-"-)

Even Mitsuhide came to see how you were doing informing his lord that he will torture the man so badly that he would pray for death for harming their beloved princess

Ieyasu signalled Nobu inside and left the room to give the two of you a moment

He had sewn up the hole where your eye had been, Nobunaga sat beside you and gently caressed your face ༼☯﹏☯༽

You had never seen the man cry until today, “hey hey hey what’s with the tears, I’m the one with one less eye, you don’t see me crying, do you.”

(`･ω･´)

“But fireball it’s my fault…”, you gave him a passionate kiss to shut him up ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Nothing changed for Nobunaga, he still saw you as the most beautiful woman in the world, and boy did he remind you of that every day of your life

You moved on with your life as if nothing had ever happened at all

Nobunaga would buy you the best eye patches for you and outfits to match

Nobunaga would always drop sweet little kisses on both your eyes whenever he saw you.

He would cradle your head in his hand and then gently kiss both eyelids, he would then whisper words of love in your ear, before leaving to his next meeting

Masamune

There was trouble in paradise as the Date clan was not happy about Masamune taking a foreigners hand in marriage

The two of you were appealing to the clan in Azuchi audience hall.

During one of the meetings a fight broke out

They had their heart set on Masamune marrying a princess of their choosing ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ

In the middle of the argument one of the men stood up, dagger in hand intending to kill you Σ(゜д゜;)

The man aimed for you neck but luckily for Masamune’s quick reflexes he missed your neck, although what Masa didn’t see was that the dagger had been lodged into your eye socket

Everyone held their breath, you honestly sat there paralyzed, the shock was too much for you and you passed out

Masamune was furious ヽ(ｏ`皿′ｏ)ﾉ

He picked you up and held you close to his chest

He didn’t want to lose you, this boi though you were dead TBH (ಥ﹏ಥ)

He nestled his face into your neck, his eyes went wide when he heard your heartbeat (°-°)

He ran out of the council room and took you straight back to his manor

He called for his most trusted vassal who was responsible for cutting out his own eye, he also called for Ieyasu to assist

He sat by your side holding your hand tightly, his eye stung with unshed tears of fear, anger and frustration （>﹏<）

Nobunaga had heard what had happened and there was definitely hell to pay for whoever dare try and kill their precious princess (╬ ಠ益ಠ)

You woke up, Masamune looked at you with fear and worry.

Ieyasu had told you what had happened and handed you a mirror

You looked at yourself in the mirror through your one remaining eye, you then looked over at Masa’s miserable expression “Well, I guess there is just one thing I can do in a situation like this” (ΘεΘ;)

Masamune chocked out a reply “And what would that be kitten.”

“If eye’m being honest, this eye patch makes me look soooooo Eyeconic” (◕‿◕✿)

Masamune cracked a small smile “Lass are you trying to tell eye puns.”

( ͡ಥ ͜ʖ ͡ಥ)

“Eye, Captain took you long enough” ༼ つ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ༽つ

Masamune blinks at you and you blinked back at him, all of a sudden both of you break out into a fit of laughter (ﾉ･_-)☆

Ieyasu just rolls his eyes “Did I miss something.” ◔_◔

“Eye’ll be damned, you truly are the best kitten in the world.”

The two of you are legit pirate couple goals ٩(•̮̮̃-̃)۶

Eye puns have now been added to the list of thing the two of you goofballs joke about >^_^<

Sasuke

You and Sasuke was goofing around playing ninja ninja ( ๑╹o╹)✬

A new ninja had approach Sasuke in the middle of your game and asked if Sasuke could show him some moves

You looked at Sasuke and gave him a nod of approval (▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿)

As Sasuke showed the ninja trainee some moves, you went to sit on a nearby bench to watch the two of them

As the trainee ninja went to throw one of the throwing knives, it slipped from his fingers and shot back

Your eyes widened as you saw the throwing knife heading straight for you

It hit you in straight in the eye (ʘ‿ʘ)

Sasuke was shook, he was in a state of shock he honestly didn’t know what to do ◉_◉

Kenshin had seen the whole thing unfold and rushed to your side

He looked at his paralyzed ninja and then started barking out orders

Everything happened so fast and Sasuke had been in a daze the entire time ◉_◉

The little ninja in training was now profusely apologizing to you (⋟﹏⋞)

After you took the pain meds that Kenshin had gotten for you, you felt pretty chilled. Kenshin ordered the best doctor to help you out

Sasuke finally came out his daze to see you with an eye patch on ಠ‿↼

He started crying, he didn’t know what to do (つд⊂)

“Hey, Sasuke who am I… Whooooo lives in a pineapple under the sea.”

( ͡ᵔ ͜ʖ ͡ᵔ )

Sasuke laughed cried “Only you would imitate patchy the pirate during a time like this.” (☭ ͜ʖ ☭)

“I’ve always wanted to rock the sexy pirate look, now finally my dream has come true” (｡◕‿◕｡)

The two of you spend the rest of the day making personalized eyepatches with your favourite memes painted on them (✿◠‿◠) (✿◠‿◠)

Kenshin

The two of you were out together playing with the bunnies in your favourite flower field (✿◠‿◠)

You and Kenshin were sitting together snuggling and cuddling while he made you a beautiful flower crown from the flowers that surrounded you

❀ ✿ (✿◠‿◠) ❀ ✿

The bunnies hopped onto your laps and nuzzled the two of you love birds

( ・×・) ❀ ✿ ( ・×・) ❀ ✿

All of a sudden, the bunnies seemed on edge and startled

They stomped their feet on the ground to signal danger (⁎˃ᆺ˂)

Kenshin quickly stood up and drew his sword '̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿

The two of you were being attacked by assassins from one of Kenshin’s enemies

Word had got around that Kenshin had taken a lover, this particular enemy of Kenshin legit hated him and wanted to make him suffer

The assassins task was to kill you right before his eyes

Kenshin managed to fight off the skilled assassin failing to see a second one hiding in the tree lines

He shot you in the face with an arrow (°o°)

When he saw you topple to the ground lifeless, he left to report your death

Kenshin’s blood froze, and his heart stopped ((+_+))

He gently cradled you in his arms, tears slipping from his eyes. ༼ಢ_ಢ༽

The bunnies surrounded the two of you nuzzling you as If to say wake up

Suddenly you started to move, Kenshin quickly picked you up, holding you tight to your chest and sprinted back to the castle (つ﹏<)･ﾟ｡

He called for all the best doctor and physician to come to your aid

He was pacing up and down, he wanted nothing more than to destroy anyone who dares lay a finger on you デ╦-( ͡ಥʖ̯ಥ;)╯╲___XXXX

Sasuke managed to calm him down, writing to your Oda friends about what had happened

Once Kenshin was allowed back into the room, he was at your side, head resting on your chest ๐·°(৹˃̵﹏˂̵৹)°·๐

You gently pulled your fingers through his platinum hair and teary eyes looked up into yours (^_^;)

Thankfully the arrow didn’t move further than your eye

Kenshin couldn’t help but cry as he gently traced the fresh scar in the place of where your eye was. つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ

You simply smiled at him and said it was alright ｡◕‿◕｡

Kenshin forgot how strong and brave you were, that you were a true goddess of war (つ﹏<)･ﾟ｡

It took some time to calm Kenshin down and adjust to your new one-eyed life, it definitely made things easier when your Oda friends basically wiped out the enemies that did this to you ̿̿ ̿̿ ̿̿ ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\з= ( ▀ ͜͞ʖ▀) =ε/̵͇̿̿/’̿’̿ ̿ ̿̿ ̿̿ ̿̿

Kenshin spends every day reminding you of just how beautiful you are

In his eyes nothing changed

He took the liberty of painting little bunnies on your eye patches

(ㅇㅅㅇ❀)

He would literally cut down anyone who dare say one bad thing about you or make a comment about your missing eye ｡◕‿◕｡(◕‿◕✿)

Hope you enjoyed it love ^_^ ❤❤

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shinsorokiri · 4 years

Text

UA Idol | Chapter Fifteen

Hitoshi Shinsou x reader

Word Count: 1,802

Warnings: Language, alcohol, drinking, drunk flirting

A/N: This is just a cute fun one. Alcohol man. She does shit to you. I hope you enjoy this one, this is a little bit of how Shinsou truly feels 🥺 I’m excited to write about the third challenge too, I think it’ll be fun. I also can’t wait to write for all the other characters too, this is gonna be fun as hell. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this chapter!! :)

───────────────────────────────────

The first two days of Hell Week were officially over. It’s crazy to think that that was an actual thing. You’ve done two whole performances, and it was only over the span of two days. Literally wild. Luckily though, you’ve made it through the first to rounds. Now there was only the third, which you would get three whole days to prepare for. And thank GOD you did because the next one was intense.

After all the remaining contestants had gone and quite a few of them got wiped out, there were only forty in total left. This of course included you, Shinsou, Mina, and Denki as well as your new friends Kirishima and Bakugou. Of course, a lot of the people who stood out to you in the first round also got through, which you were happy about because they really deserved it. But with that, this next round was about to present half of the forty as the top twenty and the other half were about to head home.

“Alright, everybody. Congratulations on making it through to the third round! That’s not an easy thing to do, and you’ve all adjusted wonderfully to the group singing challenge to a duet challenge. Moving on from that though, is the solo rounds. You all are able to perform a song of your choice, but this round, as well as the last, it’s required to sing songs by artists that have already been out. However, there’s no list to choose from this time, so you can choose whatever song you would want to sing. You get two days to rehearse and let the band as well as the lighting and sound designers what you would like and work it all out with them! On the third day there will be sound check and then the performances in front of a crowd of people. This is the biggest test for everyone, you’re going to be able to show us how you interact with the audience, which is important for the live shows. For now, though, go get some rest and decide which song you want to perform. You all deserve it!” Toshinori told everyone, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t excited to just sit. Literally, that’s it, you just want to sit.

Mina and Denki had other plans.

So here you were, at a club in LA, sitting on this random ass couch that’s conveniently placed away from everyone in there. Essentially everyone from the show is in there, but everyone is too busy getting drunk and dancing and singing with their newly made friends. That is, of course, except for you and Shinsou. Who’s actually been right next to you this whole time. The two of you were slowly sipping on some complimentary drinks from Mina and Shinsou that they told you they’d keep ordering until the two of you were sloshed. Which wouldn’t happen. There’s too much that the two of you need to decide to actually get drunk.

“So, have you thought about what song you’re gonna sing?” he asks, taking a sip of the alcohol in his hand. “No… I wish I could just bust out an original, I could do that easy,” you say, sighing. “Yeah, same here. I mean I have some options, but I wish I could just sing something that I want to share. Like with my own words.” “Yeah, same. Especially since, like, you know, almost every single song out there is about love??? Like, no thank you, dude. I’m tired of that shit.”

“And this is why I love to hang out with you,” he says, a small smirk on his lips. You give him a grin and raise your glass in a bit of a toast before taking a drink. He chuckles, his eyes never leaving you. While the two of you aren’t necessarily drunk, the two of you are tipsy. I mean, think about it. Mina and Denki have bought countless shots. And there’s always four. So now, you two are just kind of trying to relax while they talk up the two girls, they’ve been staring at for the past two days. You’re feeling it a bit more than he is, and he knows that so he’s keeping an eye on you to make sure you’re okay. That’s the sole reason he is staring at you. Only reason.

Okay.

So maybe that’s not the only reason.

Can you blame him though? You really are the prettiest person he’s ever seen in his entire life. Sure, it scares him, but he really just can’t help it. I mean, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with him liking you, obviously. But the more time he spends with you, the more and more he just wants to hold you. And kiss you. And you know just be in a relationship with you. And maybe this is the alcohol getting to him, but damn. He really really likes you. And not just the way you look. The way you think. The way you act. Your voice. Your talent. Your humility. Everything about you is just so appealing and attractive. Weird how alcohol makes all of his thoughts that he tries to suppress flood his brain. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he hears your voice, which pulls him out of his silent stare. The smirk on your lips makes him smile. “Yeah, but a picture doesn’t compare to the beauty of the real thing,” he responds, reveling in the fact that he just made you flustered. He can tell by the change of pitch in your voice when you tell him to fuck off. Not mention she almost dropped her drink.

He’s so relieved he probably won’t remember this in the morning. Oh shit, wait he’s drunk. This was what he was trying to avoid? What the fuck. That’s when he realizes that if he’s drunk, you are too. You drank the same amount as him and he’s a heavy weight, so if he’s drunk you are too. And he definitely notices as soon as you stand up to go get another drink since you nearly fall over. Luckily, he steadies you. Sure, he also feels not very steady on his feet, but making sure you were okay was the top priority right now. And he would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the fact that he was holding you by your waist again. Just like when you two fell asleep together earlier. “Maybe that’s enough drinks for you,” he says, and you giggle. “Probably a good idea,” you respond, and he takes your empty glass before chugging the rest of his down. He takes the glasses and hands them to one of the workers before leading you over to Mina and Denki. “Hey, we’re going to head out. I think (Y/n) needs to take it easy for a bit,” Shinsou says, trying to pretend that he wasn’t on cloud nine with you leaning into him and happily humming to yourself. “Aw, but we’re just starting to have fun! This is Momo! Isn’t she pretty?” Mina says, motioning to one of the girls from earlier with black hair. “Not as pretty as Jirou. Come on you guys should totally stay,” Denki basically begs, but Shinsou shakes his head. “I’m gonna take her back to the hotel. I’ll text you when I’m there.”

Before Denki and Mina can protest again, he hurries and takes you out of the club. He calls an Uber, leaning against the outside wall of the club with you still attached to his side. He has his arm around you and is gently rubbing your side with his thumb. “You smell so good,” he hears you mumble, and he grins. “Thanks, kitten.”

“I really like it. You’re the best.”

He knows that you’re drunk, and he is too, but damn. That sounded so nice coming from you. He can’t help but full on smile. “You make me so happy,” he hears you mumble into his shirt, and he swears his heart skips a beat. “You make me even happier, kitten,” he answers, and it’s true. He hasn’t felt this good in a long time. And it’s not just the alcohol. It’s you. Even if he’s physically drunk right now, he feels this way around you all the time. He hears you hum a bit before looking at him with a big grin on your face. He smiles back, and before he even processes what he’s doing he kisses your forehead. Your reaction is adorable, considering you just bury your face into him again. He chuckles, not even feeling embarrassed. Thank you, alcohol.

Eventually the Uber arrives, and he helps you inside before telling the driver where you’re headed. You both get there no problem, and he helps you to your room. He gives you some Advil and gets you a glass of water, making sure you drink it. He helps you lay down, sitting next to you on the bed. He watches as you start drifting off, making sure you were comfortable and sending a barely legible text to Denki telling him the two of you are back home. When he thinks you’re asleep, he goes to stand up but is stopped by you. “Noooooooooo,” you mumble, and he looks down at you. You have your puppy eyes out and he feels his heart basically stop. “Don’t go, Toshi, you make me feel warm and happy and I sleep better with you.”

Toshi? Fuck, he likes the sound of his first name coming out of your mouth. He doesn’t even oppose. He immediately lays down next to you. “Yay,” you mumble, and he grins. “Jesus Christ, kitten, you’re so perfect,” he says, pulling you into him. You giggle. “Not as perfect as you.”

“Um, no, you’re 100% more perfect than I am. I mean, look at you.”

“Nuh-uh, everything you do is amazing. You’re amazing.”

“You’re more amazing than I could ever hope to be,” he says, sighing. How did he get this lucky? Truly, even if you two aren’t dating yet, how did he end up just be able to be here and lying down with you? He doesn’t deserve this chance. And he loves being able to actually see you as you drift off to sleep this time. The city lights shining through the window and falling on your face make you look even more like an angel. He would love to fall asleep like this every night. And he actually falls asleep decently early for him again.

He even somehow managed to sleep through the noise Mina made when she saw the two of you after stumbling into your hotel room.

And now there’s a picture of the two of you on her phone. Just wait til she’s sober and sees it.

#shinsou x reader #hitoshi shinsou x reader #shinso x reader #hitoshi shinso x reader #my hero academia x reader #mha x reader #bnha x reader #boku no hero x reader #bnha shinsou x reader #shinsou #hitoshi shinsou #shinso #hitoshi shinso #my hero academia #mha #bnha #bnha shinsou #boku no hero academia

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strangledeggs · 3 years

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Strange Nostalgia For The Future – or: Death By A Thousand Taylor Swifts – or: This Is Pop?

Holy shit, when did this article get to be over 8 pages? Sorry everyone, Tumblr isn’t letting me do a cut, so this is just going to clog your feed for a while.

This began as a long-form review of Dua Lipa’s album “Future Nostalgia” with comparisons to the styles of a variety of other pop artists, but has since turned into something much broader and more nebulous. Call it my (incredibly subjective) attempt at defining a current “state of pop music” as it stands in the year 2020.

I’ll admit, I have a bias here, so I’ll lay that on the table: I didn’t particularly care for Dua Lipa prior to the release of “Future Nostalgia”. Actually, if I’m being completely honest, she didn’t really register on my radar until the album’s release, and so I didn’t hear any of her earlier songs until I spent a few minutes on Youtube scrambling to remember who she was and why this release was supposed to be such a big deal. I came up relatively empty-handed, with “New Rules” having more interesting production than anything in the way of a vocal hook and “Be The One” sounding blandly forgettable.

But music journalists were spinning this narrative that “Future Nostalgia” was Dua Lipa’s big moment, her “disco” album, her album full of “bangers” (yes, I know, that’s an archaism at this point, but what am I going to do, call them “vibes”?). We’ve seen hype like this before (at least I have), so we should always take some time when an album arrives with this much fanfare to ask that crucial question: is it justified? Does it live up to expectations?

I’m going to answer that question, but before I do, I want to take a step back and place that music journalism narrative within a broader music journalism meta-narrative that has been slowly gaining traction over the last decade. About 7 years ago (so around 2013), I wrote a guest article for the (what I assume is now defunct) blog Hitsville UK on another meta-narrative called “rockism”, by which older listeners and journalists tended to use to justify their dismissal modern pop music through the glorification of (and comparison to) the canon of rock music. This was not a unique article – many music journalists were writing about this same phenomenon that year; it will likely mark some sort of watershed moment in music journalism. Frequently contrasted with the meta-narrative of “rockism” (not so much in my own article, but definitely in others’) was a countering meta-narrative named as “poptimism”. It’s basically what it sounds like: an optimism that current pop music could be just as good as music of the past, or even better. This was, of course, already known in a lot of mainstream music journalism circles, but it did cause a bit of a stir in independent music journalism, especially since it seemed awfully hard to deny; then-recent examples of indie stars like The Weeknd and Frank Ocean* aspiring to make genuinely great pop music seemed like they were making a pretty good case for the poptimist outlook. Plus, as a new generation of music journalists raised on hip-hop began to cover the genre more seriously, it soon became clear that, given the crossover-laden history of rap, they would have to take pop music seriously too.

Needless to say, poptimism gained a lot of traction as a new paradigm, until it became the default outlook of music journalism by the middle of the decade. It has, as far as I can see, yet to relinquish its grip, and that’s not such a bad thing; arguably, a lot more women, queer people and people of colour have had their music taken more seriously since the shift. Before we get back to “Future Nostalgia”, however, there’s one more piece of this puzzle I want to put in place: coinciding with those early years of poptimism, pop itself hit a bit of a turning point in the year 2014. This was, of course, the release of Taylor Swift’s album “1989”.

What was so special about “1989”? It’s still a bit hard to answer that completely coherently, but it clearly changed the pop music landscape in meaningful ways. For one, it demonstrated that the overcoding of global pop music made at the hands of big-name producers was not just an approach reserved for the “born pop star” figures of Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. Taylor Swift, formerly a country singer with pop leanings, now went headlong into Max Martin-penned chart-topping smashes, and just like that, she had become deterritorialized. It was a huge success, and, interestingly, one of the first albums that got a lot of independent music journalists (and me) to take her seriously despite being her most overtly commercially-driven. I think this speaks to the power of poptimism in 2014 from two angles: for the journalists, the lesson seemed to be that if someone is already doing something near-enough to mainstream pop and then breaks through with a mass-appeal hit, why not see this as a kind of fulfillment of artistic intent? And for Swift, if you’re already doing something near-enough to what’s playing on pop radio, why not go all the way with it and sacrifice your country “credibility” for the ability to have hits beyond the genre-specific? “1989” marked a turning point at which pop music, formerly seen as something people “sell out” to make, became something you “sell into”, erasing a specific, localized identity that could be exposed as a construction anyway and replacing it with the ambition to conquer the ears of the masses.

I should clarify here, however: there are two possible conclusions one can draw from poptimism. The one I just documented, that pop music as a global/commercial phenomenon can be great and should taken seriously by music journalism, is the more frequently-taken interpretation, but it’s not my preferred one. I would rather the alternative view, which is that most music that people have tended to hear the last several decades, whether marked by the seal of “pop” or not, has been pop music. Rock is a form of pop. So is country, so is hip-hop, so is jazz, folk, metal, etc. We can distinguish between, say, the commercial radio pop – which I’ll from this point on designate as “Pop” with a capital “P” – and the pop tradition, but everything descends from pop tradition in the end, and Pop is just one more subgenre among many, albeit by definition the most popular at its given moment. Seeing that this is pretty indisputably true (and if you don’t believe me, you a) haven’t been reading my blog for long enough and b) have some serious research to do), we might as well take Pop as seriously as any other form of pop and subject it to the same criticisms, while simultaneously adjusting our criticisms of other pop subgenres in relation to our new appreciation of Pop. Who created the texture of this Pop song? Does this metal song have a hook? Is the phrasing in this hip-hop song conducive to its overall rhythmic feel? And so on, and so on.

I prefer this approach because it doesn’t necessarily assume a supremacy of one genre so much as level the playing field to allow for a more robust and less prejudiced criticism. It also doesn’t let listeners off the hook, as many (non-critics/journalists, most likely), given the opportunity raised by the previously-detailed interpretation of poptimism, would lazily slip back into listening to Top 40 radio without attempting to seek things beyond the charts; this alternative interpretation challenges us to try and hear the similarities between Led Zeppelin, Rihanna, Young Thug and The Clash while recognizing what each do uniquely. Unfortunately, it seems like the former interpretation has won out, at least for most audiences, and we now have a listener-base that, instead of keeping their ears peeled for next-big-thing indie groups like Arcade Fire as they might have circa 2008-2012, is content to wait for an already-famous star to drop the next “1989” crossover smash**.

This brings us back to “Future Nostalgia”, the latest in a line of Pop albums that seem primed to vy for that coveted position. There is, however, a bit of a gulf between “1989” and “Future Nostalgia”, and it’s not just because the moment of “1989” and poptimism has already happened. It’s also not because Dua Lipa isn’t “crossing over” from any outsider genre like Swift did with her move away from country – if anything, Dua Lipa is doubling down on her Pop ambitions here by putting them up-front and trying to make this album as blockbuster-signalling as possible. The biggest gulf is the musical one: compared to “1989” (and, I should add, a slew of other blockbuster Pop albums from the last decade, which I’ll get to discussing soon enough), “Future Nostalgia”’s songs are oddly lackluster.

Let’s start with the good, though. On my first listen to the album, I wasn’t completely baffled that critics were hearing something momentous in it. There are absolutely (again, sorry) bangers on this. Ironically, the two that stood out to me immediately were two that I later learned weren’t even released as singles, which might speak to the marketing team’s inability to judge the quality of the music they were handling here. “Cool”, easily the best thing on “Future Nostalgia”, rides a sort of bouncy warping of the riff from Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” as Dua Lipa gushes about how she just can’t control herself in front of her lover; it’s sweet, both lyrically and musically. “Love Again” (no relation to the Run The Jewels song) is perhaps the album’s most explicitly “disco” song with swelling strings and everything, and expresses a similar sentiment to “Cool”, though perhaps from a more reluctant angle: “God damn,” Dua Lipa sighs in the chorus, sounding simultaneously annoyed and amused, “you got me in love again”.

The songwriting on “Cool” and “Love Again” also happens to be some of the most basic on “Future Nostalgia”; the beat loops, albeit with some nice flourishes and rhythmic quirks, and Dua Lipa cycles through a few simple melodies, the catchiest always winding up in the chorus. “Love Again” is practically a blues song with its AAAB-repeat phrasing. I highlight the virtues of this simplicity because it throws much of the rest of the album into a stark contrast and exposes its greatest weakness: many of the other songs on “Future Nostalgia” feel fussed-over and patched together out of pieces that don’t always fit, as if the several writers*** involved in these songs weren’t in the same room when the track was finally put together. The album seems to be a case study in throwing everything at the wall and not bothering to consider whether it will stick. And yet it seems to have a small army of critics defending it, even going so far as to call it the pop (or at least Pop) “album of the year” – which has me wondering exactly what all the hype is about.

“1989” has something that a lot of other blockbuster Pop albums since its release do not: a personal touch. Taylor Swift worked hard prior to that album at building her brand as a confessional singer-songwriter, and even with the big-name productions and radio-primed hits, she maintains that image: one of her biggest “1989” hits, “Blank Space”, explicitly addresses her (supposed) romantic history and relationship to the media. Elsewhere, she does some fantasizing about classic movie archetypes and the impulse to drop everything and run away from it all, strongly reminiscent of her past work. It’s not as easy as it might sound to pull off this kind of thing, and I think Swift deserves credit not just for the excellent musicality of the songs she put her voice to, but the consistency of the strong personality she built across her career (with misstep “Reputation” sticking out as the glaring crack in the portrait).

So I won’t compare “Future Nostalgia” to “1989” beyond the initial poptimism narrative it bolsters. No, “Future Nostalgia” isn’t particularly personal – its mode seems to be more in line with what Robyn was already doing a few years before Swift, anticipating a poptimism that would effectively result in her deification over the course of the 2010s. Similar to Robyn in her “Body Talk” series, Dua Lipa seems to approach “Future Nostalgia” with a kind of assumed confidence as a dancefloor queen – more celebratory than confessional.

The celebration, however, proves to be pre-emptive; “Future Nostalgia” lacks two crucial things that “Body Talk” had in spades. The first is a general willingness to experiment. Robyn’s albums were packed with silly throwaways, but some of them stuck, and the best are featured on the collected version of the album, from the Snoop Dogg collaboration “You Should Know Better” to the cybernetic-pop-anticipating “Fembots” to the sassy “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”. The title track of Dua Lipa’s album demonstrates a little bit of adventurousness, but it unfortunately flops, arriving in the form of awkward half-rapped verses that aren’t fun enough to leave a lasting impression. The only other potential outliers are the aforementioned “Cool” (which just happens to sound less disco than the rest but is otherwise a fairly standard, if well-written, pop song) and the album’s absolute nadirs, “Good In Bed” and the closing ballad “Boys Will Be Boys” (we’ll get to that in a bit). Otherwise, the album carries its aesthetic pretty consistently between tracks, giving little impression of any desire to experiment.

The second missing element is the consistency of the songs themselves. When Robyn’s songwriters toss her, say, a pseudo-dancehall song, they commit to it, making sure there are no weird melodic/harmonic/rhythmic hiccups and that the pieces fit together. And unfortunately, the majority of “Future Nostalgia”’s songs are full of exactly those kinds of hiccups and disjointed structural assemblages that leave me scratching my head. A lot of it’s subtle to the point that I can almost understand other critics missing these details, but I pick up on this stuff fast, and once I hear it, I can’t unhear it.

A lot of it’s in the phrasing; too often, Dua Lipa will go for a quick succession of staccato notes in a chorus when a simpler, slower phrase, or maybe just silence would have worked better (see “Break My Heart”, or the post-chorus of “Future Nostalgia”, in which she sings the 100% non-credible line “I know you ain’t used to a female alpha” – side note, has she even listened to top 40 radio in the last decade?). “Physical” is almost fun until you realize that the phrasing, melody and harmonic structure of the chorus would fit perfectly into any godawful Nickelback song.

Actually, “almost fun” is one of the phrases that I feel best describes so many songs on this album. Too many of the tracks set up something great only to follow through with some baffling songwriting choices. The second track in, “Don’t Start Now”, disrupts an excellently-phrased verse and infectious bassline with a chorus awkwardly parachuted in from what sounds like a 90s house song. The more in-character post-chorus that follows can’t help the song recover once you realize that it’s nowhere near as endearing as the original verse melody. That half-assed rapping makes a re-appearance in the bridge of “Levitating”, which is otherwise perfectly acceptable. If not for that moment, “Levitating” would come close to being the third pick of my favourite songs here, although you can’t fool me, Dua Lipa: I know that chorus is just a sped-up re-hash of the Jacksons’ “Blame It On The Boogie”. “Pretty Please” is also fine, funky and subtle, displaying some restraint on part of the songwriters and producers for once – though there’s also nothing about it that jumps out and grabs me. Besides the two standouts, is that the best I can hope for on this album, a song where nothing goes horribly wrong? At any rate, it’s better than the bland, shameless Lily Allen rip “Good In Bed”, which also features an utterly confounding “pop” sound effect in the chorus replacing one of the mind-numbingly repeated words.

There are some exceptions with regard to singers that can make use of this kind of disjointedness. Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener” walks a thin line, but it often pays off. See, Grande is a singer’s singer, at least by Pop standards; she’s known for crooning, for belting, for singing her lungs out. But she also wants to be a Pop icon to young people right now, and that means staying up-to-date in her production and songwriting. The trouble is, one of the most popular genres with the kids these days happens to be trap, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to Grande’s showboating vocals, favouring short, choppy phrasings and half-mumbled half-singing mixed almost low enough to blend with the music. So she compromises: some of the songs on “Sweetener”, such as the title track, have verses and choruses that feel as though they’re pulling in opposite directions, with Grande getting an opportunity to flaunt the long high notes in a percussionless section before dropping into those staccato bursts that suit the heavy 808s of trap. Despite it being more drum’n’bass/R&B throwback than trap, a similar dynamic is at play in Grande’s biggest hit from that album, “No Tears Left To Cry”. Unlike Dua Lipa’s lurching song structures, Grande’s feel intentional and thematic; the songs aren’t always bulletproof, but I feel like I learn something about her by hearing the tension of styles she’s struggling to stretch herself between. All I feel like I learn about Dua Lipa from the messiness of her songs is that either her, her songwriting team, or both are very confused about what goes into an effective pop song.

Of course, Ariana Grande is also operating in a slightly different mode than Dua Lipa in the first place: whereas Dua Lipa is engaging Pop radio in the recent tradition of satisfying formulaic hits like those of “1989”, Grande has one foot (or maybe even one and a half?) in the parallel tradition of R&B. While the two traditions frequently mix and crossover on the radio, they represent very different approaches to music whose distinction might provide some insight into why some of what Dua Lipa is trying to do isn’t working.

To put it simply, the basic unit of what we’ll call traditional pop is the song, and the performer of the song is meant to convey the essence of that song as a relatively unwavering whole – the performer is effectively the conduit for the song, which reaches the listener through the medium of the performer. The singer has some room to “interpret”, but once a given interpretation is found to be effective in its “hook” potential, it’s typically kept as part of the formalized song, written in stone, more or less.

R&B, true to its roots in “rhythm and blues” and, before that, jazz, essentially reverses this. Songs are present in R&B and not necessarily unimportant, but they typically become conduits for the performer’s own expressiveness. In this setting, the performer’s “interpretation” is actually the most important ingredient, as the performer’s style is effectively the product, the listener’s focus. This places greater emphasis on experimentation with phrasing, melody and other aspects of a song, as well as the potential differences between multiple recordings and performances of that song.

These two paradigms have consequential implications for singers of songs operating in a given mode. A traditional pop singer, for example, is going to be more likely to defer to the song as-written in their performance of it for a recording. An R&B singer, by contrast, is more likely to improvise, often delving into explorations of how to make their voice a more expressive instrument – in many cases, actually, it can be a matter of making their voice more like an instrument, full stop. The notes aren’t sung to express words so much as they are sung to express pure sound. Vocals can vary wildly in rhythm, giving off phrasings that might normally be considered unnatural, but, if placed artfully enough, can re-shape our expectations of pop music in the first place. These aren’t ironclad rules, by the way – the genres cross over frequently and the lines are often ambiguous. But I think defining the differences here can at least help us understand the split in the approaches of, say, Taylor Swift vs. Janet Jackson.

Arguably, the biggest R&B star in the world at the time of writing this remains Beyonce, and with fairly good reason: her powerful voice brings a lot to what are often already well-written songs. Take note here: something like “Formation” (which I have previously written about in my article on hip-hop’s inheritance of the post-punk legacy) or even “Drunk In Love” probably wouldn’t fly in the realm of Pop. Tracks like these are mainly embellished not necessarily with flashy songwriting or production flourishes (although they can have those too), but with Beyonce’s vocal interpretations of them, sometimes approaching something more like rapping than singing****. Note also: vocalizations in this context are given a certain freedom, a license to be weird within a certain range of acceptability. Need I remind you of “surfboard, surfboard, / Grainin’ on that wood”?

My point here is that R&B singers are playing by different rules than Dua Lipa. This isn’t just me arbitrarily deciding that what she’s doing isn’t “R&B enough” – you can here it in her approach. My criticism of her awkward phrasing is based largely on the fact that it doesn’t sound like she’s doing it to “experiment” with the songs she’s given. She repeats these phrases exactly the same way each time, as in the chorus of “Break My Heart”, just so you know it’s intentional. If she is, in fact, improvising, the songs aren’t very suited to it and her attempts are mostly unsuccessful; they become hooks that highlight their own weaknesses rather than bold forays into new rhythmic territory.

The most interesting part of “Future Nostalgia” is, by far, the backing music. Even when Dua Lipa’s singing and hooks fail, the production shines through (even here, though, there’s a caveat with regard to the last two tracks). Consider the sublimely gauzy vocal(?) loop at the beginning of “Levitating”; the sweeping disco violins of “Love Again”; the finger-popping funk bassline of “Don’t Start Now”; even the Justice-lite bass synths in the chorus of the otherwise by-the-numbers “Hallucinate”. “Physical”’s best aspect is, in fact, a small countermelody running in the background of the obnoxiously bland chorus.

This is where I can most understand what got music critics hyped up on this album in the first place: superficially, at least, it sounds pretty damn good. But I suspect the willingness to overlook its other obvious faults stems from a tendency among “poptimistic” critics to treat singers as interchangeable in a system they perceive to be dominated more by “sounds” than by music proper. In fact, the singer is a real make-or-break point in much of modern pop music (Pop or otherwise), likely due to the focal point they occupy; a great singer can occasionally salvage a terrible song, while a bad (or even just mediocre) singer can easily bring down the most well-constructed powerhouse hit.

A case against valuing “Future Nostalgia” solely on the basis of its production: the last Pop album I remember listening to where the production outshined the songwriting was Billie Eilish’s “WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO?” Eilish’s songs aren’t bad, and are frequently even good – but I was surprised at how conventional, or even “traditional”, most of them were. “Bad Guy” and “All The Good Girls Go To Hell” are basically jazz songs. “Xanny” and “Wish You Were Gay” (the most lyrically immature, it must be acknowledged) are pretty standard singer-songwriter fare. Others tend to play to a type: either sleepy ballads (“When The Party’s Over”) or, the most interesting songs on the album, the hip-hop influenced minimalist pieces (“Bury A Friend”, “You Should See Me In A Crown”).

But of course almost all of these songs are transformed in part by some rather astonishing production. No one who’s heard “Bad Guy”’s synth-squiggle chorus would mistake it for jazz, and the chorus of “Xanny” squirms in a shroud of distorted bass that pull back when you least expect it – hardly typical sonic territory for most singer-songwriters. Even the already-powerful “Bury A Friend” hits harder than it might have without the surging crunches it’s afforded in the production.

My point, however, is not that the production is what makes this album – it doesn’t, at least not entirely. The production is roughly half of what’s interesting here. The other half is comprised by two things: the fact that most of the songs are fairly strong already (though I think Eilish could lose a few of the ballads and come out better from it), and the fact that Billie Eilish also happens to have a very distinct vocal style. Actually, that last part alone is probably the selling point for most people: Eilish’s eerie half-whispered delivery plays more of a role in constructing her album’s overall dark mood than the production. It has its limitations, and I wonder what her future will bring in terms of her ability to move beyond the role she’s effectively typecast herself in, but it has something on Dua Lipa: it has personality.

So vocal style is important, but that’s not all: as I mentioned, Eilish’s songs are also consistently stronger than Dua Lipa’s, even when both are at their lyrical worst. Sure, “Wish You Were Gay”’s self-absorbed whining about unrequited love and sexuality sounds exactly like what you’d expect to come from a undeveloped teenage singer. But the lyrics are the only thing wrong with that song; take those away, and the melodies and instrumentation sound pretty damn great. The same cannot be said for the overblown dollar-store balladry of Dua Lipa’s execrable “Boys Will Be Boys”, which, despite projecting an ostensibly more “progressive” outlook than “Wish You Were Gay”, falls flat on its face anyway. And I’ll take an Eilish ballad over “Good In Bed”, which sports an obnoxiously repetitive chorus – static, plastic, it sounds like a strained smile looks, desperately trying to convince you that this is fun, right?

“But wait,” you might say, “pop music is supposed to be fun! And isn’t that what most of ‘Future Nostalgia’ aspires to? Shouldn’t we forgive Dua Lipa for some of her mediocre songwriting if her goal in making us dance is at least a defensible one?”

And the answer is no, because Pop is already full of music more fun than this. The way I see it, there are several ways in which one could make music more fun than “Future Nostalgia” (better songwriting being one I’ve already discussed to death here), but I’ll wager that a fairly reliable method is that frequently employed by Lady Gaga: do something musically outlandish and downright weird.

“Bad Romance” is the obvious lodestar here, but Gaga’s career is full of the absurd: just take pretty much any song off of “Born This Way”. Even the “normal” songs like “Yoü and I” (at least pre-“Joanne”) come across as weird by virtue of being placed next to something like “Electric Chapel”. And all this is done in the service not only of raising eyebrows, but in the name of fun. Even some of Gaga’s weaker efforts like “Venus” (or many others on “Artpop”) have a winking slyness to them that lets you laugh along with her. It rarely feels like she’s “serious” when she’s singing about love, sex, or dancing all night, but she gets you dancing anyway.

“Future Nostalgia”, by contrast, has few attempts at any kind of weirdness, and those it does have fall flat. I’ve already mentioned the cringe-y pseudo-rapping, but the spoken-sung pre-chorus of “Physical” is just as embarrassing, bringing the song’s momentum (its second-greatest virtue) to a screeching halt with an awkward phrase that feels totally unnecessary. And then there’s that sound effect on “Good In Bed”. These moments detract from the album because they feel half-assed, like Dua Lipa never bothered to commit to the bit she tacked on. And aside from this, “Future Nostalgia” remains pretty conventional Pop – she’s not exactly reinventing disco here, just emulating it for a new generation with mixed results. If only she could pull a “Heartbeat” or “Love Hangover” out of her bag, but the album is so radio-oriented that the songs rarely reach the 4-minute mark even when they find a groove worth hanging on to. It’s as if she mistook the law M.I.A. ironically lays down at the end of her biggest hit for sage advice: “Remember: no funny business!”

There is one more aspect of the poptimism that helped propel this album in the eyes of critics I have yet to discuss: the paradigm’s coinciding with the recent wave (is it the fourth? I’ve lost count) of popular feminism. This was significant for Taylor Swift at the moment of “1989” because it allowed for interpretations of songs such as “Blank Space” to reach beyond a simple commentary on her stardom and discomfort with media coverage, branching out into a more expansive reading of the song as representative of the ways in which women in general are demonized for their past relationships. Feminism, as a cultural framing device, was crucial in shaping listener perceptions not just of “Blank Space”, but of many other songs on the album. It also helped to launch a whole wave of emerging and returning Pop artists’ albums and singles that traded in similar (vaguely) politically-charged lyrics.***** In the years that followed, a veritable opening of the floodgates would happen with regard to public feminist consciousness-raising, culminating in specific incidents such as the #metoo movement.

For the record, I think this was largely good. I’m under no illusion that “1989” is in any way a politically radical album, but I think the return of pop feminism has generally had a net positive influence in getting pop artists of all kinds of re-think their music’s relationship to gender politics. That being said, there are two things I resent about its lasting impact. The first is the kind of forced extrapolation of songs that bring up gender in any way into “feminist” anthems when they’re largely about relations that have little to do with the matter. One case in point might be Dua Lipa’s pre-”Future Nostalgia” hit “New Rules”; inexplicably, I often see fans trying to make the song’s lyrics out to be some kind of political diatribe about the cruelty of men to women or something like that, when in fact it sounds more like a typical “bad relationship” song, the kind that have been on the charts for decades by now.

But the other thing I’ve come to dread from pop-feminist Pop is the inevitable half-assed “message songs” that seem designed to cash in on using feminism as a signifier that an otherwise apolitical artist is still hip and knows what’s up. Whether through “New Rules” fan encouragement or her own hubris, Dua Lipa has regrettably chosen to end “Future Nostalgia” with such a song: “Boys Will Be Boys” (no relation to the significantly better-written song of the same name by Stella Donnelly). I don’t really want to write a lot about this song because part of the problem with it is that it’s bad in a lot of boring ways, but I do think it’s significant that it was singled out by several other critics (even those who liked the album) as the album’s worst song by miles. I’m hoping this shows a change in perspective here, as critics get harsher about flops like this one, and hopefully the eventual end result from this pushback is that Pop stars will stop trying to convince us they’re “real feminists” with empty songs like “Boys Will Be Boys” that are tacked on to the end of their “bangers” album as a kind of placating afterthought.

So a number of critics have indeed placed too much stock in this album: contrary to the feeling you may have gotten from my relentless criticisms here, “Future Nostalgia” isn’t necessarily bad, but I wouldn’t call it “good” either. It sits in a mid-tier of Pop albums over-enthusiastically pushed out during this era of high poptimism. It’s not the next “1989”, or “Lemonade”, or “Body Talk”, or “WHEN WE ALL ETC.” It’s just a mediocre album with a few great songs that were somehow never released as singles.

Is the inflation of “Future Nostalgia”’s reputation a sign of poptimism’s imminent bust? Are we entering a period of critical groupthink and gradual decay? These questions are too big to answer here, or perhaps at all for now (likely we’ll know the answer for sure in another decade). But I want to end this on a positive note by singling out a singer I haven’t mentioned yet as perhaps the greatest Pop artist of the last 20 years: in all these comparisons, I never got around to bringing up Rihanna.

On one hand, much of the poptimist revolution in criticism has involved taking the studio albums of Pop artists as seriously as their counterparts in other genres. On the other, Pop has never really stopped being a singles genre, and few have demonstrated this better than Rihanna. This is not to deny that she’s released some totally listenable, or even great, albums in her own right: “Talk That Talk” and especially “ANTI” stand as excellent records that came along relatively late in her career. But, well, raise your hand if you’ve actually listened to, say, “Good Girl Gone Bad”. Now raise your hand if you know “Shut Up And Drive”, “Don’t Stop The Music”, “Disturbia”, and, of course, “Umbrella”. See what I mean?

Perhaps I could blame “1989” again in part for this shift in focus from Pop singles to Pop albums. It’s pretty remarkable, after all, that the album is as consistent as it is, and I think that might have caught a lot of critics who were expecting otherwise off-guard. I think another problem, however, resides in the dominant mindset among critics in the first place, the idea that albums are the more valuable art form, the standard by which greatness is measured. Even I find myself incapable of breaking free of that format of evaluation – I’m much less likely to seek out more of an artist’s stuff based on a few great singles of theirs compared to if I hear an entire album from them that I like.

This might be slightly unfair of us critics, but there are workarounds to help correct this bias. One of those workarounds is the compilation. If an artist can make an album’s worth of great songs, but they happen to be spread across a number of their otherwise-mediocre albums, they can still win favour by collecting all (or most) of those gems in the same place, a “greatest hits” collection being the most common******. This seems like a pretty reasonable way of enjoying singles-oriented artists for those of us who are still stuck on the old album format.

But compilations have also never been as popular to review among critics as studio albums (I don’t know, maybe many feel like it’s cheating to collect the best stuff in one place?) and, as stated, it seems like poptimism’s paradigm shift has only reified the bias towards albums by putting more weight on Pop artists’ studio albums than before. Further, as compilations have started to die out (since anyone in the streaming age can assemble their own “greatest hits” playlist that will have all their own personal favourites on it), recent Pop artists often aren’t even given the chance to be evaluated at their best in a compilation format. I wonder if this is also a contributing factor in the hype surrounding “Future Nostalgia”; though it would probably be better remembered for its singles which could be collected on a later “Best Of Dua Lipa”, the fact that such a collection is unlikely to materialize pushes critics towards trying to sell listeners (and themselves) on this being Dua Lipa’s “definitive statement” and reason to take her seriously as an artist simply because it’s the most consistent thing she’s released so far.

Regardless, Rihanna is a model artist in terms of being a singles-oriented Pop singer deserving of a great compilation. If someone were to put it together, I’m fairly certain it could rival Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection”, the former (basically archetypal) gold standard for a Pop artist’s greatest hits. Imagine hearing “Umbrella”, “Work”, and “We Found Love” all in the same place, uninterrupted by the inevitable string of lesser artists’ hits you’d inevitably hear if that place was the radio or some poorly algorithmically-generated playlist. My concern is that with the death of the compilation and shift in the expectation for the Pop artist’s studio albums to be their defining moments, such an album will only ever exist in an unofficial capacity. Which is fine, I guess – if you hate pop canon. But I don’t, so I patiently await the return of a collective memory for singles that extends beyond the radio and the playlist.

*Interesting to see how these examples have aged.

**Don’t get me wrong, I like “1989”! But its potentially negative influence will be detailed further as I continue.

***This isn’t a criticism of songwriting teams in general – certainly great songs have come out of the modern collaborative approach to pop songwriting, and I’ll get to those soon.

****And of course there’s a whole other conversation to be had about the ways in which hip-hop and R&B, formerly more separate genres, have been in the process of merging for the last two decades as performers in each have realized how much their interpretive approaches have in common.

*****It should be noted that this trend started several years earlier in “underground” and “indie” scenes and only just made its way into the Pop mainstream around 2014, but that’s a discussion for another article.

******Actually, even if an artist has only one great song, multi-artist compilations can step in to help. But since I’m focusing mainly on the respective cults of personality of specific Pop artists here, I won’t get into those. I should also add that Pop is by no means the only genre in which this happens: there are definitely so-called “classic rock” artists who I wouldn’t bother listening to outside of a compilation of their best stuff (Queen, for example).

#Music #Music criticism #Pop music #Dua Lipa #Future Nostalgia #Rihanna #Billie Eilish #Beyonce #Taylor Swift #Robyn #Lady Gaga #Ariana Grande

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weirdlandtv · 5 years

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Like the 1960s generation had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, the Big Three of the 1980s were Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. Their new albums weren’t just song collections, they were messages uttered by the Oracle up on the mountain, echoing across the valley. They were events, statements, re-incarnations. Each new album presented a new persona for fans to imitate and for critics to evaluate, or, in the case of Prince, decipher. (Artists, back then, had to change with each new release or else be considered irrelevant. David Bowie entered the 1980s a smart yuppie, George Michael in the span of 7 years went from sparkling teen idol to sensitive, searching biker cowboy.)

Michael Jackson and Prince were regarded as rival gods, with the former more commercially successful but the latter preferred by most serious music critics (though in reality, fans, like me, liked both). Michael Jackson played games with tabloid journalists, who in turn responded with growing hostility; Prince played pranks on music critics, who wilfully allowed themselves to be deceived and wowed by this inscrutable prodigy.

Michael Jackson’s Avalon was Neverland, a fantasy dream that always invited ridicule (though not from me); Prince’s Mount Olympus was Paisley Park, a place deemed so mythical that fans constructed their own maps from the few photos and bits of footage that existed of it, and then endlessly speculated on what life was like inside of it: the parties, the concerts, sacred rituals, whisperings, the spontaneous nightly sessions. “Did you know,” they’d say, wide-eyed, “Prince has this huge vault of original masters and unreleased music right under Paisley Park? Only he knows the key code.” Whole albums (all masterpieces of course) had disappeared into that vault, never to be heard by ordinary mortals. And he never slept: nobody had ever caught him sleeping. He just went on and on, creating music. That was Prince, the enigmatic wonder, the living love symbol, and flamboyant question mark.

I still find it strange to realize so many of the artists I just mentioned, who so energetically populated my childhood and early teens, are dead. Michael Jackson, Prince, David Bowie, and George Michael all died within 7 years of each other; but there’s also Whitney Houston, Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, and so many more. (Compare 1960s giants Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, who are still touring and releasing records.)

When Prince died, a little more than three years ago today, I was on Texel, an island to the north of Holland, where I live. I checked my phone, checked the news, like you so stupidly do every now and then, and then saw the incredible headline. A sunny day, clouds seemed to appear that moment. Some people love celebrity deaths and follow juicy rumor sites about who punched who and who stepped out of the limo without their knickers on; me, I get depressed. It’s like having swallowed a stone. The sensationalist cries around every celeb death to me are like a beehive of bad vibes, a pest, and I have to stay away from it as far as possible if I want to protect my mental health, or what’s left of it. Prince’s death made me take things slow for a week or so. I have to mentally chew on such things, change my settings, ease into the new reality, let my heart adjust to its new weight. I’ve often had to deal with death in my life, sometimes it’s as if every high-profile death shocks me back into that familiar feeling of dread and despair.

Though Michael Jackson’s Neverland has turned into a derelict theme park that carries the curse of being unsellable, Prince’s Paisley Park has become a museum. Occasionally, browsing the internet, I see photos of it, and I’m always struck, kind of uneasily, about how soulless it seems. What does the lair of an extravagant hermit look like? What did I expect? Not something that looks like the atrium of a New Age company maybe. Looking at the interior, those sad police photos that were released last year, I can’t help but see the stupendous mundanity of it all. The building itself, somewhere in a suburb outside of Minneapolis, resembles a bunker, and though the pyramid skylights, that vaguely resemble guard towers, provide some natural light, the rest of the building is artificially lit, but dark. The recording studio is just that. Some of the walls have sayings like “Everything You Think Is True”. Stained glass with stars, clouds, and guitars. There’s a potted plant here, and an ugly tangle of phone cords in the corner there. Prince’s bedroom was sparse with empty green walls, and a plastic trash can you can buy at your local Walmart (but he never slept of course). The legendary vault reminds me of the storage room of my dad’s old electronics company, with its disorderly shelves and half-opened cardboard boxes. And everywhere, in every corridor and every space, there’s Prince iconography, but it’s rather bland, like the cover of a cheap unofficial biography.

For Prince, it must have been strange living in your own mausoleum.

The music that came from that place though. I believe PARADE (1986) was the first full album he recorded there, and then everything that came afterwards. My uncle was a real Prince fanatic, taking a slew of albums with him whenever he stayed with us, bootlegs too, so from an early age I became quite well-versed in all things Prince. Bits of his lyrics are as familiar to me as old family sayings. Personal favorites are the albums 1999 (1982), BATMAN (1989), and the LOVE SYMBOL ALBUM (1992). I like the street-smart humor of his early stuff, the raw passion, the in-your-face sex metaphors, with symbols as loud as cymbals, just the wild mercury sound of it; later on, his work became more spiritual, and harder for me to follow. His whole being though was music, every movement was a melody, every step a beat; he created music the way other people breathe. He had more songs in him than a duck has quacks. If you listen to the posthumous release, PIANO AND A MICROPHONE 1983, it’s as if the piano, microphone and artist aren’t three separate things, but one organism, bleeding and generating music; it features some wonderful, loose playing. It seems to me that towards the end of his life, in physical pain and unable to play a piano or guitar unless stuffed with elephant tranquilizers, he started to drift, and drift further, until he fell over the edge.

Like Bob Dylan, whose mystique and inaccessibility he shared, Prince had a habit of frustrating his fans, by deliberately excluding a great song from an otherwise so-so album and storing it in his vault, or by making his music hard to buy or even find (online, before he died, there was almost nothing). That’s one reason I kind of stopped following him; the other is the depressing decline of his songwriting since the 1990s. Looking at his later albums, which I first dutifully bought until I didn’t anymore, there’s hardly anything I really like. None of the best-of compilations collect anything from after the 90s. What happened? Age is part of it of course. A decline in quality is inevitable, most musical artists do their best work in their 20s and 30s. It’s also possible Prince’s brand of singing about his women like they are divine vaginas simply went out of style. Once cheeky and outrageous (his work was why Parental Advisory stickers were invented), his songs no longer shock us 21st centurians. We’ve seen so much already. Dirty sex wasn’t the only topic he sang about of course (far from it), but it’s the one he pushed forward the most as part of his image; his “royal badness” was part of his appeal. (The BATMAN soundtrack originally was going to feature Michael Jackson as Batman, the force of good, and Prince as the Joker, representing decadence, sin, evil.)

But his supposed “badness” was an act of course. The cocky poses, flashy gestures and mean diva looks were an obvious shield against the outside world, a theatrical defense mechanism. An attempt to dazzle people before they can get to you. When you’re shy—and he of course was the shyest—you feel like everyone is constantly watching you, and you become overly aware of how you look, how you walk, how you come across; you are constantly aware of your physical being taking up space. So what do you do when you’re an artist? You perform. Everything you do becomes a kind of performance, a conscious act. It gives you a feeling of control: you know why people are watching, because you’re making them watch you. But the essence of it is always shyness and nerves.

There’s something endearing about that 1983 footage of him being invited on stage for an impromptu jam by James Brown, who a few minutes earlier had invited Michael Jackson up. Ready to upstage his rival, who had just performed some killer moves, Prince takes the stage, struts, plays some random riffs, struts some more, suddenly takes off his jacket and does some tricks with the microphone stand, claps to whip up the audience—and then as he wants to make a fast and sudden exit, he clumsily goes down knocking over a prop, stage hands hastily arriving from all sides to help him up.

He died in an elevator near the lobby, but the spot itself has been covered up by a new wall (it’s near the watchful eyes in the third image). I keep wondering what happened. Was he making his way down to the ground floor from his production offices, or was he going up from the recording studio to his bedroom to maybe sleep? One associate, questioned by police, stated that Prince had told her he “was depressed, enjoyed sleeping more than usual and was incredibly bored”, and that at his last concert, he felt like he was going to fall asleep on stage. Those were rare remarks. An intensely private person, he mostly hid his problems, not just from others, but even from himself. The end, then, was inevitable. As with Michael Jackson six years before, the drugs relieved him of his pain, and then of his life.

He never slept, and when he did, it was 4ever.

#prince #paisley park #photos #inside #interior #studio #music #pics #pictures #images #house #home

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pandoriasbox · 4 years

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Jade’s SSO Rambles - 5 Current Care System

(Please keep in mind that these are my thoughts and opinions at the time of writing these rambles. I may change my mind in the future.)

Before beginning I want to establish that this particular rambles topic is purely my current thoughts on care system we have now. I want to explore further how horse care can function in game but due to how much I’ve struggled with trying to articulate I’m going to post my current thoughts now and I hope to return to the topic in the future. I would especially like to come up with better suggestions for a full overhaul as I have some fun ideas related to our new crafting mechanics that were just released and some other ideas I have brewing in my brain.

Horse Care Praise

I hate to criticize or suggest adjustments to anything without offering a positive outlook on what I believe is done well about the aspects I want changed. It’s also good to take note of these parts as they could potentially be something worth working into the overhauled system.

I appreciate that unlike 90% of horse games that have been around (at least since I was a kid and amongst those I’ve found in my own horse game research) that SSO and the other Star Stable PC games have always kept the actual horse care aspect simple. You take whatever you want to care for a horse with and use it on them without having to go through a mini-game. It’s a simple animation or one and done action. This is important to me when you have to do this on a regular basis or to a large amount of horses. (Only issue is that loading bar and some other small UI nit-picks.)

The functioning wash stall is a nice addition to the game, I appreciate how it actually acts as a grooming interaction on your horse too and temporarily removes the tack. The only thing I wish we had was a way to activate photo mode and have slightly more free camera movement and the hidden UI like our horse’s name and hiding all sparkles while activated. (I also adore the little easter egg where you dance in the suds.)

I appreciate all the different items we’re able to feed our horses. It’s also kind of neat that while normal items like apples, carrots and hay are available in all the standard feed shops there’s special harder to get items too. Such as the produce cart in Aideen’s Plaza or when we get holiday items. (Like from the little helpers or 2019’s birthday cakes!)

Horses App

I think in terms of mini-games that the way the foal app does it is actually pretty enjoyable. This is a little bit off topic since it delves into the app instead of SSO itself but an equally noteworthy topic especially if the team ends up pulling aspects of the mini-games into SSO. I like that it doesn’t take an extreme amount of work like some games do and that the hoof picking especially has noticeable spots to clean and you only do one hoof. (I also appreciate that it looks like actual objects falling off, sure it’s not realistic but it’s more appealing than other games I’ve seen.) The only thing I’ve ever had an issue with is the petting which seems to have problems with detection of the touch screen.

Overall the visual effects are pleasant and I love the fact you don’t have to cover every inch of the horse for it to count. You can just keep grooming the same spot for the brush and washing and it works instead of trying to hunt the tiny section you missed besides for when you wash soap off. (Which makes sense, you wash where you put it.)

I also like that the horses seem to have certain foods they like or prefer more. Though I personally would like to see it that they eat anything but have certain foods they like more than others.

In terms of the training I really love that we can run our horse through ground work with lunging, cavaletti, free jumping and the sorta tricks teaching and side pass work. These are aspects I would really love to see integrated into SSO as other options for training our horses outside of running the same races over and over. If the first person view isn’t kept though I do think the player movement both mechanically and visually will need an update. The only noticeable gameplay issue I could see is in terms of accessibility if mouse movement was used to replace the touch screen element.

Basic Care System Suggestions

These are aspects I think should be for the most part implemented regardless of how the team goes about updating the caring system unless it becomes redundant.

As I praised above, keep a simplistic means of doing horse care for accessibility and even if it doesn’t have any effects it’s still nice for roleplay. Either keep it down to a simple click and drag or you press an interact button.

Remove designated care areas and let players do basic care actions such as brushing, hoof picking, watering and feeding anywhere. (Care areas such as those in and around stables.)

Remove excess UI such as the loading bar and only have the animations playing. Also remove the blinking or fading black screens. If necessary simply have the player clip into place like when mounting and let them move from where they are after the animation. (Unless it could cause issues with players clipping through walls.) Also remove the bar across the top and make any updates to your horse less intrusive such as the using the notification box in the corner.

Reasons to Remove Current Happiness System

While I don’t have any promising ideas for replacing the current system I didn’t want to leave out my reasoning for removing the current “mood/happiness” system and the buffs/debuffs associated with daily care of your horse.

Higher Player Accessibility

Players are not required to perform the care in order to have non-debuffed/faster horses. (Especially those with disabilities.)

No guilt over having to either leave horses extremely unhappy or for having to use star coins to tend to all of them.

Players can ride any horse they own at any time, therefore increasing enjoyment of their current horses and allowing them to participate in unique events related to specific breeds.

Removes Feelings of Punishment/Positive Reward For Not Playing

If a player is unable to log in on a daily basis they are immediately punished by losing happiness with their uncared for horses. Even one day is a rather big nuisance and cannot be rectified immediately other than through paying a large sum of SC to the vet. Removing this aspect will garner player happiness and remove a reason for the player to not want to return to the game.

Removes the aspect that using the app to pay for horse care has induced that basically rewards players for not playing the game as they don’t even need to log into the game in order to have their horses cared for.

Provides Additional Reason to Buy More Horses

Players will be more willing to purchase additional horses because of the former reasons. There are little to no negative connotations with owning a massive hoard of horses if daily care requirement is removed.

Players will also be more willing to buy horses as they will no longer have to balance paying for stable care versus paying for a new horse.

Extra Notes

I think adding the foal app mini-games especially for grooming (and maybe training in the future) would be a good idea. These could be accessible in the home stable wash stall or at the wash stalls in places such as the Rescue Ranch and Starshine Ranch.

The mini-games should remain as completely optional and more interactive, engaging and roleplaying based way for the player to interact with their horse. As mentioned in Amelia and Leila’s interview it would also provide additional repeatable gameplay especially for younger audiences.

If daily feeding is required I think going with an idea similar to Amelia’s suggestion for a silo from the interview with Leila would be a good idea. I personally think either setting this up via the bulletin board or having it in the feed room would work best. The player could then buy hay from the food stalls and fill up their feed storage to act as a shillings based auto-care system. (I also think if a means of crafting food that buffs your horses is added then you could add it to the auto feeding to apply it to all your horses.)

Also in regards to the vet currently, I feel the price is absurd to pay to get your horse to max happiness. It should not cost me a week’s worth allowance of free currency to max 1 horse. Either it should be 100 to max my entire stable or should be far cheaper to max a single horse. I would argue no more than 25 SC at most with 10-15 being preferable. I would also like to see an alternate option to pay in a large amount of shillings for the vet.

I’d like to see stable care changed from 7 SC a day to 5 SC if we don’t have any shillings alternative systems in place. Even then 5 SC a day is still better as it is easier (at least where I’m from, not sure elsewhere) to count by. Most of the horses are for sale in multiples of 5 (650, 825, 900, ect) and would make pricing easier on players. I would argue anything sold for SC should be done in multiples of 5 but stable care is the most commonly purchased thing beyond horses. (Since most apparel can be bought with shillings instead and not many items are SC only.)

Alternate System Suggestion

So while I haven’t been able to think of a better system overhaul I did come up with something that feels like a step in between our current system and a brand new one. I don’t think this is the best way to approach updating how horse care works but I wanted to mention it in case it can help inspire ideas from others on how to do a better update.

The basic idea is running on a “3 tier” happiness system where you horse is either happy, unhappy or miserable. (Instead of the 5 stage system we currently have.) This includes 3 tiers of caring as well.

Horses can be brought from miserable to happy in one day without paying SC and can be done to any number of horses but requires more effort than paying a vet.

Taking care of your horse daily results in the least amount of time and effort required to maintain the horse’s happiness. However stable care isn’t necessary and the player can mostly avoid the punishment issues even if they don’t because they can raise their horses’ happiness up without paying SC if they are willing to put time and effort in.

Overall this idea is very rough and I’m sure would require quite a bit of additional work especially as I unfortunately don’t know how the programming/coding side would work.

Alternate System Breakdown

Each action adds points to the horse’s overall happiness. Basic actions such as brushing, hoof picking, watering and feeding your horse hay will be the equivalent of +1 happiness. More advanced actions will give the player higher amounts of happiness such as using the wash stall or other special designated grooming areas. (Not care areas like around stables but more like the stations at the ranches.) Certain foods will reward higher happiness points so an apple, carrot or orange might be +2 instead of 1.

When a horse is miserable the only way to reach full happiness is by visiting a vet in order to use a care station with them. This wouldn’t require SC but instead would be similar to how the Rescue Ranch worked where you perform an action with the horse to give it the final boost required to reach full happiness in one day.

Doing tier 1 or 2 caring for your horse subsequent days in a row would be enough to raise them to max happiness again. It should only take about 3 days at most to reach it. I’m not certain if continually feeding your horse should theoretically be able to max happiness, I was considering having food max out in terms of how much it can do. (“Your horse is full and cannot eat anymore” or something like that.)

In terms of a point system doing basic care is enough to maintain horse happiness every day and is enough to go from an unhappy status to happy. Going from miserable to happy would require a certain number of food (which could be its own point system potentially?) combined with the full amount of care options available from the basic tier 1 and 2 grooming to the tier 3 vet assistance.

Lastly, I would prefer to have the requirement of daily feeding removed from the game entirely so I don’t feel this is the best way to replace our current system. As I discussed with a friend I think part of the problem keeping this in SSO is the fact the game’s time is tied with real life time. I don’t mind daily feeding of my animals in something such as Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley because time is different and unrelated to when I’m available to play. I can play through a week’s worth of time in game during a single day’s play session in real life. But I can also abandon the game for a month and come back to find everything as I left it unlike in SSO. If I leave that long then all my horses will be miserable unless I pay for stable care with premium currency and it will take a week or so bare minimum to get anyone up to max happiness again without paying 100 SC per horse. For a game that wants players to keep paying either via subscriptions and/or with the multitude of horses released it really doesn’t make sense to keep such a punishing system in game. I can see where starting out that makes sense as a game mechanic but it is incredibly outdated and long over due to be replaced either with a long term solution or a short term one.

Link to Amelia’s interview with GM Leila.

Again, thank you for taking the time to read through my thoughts! I hope I’ll be able to come back to this topic in the future with some additional ideas that would expand upon the game rather than simply analyzing our current gameplay.

If you have anything you’d like to add feel free to respond via reblogging, replying or shooting me an ask!

#jaderambles #sso #care #care system #discussion #game mechanics #mechanics #5

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noxstellacaelum · 4 years

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Filtering Female Characters Through the Male Gaze

Female characters filtered through the male gaze: A (way) too long post about why we need a more diverse and inclusive approach to staffing showrunners, writers, directors, crew – heck, all roles -- in TV and movies.

Yes, I know I am not the first person here on this.

And note that while I have included a few tags b/c I talk about my frustration with Shadowhunters, Veronica Mars, the Irishman, Richard Jewell, and a few other recent shows/movies, I don’t get to this stuff until the very end, I appreciate that fans may not want to wade through the entire essay, which (again), is a bit of personal catharsis.

I recently had a random one-off exchange with a TV writer on twitter. The writer said that she had enjoyed the movie Bombshell much more than its Rotten Tomatoes rating would have suggested. She wondered if the disconnect between her experience/perception of the movie and that of mainstream reviewers might have been shaped by gender: Specifically, she observed that Bombshell is a movie about women, but most reviewers are male.

I have complicated feelings about Bombshell. On one hand, yes, there was and is a toxic culture at Fox News. Yes, Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly were victims of that toxic culture. But no, these women were not mere bystanders: They traded in the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia (for starters) that still characterize Fox News today. Why should these wealthy, privileged white women – both of whom spent many years as willing foot soldiers in the Fox News army -- get a glossy, Hollywood-approved redemption/vindication arc? On the other hand, I am glad that the movie makers made a film about sexual harassment, and that the movie presented Kelly, in particular, as an at least somewhat complicated character. This would not be the first time that a movie about women – especially complicated, and not always likeable women – has proven to be polarizing.

My ambivalence about Bombshell notwithstanding, the writer with whom I exchanged tweets is (not surprisingly, since she is in the industry and I am not) on to something when it comes to gender, character development and critical reception. It’s not just that Bombshell was about women, but reviewed largely by men; it’s that stories about female characters (real or fictional) often are filtered through the male gaze in Hollywood: On many projects – even those focused on female characters – creators/ head writers are male, directors are male, showrunners are male, and producers are male. This matters, because preferencing the male gaze impacts what stories about women get told, who gets to tell them, and how these stories are received inside and outside Hollywood.

First, though, the caveats. I do not mean to suggest that men can never tell great stories about women. Of course they can. I also don’t mean to suggest that being female exempts creators, writers, directors, showrunners, etc. from sexism or misogyny (or any other forms of bigotry, as my discussion of Bombshell suggests). There are plenty of women who prop up the patriarchy. Rebecca Traister’s work speaks to this issue, as does the work of Cornell philosopher Kate Manne. There is an important literature on the concept of misogynoir (misogyny directed at black women, involving both gender and race), a term coined by black queer feminist Moya Bailey, as well. Intersectionality matters in understanding what stories are told, who gets to speak, and how stories are received in and outside Hollywood. I also don’t mean to suggest that there are no powerful women in Hollywood. Shonda Rhimes; Ava DuVernay, Reese Witherspoon (increasingly, given her role as a producer of projects like Big Little Lies), Greta Gerwig’s work in Lady Bird and Little Women, and others come to mind. As I am not in the entertainment industry, I am sure others could put together a far more complete and accurate list of female Hollywood power brokers. And, finally, I appreciate that Hollywood is a business, and people fund and make movies that they think their target audiences want to see. So long as young, male viewers are a coveted demographic, we are going to see projects with women who appeal to this demographic onscreen.

Given these caveats, why do I think that the filtering of female characters through the male gaze is an issue? For me, it has to do with a project’s “center of gravity” -- that place, at the core of the project’s storytelling, where the characters’ agency and autonomy comes from. It’s where I look to understand the characters’ choices and their narrative arcs. When a character’s center of gravity is missing or unstable or unreliable, the character’s choices don’t make sense, and their narrative arc lacks emotional logic. Center of gravity is not about whether a character is likeable. It’s about whether a character – and the project’s overall storytelling and narrative voice – make sense.

When female characters are filtered through a male gaze, a project’s center of gravity can shift, even if unintentionally, away from the characters’ agency and point of view: So, instead of charting her own course through a story, a female character starts to become defined by her proximity to other characters and stories. She becomes half of a “ship” . . . or a driver of other characters’ growth (often through victimization, suffering, or self-sacrifice) . . . or mostly an object of sexual desire (whether requited or not). Eventually, she can lose her voice entirely. When that happens, instead of a “living, breathing” (yes, fictional, I know) character, we are left with a mirror/ mouthpiece who advances the plot, and the stories, of everyone else.

What are some recent examples of this? The two that I have mentioned recently here are Shadowhunters and Veronica Mars S4.

- With SHTV, I will always wonder what might have been if the show – which is based on books written by a woman, intentionally as a “girl power” story – had female showrunners. Would an empowered female showrunner have left Clary, THE PROTAGONIST OF A 6 BOOK SERIES – alone on an NYC street in a skimpy party dress, in November, with no money, no ID, no mother, no father figure and no love of her life, stripped of her memories, her magic, and chosen vocation, as punishment, after she saved the world? Would a female showrunner have sidelined Clary’s love Jace, and left him grieving and suicidal, while his family lived their best lives and told him to move on? Would a female showrunner have said, in press coverage of the series finale, that the future of the Clary and Jace characters was a matter for fan fiction? After spending precious time in the series finale wrapping up narrative arcs for non-canon and/or ancillary characters. And to my twitter correspondent’s point, I guess I am not surprised that mainstream entertainment media outlets didn’t call out the showrunners’ mistreatment of Clary, and by extension, Jace, and the obliteration of their narrative arcs -- and yes, I am looking at you, Andy Swift of TV line (who called the above-mentioned memory wipe “actually perfect”).

- Likewise, with Veronica Mars, would a more diverse and inclusive writers room have made S4 Veronica less insightful and less competent than her high school self, or quite so riven with self-loathing, or quite so careless and cruel with the people in her life who love her? Would a more inclusive creative team have made S4 Veronica less aware of the class and race dynamics of Neptune, yet more casually racist, in her mid-30s, than she was in high school?

- There are so many other examples from 2019. Clint Eastwood falsely suggesting that a female reporter (who is now deceased and thus unable to defend herself) traded sex for tips from an FBI agent in Richard Jewell. Game of Thrones treatment/resolution of the Ceresi and Daenerys characters – where to even start. Martin Scorsese’s decision to give Oscar winner Anna Paquin’s character a total of 7 lines in the 3-plus hour movie the Irishman.

- And, in real life, I wonder whether a Hollywood that empowered and supported female creators would make sure that people like Mira Sorvino and Annabella Sciorra got a bunch of work while also making sure that Harvey Weinstein never again is in a position of power or influence. Same with female comics targeted by Louis C.K. Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose … the list is long, and Kate Manne’s work on what she calls “himpathy” is useful here.

To be clear, I am not saying that stories involving “ships” of whatever flavor, stories of suffering and self-sacrifice, and stories of finding (or losing) intimate relationships are “bad” or “wrong” or inherently exploitive of female characters. I don’t think that at all. I also don’t think that female characters have to be perfectly well-adjusted, virtuous, or free from bias, or that they should never be make bad choices or mistakes. I want female characters who are flawed, nuanced. I don’t mind lives that are messy, or romantic entanglements that are complicated. Finally, I don’t think that that faulty, reductive, or unfair portrayals of female characters is a new thing. Mary Magdalene was almost certainly not a prostitute, after all. And classicist Emily Wilson – the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English – has brought a hugely important perspective (including an awareness of how gender matters in translation) and voice to the translation and study of canonical characters and works.

At the end of the day, I just want female characters to be able to speak with their own voices, from their perspectives. I want them to have their own, chosen, narrative arcs. I want them to speak, act, see, and feel as autonomous individuals, with agency, and not just in reference to others. And, I think that more a more diverse and inclusive approach to staffing writers rooms and in choosing show runners, directors, and key positions in storytelling would help.

#shtv #veronica mars #clary fairchild #clary #jace #clace

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flourchildwrites · 4 years

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Seconds

Call their predicament fate or karma; blame it on the moonlight or the romantic music playing during the movie's wedding scene. Whatever forces were at work, the opportunity was there for Rebecca and Jean, ready and ripe for the taking. The only question that remained was if she was hungry enough for seconds in spite of the complications.

It was going to be a very interesting vacation.

Written for @fmasecretsanta2019 for @areyousanta

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types

Relationship/Pairing: Rebecca Catalina/Jean Havoc, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang, Lan Fan/Ling Yao

Genre: Modern AU, Cruise Ship Vacation, Night After the One Night Stand

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences (contains suggestive sexual references)

Word Count: 2,288 words

Read on AO3

Carnival’s newest attraction, the Mardi Gras, was a ridiculous boat, at least in the opinion of one, Rebecca Catalina.

The cruise ship’s towering atrium featured floor to ceiling windows that courted nearly panoramic waterway views. Numerous restaurants dotted the ship map; their descriptions were laced with four dollar words such as “fragrant,” “authentic” or “sumptuous” that made Rebecca’s mouth water. And if the ginormous pool on the lido deck was not enough, there was always the wonderland dubbed the “Ultimate Playground” stuck awkwardly on the back of the ship to consider. The colorful tracks of the world’s first rollercoaster at sea cut through the thick, humid breeze, and on the first day of the cruise, the line to ride the attraction stretched around the deck.

The atmosphere oozed excess. It was just the sort of laissez-faire ambiance that Riza Hawkeye shied away from. It was the precise brand of absurdity that her wealthy grandfather would choose to celebrate her college graduation. Not that he had been invited, and in this respect, Riza and Rebecca’s vacation mimicked Riza’s upbringing. George Grumman generously financed it, but ever-faithful Becca was left to weather the changeable tides alongside her best friend.

Not all waters had been as navigable as those of the murky Mississippi River.

“Enjoying the view?”

Rebecca startled at the sound of Riza’s voice. She grounded her thoughts in the here and now, honing in on the small talk circulating around the dinner table. Her dark, wing-lined eyes darted away from the windows of the formal dining room and toward the beaming face of her best friend. Riza Hawkeye looked happy; if not for the three-course meal they’d just devoured, for the new company at their table — her long-distance boyfriend, Roy Mustang and his tagalong pal, Jean Havoc.

But where Jean was concerned, Rebecca had her reasons for reticence. Reasons she was not apt to share with Riza during this vacation, a trip that was supposed to be all about her best friend and not Becca’s bedroom faux pas.

She simply wouldn’t think about how she had foolishly spent the night with Jean before they’d remet as travel companions of Roy and Riza that morning. Rebecca wouldn’t think about the lip-biting set of abs hiding underneath his well-pressed button-down. She tried not to notice the way she caught Jean’s baby-blue eyes darting away from her over dinner. By all accounts, their night together had been meant as a fun, casual encounter, but the next day’s harsh revelation had complicated matters.

He’d said he was on a business trip when He caught her eye in the hotel bar the night before departure, and Rebecca had not questioned him further. Not when his sweet talk was so saccharine and the rough stubble on his chin had felt so good on her-

“Are you feeling alright, Rebecca?” Riza asked; her lightly penciled eyebrows were knit with concern underneath stylish round glasses.

“Yes, sorry!’ Rebecca replied happily. Too happily, perhaps. “I’m absolutely fine. Wonderful even.”

She was not fine, let alone wonderful. She was scared shit-less of being called out by the elephant at their dinner table. A very attractive, extremely capable elephant with who had played her body like a fiddle. His brash melody was stuck on a loop in her mind.

Rebecca watched as Jean licked a bit of chocolate mousse from his spoon, and she suppressed an indignant eye-roll. The least he could do was be less like sex appeal on a stick. He could pretend not to know that he tied her stomach into knots, courtesy of their shared secret. But given the way those baby-blues bore into her, nevermind that she refused to meet his gaze, Rebecca realized that they’d have to talk about it.

The sooner, the better.

God, she hated being 23 sometimes. Young enough to take some disastrous missteps in good faith but too old to run away from her problems.

“So Catalina, how about we take a walk to clear your mind,” Jean purred. “Get to know each other a little better while these two catch up. What do you say?”

A sinking feeling settled into the pit of Rebecca’s stomach, and it turned over on itself when she spied Riza’s hopeful expression.

The things she did for the love of a friend.

“Sounds like a great idea,” Rebecca uttered; her words sounded stiff as they slipped through her burgundy lips. “I’m gonna make a stop by the bar before we leave.”

She rose from their table with her room key clutched firmly in the palm of her hand. Even as her gaze lingered upon Roy and Riza’s intertwined fingers, she bid them good evening and walked across the dining room to the mahogany bar at the far end of the large room. Through a stilted smile, Rebecca ordered another glass of cabernet sauvignon, urging the bartender to be generous as the long shadow of Jean Havoc crept over her shoulder.

If the previous night had taught Rebecca anything, it was that Havoc was a livewire, energetic and unpredictable when he allowed his passions to overpower his common sense. But the chilly night air on the lido deck appeared to temper Jean’s demeanor. Quietly, he sat back against the sturdy frame of a ship deck chair with the top three buttons of his shirt undone and his hands leisurely placed on the back of his head. The spiky ends of his hair caught the humid breeze as he stared back at Rebecca with a lazy, contemplative smile. His patience offered no inroad, but neither did it discourage a conversation.

Rebecca got the message loud and clear — she would have to bring it up, or they would simply sit outside for the remainder of the evening watching Crazy Rich Ishvalans play across a large screen over the pool.

She took yet another sip of wine and placed the stemmed glass on the table between their lawn chairs. After adjusting the hem of her green maxi dress, Rebecca swung her sandal-clad feet upon the lower slats of her deck chair. A long, slow sigh escaped her throat, and she, ever brazen, decided to jump headfirst into uncharted territory.

“I think it goes without saying that we should not mention what happened last night to Riza or Roy,” she announced. “Still, I think it would be beneficial for us to talk privately since I have some questions.”

“Don’t worry, Catalina. I don’t kiss and tell,” he said with an amused air. “But now that you mention it, I might have some questions too. Ladies first.”

Rebecca attempted to organize her thoughts by level of importance. But her wounded pride, a part of her that resented she’d been lied to, spoke up first.

“You said you were in New Orleans on business,” she stressed. “This cruise doesn’t seem like business to me.”

Jean shrugged his shoulders, turning his head to look at her.

“I thought work provided a better excuse to make a clean break, and honestly, I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

His tone shifted, tending toward a playful vibe. “I know we agreed to keep it casual, but who’s to say you wouldn’t have fallen madly in love with me and tried to follow me onto the ship if you had known.”

Rebecca’s left eyebrow arched incredulously even as her lips quirked with suppressed laughter.

“Does that happen to you often?” She quipped.

“No,” Jean chuckled. “I don’t do that sort of thing anymore. Not since I got injured three years ago. Consider last night an exception.”

“That’s right,” Rebecca hummed, “you used to be a Marine. Jealous boyfriend catch up to you and made you change your ways?”

“Nah,” he said, still in good humor, “it was a bullet. But enough about me; my turn. Do you do one night stands often, Catalina? Am I just another person in a long line of notches on your bedpost?”

She tipped the glass of wine to her lips and drank, mindful that Jean was giving as good as he had gotten. “I don’t think we’ve had near enough alcohol for that question.”

And this, she meant wholeheartedly.

“But, to give you a direct answer, no,” Rebecca admitted. “I’ve been too busy with my MBA program to go out, much less date. Last night was…”

She didn’t want to parrot his words, though certainly, their time together had been ‘an exception.’ Phrases swam in her wine-drenched mind; none were suitable. Last night had been many things, satisfying and unexpected, to say the least. But to sum it up in a single word...

“Needed,” Jean added. His eyes stayed fixed on a dark point in the distance, between the blanket of stars and the cloak of dark water. “For both of us, I think.”

It was impossible to get a read on him. Rebecca was left to marvel at the way Jean had coaxed the answer straight from her subconscious. Speechless, she could only nod and hum her agreement as her fingers fidgeted with the straps of her sandals. She scanned the lido deck, looking for some sight to redirect a conversation that had gone too far, too fast for her liking.

Small groups and couples, not unlike Jean and herself, dotted the layout. Some watched the movie, transfixed by the hilarity of a makeover montage featuring the film’s gruffest character, Buccaneer. Others simply sat engrossed in quiet conversation and after dinner drinks.

A pair of young Xingese kids, probably high school-aged, caught Rebecca’s eye. They sat on the edge of the deck with their legs dangling into a large pool at the center. A boy with slender, slanting eyes reached down into the water and brought his hand up, playfully splashing the girl next to him. She laughed in response, running a prosthetic hand through her hair and clearing the water from her heart-shaped face. And in the blink of an eye, she pulled him into the water.

The scene read like young love and are Becca watched as a childhood crush matured into something meaningful right before her eyes. The teens chased each other through the pool and moved as if they were two halves of the same whole, different as could be and complementary down to their core. When finally the girl caught the boy, she pinned her arms around him against the side of the deck. He laughed, brushing her bangs from her face. The apples of her cheeks turned cherry red.

“Do you see them?” Rebecca asked, nodding subtly in the direction of the pair. “What I wouldn’t give to go back to that age knowing what I know now.”

“And what would you do differently?” Jean asked.

She told herself that he was only indulging her to be polite, but still, Rebecca answered. Sour memories of her high school regrets were slow to be forgotten, and the question was quickly answered.

“I cared too much about what others thought,” she explained. “Spent hours trying to make my hair straighter or attempting to do my makeup the same way. I swapped band for cheerleading and junk food for gym classes. The only thing I never compromised on was having Riza as a best friend, and sometimes I’m afraid that the pressure I put on myself to conform rubbed off on her during difficult times.”

So much for keeping the conversation light.

“I used to be like that,” Jean admitted.

“You cared too much about what other people thought?”

“No, I regretted past stuff so much that I forgot to live in the present.”

Rebecca was surprised by his candor, and she turned to face him, unsure if she should end the conversation or listen to further insights. Before she could give her course of action a second thought, Jean sat up, and, to Rebecca’s continued shock, he pulled at his side of his shirt. The action revealed a patch of puckered skin, red and raised, in the shape of a crater. Jean pointed to the modest scar on his side.

“It looks small, doesn’t it?” he said. “But that bullet nearly cost me everything. Took me a year to walk again, and the doctors say my long term prognosis involves a wheelchair, but I can’t dwell on any of the what-ifs. I have to take the good stuff life offers me while I can seize it.”

Rebecca couldn’t help herself. She had to ask, needed to know why this theory of his, contrived as it might be, struck a chord.

“And what is life offering you right now?”

The question might have been bait — this much Rebecca was willing to admit. Call their predicament fate or karma; blame it on the moonlight or the romantic music playing during the wedding scene of the movie. Whatever forces were at work, the opportunity was there, ready and ripe for the taking.

All they had to do was seize it. Bottle the spark that cracked between them if only for a handful of nights at sea.

Jean leaned in and tucked a lock of curly hair behind Rebecca’s ear.

“I know we agreed not to let it happen again, but I get the feeling life is offering me a second helping of what I had last night.”

It was her turn to flash a knowing grin.

“I never said the first time was the last. I just don’t think we should let it complicate Riza and Roy’s vacation.”

“Well then,” Jean whispered. His hot breath curled around the curve of her ear, sending shivers down her spine. “Are you hungry for seconds?”

For the second time in as many days, Rebecca/SelfRestraint.exe failed to run properly. Fortunately, Rebecca/ThinkingTooMuch.exe was also compromised.

“Starving,” she replied.

A/N: Surprise, @areyousanta! I am your back up gift giver for the FMA Secret Santa 2019. I heard you like Havolina, Royai and Lingfan, so I tried to tie those ships into this modern AU. However, I admit, this one-shot is primarily fluffy (and suggestive) Havolina. The struggle to keep this fic PG-13 was real, and I'm not sure that flourchildwrites/goodjudgment.exe was functioning properly, lol. As always, I really appreciate all the kudos, bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, likes and reblogs my readers generously provide. Don't be a stranger and check out my tumblr, @flourchildwrites. Send me questions, comments or whatever else may be on your mind.

#fmasecretsanta2019 #fma #havolina #royai #lingfan #jean havoc #rebecca catalina #modern setting #alternate universe #cruises #night after the one night stand #sexually suggestive references

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forasecondtherewedwon · 5 years

Text

Alright on Paper Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: T (for now) Word count: 1699 Chapter: 1/?

Spideychelle Week Day 4: Fake Dating

Summary: Reading the newspaper has taught MJ a lot about the Avengers' relationships. Doesn't mean she wants to be in one.

Or, MJ fake-dates Spider-Man, but won't commit because she has a crush on Peter Parker.

MJ reads the paper.

Oh, what, she’s supposed to be above reading the paper because print is dead and the internet offers both more news (stories and outlets) and faster access to it? Tough. She still reads it because her dad still gets it. He’s had a subscription since he graduated college and thought reading the Times―tucking it under his arm and flipping through the pages while he rode the subway―was a more accurate measure of adulthood than owning a car. (They still don’t have a car, by the way. MJ is never going to learn to drive. Ugh.)

The appeal that drew her to it, at the age of four, was the occasional editorial cartoon, utterly beyond her comprehension. These days, she’s a little more interested in the articles on domestic politics, but hey, people are allowed to evolve.

So if you’re her, you’re MJ, you’re living in New York and you’re paying attention, you’re going to notice the Avengers. Notice shit like violent attacks and streets covered in rubble―although, that’s basically the city at rush hour during construction season. She’s noticing other things though, Avengers voicing opinions, reviving a feeling of civic interest, pride, and responsibility. She’s noticing the tide turning; citizens less interested in blaming superheroes for unscheduled demolition in Manhattan and more interested in who does Hawkeye’s tattooing or which karaoke bar Thor can most likely be found at on a Friday night.

And the Avengers’ relationships. New Yorkers are feeding on (super-)human interest stories with their faces so close to the pages they just about rub all the ink off with their noses.

It’s a terrible thing to know this, to be as observant as MJ is, tracking these changing attitudes and becoming an accidental expert on the path to good PR for the biologically, magically, genetically, or otherwise enhanced. Reading the paper is what gets her in trouble―sooner, rather than later―when Spider-Man starts hanging around.

Technically, he’s always hanging (that web shit is strong stuff, by the looks of it), and he’s always around. MJ figured out ages ago that Queens is his home base. Still, their borough’s just big enough and just crowded enough that she’d never encountered him in person until a few months ago. Now she sees him all. The. Time. He says coincidence, she says to-mah-to, and it really is him saying that because they’re officially on speaking terms. It’s an improvement to their interactions, mutually decided upon after Spider-Man scared the bejesus out of her when she was standing on her apartment’s balcony one day, glanced over the edge, and saw him crawling up the wall.

The deal became that if he was going to drop by, he better be obvious about it. This led to a routine MJ is loath to describe with the word ‘charming,’ but which may or may not involve her going out to the balcony or chilling by the open window of her bedroom on Saturday mornings, after her parents have left to run errands, and offering Spider-Man a glass of orange juice while they chat and she shares her paper with him. He likes the arts section. She likes watching him read it, sticking to the wall outside her window, the posters for whatever’s in theatres appearing upside down.

He joked one time about them catching a Saturday matinee together. She’s pretty sure he was joking.

The deal evolves as the weeks go by. MJ’s apartment is less of a rest stop between crime-fighting gigs and more of a superhero counselling centre with only one client. Not that Spider-Man is looking to her, a high school student, to mend whatever trauma led to him donning a formfitting red costume and babysitting an entire city, but she’s sure giving him a lot of advice lately.

It’s just… life stuff, really, and MJ doesn’t know where he sees authority when he looks at her, yawning in her jammies as she passes his juice through the open window, but he seems to listen. Maybe her dad was right about the paper; it’s possible that reading it makes her appear wise.

But it makes her act like a damn idiot in a crisis.

She’s heading to a guidance appointment one Wednesday (it’s junior year and MJ is getting some assistance with scouting out colleges) and the halls are empty; she was given permission to leave class five minutes early. When she turns the corner towards the guidance room, there’s Spider-Man. Just standing there. Middle of the hallway. MJ drops a textbook and it strikes the ground with a deafening slap.

This is her comfortable weekend companion, the hero of Queens. She adjusted to understanding that Spider-Man can be both, but there doesn’t seem to be any room in her mind for him to also exist midmorning at Midtown Tech.

He’s staring back at her (she can tell―the aperture of the white eyes on his mask has expanded in shock), arms held away from his body sort of comically, and MJ’s trying to recall if she’s ever seen him upright before when the jarring old-school bell rings and students flood from the door of every classroom.

Spider-Man bounds towards her, grabs her book from the floor, pushes it to her chest until she grips it, and says, “I know what to do.”

Everyone’s starting to make sounds of surprise, recognizing the Avenger in their midst, but even though MJ knows Spider-Man is kind of a hero of the people, he’s not acknowledging them at all. In fact, he’s wrapping his arms around her, and her eyes―boy oh boy―are wide. There’s just one thing on her mind besides what his suit feels like against the backs of her hands…

She’s praying that Peter isn’t seeing this.

“I’ll swing by your apartment later,” Spider-Man promises, speaking quietly near her ear.

He puts another little squeeze into the hug before stepping back. Reeling, MJ watches him give their audience a polite wave as he walks backwards in the direction of the nearest exit.

“Sorry, guys,” he tells the gathered crowd. “Uh, duty calls. I just wanted to stop by and see my girlfriend.”

Heads are swivelling to stare at MJ even before she drops the book for the second time.

\\\

“How?” she demands of him that evening, pacing tightly on the balcony while her parents laugh along to a sitcom in the living room. “How could that be you ‘knowing what to do’?!”

“I was doing what you said,” Spider-Man says defensively. He’s pacing too, along the balcony’s two-inch-wide railing. (She’s too mad to be worried.)

“Excuse me? We’re putting this on me? When was I an active part of that plan, while I was holding that stupid textbook or while my arms were pinned because you were hugging me? I’d really like to know.”

“W-well, it’s what you said about public perception of the Avengers.”

“Specifics!”

“Like Iron Man,” he argues, lowering his voice after how she snapped. “People like hearing about him and Pepper Potts.”

“And have you always modeled yourself after Tony Stark, or is this sudden, public relationship announcement your first foray?”

They stare at each other for a minute, Spider-Man balancing and MJ looking up at him―which is kind of weird after they hugged today and she realized he’s shorter than she is. She sighs, regretting her harsh words.

“I’m sorry,” she offers. “I know what you did was thoughtless―”

“Well―”

“―ill-advised―”

“Literally your advice.”

“―and, frankly, moronic―”

“Hey.”

“―but I get it, you panicked―”

“I had it under control.”

“―so I forgive you.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

“Now, come down here so I don’t have to keep resisting the urge to shove you off that railing.”

Once Spider-Man flips down (she’s already forgiven him―what, does he think he’s getting bonus points for landing the dismount?), MJ crosses her arms and gives that red mask of his a stern look.

“Still not thrilled, huh?”

“Good guess,” she says dryly.

“I might be missing something here, but… why? I mean, I didn’t think I did anything to embarrass you. Did I hurt you somehow?”

MJ shrugs and stares at her slippers.

“People saw.”

There’s a pause.

“…We already knew that.” His tone is almost clueless enough to make her apprehensive that this is the guy she and the rest of Queens have protecting them.

“I don’t know if… if a certain person saw.”

She’s blushing hard to admit even this much of a crush and she’d be mortified if she wasn’t making her confession to this socially illiterate superhero.

“Boyfriend?” Spider-Man asks. MJ glances up to see him leaning extremely un-casually against the wall, arms folded a little less tensely than hers.

“You sound skeptical,” she accuses.

“You’ve never mentioned him.”

MJ glares for a few seconds before backing down.

“No, he’s not my boyfriend. And you didn’t know that either because we only ever talk about you.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Spider-Man immediately offers, like he’s trying to even things up.

Groaning, she lets her shoulders slump.

“You do now.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty unlikely that nobody took a picture.”

“Safe to assume the students of a school called Midtown Tech are tech-savvy enough to work a cellphone camera. By the way,” MJ adds, narrowing her eyes at him, “why were you there?”

“Oh, um, gas leak in one of the Chemistry labs. They dispatch the fire department for that kind of thing and I hate for emergency services to get tied up if I can fix it myself.”

“Huh. I had no idea gas leaks were in your repertoire. Thought muggers and bicycle thieves were more your beat.”

She’s teasing him pretty lightly considering he definitely just lied to her. It’s fine, she’ll wait to crack him until he’s forgotten all about visiting her school.

Spider-Man swings his arms nervously.

“If it’s a community problem, I’m on it. I’m just a friendly―”

“―neighbourhood Spider-Man,” MJ finishes. “Yeah, I’ve heard the tagline. And you’re also my fake boyfriend until we figure out a way for you to tactfully dump me.”

He takes an excited step towards her.

“I know wha―”

She cuts him off with a swiftly raised hand.

“Don’t even say it.”

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