#my ten thousand art style shifts

[stickidystickblog]

Love him, mwuah

#my ten thousand art style shifts #arg arg arg #fnaf #fnaf:sb #fnaf sun #fnaf sundrop #fnaf:sb sun #fnaf:sb sundrop #sun #sundrop #ashyslittlefnafau

[castletown-cafe]

Life Updates, AuDHD, and A Mental Trainwreck

Content Warnings: Mental illness, current events, betrayal trauma, abuse, & family death.

It's time I talked about how things have been for me lately. I'm tired of hyping up all these things/projects I can't commit to, it feels like I'm making promises I can't fulfill. I get too ambitious, I get too many ideas, and even the ones I manage to see through, I just do not enjoy the writing portion.

About a year ago, my focus drifted away from Castletown Cafe. Many of you here may know what that's like to lose interest/hyperfixation on one thing and get fixated on something else, that's natural for us with autism and ADHD. We get an intense hyperfocus on a topic or project for a while only to shift to the next topic, losing interest or forgetting about the previous. I got really fixated on Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, Splatoon 3, and ACNH this past year, as well as making my own unrelated cooking projects revolving around seasonal ingredients. This fall, I got crazy ambitious for an entire fall-themed cookbook and even a Halloween one, things that obviously will take years of practice and experimentation (and need year-round work).

On top of that, however, I have not been feeling as well mentally this year. I've had less motivation to draw, and felt a stronger dislike of writing. If you have ADHD you know how hard it is to get yourself to do something you don't want to do. It's like pulling teeth. I've always had issues with executive dysfunction, and I wonder how much of it I've succumbed to this year. And while I've never been diagnosed with clinical depression, I'm wondering/concerned if I am showing signs of it like I might have been this year with my lack of motivation, my focus and drive getting worse, loss of enjoyment of things I ordinarily enjoy doing, such as drawing, feeling sad more often, and either sleeping too much or too little.

Granted the events of this fall haven't helped. We all know what's going on in the world right now. It's horrifying, it's depressing, and it's easy to feel helpless, but we all have the power to protest, to boycott, and to use social media to amplify voices of the marginalized. I have been very active on Twitter with this, but it has also been hard to enjoy my favorite times of year, the fall and Halloween, when tens of thousands are being massacred. It's no wonder I have been so depressed this fall, knowing the country we live in is siding with the colonizers and is actively funding genocide. Our tax dollars are being used to fund this and many, if not most, American brands and companies are also in favor of it.

Then, in November, I discover that an 80s band I liked is guilty of VERY inappropriate behavior toward women. One I had been listening to for the past few years. Fronted by a guy whose music I had enjoyed since childhood. I shouldn't have been so surprised, but it still broke me anyway. Another betrayal was a YouTuber who turned out to be an imposter with no thoughts or opinions of his own, only stolen from others. Yet another was a confirmation of suspicions I had toward a certain animator having NPD and being abusive, (who, to be honest, I never actually liked, just her art style and cartoons).

Oh, but that's not all! Here's where it gets really personal, but I think I really need to disclose this. On top of everything going on, I had two deaths in the family recently. One was a parent whom I didn't get along with very well, the other was my old pup Oscar. My old doggo has been easier to grieve, because he was a sweet, good boy....and honestly....he deserved a better end to his life than what he got. He was living with my father, keeping him company. My father was the parent I had a bad relationship with, and is the reason I advocate strongly for responsible and careful drinking. Because he failed to do that. He always used alcohol for self-medication, something you should NEVER do. His substance abuse got worse and worse over the years, driving him meaner and more abusive. He was never really kind to me, even if he tried to be. I never had a good relationship with my father, and honestly I know a lot of people can relate to that with one or both of their parents. A lot of us have betrayal trauma from growing up, maybe you have parents who don't love you unconditionally, or parents who never wanted to be parents, emotionally or physically abusive parents, you get the idea. Mine just so happened to be a man born and raised in a time where there was no diagnosis for his neurodivergence. He had tons of internalized ableism that he pushed onto me, and modelled horrible, angry behavior. He also had depression, but never sought help, and I believe that's due to toxic masculinity.

He can't hurt me anymore, though. I moved out of his house almost 5 years ago, and I wish it had been sooner. I'm not sure how to feel about his passing, because of how he treated me when he was alive. One thing I have been feeling though, is stress. He has left behind a house that is a disaster because he neglected to take care of it, tons of debt because he had failed to pay his bills, and no will whatsoever so inheritance is also going to be a mess to untangle. My family and I have been going back to that house to clean it, get it repaired, and figure out what to do with everything left behind. Right in the middle of a holiday season. What fun /sarcasm.

On the topic of Oscar, it's safe to say how he passed/what happened. My father went first, and so Oscar just curled up next to him.....and stayed there until he also died. And honestly....that's just heartbreaking.....I wish Oscar could've howled for help, that someone could have heard him and come to his rescue and taken care of him....but he didn't....I just wish i could have been by Oscar's side in his final moments. I know he was an old dog, he lived to be 15 and a half...but he's with my grandma now and I hope she's taking good care of him, wherever they are.

Meanwhile, Penny has been a new family member since July. She has been by my side to give hugs and cuddles, and I've needed them a lot these past few weeks. Since Oscar stayed behind to keep my father company when I moved out a few years ago, I missed my puppy, and having a little doggo around. And so, enter Penny. She's even registered as an emotional support animal, or ESA, and she goes all kinds of places with me. I love the attention she gets from other people when we go shopping together. Her cuteness lightens up a room and makes the day of many people.

My little fluffy girl has been a big help getting me through everything this season.

Back to Castletown Cafe, it may take a while, but I hope one day to return to it. I have all kinds of ideas and things I want to make and practice, and I also hope to create more content in 2024, even doing more live gaming on Twitch. I got a new computer for streaming, but I still need a monitor for it. I wanna have a streaming schedule and everything.

I really appreciate all of you who are still here even though I haven't been able to make many new things or deliver upon hyped ideas. I feel bad about my lack of content this year, though with recent life events I think it's really understandable as to why I haven't been able to churn out much in that regard.

One more thing: I do want to disclose that my ADHD is unmedicated. I can't get medication for it (not with this hell-thcare system) and I don't know what I should take for executive dysfunction. For those of you who made it this far with ADHD, what do you recommend?

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read this, especially if you made it all the way to the end here. I know it was a lot, and some of this is REALLY heavy stuff. These are things that we all do go through, however.

Thank you.

~ Mari 🧡

#long post #cw: death #cw: abuse #cw: addiction #cw: grief #mari speaks

[yoonpobs]

to the touch | pjm

pairing: park jimin x oc (ft. brother yoongi)

genre: mutual pining, fluff, cute crushes, brothers best friend

warnings: JIMIN that's it

words: 5, 216

summary: he's back

“You’re … you’re here?” You squeak and it’s not one of your best moments even if you were sure Yoongi would argue otherwise and that you rarely had average moments, to begin with. But there was something about spontaneity and surprise that threw you off in the worst way possible and made your brain short-circuit to the point where you’re unable to throw coherent thoughts together. And this was definitely a surprise, one that you’d never expected to happen because—

“I am,” Jimin says curtly, tossing you a firm nod of his head when he pushes you aside and steps into your apartment like he’s been year a thousand times. But in reality, it’s his first time standing at your doorstep, first time knocking on your door, and definitely the first step he’s ever had the chance to get a glimpse of how your living room looks like.

You’re still gaping at the entrance with the door open and you’re sure if any of your neighbors were to step out of their homes, they’d just see a lone girl outside that looked a little too unnerved to bother. When you snap out of it and turn your body to face your visitor, he’s already made himself comfortable on your couch and it’s hard to piece together the fact that Jimin was quite in fact in your living room, and lounging on your couch, staring at your television like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“W-What—how?” You croak because there are about ten million different thoughts running through your head but the most pressing one is how Jimin looked … different.

A good difference, for sure. He’s always been handsome and unreasonably so. Especially with the way that he’s dyed his hair back to black and the gentle fluff of how it lays atop his head. You note that he still kept his style despite him going MIA for three years and wore slacks that shaped his legs (and butt) beautifully with a casual shirt tucked into the waistband of his pants. It was unfair how effortlessly good-looking he was on a spontaneous occasion while you looked anything but, especially with your sweats and old tank top.

But Jimin had always been a little hard to read. Terrifying and brassy all at once but never obstructive—although you’d argue that his presence was the obstruction as it is of how distracted you feel whenever he was around you years ago. It’s like you never learned how to accommodate his presence because he happened to fill every space with just his body even if he wasn’t that tall.

“I thought I’d pay a visit. Your brother gave me your address.” He says, finally turning his head to face you, and its still blank like every expression you remember made towards you. You expected nothing more or nothing less than the way he stares you over and makes you feel like the outsider in your own home.

“Yoongi …” You grit, cursing your brother mentally and hoping he’d make use of that stupid sibling telepathy power he claims he has to receive your gripe.

You clear your throat as you awkwardly shuffle closer towards the couch and hover awkwardly by the arm of the sofa to keep your distance. It’s been years and it’s still a little unfamiliar to see Jimin right in front of you, and not someone you kept at the back of your mind.

“You could’ve called …” You say softly while fiddling with your thumbs. Jimin just raises an eyebrow at you and you feel stupid for saying that already.

Some things don’t change and it’s proven when your heart still beats the same when he’s around you. You cursed at yourself for being weak-willed because you thought time would help you get over your silly crush on Jimin but you also long acknowledged the fact that it wasn’t just a crush. It was more.

You hated falling for the cliches of crushing on your brother’s best friend, especially one that was just emotionally reserved and detached ninety percent of the time. The only conversations you remember having with Jimin were the ones that you were blushing at him when he looked at you a little longer than usual, or when he drove you to and from school when Yoongi left for university.

But then he disappeared, without saying goodbye and you only found out from his parents that he got into a dance program abroad and packed his things and left. Obviously, twenty-year-old you was devastated because you somehow convinced yourself that he enjoyed your presence even if he was huffing and puffing every five minutes when you’d fall into a ramble of your own.

He changed his number and he wasn’t a social media person so you had no idea what he was doing or how he was, besides the occasional mention of his name in conversations you had with your brother. It sucked. Majorly. Because you really liked him even if he was cold because you knew that Jimin was a good person. A cold and shitty person wouldn’t pat you on your head before your wisdom teeth extraction and mumble it’s okay if he wasn’t kind.

“The place is nice.” He ignores your statement and glances around your apartment and you feel smaller. You do feel a little relieved that he approved of the place, and you did spend hours browsing through catalogues and going through roommates until you decided that this was perfect. Granted, it was a little pricey but you valued comfort and a decent workplace to really get you motivated.

“Thank you.” You mumble, still shifting on the balls of your feet and Jimin just raises an eyebrow at your impersonal stance. You know he wouldn’t point it out because he wasn’t that kind of guy, but his face often spoke for him so you swallowed all the concerns you had and took a seat at the edge of the sofa, as far away from him as possible.

“Do you live alone?” He asks. You’re about to respond but he doesn’t let you.

“It’s dangerous if you do. Do you really just answer the door for anyone without checking who it is? You’ll get yourself into some serious trouble if you aren’t careful.” He chides you.

You want to scoff at him because you were an adult and you’ve learnt a few things along the road to adulthood. Jimin was always a little on edge most of the time and you knew he was just bad at expressing his emotions so you never faulted him for it. But now, you were a little older and not as naive—but unfortunately still very much into him.

“God Jimin, it’s fine—”

The door opens and both your heads immediately turn to the source, and Jimin is sharp with his movements and you try to not allow your heart to flutter when he tugs you closer to him and hides your body with his own as if he thought it was an intruder. But you knew better, so you knew it was—

“Tae. You’re back early.” You greet your roommate who only eyes the man on the couch who has you situated behind him like he was your personal shield. His bag is tugged over his shoulder and you see a few of his art supplies threatening to fall out so you hop off the couch to help him with his belongings, and Jimin’s gaze just burns harder onto the back of your skull.

When you’re close enough, Taehyung leans in and gives a brief glance over at Jimin who is still piercing him with a fierce gaze.

“Why is your booty call staring at me like I’ve murdered ten kittens?” Taehyung whisper yells and you glare at him, pinching his hip because just because he thought he was being quiet didn’t mean that he could easily get rid of his naturally loud voice.

“That is not my booty call!” You respond equally as agitated, “That’s … Jimin.”

Taehyung’s eyes bulge out of his socket when he looks over your shoulder once more to still see Jimin glaring at the two of you.

“Why is he so fucking scary? You said he was nice!” Taehyung hisses.

“He is nice!” You weakly defend, “He’s just … scary looking?”

You know it doesn’t convince Taehyung because he’s sighing and dropping his belongings to the floor, offering Jimin as sincere of a smile as he can muster even though you’re fully aware that he’s terrified of the man on your living room couch.

“Hi! I didn’t know _____ was having guests over. I’m Taehyung.” He smiles brightly at said guest but Jimin just blinks at his cordiality and then looks over to you.

“Is he your boyfriend?” The question throws you off guard and you can tell that Taehyung even more terrified when Jimin completely ignores his presence even though he was the tallest person in the room.

You splutter for a response even if the answer to that was obvious. But Jimin had a shitty way of interrogating people, even if it probably would work in legal settings because he was just terrifying enough for you to stumble over your words and make you look guiltier than you were.

“Unfortunately not.” Taehyung thinks he’s saving you when he lightly jokes with Jimin. And you want to facepalm because Jimin was aloof and impartial to everything, and had horrible skills of reading the room because you were sure that Jimin thought that Taehyung wanted to get in your pants.

“Tae, would you excuse us for a second?” You smile stiffly at Taehyung who is quick to oblige as he darts into his room.

Jimin now has his arms folded across his chest in a manner that makes him look more hostile, but you knew him well enough that you suppose he just had a lot of questions.

“Did you really have to be like that?” You ask irritably as Jimin scoffs at you.

“Please, do enlighten me. All I did was ask you a simple question, which you couldn’t even answer. What was that about?” Jimin responds equally as displeased but you had so many questions and you didn’t need to deal with his mini tantrum right now, especially between the walls of your own home.

“Don’t turn this on me! You turned up to my house unannounced after three years of no contact and you expect me to bend at your will? What do you take me for? A puppet?” You retaliate with petulancy and you can tell Jimin is slowly getting more annoyed by the second but won’t blow up just yet. Or probably because you had another person in the house.

“Am I not allowed to visit?” Jimin raises an eyebrow.

You scoff at his audacity because Jimin was seriously so bad at reading emotions. You weren’t even sure why you liked him but your heart never made reasonable decisions for you.

“We haven’t spoken in years, Jimin!” You throw your hands in the air, “I didn’t even know where you were or what you were doing because you disappeared like you were running away from a crime!”

“Did I need to update you on my whereabouts?” You know his question is genuine even though it was posed a little rough and you want to pull at your hair because obviously, you wanted to know! Jimin was the person you spent the most time with, outside of school, and one day he wasn’t anymore.

“Of course! I thought we were—I thought … why did you just disappear?” For some reason, it was hard to say that you and Jimin were friends either because the only reason why he’d ever tolerate you in the first place was that he was a good friend to Yoongi and you were just someone that came with it by association. He never outwardly said that he hated spending time with you but he never said he enjoyed it either.

Jimin raises an eyebrow and stands up, and you notice that he still towers over you. He walks towards you slowly, and you feel all the hotter under his intense scrutiny that you just want to retreat to your bedroom and forget this ever happened.

“You don’t need to know.” He says and you feel yourself deflate, “I wanted to visit because your brother’s worried about you.”

The confession just annoys you because you knew to a certain extent that Jimin wouldn’t be here from … wherever he was … if it was only for your brother. He had to give a shit somewhere deep down in him enough to make an effort to get your address from your brother, then turn up on your doorstep unannounced with his usual impassioned stare.

“Oh fuck off, will you? I’m not a little girl anymore. I can take care of myself.” You bite back.

Jimin shoots you an unimpressed stare at your snappishness and he won't lie and say that he was pleasantly surprised to see you after a long time. You were always pretty, in an unconventional way, he supposes. You never made an effort to look nice but just did with the way you approached life, even when you were younger. But now that you were standing in front of him with a bite that you didn't have when he left, he's intrigued.

"You weren't so rude before I left." He smirks at you.

His gaze also makes you burn and you avoid his eyes when it searches for yours. You hate that his tone makes you feel funny and that you wanted him to be a little mean.

"Yeah, well—that's what happens when you don't see someone after three years with no contact or notice. They change. They get a little annoyed because someone is just too emotionally constipated to ever make any effort to keep in touch." You narrow your eyes at him.

"Why are you throwing a hissy fit? Needed me to keep you company?" He prompts.

You flush but still glare at him.

"Whatever, Jimin. I just would've appreciated it if you called. Or at least have done something to let me know that you were alive." You mutter.

Somehow, he's managed to cage you in with his body against the back of the sofa, and your breath hitches when you feel his broad chest pressed on yours. You didn't realise it happened until he places his arms by your side, effectively leaving you with no room to leave. You gulp because this is the closest you've ever been to Jimin and you feel dizzy. He smells fresh like laundry and flowers. It's a huge juxtaposition to his demeanour, but he smells good and you want to nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck.

"Why would I? You're Yoongi's sister. Not my girlfriend." He smirks.

You huff and roll your eyes. The reminder stings a little and you know he's baiting you.

"So? Were we not at least friends?" You snap.

He wants to laugh because you're obviously annoyed at the casual way he referred to you as Yoongi's little sister. You're frowning but attempting to pretend that it didn't bother you.

Jimin would be lying if he said he was never interested. Because he was, undoubtedly so. But back then when you were still navigating your way at the beginning of adulthood with Yoongi constantly breathing down his neck, he would have never done anything to compromise his friendship with your brother; or lead you on. But now you were standing in front of him, soft and sweet with a little edge to you that draws him in.

"Do you usually have crushes on your friends?" He pushes.

Your eyes widen and snap up to look at his teasing expression. His smirk is apparent against the rest of his face and you feel absolutely mortified that he's so close to you when he called you out.

"W-What? A crush? I didn't have a crush on you!" You rebuff him with a stuttery voice and you weakly try to push him away.

But he locks you in position with his hands around your wrist as he leans down and crowds you further with his presence.

"You didn't?" He feigns hurt, then he pulls away abruptly and you're immediately chasing his warmth, "Shame. I would've liked that a lot."

You gape at him when he shuffles away, putting some distance between the two of you as he dusts his hands on his slacks, giving you a curt smile; one that never reached his eyes but that was still Jimin being friendly.

"Y-You what ...?" You squeak.

Jimin shrugs and walks towards your door and you're half-terrified and half-relieved at the prospect of him leaving. But you're more terrified because you don't know if you'll ever see him again and with your current interaction you don't think you'll ever get over him.

"Usually a cute girl crushing on me would be a huge ego boost ... but you didn't, so ..." He trails off.

You bite your lips as you play with your hands. You know he's teasing you and you didn't know when he's gotten so forward, or good at this game. But you suppose Jimin has always been charming too, even if he was bad at emotions. He was good at playing them. And the way he rakes his eyes over your body only to bite his lip makes you burn in want.

He's about to turn the knob of your door but you reach out to grab his wrist before your mind can tell you it's a bad idea.

"W-What if I ... what if I ..." You mumble, hands wrapped loosely around his wrist as he turns around, leaning against the door the way boys do that was super hot for no reason.

"Speak up, bunny."

The nickname only makes you blush harder because it reminded you of all the times he's ever called you that stupid childhood nickname that somehow followed you up until adulthood. But you had to admit the way that Jimin uses it makes you feel ...warm. Like you want him to call you bunny for whatever reason he does so.

"WhatifIdid ...?" You mutter quickly and softly that Jimin leans in to get a better listen, also prompting you to speak louder.

"Couldn't hear you." He sing-songs.

You grit your teeth and swallow your pride because even after three years, you were soft and pliant for Park Jimin even if he was hot to the touch. You just wanted to please him.

"What if I did?" You say a little louder, braver, with determined eyes, "What if I did have a crush on you?"

He grins at you in Jimin fashion that was still a little reserved but warm because you knew him. You knew that was what he wanted to hear. So, he rests his body against the door and gestures his finger in a come-hither motion to get you to step closer, which you oblige. It should've been offensive that he could summon you so easily, but Jimin was a lot of things but he would never take advantage of your passiveness.

"I don't know. What would you have done if I hadn't left? Play friends? Family maybe?" He teases.

You scrunch your nose at the prospect of playing family with him because you've heard that phrase way too many times. Your parents at one point kept on saying how you had two older brothers instead of one because Jimin was always there, but they were blissfully unaware of your crush and the way you'd frown at the suggestion.

"We would've hung out more ..." You mumble.

Jimin snorts but cocks his head for you to continue.

"What's the point of this?" You huff, shutting your eyes when you can feel his gaze on you.

"You tell me. You were the one with the crush."

You want to correct him and say am the one with the crush, but you bite your tongue.

"You're the one who wants to know." You respond with indignation.

He chuckles, low and deep before he tilts your chin upwards with his index finger.

"You're still a little girl, aren't you ______?" You think it's the first time Jimin has called your name the entire time he's been here and you almost whine with the sultry look he's giving you.

Jimin applauds his self-control because you were a sight to behold. Even if you were in sweats and a tank, with your glasses drooping slightly down your nose and tangled hair, you still were so appealing even if you didn't know. You looked comfortable, homey and it did make Jimin burn with an ugly monster to know that 'Tae' could see you like this daily.

"Am not." You growl, but he only thinks you look like an angry bunny.

"You are. You don't know how to ask for things, hm?" He hums, tracing a finger up your jaw to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear.

"I so do know how to ask for things that I want. I do it all the time." You retort petulantly like you had a point to prove but Jimin only chuckles darkly.

"Then what do you want right now?"

Jimin's question is expected but it also throws you off-guard.

"R-Right n-now?" You stutter.

He tuts as if he expected your bewildered and shocked expression.

"When else but now, bunny?" He whispers as his gaze has you locked in a trance when your eyes dart to his lips when he drags his tongue over it. You're entrapped in him because his mouth suddenly looked really inviting.

"I really wanna ..." You mumble, ears flushing a pretty shade of red and you lean into Jimin's hand when he cradles your cheek gently.

Jimin was capable of being gentle, even though he chose not to. But he never was, though there was something about you that made his territorial, made him want to fight. He didn't know when he started feeling this way but he supposed it was a flurry of emotions and the accumulation of the times he's spent with you throughout the years. Three years didn't do him justice and only made him think of you more. He knew he was hard to read, and frankly even harder to understand. Jimin also knew that you were fully aware of this fact. But that didn't deter you in trying to get to know him, to prick yourself against all his edges that were harder to accept.

You were sweet and naive, a type of person that Jimin would usually scoff at. But your one-dimensional and idealistic view of the world was fresh to him, even if that meant you were living in your head most of the time. It never took away from the fact that you were kind and understanding. The type of person that cracked all of Jimin's harshness made him want to try.

But it didn't mean he wasn't going to have his fun. He liked seeing you like this, gentle and warm, close to him as you look at him with a hazy expression.

"Wanna do what?" He prods, reaching his hand to the back of your hair to tug your face closer to his, but maintaining enough distance to prompt you to make the first move.

Jimin would do it. But he wanted to be sure that you wanted this, and not the idea of him. Sure, he was giving you hints and nudging you, but he also was aware of the fact that you'd never say or do anything that you didn't want. You were always clear-cut about this type of thing.

"You know ... that ... thing ..." You mumble, shifting on your feet as he glances down to your face.

You still looked unsure, but you leaned into his hold regardless, and Jimin took that as a good sign. You just need a little push.

"You know I'm not that bright. You need to tell me, bunny." He says gently.

You can't stop the small whimper in the back of your throat at the nickname and it's taking everything in Jimin's willpower to not take you against this wall. He would, but you deserved sweet things and he wanted to try be that for you.

"I ... I wanna ..." You whisper, "Wanna ... kiss you."

You clutch his t-shirt in his hands and when you glance up he's grinning widely as if he's won the lottery.

He nods his head ever so softly, and you take that as a cue to lean in.

When you do kiss him, you already feel your knees buckling because it's like everything you dreamed and more. Jimin was the right amount of assertive and gentle that makes you chase his mouth even if you were pressed up against him. He takes the lead eventually when his hand cups your jaw to angle your mouth deeper into his, and your body flush against his.

You feel like a teenager again having your first kiss, but it may as well be because you've always wondered what it was like to share your first kiss with Jimin back in high school.

"Is that all?" He whispers against your lips, but before you can respond—

"Oh fuck, I'm sorry!" You hear Taehyung squeak and that makes you pull away from Jimin, highly embarrassed to be caught making out with him against your door like a horny teenager.

You want to curse at Taehyung but he's already ducking into the kitchen before you can get any words out.

Jimin doesn't look affected, if anything, he looks pleased. The moment you shared a clear testament of who you belonged to and Jimin loved the fact of people knowing it was him.

When you look at Jimin, you're equally parts flushed from the kiss but giddy too. You give him a shy smile, and Jimin just chuckles lowly at your bashfulness.

"I'll see you around, ______," Jimin smirks at you when he reaches for the doorknob to leave. You follow him out, wanting a little more privacy even if it was in the hallway of your apartment complex.

When Jimin steps out and with you behind him, you swing on your feet as he observes your next actions. You clear your throat, even though you were confused and glad—because that was the closest thing you could get from Jimin that was affection so you'd take it.

"So ... what does this ..." You mumble, before shaking your head.

Jimin raises an eyebrow.

"What did I say about asking for what you want?" He berates you as if he was speaking to a child, but his tone is still curt and a little detached, but very like Jimin. You know that it's him and you like that anyways.

"Don't make me say it ... it's already embarrassing as it is ..." You whine, burying your head into his t-shirt.

Jimin welcomes the sudden closeness and pats you softly on the head. It's a little stiff because he still isn't used to physical affection that wasn't 'intimate', but he did say he would try for you.

"Again: I'm not that bright." He teases.

You roll your eyes, but then bite your lips when you see he's waiting for a response.

"... what does this mean for us?" You ask softly.

Jimin smiles at you and decides to grant you a gentle kiss to your forehead. A kiss that was so domestic and soft that you feel your heart soar.

"Check your phone." Is all he says when he waves you goodbye, as you stare at him dumbly, heart still fluttering and cheeks burning.

When you return back into your home, you lean against your door as you press a hand to your chest to feel the way your heart beats rapidly against it. You feel weak in the knees but so blissful that you let out a squeal into the palm of your hands.

Once you've calmed down, and offered Taehyung a look that said you'll explain later—you rush to check your phone, only to smile at what lies on the screen.

Unknown Number [17:21]: hi bunny

Unknown Number [17:21]: save my contact

Unknown Number [17:21]: make sure that when people see it they'll know you're mine

Unknown Number [17:22]: see you soon

Unknown Number [17:22]: if you're still a little slow ... it's jimin

Unknown Number [17:25]: ❤️

You notice the heart emoji was sent a few minutes after the rest of his texts, which showed you that he may have contemplated whether or not to send it. You feel your heart flutter, as you plop back onto your bed, a wide grin splaying on your face.

extra scene

"I'm sorry ... what?" Yoongi chokes on the piece of meat he just shoved into his mouth as he stares at his best friend in the face as if he'd grown another head. But as usual, he seemed to only attract people that were vastly similar to him, and Jimin's face is unreadable as ever. But Yoongi knows he's serious and not fucking around because he's looking intently at the older boy for a response.

"So?" Jimin says casually, leaning into his seat and Yoongi needs to chug down a glass of water to ensure that the food goes down all the way before he can say anything to the question Jimin just posed him with.

"You want my sister's address ... to ... I'm sorry, correct me if I'm wrong but I had a fall and I may have a concussion so I don't know if I'm hearing things right," Yoongi deadpans but Jimin just rolls his eyes at the older one's dramatics before nodding his head for him to continue.

"You want her address to ... confess to her?" Yoongi says hesitantly and Jimin nods his head as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

But it wasn't. Because as long as Yoongi's known Jimin, he's been all detached and broody, uninterested in everything and everyone. He's never shown the slightest interest in anyone and usually opted for casual hookups than actual relationships so clearly, Yoongi is a little skeptical.

"Are you okay?" Yoongi asks baffled.

Jimin nods, folding his arms across his chest.

"Yes. I went for a medical check-up that day and my doctor said he's never seen results as impeccable as mine." Jimin says blandly.

Yoongi scoffs.

"You're just not ... the dating type, you know? Much less ... with my sister?" It sounds weird to even Yoongi's ears. He grew out of his childish mindset and had no problem with Jimin dating you, but it was still weird to see his best friend showing interest in you.

"I like her. And I respect you. Which is why I came to you before I did anything."

Yoongi gapes at his best friend, who looks much softer than he usually does.

"Wow ... I just ..." Yoongi exhales, "Damn."

Jimin offers a small smile before gesturing to their food.

"At least we can really be brothers now." Yoongi jokes, sliding a piece of paper with your address on it to Jimin.

Jimin smiles fondly at the paper before tucking it into his shirt jacket.

The image of you in white, smiling and looking only at him drives him to see you the next day.

#bts fic #bts imagine #bts fics #bts imagines #bts fluff #bts jimin #jimin imagine #jimin fluff #jimin x reader #park jimin x reader #park jimin fluff #park jimin fic #fluff #mutual pining #cute

[neocatharsis]

Ten on his new Represent capsule, grappling with creativity, and evading genre lines.

As Ten Lee - a vocalist and dancer in K-pop groups NCT (with whom he debuted in 2016) and Super M, and Chinese group WayV - is musing over his proclivity for partnering music or visual styles in a way that others deem strange, he veers off on a tangent. “Anything can be matched… except juice and coffee,” he says, suddenly. “Those two should never be.” Ten is infamously anti-fruit. It stems from a mistaken process of association in childhood where “I had the image of a spider and the image of fruit mixed up,” he laughs awkwardly, “so now whenever I put fruit in my mouth, I think there’s spiders in my mouth.”

Random abstractions such as this pepper his rapid-fire conversation, like small fireworks fizzing through the dark. Excitable, enthused and sharply alert, if Ten’s energy was visible it would be a shimmering mantle of gold and silver dust. As a dancer, he moves with a sinuous, controlled power that can shift from elegant to explosive on a single beat. As a visual artist, the Bangkok-born, multilingual 25-year-old recently added the title of designer to his growing list of achievements, launching an already sold out collaboration with the bespoke merch platform Represent.

Aptly, he named his collaboration “What is ??? THE ANSWERS”, for although being a chameleonic artist is one of Ten’s greatest strengths, the personality traits that enable this created within him question marks around how he saw himself fitting into the world. “People ask me, ‘What kind of music do you like?’ And I say, ‘I like R&B but hope it sounds rock’. And they’re like, ‘That doesn’t make sense’.” It was troubling to Ten that people began telling him who he was and how he should be, instead of accepting him as is.

In a recent Instagram Live, the myriad of Ten’s contrasts tumble forthwith. He’s the doting cat-dad. His inner emo, who loves rock music, shows off dried roses, with the stern, black, geometric lines of the large tattoo on his inner right arm sometimes visible. But he’s also delicate in a way, with his butterfly tattoo and hair lightly permed, who names daisies as his other favourite flower, and plays Fousheé’s breathy TikTok hit, 'Deep End'.

“Have you seen the image where I have my name in a cross in lots of different languages?” He pulls the image up on his phone. The design sits on his Represent long sleeve tee. “I was thinking [about this], like, what you’re saying... Ten has this luvvie flower side and a very ‘rawwrr!’ side. I’m always like, ‘Ten, what kind of person are you?’ I do ask myself that, too, because everything I like is so different [to the other].” He could have conceded, and reined himself in. He’s pushed back instead. “I thought, ‘I can be anything I want, I can be this in the morning and this at night. I can be any person I want to be’. And that’s what makes me comfortable and happy.”

On his Instagram, Polaroids feature scrawled messages, like “Don’t tell me what to do!” and “Whatever! I’ll do it my way”. The designs of his collaboration seek to challenge being boxed in by other people’s standards, thus limiting ourselves. The recurring symbol of a cross tipped with arrows is a nod to the Chinese letter for 10, but doubles as a plus sign. He’s added it to his Instagram, writing “TEN_+•10” in his bio. “A plus sign can mean that you’re adding on and growing.” He points to another version of the arrow-cross, one with short diagonal dashes between its points that symbolise light. It means, he says, “that I’m radiating. I’m burning, I’m active, I’m doubling myself.” He touches his forearm, where crowning his geometric tattoo is a blazing sun. “I have this, like, if you want to be the light, you have to burn. I relate to that.”

This isn’t to say Ten’s self-exploration is complete. While celebrating his strengths, the artwork also portrays parts of himself not yet conquered. He admits to being a chronic overthinker: “Even very small things that happen to me, I rethink a thousand times, and I get stressed out because of the things I do. Like, the main theme [here] is me overthinking but trying to find an answer even though it doesn’t have any answer.” Fittingly, spiral shapes dominate his designs, looming large amongst bright, bold shapes that evoke 80s Pop Art and graffiti, though Ten shies away from defining himself as “fully an artist, I’m not in the position to say things like that yet.”

“I’m still learning and trying new things. You learn by getting different elements from different people and I’m in that stage now.” He enjoys wandering the infinite halls of Instagram and Pinterest where he screenshots art that he likes, lost in the images, often for hours. He explains that he’s mostly influenced by whatever his current visual obsession is. “I’m interested in tattoos lately so my paintings look like tattoo designs. I’m that person who, when they see stuff, it goes into my brain and instantly comes out from my hands,” he laughs.

Ten’s introduction to art and design was through his mother, who believed music, art and sport were more important in a child’s development than traditional academia. “She didn’t care if I got an A* or not, just don’t get an F or a D,” he grins. Like any kid forced to do something, Ten railed against spending his weekends at art school. He attended but he didn’t draw. He befriended his teacher and other pupils and, as they worked, he chatted. “I was a very talkative kid! When I came to SM Entertainment (in 2013), I had a lot of my own time because my parents were in Thailand and I was alone. I had to absorb all the new culture and adapt to a new environment.’” When he felt surrounded by “negative energy”, he began drawing, enamoured with the space and freedom it offered because in art, as he often says, “there’s no right answer.”

There is, however, sometimes a middle ground. His goal was to make the Represent collection accessible to his diverse fanbase. “I wanted to make things that people can easily wear because it was my first project to make something with clothes and it’s a collab. If you go too far out, no one will get it. If you go too far back, people won’t reach for it. So finding the middle ground is important but that’s the hardest thing to do. If it’s my own project, I’ll be like, ‘I’m the president of this brand, I’m gonna make all the weird clothes that I can imagine!’”

He sought second opinions to ensure his designs landed the way he hoped. “I have a lot of good friends around me - my choreographer, (SHINee and Super M member) Taemin hyung, my manager. I randomly ask people I’m comfortable with and have known for a long time, like Mark (Lee, of NCT and Super M). Mark has the same kind of perspective as me, but I’m a person who is arrghhh!” He waves his hands in the air. “And he’s very calm. I need a person who is opposite of me because when I’m in a mood, I talk nonsense - ‘I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I wanna make this!’ - and Mark’s like,’Bro, calm down’,” he says in a rather uncanny impression of the Canadian-Korean.

Ten works fast when he’s drawing. He has to. He describes his personality as someone who can't wait until the next day to do something. “I’m very impatient,” he smiles. “If I’m going to paint or draw, I’m going to finish it in, like, two hours. I can’t sit down for three hours.” When inspiration hits him, it’s off the back of deep contemplation, sometimes about the mundane - “Like, why do the cats come to me when they’re hungry only? Is it selfish or instinct? - at other times, something affecting him emotionally.

But whereas his job as a singer and dancer sees him project his energy outwards, art offers the opposite. He’s often alone in his room when he works. As is for many artists, the right mood is fundamental. “When I’m in a good mood, I can’t draw,” he half-sighs. It’s also a multi-sensory process. “Smell or the temperature of the room, that really helps me draw. I light three or four candles. And when I draw, it’s kind of heavy, the feeling,” he explains. “It feels like you’re sinking into something, into yourself, and everything seems so small. Everything narrows down into me, my pencil, the paper.”

The more work he does in different creative mediums, the less Ten’s desire is to keep them separate. His art, dance and music influence each other, whether it’s customising his own collaboration pieces, a choreography video in an art gallery or dancing underwater with a film crew. When someone tells him that something won’t work or match up well, he refuses to let the idea go until he’s attempted it.

“I’ve had that since I was young. I think everything is possible. If you don’t try, you don’t know. When people say it’s impossible, like dancing in water for three minutes, I’m like, then let’s make it possible. You don’t need to walk a straight line [in life], you can walk this way,” Ten says, pointing along an invisible line before switching sharply in direction. “Then go back on track, go that way, come back. No one should tell you to walk in a line, I don’t see the point of that.”

© Clash Magazine

#nct #wayv #Ten

[nothing-more-than-hot-leaf-juice]

Ok modern zuko would be an expert at breakdancing and sokka would be the guy who just bi-panicks whenever he does

(whoops, my hand slipped and I accidentally wrote a modern au headcanon turned zukka karate au one-shot) 

Okay but consider this instead: Zuko doesn’t know how to dance for shit and has horrible rhythm, but he is a GOD at martial arts. He’s been doing some type of style since he was a kid and is a full black belt by the time he hits high school. Martial arts was always something he excelled at, but it was also something that made him feel more secure. It was something he could work on to help him protect himself from his home life, even if it wasn’t enough most times. He specifically excels in weapons forms (I’m thinking twin sais) and you DO NOT want to spar with him. Because he may be skinny and shorter, but he’s quick and can hit hard at just the right spots. 

When he was younger he was obsessed mainly because he felt that belt rankings and trophies from competitions were a way to prove himself to his dad, but when he moved in with Iroh (who encouraged him to keep it up and was so proud of how talented and passionate he was about it), he basically used it in place of talking about his feelings. He didn’t talk about his home life or the shit Ozai did, instead, he put all his energy into his black belt levels, learning new weapons forms, and eventually into teaching new students as a junior instructor. 

At school, he’s awkward and asocial and just doesn’t have the energy for people. Zuko has little patience for asshole classmates who ask intrusive questions about his scar or spread rumors about where he got it. He eats lunch in his English classroom and would be a complete shut-in if Iroh didn’t get him to work part-time at the Jasmine Dragon. But in the dojo, he’s focused and is able to direct his energy into improving his forms and teaching younger teens. 

One of his newer students transferred from a different dojo after moving from a different state. He’s actually a freshman at Zuko’s high school but it’s not as if Zuko really interacted that much with him. This kid, Aang, is as talented and dedicated as he is, but has a long way to go to learn all the new katas. Zuko’s been dubbed the ‘scary’ trainer at the dojo. He’s the serious one who will yell if someone is goofing off and everyone’s seen that he has no problem using full force in a demonstration (little kids love him and he’s super nice to them, but he teaches the 12-15 age range). Plus there’s that scar, which doesn’t make him the most initially welcoming person. But this new kid Aang just latches onto Zuko immediately. He says hi to Zuko in the halls at school and works on his katas outside of regular practice times. At first Zuko thinks this sickeningly positive kid is annoying as crap, but warms up to him. He likes that Aang cares about martial arts and isn’t nice as a show, he’s just genuinely nice. 

And maybe he sees Aang hanging around school with a sophomore girl and her brother who just might be in Zuko’s calc class and English class. 

And maybe Zuko thinks this guy is insanely attractive and somehow incredibly funny even though most of his humor consists of the worst puns imaginable. 

But obviously, Zuko hasn’t attempted to ever actually talk to this guy. The most that he could classify as ‘talking’ to the cute, funny guy on the robotics club is the one day in English class when he had to respond to someone’s dumbass comment about Macbeth with what ended up being a ten minute spoken essay about obvious motifs and symbolism. To which Mr. Puns and Ponytail was very obviously paying great attention to and even gave Zuko a smile and thumbs up for. 

Zuko knows it’s pointless to engage. After all, he’s a senior and he doesn’t have any friends anyway. There’s no point in making any this year. Crushing on this guy from the comfortable position of the other side of the room is totally good enough for him. Totally. This is fine. He’s fine.  

Besides, he’s got competitions and if he doesn’t secure the regional championships this year he’s never going to get the chance after he goes to college. And he’s got his kids to train. Aang in particular is gearing up for his first debut into this area’s tournament. 

The tournament’s in October and usually, Zuko focuses on his own matches and performances, but Aang really wanted him to watch his set. So on this day, he stands on the sides of Aang’s zone instead of obsessively going through his katas in a corner.He’s not going to be able to watch the whole set because it overlaps with his own weapons portion, but he stands on the side and gives Aang a reassuring look that, ‘don’t worry, you’ll do great, you’re a talented kid,’ when his student looks over to him nervously. 

And wouldn’t you know it? Aang brought some friends to come watch. And one of them is Mr. Zuko’s Big Gay Crush. 

“Oh, hey Zuko,” are the words that come out of this guy's mouth that give Zuko a near-stroke. And damn if this guy’s eyes aren’t blue and pretty and he usually wears his hair in a ponytail at school, but now he’s wearing it down and Zuko wishes he could take screenshots with his brain because holy moly. 

“Hey.” Is the best that Zuko can get out of his dumb mouth. “You’re Sokka.” 

“Aang invited us to come watch,” Sokka nudges his head to indicate the ‘us’ includes his younger sister, who Zuko doesn’t know the name of. “How do you guys not get heatstroke during these things? It’s like a million degrees in here.” 

“Oh the gi’s pretty cold, I mean, it’s got air and stuff.” 

Zuko decided right there that he would be completely fine with being struck by lightning. Of course, that’s what his stupid brain would come up with. Of course, that’d be the thing he’d say in front of one of the smartest guys in his class. 

They watch Aang perform his set for the judges. Zuko recognizes that Aang took his advice when he said that he wasn’t putting enough force into his hits. He’s never seen Aang be as, well, aggressive isn’t the right word, but he’s definitely putting more power into his form. Zuko wouldn’t admit it, though, but only part of his attention was for Aang at the moment. The other part was for Sokka, who was smiling bright and pumping his fists when Aang completed a row of kicks. 

The small part of Zuko’s brain that wasn’t being taken up by watching Aang or trying to act normal around his crush noticed the clock on the wall indicating that the weapons portion would be starting in five minutes.  

“I’ve got to go do a thing so I’ll just, um, go do that now.” 

“Are you competing too?” Sokka asked. 

To this question Zuko just holds up his sais and raises his eyebrow as if to say ‘it’s a tournament, what do you think?’ Because yeah, he knows Sokka’s super smart, he’s seen him churn out calc answers at the speed of light and noticed his name on the robotics club awards update on the school’s website, but he’d also seen Sokka eat 5 packs of fundip at once on a dare and unironically wear a ‘women want me, fish fear me’ t-shirt for most of junior year. Somehow he had managed to fall for the smartest dumbass on earth. 

“Oh yeah, right.” Sokka eyes the sais and then looks right at Zuko’s face, “Aang says you’re really good.” 

Zuko decides that thinking about Aang talking to Sokka about him was something he didn’t need distracting him during his set. That was something he could anxious about later. 

“Hopefully good enough for those five assholes,” Zuko replies, gesturing to the panel of judges in the weapons section of the gymnasium. To his shock, Sokka laughs. It’s a nice laugh, too. And Zuko really hoped he could blame the blush that was one-hundred-percent creeping up his face on the lack of AC. 

“You know, you’re pretty funny man,” Sokka tells him. Zuko has no clue how to take that compliment, but he really does need to go. 

“Right,” he grins nervously and shifts his left foot around to bounce away, “well I have to go do my thing.” 

“Good luck!” 

That’s where Zuko thinks the beginning and end of his interaction with Sokka would be. 

The weapons portion thankfully goes by age. And since Zuko’s one of the youngest competitions, he gets to go first for his sai katas. This is what literal years of training have prepared him for. At regionals last year, the second advanced kata got him placed high enough to qualify for states. This is what he’s good at. He tells himself that a thousand times before starting his set. 

There’s not a thought in his head as Zuko goes through the form. The sais glide through his fingertips with every jab, block, and hook. The imaginary opponent doesn’t stand a chance. He’s cool and competent and graceful. It’s therapeutic in a sense. There’s enough adrenaline to make Zuko feel like he’s worth something, but more importantly, he knows he’s nailing this. Whatever the judges say about it, he knows that he’s perfected this form after practicing it at least a thousand times over three years. 

The judges agree with him. He’s the first competitor of the weapons portion but there isn’t really a doubt in their minds about who’s going to place. 

Zuko zones back in to the gym after bowing to the panel. He walks off, feeling lighter and letting a satisfactory smile take over his face. 

He expects the hug from Uncle and the proud smile from Sensei Piandao, but what he doesn’t expect is to see Sokka, eyes wide as globes, staring at him from the other side of the mat. 

Because what Zuko doesn’t know is that the second he turned his wrists in his first form during his hooks, Sokka’s brain went into Full Bi Panic Mode. 

And Zuko thinks the one conversation where he couldn’t talk like a human and wanted to die for most of it would be the only time Sokka would decide to willingly talk to him. Zuko is dead wrong. Sokka, in fact, has decided that this, this is the guy his Disaster Bi Brain has decided to latch onto. Sokka’s brain and all his squishy feelings have apparently decided to attach to this aloof kid with the scar who reserved his voice for eloquent, impassioned speeches about dramas and was apparently an actual god with weapons. Sokka decides that Zuko could roundhouse kick him in the side and he’d thank him. And right now Zuko’s looking at him with a dumbfounded expression, prompting Sokka to remember how to function so he can go over to congratulate Zuko and maybe ask if his dojo provides a free trial. 

So yeah, that one conversation ends up decisively not being the end of anything. 

#sorry #not sorry #zukka #zuko #sokka #atla #avatar the last airbender #fanfic #I'm gonna edit and add to this #and probably updated something on my ao3 in the first time in a literal month #thanks babe for the inspiration #the babes are asking #hot leaf content

[because-of-a-friend]

Dad!Seventeen

Thanks for the compliments anon! I hope this is what you wanted! I ended up just doing it in reaction style and ran with the dad/uncle idea to show how they’d interact with their kids and the other boys’ kids! Feel free to request more! (Sorry it took so long, I had a bunch of extra long shifts at work)

MASTERLIST

CHOI SEUNGCHEOL

LOVES HIS KIDS!!!!!

OMG!!!!

To Cheol, his kids are his whole world

Obsessed with just gathering them up in his arms and hugging them tight

Definitely a cool dad

His kids trust him and feel comfortable around him 

He literally can’t say no to them

The other boys’ kids realize this as well

So everyone goes to Uncle Coups to ask for stuff

“Seungcheol, why would you let my kid eat three ice cream cones?”

“I don’t know, Jihoon, she just looked at me with those big eyes and I couldn’t say no”

But honestly Coups would do anything to see his kids smile and just cares about them so so much

Just the weakest sweetest dad/uncle ever

YOON JEONGHAN

Jeonghan thought he was clever and cunning

His kids are 10x more so

Like Cheol’s kids, they get whatever they want

But it’s not bc Jeonghan just lets them have it

It’s bc they’re really good at arguing or sneaking their way into getting the things they want

He adores them for it tbh

Like so proud

“Jeonghan, your son managed to sneak my kids out of our house to have a sleepover at yours”

“Wow! He really did that???”

“Jeonghan!”

“Right, right, I’ll get onto him for that”

Is really excited when his kids and everyone else’s are teens and older bc he’s really good at giving advice and enjoys having genuine conversations with them

But honestly just adores his kids and is always so proud of them and fascinated by every little thing they accomplish

JOSHUA HONG

Joshua’s kids have perfectly packed lunch boxes and cute little matching outfits and the best manners of the kids in their classes

He treats his kids with respect and teaches them patiently and his love for them is immense and obvious

The kind of dad who is always looking over at his kids during parties and get-togethers to just watch them and smile at how they’re interacting with others

He always pins all of their best grades up on the fridge and makes them feel so special anytime they accomplish anything

Really just a cookie-cutter perfect dad 

The other boys are jealous lol

“Can your kids hang out with mine more? They need a better influence than Jeonghan’s son”

“Hey!”

“Hannie, please, we all know your kids get all of ours into trouble”

“...yeah”

But seriously, perfect dad with perfect family

MOON JUNHUI 

More of a friend than a dad tbh lol

His kids get to do whatever they want as long as Jun gets to come along

“So you were with all of our kids when they snuck out?”

“Yeah, that’s why it’s fine, I was there”

“Jun, I think you might be missing the bigger picture”

He’s the chillest dad

His kids and all of the other boys’ kids like to hang out with him bc they know that means a day of playing video games, eating snacks, and taking naps

His kids adore him for it tho and never feel scared to tell him anything

He makes sure they solve everything together so they never feel like they have to handle anything alone

KWON SOONYOUNG

Excited to pass his talents onto his kids

Like from the moment they start to walk he tries to teach them dance moves 

And his Significant Other is like “Soonyoung pls”

And he’s like “They have to learn to dance”

Devastated when one of his kids mentions they want to learn songwriting from Uncle Jihoon

“Soonyoung, you’re overreacting”

“No I’m not, if she’d rather write songs with Jihoon then she can be his daughter, she is no longer mine”

But seriously, he loves his kids 

And he’s going to support them whether they want to be dancers or singers or doctors or artists or anything

And he’s gonna do whatever he can to help them get there

But he likes to get them involved in his every day life to show them how important it is to have them around and how much he enjoys including them 

JEON WONWOO

Just imagining Wonwoo and all the little baby Wonwoos with their matching glasses

Also has incredibly polite kids

Like Wonwoo, some of his kids are more introverted so they’ll spend their time entertaining themselves

He does, however, get stuck with some extroverted kids

And he like...

Does not know how to handle their endless social energy

He’ll spend so much time trying to entertain them and spend time with them

But then sometimes he’ll just be like 

“Ok, we’re going to take a trip to Uncle Joshua’s house so you can all play with your cousins!!!”

But he seriously adores his kids

Like Jeonghan, he’s fascinated just watching them grow up and make their way through the developing phases of life 

He’s just so immensely proud of them always

LEE JIHOON

Everyday Woozi is like “who tf let me have kids”

He just gets so confused by them and the things they do

“What- what even went through your mind that you thought this was a good idea?”

But at the end of the day, no matter what they do

His overall reaction is just like 

“Cheers, I’ll drink to that bro”

Really just kind of goes with the flow

I can def see him going to the studio with little ones on his lap

They kind of just become little extensions of him that follow him everywhere and do whatever he does

They all wanna be just like him

And he doesn’t understand bc he’s not sure he’s even a good dad so he doesn’t get why these little beings think he’s the greatest person on earth

But he’s happy to have them around and feels so grateful for his kids

LEE SEOKMIN

Guess who is raising his kids to have the exact same cheesy sense of humor he has

It’s Seokmin!!!

As a result he thinks his kids are the funniest people on earth

They make him laugh all the time

His family are always the loudest people at any party

But it’s cause he lets his kids be kids and never gets upset at them for things kids do

Like talking really loud lol

As a result his kids feel free to explore any endeavors that they’re interested in

Seokmin’s schedule fills up pretty quickly bc of this

One kid has art class at one and another has volleyball at two and then another has science camp at three

But he just wants his kids to explore all of their interests and he’s happy to do whatever we can to help them do that

KIM MINGYU

Sweetest, cutest, most precious kids in the whole world

Just a bunch of cuddly kids that are EXACTLY like Mingyu

And Mingyu is just so excited??? To just see them???? Every single day???

Definitely the overly clingy dad that just wants to be around his kids 24/7

And the super embarrassing one too

Always peaks his head in when his kids have friends over 

“You guys want any snacks?”

“Oh my god dad, get out!”

But he’s also a super fun dad and his kids are really grateful to have him

And the other boys’ kids love to come over bc he makes the best snacks

(Don’t tell Jun or DK that, they’ll get jealous)

But just such a cute sweet family

XU MINGHAO

Also more like a friend than a dad

Like seriously

Unless you explicitly knew Minghao was his kids’ dad, you’d assume he was their older brother or cousin

They just kind of always chill

Like Hoshi, there are interests of his that he is so so so excited to teach to his children 

Especially art!!!

He can’t wait to see how his kids express themselves in a creative aspect

They’re all in an art class with DK’s kids 

Which leads DK and Minghao to spend more time together as they wait outside the class for their kids to be done

And then give each other looks as their kids show off their art work

But Minghao is super proud of them bc he can tell that that’s all they really want: to make him proud

Sometimes he feels more like a spectator in his kids life but he doesn’t really mind

Because they’ve always been independent and he lets them decide what they want and is happy to give advice when they come to him

But really just wants them to succeed in whatever they want to succeed in and trusts them with making their own decisions

BOO SEUNGKWAN

You know he has the cutest kids in the world

Seungkwan only realizes how sassy he is when his kids take after him and make sassy remarks to him 

And then he makes that offended face lol

Like Joshua, his kids have really cute matching outfits

But the cuteness factor is multiplied by like ten-thousand lol

Bc Seungkwan has a habit of singing all the time

His kids gain that habit too

And they get really into certain songs

Another dad that feels betrayed bc when his kids learn that Uncle Jihoon writes songs, all they wanna do is spend time with him

Jihoon doesn’t understand how he just has this growing posse of little children that just watch fascinated as he’s sitting in the studio working on new music

Along with, of course, Hoshi walking in to ask if anyone wants to watch him dance, and Seungkwan and Mingyu coming in to offer everyone snacks

But Seungkwan’s kids are kind of fascinated with everything and Seungkwan just has fun exploring the world with them

HANSOL VERNON CHWE

Vernon’s kids see a side to him that no one else gets to see

They unlock a really deeply emotional part of him and he adores his kids

He really really loves the quiet moments with his kids

When they’re falling asleep watching cartoons

When they’re super concentrated on drawing in a coloring book

When they’re happily stuffing their faces full of food

He just lives for the moments where he can watch them enjoying life or figuring things out for the first time or really just existing 

He gets really really nervous about being a father bc he doesn’t want to mess anything up

But he knows that as long as he keeps his mind open to learning and keeps his kids’ best interests as his first priority, they should all be ok

Occasionally gets overwhelmed with how much he loves them and will just grab them and kiss all over the top of their heads 

Just a cute dad who really really loves his kids

LEE CHAN

Since he’s been babied by the other boys for so long, he loves being able to baby his kids

They are SPOILED beyond belief omg

He’ll buy them anything or do anything with them or cook anything for them just to see them smile and show them the love he has for them

Convinces his kids to take little dancing lessons from Uncle Hoshi, since Hoshi is jealous that everyone’s kids want to learn about song writing from Uncle Jihoon

Aside from Coups, Dino is probably the most excited that him and all the boys are still good friends even well into their fatherhood days bc it means his kids grow up with extra Uncles and tons of cousins

It’s also a relief to know that his kids have so many other people besides him they can trust to ask for help or advice

To him it’s just like SVT kept growing bigger and bigger

 They’re all one giant family and he wants to keep it that way bc he wants his kids to feel safe and supported their whole lives

#svt #seventeen #scoups imagines #jeonghan imagines #joshua imagines #jun imagines #hoshi imagines #wonwoo imagines #woozi imagines #dk imagines #mingyu imagines #minghao imagines #seungkwan imagines #vernon imagines #dino imagines #incorrect seventeen quotes #incorrect svt quotes #seventeen texts #seventeen snaps #seventeen reactions #seventeen scenarios #svt texts #svt snaps #svt reactions #svt scenarios #seventeen incorrect quotes #svt incorrect quotes #ot13 #seventeen ot13 #seventeen ot13 imagines

[starsinmylatte]

A Song Among the Stars

Chapter count: 2/?

Rating: Mature 🔞

Relationships: Grand Admiral Thrawn/Original Female Character

Tags:

Space Opera (literally)

Slow Burn

Slow Romance

Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con

Never by thrawn

Sexual Tension

Mix of Legends and Canon

Art Enthusiast Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo

Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo is protective of his muse

Ballroom Dancing

Imperial Star Destroyers (Star Wars)

Imperial Officers (Star Wars)

Angst and Romance

Canon-Typical Violence

Chiss (Star Wars)

Chiss Ascendancy (Star Wars)

Masquerade

The Empire shows off

Imperial style

Phantom of the Opera AU if you squint

Thrawn finds his muse

Total word count: 5,506

Chapter 1: Overture

Song suggestion: Reflections- Toshifumi Hinata

I lingered in the bath, fully understanding that I was only delaying the inevitable. The warm, aromatic water swirled around me as I began to dread the next few hours. Soon, the handmaidens assigned to prepare me for tonight would arrive to ensure my compliance.

At an earlier point in my life, I would have resisted all of their attempts to shove me into the various gowns, gems, and the absolutely appalling shoes that had been chosen for me. I had actually bitten the first girl that tried to change my outfit forcibly.

The handmaidens were all extremely wary of me after that incident, but, somehow, three of them had managed to become my only true friends on Coruscant. Despite my best intentions to hate everyone, Talle, Kaia, and Ahni were the only ones who bothered to understand my story.

Though each of us was from a different planet, we had all been taken from our homes by the Empire. We all served high-ranking Imperials, but my main role was different. I was a piece of Imperial propaganda. I was painted as the poor girl from the Outer Rim whose singing talent was discovered by the Empire and given a place to shine for the whole galaxy to see.

My train of thought was immediately interrupted by the sound of three very familiar sets of footsteps entering my room and a sing-song voice that rang out, “Oh Lyra! It seems that you’re stuck with us yet again.”

I let out a genuine snort before retaliating. “Kaia, you know nobody else wants to be anywhere near biting distance of me. You’d have to be personally requested by Lady Tarkin before anyone would consider switching jobs with you, and that’s saying something.”

I suddenly shuddered as I remembered my last encounter with her. Thankfully it had been brief, but it had still felt like an eternity. “That woman is so unpleasant.”

The second voice jokingly mused, “I don’t know, sometimes you can be almost as miserable as her. Now come on out of the bath. We have to start getting you ready.”

“Just five more minutes Talle.” I groaned, “I can just feel that tonight will be particularly long.”

Kaia laughed as she poked her head into the refresher and handed me a mug. “Somehow, I knew you’d say that, and that’s why we’re here ten minutes early.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Before you even begin to ask about it, here’s your shig.”

I shot Kaia a friendly scowl before immediately perking up at the mention of my favorite tea. I had always been partial to caf, but there was nothing better than a steaming cup of herbal tea before a performance. The citrusy scent of the behot immediately filled the small room, and holding the warm mug in my hands was instantly comforting. I let out a sigh of pure bliss, “Stars, you are a wonderful friend.”

Kaia winked before exiting the refresher. “Oh, I know.”

As I enjoyed the last few minutes of my bath, the tea brought back memories of my home. Before the Empire had taken me, a cup of shig and a hot bath would have been considerably rare, and the chances of both happening on the same day, even rarer.

Back on Ero, life was more mundane. My father always had quality goods on hand, but as a trader, he couldn’t just let his daughter drink all of his products. There were also no fancy bathtubs because they were a waste of precious drinking water, so almost everyone used sonic showers instead. I could resent the Empire all I wanted to, but there was no denying that I was at least well provided for. Somehow that made me hate my captivity even more.

I gripped my mug as I fought the other memories that tried to resurface. It had gotten easier to push them down as the years passed, but the pain was still there. Flashes of my capture, my time spent held on a Star Destroyer, the captain that had trapped me in his quarters…... The last thing I needed was to slip back into these memories.

Then there was a gentle hand on my shoulder. The sudden presence made me jump, but I saw Ahni’s smiling face when I looked up. Her face was both a comfort and a constant reminder that the Empire had hurt many people besides me. She had a beautiful deep green complexion marred by the scars from her capture that ran across her face and entire body. Ahni rarely spoke, but she was still extraordinarily expressive and always had ways to make her emotions known. Realization flashed across her face before she bent down and hugged me.

We shared an understanding moment of silence before Kaia yelled in from the other room. “Come on, Ly! We have to get you into all this kriffing fabric sometime today. I heard that we managed to get one of the better options, but tonight everything is special, so there’s more to do than usual.”

Stars, I almost forgot, I mentally berated myself. Tonight’s not only the biggest party I’ve been expected to perform at so far, but it’s the kriffing Masquerade too.

I immediately began cursing under my breath in every trade language I knew as I leapt from the bathtub, wrapped a robe around myself, and ran out of the refresher, closely followed by a very amused Ahni.

My apartment was quite lovely for basically being a prison. I had a plush bed with privacy curtains, a small vanity, a bedside table, a closet filled with outfits, and a tiny enclosed balcony. Having a private refresher made it very close to luxury.

I walked over to the vanity and had a seat. I had been prepared for Imperial events far too many times and knew the procedure that was about to happen by heart. I used to protest that I could get ready myself, but preparing for an Imperial ball required way more thought and perfection than anything else and by now, I put my trust in Kaia, Talle, and Ahni.

Tonight demanded absolute perfection.

The Masquerade was a collection and celebration of the Empire’s most significant members, and my role was to be the sparkling gem in the center of everything. I knew my true purpose tonight involved way more than my renowned singing ability. My presence tonight was pure propaganda. I was a message to every person on every planet in the Empire. This could be you. The Empire is generous. If this insignificant girl from the Outer Rim could be here, you could be here too.

I had already been warned about the consequences if I fell short of what was required tonight.

Hours later, the process was finally complete. Talle had powdered, colored, and shaded my face to her precise standards. She had even filled my lips in with a deep red pigment and darkened my eyelashes to complement my icy blue eyes. Not to be outdone, Kaia had coaxed my long blonde hair into an elegant, intricate updo inlaid with black and white quartz.

The dress came last, and it was stunning. When Ahni opened my closet, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. Whoever had selected it had undoubtedly wanted me to stand out. There would be no shortage of finery tonight, but I was to be resplendent.

Talle was completely astonished for a long moment before she spoke, “I do believe this is the least horrid thing they’ve picked out for you.”

Ahni nodded vigorously in agreement while Kaia and I remained utterly speechless. The dress was breathtaking, even just on the mannequin.

Getting into the dress was a three-person endeavor, but the struggle was utterly worth it. The long, form-fitting black dress perfectly hugged every curve from the floor up before tapering just slightly above my cleavage. There, the material shifted to the left, wrapped behind my neck, and then formed a sleeve that draped down my entire right arm. However, the most remarkable thing about the dress was the fabric. Any and every way that I moved caused the material to shimmer like the thousands of stars twinkling in the night sky.

I was provided a single thick, gold cuff for my left wrist, and even though the hem of the dress would cover them, heeled slippers made out of the same fabric as the dress.

Talle smiled and carefully handed me the final missing piece. “Now, now,” she jested, “you can’t go to a masquerade without this.”

The mask she handed me was so intricately ornate that it easily could have been mistaken for black lace, but it was actually made from a lightweight metal inlaid with dozens of sparkling diamonds. When I put it on, it rested just above my nose to conceal the upper half of my face beautifully.

As Kaia secured the whole thing in my hair with more pins and gemstones, Ahni produced a floor-length mirror from the closet. In my performances on Eros, I had worn dresses that were considered elegant in the Outer Rim, but there was no way they could ever compare to this. For the first time in my life, I was stunned at my appearance. I had never been overly confident, but now I felt absolutely beautiful.

Talle laughed, “Just try not to stop any hearts tonight. The Empire might lose important officers, and then we’d all be in trouble for making you look this good.”

Kaia placed a hand over her mouth to stifle her snickering, and Ahni looked highly amused by the thought.

I just rolled my eyes, “I think their partners would probably get to me first.”

That sent everyone over the edge, and we all laughed to the point of tearing up. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. Ahni went over to open it, and two officers decked out in their Imperial best stepped into the room. The shorter officer locked eyes with me and blushed furiously before looking away.

The taller one finally spoke, “Good evening Miss. We will be your escorts for the night. If you wouldn’t mind following us, we have a speeder waiting to take us to the venue.”

I smiled at the officer, “Thank you, I appreciate it. If you wouldn’t mind waiting outside, I’ll finish up and be out in a second.”

He nodded and signaled to the other man. They stepped outside, and I immediately pulled Ahni, Talle, and Kaia into a big hug. “Thank you all for your help and for being my friends; you make this so much more bearable. I’ll see you when I get back tonight.”

After a few seconds, we broke apart and finished our goodbyes. I smiled at my friends one last time before walking out of the room to join the officers.

________________________________________________

Chapter 2: Aria

Orchestra tuning: The Imperial March (Glory of the Empire)

Lyra’s final song: Roméo et Juliette, CG 9 Act 1: “Ah, je veux vivre danse ce rève” sung by Aida Garifullina

*TW* brief Attempted assault/non-con towards the end of the chapter

The officers outside of my door stood so close that I almost ran headfirst into the taller one when I stepped out.

“Apologies, Miss, we thought you’d be a little longer,” the man managed as he smoothly sidestepped me before acknowledging his previous blunder, “It also seems like we’ve forgotten to introduce ourselves.”

He briefly paused to take his place beside his partner before continuing. “My name is Captain Dreycolt, and this is Lieutenant Arkmad. It’s an absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance and we both actually have you to thank for our presence at the Masquerade tonight.”

Arkmad, who was still noticeably red in the face, nodded sagely. “None of the higher-ranking officers wanted to be stuck with a job at the party; however, the rest of us were fighting to even be included. We happened to fall at the perfect place on the pecking order,” he smiled slyly.

I raised a single eyebrow at Arkmad and gave him my most saccharine smile, “Well, I’m glad that this will be an enjoyable job for you, even though you’re stuck with me.”

His face flushed several shades deeper, and he started to stammer. “M-My apologies M-Miss. I n-never meant to imply….”

Dreycolt promptly tapped him on the shoulder to cut him off before turning back to me and smoothly taking my hand. In one fluid motion, he leaned forward, slowly raised it to his lips, and gallantly kissed the top of my hand. He smiled up at me through lowered lashes, “However, any job that is this beautiful couldn’t possibly be so bad.”

Now it was my turn to blush and I prayed the mask hid most of it because Dreycolt was definitely an attractive man. His caramel-colored hair was neatly trimmed with darker eyebrows and eyelashes framing his warm amber eyes. The uniform he wore fit him exceptionally well, and the slight stubble on his chin tickled my hand as he pressed his lips to it. After what felt like an eternity, he released his grip, and my hand returned to my side.

There was no doubt Dreycolt’s distraction from his lieutenant’s blunder had worked as intended. I could tell he knew as much from the slight smile that tugged at the corner of his lips.

“You flatter me, Captain. If all Imperial officers are as pleasant as you, perhaps tonight will be more enjoyable than I expected.”

Of course, all officers aren’t as kind or practiced in flattery, I thought darkly. These two seem bearable enough to talk to, so I’m at least grateful for that. After all, they’ll be keeping me company for most of the night when I’m not on the stage.

His annoyance at the situation briefly flashed in Arkmad’s eyes before he cleared his throat. He did not seem to enjoy being sidelined for his misstep.

“We should be on our way by now,” he chided. “The airspeeder has priority clearance to travel outside of normal traffic lanes, but I don’t want to explain why the Empire’s star performer is late for her practice time with the orchestra.”

He was, of course, right. Dreycolt jokingly bowed and gestured out into the hallway. “Lead the way, Miss.”

With the Captain and Lieutenant flanking me, I walked through the twisting hallways of the building towards the balcony where our airspeeder was docked.

I was still somewhat dreading the Masquerade, but at least the ride would be pleasant and I would even get to see the sky again. It sounded like such a small thing to enjoy, but coming from Ero to Coruscant was a massive shock in so many ways. I could always see the sky and the stars glittering at night in the Outer Rim but Coruscant was a completely different story.

Though my apartment was beautiful, it was nowhere near the skyline. I played an important role, but it was definitely not important enough for me to live among the rich and powerful. The towering buildings above me kept all traces of natural light from finding my little room, and while artificial light was better than living in the dark, it held no comparison to the real thing.

When we reached the airspeeder, Dreycolt jumped into the driver’s seat, and Arkmad helped me into the back before taking his place in the seat beside him. At the press of a button, a smooth, clear dome slid overhead and enclosed the craft.

I couldn’t resist making a joke. “For both your sakes, I’m glad there’s a roof. You would have to deal with my very unhappy hairstylist if her work was ruined.”

Dreycolt let out a deep-chested laugh, and even Arkmad’s stormy facade cracked into a smile before the airspeeder pulled away from the building, and we were finally on our way.

Since I was expected to be at the venue early to rehearse, night had not yet taken over the cityscape. The sky was cloudy as usual, but light still fell to glisten and reflect across the tops of the tallest buildings. The view was absolutely breathtaking.

I all but shoved my face against the clear dome to take in all of the incredible scenes spread out below. Thousands of speeders, taxis, and transports wove around the many buildings, each with a different purpose and destination. I was beyond captivated by all the people and their freedom to go wherever they pleased, whenever they wanted to.

Before I knew it, we had arrived at one of the most palatial homes on the highest level I had ever seen. Dreycolt stopped the speeder at the balcony, although calling it a balcony was a massive understatement, and Arkmad helped me out onto the landing. I had become accustomed to the splendor displayed by the most influential Imperials, but this was on another level entirely.

An enormous garden lay spread out beyond the balcony’s opulent landing pad. The path we walked down extended its way throughout the entirety of the grounds and wrapped around a massive central fountain before it continued up into a set of stairs that I could only guess led to the main ballroom.

Statues depicting the most famous Imperial victories lined both sides of the walkway, which eventually branched off to different garden sections on each side. Upon closer inspection, the central fountain proudly displayed the Imperial Crest carved into stone so dark it could’ve been mistaken for a solid shadow.

Every single hedge, bush, or flower we could see was maintained to standards of perfection that would impress even the Admiralty of the Imperial Navy. The sweet scent of the many exotic flowers lingered in the air, and the sounds of water trickling from the fountain made the garden almost seem peaceful.

Dreycolt let out a low whistle that made both the lieutenant and I jump. Evidently, he had passed the speeder off to another officer while we were distracted. “Stars. I had heard the constant squabbling over who would get to host led to an amazing result, but this is insane.”

Arkmad nodded, “Someone told me the Emperor personally picked the host and venue. I have no idea who was picked, but they certainly did an outstanding job with the preparations.”

“I wish I were able to walk around,” I sighed wistfully. “It’s been years since I’ve been in a real garden.”

Dreycolt smiled, “Well, Miss, perhaps after your performance, we can arrange that.”

The grin that crept across my face was hard to hide as that simple thought became all of the encouragement I needed to get through the night. As the three of us began the walk to the ballroom, I realized that whoever had designed the path had done so with women’s shoes in mind, as it was completely smooth and comfortable to walk on. Kriffing hell, they really thought of it all.

Before long, we reached the top of the stairs and entered the ballroom. I didn’t think anything would outshine the garden, but I was so very very wrong. The garden was the pinnacle of control and order, but the ballroom exuded absolute elegance.

As we reached the top of the stairs, another officer was waiting to announce our arrival, but I was so captivated by my surroundings that I barely heard what he said. Beyond him was the main dance floor. It looked to be made out of the same dark stone as the fountain, but it was polished so thoroughly you could easily see your reflection looking back at you if you looked down. At the far end of the room, a small but wide set of stairs led up to the stage where the orchestra was busily setting up. More stairs just inside the entrance led to the upper floor, which was filled with tables draped in brilliant white cloths for people to sit and enjoy the spectacle of the dancing below them. A massive, crystalline chandelier hung over the ballroom and blood-red sashes decorated the balconies.

There was so much more to see, but, unfortunately, I wasn’t there to spectate.

As I walked up to the stage, I stopped to greet the conductor of the orchestra; Skath Farri was an old friend from the conservatory where I had trained. He was invited to Coruscant for his considerable talents and was never permitted to leave. Now, he conducted the Imperial Orchestra. No one could know our relationship was anything more than professional, or we’d never see each other again.

“Ly! You look gorgeous, my dear.” He greeted me with the usual platonic kiss on the cheek and inconspicuous wink. “Are you ready to shine tonight?”

That was his unique way of checking in on me. He was very aware that I had never entirely given my voice, or heart, to the Empire. I followed orders and sang the songs they wanted, but the emotion that drove my greatest performances was still in the Outer Rim. There was a marked difference between my performances here and Ero, but only someone like Skath would ever notice. I still played my part of the obedient songbird, but I refused to give them all of me.

I smiled back at him. “Just about as ready as I’ll ever be. They sent me a rather impressive list of everything I’m to perform tonight. At the very least, I came prepared.”

Skath just smiled knowingly before he shooed me onto the stage to begin warming up with the orchestra. Time seemed to stop as I rehearsed, but before long, the guests started to arrive and I was sent over to wait in my spot in the backstage wings until it was time to perform.

I could only see the stage, but I heard names, both familiar and not, being announced upon their entrance. The ballroom began to fill with voices as the guests trickled in. All of a sudden, a musical cue played, and the room went deathly silent. A ghostly hologram flickered to life in the center of the stage, and the shadowy form of the Emperor appeared.

“Welcome, my friends. I trust you will all enjoy tonight as a celebration worthy of our great Empire.” He paused for applause before continuing. “Now, it is my wish that you use this time to reflect on the victories that brought us to this moment. I assure you there will be many more in the future.”

The Emperor stood for even more cheering before holding up his hand to silence the crowd. “Now, let my Masquerade begin!”

His hologram flickered slightly before disappearing altogether as the lights dimmed, cuing me to get on stage. I walked out to stand in the center of the stage, and as soon as I reached my place, the lights slowly returned to their former brilliance.

I was no stranger to performing, but having every single Imperial in the room staring at me was enough to give me butterflies in my stomach. Thankfully, before they could settle in, Skath cued the orchestra to begin with a flick of his baton. The opening notes of the first piece, a current favorite on Coruscant, swelled to life, and I began to sing.

Almost immediately, the officers and politicians turned to their spouses or began to venture off in search of a dance partner. The crowded dance floor began to clear slightly, as others had no interest in dancing and were only there to make connections. The first song ended with tremendous applause, and I began the second. You can do this. Just take it one piece at a time.

By now, I was calm enough to enjoy myself and to watch the dancing and it quickly became apparent that everyone in attendance had tried their best to impress. The ladies wore beautiful, elaborate dresses made out of the best materials and representing the latest fashions from every corner of the Empire. Politicians displayed the most richly colored and finely tailored clothing they owned and Imperial officers were in their usual dress uniforms, but no one was seen without a mask.

There were all kinds of masks on display. Some were crafted entirely from gems or precious materials to show off resources from their home planet. Others pulled designs from legendary animals or myths. There were even some covered in exotic feathers or flowers, but every mask was distinctive in its own way.

Hours passed as I continued to sing. Slowly but surely, I made my way through the extensive list of songs on the program until only one remained. The last song required using a specialized instrument, so I retreated to the wings for some water while it was being set up.

Suddenly, Skath appeared and sprinted towards me. He spun me around to face him fully, and I was in shock at how frazzled he looked. Even his voice was strained. “Lyra, you have to trust me. I have no idea who asked for this, but they were important enough to change the final song we planned. Every member of the orchestra was given the new sheet music, and a stand was set out for you.”

“They want me to sight-read a piece on a night as important as this?!” I gasped indignantly at the thought.

Skath’s face was grim. “No. You’ll know it, but you won’t be happy about it. We don’t have any time left, so we’ve got to get back on stage. For what it’s worth….. I’m so sorry.”

My stomach sank. If he was this upset… I had no idea what to expect. However, there was no choice but to walk back to my place on stage and pretend nothing had even happened. With every step, the sinking feeling in my stomach grew.

It was so much worse than I ever could’ve expected. There was no way anyone here besides Skath should know about this song, but here it was in front of me. It was my favorite piece of music and the only one I’d sworn to keep from the Empire forever. The piece that had been the star of my first major performance on Ero after I left the conservatory.

Before I could even finish my thought, the orchestra cued up. The first few notes began, and every single one of them felt like a knife to the heart. My muscle memory kicked in, and before I even knew it, I was singing.

Thoughts flew through my head while I choked my way through the opening verse. What would I do? Do I keep my promise and hold back, or do I seize the chance I was forced into and truly sing from my heart? Memories of Ero, my family, and my friends all returned as the song continued. My voice began to flow over the music as I made it my own. I remembered my father’s smile and how proud he’d been of me for my music.

Courage suddenly coursed through me like liquid fire. I’d show every kriffing Imperial here what a daughter of the Outer Rim was truly capable of! I was wrong to hold back my emotions before. They could take me, bring me to this place, and shove me on a stage, but they could never control my voice. The Empire wanted me to be their emotionless puppet. My voice wasn’t exactly quiet before, but now it rose to fill the entire ballroom. I was going to burn myself into the mind of every Imperial present. Whoever requested this song would not see me subdued; they would see me triumphant. I poured every ounce of bottled-up emotion into my music, and my voice soared. Then, I had sung the final note, and it was all over.

You could’ve heard a code cylinder drop in the ballroom after the orchestra finished. The dancing had all but stopped, and people were leaning over the balcony to watch me. I curtsied, preparing to exit the stage and receive whatever punishment was in store for kriffing up the Masquerade, but then the thunderous applause began.

I kept my curtsy for as long as possible before my knees started to buckle. Everything left in me had gone into the song, and I barely made it into the wings before I collapsed. Fortunately, Captain Dreycolt was there to catch me before I hit the floor.

I smiled weakly at him. “Since the orchestra is taking it from here, now might be a good time for me to get some fresh air.”

He grabbed Arkmad, and together they helped me out one of the side doors into the garden. I didn’t want to be seen in my weakened state, but thankfully the garden was empty. Most people seemed to be still dancing or otherwise occupied. Those that were in the garden didn’t appear to have ventured this far.

Dreycolt stopped and pointed at the hedge maze, “There’s a small sitting area in the middle. The only way in or out is through the maze. Why don’t we take you to it so you can rest? Arkmad and I will stand at the entrance and exit to make sure you aren’t bothered.”

I had no complaints; the idea sounded fantastic. We made our way through the maze until we reached the center. It was small and only had enough room for a bench, but it was paradise to me. Arkmad helped me onto the bench before making his way to the exit. Dreycolt gave me one last worried glance, turned around, and headed back towards the entrance. The crisp night air felt wonderful on my face, and I began to relax. I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and started to feel normal again.

The sudden sound of footsteps startled me. Assuming it was Dreycolt or Arkmad, I rose to meet them. For the second time that night, I was profoundly incorrect. A cold, sly voice broke the silence as the face that haunted my dreams stepped into the area. “Hello, Lyra. I bet you thought you’d never see me again.”

Icy fear washed over me as I was thrown into complete shock. Standing in front of me was Girerd Bost, the captain that took me from my home and attempted to violate me in every way possible. The starlight shone on his face, illuminating his narrow, glacial eyes and the nasty scar to the right of them. I hissed at him, “Captain Bost, what an unpleasant surprise.” I gestured to his scar, “It’s a real shame that didn’t heal better.”

He had the decency to look hurt by my cutting words as he moved his pale hair to the side and softly traced the scar. “Unfortunately for you, it’s Commodore Bost now.”

Before I could even blink, he lunged at me, grabbed me by the throat, and shoved me down onto the bench. Bost leaned forward and whispered into my ear. “Those two boys waiting for you were certainly brave. They tried to argue with me, but they couldn’t disobey a direct order from a Commodore no matter how much they wanted to.”

He paused briefly to trace his other gloved hand over my face. His touch revolted me and made my skin crawl; he seemed to take pleasure in my discomfort before continuing, “Now, there’s no one nearby to interrupt us…”

At that moment, he made the mistake of stroking my lips. It was my turn to lunge forward, and I bit down on his hand hard. Bost screamed and released my throat to grab his bleeding fingers. I leapt up from the bench and bolted past him, sprinting as fast as possible towards the maze’s entrance and praying that I wouldn’t hit a dead end. He was chasing me by this point, screaming obscenities and threats of what he would do to me. Finally, an opening in the hedges appeared. I glanced behind me to see if Bost was close behind, but as soon as I turned my head, I suddenly collided with a very large, solid thing.

The hedges made it way too dark for me to see, but from the soft grunt I heard during the collision, it was another man. I recoiled backward defensively as Bost rounded the corner. The mysterious man glanced at him, looked back at me, and seemed to judge the situation quickly. He swiftly stepped in front of me to block Bost’s path. At this point, all my dignity flew out the window, and I hid behind his tall figure. I just had to trust fate that I was better off with him than with the Commodore. In contrast to Bost’s loud cursing, the other man’s voice was impossibly soft and collected when he spoke. “Commodore, I believe this woman would like to be left alone.”

Still distracted by his hand, Bost howled, “Just who do you think you…..”. He looked up at the man and abruptly shut his mouth. Before he could re-open it, my unknown hero spoke again. This time his voice had a definite edge, and an unrecognizable accent slightly marred his words.

“I am Grand Admiral Thrawn of the Seventh Fleet. I trust you will have no further issues with me asking you to leave.”

#grand admiral thrawn #thrawn #thrawn fanfic #fanfic #ao3 #also on ao3 #star wars rebels #star wars the clone wars #star wars legends #Thrawn x oc #mitt'raw'nuruodo

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Comic-con.”

You guys wanted something fluffier and lighthearted, so I took a suggestion from a group of the Discord server, and did this with it I hope you guys like, and thank you for the suggestions.  “Where are you taking me? And why am I wearing this?”

Adam frowned at her, “Don’t be such a party pooper, I took you to watch MMA last week, and now its my turn to pick the fun activity.”

Sunny held up the glowing weapon --of facsimile of a weapon--, “What is this called again.”

“It’s an energy sword, from a really REALLY old video game.”

“And what are you supposed to be.”

Adam turned to look at her, shaking his head in disappointment, “Sometimes, I am sad for your lack of pop culture education.”

“And whose fault is it for my lack of pop culture education?”

He tapped his chin, “I suppose that is true.” 

“To be fair the pop culture you subscribe to is like two thousand years old.” She looked him up and down. He was wearing a spacesuit and a jetpack. This might have been normal for him were it not for the painstaking hours that he had spent painting the thing and applying decals.

Where the standard issue UNSC space - suit ranged anywhere from white to silver to dark blue, this one was in a gaudy combination of white with green and purple highlights with a blue decal on the front embossed with the outline of stylized white wings. Under that, he had taken the time to dye one of the old undersuits purple, and was now wearing the hood to complete ‘the affect’

“Seriously though. What are You?”

He turned to look at her grinning and patted her on the shoulder, “Just wait.”

She sighed and did as told following him out of the underground parking lot and up into the sun. She threw her hand over her face as they came up into the sun, and when she withdrew her hand, she found herself surrounded by hundreds of humans all walking towards the same destination, and all of them were dressed, strangely… she couldn’t tell which ones for sure, because humans always seemed to dress strangely, but something bout this gave her the feeling that these ones were doing it on purpose..

At her side, Adam was grinning.

Following the line of people her eyes traced up to the large, and spacious building just up ahead. The walls were made out of metal and glass paneling, and across their surface scrolling scenes from movies and comic strips flashed.

Off to her side, a man in a blue and red suit, with a big yellow S on the front went floating past, his hover boots giving him the effect as if he were flying, red cape billowing out behind him.

Someone else to their side was walking a rather large brown dog towards the building. It had a teel collar and a couple of painted on black spots, while he was wearing a  green shirt and brown pants. He looked like he really needed a haircut.

Sunny tilted her head to better read the letters on the building before her.

J. HAIL CONVENTION HALL 

They were just outside the doors when someone ran up to them. THey looked younger, maybe in their teens, dressed with an elaborately colored wig, and strange colorful clothes, “Holy Shit! Your costumes are awesome, Can I get a picture?”

“Hell yeah.” Adam motioned the kid closer, pulling Sunny down beside them so the kid could grab a picture and then turn to look at Sunny, “How did you make it look so real. You look just like the Drev from that movie.” 

She stared at him before looking down at herself.

Adam laughed, “It looks real because it IS real.”

The kid stared at them in disbelief, “No way.”

“Yeah she's a real life actual alien.”

Eyes went even wider, I...w...wow.” 

Sunny shrugged and waved one of her arms to the kid as Adam dragged her further up the line.

“Here, hold out your hand.” She did as told and he wrapped a small plastic bracelet around her wrist. The letters on the band read VIP

Walking over to the doors they were stopped by a group of people holding up their hands. One of them walked around them, and pointed at Adam’s jetpack, “YOu have a licence for that?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” 

He reached into one of the pockets on his suit and pulled it out to show them. THey looked it over and then nodded, and he grinned. Tey read off some rules before they were suddenly interrupted.

Voices behind them, and Sunny turned.

A group of people walked up, one of them was dressed like a cowboy with a yellow shirt and blue pants, with a brown hat.

Another human in a blow up dinosaur costume pointed at Adam’s uniform,

“And what does that button do.”

Adam grinned, and Sunny watched him with a fond shake of her head as he approached them, putting on some sort of character voice.

“Ill show you.” Looking around to make sure that everyone was clear, he deployed the wings of the jetpack, striped in red and white.

The group oohed and ahhed.

THe cowboy moved forward, “Oh what, these are plastic, he can’t fly.”

“They are a trillium carbonic alloy and I CAN fly.”

“No you can’t”

“Yes I can.”

“Can’t.”

“CAN.”

“Can’t Can’t Can’t.”

“I could fly around this convention center with my eyes closed.”

Sunny just stood there watching them nervously shifting back and forth. She had a feeling that they were arguing, but it also felt very scripted, though how it could be scripted, she didn’t know. They had never seen these people as far as she was concerned.

The other man moved very close, “Ok then my light beer, prove it.”

“Alright then, I will.”

He held out his hands voice growing a bit more serious as he did, “Everyone step back.”

They did as told, and the cowboy was smiling now instead of frowning.

“Adam, is this legal.” Sunny wondered.

He turned to look at her, “Yes, the convention center has its own airspace just for this. I had to sign a waver.” He turned back to the others and ignited the engin on the jetpack kicking off the ground.

His flight was far more controlled than his original flight, and he flew in a fast circle around the area, dropping in with a flip to land before them to the cheering of an amassed crowd.

He pointed at the cowboy, “CAN.”

“That wasn’t flying, that was falling with style.” The man protested though he was grinning even as he walked over to take a picture with Adam.

“Pretty sure that made my day, your costume is awesome. Is this a real spacesuit.”

“You bet it is.”

“Where did you get your hands on one.”

“Oh I have my sources. Did you make your costume?”

“Sewed it myself. The hat and boots I bought though.”

They parted ways with Adam’s new friend and stepped inside the convention center scanning their bracelets as they went in.

“Welcome, Sunny to the biggest nerd convention ever conceived of by man...ComicCon.”

She turned in a wide circle eyes wide at thousands of booths, thousands of people all talking and laughing. He grabbed her hand and dragged hr further inside, “IF your good, I’ll buy you a sword.”

“Nerds want swords?”

He raised an eyebrow at her, “Of course nerds want swords. Here, lets start over there and movie this way, through the art section first.”

Sunny did as told, following after him.

She never knew Adam being one to spend a lot of money, he had no reason too, but after the first ten minutes she figured out that he was a little bit of a spender when it came to nerdy things. Posters and drawings and other related items.

However, she was surprised to find that they did have leather workers and blacksmiths as they were called, and she did…. In fact… get herself a sword which she recognized from the lord of the rings movie he had made her watch. It was a pretty good sword all things considered as if whoever made it actually knew how to make swords.

They were coming around a corner when they almost ran into another group of people. Adam dropped one of his bags and the other reached down to pick it up. When he stood, Sunny's eyes widened. Blond hair green eyes and an eyepatch, “Sweet Costume!”

She shook herself thinking she had bumped her head or something and was seeing double, but no, when she looked closer she realised that this person couldnt have been more than fifteen or sixteen…. And dressed like Adam.

She looked over at Adam who was standing mouth open eyes wide.

“Can I get a picture!”

Sunny just nodded her head as the kid jumped over next to her and had his friend take it before running off yelling back at her about her amazing costume.

Adam turned to look at Sunny, “Did I just>”

“I think you did.”

He shook himself, “Wow.”

She nodded 

After that it started happening more and more. 

Adam was everywhere, in all stages of life. They had recreated his uniforms, his flight suits, his space suits. They brought their dogs. There were even gender bent versions of him, blond women wearing eyepatches, brown jackets and jeans making it very clear who they were .

It got even more weird when Sunny started seeing herself.

Small children in costumes made of foam.

People wearing onesies that sort of looked like her, and even one costume that had a woman on stilts for her legs, and a complex system of homemade mechanics to allow her to move around.

Adam stood there mouth open just staring at them.

Sunny laughed at the irony.

He was here as a guest, and no one knew.

If only they had any idea that the real deal was here and dressed like a space ranger from a two thousand year old cartoon.

Sunny tilted her head listening to the announcements which said there would be a “Adam Vir look alike contest going on on the other side of the convention.

She turned to look at Adam and they  both began to laugh hysterically. She grabbed his arm. We have to see this.

They wandered over just as the others were filtering in. And there were TONS of them, all dressed like Adam. One stopped next to him, spiky blond hair, clearly dyed for the occasion, wearing a flight suit and aviators.

Adam Tried to avoid eye contact with anyone as they sat down to watch, however no one recognized him, not even close.

They sat, watching the judging.

An adorable little boy with blond hair and a NASA T-shirt won for the younger age bracket.

The jumpsuit wearing kid to their right won for his teenage years.

At the end it was up between two men, one in casual wearing and one in a uniform. The one wearing the uniform had a similar lopsided grin as Adam and she would have chosen him as a dead ringer, and was almost put off when they chose the other man, who was, on the other hand, roguishly handsome.

She snorted, “He looks nothing like you.”

“But he does look like Keith Jenning who played me, so I guess people sort of conflate us as being the same person.”

“This is so unreal.”

They laughed again as they walked away sunny pointing out he probably would have lost the contest if he had tried to enter, and he laughed along with her.

THey were perusing through a booth with a bunch of old vintage movies when another announcement came over the intercom, saying that the cast of Adam’s movie was going to be speaking.”

Adam’s eyes widened, and together they made their way wanting to see what all the fuss was about. There were hundreds of people packed into the large room, and they were only able to get space just along one wall.

Up at the table, he recognized Keith Jenning, Rita. Ortiz, and Adler Handen, the voice actor for Krill and the woman who played Sunny.

Adam leaned back against the wall to watch.

Keith didn’t look anything like Adam at this moment, his hair back to brown like it usually was.

Hands raised in the crowd as questions were shot out, “What was the hardest part of playing Adam Vir?”

Keith laughed and then paused, “I think it might have been the eyepatch. I stubbed my toe like…. What was it Rita, we kept track on set.”

“About 456 times during the course of filming.” She added, and the group of them laughed.

“How accurate is the story to what actually happened?” Someone called out

Adler Handen leaned forward, “You know it was actually pretty accurate because Adam Vir was actually consulting through the whole process, though I think it is glammed up to make him look maybe a little more….”

“Poised.” Rita added, “Ellis gave him a bit of an action hero spin.”

“What is he actually like?”

Keith smiled as did Rita, “He’s hilarious, and kind, and a bit of a clutz I would say.”

Rita laughed, “That is one part of the movie that is inaccurate. I think they should have put it in, but he was like the last man to step onto Proxima B, and when he did he says he actually fell out of the shuttle and landed on his face.”

There was laughter from the crowd.

“Honestly a really modest guy all told.

“He has the personality of a golden retriever…. In a good way obviously.” Rita said

Keith had stood up from his palace at the table and was looking around the crowd for more questions, when his eyes fell on Adam and Sunny not a few rows away leaning against the wall.

The recognition was instantaneous, despite them not having seen for a long time. He pointed his eyes wide, “Adam…. Adam is that you. Sunny?”

The entire crowd turned and thousands of eyes fell on them.

Adam was stuck like a deer in the headlights hands held up.

“No way It IS YOU. Someone grab a chair and get him up here.” 

Rita stood in her seat and waved.

Now people were standing to get a good look at them as two security people motioned them up.

Adam was bright red in the face as he was pushed to come on stage. The people looked confused, but when Adam pulled off his hood, and pulled on his eyepatch the entire convention center began cheering.

“Yeah give the man a round of applause.” Keith said pulling out a chair for him to sit on while Rita did the same for Sunny.

Adam shifted awkwardly in his seat.

“Nice costume, is that from Toy story?”

Adam shrugged, ‘Yeah, or the Tv show I guess.”

Someone hurried over with another microphone as the crowd below continued to babble and point.

Keith leaned forward, “Did I mention he was a raging nerd. Did you wear the costume to hide or….”

Adam shook his head, “No, I've been coming to the convention since I was a kid.”

There was cheering in the crowd.

Hands were raised high into the air for questions, and Adam blinked a bit red in the face still.

“Is it true what they said about Proxima B?”

Adam smiled, “uh yeah I fell flat on my face, right out the door. You see the movie had a ramp, but a ot of our ships don’t have ramps, they have doors because it would kind of be…. Impractical to have a whole ramp opening up into an airlock. So instead it had a door and stairs. And I got so excited that I missed the second stair and just fell.

“How accurate is the rest of the movie?”

He shrugged, still blushing, “They did make me look a little more… heroic, than I actually am. I mean there is a little known fact among members of the UNSC that doing a warp without a warp dampener like we did on the Enterprise was…. How shall we say… extremely hard on the body. About fifty percent of the men on the bridge peed themselves and passed out.”

There was laugher from the crowd.

“Were you part of the fifty percent?”

He snorted, “ I was nineteen of COURSE I was part of the fifty percent. Captain Kelly had a bladder of Iron though.”

More laughter.

“And when it came to meeting with aliens for the first time, I was so excited that I ran after them right….. Well as it turns out, to the aliens it looked really, really bad. Like they thought I was going to eat them.” More laughter, “We are still trying to repair human/Bran relations five years later because of me.”

More questions.

“What is your funniest story, something that didn’t appear in the movie?”

Adam had to think about it for a minute, “Did  I ever tell you about the first time we met Iotins or the Celzex.”

Cheering in the crowd,.

“Ok ok, so The one thing you need to know about Iotins is that they smell good, and I don’t mean your girl’s perfume good, I mean like continental breakfast with bacon and eggs and potatoes and I don’t know what else.” Sunny smiled as she listened to the sound of the crowd’s amusement, “This is the kind of smell that turns you into one of pavlov’s Dogs. Drooling all over yourself stomach grumbling the whole nine. So when we met them for the first time, it was during a GA convention and my men hadn’t eaten since breakfast. It was so bad, I drooled all over my uniform and we scared the Iotin council half to death.”

He smiled as the crowd encouraged him into more stories.

“Then of course there is the Celzex, a very war-like race, very honor bound and very easy to offend. And yet they are about a foot tall rainbow colored, fluffy and with  adorable pig ears. These guys were designed to be cuddled, and yet, not one human has ever done it for fear of pissing them off since they have weapons that could glass our entire planet.”

He was Animated as he told his stories, and the crowd was animated with him

“Sunny, i have a question.” She lifted her head in surprise, “Is it true you grew up in a stone hut/”

She hummed deep in her chest, “Yes, where else would I have grown up.”

“So you didn’t have electricity?”

She shook her head, “No, why would we need it?”

She answered a few more questions.

And then one young man stood.

“So, I was wondering, you supported the LFIL during their protests.”

Adam shifted nervously in his seat, “I did.”

“And it’s because of you that they are in a probationary state of legality.”

“Yes.”

.”“So I was wondering, considering all that and considering your relationship with Sunny. Have you tow ever thought about dating.” Adam blanched white and you could have heard a pin drop.

Sunny glanced quickly over at adam. A part of her really wanted him to admit it to people, but another part of her-- the bigger part-- knew that doing it here in front of thousands of people would be a disaster. He opened his mouth to stammer out a question but Sunny leaned forward towards her mic.

“You misunderstand Drev courting customs. He would have to be able to beat me in a fight first.

Factions of the room muttered, and Sunny quickly moved the conversation on to more Funny stories.

Adam turned his head towards her with a look of relief.

With her head turned form the cameras she gave him a brief wink before turning back.

They didn’t exactly get to see the rest of the convention as they were waylaid by people wanting autographs and to talk to him. He of course was good natured and answered all their questions with a smile and gave pictures with enthusiasm.

She smiled

He was kind like that.

Thought some worries gnawed at the back of her mind.

People were beginning to suspect, and that could be a big problem for Adam.

[doshmanziari]

Musical Offerings for the New Year || What is “Radical Music” in 2021?

Near the end of 2020, a bunch of musicians populating a chatroom, including myself, each submitted ten minutes’ worth of our work to another musician, Chimeratio, who generously compiled it all into a set totaling nearly ten hours.¹ The work didn’t need to be new; just what we thought might best represent our abilities/style(s) and/or perhaps what we were especially pleased with. The set premiered in late January. Since I have some tentative plans for reorienting Brick By Brick this year, while not overriding its emphases, I wanted to share that music with anyone who’s interested.

I compiled the four videos into a playlist, although you can also access them individually: here (1), here (2), here (3), and here (4). If you care to, and are on a computer, you can also view the accompanying chatlog and read people’s responses from when they were listening to the live broadcast.

The compulsion for this project was sparked by excited discussions over and usage of the term “digital fusion”, most helpfully propagated by Aivi Tran, designating a computer-based body of work that for years lacked the rooftop of a commonly agreed upon genre-name. While describing my music has never been a big concern, even if it’s usually felt impossible (what, for example, is this? or this? I dunno!), I’ve appreciated how the spread and application of this term has brought together people who may have felt isolated.²

As “digital fusion” gained designative traction, I witnessed the activity in the aforementioned chatroom explode over the course of a few days. Before, a day’s discussion might’ve been a few dozen messages; now, there were dozens of messages every half-minute. This had positive and negative ramifications, the negative being that conversations often proceeded at a pace of rapidity which precluded concentrated thought. Eventually, I bowed out because the rapidity exceeded my threshold for meaningful interaction; but I was glad that significant invigoration was going on.

I wanted to share this music also because it intersects with thoughts and talks I’ve been having stemming from the question, “What is ‘radical music’ in 2021?” This was stimulated by a 2014 talk given by the writer Mark Fisher, wherein he contends that, were we to play prominent “cutting edge” music from now to people twenty years ago, very nearly none of it would be aesthetically shocking, bizarre, or revelatory (think of playing house music to an audience in the early 1960s!). Fisher also observes a trend of returning to music which once was seen as the future -- as if, deprived of a shared prograde vision, imaginations turn hazily retrograde; ergo, genres such as synthwave or albums like Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.

It isn’t my goal here to argue about the “end of history.” Fisher’s time-travel hypothetical, however, rings loud and true to me. Visible musical radicalism has, for at least a decade, been strictly extra-musical, in the sense of songs like “This is America” or “WAP”, where one’s response is primarily to the spectacle of the music video, the performer’s identistic markers, and/or the manner in which the lyrics intersect with (mostly US-centric) ideological hotspots. Musically, there is really nothing radical here. Any vociferous condemnations or defenses of a song like “WAP” deal in moralizing reactions to semantics or imagery: how progressive or regressive is the political aspect? how propelled or repelled are we by the word “pussy”?

It would be a mistake, and simply wrong, to assert that the only music one can enjoy escapes the parameters outlined above; and my inability to coherently categorize some of my own music hardly raises that portion to the status of radicality. But the question here pertains to what is being made, and I think that if we’re going to seriously consider the nature of truly radical music today, we do need to question if such a quality can prominently exist when our hyper-fast consumerist cycle seems to forbid not just sustained, lifelong relationships to artwork but also the local, unhurried nourishment of creative gestation. Now, in my opinion, there are good, even great, examples of radical music still being made in deep Internet-burrows, and for evidence of that I would offer some of the material contained in the linked playlists. Moreover, I’d say that this quality can exist in part because these little artistic communities are so buried.

Let me share a quote that another person shared with me recently:

For culture to shift, you need pockets of isolated humanity. Since all pockets of humanity (outside of the perpetually isolated indigenous people in remote wilderness) are connected in instantaneous fashion, independent ideas aren’t allowed to ferment on their own. When you cook a meal, you have to bring ingredients together that have had time to grow, ferment, or decompose separately. A cucumber starts out as a seed, then you mix it with the soil, water and sunlight. You can’t bring the seed, soil, water and sunlight to the kitchen from the get-go. When you throw those things in to the mixture without letting them mature, the flavor cannot stand out on its own. Same thing with art and fashion. A kid in Russia can come up with a new way to dance, gets filmed on a phone, it goes viral quickly but gets lost in the morass of all of the other multitudinous forms of dance. Sure it spread far and wide, but it gets forgotten in a week. In the past, his new art form would have been confined locally, nurtured, honed, then spread geographically, creating a distinct new cultural idiosyncrasy with a strong support base. By the time it was big enough to be presented globally, it was already a cultural phenomenon locally. This isn’t possible anymore. We’re consuming too many unripened fruits.

The main impression I have here is that radical music today will, and must be, folk music. Our common idea of folkiness might be the scrappy singer strumming a guitar, but my interpretive reference rather has to do with the idea of a music being written, first of all, for one’s self, and then shared with a small-scale community, which in turn helps the artist grow at their own pace. This transcends a dependence upon image, the primacy of acoustic instrumentation, or the signaling of sincerity versus insincerity. It is a return to the valuation of outsider art, so rare nowadays. As someone who I was recently in dialogue with wrote, “Where can you find new genuine folk music? Pretty much just with your friends, imo. Even then, the global world is so influential and seeps into any crack it can find. I think vaporwave was radical and folk for a while. Grant Forbes made that music way before the world knew about it.”

Sometimes, a lot of fuss is made over what’s seen as “gatekeeping” within certain communities. It can be, depending on the context, justifiable to question and critique this behavior. At other times, the effort of maintaining a level of exclusivity, of retaining an idiosyncratic shapeliness to the communal organism, can be a legitimate attempt to protect the personal, interpersonal, and cultural aspects from the flattening effect of monoculture. Hypothetically, I welcome the Castlevania TV series and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate having introduced new and younger demographics to Castlevania. In actuality, stuff like “wholesome sad gay himbo Alucard”, image macros, and neurotic “stan” fanfiction being what’s now first associated with the series makes me want to put as much distance as possible between my interests and those latecoming impositions.

The group-terminology David Chapman uses in his essay “Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths in Subculture Evolution” is kinda cringey, but some of the cultural/behavioral patterns he lays out are relevant to the topic. Give it a look. If we cross his belief that “[subcultures] are no longer the primary drivers of cultural development” with our contemporary consume-and-dispose customs, we’re left with the predicament of it’s even worth attempting to bring radical/outsider art beyond its rhizomatic habitat. This is troubling, because it would mean that artistic radicality no longer might not only refuse to but cannot encompass cultural upheaval. It would be like if dance music were invented and -- instead of progressively permeating nightlife, stimulating countercultural trends, and ultimately being adapted as the basis for pop music globally -- only were listened to via headphones by a few thousand people on their own, stimulated a group meeting once a year or two, and never affected music beyond a niche-within-a-niche. That’s a very sad picture to me.

⁂

¹ Chimeratio has also maintained an excellent blog on here dedicated to looking at videogame music written in irregular time signatures, far preceding higher-profile examinations like 8-bit Music Theory’s video on the same topic.

² For myself, creative isolation has had its uses, because it has led me down routes that are highly personalized. The isolation can be dispiriting too. Although a lot of my music is videogame-music-adjacent, almost none of it uses “authentic” technology, such as PSG synthesizers or FM synthesis; and the identification of those sounds is fairly important for recognition.

#music analysis #radicalism #digital fusion

[apr1cots]

my sweet bbs @frenchmarshmalloww, @lucienneart, and @phoebedelia tagged me to do this and i haveee never done a tag before so here i am. 

here are tiny glimpses into my life through my babies

a handful of birthdays

he’d been dreading the day for weeks. it didn’t matter who wished him happy birthday, because he knew that the one person who really mattered wouldn’t say a word. his heart ached in a way he hadn’t thought was survivable and in his darkest moments, he still didn’t know how he could possibly keep on living. nothing was right without draco and it wasn’t fair that he felt so empty when draco appeared to be completely fine. how could draco be so okay without him? draco lived in his head, their arguments playing on a loop. but more than that, harry couldn’t stop thinking about the good times, the best times.

not to start us off in a dark place but lol. my best friend from the age of 5 years and i dated and in the end it led to the  brutal demolition of our friendship. losing that longterm friendship with someone who knew every inch of my soul shattered my heart pretty bad. i wrote this the day before my birthday, knowing i wouldn’t hear from him. i didn’t. and it hurt like hell.

wolf

i was just staring at my suit across the room while the minutes ticked on and i kept telling myself i’d stand up in just a moment and then it was half ten and it was too late and i closed my eyes and forced myself to sleep so i didn’t have to think about everyone who would be upset with me. 

this is how my depression feels so much of the time. the avoidance and the sickening weight of wanted so desperately to be productive or to go to the thing. having your true self begging you to get up and clean your room but a thousands voices drowning that voice in your head out screaming you can’t you can’t you can’t.

love letter

his shaking fingers traced draco’s name in the white marble remembering again that it would never get easier. 

losing people changes your heart forever. 

caught

draco’s hand caught scorpius’ wrist just before he dipped a finger in the frosting.

“and what exactly do you think you’re doing?”

i love children! i’ve always been surrounded my children in my family and i’ve done quite a bit of nannying. i prefer children over adults any day of the week. when i was very tiny i wanted to be a grandma when i grew up.

cruel summer

the cracks in the weathered leather of the passenger seat of the dark green tr6 caught on harry’s trousers as he shifted in the warmth of the dying embers of the sun’s valiant effort at an indian summer, so rare in his corner of the world. trees flew past his peripheral vision, blurred as he focused on the road ahead.

my dad has a cute little red tr6 and i LOVE it. going for drives in the summer is one of the best feelings in the world. my dad loves an indian summer night and they always make me think of him. plus taylor swift, of course. 

strangers in the night

harry had grown to hate the sunrise. the soft unfurling colors were a stinging reminder that he should be asleep, that he only had half a handful of hours before he had to start a new day, and that his own sanity was spiraling out of control in the stilted slow motion of the hours when everyone else was asleep. the sunrise filled him with a thick, creeping self loathing every time, molasses filling his belly and settling like a rock. 

insomnia has let me see far too many sunrises that i didn’t want to see. and it always fills me with guilt because i should have tried harder to sleep and if i had only done all of my work on time and worked out and x, y, and z then i would be a better person. 

harry styles giving harry potter bi panic 

when zayn left the band, he and ginny went on a drive around london, listened to spaces and bawled.

i did this!! with my sister. though, not in london. we were devastated the day zayn left the band i will never forget it and we were driving and listening to one direction and spaces came on and we just turned towards one another halfway through, eyes full of tears, and knew. 

just friends 

It felt like Harry was the first thing he had ever really wanted that he couldn’t have. And it was all his fault.

pining for your best friend is the WORST!! certifiably. i hate it. been there. done that. couldn’t be me again haha. mine did end up in a relationship but not like this!!!

this ended up way longer than i intended and also p depressing haha. but pain creates art so. ily all and i tag @moonstruckwytch & @nv-md & everyone

#meeee #drarry #harry potter

[ladyfogg]

May I? - 23/?

May I? - 23/? 

Fic Summary: Ensign Faith Diaz struggles to hide her mental illness from her fellow shipmates aboard the Enterprise until an intrigued Data goes out of his way to try to understand her behavior. At his insistence, Faith tries to figure out what she’s truly passionate about and eventually seeks the professional help she needs. Fic Masterpost.

Fic Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Data/Female OC

Warnings: tw: depression, tw: anxiety, fluff, friends to lovers, eventual smut

Screenshot by @geekygwen​

Sharing a space with someone else was a new experience for Data. He had spent hours on end with Faith in the past, however, having her there with him after his shift or on his days off brought a new level of intimacy. His bed was now their bed and his quarters were now their quarters. 

Her clothes hung in the closet next to his. He even had set up a terminal for her across the room from his and occasionally they worked together. 

The transition did have a few minor inconveniences as sharing a space normally would. However, through communication, the two were able to establish boundaries. For example, Faith would pick up after herself and Data would not rearrange her belongings without asking.

All in all, it was a positive experience. 

They had not told many people about the arrangement. Data had improved on keeping the details of their relationship private, limiting any questions to a select number of confidants. 

With his and Faith's relationship on solid ground, Data turned his focus to his upcoming art show. The closer the date approached, the more it consumed his thoughts. He found himself having difficulty narrowing down which paintings to showcase as he had painted thousands over the years. Faith helped with the event details themselves, such as food, decorations, etc. It was turning into a wonderful joint effort between the two.

Data sat at his console, running diagnostics while simultaneously organizing his artwork yet again. He heard the door open and glanced up to find Faith entering their quarters.

"Ten Forward is looking great," she said. "Guinan took over decorating and kicked me out." When she saw him at his console, she sighed. "You were there when I left hours ago. Shouldn't you take a break?"

"You are well aware I do not need to rest." Data continued to work. "The show is twenty-two hours away and I have yet to decide on which paintings to display. Aside from the ones involving you, of course."

Faith crossed the room and moved to stand behind him. Her hands ran up his arms to rest on his shoulders. "There is such a thing as over-thinking, babe. You need a distraction."

"There is not much that can consume my thoughts enough to qualify as a distraction."

Data found his console blocked by Faith as she slid her body onto the smooth surface. Her legs moved to trap him between them, forcing Data to look up to meet her eye.

"I can think of one thing," she said with a flirtatious smirk.

Intrigued, Data studied her. "You are attempting to seduce me in order to take my mind off my problem."

"Correct." Faith cupped his face as she leaned forward, eyes shining with excitement. "Also, I believe making love in a work-like setting was on your list. Number thirty-two, right?"

"Thirty-three," Data corrected. "Thirty-two involved the armchair, remember?"

"Mmmm, yes I do."

When she kissed him, Data closed his eyes and surrendered to the sensation. He had grown used to the strange tugging feeling in his stomach when they touched and the way his hands seemed to move on their own accord, coming to rest on Faith's thighs. 

Before they could go any further, however, Data found his mind too preoccupied. He drew back and gave her an apologetic smile.

"I am afraid it is not working."

Faith smiled back, running her hand through his hair. "It was worth a try. I figured it would be a long shot. Do you want me to leave so you can keep working?"

"I would rather you stay."

Faith slid off the console and placed a kiss on his forehead. "Whatever you need."

Data returned to work. "I would appreciate your input on the pieces for the show."

"Of course! Did you narrow down which ones you want to focus on?"

"I have settled on one-hundred and twelve possible paintings and combinations."

Faith blanched. "You might want to pair it down a little further."

"I am aware."

"Have you tried laying them out and looking at them?"

"I do not understand how that will help."

Faith smiled at him while she stroked his hair. "I know you have your lists running through that amazing mind of yours, but an art show is about visuals. So, maybe you should choose based on that."

Data had not considered such an approach. "It is worth a try."

He stood and the two of them went into the next room. Every surface aside from the bed had paintings either propped up on or leaning against it. Each time Data thought of a painting, he had taken it out of storage and the result was a room filled with various works of art. 

As Faith spread the potential paintings around, Data studied them closely. All he could see were the change in techniques. How his style shifted each time he studied another artist or how the colors changed when he focused on color theory. 

Remembering Faith's comment about visuals, he concluded that style and color were not exactly what she had been referring to. So he focused on the subjects instead. Once he began following that train of thought, he started to move the paintings around himself. 

Faith stepped back and let him work as he picked up speed. Eighteen minutes later, he stopped, taking a few steps back.

Without realizing it, Data had selected paintings of his friends and family. He stared at the collection of faces, reliving his memories of each one.

In the beginning were Dr. Soong and his wife; his parents whom he had never really gotten to know. There was one of Lore, his brother and rival, yet no less a part of Data than anyone else.

Commander Riker followed, someone who Data looked up to and came to think of as one of his closest friends. Lieutenant Worf, Wesley, Dr. Crusher, were showcased as well. He had learned so much from each of them and cherished their friendships. Guinan and Counselor Troi had been instrumental in his growing relationship with Faith. Their advice and wisdom was something he would always value.

Captain Picard's place among the collection was well-earned. He was not only Data's captain but had advocated for him when no one else would. Without him, Data had no doubt he would not be where he was. 

Spot was no less important than anyone else. Through his cat, Data had learned to take care of another being. Geordi was his first and best friend. Data had come to think of him as family and hoped the sentiment was returned.

At first, Data had hesitated to include Tasha due to their intimate history. However, she was and always would be special to him and Faith knew of their past. When he first told her, they spoke for hours about Tasha. Data felt if Tasha were still with them, she and Faith would have been fast friends.

Lal stared up at him from the painting, captured exactly as she had been when she was alive. Data still had her memories and accessed them from time to time. The idea of creating another android child had not left him, though it was a discussion he and Faith would have to have when they were further along in their relationship.

The final paintings were of Faith. The first one of her he had even done, leading up to the stars one he had shared with her weeks ago.

As Data was studying his work, Faith came up next to him and slipped her arms around his waist.

"I love it," she said.

"Does this look visually pleasing?"

"It's more than that. It's beautiful to see all the people who made a difference in your life."

"Then, these are the paintings I will display."

Faith beamed up at him. "I'm so proud of you."

The way her face lit up as she looked at him gave Data that feeling again and he bent his head to kiss her. 

"I must go relieve Commander Riker from the bridge, and you must sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day for both of us," Data said.

"Don't remind me. My brain is already spinning with everything that still needs to get done."

"I shall make you your tea before I leave. Do you wish for me to stay until you fall asleep?"

"No, no. I'll be okay. Besides, you have duties to attend to." 

Data replicated Faith's evening tea while she changed into her sleep clothes. Once she climbed into bed, Spot slunk out from behind the chair where she had been hiding and took her usual place at Faith’s feet. It pleased Data to see his cat warm up to Faith so much. 

"Thank you, babe," Faith said, taking the teacup from him. "If I'm not awake when you get back, feel free to wake me. I have some diagnostics I have to run before preparing for the show."

"Faith, you should set aside downtime for yourself as well. I appreciate all your help but I have noticed you have not properly rested in many weeks."

“What do you mean? I’m sleeping better than I have in years.”

“Sleep is not always the same as resting.”

With a sigh, Faith leaned back against the headboard, hands clutching her steaming mug. "Deanna said the same thing. I agree but I just don't know what I could do to take my mind off things."

"Perhaps we can spend time on the holodeck."

"Yeah but what program? My mind is blank."

"I can create a program for you if you trust me."

Faith smiled softly. "With my life. I'm sure I'll love whatever you come up with."

"Then I shall do so." He leaned down to kiss the top of her head. "Goodnight, mi alma."

"Goodnight, babe."

Data began creating said program by the time he left their quarters. He wanted it to be perfect, not just because he cared about Faith but because she had been such a big help with the show. 

When he arrived at the bridge, Commander Riker smiled at him. "There he is! How is the planning for the art show going?"

"Very well. Faith helped me decide which artwork to display."

"That girlfriend of yours is a gem." Riker stood to allow Data to take the captain's chair. "You're a lucky man."

"Thank you, Commander. I believe so too. Will you and Counselor Troi be able to attend the show?"

Riker smiled wider and clapped him on the back. "Wouldn't dream of missing it."

As he turned to go, Data realized he would like Riker's advice on helping Faith relax. "Commander, may I ask you a question of a personal nature?"

Riker stopped, his eyebrow quirked in amusement. "Sure, what's on your mind?"

Data stepped closer and lowered his voice to avoid others overhearing. "I have offered to create a holodeck program to help Faith relax. As you are aware, it has been a stressful time for her and she has difficulty resting when she’s not working. What would you suggest?"

"A program is all well and good, Data, but what Faith really needs is shore leave. She needs time off the ship and not spent in a crashed shuttle or being held captive."

"It is difficult enough to convince her to take time off on the Enterprise. It will be a task to get her to leave the ship."

"Well, I assumed you'd go with her. You both have plenty of personal shore leave available and you deserve a romantic vacation."

Data could follow Riker's logic. "That is an interesting idea. I shall work on that for the future as it will take some planning. In the meantime, what would you suggest for a holodeck program?"

"Sunset dinner on the beach," Riker said without hesitation. "Soothing, romantic, and leaves room for a moonlight swim if you catch my drift." He winked.

Data did not but he assumed the commander was referring to something intimate. "I see. Thank you, Commander."

Riker gave him another pat on the back and a smile before he took his leave.

Data had to switch his focus to his duties but kept building Faith's program in the back of his mind. His subroutine had specific perimeters for showing appreciation. He needed to put as much work into thanking Faith as she had put into helping him. He had often heard from his various male colleagues that anticipating their partner’s needs or showing adequate appreciation was difficult in a relationship. Data had thought as much for some time but that was no longer the case. As his and Faith’s relationship progressed, he found it easier to do so. His urge to make sure she was happy and healthy outweighed most anxieties about failing. Most. Not all. 

His shift was routine and once it was over and Captain Picard arrived to relieve him, Data returned to his quarters. Faith was still asleep when he returned, which pleased him. True to her earlier statement, she had been sleeping for longer, uninterrupted periods of time which he knew was good for her overall well-being. 

As he sat beside her, he admired her relaxed features. He appreciated seeing her void of the anxiety that so often took hold. Sometimes when she thought he was not paying attention, she would let her anxiousness show and her forehead would crease with worry. It was those times that Data was concerned about. With many good things happening around her, it made him curious about what could still be plaguing her ever-working mind. Counselor Troi had explained to him that anxiety and depression did not simply disappear because things were going well. But when Faith slept, Data noticed that was all gone.

He reached out to stroke her wavy hair. A moment later, she stirred, opening her eyes and giving him a sleepy smile. "Good morning." Her voice was soft and hoarse.

"Good morning, Faith. You asked me to wake you when I returned."

She gave a large yawn and a stretch. "I did, didn't I?" 

Data could tell sleep was not leaving her as quickly as it usually did. "Perhaps you should remain resting. No one would fault you for taking advantage of the time."

"But, I have diagnostics…"

"Are they urgent? Do Geordi or the captain need them today?"

"Well, no."

"Then go back to sleep." Data readjusted the blanket. "You can run them later."

She pondered his response before giving him a sly smile. “Or you can slide into bed with me and we can make out a little.”

Data was intrigued by her switch in priorities. He had known sex and physical contact could distract humans but it was interesting to witness it firsthand. Faith was quite driven and focused when it came to her work, but it seemed the thought of being sexual with Data was enough to change her mind about continuing her rest. 

He saw no reason to deny her request and found the idea acceptable. He stepped out of his shoes before sliding into bed with her. Once settled, he pulled her close. When their lips met, she no longer had any traces of sleep. Her body curled around his, her hands clinging to the front of his uniform. Per his program, his eyes closed while he kissed her and he focused on using his other senses. Her smell invaded his nostrils and the way her mouth moved against his activated his sexuality program. However, since Faith had not specified whether or not she wished to engage in intercourse, he shut the program down. 

“I love kissing you,” Faith mumbled, her sleep-addled brain making her more vocal about her feelings than she normally would be so early in the morning. “I can kiss you for hours.”

“While physically I will be able to do so, I do not believe you will.”

She chuckled, peppering his lips with kisses. “I can try.”

Data knew she was being facetious so he let the comment go without discussing exactly why that would not be advisable. He cupped her cheek and kissed her deeply, the way he knew she liked. At least, he concluded she appreciated such action. Her pulse tended to race faster and she often let out a small noise of appreciation. 

The results were instantaneous. Faith clung to Data even tighter, throwing her leg over his hip. He may have shut down his sexuality program a bit prematurely…

Before they continued, however, Data wished to discuss with her the idea of taking shore leave. Since she was so obviously relaxed, he thought she may be more agreeable to the idea in such a state. 

“Faith,” Data said in a hushed voice when she pulled away to catch her breath. “May I ask you a question?”

“Now?” Her response was not said with any annoyance or malice. It was more of a whine as she attempted to kiss him again. 

Data gently stopped her. “I realize my timing may interrupt our current intimate session, however, I promise it is relevant.”

“I was only teasing, Data. Of course you can ask your question. What’s on your mind?”

“While our duties on the Enterprise do not allow us to indulge in such intimate activities on a regular basis, I was wondering how you would feel about taking shore leave with me sometime in the near future.”

Faith pulled back to look him in the eye. “You want to take a vacation with me?”

“Is that not an activity most couples participate in?”

“It is. I’ve just never been on vacation with someone I’m dating. And the thought of taking shore leave always makes me feel so guilty. I mean, the Enterprise—”

“Can function without us for several days. It has done so numerous times in the past when neither of us was on board.”

She pursed her lips as she usually did when Data made a valid point. He allowed her to take her time answering, not wishing to rush the process or put pressure on her answer. “I’ll definitely consider it,” she concluded after a time. “It’s not that I wouldn’t love to have several long uninterrupted days with you in a comfy bed somewhere tropical. It’s just…” She trailed off. 

“Is your anxiety a factor?” 

Faith nodded. “I tried taking shore leave when I first joined Starfleet and for some reason, I could never relax enough to enjoy it. The guilt of being off having fun while my colleagues worked just felt wrong. it was always difficult to turn my brain off.”

“I do not believe humans can do such a thing. It is my understanding, that would be fatal.”

Faith chuckled, stroking his cheek. “Not literally. Figuratively,” she explained. “What I mean is, when I’m on vacation, I can’t help but worry about all the stuff I should be doing on the ship. What I could be helping with. It got to the point where shore leave made me more stressed than staying on board. So I stopped taking it.”

“Perhaps with me accompanying you, that can change,” Data suggested. “You do tend to lose track of time when we are in bed together.”

She gave him a sly smile as she drew closer once more. “Are you saying that I’ll be so distracted by your sexual prowess that I’ll forget all about the Enterprise?”

“When you phrase it that way, it does seem as though I was boasting,” Data realized. “I can assure you, that was not my intention.”

Faith chuckled and gave him a small peck on the lips. “I will take shore leave with you, but I’ll need some time in advance to get used to the idea. Is that okay?”

“I only wish for you to be comfortable and happy.”

“If you want me to be happy, kiss me again.”

Data obliged. 

They did not spend much longer in bed as there were still many preparations to complete before the art show. Hours later, after Faith assisted Data with carefully packing his paintings and transporting them to Ten Forward, she stepped away to get herself ready for the show. Data did not know what she meant but was unconcerned. He set about putting the paintings on display himself, readjusting them to account for the flow of the room or certain lighting. Data had just put the finishing touches on his work when Guinan approached him. 

“These look wonderful, Data,” she said with a proud smile. “Everyone is going to love them.”

“Thank you, Guinan. And may I say, you and Faith did a wonderful job with the decorations.”

Ten Forward had been transformed into an elegant art gallery. Faith had insisted on having what she called “finger foods” and various kinds of synthehol, all for the guests to graze at their leisure. 

Guinan looked around. “This was mostly Faith. She was adamant about making sure your art show was ‘perfect’. Her word, not mine. Said she even researched what other art shows look like. She really cares about you, Data.”

“That is good to know. She is special to me as well.”

“It’s more than that,” Guinan said, linking her arm with his. “Her feelings for you run deep. And while I know you are just developing feelings yourself, I want you to know how serious she regards her relationship with you.”

The tone of her voice led Data to believe her intentions were serious. He had known Guinan for some time and she would not make such a statement for no reason. 

“I appreciate your concern,” Data said. “But you need not worry. I am serious about our relationship as well. In fact, Faith and I have been sharing quarters for some weeks now.”

Guinan actually looked surprised. “Really?”

Data nodded. “We did not want to tell many people as Faith values her privacy. I am learning to appreciate it as well. I am also eager to continue this relationship with Faith. She is…” He could not find a word sufficient enough to describe exactly what Faith was to him. 

Thankfully, Guinan did not need him to finish his thought. She patted his hand, her smile widening. “I understand, Data. You better get ready. Your guests are going to be here shortly.”

There was not much left to do so Data took the time to do one more walk around the room, making sure his paintings were in the exact position to give them the best appearance. Eventually, Guinan opened the doors to Ten Forward, and Data’s friends and colleagues began to arrive. 

To his surprise, a large number of people began to file in. He imagined if he was capable of feeling nerves, he would certainly be feeling so. Having others experience his creative endeavors tended to heighten his senses to a degree. He found himself focusing on their expressions and stances, trying to decipher what they thought of his work. 

Geordi was among the first group of people to arrive. Data watched him walk through the show, admiring each of the paintings for a significant amount of time before approaching Data to congratulate him. 

“Data, this is spectacular,” he said, giving his friend a smile. “I’m really proud of you, buddy.”

“Thank you, Geordi. I hope you do not mind that I included a painting of you in the show.”

“Not at all. I’m honored and touched. I think these are some of your finest work.” Geordi looked around. “Where’s Faith?”

“I do not know,” Data admitted. “She helped me bring the paintings down and then said she had to go get…” He spotted her the moment she walked in and almost lost his train of thought. “...ready.”

Faith looked stunning. She was not dressed in her Starfleet uniform or formalwear. She had opted for a dark blue sleeveless dress that hugged her curved frame. While the front did not dip as low as the dress Fajo forced her to wear, it still accentuated her breasts. When she turned to greet Counselor Troi, Data noticed the back of the dress dipped provocatively, stopping just above her lower back. The skirt of it folded around her long legs when she walked, occasionally showing off a smooth leg through a slit in the side. Her hair was pinned up in a simple style which highlighted her natural waves. 

She was a vision of pure beauty.

Geordi followed Data’s gaze and smirked. “I’ll leave you to it,” he told his friend, before disappearing into the crowd. 

Data did not notice him leave. 

Faith caught Data staring and gave him a shy smile as she crossed the room to him. “Sorry I took so long,” she said, fidgeting with the dress. “I wanted to try something new and had to work up the nerve to actually leave our quarters.”

“Faith…” Data was speechless which was a strange feeling for him. “You look beautiful. I am honored you dressed so…” His eyes scanned her frame once more. “...exquisitely for my art show.”

“Well, it was more for you than the show.” She slipped her arm around his and smiled. “Shall we mingle then? Everyone seems so excited.”

Data had to admit, he found it difficult to focus on anything else with Faith on his arm. He found his gaze constantly drawn to the stray curl around her ear or the way the dress draped over her backside. Thankfully, she was more focused than he was and was able to draw his attention to those who were speaking to them. The compliments on his paintings came one after another. Person after person approached them to congratulate him on his work. His friends were each thrilled to be included. 

At one point during the evening, when Faith was engaged in conversation with Beverly, Data slipped away from her to approach Captain Picard. He had seen the captain enter Ten Forward some time ago but had been reluctant to engage with him until he had time to study the paintings. 

“Hello, Captain,” Data said, coming to stand by his commanding officer. “Thank you for taking the time to come to my show.”

“Data, I have to admit, I didn’t know what to expect when you told me you were putting together an art show,” Picard said. “This is wonderful. Seeing all of us depicted by your own hand is very moving.” They walked down the line together and Picard smiled at the image of him. “I will say, you could have at least made me look a tiny bit younger.”

Data recognized the light tone of Picard’s voice as a teasing one. “I shall keep that in mind for the future.”

At the painting of Tasha, Picard paused. Data recognized the sadness in his eyes. He often wondered how the Captain handled so many losses under his command. In the past, Data himself lacked the emotion to really dwell on such matters. But when Tasha died, that had changed. And now that he was with Faith, he could not imagine losing her in the same manner. It was a scenario he did not entertain. 

When they reached Faith’s paintings, Picard’s demeanor changed to a lighter one. He gave Data a look out of the corner of his eye, his eyebrow cocked in amusement. “You and Ms. Diaz certainly have come a long way in such a short time.”

“Sir, do you think our relationship has progressed too quickly?” Data asked. “I had my concerns about such a thing but was assured we should move at our own pace.”

“Mr. Data,” Picard said, giving the android his full attention. “I may not know a lot on the subject but I do know this: love is love. It is going to happen whether we wait or jump right in. I envy you, Mr. Data. What you and Ms. Diaz have is special.”

“You are not the first person to tell me such a thing.”

“That’s because it’s true. We can all see it. And we’re all happy for you.” He gave Data’s shoulder a brief squeeze before pulling away. “Now, tell me about this one here…”

By the time the last of the guests left Ten Forward, Data was ready to retire to his quarters. He imagined he was as close to tired as an android could be. Talking to so many people in such a short time was a lot. But there was another reason he was eager to leave. The entire evening he had been watching Faith and planning how to show her his appreciation for everything she had done for him. Guinan offered to clean up and all but shooed Faith and Data from the room. 

“That was wonderful!” Faith gushed as they stepped onto the turbo-lift. “Everyone loved your work. It was a magical evening. Some people even want to know when the next one will be. I don’t think I have the energy to even think about that let alone—”

Data silenced her with a deep kiss. Faith let out a noise of surprise, almost stumbling from the force of it until Data’s strong arm looped around her waist to catch her. He was overcome by a strange sensation pulsing through his body. When her mouth opened in surprise, he immediately slid his tongue past her lips. He could not understand it or contain it, causing him to kiss her with almost bruising force. Thankfully, he caught himself before he could accidentally hurt her. 

When he drew back, she was panting, her brown eyes wide. “Where did that come from?” she asked, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. 

Data’s eyes followed the movement. “I do not know. But I have been wanting to do that since the moment you stepped into Ten Forward.”

Faith smirked, slipping her arms around his neck. “Oh really? What else have you been wanting to do?”

The doors to the turbo-lift open and without warning, Data scooped her into his arms, making her squeal in surprise. "Data!" 

He wanted to experience her sexually. Their intimate moments had become a comfortable and enjoyable part of their relationship which he looked forward to. It was not only because of the feelings that emerged during their time together but because of the closeness it provided. 

Faith had shared a similar sentiment with him so he knew the feeling was mutual.

Feeling. It was strange for Data to use the term so frequently. Desire and happiness were the emotions he associated most with Faith. When they were engaged in intercourse, most of his background processes were shut down or filed away for later. 

As he carried her down the hallway towards their quarters, his hand found a slit in her dress, coming to rest on her thigh. He touched the warmth and smoothness, wondering if it would feel different if his hands had human nerves. 

Would his skin goose pimple like hers did? If he had a heart, would it race? He noticed her pupils dilated when she was aroused so he had adjusted his sexuality program to do the same when they were intimate. Faith had not mentioned it but he noticed she seemed to smile wider when it happened. Even then he saw it happen right before his very eyes. 

“Faith,” he said as they approached their door. “May I make love to you again?”

“I want you to do more than that, Data,” Faith told him, her voice dropping into the low register she only used when they were intimate. “I can tell you’re feeling something and I want you to give into it. Don’t think. Don’t analyze. Just feel.”

The doors opened and Data carried Faith over the threshold. “I could not stop this feeling even if I tried.”

#commander data #lt commander data #data tng #Data Soong #star trek next generation

[allthatglittersisnotgoldrush]

Author Interview: TolkienGirl (by Victoryindeath2)

Thanks, @wearetakingthehobbitstogallifrey!

1. You have written the most fics in this AU. Aside from the fics themselves, what are your top ten titles?

Ooh, what a good question. What a HARD question. I first narrowed it to 32. Then 30. And then, painstakingly, 15. So that's what you're getting :D

- the tabernacle (reconstructed)

- within the hollow crown

- dirgemaker

- the ceremony of innocence

- the gift which is withheld

- where the hero shifts

- seven card stud

- The Cold Heaven

- the death of myth-making

- stabat

- the god of the underworld has let you go from his hand

- in low place, not in high place

- book of hours

- The Shield of Achilles

- Tang

2. Of the three C’s in our beloved Feanorian family, each author has, to a certain extent, claimed an affinity with one of them. We (and the whole gang) are currently in difficult times, so can you drop a line about a soft moment in Curufin’s childhood?

Curufin was very fascinated by candle-making, though he didn't care very much for the other domestic arts. Nerdanel didn't quite know why, until she realized he loved to hoard bits of wax to make molds for keys and little figures and other things. With her help, he made a little molded chess set to gift to Feanor. It was one of their most pleasant mutual memories.

3. If you found yourself trapped by one of these three villains—Morgoth, Mairon, or Gothmog—which would you choose and why?

Ok as a woman I think I'd pick Morgoth. HEAR ME OUT. I have the most time to negotiate with him as long as I know how to flatter him. Gothmog would...definitely just get right to his awful business and Mairon would kill me on sight. BUT CANONICALLY LUTHIEN WAS ABLE TO PLAY MORGOTH SO MAYBE I HAVE A CHANCE??

4. So in the TV series of this which is filmed and released to wild acclaim in our dreams, who would you like to score the music, and what would be the song in the opening titles and the end credits of the very first episode?

Howard Shore in consultation with Ludwig Göransson. Opening song...EITHER "I Am Mine" by Pearl Jam or a haunting, sufficiently Irish version of "The Parting Glass", either of course would be played over an intro sequence of shadowbox and woodcut-style art, and then, the credits of the first episode would be "Glory" by Bastille.

5. In canon and in this AU, Fingon goes to save Maedhros before he knows that Maedhros had no hand (haha oops) in burning the ships/bridge. Still, do you think anything would have changed in the story if Maedhros HAD helped to burn the bridge?

I think, in the grand scheme of things, it would not have changed much. It was an important little moment for Fingon to cling to in his delineation between Maedhros and the rest of the Feanorians, but as we have seen, Fingon needs to accept that Maedhros IS a part of his family, and HAS chosen to do a good many bad things, so that his genuine compassion and love for Maedhros can truly flourish and heal.

Bonus question: pick a Taylor Swift lyric for each Feanorion—you may expand to other characters should you so desire of COURSE

Feanor: "Haven't you heard? You might have him* but I always get the last word"

(from Better than Revenge) (*the diamond)

Nerdanel: "There'll be happiness after you / but there was happiness because of you, too"

(from Happiness)

Maedhros: "Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand Paper cut stings from our paper thin plans My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust Trying to find a part of me you didn't take up Gave you too much but it wasn't enough But I'll be all right, it's just a thousand cuts."

(from Death by a Thousand Cuts)

Maglor: "And maybe we got lost in translation Maybe I asked for too much But maybe this thing was a masterpiece Till you tore it all up"

and

"I'm a crumpled up piece of paper lying here"

(from All Too Well)

Maglor gets a bonus one because he's dramatic:

"Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / I don't belong"

(from The Lakes)

Celegorm: "With you, I serve With you, I fall down, down Watch you breathe in Watch you breathing out, out"

(from Epiphany)

Caranthir:

So, how can I ever try to be better? Nobody ever lets me in And I can still see you, this ain't the best view On the outside looking in I've been a lot of lonely places I've never been on the outside

(from The Outside)

Curufin: "I'm only seventeen / I don't know anything"

(from Betty)

Amras: "And if I didn't know better I'd think you were talking to me now If I didn't know better I'd think you were still around What died didn't stay dead What died didn't stay dead You're alive, you're alive in my head"

(from Marjorie)

Amrod: "You could be anything you wanted if you were still here."

(from Ronan)

BONUS:

Fingon: "Long live all the mountains we moved / I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you." (from Long Live)

Estrela: "I love you ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?" (from Cruel Summer)

#q&a #author interview #gold rush au #this was a lot of fun #aesthetic

[doomedandstoned]

10,000 Years Take Us Into The "Gargantuan Forest"

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Review by Billy Goate

Album Art by Francesco Bauso

Leaving the world For salvation yonder Quest for eternity To suns beyond

Gazing upon our past Out into forever To a future obscured What glory awaits?

To begin another week of awesome original content at Doomed & Stoned, we're getting you better acquainted with the Swedish juggernaut 10,000 YEARS.

Last summer, the band dropped their eponymous debut to welcome ears and in just a few short weeks 10,000 Years come roaring back with a follow-up. Y'all know I'm a sucker for a good concept album. The eight-track full-length record 'II' (2021) picks up the trail of the Albatross research vessel, which has been galavanting 'cross the nether reaches of the galaxy on a potent rocket fuel made of sludgy stoner rock and doom metal.

If that sounds epic, wait'll you get a load of what's next for our interstellar crew. It helps if you picture the following text as a Star Wars-style screen crawl, slowly working its way up the page against the backdrop of a starry night.

After narrowly escaping the confines of the strange planet and its surrounding dimension, the Albatross and its crew finally return home to Earth. The re-entry is rough and the ship crashlands in a forest. The earth that greets them is vastly different from the one that they left.

When the ship travelled back to earth through the wormhole, it created a rift in the space-time continuum which propelled them far into the future, as well as allowing the Green King and other ancient gods from the other dimension to cross over to our dimension. They have since taken control of not only the earth, but the entire solar system.

After various harrowing experiences and encounters, the truth finally dawns on the surviving members of the crew. They are indeed back on earth, but ten thousand years in the future from when they started their journey. And to make matters worse, they find evidence that the Green King has been known and worshipped by secret cults and societies on earth for millenia, since before humankind even existed.

The surviving members of the crew come to the conclusion that the only way to set things right again is to repair the Albatross and take it back through the rift again in order to close it.

Now that's a saga I'm ready to get invested in. George Lucas, eat your heart out!

The record revs to a start with "Descent," a track that can best be described as terrific panic. It had me thinking of KOOK's "Escape Velocity" from their recent second album, though that's an eight-and-a-half minute slow burn and this is a quick twenty-six second fall from the sky. I wish this little notion had a chance to develop into something longer, but regardless what a thrilling way to open an album!

With rapt attention, I'm waiting to hear what comes next. The ship seems to have crash landed deep inside a "Gargantuan Forest." As an aside, it would be a blast to smoke a bowl o' something (anything, really) with Erik Palm (guitar), Alex Risberg (bass, vox), and Espen Karlsen (drums) just to gab it up a bit about sci-fi lit and horror flicks. I mean, check out the trove of B-movie greats referenced in their preface to the new single (which Doomed & Stoned is debuting today):

In this ABSURD (1981) video, 10,000 Years enter a FOREST OF FEAR (1980) as they access THE BEYOND (1981) and enter a BLOODBATH (1971) with THE BOOGEY MAN (1980), otherwise known as the Espbeast. The Espbeast stalks and haunts the bodies and minds of the characters in this C-grade homage to the horror movies of yesteryear.

The characters FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE (1976) through insane NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN (1981). If they survive the AXE (1974) they may still end up in an INFERNO (1980) and risk being EATEN ALIVE (1976). All the same risks face the viewer, so don’t watch with the lights out, don’t watch by yourself and DON’T GO IN THE WOODS ALONE (1981). Because after all, isn���t there an Espbeast in all of us?

10,000 Years have picked the ideal setting for the music video. The forests of Sweden stand tall and dark, the ground packed with snow. Screw you, Blair Witch Project -- this is where I want the next found footage flick filmed!

The song opens with a mysterious theme on solitary electric strings, surrounded by hazy reverberation. Drums and bass accent the motif as it's repeated several times over. Dazed by their graceless fall to earth, the crew wander about, checking one another for injuries, seeing if the faithful Albatross has even hope of another journey. As the shock begins to wear off, their hopeless plight reveals itself.

Screaming from the sky Blasting through the atmosphere

Come to rest On the forest floor Still alive What fresh new hell is this?

Surrounded by swamps A strange bleeding from the earth

Giant trees A dense horror taking root Same old sun Unfamiliar rays shine down

Is there something lurking about in the Gargantuan Forest? I'm sure no one wants to wait until nightfall to find out! The so-called "Espbeast" (which the band may actually have been first to name) is more than likely some strange amalgamation of guitar and creature, ripping through foes like a berserker of sound with scraps of High on Fire's "10,000 Years" echoing perversely through the treetops as it stalks and ultimately slays you. Nobody wants to be around when the Espbeast is on the prowl.

Now see, I'm letting my imagination get carried away! Then again, maybe that's what the band had planned all along -- for listeners to join in the fantastic adventures of these cosmonauts, to see through their eyes and feel through their body as they touch foot to strange soil. What will our adventurers find next?

The answer comes all too soon: "Spinosaurus!" This gruff beast charges angrily through the woods knocking things about, displacing rocks, snapping branches, royally pissed and ready to make somebody pay for the noise that snatched him away from a damned good nap. The repeated note riff, with its odd strumming pattern, does a nifty job of representing the crude movements of the Spinosaurus as it lumbers about the forest. Eric is a virtuosic mess of frantic tremeloes and wiry noodling against Espen's stampeding drums, as Alex narrates the scene with a terrifying shout:

Is this our earth? No time to dwell Dorsal sail cutting air Cretaceous ghost made flesh

Staring into Dead end eyes No place to hide Theropodic annihilation

Teeth into flesh!

What the crew is experiencing on their homeworld thus far seems foreign, almost ancient. Through some curse of Einstenian logic have we zipped through a wormhole only to return to the distant past? "The Mooseriders" are about to challenge our assumptions about what's possible on this Rock.

Thundering hooves crack the sky Dark robed wizards appear in the light Travellers in ether descending Protectors of the realm

These are the oath-bound eternals -- interdimensional templars, if you will -- who have arrived at this precise moment in time to take on the Green King. Complex rhythmic drumming with precisely stricken odd beats, is accompanied by a hyperactive bass and progressive metal riffmaking. Together, the band conjures the trot and hustle of the approaching entourage. A wilding guitar heralds a message from the great protectors:

The hour draws near The endgame is nigh Divine prophecy Even death may die

The mood now turns stately. A brave theme is introduced and developed with dashing prowess. This track would fit perfectly into a playlist with Mastodon, Ape Cave, and Zirakzigil. I found Alex's vocal approach especially appropriate for the frantic depiction of "antlers clashing with steel" in this battle to the finish. "Even death...may...DIE!"

"Angel Eyes" greet us on the B-side, and it's not a cover of the Jerry Cantrell song (though that would have been unexpectedly awesome). No, the hard-charging mood and raspy vocals are pointing to something far more apocalyptic.

Hooves of burning coal Let loose upon the world

Return of the warlord Eternal fire scorches the earth

Heavenly gaze Order through chaos

At times Alex seems exasperated, practically out of breath, as he gives these dire words his all. It's a style the 10,000 Years frontman owns as well as his counterpart, Simon Ohlsson of Vokonis, who has a comparable vocal attack. A bass-fortified guitar establishes a second theme that adds a Wagnarian touch of high drama, and this ushers in the song's curtain fall.

If 10,000 Years is to be compared with High On Fire at all, the rumbling riffstorm "March Of The Ancient Queen" surely merits it (to say nothing of their mutual love of alternative histories).

Her royal blood Once ruled these lands Generations Buried by time Dynasty of dust Rise from the sands Rise from the dead The Green King's servant

March!

March Of The Ancient Queen - Single by 10,000 Years

That last lyric is uttered with the most blood-curdling all-caps conviction that I was immediately drawn into its sentiment, miming "Maaaaarrrrrch!" with my ugliest war face on every time it came up in the song. The NWOBHM-style finish is so deftly executed that it comes across as orchestral. 10,000 Years paint with big, bold strokes here.

"Prehuman Walls" is a welcome shift down, with its chugging "Bury Me In Smoke" tempo. You sludge fiends will find moments of Zen here, with riffs that bend and twist and saw 'neath the summer sun. The crew have chanced upon a temple of sorts, though not one made with human hands. Nothing seems to make sense here at all. It's like Area X from the film Annihilation (2017), where everything is a contortion of reality. Then the "truth settles in." This alien monstrosity, we find, bears the mark of the sinister Green King. We thought we'd escaped him, only to find that he both followed us and was here millenia before.

Unholy worship Feed the Green King Eyes pried open Sanity stripped away

At last, we reach the final track in our journey: "Dark Side Of The Earth". So many revelations have been made in this second chapter, so many loose ends that need to be tied off. Naturally, a third chapter must be written. "We must go back, set it right," deliberates an exasperated Albatross crew. "We must go back, whence we came."

Dimension walls broken down The fabric ripped and torn apart Thread the needle once again A journey of ten thousand years

We must go back, set it right We must go back, through the tears

Insanity the only way The dark side of the earth

Following these words, the song develops instrumentally and the mood gets quite emotional. I found myself drawing parallels between this "bastard version of earth" and our own, wondering if we ever can go back and make it right. For us, perhaps it should be about moving forward, for there is no golden age or better time to which we can return. We make this world a heaven or hell tomorrow by the choices made today.

The album was recorded by Tomas Skogsberg at Studio Sunlight. Totally diggin the awesomely swamp landscape that Francesco Bauso of Negative Crypt Artwork created. It reminds the five-year old me of Luke's sopping wet landing on Dagobah, though guitarist Alex Risberg says the band's more inspired by Planet of the Apes than by Star Wars.

The album will be released on June 25th as a special vinyl "Green King Edition" by Interstellar Smoke Records pre-order here), a cassette tape "Forest Edition" from Ogo Rekords (pre-order here) and "Swamp Edition" from Olde Magick Records pre-order here), with the digital and compact disc formats handled by Death Valley Records (pre-order here).

10,0000 Years have in II their most accomplished album to date, with powerful moments that will stay with you long after the record's stopped spinning. Fans of High On Fire, Black Tusk, and The Sword listen up! You might just discover your next favorite band.

Give ear...

10,000 Years - Gargantuan Forest (Music Video)

Some Buzz

Having previously played together in the original lineup of Swedish underground heavyweights Pike, Erik Palm (Guitars) and Alex Risberg (Bass/vocals) found their way back to each other, musically, in early 2020. The creative fire reignited and stoked to a burning inferno and through a mutual love of heavy riffs and thundering stoner rock, doom, and sludge metal, 10,000 Years was born. Finding a drummer would prove to be an easy task and with Espen Karlsen the final piece lay firmly in place. The groove they fell into during the first rehearsal hasn’t stopped rumbling since.

After spending the first-half of 2020 writing and rehearsing, 10,000 Years recorded their self-titled debut EP during one weekend in June in the legendary Studio Sunlight with equally legendary producer Tomas Skogsberg. The self-titled EP was released on July 10th and immediately struck a chord with the heavy underground worldwide, and 10,000 Years garnered rave reviews and accolades.

10,000 Years by 10,000 Years

10,000 Years' musical and lyrical world revolves around the tale of the terran class III exploration vessel Albatross and its mission to explore the Milky Way and nearby galaxies in search for a possible new home for humanity. The EP tells the tale of its first foray into space and what happens when the crew accidentally travel through a wormhole and end up in an adjacent dimension populated by ancient gods and giant beings, ruled by the Green King. The EP ends with “From Suns Beyond,” where the crew make it off from the strange planet, back out into space in search of a way back home. The new album picks up the story as the Albatross blasts through the atmosphere of a seemingly unknown planet and crashlands headfirst into strange new adventures.

II by 10,000 Years

Now, less than a year after their first release, 10,000 Years are back with their first full-length effort, aptly titled 'II' (2021). Picking up right where the EP left off, II continues the story of the ill-fated Albatross mission and its exploration of time and space through a skull-crushing mixture of stoner rock, doom, and sludge metal. The album will no doubt continue to build on 10,000 Years' already golden reputation and prove to be an even bigger hit with the heavy masses.

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#D&S Debuts #10000 Years #Västerås #Sweden #doom metal #sludge #heavy metal #sci-fi #horror #music video #Interstellar Smoke Records #Death Valley Records #Ogo Rekords #Olde Magick Records #Doomed and Stoned

[nightwolfomega]

Painting Fox

Part 3 (Final)

    Aki got to work on lunch, he wanted to make sure it was perfect for Cora. So she could never have to worry about her family's cooking. He didn’t hate her family, not one bit, he just wanted to make sure his food was better than theirs so she wouldn’t have to worry about thinking about them and having to take those long trips to visit. He’d go with her obviously, Cora’s family loved him but they just kept taking her time that was meant to be with him.

For a day such as this one would call in for something Cora would really like, spaghetti with meat sauce and chunks of romani tomatoes with a dash of brown sugar to give it a sweet taste. “She’s going to love this.” clasping his hands together as his tails wagged. Making sure the parmesan cheese was shaved on top of the dish to give it a nice touch of cheesiness. 

“The perfect dish for my perfect girl~.” He sang song to himself, the table set up nicely with a little lit candle of her favorite scent of vanilla buttercream. He walks briskly to the studio “Cora, lunch is ready!~” he calls out cheerfully. 

He noticed however she was nowhere to be seen “Cora?” When he is about to scan the room his eyes widen in horror that his secret room’s door is open. “Oh no”, he must have forgotten to move the shelves back when he was setting up their painting time. Dashing quickly to the door he looks inside in panic to see her looking at everything, Cora saw it all now. the paintings, the sculptures, even the poems he had written for her. 

His hand grips onto the rims of the doorway tightly, his tails now fluffing up as sweat was starting to form on his body. She didn’t see him as he approached her from behind “You shouldn’t be in here Cora.” earning a yelp from her “Aki!” taking a step back. 

Aki’s ears drooped “I guess you got a good look at everything didn’t you?” he spoke sadly walking closer to her. “Aki, what is all this?” she spoke innocently looking at all the artwork based on her again. 

“It’s my collection of the most sublime art in the world. The art that I keep all to myself. But they all pale in comparison to you Cora”. Looking at her with a sickeningly loving adoration. 

She felt so small compared to him now, as if he was practically a giant now. “Aki this is...” she spoke fidgeting the end sleeves of her shirt, Aki felt panic coursing through his body “Cora please don’t let this scare you off, I-I just…” his hands shaking “I’ve been holding back telling you about how I feel. What I truly feel about you Cora.” Aki walked closer as Cora stared at him “Aki,” his name passing through her lips, “You wanna know why I made all this art based on you? Do you wanna know what I’m gonna say?” his fists balled to the point his knuckles turned white. “It’s because I love you that’s why!” 

Cora stood still greatly surprised to hear him say that “Do you even realize how wonderful and special you are? Every time when I look at you I feel a rush of inspiration that gives me the power to create masterpieces. Just looking at your artwork fills my soul with overwhelming joy that I just want to keep all to myself” 

His tails now swaying “Cora you're just so perfect and astonishing, your like an angel that has been graced onto earth that must be given all the love and attention such a divine person like you deserve.” His eyes glowed trying to get close without scaring her, but sadly it only made it ten times more frightening to Cora.

 “I’ve fantasized so many times of you and I being in a happy loving relationship together, just us making so many breathtaking beautiful collages, holding each other close as our heart’s practically touch and saying how much we love each other.  It would be so heavenly.” he sighs dreamily. 

“But every time I would try to build up the courage to say how precious you are to me something always pulls you away from my loving embrace and it makes me so furious.” he growls as his tails sway agitatedly and his ears fold back. “I hate the way people look at you and your art, always criticising and being such picky little pricks, it made me want to just rip them apart.” snarling angrily as his teeth and claws become sharper. 

Aki was starting to shift now, becoming larger as fur sprouted from his body making himself look more feral and wild “I just want to give all of myself to you body and soul!!” His voice sounded deeper and inhuman. 

The kitsune was breathing heavily now as his markings glowed with his eyes, a wide unsettling grin spread on his face, his larger tails now still, his large hulking body crouches ready to pounce at her. 

“A-Aki buddy you need to breathe let's talk about this.” she spoke shakily, taking another step back. “Come here Cora, I want to kiss you.~” he spoke as his pupils became slits and leaps at her. “Aki WAIT-!!!” she partially screams dodging out of the way as he crashes into the wall. 

“Cora!” Aki roars, scrambling to get back up. “Cora don’t run away from my love! please!” he cries out desperately chasing after her. She makes a run to the door to get out of there, she could hear his claws clacking on the floor coming closer and closer to grab her. 

In a single heartbeat she manages to skid slide out the door as Aki slams into the doorway getting stuck. “CORA!!!” he roars frantically trying to reach his arm out to grab her. 

Cora was trying to catch up with her breath, staring at Aki terrified that he'd become like this. 

Aki was screaming now, screeching and begging for her not to leave him while trying to pull himself out of the doorway with tears running down his face and his claws digging into the floor making deep scratches, the whole sight felt unsettling for her to watch it felt like watching a animal suffering trying to escape from a cage. 

Her legs tremble but forces herself to stand up, Aki stares at her now as his eyes dilate terrified of what will happen next. She’s going to leave him, run away and never see his precious artists again. The sudden realization made his heart drop and shatter into thousands of pieces, “Cora, Don’t leave me. I’ll be good, I’ll be such a good kitsune for you. Just-please don’t leave.” in a brittle tone his ears drooping as he now sobs.  

It was over, it was all over. Cora now saw him for what he truly felt about her and it made him sick to his stomach. He could have made her so happy and loved, give her anything her heart desired. Go as far as to destroy someone that even dampened her mood. But now he would have nothing, just his art that would be hollow without her to fill that empty void in his life. 

Aki was too scared to look up, he knew what the outcome was. It was too painful to even do. “You big silly fox.” hearing the all too familiar voice speak to him. His head shoots up to look at Cora looking at him face to face, her arms wrap about his thick neck in a tight hug. 

The kitsune shivered under her touch, making his breathing become shaky. “I’m not going anywhere Aki.” she spoke in a gentle tone caressing his head. “I’ll always stay by your side.” giving him a warm smile petting his ears. Aki’s tears stream down his cheeks “Cora…” he whimpers his arm now wrapping around Cora tightly, “It’s going to be okay Aki.” she coos nuzzling her face against his. 

Cora stroked his head and ears softly, she loved him with all her heart and soul too. Even when they first met her heart fluttered just looking at his smile, having a feeling that someone finally understands her not just her joy for art and style but Cora herself. There wasn’t a day when Aki wasn’t on her mind while working on the ten month commission, she missed him more and more each day. When she saw the breathtaking artwork that Aki did of her she felt the overwhelming love was flowing onto her, it made her want to shed tears of how sweet and miraculous Aki was to her.

She could hear Aki’s overjoyed chirps and squeaks nuzzling her back even making it tickle a little. Finally calming down he shrinks to his somewhat normal size hugging her tightly in both of his strong arms now. “I love you so much Cora.” 

Aki could feel her hugging him back “I love you too Aki.” those words just made his heart want to explode with streamers and confetti out of his chest. He looks down at her “You do? Y-You really do?” he asks, trembling. “Yes, I always did.” stroking his back “I was just so nervous to tell you cause I didn’t want to ruin the relationship we had. And now after coming back to see you changed so much I didn’t want you to think I was shallow since you look like this.” being honest looking up at him. 

A big relieved grin plastered on Aki’s face “Oh Cora.” his tails now wagging quickly. “I’ve dreamed about this ever since I first met you~!” cupping her cheeks gently. Cora let out a little giggle “Then let's make it into a reality then.~” she replies slowly moving forward and pressing her lips onto his. 

Aki froze, his tails fell to the floor, feeling Cora’s soft warm lips. If he was dreaming it was something he would never want to wake up from. She pulls back seeing Aki’s breathing has stifled. 

His hands slowly raised to hold her cheeks and looked into her eyes those beautiful ocean blue crystals that sparkle with love and life. Aki captures Cora’s mouth into a passionate kiss finally free to release all the love he had to keep hidden within his heart, he pulls away to give her air to breath “Cora, being with you like this, just to hold you in my arms is absolute bliss for me~.” holding her close to his body. 

Cora smirks “I feel the same way holding you too Aki,” rubbing her face onto his chest, “So, shall we enjoy our lunch together and after that do a little more painting? But now as a couple.” she asks with a coy smile. Aki laughs softly “Yes! Of course we can!” it was taking everything he had not to just go crazy with joy. Her hand held onto his gently “C’mon let's go to the kitchen together.” in a sweet warm tone.

The kitsune nods excitedly “I made you your favorite, I hope it’s still warm.” he chuckles bashfully. “I’m sure it will taste absolutely delightful darling.” leaning her head onto his arm. 

Aki’s face flushes, he tries to stifle his happy chirps as they walk together. “You don’t have to hide your chirps Aki, I think they're really cute.” 

The tips of his tails wagged quickly, This would be a day that he will always remember, the greatest day of his life that the woman he loves more than life itself loved him back.

They enjoyed their lunch together and went back to start new paintings but this time worked on a much larger scale. It was a twenty by twenty blank canvas that was hung on hooks to keep it from falling on the floor. Aki had his tails ready to dip in the pain as Cora had her brushes and palette ready. 

Aki starts now that his tails soaked up the pain he starts to paint as Cora puts in her own touches, it felt as if they were dancing together to create something extraordinary. They laughed and had their wonderful fun as they worked together. Cora knew things were going to be different now, knowing what Aki was capable of and how much he loved her and what he was willing to do to show it. Despite it all though it was still Aki, the same kind, loving, artist she knew and would always love.

When they took a step back they gazed at their masterpiece, The colors of red, purple, orange, and blue all intertwined like a wild surreal tornado into a heart of their love forming together as one. Aki looked over to Cora smiling warmly “I love you Cora.” holding her hand. She smiles warmly “I love you too Aki.” leaning onto Aki looking up at him. Now it would just be them, no one else to interfere or meddle with. It was Cora and Aki in their own little world and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

#Painting Fox #kitsune #artist #painting #Cora #Aki #yandere #monster #monster boyfriend #romance #horror #writing #fox #obsessive

[donavanhall]

Acts of Translation

Late in February 2021, I was walking through the Long Island Pine Barrens, along the beginning of the Paumanok Trail.  The snow-covered path was marked by the patterned boot tracks of other hikers (only two or three at the most) and the cloven hoof-marks of deer.  The sky above the trees was pale blue, tinged with gray.  The air was cool, crisp, dry.  With each step, my boots compacted the icy slush and sometimes my boot would shift, sliding on the heavy, dense snowpack so that I’d have to compensate with a movement of my upper body and arms to keep my balance and to prevent myself from slipping.

The fourth branch of Jacques Roubaud’s “the great fire of London”, a volume called Poésie: (récit) — I prefer the French title since Poetry: (a story) is less poetic and loses a sense of meaning that I think should be there, poésie to my ear implies a movement that is lost in the more static English word, poetry, and récit (and perhaps this is peculiar to me and has nothing to do with actual French) suggests narration closer to that when a storyteller speaks to a listener who receives the récit and so completes the action, a story doesn’t necessarily require a reader — begins with the Narrator (Roubaud) moving through space, in this case, the space is urban, the streets Paris.

Early in December 1994, I was walking in Paris.  The sky was gray, low, the air humid, warm.

For walking in Paris, I wear a blue K-way jacket, and a cap, also blue.  The K-way was a gift, not something I’d picked out.  It was light, blue, waterproof, costly.

For walking in the woods, I wear an olive green jacket made by Patagonia that zips up the front and has a little pocket over the left breast where I can store my phone for easy access.  Around my neck, I wear my “Doctor Who scarf” knitted by my mother.  (The scarf isn’t a replica of any of the long scarves worn by the Fourth Doctor, played by actor Tom Baker, but a spirited recreation of the sort that anyone familiar with the various scarves featured in Season 12 through 17 of the TV show would immediately recognize.)  On my head I wear a black bowler hat I purchased at the museum shop of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2018 when I took my mother and son to the Magritte exhibit. (The next summer, I would take my wife and son to Brussels to tour the permanent Magritte exhibit at the Musée de Beaux Arts.  The study of Magritte’s art and writing is a principal concern of my Project.)  The clerk at the shop said this style of bowler hat is the exact same one worn by René Magritte when he was alive.  So it should be no surprise that I’m pleased with it and wear it every opportunity I get, and especially when I’m out on my daily walk.

Before the pandemic, I walked every afternoon through the pine barrens.  This was easy enough since the office where I perform my paid work (not at all literary) is located in the middle of the pine barrens.  There are a network of trails that lead through the woods that are immediately accessible from the back door of the building where I work.  A year ago, my office was closed, so that I now work from home.  Now my afternoon walks (usually) are taken along the streets in the neighborhood where I live in the village of Long Neck.  I’ve become a familiar sight in the neighborhood as the man in the bowler hat.  My neighbors wave to me and sometimes will view my unusual headwear as an occasion for conversation.  What kind of hat is that? asked one neighbor.  Another fellow walker assumed I’m a fan of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, a novel by Anthony Burgess.  I’m more a fan of the book than I am a fan of the movie, but my bowler hat is most deliberately a nod to Magritte and not to Alex and his three droogs.  Throughout the pandemic, Magritte and his art has been my life line.

On his walks in Paris, Roubaud doesn’t wear a bowler — his cap is of a different sort.

I bought the cap in New York, at J.J. Hat Center, at the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street.  It’s a hat made in Scotland and the salesperson assured me that it was the same exact style of cap worn by Sean Connery in the film The Untouchables. It’s no surprise that I’m happy with it.

After I’m vaccinated and I feel like taking the Long Island Rail Road to Penn Station again, maybe I’ll go to the J.J. Hat Center myself and shop for a hat.  Although according to “the internet” J.J. Hat Center is now located at 310 Fifth Ave (between 31st & 32nd), not far from Penn at all.  If/when I do go in to the city, I’ll want to pay a visit to the Fountain Pen Hospital.  A man can never have too many hats or too many fountain pens.

I could go along in this vein for quite some time, this leisurely stroll through Roubaud’s Poésie: (récit) allowing his text to guide my own thoughts, reveries, musings, etc.  The resulting text would function as a companion text.  I’m walking along with Roubaud in Paris as he moves from the National Library, past familiar restaurants, along familiar streets…

I passed between the tops or periscopes of the licorice icebergs of the Buren columns, making sure not to slip on their outgrowths/extensions [? the French word is excroissances, but it’s not obvious to me what these outgrowths or extensions might be], on the damp grills, slimy, soaped with crushed beige leaves.  And I made it through with no accidents to Place Colette, on the right side of the Théâtre-Français.  This route was well known to me.

...but Roubaud himself is not walking with me, only his text, or perhaps he is with me as an invented copy of an imaginary Roubaud that I carry within myself as I read and as I walk along the snow-covered Paumanok Trail thinking of his book, or books (one book in seven volumes called collectively “the great fire of London”).

I read the first two and a half branches (the first three volumes to be translated into English), starting with Branch One: Destruction in the fall of 2018.  Without really intending to, I wrote a little book of jottings while reading Roubaud’s novel.  I called my little book, In the Labyrinth of Forking Paths, since “the great fire of London” is “a story with interpolations and bifurcations” with actual links indicating different narrative paths the reader can take during their wandering reading.  I was reminded (though only a little) of the choose-your-own-adventure books (published by Bantam) I read when I was a kid.  One of my early attempts at writing fiction was a “literary” choose-your-own-adventure called (imaginatively enough) Into the Labyrinth (a slight variation on a title of one of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novels, Dans le labyrinthe, with whose hyper-descriptive nouveau roman style I’d become bewitched, a style ideally suited to such text adventures).  (I published my Into the Labyrinth as an interactive fiction designed for a media platform that worked only on those early generation iPods.  I have no idea if anyone ever read/played my interactive fiction even though according to the app, mine was the most downloaded story.  It was certainly the longest.)  I won’t claim that I have been waiting for the remaining four volumes to be translated into English.  In fact, I felt a certain level of contentment with the artificial truncation of the novel — I had read all that I could, all that was available in English, so now I could move on to other things, like reading the works of Miklós Szentkuthy.  Procuring and reading the rest of “the great fire of London” wasn’t a tempting prospect until Anthony, author of the blog, Time’s Flow, mentioned that he’d purchased the remaining volumes in French and would be making an attempt to read them.  That was all it took.  If Anthony was going to do it, then so would I.  I ordered copies from a bookseller in France and they arrived last Friday in the post.  So when did I get the idea to translate these remaining four volumes into English myself?  Was it a serious idea or just another of my fanciful projects?  Project 7139: translated two thousand pages of Jacques Roubaud’s “the great fire of London” into English.  (For the record, I’m currently working on Project 3 which I started twenty years ago.  Project 4 is “write a masterpiece that will establish my literary reputation.”  That one might take awhile.)  Certainly, I would read these other branches.  Or would I?  My track record for finishing big projects is not stellar.  (The first time I read Proust, it took me ten years.)

While walking in the snow in the pine barrens, I thought about why I was being pulled back into Roubaud’s book.  What was it about his very long prose that attracted me?  Was this a momentary literary crush or had I fallen for “the great fire of London”?  If this were a romance, you could say that Roubaud and I met in the fall of 2018 and spent some time together, mostly walking.  We shared our mutual interests, talking about poetry, literature, and mathematics.  I learned a great deal about haikai (haiku and haibun), gained a new appreciation of the works of Charles Dickens, and was introduced to Nicholas Bourbaki, and then resumed my own mathematical studies after a hiatus of twenty years, this time beginning with set theory and topology.  And then it was over.  He had to go.  We parted ways.

Then two and half years later, Roubaud pops up again at a party hosted by a friend, this time we’re speaking French — my French is better now, so it’s much easier for us to talk and now I feel something different than I did before.  We’re making a real connection.  I can feel it.  And Roubaud seems somehow changed.  When we first met, I was the one who was paying attention to Roubaud, accompanying a new master, and learning new things.  Now, this new Roubaud, this French-speaking Roubaud is interested in me, keeps asking me questions, asking for my opinion. Then it dawns on me.  Roubaud has chosen me.  You’re the one, he says.  I’ve picked you.

Of course, this isn’t an exclusive relationship.  Such is the way with authors and their books.  Readers must share the objects of their affection, but still it feels different when a book chooses you rather than you choosing it.

I’m choosing you.  I’m ready whenever you are.  Shall we begin?

#jacques roubaud #walking #translation #french #literature

[incarnateirony]

I went off on a rant to a friend about things like Gamble Era, and miscellaneous idolized past authors, and you know what, fuck it. I'm going to say it out loud. And listen, listen this is NOT going to be my normal "Whatever you like :)" post like, this is literally an accumulation of horse shit I've seen talked about in any and all lanes for years that have been driving me fucking bananas for years. Don't just read this going HAHA I HATE GAMBLE TOO and then be shocked when I slap at inexplicably favorited authors in this fandom beyond that.

------

God how can anyone genuinely like Gamble, like, literally, legitimately and 1000%, not even about her killing Cas or whatever, what kind of pure trash TV do these people intake in mass that they think Gamble was good at her job I can not emphasize enough how cripplingly disappointing the shift from S4-5 to 6-7 was I know art is in the eye of the beholder or whatever but JESUS. FUCKING. CHRIST.

Fuck constructivist theory there's a point when things are just clearly trash Benefits S7 had: Just da bros uhhhh *flips through pages* Anything else? Are dick jokes art?

Her era was overrun by plot holes you could fly boeing jets through -- and I don’t mean shit like when fandom goddamn made up in their own damn head about an angelreaper retcon even though the reaper in the same episode they said was a retcon said the deadass opposite of what everybody fucking wound themselves up about, just deadass yawning voids -- it had unstable mechanics on previously established species shit, the villain plot was one giant monster of the week that tried desperately to go back to how they handled shit like Azazel as a threat but miserably failed, the monster had the dumbest weakness possible, the characters themselves were unstable in their characterizations and not even in that general "I don't like what the show is doing with them" but episode to episode Sam flipping from ripping Dean with laughter over gay jokes to woke-sounding sentiments

The cinematic style was gone and just vacant, it was neither the overexposed horror desaturated film nor the vivid fantasy of Carver, it just sat there like an unpolished lump

While later seasons also lost the classic rock vibe for budget reasons, that too disappeared in her era so we had no film energy, no story energy, no character energy, no villain energy, no structure energy, and we didn't even have the fucking cool tunez but we had dicks allergic to windex

It even lacked the elements that gave Kripke era value

Dusty americana died, all we had left was teenage girl fuckin emo sad boi drama And even that was miserably piss poor

I have never seen such a visionless fucking disaster successfully air an entire season on my fucking TV

I will never, EVER be able to outline what a fucking disappointment it was to go from S4-5 level show maturation into this negative embarrassment by season 7.

S6 Kripke was still around to some extent and that's the only reason I can deduce, S7 minded, there was any substance to it, even if her writing and editing crew at the time were a goddamn tire fire. And then people turn around and yell feminism if you criticise the giant fucking blazing slag heap that was her era and blame anyone and everyone but her and here you FUCKING go and she does half the shit all over again in the Magicians

(The friend replied: "The season only works in reverse, which is a crime on serialised TV (and just bad screenwriting)." )

That's just it though, it's like S7 we were suddenly back to fucking episodical TV like S1-2 because enough fuckbats yelled about Good Old Days. Only instead of ʷĤε𝕣є'𝓼 đα𝒹 or 𝐓Ħⓔ DεᗰＯᶰ 卄𝓐ｓ Ƥl𝓐𝓝Ş ℱⓞｒ Ⓜ𝔢 it was   ħ𝔞ⓗａ 𝓓ＩＣ𝐤ᔕ  🍆

I mean fucking sure this show started targeting late teenage women but Kripke had started maturing it forward and then Gamble fucking rolls along and it's like she's writing for 13 year old boys suddenly

Well I say that's what she seemed to be writing for but at the time the marketing was gross objectification going LOOK PRETTY BOYS WITH GUNS and that was it, that was the substance of what they gave a shit about and apparently the kind of demographic they thought constituted the sum of the SPN audience which, go get fucked guys, seriously. No fucking wonder the ratings got gouged in half over the course of a year. And fandom yells BUT FRIDAY DEATH SLOT but go sit and spin, S6 was friday deathslot too but before Kripke disappeared as the last thread holding SOME kind of cohesive value in the piece together in S6, that went to shitfuckhell in a handbag at light speed. People migrated to SPN Fridays S6 just fine. They LEFT season 7 and then people plug their ears if they don’t like that. And Carver had to fight all S8 to get it back, /but succeeded, and then-some./ 

oh and lemme head off fandom dumbfuck argument #72 about “well Dabb’s ratings are lower than Gamble’s were so he sucks and ruined it worse” go take your fucking ass and google “national primetime ratings decline” and enjoy exploring the last fucking 70 years of TV history. Pointing out a show crashes within a year because of massive failure is not the same as people being intentionally fucking daft sods to the TV universe’s decline over the last decade so like, don’t. Don’t be that person. Because you’re still embarrassingly wrong.

(The friend replied: "That's why I don't get why people care about what the vocal minority have to say. They *already* got what they wanted. It crashed and burned. Nobody in their right mind in corporate world is gonna be like, let's try that again, let's throw more money into that burning pit That's just not happening. Gay angels or no, it just ain't." )

I mean that should have been obvious when 1. Carver brought back Cas and pretty much immediately promoted him to Regular 2. Misha then got promoted to lead credits in S12, no matter what circles of intentional, willful ignorance fandom argues about what the credits mean for petty piss fights

"LOL & MEANS HE'S LESS IMPORTANT" Shut the fuck up and sit down you basement dwelling shitlord, go watch the A-Team, tell me how Mr T is the least important character

Also unpopular fuckin opinion Robbie Thompson and Ben Edlund are not That Great. Compared to what they were SURROUNDED with they were exceptional but Berens and Yockey could run circles around them both. They just happened to give fandom shit they liked during dark times so it made them fun. Robbie Thompson and Ben Edlund are basically the baseline value of our current writing team on random names. Give me Robbie Thompson and give me Davy Perez and I see no fucking difference. People compare Edlund to Yockey because of certain shit he pulled off but like, no? If there WAS a comparison it’d be like, Meredith, and even then I can’t see any way Edlund is substantially better than Meredith but could list the other in reverse?

But if we're talking about being able to write pieces with more than 1 or 2 layers of impact I'm sorry, it's rose colored glasses that makes people idolize them

Like if people seriously objectively fucking sat and reviewed the methodology and substance of their past idol authors to the demonstratable level of the current crew where I am DEAD ASS HAVING DISCOURSE WITH THE EXEC PRODUCER ABOUT BAUDRILLARDIAN CONCEPTS AND DELILLO in the middle of a hypercomplex postmodern two-directional commentary piece on some scaffolding of sociopolitical representation commentary that SAILS past the level the ‘activists’ in this fandom think about, literally, what people like is Gay Shit They Got lobbed at them or shiny visuals. And you know what, whatever, sure, like what you like IDGAF but don't sit here like Thompson was some fucking Shakespeare. No, your fucking "meta" you -- you, in any lane, anyone, any ship, anywhere, ever -- wrote by COMPLETELY randomly associating whatever storyline you could staple on to try to pretend the text was doing what you want at the time -- is not the same as author intent and actual weight and merit to the cohesive structure of what they build.

YES YES I KNOW, Death of the Author, someone just popped that up in their head, like the ten thousand posts I've made over the last 209349 years addressing how people abusive the fuck out of the term and that's fine, interpret shit however you wanna make it do jumping jacks but don't sit here entering the time you attached Little Bo Peep as some sort of intrinsic value to Dean trying to find Sam in 1492 and act like that's some deep critical shit the authors thoughtfully laced into the piece, these are not the same fucking conversation.

Big hollow voids of statements doesn’t make a better author, it makes you bust your ass harder to actually give any sort of consequential meaning to the piece, and that has nothing to do with the quality of the author or text themselves, that has to do with your interpretation in a piece devoid of genuine thematic subtext so people desperately try to bobby pin some bullshit together. Which also is probably why this fandom can’t tell the difference between coding, interpretation, subtext, and text for their fucking life anymore.

Protip the entire goddamn writing room is pouring that gay shit in your cup that's been triple brewed above Robbie or Edlund’s pots and people are still complaining it isn't enough

Another point that drives me up a wall, "LAZARUS RISING IS THE BEST EPISODE EVER" okay like lmaooooo what the fuck are you smoking Was it impressive as fuck at the time yes it was. But again, fucking perspective. I literally went back and watched it like a month ago and I realized it was a fucking void of content compared to our modern writing, it just had one of the most impressive entrances, it DID have good directing (YES MANNERS WAS GOOD, NO DISRESPECT), and it introduced a character everybody loved. Dean was still a halfass caricature

You wanna know why everybody made that shit gay right away Because there was no fucking substance around it it was a wallpaper of a cool looking episode that was otherwise blank space to run around in on dialogue they should have thought to construct better if they didn't want it to be gay

And sure since then the author room has picked up the big gay ball and started actually turning it into some shit which, great, but this is yet again a matter of structure and intent versus throwing rotten pasta at the wall and seeing if the mold makes it stick. I don't care if you have a vegan recipe that converts the fucking mold on the pasta into a healthy sauce base that isn't what it was thrown at the wall like, and no amount of complimenting the original chef's moldy pasta means it was some tasty shit before you added 10,000 ingredients they never fucking thought about or at least a second chef came along and figure out what to do with the pile of goo.

Fandom would stop being this miserable fucking putrid stinkhole if people would collectively apply some goddamn perspective to the content they argue about before even bothering to engage with uwustiel/cest dot tumblr dot com in irrelevant argument #9238428934 they use to fence off whether they should enjoy the content or try to explore it for its value or not because there is NO. MORE. PERSPECTIVE.

YOU KNOW WHAT? IT’S FINE TO EVEN ADMIT YOU LIKED THINKY-FREE TV, THAT’S FINE, THAT’S YOUR RIGHT.

But don’t SIT here acting like a lot of these former train wrecks were “better authors” or somehow objectively “better content.” No like, you like not thinking about shit that much and staring at pretty boys or whatever, good on you, but you literally like, objectively, some of the shit I’ve seen go down is like genuinely trying to compare a toddler’s fridge art to a Vasarely and hold them both up in front of people who do art for a living. They ain’t gonna shit on the kid’s fridge art, but they’re gonna go “awwwww she’s gonna grow up to be a great artist!” before breaking down on Vasarely’s vector illusion shit, sorry, that’s just how it be. I’m sure the kid had some sort of vision to drawing the triangle over the square that kinda looks like a house but the hypercomplex thought processes simply aren’t there. 

Just people STUCK in weird idolization of shit that is so far past irrelevant to the current piece in play and fighting to win arguments while trying to convince themselves they're right and secretly dreading how titanically failboat wrong they are ignoring the sound of the glacier having ripped through their hulls SEASONS ago. The ice water has already leaked onto the fucking DECK and people are still arguing about completely ridiculous shit or fancying things that were 1/10th of the value of the current content they're claiming isn't good or enough or valid compared to the shallow specters that birthed them out of old aeons. 

Dead-ASS Kripke picked shit because it “sounded cool.” I’m sorry if there weren’t some model guys fandom wanted to hump everybody would be making fun of the fedora-tipping mindset that probably is where the fucking trenchcoat came from and may have debated giving Cas -- sorry, “CASS” because “COOL” -- katanas. But sure. Way, way deeper and more intricate than the Jungian intertextual post modern piece that’s so tightly knit it’s making fandom unwittingly comment on themselves.

I thought people grew out of that shit when they were like 16 unless they were incels

(My spidey senses detected someone unironically preparing to inform me about stealing borrowing the imagery from Constantine on reflex, because you know, that’s some peak intertext right there.)

Dead ASS that writing logic is that motherfucker that wanders into your freeform RP server with Spawn knockoff miasma chainsaw arms under his leather trenchcoat shooting twin Deagles with a vague story of wanting to face his demon overlord father that’s written like a looney tunes villain, in the middle of you cowriting with your lit-savvy friends trying to make a fun fantasy adaptation rendering fascism and corporate america and then he gets upset when nobody wants him to shit lightning -- /fight me/.

SERIOUSLY FOLKS. WANNA ENJOY THE SHOW AGAIN? GET SOME PERSPECTIVE. LET GO OF FETISHIZING WEIRD WARPED MEMORIES AND LINES OF ARGUMENT INSIDE YOUR OWN HEADS ISTG IT'LL HELP.

The day I find an argument that makes season 7 legit good TV rather than, at very best, “fun junk TV I had a cool ride on”, that does NOT involve evoking arguments distinctly born out of petty shipping culture arguments and/or (generally the same) attaching their own shit with a stapler to MAKE it have some sort of meaning at the time it was airing (rather than later showrunners making it add up to something), I’ll eat my fucking arm.

𝓯𝓾𝓬𝓴. Carver era had already gone through dramatic changes that deepend the scope of the show and even then, 15.09 Bobo’s The Trap held more ACTUAL commentary on this fandom than Thompson’s Fanfiction episode did as a supposed fandom-commentary episode much LESS 15.04 as an actual meta framed episode. Fanfiction was like 4 years behind and completely fucking unplugged, whereas the base of the show itself is more integrated now in these dynamics than any attempt at meta episodes back then were.

old days it took one goddamn episode of dreaming for people to 1. start talking about Freud and 2. pretend the whole everything after that was some Freudian masterpiece even when, if it were, it would have been an entire avalanche of dropped balls. But two seasons of direct citations and literal manifest avatar-bodies of Jungian psychology elements and it’s hard to pull more than a peep out of the fandom about it because they’re too busy yelling about tulpas or sirens from before most of the people around here hit puberty.

𝓕 𝓤 𝓒 𝓚

furthermore why does anyone that idolize season 7 for what they think fits their bill think season 15 is gonna end how they want when they’ve been taking the piss out of season 7 over and over and over and over again IN THE TEXT as being dumb as SHIT

𝕀ℕ 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔽𝕌ℂ𝕂𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕋𝔼𝕏𝕋

WHY SET YOURSELF UP FOR DISAPPOINTMENT

TO WIN TEMPORARY ARGUMENTS? THAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY LOSING FROM START TO FINISH?

actually you know what

rolling back to the whole “empty/subtextless stuff making people bust their ass” seems to be what you miss. Saying, “I miss empty, shallow, shitty writing” doesn’t really sound as good though so we change “what I like” into “this is talentless trash” it postures better, but it seems to be the people who have objectively fucking refused core tenets the show has evolved over the last 7 years, most explicitly the last 3-4, and absolutely refused to soak them in the form they deliver in. And they’re mad. Because it isn’t hollow. They can’t run around in fucking blank space and plug absolute horse shit into the voids and then posture like they’re supreme in this noncommital wasteland. Because everything’s built out and structured in and loud as fuck and people are debating the actual installed and even dogmatically cited work of philosophers driving the ideology of the show now and they can’t get away from it, and/or actually have to pay attention to the whole show and think about it all as a picture instead of the parts they want, so it’s “bad.”

I just sensed like 50 readers shoving their foot into that shoe. Good.

Jesus christ I’m pretty sure that’s what it is in hindsight after yelling all of this. These characters can’t be used as sock puppets anymore that people can win bullshit arguments unless they literally delete the entire principle of the modern show -- and this goes for MULTIPLE lanes really, each in their own way -- so now it’s “bad.” And that’s just not how this works.

#supernatural #spn #rant #vent #mildew