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huearmy · 4 years

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The Smell of Truth - II

Summary: After years being forced to fight in clandestine hybrid ring, Jungkook is now living in shelter, but life remains bad, the place is abusive, and nobody seems to want adopt him. Until one night a pro-hybrid activist group invades the shelter, and a woman in black smelling like truth promises that things will get better, and he decides to follow her wherever she goes.

Pairing: pitbull!Jungkook x human!Reader

Genre: fluff, angst, future smut maybe.

Words: 3291

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: N/A. Jungkook continues to be just a cute pie here ok dont touch me.

Chapter I - Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII

You have always been enchanted by hybrids. You grew up surrounded by them, they were friends and family. Literally. For exemple, your favorite uncle adopted your cousin, a cat hybrid, when you were five and she was three, he and his wife wanted a second child but could't have one biologically anymore, and you got a friend as a gift. You never saw your cous being treated diferently from her older sister, indeed they were equaly loved by the whole family. You two would run and play for hours together.

You learned some diferences between you and hybrids when living with your cousin in childhood. The first one was that you, unfortunately, don't have fluffy beautiful ears and tail like they do, more than once your mother needed to comfort you before going to sleep cuz you were crying, wanting to be cute too. The second was that you were always at a disadvantage in games like hide and seek and tag you it, but you still had fun. The third is that hybrids can't go to school like normal kids. Until a certain age you were home schooled, taking classes with a tutor, when you turned eleven things changed a little bit, and you started studying at an elite college. Your world expanded, you started to study more hours a day and met new people, new teachers, classmates, you made new friends that gradually showed you a cruel world that you didn't know. Most of your friends were also daughters of politicians and entrepreneurs, just like you, and just like you, they grew up surrounded by hybrids. But while they were family to you, to your classmates they were butlers, maids, pets. Soon you started to understand the injustice of it all, of why you were bullied when you talked about your cousin, why you didn't like to go to some friends' house where you would see them treating their hybrids coldly.

The last straw came when you were fourteen, more specifically your birthday. Until then you kept your friends from meeting your cousin, for fear that the situation would be strang, but it was you birthday, you wanted all your friends in your sleepover, including her. At the beginning of the night you were apprehensive, but your friends did nothing but find your cousin cute and be kind to her, so you relaxed. Everything was going well until one of her best friends decided that she liked your cousin so much that she was going to "ask her father to buy her".Your cousing didn't understand at the time, it was the first time that she was treated as something and not as a person. You were so angry that the party ended right there, most girls left, even though it was two-thirty in the morning. Days later you were expelled from school for getting involved in a fight and assaulting one of the girls who used the wrong word to define your family. You went back to school at home, with the best private tutors, and the world outside was no longer so beautiful. That's how you, already in college, joined a radical activist group for the sake of hybrids.

The concept of owning someone was disgusting for you, that's why you never adopted any hybrid, just fought to free them, in and out of law.That's why you don't recognizes yourself in the decision of getting Jungkook home. But here are you, driving your SUV with him sitting next to you in the passenger's seat. You want the best for each hybrid you have ever rescued, but never before have you been so involved that you are directly responsible for one as you are now doing with him.

Jungkook have followed you to your car, where you gave him a oversized hoodie of yours to wear - the nigth got cold - and snacks that you had prepared for your trip back home. He was really entertained comparing flavors of three diferent chips, that he didn't even noticed when your black outlaw clothes are gone, replaced by a summer dress in a cardigan. Well, he couldn't remember the last time he had a chance to eat chips, it was probably when he was a kid, and there weren't that many flavors. Of couse, he was refraining from asking you too many questions, that were filling your head like: How is house? Will it be long before we arrive? Do you live with someone else? Do you have other hybrids? Do you do these jobs every night? ... But he kept silent, like a good boy.You said the drive to your city would take about two hours, that he could sleep, but he wanted to keep awake and looking out the window at the landscape, the trees he had never seen so many together and other cars, once in a while passing by with their lights on. It would be beautiful during the day too, he thought. The music playing softly on the radio is also cool.

"Ok." You brake the silence. "We have sometime before we get home, we can talk and get to know each other until then."

Jungkook took a sip of his soda before answering.

"To know each other?"

"Yeah. Like a game where we tell things about ourselves and ask each other something..."

"Got it. How do I win this game?" Jungkook got excited.

"It wasn't supposed to be a competition." You laughed, and then got thoughtful. "If you make a question you got one point. If you tell a fact about yourself without being asked you got two points..."

"Whoever has the most points wins. Ok." Jungkook softly clapped his hands with a happy soud coming from his mouth, the gesture doesn't go unnoticed by you. You showd him where to find paper and pen in the glove compartment for him to write down the points. In one side of the page he writed your initials and in the other, his - JK.

"I go first. Hummm... My full name is Y/N Y/L/N and I'm twenty-three. And you, what' is your age?"

"Woaaaa, Y/N! You already have five points, you are good at it." Jungkook excitedly wrote down your points, already thinking about what to say. "I'm twenty-two, but not for long, my birthday is in september. I'm a virgo. What's your sign?"

"Y/S." You responds. "You are into zodiac?"

"Not exactly. But it was a fact about me." Jungkook smile to you making you look away from the road for a moment longer than insurance so you can look at the dimples under his eyes. "Among these three chip flavors, which is your favorite?" "Both cheddar and bacon, I can't choose between them" You answered without hesitation. "Actually I love cheddar and bacon in any context. Did you decided wich one you like the most?"

Jungkook thoughtfully compared the chip packs.

"Nope. I like them all together. I like sweets more. Do you live with someone else?" Jungkook took the courage to ask something that was really on his mind.

"No, is just me in my apartament. But theres always a friend or relative visiting me, almost everyday. "

Jungkook he felt a confusion of feelings, he did not know if he should be happy or disappointed that you lived alone, and as a result, that he will live only with you. It would be nice if you live with siblings or your parents if they are good like you, but at same time if they are bad he prefers to be with just you.

"How is your family?" He asked before you could make your next question.

"They are great." You said, your tone of voice and eyes ligthing up with affection. "I'm single child, but my family is quite big. We are all focused on progressive thinking of liberating hybrids. That's why I'm part of activist groups ... Of course, only I do this more clandestine work, and my mother doesn't even know. She would be crazy worry. You will like them I think. I have like six cousins, two girls and four guys... Oh my God, they will tease me so much for bringing a boy to live with me..."

Clearly your family is a trigger for you to talk non-stop. Jungkook concluded that your family must be really cool, for you to like them so much, making him wanting to know them too. It got him a little nervous. What would them think about him? Your talking makes your family look amazing, while he’s no big deal. Worse than being uninteresting is not being liked, and there are really bad things about him ... More bad than good things actually. Your family not liking him is scary, and thinking that you might know about his bad past and not liking him any longer suddenly made him anxious.

You were bragging about your great-aunt's cooking skills when noticed Jungkook got too quiet.

"You are ok, Jungkook?"

He looked at you awkwardly, eyes round like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Yes."

"Sorry I talked too much." You let a weak laugh out, feeling embarrassed. "Is your turn now. Go ahead."

Jungkook looked through the window, avoiding looking to you.

"I don't know what else I have to say... You already won anyway." He showed you the score, your inicials with no space left to write down points.

"Oh I bet you have a lot of things to say."

"Not good things." Jungkook dared to say, already regretting it as soon as the words left his mouth.Your voice softned.

"You don't need to tell me anything you are not ready to tell. Even if you're never ready. But I know that you are a person, and people are made up of many things, not just bad things." A moment of silence followed, you thinking about the next thing to say. "If you don't want to talk about past things... Lets talk about the future. What do you want to have for lunch tomorrow?"

________________________________________________________________

At some point Jungkook finally fell asleep. You drove an entire hour alone, slowly sipping an energy drink, his soft snores beside you not letting you forget about his presence. Everything you want is to sleep too, your eyes heavy, your body numb. You were thinking of it an how you would be in your bed about time, in your fluffy pijamas and warm socks, when blue and red lights appeared in your rear view mirror.

You pulled over and waited to the cop to come closer to lower the window

."Good nigth, officer."

You greeted in a low voice.The man just nodded writing down your license plate.

"Do you know why I made you pull over?" He said, louder than you.

"No, sir." You calmly answered, shrugging. "I was not above the speed limit and my tail lights are ok."

He made an approving sound.

"Papers please."

You turned on the light and reached out to get your documents from the glove compartment, making Jungkook open his sleepy eyes with a groan.

"Y/N?" He called with a pout. The ultimate pout."Shhh. Keep sleeping, babe. We didn't arrived yet."

He obeyed immediately, leaning his head on the window, and you can tell he didn't really wake up in the first place. He was with his cap and hoodie on, so the cop couldn't see his ears and know he is a hybrid. And theis way is better, you thought.

"Your boyfriend?" The cop asked while analyzing your driver's license.Time to improvise with your acting skills.

"Kind of." You timidly put a lock of hair behind your ear.He scanned the trash in the car."Any alcohol?"

"No, sir. Just energy drink and soda." You smiled.

He did the breathalyzer test on you anyway.

Since it didn't point to guilty results, you were released to continue your journey.

You took a deep breath, glad he didn't asked to inspect the car, he would surely find something that would link you to the terrorist act against the shelter, as the newspapers would for sure report the next day.

The good part is that forging Jungkook's adoption document in your name with a date prior to the rescue will be super easy, as the shelter's records blew up in the explosion. That thought made you relax and start driving normally. ________________________________________________________________

"Jungkook. Jungkook wake up." You shook his shoulder, his sleep too heavy. His head fell forward, making him jump in his spot, blinking heavily, the ultimate pout making another appearance. "We arrived, Jungkook."

Jungkook slowly regained consciousness, seeing you standing outside the car, beside him, holding the door open for him to get out.

"We're at home?." His face got bright.

"Yeah. Come."

It was a courtyard at the back of a small old building, it was still early in the morning, the sky was still dark and no one in town was awake. You turned on the car alarm, and guided a still sleepy but very attentive to the details of the new place, Jungkook, to the back door of the building, taking the bunch of keys out of his pocket - of your hoodie that he was wearing. He liked the proximity, the soud of the keys and the smell of the place. Actually the smell was pretty amazing, specially when you opened the door and everything inside got your smell, and others good things.

You noticed his nose working in the air and laughed.

"Is a flower shop. Do you like it?" You asked.

Something made sense to Jungkook, it's not that the place smelled like you, you smelled like flowers because of the place.

"Yeah. Is pretty good." He said still sniffing the air.

"On the first floor we have the shop, on the second the shop office and a photo studio that I rent to a friend... And on the third and fourth is our home." You tell him as you go up the stairs, he following you closely. "Early on, both the store and the office are open, but this should not be a problem if you want to sleep till late."

"Ok."

You two whispered up to the third floor, a small corridor with two doors on one side and windows on the other. You stepped forward to the first door, the entrance to the living room and struggled to fide the rigth key in the dark.

Jungkook noticed a faint light coming from under the door and a murmur inside. There was someone in there. He got alert and slightly apprehensive.

You finally oppened the door and got inside, dropping your heavy bag on the floor, the keys in the corner table, kicking off your boots. Jungkook got inside with short steps, looking around cautiously, looking for the person who would ambush you both. The light was the TV... He smelled a cat.

"Y/n?" A sweet and sleepy voice reached your ears, a little form lifted on the couch. A sniffing soud and the sweet voice got hostile. "Who is this?"

"Yeri, you are here." You smiled, not really caring for the mood changing of her. Jungkook stepped behind you a little. "This is Jungkook. Jungkook, this is Yeri, my cousin."

"Hi." Jungkook tryied.

"What's he doing here? You never brought anyone home ..."

And by anyone she meant hybrids, and Jungkook knows it. He couldn't see her face in the dark, just her luminous cat eyes with vertical pupils, the dominant presence of those who had their territory invaded radiating from her.

"There is always a first time I guess." You say, still ignoring the awkward atmosphere, taking off your cardigan and hanging it on the rack behind the front door. "Are you in the guest room?"

Yeri got up and turned off the TV.

"No. I'm sleeping with you."Clearly she didn't trust Jungkook yet. If you bet, she was ready to sleep in the guest room, but now she decided to sleep with you to protect you from the stranger.

"Ok." You said.

"Ok." She said.

She turned on the light in the corridor, taking a few steps to the top floor, with bare feet and cute pijamas, and then stopped looking at Jungkook. Now he could see her face. The scariest cat he has ever seen. "Welcome to the family." And than she disappeared up the stairs.

Jungkook gulped, not sure what to think about it.

"She liked you." You told him, putting a hand in the small of his back.

"How do you know?" He asked you with round eyes.

"She didn't say she disliked you." You smiled. "Yeri is pretty honest about her feelings."

You took him to a room in the hall, with a messy cat-smelling bed in the middle, an empty desk and an armchair close to the window, and an empty closet. Beside the bed on the floor was an open handbag , with women's clothing showing up.

"She said she wasn't going to sleep here..." Jungkook pointed.

"Yeah, she lied about it. She wouldn't let me put you to sleep on the couch, though..." You went down the hall and came back with another blanket. "Aaaand, this will be your room. You'd better get used to it."

You fixed the sheets and changed the blanket and pillowcases, probably to help with the cat smell, odorless bedding help to make the bed more of him.

"That's what I can offer you for now, after all I wasan't expecting to adopt you. We can fix it later." You tiredly said, picking Yeri's bag from the floor.

"Ah... Don't worry.". Jungkook wanted to say he was already happy with what he got, that being adopted in firts place was more than he expected, that he was greatfull of your caring so far. But he couldn't find the words to put in on.

"Good, bucause I'm dead tired... I need to sleep, and you do too." You gave him a pat in his back, and went to the door. "If you need it, theres a bathroom in the end of the corridor. Good night." And than you closed the door behind you.

Jungkook waited for the sound your staps desapeard to start moving and breathing again. He was in his room! He ran to the window and opened the curtains a little to see outside, it seemed to be a main street in a small town, but Jungkook had never stepped in a small town before to have reference. He tryied the armchair and conclued it was confortable enouth to take a nap on it. The closet was big enough for him to fit in - he tested it - another possible place for good naps. With leaps of joy he imagined all the things he could kept there, the clothes and shoes he didn't have yet but dream of having. Fantasizing about when you were going to take him to shopping, he put the hat on one of the top shelves and closed the double doors carefully, to make any noise. And then threw himself on the bed, scenting the sheets, sighing contentedly. He took off his shoes and placed beside the bad, his wallet in the nigthstand - open like a picture frame, showing the photo of two hybrid little boys embracing and smiling - , and the suffed bunny lying next to him with it's own pillow.

All in this room felt so real to him, as much as your smell. If you said it will be his room so it's true, because se believe in you, and he is so happy.With the thought of a bright future with you Jungkook finally fell asleep again.

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Tag list: @stayunderthelights @deolly @panconte

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Thakyou!!! Let me know if you liked it... <3 <3 <3 This is a sub blog so I wont respond coments, but I read it all.

#bts fanfic #bts fanfction #bts hybrid fic #bts blog #bts fluff #hybrid bts #hybrid jungkook #jungkook x reader #jungkook fanfic #jungkook fic #jungkook imagine #bts angst #dog jungkook #bangtanshadowfamily

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comradecrossing · 6 years

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hi do you have any tips/recs for someone who’s just starting new leaf? i had it a long time ago but i stopped playing, and now i want to start playing again but i don’t remember it well 🙈

Hi! This might be long but! When I restarted this last time I was worried it would get boring real fast like with my first save, so I planned out as much as I possibly could ahead of time.

Think of a theme that makes you happy! Do you love witchy/fairy things? A specific color? maybe a season? particular villager animal? Aliens??? If you can figure out a theme you can build around (and it can be ANYTHING) then you will have much more confidence when you first step foot in your new town!

Now I’m gonna use my town as reference, so, I really like the Witchy/Fairy aesthetic and I knew immediately thats what i was going to do. I’m bad at town names, but i like Pokemon and remembered they have a fairy town, so I looked it up and got my name and figured why stop there? That’s how Laverre City became one of my sole inspirations for my town. I was inspired to restart because of hackers so even though I cant hack, I think about things I might like to do, or really want to do when/if i ever can and i have some big ideas lol im so sad. So ultimately i settled on a fall themed town (not perpetual fall but looks best in fall and the dreamcode will be of the town in fall) with lots of pink cosmos and regular saplings to give off a resemblance to Laverre City :)I then looked at a lot of forest and dreamy type towns to get some inspiration like mushroom rings, layout ideas, and items or PWPs to use. I also checked sites like animal crossing wikia to make a list of PWPs I might like in my town and chose 30 possible options (you can only build 30) and check the space requirements.

Once I start for real with a vague idea of where I want to put things I look at all the maps available and if they don’t have specific traits i want (secret beach, desirable town tree location, diving cliff, ponds in places that wont get in the way of projects and landscaping ideas, good spot for the cafe, etc) I restart until a map comes up that I like. Once I arrive in town its time to check my native fruit and rock locations and make sure its up to my standards, and if a resident is important for you to have/not have make sure to check the map too!

Once you get a town you’re happy with and you’ve found the perfect place to call home its time to get serious >: |It’s time for your first shovel and axe.Now, I have always been anti-axe in previous games but this last save changed me. I got a hold of that first axe and chopped down every tree that wasn’t a southern cedar tree! (southern cedars are only possible at the start! If you plant them they’ll only grow in the North, thats the top half of your town.) Now your town will feel barren at first and this is the ugliest stage but also one of the funnest -imo- so lets open up your patterns and get started. Now that you have a blank canvas use your green & blue tiles to signify trees/bamboo and bushes, you can even redesign it and write “T” or “B” respectably and start laying them out. You can also use the Yellow to lay down where you want PWPs (make sure to surround two spaces further than the project requires. a 3x3 fountain should look more like a 5x5 area to ensure no one moves directly next to where you want to build). You should have lots of fruit piled up (remember to stack them) so you can layout bush tiles and plant fruit if you’d rather have a better idea of how its gonna look. I planted all my peaches and would later go back and replace certain ones with new fruit i acquired. Its good to have a “this is all a process” mindset because it will take a while to get your town done even if you time travel, but thats good! because the game is all about making your dream town!

So now you have a good amount of the town planned out and probably have some ideas of what to do next. The next few days will be spent checking out how things are growing and making sure you planted things in the right spots. if there’s anything you’re not liking - change it! Your town Your rules!

Now while you are waiting for things to grow and get pretty its time to gather aaaaaallllll the flowers you can find and organize them in a large free space so they are all diagonally touching (XXXX), this way you can get hybrids early on :)Make sure they are the same breed and check hybrid guides so you know which colors work best to make the hybrids you most want and make sure to water them everyday as they will wilt if you don’t have the beautiful ordinance. Hybrids are good to have for trades when you dont have much money.

After all this you should be off to a pretty good start. Try to keep in mind villagers you would like to have and try to make friends online or IRL that you can adopt from (I always post when i have some one leaving and who I am hoping to replace them with and I usually get an offer fairly quickly, even for villagers I was desperate to get out. No matter who they are someone likes them :)) But if your town is set up in a way that you’ll be devastated if your dreamie moves in that one perfectly made up spot, it might be a good idea to plot set &/ reset.Plot resetting is when you make a *NEW* character save to check and see if anyone moved in overnight, and more importantly, if they moved in an undesirable place. If this happens restart and select the new save option until the villager plots in a spot you like. Once they do that build your tent somewhere and save quit. This will make the new residents spot permanent and then you can select the new save once more and delete their home. This could take quite a while if you have lots of “open” space. “Open Space” is how I refer to non-tiled/pwp or house occupied areas and the way I go about this is covering my town in about 75% tiles and spacing out pwps to where there are as few places houses can plot in as possible. Houses wont build over tiles and will plot at least 2 spaces away from other buildings, rocks and projects and one away from clifs and ponds/rivers. They dont care however if there are trees, bamboo, items, bushes, or flowers so be sure to lay out tiles in any place at risk to being plotted on. I refer to this as “Plot Setting” as you can make 3x3 empty plots you surround with tiles which will help villagers know where to plot. If you do a good job and plot everything out just right, you’ll never have to worry about someone messing up your hard work.

Now here’s the kinda sucky part of ACNL and that is The Limitations.Annoying programmed rules that seem to only get in the way such as the 2-space rule between pwps/buildings. This can mess up your aesthetic a lot and sometimes you will have to completely replan things due to a small fact you may have overlooked or not noticed and suddenly your garden isnt looking right so im gonna name off the biggest hassles and how I have gotten around some of them.

Bush + tree + bush: You can line up 12 trees/bamboo and bushes in a line. This works both straight and diagonally. only 12. Now you can leave gaps in some places that will reset the count or do intricate designs like one cedar in the middle of 4 bushes, a line of bushes with trees spaced out directly behind, a pattern of bushes and chopped bamboo, etc get creative. Visiting others towns or looking at pics people post can help you get lots of ideas. Bushes can touch each other but trees & bamboo still have the one space between rule.

PWP 2-space rule: now I’ve already mentioned this a few times but this rule is always the one that I seem to forget when planning. YOU NEED TWO SPACES. I cant tell you how many times i have planned project locations weeks in advance only to not be able to lay them out as i wanted because I got the space requirement wrong or only left one space between other objects :/

Beach Rules: You may have seen cool towns with pwps, cedar trees and hibiscus bushes scattered around their beach and Ive got some bad news; Those are hacked towns. The only thing that can be planted on the beach naturally is coconut and banana trees, flowers, and clovers. Nothing grows on the beach, not even weeds. No pwps can be built there either, even though it was initially programmed to be possible. I currently use the space for hybrid breeding since i have no space to elsewhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Tear Down and Build Up: I will say though that even though only maybe 15% of my original plans came to life, my town looks way better than i had ever imagined it would. Don’t be afraid to tear things down and try out different locations or setups you might figure something out that looks amazing compared to your original plans.

Finally, while you can participate in the Happy Home Ratings, you dont have too. Decorate how ever the flip you want. Find new things to do everyday as the game can get old fast and you might get temped to Timetravel (which isnt a bad thing if thats what you want to do, but be careful you dont lose your villagers/flowers! Even though I have the Beautiful ordinance, I water all my flowers incase they pop out a hybrid. I try to earn all the badges, I visit dreamtowns for inspiration, redesign areas of my town, farm PWPs, make patterns, try hunting down items to decorate my house with, etc, this is another area where having a theme can help as you will find inspiration easier, and make you feel more immersed like you’re playing an RPG.

I’ve gone on a lot here and I have more to add but I’ve spent over an hour typing this, but let me know if you have any other questions or need clarification on anything :) I’m not gonna add pics rn but if you need photo reference send another message and I will address it separately and add it here later.

Now heres a bunch of links to help you get invested:MoriBD - A catalog of every in-game item and an option to make a wishlistHybrid Guide - By @nooklingPWP GuideVillager Adoption Further Info on Plot ResettingPWP Farming Towns/interiors I found inspirationalSome QRsHacking info (if youre interested)How to upload your screenshots & Make your screenshot pretty!

Pick the right face when you startOnce you get the QR reader (talk to sable 7 days) you can use these

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help :)Just putting it out there too, I am always happy to help people get whatever they want/need for no cost whether it be fruits, bamboo, mushrooms, items, hybrids, etc, I will always do what I can to help you out, whether you’re just starting or on your 5th year.

#ref #tutorial #animal crossing #acaddicts #animal crossing new leaf #i might have to go through and edit this later #but im too tired rn #blanca

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bruhsauraus · 6 years

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Armando Iannucci: I was saved from being a reject by comedy

The king of satire, back with a new film about Soviet-era Russia after Stalins death, talks about being uncool, Veep and building a spaceship in London

Armando Iannucci arrives for our 3pm meeting with a small amount of his lunch still clinging to his shirt. We discuss retouching the mark for the Observers pictures but, admirably, he doesnt seem to care either way. It is tempting to describe the 53-year-old Iannucci as the most feared political satirist of our age. Certainly, his output in the past decade the BBC sitcom The Thick of It, the companion film In the Loop, and latterly Veep has been untouchable in skewering the vanity, incompetence and plain childishness of people in power. But, in person, nothing about Iannucci is remotely scary: he is self-effacing, smiley, quick to laugh. At the end of the day, hes just a guy with a tomato stain on his shirt.

Iannuccis latest target is Stalin and his cronies. His new film, The Death of Stalin, is set in 1953 and depicts with unexpected historical accuracy the undignified scrabble for dominance that followed the demise of the Soviet despot. It is silly, moving and revelatory, all at once, with deft, pitch-perfect turns from Simon Russell Beale as Beria and Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev. Iannucci, who never likes to have fewer than seven plates spinning at any moment, has also just published a book on classical music, Hear Me Out, about a lifetime of listening to Mahler and Britten in open defiance of the keepers of the cool.

Was it easier than you expected to make a comedy about Stalin and his inner circle that was also factually accurate? Yeah. When we were researching it, we found out things like Vasily, Stalins son, really did lose the ice-hockey team in a plane crash. And because the comedy is the comedy of hysteria, you want to be true to what happened and how people responded. So anything that was so-bizarre-and-yet-true was a candidate for going in. I thought about having This is a true story, but then I thought, no, just watch it for what it is, and it would be great if you subsequently found out that the bulk of it was true.

These men are vicious, but your film also gives them a human side. They have families they fear for; they play practical jokes. Did your feelings towards them change? Um, no. But I did think, what must they have done to have survived and ended up so close to Stalin, and what has it done to them? The fact, for example, that he would almost taunt them and mock them and play them off against each other With all these things its about posing the question, What would you have done in those circumstances?

Power corrupts? Yeah, it was almost like Animal Farm by the end, and yet they all lived near each other and popped in and out of each others houses. He might have had your brother shot and all that, but they had to sublimate that as just part of the process of moving forward. But, you know, you read that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were the biggest enemies and are now reconciled. Im not saying they are like Stalin, but in that febrile environment where you see each other every day, in order to survive, just psychologically, you must have to close off a bit of your emotion.

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Watch a trailer for The Death of Stalin.

So there are lessons about todays political landscape? Trump gets all his closest associates in over the past three or four months, and has to say, By the way, youre fired because I need to survive now. So could you go away? And eventually hell be saying that to his daughter and his son-in-law: Youve now become an albatross, I cant be seen with you anymore. Or after the general election, Theresa May turns to her two very close advisers and says, Its you or me. And they all kind of understand that. Its like that thing in The Godfather: Its not personal, its strictly business.

Is it true there have been calls in Russia for the film to be banned? You say Russia its a person in a country of 200 million people. Just somebody somewhere said something.

Were you expecting a reaction? I was wondering what it would be. I was surprised to hear we sold it to a Russian distributor. Stalins been making a comeback. There have been busts of Lenin, Stalin and other key figures going up in Moscow for the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Its that sense of, dont be frightened of strong men. Thats the message in Moscow at the moment.

Theres a line in your book Hear Me Out where you describe film directing as an astonishing ego trip, and that you wouldnt recommend it to anyone who has the slightest psychotic tendencies. Is it a job you feel comfortable doing? Ha! It is, but you do spend all day ordering people around, and everyone will do what you say. My wife teases me when I finish a shoot that it takes about a week and a half before I stop going, Right, shall we have a cup of tea? You, get a cup of tea I can see how, especially if you do shoots that go on for months, you become like a medieval lord with all these serfs, just ordering them around and torturing them and asking them to tell jokes and fetch food.

As the creator and showrunner on HBOs Veep for the first four seasons was it a difficult decision to give it up in 2015? No. It might have been the British thing that we dont do that many episodes of TV shows in the UK. Plus, it was three months of the year going out to Baltimore, backwards and forwards, and it was an all-year-round thing of the writing, the shooting, the edit, the publicising and then the writing And I knew the show could carry on, but fundamentally Id taken it to where I wanted to take it.

The show will end next year with a final, seventh series. Do you know whats going to happen? No, no, no. They asked if I wanted to stay on, but I knew I was going to do Stalin and I just thought, I cant be on set and get a call saying, Can you look at this script? But its great, because I watch it as a viewer and you realise though I always knew this what an amazing cast it is and how funny they all are. And also, I genuinely dont know what they are going to say next, which is really great.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as vice-president Selina Meyer in Veep. Photograph: HBO

It was recently announced that youre making a new show with HBO called Avenue 5. Whats the idea behind that? Ive always wanted to do sci-fi, so this will be set mostly in space, in about 40 years time. Its not going to be Blade Runner, but there will be an element of realism to it. Ive been out to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Virgin Galactic, looking at where it might be in about 40 years time. Ive mapped out the season and were writing the pilot episode and well shoot that sometime next year. And because its in space, its not location specific, so we can shoot it in a studio or a hanger in London. Well just build a spaceship here.

What impact do you think streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are having on terrestrial TV? Well, the good thing is that content producers writers and producers have more places to go. And also, whats great, and HBO paved the way with this: quality stuff is profitable. Thats their business model: youll only subscribe to HBO if you think youre going to get good stuff thats different from whats on the networks. So they need it to be better and well thought out and high production values and all that.

But is the quality always better? I do worry that simply because theres so much money available from the big streaming companies, theyll say, Oh well make your movie. We know no one else wanted to, and we realise why, because it was slightly indulgent or whatever, but well make it. And you watch it and you think, it was fine but For all the criticism of the studio process, if youre making something that costs someone else money and which is going to be available commercially, you want people to go and see it. So it does force you to think: have you made it as well as you can? Or have you really thought this through?

In Hear Me Out you write about the tyranny of the keepers of cool. Was liking classical music a reaction against them? Well, I was never really into fashion or clothes. I just wasnt that bothered. I wanted to read a good book. I was saved from being written off as a complete reject by the fact I could do comedy.

You started to learn piano in your 40s. Was that difficult? I found it hard. It was learning a language: Oh, I can speak music! And suddenly these dots and whatever started to make sense. But it was hard work. Some people can do it instinctively and I couldnt. My son would lean over me, hed be practising the violin, and go, No, no, no, its like this. And he hasnt had a piano lesson.

Do you listen to any non-classical music? I kind of like Radiohead, the Beatles, Bowie, its not extensive, but Im always trying. Whats interesting now is, because everything is available, kids can listen to Sinatra when theyre 12 and theres no real sense of: Youve got to listen to this because its out now. But you cant listen to that because thats from 20 years ago. They are a lot more experimental in what they are listening to and that then feeds into the music thats being produced. Its influenced not just by music from two years ago, but music from 20 or 30 years ago.

How can classical music stay relevant? Its up to the classical music establishment, for want of a better word, to open it up. Concerts neednt be off-putting and expensive and you dont have to dress up and you dont have to understand the technical complexities. Just talk to the audience. One of the weird things about a concert is that nobody says anything to you, so youve got to just accept whats in front of you and work it out. Somebody should sit down and explain: This piece, when it was first composed, caused a riot. Now it might sound a bit more conventional because its been used in a Walt Disney movie. I dont know, I think its just useful.

Stalin had a great passion for classical music. So listening to it doesnt make you a better human being then? George Steiner writes about how Goebbels was into Mozart and played the piano beautifully. Wagner was an antisemitic bastard, so actually, no. Thats the sad thing: it doesnt make any difference. It really doesnt.

Can you put that aside when you listen to the music? I dont know. I always got taken by the grandiosity of Wagner, but the more I listen to it now the more I think, it does sound fascist, doesnt it? But its interesting, that thing of, Can you excuse? Like Polanski. That whole, Great film-maker, but should you be watching his movies? I dont know what the answer is.

The Death of Stalin is released on 20 October.

Hear Me Out by Armando Iannucci is published by Little Brown (14.99). To order a copy for 12.74 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/15/armando-iannucci-the-death-of-stalin-hear-me-out-interview

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