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armageddonouttahere · 5 years ago

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Consolation

Title: Consolation

Summary: Takes place after “Putting Others First”, in which Roman sinks into his room and doesn’t leave for a while. Logan is the only one not preoccupied enough to come and lure him out, but in this he has to face emotions he’s been putting on the backburner for a long time.

Pairings: Romantic Logince, background platonic Moxiety

Warnings: Crying, self-doubt, insecurity, negative thinking

Rating: General Audiences

Genres: Fluff, Hurt/comfort (with a happy ending)

Word count: 2,500

A/N: Here we are, at last! I had cranked out the last couple paragraphs of this fic just an hour ago, and I’m very excited. This had gone from a little Logince comfort drabble to a fic of 2,500 words (exactly, though I didn’t do that on purpose). I hope anyone who sees this enjoys it, and everyone who’s been waiting for it likes it even more, after all this suspense. Taglist will be at the end, under the cut.

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Logan was at a loss. The aftermath of Janus’ name reveal left all the sides shaken and fragile. Especially Roman. Logan wanted to help, he wanted to be able to tell Roman with certainty that he will be okay, that everything will be alright. Logan needed to be able to look Roman in the eyes and know that the words that came out of his mouth are truths.

But he can’t. So, Logan focused on the problems he could solve. He endeavoured to keep Thomas in working order, though on the inside he may be struggling. Virgil seemed to have taken a backseat, focused on watching over Patton. The most he’d seen of the anxious side was weekly updates and reports on Patton’s condition, how he was feeling, which Logan appreciated greatly. He needed all the positive data he could get.

As the logical side, Logan was somewhat attuned with the other sides’ reasoning and thought process. He needed this information to be accurate in order to know how Thomas works, how he functions. He knew how the other sides try to solve problems, how they understand things. When something or someone throws a wrench in the system it’s one of the few things that affected Logan physically.

In the aftermath after Roman sank out Logan had migraines for weeks. Roman’s flawed logic- his flawed perception of himself- is the one thing that has caused Logan the most physical pain. Roman’s view of himself shifted so drastically to the negative end that Logan felt… sorry? For him?

He felt… he- he felt. Roman made him feel. What did he feel, exactly? Empathy? It was true that Roman’s emotional pain gave Logan physical pain, but the shared anguish went further than that. Logan knew what it’s like to feel wrong, to feel unheard. He related to Roman. He knew what he’s going through.

Their opinions may differ, but Roman still needed consolation. Logan won’t further his belief that Janus is the villain, but Roman doesn’t need a scolding or a lecture, skewed though his viewpoint of Janus may be. He needed someone to listen to him, someone to comfort him.

Logan was aware that he’s no optimal candidate for the matter, not the first choice for consolation (nor the second). He does not possess the endless cuddles and comfort food of Patton, nor does he have the quiet understanding and listening ears of Virgil. His only way of reassuring the prince is through data, probabilities, and chances. Inadequate. Unsatisfactory. Definitely not enough.

Logan made a plan. A plan to make Roman feel better. A plan to get Roman to open his door, something he hadn’t done in two weeks. He gathered things he believed he would need in order to cheer Roman up: the Sherlock screenplay Roman had gifted him at Christmastime, Logan’s book of Shakespeare’s plays (Hamlet being pre-marked with a red sticky-note, in case Roman is feeling increasingly dramatic and macabre), his journal for note-taking, vocab cards, and his laptop- which has a playlist compilation full of ‘cute’ animal videos at the ready. All of this was needed for Logan to get up the courage to knock on Roman’s door. He felt as if he’s putting on an armour of sorts. Preparing himself for battle.

It’s quite funny- the logical side needs bravery and courage to step outside his area of expertise and comfort the prince of the group.

May 17th, 2020. 1830 hours. Attempt #1: Prologue.

Roman has not left his corner of the mindscape for 16 days, 6 hours, and 28 minutes. Virgil has just given an update on Patton’s condition, which is thus: Patton’s “room” has slightly lessened in its intensity of upsetting emotions. The picture frames’ rate of showing unfavourable memories has decreased. Patton has not cried yet today. The Dark Sides, Remus and Janus, seem to be keeping on the “down-low”. Thomas has not had any intrusive dreams in many days. Virgil has been too preoccupied in keeping tabs on Patton to give him anxiety over much. Thomas’ motivation has gone down. His restlessness has gone up. Roman’s unconscious contributions to Thomas’ everyday life have gone down significantly. Thomas has stopped daydreaming. He has stopped thinking about the future, what he has to do tomorrow. He is becoming forgetful and apathetic. As the logical side, there is only so much I can do to keep Thomas in working order without help from the others, that much I can admit. I have put off trying to help Roman in case things only become worse, but the stakes are too high at this point. Action must be taken. I will record the results of this 1st attempt later.

Logan steeled himself, books tucked under his arm. He took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

Around nine at night, he wrote down the results. Roman had been unresponsive to polite requests for entry, knocking, attempts to start a conversation, small-talk, even a referencing desire to build a snowman. He had not responded to propositions of reading from plays or poetry, or any of his favourite literature. In summary, it was almost like speaking to a “brick-wall” (almost, because the door to Roman’s room was made of mahogany).

“Really? Things must be bad,” was Virgil’s response as Logan recounted the events to him later that evening. It was late, almost time for Logan to get some shut-eye after organizing Thomas’ duties for tomorrow. Logan had entered the kitchen hoping that Thomas would get a good night’s sleep so he could have the highest level of productivity the next day, but judging by the Monster Energy drink resting in Virgil’s hands he supposed that was not the case.

“It is certainly concerning. I tried… if not everything, at least a substantial amount of options.”

“Yeah, and if Roman doesn’t answer to a Disney reference… I’m worried about him. Do you want... me to try?” he said, fidgeting. Logan realized he looked uncomfortable with the idea. Virgil must felt a little guilty for not showing up at all during the argument.

“No, I believe that more attempts should be made. To wear him down, in a way. I’m planning to try again tomorrow.”

“Same Bat Time, same Bat Place?”

“An interesting way of putting it, but that’s the idea.” Logan rubbed his eyes and began making a list of all his tasks once he returned to his room.

“Alright. I’m gonna go see Thomas.” Virgil said, getting ready to sink out.

“I assumed you were. And Virgil?”

He popped back up. “Yeah?”

“Please at least try to motivate him a bit, if through fear? I don’t want to deal with a gloomy, unproductive Thomas tomorrow.”

“You got it. I won’t screw him up too much. ‘Night, Lo.”

“Good-night, Virgil.” He was alone.

“Roman?” Logan knocked once more. “Roman, would you be open to company? I wish to speak with you.”

Nothing. He sighed, pushing his journal farther into his pants pocket. He decided to come with substantially less things this time around. To come as he is.

“I’m not entertaining visitors or guests at the present. Please come back another time, thank you,” came a weak and muffled response.

The sound of Roman’s voice gave Logan an ache in his heart which he didn’t want to name. He ignored it, for the moment.

“I just want to speak with you. You’ve been decidedly quiet these past few weeks. Your input, both in-person and in Thomas’ subconscious has dropped a considerable amount. As far as I am aware you have not made your presence known to me or any of the other sides in over two weeks.”

Silence was his response. Facts were getting Logan nowhere. Logan sighed, struggling with himself. Did he tell Roman what he thought in simple terms, what he was trying to say through his data? How could he bare himself to Roman’s listening ears, let himself be known?

“In all honesty, Roman, I’m- I’m…” He took a breath. “I’m worried about you.” He said this in a rush, letting it all out in one breath. Like a Band-aid, as Virgil had stated. The silence that still followed both frightened him and spurred him on.

“Roman, I- I haven’t spoken to you in weeks. I’m afraid of what will happen if you stay isolated for much longer. You’re a necessary part of Thomas’ life, for me to have things to maintain and keep in order. But more than that, more than duties of mine, I mis- I’m… finding your absence upsetting.”

Logan faintly realised his hands had begun to shake, and he clenched them.

“You… mean a lot to m- the Mindscape, to Patton, to Virgil… to everyone. No one means you harm. We need your input on discussions, and revel in your ideas and thoughts. We... miss you.”

Just gotta rip it off.

“I- I miss you, Roman.” Logan shut his eyes, forcing out the idea that he had become emotional enough to begin producing tears. Logic does not cry. “We bicker sometimes and both of us are wrong on occasion, but I would rather have arguments with you than nothing without.”

“Seeing your vibrance and excitement in brainstorming, your happiness in Disney movies and romances, watching your brilliance when creating plays and stories and… being you, I- I find myself… swept up- metaphorically, of course- in every emotion you give off when you’re around me. Seeing you productive and happy gives me more of a reason to work to the best of my ability.”

“It’s… it would be difficult for me to ever say these things in the hearing of the other sides, but… I miss the feelings you bring me when you are around. It is something greater than a job well done, Crofters, or puzzles and murder mysteries being solved.”

“The emotions I feel when you are around are something more than a simple pleasure in watching, in the aesthetical enjoyment of seeing things fall into place. When I’m with you, I feel… spurred into action.”

“Roman, I- I can’t… I can’t bear your absence any longer. I’m worried about you, but more than that, I’m worried that should you keep to yourself, I’ll never… I- I won’t…” Logan swept aside a few tears that had run down his face. His throat ached so much that he feared he wouldn’t be able to get any more words out. The words he spoke next came out in a hoarse whisper.

“Without you I’m afraid I’ll never feel anything again.”

A shuddered gasp tore itself from Logan’s throat as he took his first proper breath in a few minutes. Tears slicked their way down his face freely now. This was, Logan supposed, because such a long drought of emotion had rendered him virtually unable to control any that did overcome him.

“However,” Logan began once more after a few more minutes of silence, his voice quieter now. If anyone else had heard it, they might have said he sounded ashamed. “Should you wish to remain alone for… whatever period of time, I won’t stop you. Asking you to open your door for my sake is extremely selfish of me. I’m… I’m sorry, Roman.”

Logan took one more breath before turning around to leave. He had no idea what the effects of his speech would be, and that scared him. He was in an entirely new territory. This was an unprecedented event, with no similar experiences to compare it to. He had ‘boldly gone where no man had gone before’, so to say.

Logan was so wrapped in his own panic, for that is what it was, he almost missed the imperceptible click of Roman’s door opening as he walked away. Every muscle in Logan’s body tensed, and he prepared for angry words and scathing insults. Logan would face it, however. He turned around, and was met with a sight for some very sore eyes.

Roman held open his door an infinitesimal amount, peering through the crack. Through the small open space Logan could see the prince out of his usual outfit, the beautiful swath of his hair, and one very tearful eye. Logan opened his mouth without knowing what would come out, but the air was knocked out of him.

Roman flung the door open wide and his socked feet ate up the steps between them as he flung his arms around Logan, the force of his embrace almost tipping Logan over. An embarrassing ‘oof’ escaped him at the impact and his hands went up to grip the back of Roman’s jumper after only a second of hesitation.

Logan’s mind filled incredibly fast with all sorts of information: the scent of Roman’s hair, the warmth of his body, how Roman buried his head in Logan’s neck and the slight wetness that came from tears. The way Roman’s nose jutted into his neck, the almost imperceptible touch of Roman’s lips on his shirt collar. Logan’s body betrayed him in an audible catch of his breath as Roman clung to him harder.

“Roman, I-” Logan began in a faint whisper, but Roman only shushed him and tightened his grip, rocking them from side to side ever so slightly.

They stayed like that for Galileo knows how long when the prince peeled himself from Logan. Roman looked upon Logan with eyes so bright from unshed tears Logan would have believed there were stars in them.

“You never said anything. Not a word.”

Their conversation was as hushed as could be, the Mindscape and the world beyond it ceasing to exist and zooming in on the two of them, in this moment.

“I’m not good with words. When it comes to talking about feelings, I mean. You know this.”

“Don’t lie, Specs. That was one of the most eloquent and beautiful things I’ve ever heard.”

Logan scrambled to find a breath within him as Roman smiled up at him. For one of the few times in his life, he found himself with nothing to say.

“It was moving, and heartfelt-” Roman continued, taking Logan’s hand and stepping back, towards his room. He paused in his motions and looked at Logan once more.

“-and it was incredibly romantic.” He said softly.

“I’m- I’m glad.” came Logan’s strangled reply. Roman smiled at him again and led him into his room. There they would sit and talk for hours, and Logan would hold Roman to his chest. They would confess to things bothering them and their hopes, dreams, and fears for the future. It would grow late, and Logan would give in and begin to card his hands through Roman’s hair as the prince drifted off to sleep.

There, in the black-blue of the sky of Roman’s window, scattered with stars and the slanting rays of the moon, Logan would look down upon the prince’s sleeping head and realize, though he had first doubted his abilities, he had been enough. Enough for Roman and for himself. He had been enough.

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Taglist:

@count-woe-laf @psychedelicships

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aer-in-wanderland · 5 years ago

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구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - Lost in Translation EP02

Back by, possibly not popular, but certainly very enthusiastic demand: my sister’s and my continued adventures in mistranslation and cultural subtext. You can find EP01 here. Buckle up and settle in for another monster post because, wow, a lot happened in this episode. Contains spoilers.

Prologue

We open with a sweeping view of Baekdudaegan as Yeon narrates about his past as the god who presided over it. For context, Baekdudaegan is the biggest and most famous mountain range in Korea, taking up an enormous swath of the Korean peninsula (to the extent that it’s often referred to as its ‘spine’ or ‘backbone’). So Yeon wasn’t lying when he said he was a ‘major’ mountain god. ;)

Yeon: You could say these were my Leeds Days. I was the master of Baekdudaegan, a mountain god who controlled the wind and rain,* and a gumiho who was, from the start, of a different caliber than the mongrel foxes you see in Hometown of Legends. ...Or, I was.”

[*Note: Can also be taken to mean ‘the natural elements’ in general.]

When Yeon refers to his ‘glory days,’ the term he uses is ‘Leeds Era’ (리즈시절). Originally a sporting term for the height of a footballer’s career, in Korean, the expression has come to be used to describe a person’s bygone glory days. The modern figure of speech (complete with English loan word) makes for a funny counterpoint to the Yeon we see on screen and recalls the mint-chocolate loving American TV show enthusiast we’ve known him as so far.

The other modern reference he makes is to Hometown of Legends (전설의 고향), which has been the title of numerous dramas and movies (1977-2018) centered around Korean myths and legends. This is basically the equivalent of an alien referencing the X-files. Overall, the narration serves to remind us just how modern our gumiho has become and clashes humorously with the visual onscreen.

Yeon’s above narration concludes with the first appearance of little Ah Eum, who immediately proceeds to pet the mighty master of Baekdudaegan as if he were her pet dog pfft (thus the ‘....or I was.’)

As an aside, tvN released some backstory information revealing that Ah Eum had gone to find Yeon in order to pray for rain. Which means she pet him in spite of that lol We also know from the past-life sequence in episode 10 that she had actually been warned never to venture anywhere near his mountain because a 1000 year old gumiho lived there. It’s almost as if her guardians don’t know her at all...

For anyone keeping track, Ah Eum uses banmal with Yeon from the very beginning. We find out why later. As a princess (even one who had been discarded), she’s used to outranking everyone around her and therefore speaking almost exclusively in banmal. To be fair, with her temperament, Yeon being a 1000+ year old mountain god probably just wasn’t enough to get him an automatic pass from her. Point for Ah Eum/Ji Ah character continuity.

Yeon: If I could rewrite* my past just once, I would return to this moment without hesitation. So that that child could never find me.

[*Note: Literally, ‘A/S my past,’ which I’m pretty sure has its roots in computer usage. So again, thoroughly modern vocabulary from the former master of Baekdudaegan.]

We transition from young to grown Ah Eum with a sweep of the Red Umbrella. According to tvN again, this umbrella was actually a gift from Ah Eum to Yeon, and it’s also the same umbrella Yeon still carries everywhere. It’s somewhat poetic, then, that it was this umbrella that lead Ji Ah to him. So, a meaningful item on multiple fronts.

Yeon: Some called it, ‘the scandal of the age that shook Baekdudaegan.’ To think, a mountain god who had given his heart to a human... Nowadays, it would have felt like a disciplinary hearing, but I didn’t care a whit. I liked her [presence] permeating my woods.

As you might have guessed, this love story ends in tragedy. Someone stole her life. Once she crossed the River of Three Crossings, I would never be able to see her again. I couldn’t hold on to her, but nor could I bear to let her go...so I resorted to abusing my power.

The BGM playing as Yeon narrates the ending of his tragic story is ‘The Parting at the River of Three Crossings,’ which I think of as the epic love theme of TotNT alongside ‘Sad Fate.’ Why do I keep mentioning the BGM? No reason, other than that it interests me. ;)

On a linguistic note, Yeon’s line, ‘Someone stole her life’ caught my attention from the first time I watched this due to his unusual usage of the word ‘life.’ Korean has multiple words for ‘life.’ The one that would typically be used in this context is ‘moksoom’ (목숨), which I think of as having the nuance of one’s life force. So to steal one’s ‘moksoom’ would mean to kill them. Instead, he uses ‘insaeng’ (인생), which is more like the life one leads. To steal someone’s ‘insaeng’ sounds more like a case of identity theft. As we find out later, that actually is what Imoogi did, and this hinted at that linguistically.

I’m not sure how well this translated, but the gesture of Yeon kneeling is both epic and heartbreaking. Kneeling is a very weighty gesture in Korea, so for Yeon to use his godly powers to freeze the very River to the Afterlife only to kneel and beg for one last moment with Ah Eum is just... It’s a momentous enough gesture for Taluipa, the ultimate stickler for rules, to make an exception and grant his request.

The fox bead: In Japanese lore, a fox’s bead is often akin to its life force, but that’s clearly not the case for Yeon. In Korean lore, fox beads are sometimes called ‘the treasure of a fox’s lips,’ since the bead is supposedly located within the fox’s mouth (and can thus be stolen/gifted with a kiss). Some tellings claim that someone who swallows a fox’s bead gains understanding of all things and phenomena in the universe, while others say they grant the bearer’s wishes.

Yeon continues his narration, describing how he’s encountered women with Ah Eum’s face over the centuries, but that none of them were her. For anyone interested, you can find my hot take on that here.

Okay, can we please have a spin-off of Yeon hunting down folklore monsters in Japanese-occupied Korea Gaksital (2012)-style?

Fun fact: Based on some of the still cuts they released, there was actually a deleted scene in which Yeon pulled the late-Joseon era Ah Eum look-alike aside, checked her for the fox bead, and then erased her memories. (And by ‘fun’ I mean, ‘why would you delete that??’)

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Iconic.

Fun fact: Lee Dong Wook picked this as the most memorable line of the drama due to it’s thematic echoing across multiple episodes.

On the topic of the tranquilizer, there was a deleted scene in episode 1 in which Ji Ah very openly 'borrowed’ it from Shin Joo’s vet clinic because she already suspected Yeon was a fox: fox fur, Fox Ridge... She was taking a pretty big gamble though since he’s not exactly your average fox.

It’s worth noting that Ji Ah doesn’t say she was ‘looking’ for Yeon (although she was, because she’s a go-get-‘em kind of girl); she says she was ‘waiting’ for him. I took this to mean she was waiting for him to return and make good on his threat to kill her (since, not only had she not forgotten, she’d been actively sticking her nose into anything remotely supernatural or unexplainable), at which point, presumably, she planned to turn the tables on him.

Episode 02 Title Card: I’ve Been Waiting for You

For anyone wondering how Ji Ah managed to get Yeon back up to his penthouse, apparently she told the security desk her boyfriend was drunk and boldly took him back up in the elevator (presumably with help) haha

Possibly coincidentally, Yeon’s first line to Ji Ah when he regains consciousness is the same as his first line to little Ah Eum: ‘Do you want to die?’ (minus the sageuk speak)

Ji Ah’s line, “I wouldn’t be sipping tea here if I was worried about that,” would more literally be: “If I valued my life, would I be sitting here drinking flower tea?”

Lol Ji Ah. “Want a cup?” is such a classy power play.

Sub: “After the stunt you pulled, you’re actually offering me tea?” Ha. Also, what Yeon literally says is: “You pulled that variety-esque stunt, and your next line is what? ‘A cup of tea’?” ‘Variety’ here is an English loan word meant in the sense of ‘variety shows’ (ex. Running Man or 1 Night 2 Days), though to my knowledge, no one has ever been tranquilized on one.

The following exchange was littered with enough small things I would have changed that I’ll just translate the whole thing here for reference:

Ji Ah: When a man and a woman have that level of physical contact, don’t they usually also drink tea or eat meals together, too? These days, the whole pure and noble act doesn’t go far.

Yeon: Whether it does or not, when you’re at a disadvantage, isn’t it considered common courtesy to come [to the table] having put aside either your pride or your self-esteem [i.e. at least one of the two]?

Ji Ah: Listen until the end before you determine who’s at a disadvantage.

Yeon: (Nodding) In exchange, if my thinking still doesn’t change, you’ll pay the price for having tested me.

Ji Ah: Price?

Yeon: Your sight (literally ‘eyes’). I’ll be taking your eyes that have seen what they shouldn’t have.

Ji Ah: Deal. (literally, ‘call’ as in poker)

Rang & Yoo Ri Crash a Funeral

In the off chance you were wondering why this is basically the only time we see Rang driving Yoo Ri and not the other way around, it’s because Yoo Ri is ‘in character’ as the daughter of a major conglomerate and wouldn’t be expected to drive herself if there was another person in the car. In Korea, there’s a whole code of etiquette around who sits where in the car.

Instead of ‘Lee Rang-nim’ the subs have Yoo Ri addressing Rang as ‘sir.’ That just strikes me as so distant and cold...

To my thinking, this scene was peak ‘Hoket-dan.’ It was nearly the same level of over-the-top campy as some of the old supervillains. If I’m being perfectly honest, I was worried at this point that Rang’s character would turn out to be equally 2D. Joke’s on me though, ‘cause this later became a hilarious character quirk when Sajang says to Rang, “It can’t be that you came to enjoy watching me die?” and Rang responds, “I love doing that! Look, I even brought popcorn. I even go about visiting funeral homes and stuff on purpose.” lol

Ji Ah’s Gamble

Okay, but Yeon actually took her up on tea haha I love it.

Subs: “So you’re a fox that’s pretending to be human.” The word they use here (and throughout the drama) is ‘doongap’ (둔갑), which is literally ‘to assume the form of.’ Unfortunately, there’s no verb in English that neatly conveys that, so this gets subbed a lot of ways. I’ve mostly been translating it as ‘transform,’ but that’s more properly ‘byeonshin’ (변신). Sometimes with translation, the best option still isn’t great.

It’s also worth noting that this is actually not what Yeon is doing here, since he sees those sorts of tricks as beneath him. Yeon is a cheon’ho; his human form is his own.

Sub: “What a lame reaction. A normal human being would scream...” More literally: “What kind of reaction is so lacking in sincerity? Generally, if [you’re] a human, I should at least get a scream...” Again, both ‘reaction’ and ‘scream’ are in English, and, somewhat humorously, Yeon uses the verb + juda (주다) form, implying he was hoping to elicit a scream with his reveal pfft

Sub: “No. I knew something like you would exist somewhere out in this world. I started directing a TV show about urban legends so I could catch you myself.” This is mostly fine, but what she says more literally is: “No. I knew something like you would exist somewhere in this world. In order to catch [one] myself, I buried my bones in a TV show about urban legends.” To ‘bury ones bones’ means ‘to devote oneself entirely to’ and implies more drive and dedication than in the sub. The subject is once again omitted, so she could mean Yeon, but I think she actually means ‘things like Yeon’ more generally.

Yeon’s line to Ji Ah when she asks him about their long ago encounter was subbed as: “I followed the smell of blood, and I ended up saving a little kid. But I can see that she’s very ungrateful.” I would translate this as:

Yeon: I smelled blood and followed it, and ended up saving some little girl (lit. young child), but now I see that that child is trying to repay a favor with enmity.

The expression Yeon uses here, to ‘repay a favor (eunhye) with enmity (wonsoo),’ is a common turn of phrase. It’s the Korean equivalent of ‘biting the hand that feeds you,’ or ‘repaying good with ill.’ Considering eunhye has actual consequences for Yeon, he doesn’t seem all that put out.

Lol Something about Lee Dong Wook’s delivery of Yeon’s line, “So you lost your parents...” reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote: ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’

Sub: “I’m not threatening you. I’m taking my chances.” This should be: “You’re mistaken. I’m not threatening; I’m gambling.” This turn of phrase is rather clever in Korean since ‘threat’ (협박) and ‘gamble’ (도박) are only one syllable off. In terms of the subs, while ‘gambling’ and ‘taking my chances’ are similar on the surface, they’re different enough in nuance that I would consider this a mistranslation. ‘Gambling’ implies an informed, calculated risk, whereas ‘taking my chances’ gives the impression of improvisation and leaving everything up to luck.

The Funeral Parlour

This scene is Rang in a nutshell. I actually don’t have much to comment on linguistically, but it was definitely an important scene for establishing Rang’s MO and motivations.

Shin Joo & Yeon

Yeon and Shin Joo meet up at the ice cream parlour to debrief on the situation with Ji Ah, and it’s cute how Shin Joo is more indignant over what went down than Yeon.

Subs: “It’s like we exist to repay people for their kindness.” This has been grossly paraphrased due to lack of cultural context. His line is literally:

Shin Joo: It’s not as if we’re magpies meticulously repaying our eunhye! Geez, how long do we have to be bound by that sort of premodern contractual relationship?”

This is another Korean folktale reference, this time to the story of The Grateful Magpies. I elaborated on it a bit here.

Yeon: “It’s old-fashioned but romantic. And it's also a fox’s dignity.” ‘Romantic’ here is the French loan word ‘romang’ (로망). In contrast to the English ‘romantic’ (which is also used), ‘romang’ is used to refer to ‘anything marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.’ ‘Dignity’ could also be translated as ‘grace of character.’ Yeon’s preoccupation with style/swagger/dignity is enough of a recurring theme (and occasional joke) that it features in his character profile.

For anyone keeping track, Shin Joo refers to Ah Eum as ‘Ah Eum agasshi.’ ‘Agasshi’ meaning ‘miss’ or ‘lady.’

Shin Joo’s line is subbed, “Does she bother you?” but it should be: ‘Does it bother you?’ where ‘it’ refers to the fact that Ji Ah so closely resembles Ah Eum.

Sub: “I’ve seen tons of people who looked like her for hundreds of years.” It’s actually not ‘tons of people,’ but ‘a couple’/‘several’ over the course of hundreds of years. Let’s be honest, people as pretty as Jo Bo Ah just aren’t born every day. ;)

Yeon’s line may be overly blunt, but it’s sweet that he calls Shin Joo, ‘Shin Joo-ya.’

Back over to Ji Ah. The way this scene suddenly switches from sentimental to horrifying is great. I also like that it’s unclear when she fell asleep. The boundary between reality and unreality is as blurred for the viewers as it is for Ji Ah, and it leaves us with a similar sense of disquiet.

In case it wasn’t already clear, it’s the tooth on this skull that leads Ji Ah to Eohwa Island. She sees a skull with an identical tooth in the news and goes to investigate.

Afterlife Immigration Office

LOL Hyeonuiong briefing the newly departed on death via powerpoint is hilarious. The powerpoint reads: ‘A Guide to Hell for the Dead, Presenter: Hyeonuiong.’ The red sigil on the right bears the characters ‘十王’ (the Ten Kings), so I guess this is an official, Afterlife-approved slideshow. heh

Side note: I’m impressed with the way this show seamlessly shifts between genres. We went from emotional to creepy to funny without it feeling forced or jarring (or at least, it didn’t to me).

The powerpoint (complete with webtoon) continues cheerily: “Hell! What is the Afterlife?” / “The 10 Types of Hell.” pfft Who made these slides? Whoever they are, point to them.

Subs: “You know King Hades, right?” WOW This is bordering on cultural whitewashing if you ask me. This should be King Yeomra (aka King Enma). He’s one of the Ten Kings of the Afterlife, and quite arguably the most famous.

The sub here says Taluipa is Yeomra’s older sister, which is understandable since the antiquated word Hyeonuiong uses (누이), doesn’t specify older or younger. We find out in the final episode, though, that Taluipa is actually Yeomra’s younger sister. As far as I’m aware, this is not part of the original lore.

Lol Yeon being a drama king: “I’m going to take revenge! Thanks to her, my obligatory military service has already gone on for 600 years~!” (You’re not fooling anyone, sir)

“No way! A man’s hair is his life! My red-brown...” Fun fact: It was actually Lee Dong Wook’s idea to make Yeon’s hair red-brown, both as a nod to him being a fox, and to give him a more otherworldly look.

Why do the gods keep saying reincarnation is random when everyone we see reincarnated kept their face??

‘Oh my god” lol Watching kdrama characters react in English never gets old. Possibly because there’s something exaggerated or overdramatic in the conscious decision to use English instead of Korean.

A++ response from Yeon. I saw something going around to the effect of, ‘this show really just said love is love,’ and I love that. Point to the writer.

The BGM here is once again ‘Thread Rings.’ Given where it keeps being used, I’m fairly certain they’re somehow related to Ji Ah/Ah Eum... (So I guess there actually is a reason I’m paying attention to the BGM ;p). Lee Dong Wook just disclosed the behind the scenes scoop on the rings in his latest VLIVE.

This bulgasari is such a mild-mannered person. Like Shin Joo, he calls Ji Ah ‘PD-nim’ and speaks politely and deferentially.

Not for anything, but I really liked Jo Bo Ah’s delivery of Ji Ah’s line, ‘I saw a corpse.’ Her little mannerisms really sold Ji Ah to me as a person and not just a character.

Bulgasari: “That dream, can you sell it to me? I want to play the lottery.” In addition to the concept of symbolism in dreams, Koreans also have a common notion that dreams can be bought and sold. It’s funny, though, when you consider he’s probably just planning to eat the dream.

I love whenever Taluipa calls Yeon, ‘Yeon-ah.’ She’s normally so prickly that it’s notable when she's affectionate. Also, seeing as Yeon is older than 95% of our characters, there aren’t many who might address him like this with the affectionate diminutive.

Heh, Yeon refers to Ji Ah’s favor as a ‘civil complaint.’

When Yeon asks Ji Ah for her parent’s times and dates of birth, what he’s actually asking for is their ‘saju’ (literally, ‘four pillars’). You can find my explanation here.

The Snail Bride

Bok Hye Ja: “It’s the first time he’s brought someone (literally ‘a person’).” Normally this would mean, ‘it’s the first time he’s brought a guest,’ but in this case, I’m fairly certain she means, ‘it’s the first time he’s brought a human.’ ;)

“I won’t ask you to understand.” This was another exchange that made me love Ji Ah. I found her frank and sincere apology refreshing.

On a personal note, I loved watching Yeon recalibrate his estimation of Ji Ah in this scene. And it was also a scene in which viewers got to recalibrate their impressions of Yeon. Yeon is feigning indifference, but he makes a point of asking after Ji Ah’s feelings, which is not insignificant. It’s also in sharp contrast to what we’ve seen of Rang so far.

Oh my gosh, THAT PUFFBALL DOG (and it’s name is Bean-ie) XD

Minor detail, but where did Shin Joo get his necklace? Wait. OH MY GOD. Shin Joo is the Aquaman of TotNT. Yeon gets to be Batman and Superman rolled into one and Shin Joo’s power is that he ‘talks to fish animals.’ Dead.

Lol Ji Ah watching Yeon eat. I feel like this is a running joke. In the tales, gumiho notoriously eat people’s livers, so seeing him eat normal food must be a bit eye-opening.

The text description for Shin Don was left untranslated in the version we’re watching but it reads: In A History of Goryeo, there’s record of Shin Don, a monk from the time of King Gongmin’s reign (1351-1374 C.E.), having been an old fox.

Subs: “Is it true that the monk of Goryeo Dynasty was a fox?” Us: ‘Yes, the one monk in all of Goryeo and for all of Goryeo. Guess he’d have to have been a fox in that case.’ This should probably have been translated as: "So then, Shin Don...is it a fact that the Goryeo monk Shin Don was a fox?”

Ji Ah: “Oh my god.” heh

Do You Really Want to See It?

Wait, they walked all the way from Insadong to Digital Media City? Okay, this is one of the (few) pitfalls of being fairly familiar with Seoul. Sometimes it’s really obvious when two locations don’t connect and then it pulls me out of the drama. I think we’re supposed to believe that the Snail Bride is in the vicinity of Ji Ah’s broadcast station, seeing as her team are lunchtime regulars, but the the two neighborhoods are nowhere near each other.

Yeon’s line in the subs here is: “A. I’m a busy man. B. We may currently be living in the same world, but there is a big difference between where we come from.” Personally, I would have translated this as: “Firstly, I haven’t got that much free time. Secondly, we may be unavoidably living mingled together, but the world I belong to and the world you belong to are incontrovertibly different.”

Subs: “Those who got a peek at my world ended up going crazy or dying young.” More literally: “In the past, there have been those who got a glimpse of the world’s secrets. Well, most of them either went mad or had their lives cut short.”

Minor detail, but Ji Ah’s response subbed as: “I don’t care. I’ll stay out of your way. Just don’t disappear.” should more literally be: “Just don’t disappear from my sight (lit. ‘from before me’).”

The sub on Ji Ah’s line here reads: “She (Sae Rom) and I both had nightmares.” What she actually says is: “Me and my hubae also had nightmares,” meaning that she (Ji Ah) and Jae Hwan had nightmares in addition to Sae Rom. Which is why Yeon refers to them as ‘contagious’.

Okay, is it just me, or does LDW look exceptionally unreal in this scene?

Bulgasari

I’m not familiar with the actor who plays the bulgasari (pretty sure he’s a new face), but he did a great job making his movements uncanny here. The firey CG effects are fun too.

Heck yeah! Yeon sure knows how to make an entrance. Seeing as how he instructed Ji Ah on what to do, I’m pretty sure he was there the whole time......show-off.

Once again, I’m digging the fight scene underscored by ‘The Uninvited.’ I would happily watch an entire series that’s just Yeon and Ji Ah solving supernatural cases and hunting down baddies who disturb the peace.

The Smirk™ XD I’m 90% sure this was another LDW ad lib.

Lol Yeon. Subs: “Really? Then am I the jerk here?” More literally: “Really? Then I guess I’m the only bad guy, huh?”

On a linguistic note, the bulgasari speaks to Yeon in old-timey speech, once again playing up their mutual identity as creatures of lore.

It’s only at this point that, prompted by Ji Ah, Yeon finally reveals the bulgasari’s identity. This is accompanied by a brief chyron telling us that they appear when the world is in disorder, and Ji Ah supplies that they eat nightmares.

To elaborate a bit, bulgasari are one of the better known Korean creatures of lore. There are two different sets of hanja for them: (bulgasari 不可殺伊 ‘can-not-kill’) and (bulgasari 火可殺伊 ‘fire-can-kill’), which explains why, depending on the telling, they’re either un-killable or only die by fire. In traditional lore, feeding them metal makes them grow larger and stronger, which, while not the case in TotNT, is probably what inspired the coin-gobbling.

Subs: “Yes they are especially fond of broadcasting studios, which are packed with people. Eating metal reveals their true identities.” That subtitle went a bit sideways. It’s not that they like broadcast stations in particular, but crowded places like broadcast stations. So it should read: “They like places with lots of people, like the broadcast station, and if you feed them metal, they reveal their true colors.”

Okay, Yeon’s line that’s subtitled as, “The hostage will answer,” is more literally: “Hey, hostage. Try answering me.” It’s worth noting that, while he calls her ‘injil-bun’ (injil = hostage + bun = the polite word for a person), he’s still speaking to her in banmal, so he’s once again being cheeky.

It’s taking some license, but I would translate Yeon’s question to Ji Ah here as: “In this moment,* what exactly can you do other than rely on me to save you?” which is essentially what he means. [*Note: literally, ‘at this timing,’ and once again, ‘timing’ is in English.]

We get a series of short scenes lining up some of the side characters who will become our key players on the island: the fisherman find the severed head, Ji Ah grills Detective Baek about the case, and Rang approaches Pyung Hee with his usual devil’s bargain pitch. I didn’t really notice anything here that I think is important enough to the central plot or characters that it’s worth commenting on (especially given how massively long this post is already), so I’m just going to call it good and move right along. ;)

Pfft I definitely wasn’t expecting the bulgasari to be literally chilling in Yeon’s freezer (not that he had a choice). This is somewhat interesting given they’re typically thought to be weak to fire, not ice.

Subs: “I’ll die even if I tell you where he is.” More literally: “Whether I die in this way [by Yeon’s hand], or that [by Rang’s], it is all the same.”

Brother Complex

Sub: “Don’t even think of hurting her.” More literally: “Just try touching one hair on her head.”

Oh my gosh Rang’s face ㅠㅠ This was the first time I felt Kim Beom really got to display his acting chops in this role, and boy, was I glad to see it. This was also when I knew Rang was going to make me cry.

Yeon: “You’re acting like this because you lack affection.” The expression Yeon uses is ‘aejeong gyeolpip,’ which literally does mean ‘affection lack/want/absence,’ but I would have translated it as ‘affection-starved,’ since saying Rang ‘lacks affection’ could also be interpreted to mean Rang is incapable of expressing affection.

Yeon: “Why’s that?” Lol Lee Dong Wook. Also, this one line is cheekily in polite speech.

Subs: “Just because of a woman you gave up your position as a mountain spirit, left the mountain, and you even...” More literally: “Just because of one mere human woman you gave up your position as a mountain god, turned your back on the mountain, and..!!”

Yeon: “Yes, I know. I even abandoned you.” Rang-ah~ ㅠㅠ I recently received an ask as to whether or not I believed Yeon had truly abandoned Rang, which I answered here.

Oof, Yeon giving Rang advice as an older brother. In Korea, nagging is seen as a sign of affection. You may recall Ji Ah was very excited for her dad to nag her about her boyfriend in episode 12.

Sub: “You crazy fool.” Rang literally calls his brother a ‘michin nom,’ ‘michin’ meaning ‘crazy.’ ‘Nom’ is a pronoun that, depending on how it’s used, can mean anything from ‘guy,’ to ‘jerk,’ to ‘bastard.’

Sub: “I don’t need to know.” Actually: “There’s no need [for you to tell me].” The two are subtly different. Yeon’s saying he’ll find out on his own, not that he doesn’t want to know.

Fun fact: Kim Beom said in his script reading interview (before they started filming) that he was a bit worried about his onscreen dynamic with Lee Dong Wook because, while Rang has to hate Yeon, LDW is a hyung that KB likes so much in real life. What a cutie.

We cut briefly over to Ji Ah on the phone with Jae Hwan, asking him to look after Sae Rom while she chases down the skull lead.

As an aside here, Ji Ah calls Sae Rom, ‘Kim-jak’ (short for ‘jakga,’ meaning ‘writer’). In Korea, it’s common to refer to someone by their role or title. This might indicate distance, but Ji Ah’s shortening it makes the term familiar and speaks of their camaraderie. In the subtitles, this has become, ‘Ms. Kim,’ which is oddly distant given their frenemyship.

The Island

Is it just me, or does it feel like there should have been a scene here explaining how and why Yeon came to be on the boat? I’m assuming it got deleted due to time constraints, but I feel like it was needed.

Pfft The way Ji Ah pops up from behind Yeon, cutting comically into the dramatic shot of Lee Dong Wook’s windswept profile + BGM was great.

In case it wasn’t already apparent, Kimite patches are used to alleviate sea sickness, so this is further undermining the mood of a second ago haha

Yeon’s line is subbed: “I’d like to keep it to myself,” but this should more literally be: ‘Let’s each work individually/play it solo.’

Sub: “No, thank you.” What Yeon actually says: “Hard pass.” hahaha (Literally: ‘I’ll immediately/urgently decline,’ but tonally, ‘hard pass’ is closer).

The subs have Yeon’s line as: “You need to be careful what you pay attention to.” I would have translated this as: “If that’s the reason [you’ve come], go back. You mustn’t recklessly lend an ear [to such things].” His tone and phrasing are both surprisingly gentle.

Subs: “My guts keep telling me, that this is a very suspicious combination.” Well, my guts keep telling me, that this is a very suspicious sub haha I would have translated Yeon’s voiceover as:

Yeon: The same boat...the same island...a woman with the same face as that girl. My instincts speak to me relentlessly, telling me there’s something amiss about this combination.

Pfft The contrast between Ji Ah's dismount from the boat and Yeon’s.

Lol Yeon’s ‘excuse me’ was totally rude

For the record, from the moment Yeon sets foot on the island, he speaks to everyone in banmal. That’s bad form towards any stranger, but it’s especially rude considering their age. Sure, Yeon’s way older, but they don’t know that.

Ji Ah mouthing “What?” in English haha

Yeon clocking the effectively creepy villagers. Turns out the right BGM and camerawork can make anything creepy. Point to the director.

Settling in on the Island

Ji Ah’s line subbed as, “I thought you didn’t want to be involved,” should more properly be: “I thought you just said we should each play it solo?”

Yeon’s line is similarly mis-subbed as: “I changed my mind. Don’t let it bother you.” What he actually says is much ruder: “I’ll do what I want! Butt out.” Which explains Ji Ah’s affront heh

Lol Yeon walking right in front of the camera. Anyone who has ever had a pet recognized this moment.

I love how Yeon is being completely tactless and insensitive but then grudgingly course-corrects when Ji Ah glares daggers at him.

Fisherman (subs): “It gives me a bad feeling in my mouth.” Excuse me, what? haha The line is: “The more I think about it, the more it bothers me.”

Lol Ji Ah: “In the documentaries I watched, they say digging holes is your speciality” (complete with digging gesture).

Fun fact: Ji Ah blocking the way with her leg and Yeon burrowing under it was something Jo Bo Ah and Lee Dong Wook came up with themselves. Ji Ah’s line was scripted, but I’m nearly positive Yeon’s comeback of, “Burrowing is my speciality,” was an ad lib by Lee Dong Wook. Once again, casting Lee Dong Wook is the gift that keeps on giving.

WAIT. Subs: “You can’t go.” / “Borrowing is my specialty.” Hahaha What even? Cheon’ho Lee Yeon: professional mooch.

The way we then cut to Yeon ‘burrowing’ into a freezer of ice cream is just perfect. Point to the director.

Once again, Yeon is talking to all the village elders in banmal.

“You have a terrible service mentality.” pfft

OH. Ji Ah’s response to the misogynistic fisherman is just A++

Her line here is literally: “Oops, I’m afraid I’m overflowing with ‘jeong.’” ‘Jeong’ (情) can be a little hard to translate. It literally means ‘emotion’ or ‘affection,’ but the way it’s used linguistically can be a bit complex. The sub here was: “I’m afraid I was too generous,” which I actually think is pretty decent. The turn of phrase in Korean though, using the word ‘overflowing’ while over-pouring on the man, made her response doubly witty.

Hah. I love the way Yeon just raises his eyebrows when he comes out of the market and spots her.

Subs: “How dare a witch from outside come here and...” He actually calls her a ‘michin nyeon’ meaning ‘crazy bitch,’ so the line is: “Crazy bitch, where do you think this is that you dare...”

Ji Ah’s line that begins, “If you’re going to hit me...” is just SO great. We stan (1) queen.

Subs: “Nice. You’re tough.” This is a bit hard to translate. Yeon’s line is literally: “Oh~ What ggang is like this?” ‘Ggang’ can be translated as ‘guts,’ ‘tenacity,’ or ‘persistence.’ Naver dictionary describes it as: ‘a personal trait found in one who never gives in, when put in whatever difficulties,’ which is so spot on for Ji Ah. I might approximate this as: “Woah~ Just how gutsy are you?”

The way he's just like, ‘I approve. Here, have a shikhye~’ is mildly adorable. Did you buy that for her, Yeon, or were you planning on having two but decided she’d earned one? haha

Ji Ah’s response is equally great. The sub says: “That was nothing.” which isn’t a bad option for a subtitle, but what she literally says is ‘saesam-seureopge’ (새삼스럽게), where ‘saesam’ means ‘now? at this point? after all this time?’ So she’s basically saying, ‘You’re bothering with that observation, over that little stunt, after everything else you’ve seen me do?’ haha

“I plan to mooch off of you as much as possible.” Pfft I love how Yeon actually moves to stand behind her just to underscore the point. That’ll be Lee Dong Wook again.

Wow, these are some sketchy old people.

Subs: “People aren’t the only ones with eyes and mouths.” What he actually says is, “Are people the only ones with eyes and ears?”

The Forest Spirit

Wow, the lighting in this scene is just A++ Point to the lighting team (or is that just natural? It feels almost too pretty to have just been natural).

I was too distracted by Lee Dong Wook to notice the first time, but Ji Ah’s face when Yeon shushes her is great haha

On a linguistic note, this scene is one of the few in which Yeon code switches to archaic speech as he’s addressing the tree spirit. It’s the linguistic equivalent of him putting on his ‘mountain god’ hat. (He still speaks to Ji Ah normally, though).

We cut briefly to the mudang (shamaness), and I’m sorry, I know this is a traditional way of speaking, but it always makes me laugh because it’s so over-the-top.

The spirit addresses Ji Ah as ‘agasshi,’ which would be strange if she was actually a modern young girl, but makes sense for a spirit who’s at least 600. Overall, it helps to remind viewers of her supernatural-ness.

Yeon telling Ji Ah she did a good job is so cute. I feel like they’re rapidly becoming a quirky tag-team duo and I’m 100% here for it.

Mudang: “His body returned to shore before his head did! Your father!” This line was explained in the backstory collection.

Okay, the mudang needs to dial it back like 10 levels here.

Possibly just me, but Yeon swatting the air with his hand as he peers into the cave struck me as vaguely fox-like.

Minor detail again, but the chyron here is subbed as ‘Jangsansa Cave.’ It’s actually ‘Jangsan sagool,’ not ‘Jangsansa gool.’ ‘Sagool’ is written with the characters 蛇窟 meaning ‘snake hole.’

Lol Yeon freezing mid-motion when Ji Ah tells him to stay put. That is 110% Lee Dong Wook’s sense of humour. Praise the drama gods for Lee Dong Wook - this show wouldn’t have been half as fun without him.

Fun fact: This cave is actually intimately tied to Ah Eum’s past with Imoogi and the story of how she came to be his ‘bride’ (read: sacrifice). I translated the tvN description here. I actually think this was fairly important information, so it’s a shame it wasn’t covered in the drama.

Sleepover with a Gumiho

When Ji Ah asks Yeon why he’s insisting on staying at Pyung Hee’s, his response is subbed as: “I have my reasons.” This is more properly: “You don’t need to know.”

Sub: “We don’t eat that crap!” Yeon’s line doesn’t have a subject, but this should properly be: “I don’t eat that crap!” We know from Yeou Nui that some gumiho in this world actually do eat liver.

“Heard of the Chinese liver fluke?” Ha. Yeon literally says ‘kan distoma,’ i.e. ‘liver distomiasis’ or ‘liver fluke’. While there was a well-known outbreak in China, it isn’t inherently Chinese. There’s a Korean word for it too (간흡충), but once again, Yeon opts for the loan word, adding further humour to the gumiho disavowing liver consumption - for health reasons, no less pffft

The BGM playing as Yeon sees Ah Eum in Ji Ah is once again ‘Parting at the River of Three Crossings.’

Bok Hye Ja’s line to Shin Joo is subbed as: “He went to the island to find this reincarnated girl?” The word she uses is actually ‘gakshi,’ which is an antiquated word generally meaning ‘bride’ (as in ‘the Snail Bride’), but it can also just mean ‘young woman.’

For the record, the Snail Bride speaks to Shin Joo in banmal, who speaks to her in jondaetmal

Shin Joo: “Contrary to how he looks, he’s the devoted type, after all.” Et tu, Shin Joo?

Shin Joo’s line is subbed: “As if that’s a good thing,” but I would have translated it as: “Romantic, my foot!”

Sub: “At least once in our lives we come across that one person we want to give our lives to.” This should be: ‘risk our lives for.’

Sub: “I won’t ever devote myself to love. My goal will be to protect Mr. Lee.” Actually: “I won’t ever risk my life for love. I’m going to protect Lee Yeon-nim!”

“Well that can also be called love, can’t it?” Thank you for this, Show. I know some people think TotNT champions romantic love above all else, but I simply don’t agree.

When Yeon checks Ji Ah again for his fox bead, the BGM playing is once again ‘Thread Rings’

I love how they did the CG on whatever is happening with Yeon’s powers here. I would have loved to have gotten more of an explanation of the fox bead and its powers (and Yeon’s, for that matter), but alas.

I love that Yeon tucks Ji Ah in even after re-confirming (or so he thinks) that she isn’t Ah Eum. It was important to me that he came to like and appreciate her for herself before learning that she was, in fact, his lost love.

Morning on the Island

Ji Ah wakes to find Yeon gone, the blanket tucked around her, and her expression tells us she’s onto him: sure, Yeon can be a grump, but he’s also a complete softie. heh

Yeon is, once again, talking to the elders in banmal. Why do I keep mentioning it? Because no matter how many times I see it it’s still funny.

Okay, Lee Dong Wook has this way of pointing at things with his entire arm that I find ticklish. Yeon ends up coming across like a petulant child. On a cultural note, in Korea, pointing at people like this is considered impolite.

Yeon dangling the ginseng behind Ji Ah as extra incentive pfft Wild ginseng can be massively expensive in Korea (on the order of hundreds of dollars), so this is actually a very effective bribe.

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that Yeon woke up before dawn, and, instead of going back to sleep, went into the mountains to hunt for wild ginseng, then set about using it to bribe the elders into answering Ji Ah’s questions for her. Entirely of his own accord. Like I said: softie.

Side note: Lee Dong Wook’s eyebrows are working overtime in this scene and I’m honestly a little jealous.

The newspaper Jae Hwan finds at the library is dated August 13, 1954, which Ji Ah immediately recognizes as having been just after the Korean War (if you’ll recall, this is when the forest spirit told them something ominous had come to the island).

This newspaper is actually really cool. You can see how, in the past, Korean newspapers used a lot of hanja in addition to the phonetic hangeul, similar to modern Japanese. The headline reads, “Headless Corpse, Discovered on Eohwa Island, Investigation Hits Dead End.” (頭 없는 屍身, 漁花島에서 發見, 捜査迷宮으로).

Okay, to be honest, this final scene - absent the extra context given in the next episode - made me question Ji Ah’s smarts again. I wondered why she was chasing down the clearly unstable guy just to question him, but it makes sense once you know she meant to warn him his life was in danger.

As usual, Yeon knows how to make an entrance. Cue ‘Gumiho’ theme.

Yeon stopping when Ji Ah tells him to never stops being satisfying.

The BGM playing as we cut over to Rang is ‘The House of Ghosts.’

Okay, those shots of Thirsty and Hungry were full-on horror movie and I actually kind of like it? I never watch horror as a genre, but for some reason, I found I missed this spooky element when it dropped out of the later episodes.

Oh, I like that Yeon went and made her a poultice. Very ex-mountain god of you, sir.

“Long time no see, Lee Yeon.” Iconic. And creepy. I love the attention to detail Jo Bo Ah displays in the difference between how she acts Ji Ah vs. Imoogi. Imoogi’s voice is higher pitched, and gives off more of a loose-cannon feel compared to Ji Ah, who speaks in a lower, more grounded tone.

Sub: “It’s me. The person you’ve been waiting for.” Imoogi literally says: “It’s me. That thing you’ve been waiting for.” This is obviously a big clue since normally one wouldn’t refer to oneself in such a way. It also reflects the fact that, unlike Terry-Imoogi, Jimoogi perceives no value in Ji Ah herself. (Yes, I call Ji Ah-Imoogi ‘Jimoogi,’ and sadly, no, I didn’t come up with it).

Yikes, Jimoogi tracing Yeon’s face was all menace and zero cute. Point to Jo Bo Ah.

Boy, this show really knows how to make an exit.

Blue Mooooooooon!! The guitar (bass?) riff is just so catchy.

And that concludes Episode 2. Thank you to everyone who commented on the first one. If not for your encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have continued. I also genuinely enjoy hearing from people, so send me your thoughts! This is a weird, unprecedented mashup of a live reaction post, behind the scenes info, and detailed language and culture notes, and I’m still learning how to balance the three. Your feedback is always welcome.

I’d also like to take a moment to credit my sister, who, in addition to weighing in on a lot of the translations, is also the chief researcher and fact checker for these. I, meanwhile, am in charge of bad jokes and snark. I mentioned before that these take longer than you might expect, but it’s really true. The time we spend watching the episode is actually the least of it, and as much as I enjoy them, they are a huge time suck.

So. This is what I’m going to do. If you’d like to see more of these, or if you enjoyed this, or if you’ve enjoyed any of the translations or commentary or whatnot I’ve been posting recently, please consider buying me a coffee. If you follow the link, you can buy me a $2 cup of virtual coffee. I’ve never done this before, but I’ve decided to give it a try. It’ll help me to gauge how much interest there is, and, possibly more importantly, it will help me to justify all the time haha. If and when I’ve established there’s enough interest, I’ll proceed with Episode 3. ;)

#tale of the nine tailed #totnt #lost in translation #구미호뎐 #kdrama #korean language #korean culture

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cherryyharryy · 5 years ago

Text

Burning Words

Chapter Five: Regrets

WC: 7.9k

Previous Chapter

Songs for this chapter

Extra piece in Harry’s POV (I suggest reading this first)

I have to say my intuition is pretty decent. The only time it’s failed me, is when I’ve chosen to ignore it. There’s a fine line though, between me wanting to listen to myself, and the nagging feeling in my gut. I’m an easy person to dismiss.

So when I spent all of last week brushing off the insistent aura of regret from my shoulders, I didn’t expect it to manifest itself in such a tame manner. My life is the embodiment of ‘when it rains, it pours,’ and I’m constantly trying to find a place to feel good within my own existence.

And right now, I really regret being such a pushover. If there’s one moment I could do over again, it would be earlier today when I turned down the overtime my boss offered. Because Jessie is sick. She isn’t, but she says she is; I’ve known her for too long now. We’ve survived a lot together:

That’s three drunken nights, five catcallers, one early morning jog right after the New Year when we said we’d get healthy. Two fake Instagram accounts to spot a cheater, six tampons thrown over bathroom stalls, eight missed calls—then a hurried drive down Park Street to find yours truly in the midst of a panic attack. And now, nine minutes for me to figure out that she’s not ill. That’s like, 75 in women years. No wonder we’re so tired all the time.

I’d put money on a phone call from Anthony. She says she’s never had phone sex, but she does so with a smile, and I’m not an idiot. She’s not ashamed; I don’t think Jessie could ever feel embarrassed with the confidence she has. This only twists the ropes surrounding my organs, pulling tighter and tighter until…

I hope to have secrets with someone one day, and then I can tell Jessie a sweet lie about how I’ve never gone skinny dipping, or Russian kissed, and she’d be content with my fib and cherry smile, because she’s my best friend.

And because I’m her best friend, I’m zipping up the back of my black dress with a hanger, praying it doesn’t pop when I exhale.

“I promise, I’ll owe you,” Jessie whines.

“No you don’t. Just tell me I don’t look terrible.”

“You’re gorgeous as always, babe.”

She’s curled up in her bed, such an actress, with a heating blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a phony stuffed nose that makes her words gel together in a tight knot. I thank her anyway.

“Don’t forget the book.”

“I know, I know.” I push off the threshold of her room to gather my things: a winter coat that looks somewhat classy, my purse, and Beowulf. I button up to my neck and yell my goodbye as I cross the apartment.

We have a small mirror that hangs against a brick wall when you first enter our home. I’ve watched Jessie nudge at her lashes and scrape tiny bits of strawberry lipstick off her teeth before we leave, dozens of times. I usually pass by her while she’s doing her last touch-ups, but now I’m alone, and I have to make the quick decision to look or not. I hope Jessie’s right, that I don’t look terrible, because I close my eyes until I’m locking the door.

***

The theater is frigid, and nearly empty when I arrive. I guess the majority of Jessie’s class isn’t as desperate to watch a reenactment of a book for extra points as she is. Tickets are five dollars, and the water I bought is warm. I am overdressed, and take out my diamond earrings after a girl in sweatpants sits at the end of my row.

At intermission I debate whether or not I should leave. I can hide in my room all night and finish Jessie’s assignment, in my pajamas, with a glass of gas station wine in hand. But I guess Jessie is in love, so instead, I wobble up to the concession in her borrowed heels to buy more junk food that can promise me a breakout by morning.

“Y/n?”

Like an eruption; his voice triggers more physiological responses in my body than a lab rat. My senses have never crossed borders with each other, and yet I stand here, hunger clawing its way up my ribs, past my larynx, banging on the back of my eyes so I’ll open them.

“Hey.” My voice is filled with saliva, and I pray he doesn’t notice.

“Are you here for the extra credit, or to watch a bunch of middle aged call-backs try their hand at acting?”

My laugh is airy and sore. “Uh, Jessie. It’s her class. She’s sick, so I’m saving her.”

“Ah,” he nods. “I’m a life jacket too, tonight. Elliot’s visiting his cousin or something.”

The lights flicker above us, and he blushes like a cherry. “I uh, I guess we’d better head back.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you, would you like to sit together?” He holds up his copy of the book. “Compare notes?”

I nod. I respond, but I’m not exactly sure what comes out of my mouth. All I know is that he has me lead the way, and deciding where to sit becomes an insurmountable task, as if my seating choice is the determinate in how he will see me in the forthcoming days, weeks. Does he like to sit in the front? The back? Close to the aisle? Where had he been this whole time? Had he noticed me when I had my mouth stuffed with gummy bears?

“If you don’t mind,” he answers the questions in my head, “I don’t care for sitting close to the front.”

“The middle then? I think I read that, two-thirds back was the best seating or something.”

“Perfect.”

We settle into our seats, the theater now nearly vacant other than the two of us, and a few people tucked away in the back.

It’s a bizarre group of words to use—the two of us—in reference to Harry and I. Technically, it’s sound. There are two in a pairing. I think it’s the us that plays my heartstrings like a violin. The vibrating in my chest escalates, echoing off the hollow of my bones, wrapping around the fibers of my muscles, weakening my nervous system like a dying light bulb.

He flips through my copy of the book where I haven’t made as many notes as I should have, nodding along to my scribbles which outline the differences between the original story and this live adaptation. “We’ve got a lot of the same.” He’s smiling big when he hands my book back. “Guess we’re doing something right then.”

I feel his energy for the rest of the play. Every move he makes is somehow worthy of interest. The grip he holds on his knee, the tilt of his head, roll of his lips, bounce of his foot. He clears his throat at one point, and I turn back towards the actors as if they are the disturbance. Each time he flips through the book to scribble a note, the pages brush against his thumb, sometimes catching on his ring. When he pricks his skin on the edge of a page, he drives it straight into his mouth. I have to remind my heart to keep beating.

“Y/n?”

“Hmm?”

“Did you hear me? Do you need a ride home?”

When had we walked outside? When did the sun disappear? When did his hair become such a mess?

“Um, no. That’s alright. Thank you though.”

“How did you get here?” His lenses are a pink champagne color, and I hope the filter makes me aesthetically appealing, as I never have been before.

“The bus.”

“The b—you’re going to take this bus? But it’s late?”

I study his face, his eyes through the tinted glass, the lines across his forehead with his brows pushing them up towards his hairline. My intelligence is working overtime.

“I’ve taken the bus at night before. I’ll be fine.” I shrug and he frowns.

“But, I—if I give you my number, will you text me when you get home? Just, I mean, I just need to know you make it back. It’s nearly eleven. And it’s the bus.”

I stand there too long, contemplating the actions he wishes to pursue. His number, in my phone. He says my name.

“Uh, yeah, I can do that I guess.”

Vertigo and an imposture buzz seize my nerves. My hands shake; I always spend so much time waiting for things to end, so I can just live in the memory. Things are easier that way.

And I’m more vulnerable under moonlight, so I hand him my phone.

“You won’t forget?”

“No. no. I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Good.” He passes my phone back, clearing his throat. “Um, I enjoyed this. Tonight I mean. Was pretty pissed at Elliot when he asked me to go for him, but...guess things worked out okay after all.”

“Yeah, not bad.”

“You um, you look...you look very pretty.”

“Oh,” I’m caught off guard, and have to take a second to scrape the word liar off my tongue. “Thanks. Thank you. You, so do you.”

He snickers, but it’s lighthearted, like a feather was tickling his chin. “Thank you, love.”

“Yeah…”

“So um, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

“O—okay.”

His lashes flutter against his glasses, and his tongue darts out to swipe over his lips. “Uh, I—do you—are you sure you don’t need a ride home?”

I nod. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” he sighs like he’s relieved, but there’s pent up nervous energy leaking out, that contradicts the lax drop of his shoulders and the fidgety hand scratching the back of his neck. “Well I’ll see you later then?”

“Okay.”

His lips are twitching when we say goodbye. He goes one way and I the other. He goes to his car, and I go towards the bus stop. My phone weighs heavy in my bag. How did I end up looking forward to admiring a sequence of numbers? I run through my options of what exactly I will text when I get home. What punctuation I will use, if I am warranted in picking an emoji, what he might respond with.

The bus driver gives me a funny look when the doors close behind me. I can’t find anything inside me to care enough though, as I normally would, and find a seat in the back. I’d give me a funny look too, if I was smiling so big at nothing in particular.

***

I almost forget to lock our door when I hurry into the apartment. I’m out of my coat and shoes by the time I reach my room, flopping down on my bed with my phone in hand.

Seeing Harry’s name at the top of the screen slows down my movements, making the moment more serious. My fingers hover over the keyboard, and I’m stifled on picking how I want to word my text.

I made it back alive

I’m home, no need to worry

I’m here:)

I consider not texting him at all, but brush the intrusive thought that he was just being nice for show, as far away into the corner of my mind as I can manage.

I’m home now

My teeth sink further and further into my lip, the skin stretching and pulling with the corners of my mouth playing tug of war. The three little dots of his incoming text seems to last forever.

How many stops did you have to make? You know how to make a man worry. I’m happy you’re home safe xx

Without much thought, because I know I’d change my mind, I send a smiley face and lock my phone, then quickly make my way to Jessie’s room. Part of me wants to gush to her about tonight, about how he asked to sit together, and how he gave me his number.

But I also have no reason to be so...giddy. His actions are easily explained if you look at them from a different angle. He didn’t want to sit by himself, that’s all. I’m a familiar face. And any decent person would offer a ride home to their...student.

I freeze in the space between our rooms, trying to pick a lane for my mind to travel down. I know myself well enough to know that my first reaction is to dismiss the entire evening, and my brain is pulling on the reins in that direction. But a selfish part of me just wants to relish in tonight’s events. He didn’t have to sit by me, and no one made him give me his number. I need to stop assuming that my presence is so revolting

When I knock on Jessie’s door she hacks a dramatic cough, and mumbles for me to come in.

“How are you feelin’?”

“Oh I’m better, yeah, so uh, how was your night? Did you like it? Did you have fun?” The covers are pulled up to her nose, her big eyes wide and shining right above them. “You look happy? Why’s that?”

“It was good,” I sigh, leaning against the door frame. “I’ll type up your notes in the morning.”

“I’ll probably feel up to it tomorrow,” she nods and I roll my eyes. “So uh, what did you like about it?”

“Oh...just...it was a good play. Really good.”

“Yeah? That’s it?”

I shrug. “What were you expecting?”

“Nothing, you just came in here with a big smile on your face, thought maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

She clicks her tongue and shakes her head, sighing. “Nothin’, nothin’.”

“Alright, well, m’gonna go to bed then.”

“Okay...thanks for saving me tonight. Glad you enjoyed it.”

My lips twitch, but I manage to reign in a smile. “Yeah, I did.”

***

I’ll be at the Library this afternoon, so you can stop by. 4-ish.

I read over his text and check the time again. It’s four o’clock now, but I feel early. Fashionably late, that’s a thing, right…that I should have done? He said ish. Does ish mean early or late? My poor brain.

I slip the continuing rewrite of my report from my bag, as if to say when I walk in: I’m here for help with school, that’s all, no assumptions, please. It’s cool outside, and when I walk in there is no relief, and yet my hands sweat. I swipe them over the back pockets of my jeans.

“Hi!” Harry’s not in his work clothes, not in his school clothes either. Faded, light-washed jeans are not something I like, but this day is starting to feel weird, so I might as well throw that out the window too. They’re nice. The t-shirt is nice too. How is he not cold? “You made it.”

“Are you sure this is a good time?”

“I’m free all afternoon,” he chirps.

“Okay.”

He’s at the same table we worked at last time. When I sit down, he adjusts his glasses, and I notice his nails are painted black again. It’s just a color. Black. And yet he makes it look brand new, like he discovered it.

“So what questions did you have?”

How do you always look so good? “Um, I don’t like Henry Miller.”

He chuckles. Everything about me is porous, and I absorb him. I can count his teeth, brow hairs, the depth of his dimple; weird how the lines deepening around his eyes are so divinely explicit. He laughs again. “Me too, love.”

When you laugh like that I wanna pass out. “But I don’t know how to write about him like that. Everything I come up with sounds...childish.”

“I think one of the best things you can do is provide examples. Scour the text—believe me, there’s plenty to choose from—that display his character. The whole book is his autobiography with a fictional twist.”

“Okay. Thanks.” I stay in my head, and he waits for me to speak. I feel like he is always waiting for me to talk. “Um, and then the issue of feminism.” I pause and he nods. “One of the things I kept seeing online is that, um, well people were saying that the book upheld women because the man, Henry, he uh…um...”

“Couldn’t get it up?”

It’s not cold in here anymore, oh God. “Uh, yeah...that part.”

“Okay then. Tell me why.”

“What!?”

“How does that make you feel when you read it?”

I shake my head. What I feel? “It’s...shit. A man not, um, performing, does not and should never, be attributed to the value of a woman. Um, some people think this scene gives her...some kind of power or hierarchy. Or that she is this automatic winner. He doesn’t get to...y’know...and all of a sudden there’s a shift. He fails as a man, so by default she wins as a woman. And that’s how she earns her value. That’s gross.”

“Write that down,” Harry says.

“What?”

“That’s very well put. You took reference of the source, gathered your feelings, and produced a well thought-out conclusion. You can clean it up later, but go ahead and write that down before you forget it.”

***

Our conversation veers off the path once the questions I came with are answered, my report pushed aside. I’m much more calm now, and at times forget that we’ve only known each other for a couple months.

We talk about high school and then books and food. And he’s easy to talk to, I’m reminded. He laughs a lot and blushes a lot.

At one point he jumps up like a child on Christmas morning, urging me to follow him through the aisles so he can show me a book he just finished reading. There’s something very boy-like about him...very cute and sweet and cuddly. I consider making up questions about my report just to see this again...see him again.

Soon the sun starts dipping down, casting globes of shadows over the first floor. Ms. Bortnick flicks the lamps on and the room lights up, although there’s still a dark glow of evening around us. I’m busy flipping through Dickenson, looking for a poem I read years ago to show Harry. Once I find it and peer up, I’m frozen.

He’s standing right below a window, weight leaning on one leg, while he slowly turns the pages of a book. It rests in his open palm, fingers splayed out across the spine and both covers. I gulp. His hands are huge. There’s peace in his reddened cheeks, an artistic contrast to the crease between his brows. Lips are in a content line, and I’m buzzed with the thought that I now know the different looks of his lips. How to others he may appear annoyed or disturbed, but I can tell he’s quite happy.

He is serene, golden; a lighthouse beckoning me towards him. He picks up stray beams of light and swallows them whole, right before my eyes, without moving a muscle. Strikingly bizarre, his features. He’s one of those you don’t want to stop looking at. So I don’t, until he notices me and smiles, nodding back to our table.

I keep my finger in place of the page I’m on, but close the book when I sit down. He follows suit after me.

“D’you find it?”

“Mhmm.” I flip the cover open and spin the book around to face him.

“Read it.”

It’s a gentle request, soft, with the hint of a question mark at the end. I clear my throat as quietly as possible.

““Hope” is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.

And sweetest in the Gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea;

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.”

My heart beats wildly in my chest, and I have to take a moment before looking up at him. He stayed foggy in my peripheral while I recited, mouthing along with his hand lazily hung over his lips, pretending not to know the words.

“I love that one,” he croons, “haven’t heard it in a while.” He slides the book across the table and starts flipping through the pages.

I watch his nails dance, and after a minute I have to clear my throat and look away, like I’m watching something I’m not supposed to, and don’t wanna get caught.

“Ah, here.” His face grows serious, lips sewn together.

My heart somersaults, because I know I’m about to be gifted with strings of moments filled with his voice. I straighten in my seat and hold my breath.

“Remorse is a memory awake,

Her companies astir, —

A presence of departed acts

At window and at door.

It’s past set down before the soul,

And lighted with a match,

Perusal to facilitate

Of its condensed dispatch.

Remorse is cureless, — the disease

Not even God can heal;

For ‘t is his institution, —

The complement of hell.”

“I remember that one,” I whisper. There’s something about myself that I suddenly don’t like, and it’s how attractive I find sadness dripping off his tongue. In a much different way than his nails.

“Yeah,” he sighs, lost in his head. I can practically see the gears turning behind his eyes. “How about something more...upbeat?”

***

We share more poems, and get back to a place where we’re smiling. Although, with each passing moment, Harry grows more and more fidgety. His hands can’t seem to stay still, traveling from his mouth to his neck to his rings. He’s the one who keeps starting new conversation topics, in between finding books, but I’m scared it’s me that’s got him anxious.

“I uh,” he starts, after he closes one of Edward Lear's books of limericks. His voice has softened like butter. Smooth like whiskey when it’s 2 am. I forget what time it actually is when he looks at me, his eyes watery, and suddenly, I wish I was drunk. “Um. Can I—is it alright if we—” he shakes his head, eyes tired, tongue-tied. “I—”

“There you are!”

We both jump when a tall, thin guy runs up to our table, out of breath and frantic, he starts tugging on Harry’s arm.

“C’mon, we’ve got a gig. Last minute. Been tryin’ to call you for an hour. Let’s go.”

Harry’s stuttering, looking between me and who I assume is a friend of some sorts, while he eventually complies with the man’s actions and rises from his seat.

“I uh, I’m so sorry...turned my phone off…” I can’t tell who he’s talking to, all I know is that he looks devastated for some reason.

“It’s okay, Harry,” I urge, gathering my things. “We were finished anyway. Thank you for helping me. Again.”

The friend, now standing by the front door, calls Harry’s name repeatedly. Harry’s clearly reluctant in moving towards him, offering up more apologies.

“It’s fine, really.” I push down the disappointment filling me up, and force a smile on my lips. “Go...do whatever you’ve got to do.”

“Right, right, uh—”

“Let’s go!”

“Well, if you need any more help, just let me know. Just text me whenever. Whenever you want.”

“Harold!”

“I will.”

“Okay. Yeah, I’ll see you then?”

“You’d better go,” I laugh, “he’s about to pop.”

“So am I,” Harry mumbles, and trudges off towards his impatient friend.

***

Pickles. Pickles are everywhere. All over our counters, in the sink, the table, the chairs. Jars of pickles. On the couch, the floor, the window sill.

Jessie broke up with Anthony.

When she broke up with Charles, it was sour kraut. Devin was jello. Kaiden was black licorice. Brian was pomegranate. She should make a scrapbook.

“One to ten?” I ask, opening a jar of kosher dill. My mouth waters when the salt hits my nose.

“Five.”

“That’s better than yesterday.” The corners of my jaw tingle unnecessarily when I bite into the green spear. I twitch and wait for it to pass.

She didn’t go into detail about what happened, or even who broke up with who. I came home from my evening with Harry at the library, to find her amongst a storm of soiled tissues on our couch.

There isn’t much to a Jessie breakup. She cries, swallows her feelings emotionally, and whatever random food—physically, calls the guy on the phone to tell him he’s a bastard, and then starts looking for someone new.

In the meantime, I pretty much steer clear of her. With Anthony living so far away, I never had to worry about coming home to them undressing in the living room, or shoving my head under the pillow while I tried to fall asleep. But I’m sure it won’t be long until she’s gushing about someone again, so I need to enjoy my boy-free apartment while I can.

“Y’know, he really pisses me off,” Jessie thinks aloud. She’s sprawled out in the armchair—my chair by the window, where I haven’t sat in a week—with her legs dangling over the side. She bites a pickle in half, and speaks through her chewing. “I mean, here I am, basically just waiting on him every day to call or text or send me a picture...like I really thought he was happy. He got a relationship without all the bells and whistles. Guys dream of that, right?”

I shrug. How the hell should I know?

“Bastard. I’m gonna call him.”

She caps the jar and springs from the chair, slamming the door to her room behind her.

I just hope the next guy has his own place.

***

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. New York, I mean. Sometimes it feels like forever, but then I remember my childhood existed elsewhere, high school sucked, and traffic had nothing to do with it. I’m pretty sure each time I leave and go back home, I’ve aged an extra ten years, like I’ve traveled to space and back. I keep finding traces of this city, in every nook and cranny of my life.

Mom was worried about me when I left. But moms worry about everything. I worry about everything, too. So her not so restrained fears, that she kind of pushed out of her mouth with a hiss, like she wasn’t sure if I was capable of absorbing the truth, didn’t really help me.

It’s a biiiig city. You’re not used to that. I just don’t want you to get swallowed up.

She was right. Sort of. Because you don’t move to New York. New York moves into you. It has its own heart and bones and skin, separate from the rest of the country. And soon your own body starts to wrap around this. Your heart becomes more tolerable to grease-soaked dinners at three in the morning. Your bones strengthen like cement so you can stand still through a harsh stop by a train. Your skin grows so thick, any number of insults bounce right off until they hit the pavement.

What New York hasn’t prepared me for, in the however long I’ve been here time-frame, is Harry Styles in my home. Using the words Harry and home in the same sentence makes me feel like I’ve jumped right into one of the chalk drawings from Mary Poppins.

Right now he’s standing at the big window, in the exact spot where I like to stand, running his hand over his stubble. He adjusts his glasses, and then I think he sees me in the reflection of the glass because he smirks. I duck my head back down and continue on the dishes.

It’s an odd string of events that places him here. Odd for other people—not so much me. Jessie apparently badgered Elliot while they were in class, complaining about her breakup, to the point where she convinced him to go out drinking. And then because Elliot doesn’t drink, and Jessie found that reason enough to drink more, I was awoken at midnight to Elliot banging on our door and Jessie singing her own version of The Way You Make Me Feel. And standing behind the two of them, after I swung the door open in my pajamas, while taking my retainer out, and swiping acne cream off my chin, stood Harry.

Harry was not in his pajamas, and he didn’t have a string of spit connecting his mouth to a piece of plastic, and he didn’t have a giant volcano ready to erupt on his face.

After Elliot dragged Jessie inside, he was left standing there, a quirky smile on his face while he did a kind of half-wave, short and dry in front of his body, and whispered out a soft hey.

Now it’s one am. I’m doing dishes because I’m nervous with this man in my space. Nervous that he’s going to pick up on details about me that I haven’t given permission to be leant out just yet. We can hear Jessie’s drinks making their way into the toilet, and Elliot encouraging her like she’s in a race. I didn’t know what to do with my hands or my mouth, so I filled the silence and busied my limbs with everything that had piled up in the sink the past few days. If they don’t leave soon, I may have to start washing clean forks and knives.

“This is a nice view.”

“Yeah,” the word drifts off, mixing and popping with the bubbles in front of my face.

“I like your apartment.”

“Thanks...most of it’s Jessie’s stuff.”

He nods. “Here, let me…” His face is stern, like he’s preparing to start working on a car engine, and not sliding the dish towel off the counter. He tosses it over his shoulder and starts rolling the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. I forget where I’m at and what I’m doing and even my name.

“Oh you don’t have to…” Dear God his nails are still painted.

“No, no, it’s the least I can do.”

The tendons in his hands pulse, rippling, like when you skip a stone into a calm pond as he dries the first plate. His fingers are long, and there’s generous space between his thumb and the rest of his digits that, for whatever absurd reason, I find attractive.

We work in relative silence, only the slight sloshing of water and the clinks of his rings on the dishes. I regret not turning the tv on at least, and I can feel us both sorting out conversation topics in our heads.

“Is that your report?”

When I look at him, he’s pinching his glasses in his hand, and using a free finger to swipe a few suds that had found their way to the side of his nose. He nods to the coffee table where all of my school works lays in a mess.

“Yeah, among other things.”

“Mind if I have a look? Have you worked on it since we last talked?”

“I haven’t done much...but go ahead. You may have to dig a little to find it.”

He dries his hands and strides around the counter, sitting on the edge of the couch. His sleeves are still rolled up—a blood orange sweater, and charcoal slacks that rise up to reveal matching socks. He picks through piles of paper and folders and flash cards until he finds what he’s looking for. A few of his curls fall and I can only see the bottom half of his face.

I finish washing before he’s done reading. And on a random act of impulse—there’s that New York in me—I dry my hands and make my way over to Harry.

“The quote you added, on the third page,” he sweeps his hair off his forehead when I sit down in the chair beside the couch, “brilliant.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you did an excellent job. And honestly, the entire thing, it’s incredible. It’s easy to talk about your opinion, but it’s difficult to actually back it up. You make it look easy.”

“I can assure you it’s not.”

He laughs without looking up. When he finishes and sets my paper down, he starts sifting through all the other work laid out before him. “How’s your chemistry class going? Didn’t you say you were having trouble?”

“Oh that was at the beginning of the semester. I think I was just overwhelmed.” I swallow and push my brows together. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“Well, yeah,” he laughs bashfully. His elbow rests on his knee, cradling his face in his hand with his mouth hidden by the heel of his palm. He blinks slowly, and his Adam’s apple bobs. “How about the homework for our class, the analysis on Slaughterhouse Five?”

“I finished that this morning, uh, I squint down at the table until I remember, “oh it’s in my bag.” I point to the space beside him where my school bag lays on the floor. “It’s right in there. You can look over it if you want.”

He slides my bag over and props it up on his lap, and I keep a hurdle of curses from leaving my mouth when my phone ringing beside the sink startles me. I hurry over to the kitchen only to see it’s just a voicemail from school, reminding me to register for next semester. On my way back, Harry’s face is set into a frown.

“Are you—did you find it? I thought I put it in there?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he holds up a piece of paper, “I got it.”

When I sit back down it takes him a moment to drag his eyes off me, clearing his throat and straightening his glasses, then reading over the one page we were supposed to write.

“Very good, well thought out,” he nods along to his comments, “I like your comparison to Ubick...you made really insightful connections.”

“So...I’ll get an A, right?”

“Yeah,” he laughs, slipping the page back into my bag. After he zips it up, we’re sitting in silence again, but not for long. “So, I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Harry clears his throat, and shifts on the couch to better face me, “would you—”

“Oh my God, don’t ever let me drink again.” Jessie hobbles through the bathroom door, Elliot right behind her as he helps her to her room.

“What were you saying?” I ask once they’re gone.

“I—”

“That was intense. Horrific, actually.” Elliot bounds into the living room, plopping down beside Harry with a dramatic sigh. “And she only had like, four drinks!”

“Yeah she’s a lightweight. She doesn’t think she is, but I’ve spent many long nights holding her hair back for hours because of a shot or two.”

“Do you want me to stay?” Elliot asks.

“No I’ve got her from here. Thank you for getting her home, Elliot.”

“Anytime,” he chirps. “Okay, well,” he pats Harry’s thigh, “we’ll get out of your hair.”

“Uh, yeah,” Harry adds, pushing up from the couch with his friend. “I’ll see you in class Monday, y/n.

“I’m sorry you spent your night drying dishes.”

“What are you talking about? It’s basically a hobby of mine.” The words are cool when they slip out, but it takes me a second to register the joke before I laugh.

“Thanks again,” I say while opening the front door.

“No problem,” Elliot assures me. “Hey, tell Jessie I like her tattoo.”

“She showed you her tattoo?”

“She showed the whole bar her tattoo.”

All I can do is shake my head and laugh.

“I’ll see you.” Harry’s movements are much more collected than Elliot’s. When I look past the threshold of the apartment, to the pair of them standing there, I have to hold back a smile that I don’t want to have to explain. It seems like Harry and Elliot are just...altered versions of me and Jessie. A bit opposite—Harry’s hands are stuffed in his pockets while he rocks on his feet, and Elliot pulls a miniature Rubik’s cube from his jacket.

“Bye, Harry.”

When he nods his dimple grows, and I know he’s fighting a smile.

***

The bell over the door jingles, and I force my eyes to stay focused on the menu hanging over the counter, and not acknowledge the attention I’ve drawn to myself. In a few strides, I’m across the room and waiting behind a short, bald man to order a sandwich.

My foot taps impatiently on the sticky floor, and I second guess my decision in coming here. It’s a little everything shop on the street corner by my dentist. And by everything, I’m including the line of ants crawling up the wall. It’s one of those places where layers of paint and wallpaper disguise the previous month’s investor. A seafood diner, an El Salvadoran bakery, pawn shop, and most recently—and with a wash of baker-miller pink slapped on—Don’s Place.

It’s eerie and unnerving inside, but cheap, and I didn’t want to eat all day before my teeth cleaning, so I’m kind of desperate at the moment. Light chatter fills the space, until someone starts coughing, and the strident atmosphere this place held disappears. When it’s ready, my order is nearly tossed to me over the counter. I grab the once frozen sandwich and fries before they hit the floor, and find a cramped two-seater booth in the corner of this place. I’m right below an air vent, so I keep my jacket on.

I pick the lettuce, that I asked not to have, off before taking a bite, and it doesn’t take long, now that I’m settled and still, for my mind to drift to Harry. He’s really set up camp in my brain—but I’m not complaining. My daydreams are stirring, a little less innocent than I’m used to, and at times I have to catch myself from drifting too far off. Even when he’s right in front of me in class, I wander, practically drowning in my own imagination, getting washed away in him. And I think he notices...I’m not sure if he knows what I’m thinking about, but judging by the smirk he gives when he calls my name, I think he might

Jessie keeps teasing me too, and it’s getting harder to keep my composure. All she has to do is stare at me for a few seconds after I come back from class, and I break. I’ll tell her what he was wearing, what words sounded particularly better from his accent, what questions he asks me in class. I don’t ever answer, just mumble out a come back to me, which spares me until the next class.

I’m rapidly finding a reason for addiction in every minuscule movement he makes. How domestication and carnal activity fuse together under his touch. Pushing his glasses up his nose is both endearing and erotic. The way his tongue hovers over his teeth when deciding his words is hypnotic and wholesome Quickly, he is turning into an adoration. He’s really almost too good to be true, and not the arrogant son of a bitch I pegged him as when we first met.

“Hey.”

I jump. This time his voice is not in my head. I force the bite down my throat and smile. “H—hi.”

“I uh,” Harry starts, eyes glistening, “saw you come in. Just thought I’d say hi.”

“Oh—yeah, hi, um—”

“Can I sit?”

“Yeah, sure,” I squeak.

He sits himself across from me, and I notice the flush creeping up his chest. His fingers dance all around each other, and his energy alone makes me nervous.

He gulps in a breath and smiles awkwardly. “How are you?” He asks.

“I’m good, just,” I nudge my half-eaten sandwich, “stopped for lunch.”

“That’s good, uh, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Okay…”

“You—I mean I—” he clears his throat. “Would you like to go out sometime? Just...nothing fancy, the two of us? Not school related? Is that something you would like?”

If I’m being honest, I have many regrets in life. Too many to count. Most too personal to share. If there’s one moment I could do over again, it is this one. I don’t know it yet, though.

I don’t know it as I scramble out of the booth, as I blurt out something about how I have to go, as I weave through this disgusting place, my feet sticking to the floor, plowing through the door.

I run all the way home. He only calls me twice, and when a third never shows up on my phone, I start to cry.

It’s such a weird place to be in. When you know you’re right in the middle of a mistake.

If there’s one moment I could do over again, it would be the night he came into the bookstore.

*******************************************************************************************

Thank you for beta reading for me!!! @cosmospy @aileenacoustic @afterstylesmadeit

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#ta!harry #burning words #fine line #harry styles #harry styles writing #harry styles fic

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arcaneranger · 6 years ago

Text

Final Thoughts - Summer 2019

Hey, look who finished the season perfectly on time, even if he did so by dropping a bunch of stuff last minute! (Technically, as of writing, I haven’t finished Re:Stage Dream Days, but you can rest assured that it’s bad.)

I thought I was going to do a first impressions rundown video for the entire season at once, since my impression posts don’t tend to get a lot of engagement anyway, but since I didn’t end up going through with it, I’ll summarize my point - summer started strong, and even here at the end, I can easily say it’s the best season thus far in what’s largely been a letdown year for seasonal anime (and a god damn renaissance for long shows, thanks to My Hero Academia, so if I seem down on a season that had Dororo, or Vinland Saga, or Fruits Basket, remember that I exclude those shows from my considerations until the end of the year).

This season saw several high-profile continuations like A Certain Scientific Accelerator, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon II, and Symphogear XV, but also new works by creators like Mari Okada, and anticipated adaptations of Astra: Lost in Space and Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest, and in the end, well...a lot of those were mixed bags at best, but the biggest drawback I will remember Summer 2019 for is that it was drowning in bad isekai shows. The aforementioned Arifureta, the basically-counts Danmachi, and also Isekai Cheat Magician, Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks, The Lost Ones, Demon Lord Retry!...it just never ended, and that’s not even counting If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord.

Speaking of all that stuff, let’s get right into it, yeah?

28 shows were simulcast this season, and of those, I…

Skipped 4:

Yami Shibai 7, Starmyu Season 3, A Certain Scientific Accelerator, and Lord El-Melloi II Case Files: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note were all skipped because I have not watched the previous series.

Dropped 15:

Worst of the Season: If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord!

I dropped this after one episode because I found the aesthetic and tone to be aggressively boring and I found even the cute daugheroo character to be utterly generic in execution...and then later found out oh boy was I right to drop it, based on how many people compared it to the Bunny Drop manga that we don’t talk about. *shudders*

Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest

Wins the “biggest tryhard” award for being just the most straightforward an SAO award gets, right up to being grimdark for dumb reasons. The first episode alone had inconsistent animation, and that just did not bode well for the future...and the plot instantly reminded me of Slime, which soured on me over time. I let this one go sour after one shot.

Demon Lord, Retry!

The blandest of beige this season, Demon Lord had neither the story nor the production values to reel me in or convince me it was anything but the Overlord wannabe it so clearly was.

Isekai Cheat Magician

This show was a pretty transparent attempt to have an isekai story with a childhood friend romance plot, and while I’m fine with one and a half of those things, it couldn’t execute them in any decent way by the end of the first episode, and just wound up being largely boring.

Wasteful Days of High School Girls

Speaking of boring, what if Nichijou wasn’t funny? You’d get something like this.

Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?

So the tone this one ultimately ended up having was pretty much exactly what I expected after the premiere - it leaned too hard on jokes that weren’t as funny as it thought they were, and too hard on the dumb hentai mom trope, and neither of those things interested me in the slightest. Pretty okay with having left this off the watchlist.

The Ones Within

I have stated multiple times in the last few weeks that Symphogear is great because it can convince you that it’s a work of genius. The Ones Within has, unfortunately, convinced itself that it’s deep social commentary of some kind, rather than a bargain-bin Danganronpa with no real thought put into it.

Are You Lost?

I’m amazed that we got another Eromanga Sensei this season and it flew entirely under the radar. For God’s sake, the first episode featured a young teenage girl eating a bug and drinking her own urine. I just didn’t see myself being particularly entertained by the shock value longer than the premiere.

Ensemble Stars (4/10)

I can’t tell if this one is actually over, but Funimation’s site doesn’t list any new episode premieres coming up, so I’m gonna assume it is? I gave this one a shot and hung onto it because it took UtaPri’s premise and gave it the slightly more serious tone I was looking for, but dropped it after the second episode started to drown us in side characters with no hint that the floodgates were closing, rather than giving ample screentime to a select cast so they could actually become at least two-dimensional before throwing in more people we’re supposed to care about.

BEM

BEM suffered from an unfortunate lack of distinct personality, which sucks when it seems to have had a decent story to tell. Nothing else about the show wound up sticking out to me, though, which has me fully convinced that Production I.G.’s name is only on this to boost recognition, and the second-billed LandQ studios did the majority of the work. And their best-known other show is Swordgai. So...

To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts (5/10)

I have gotten absolutely no pushback so far for my decision to tear into this show because it should have been a different show, so I’m gonna take that as a general agreement of my earlier statement. What a waste of a concept.

Cop Craft (5/10)

This one I still think I was not crazy to pick up after the first episode, because it wasn’t until the third that the animation tanked hard and the pacing went absolutely nuts, and apparently stayed that way. Did they write a thirty-nine-episode story that had to be condensed into twelve or something?

Magical Sempai

This one I probably would have kept watching if the majority of its humor wasn’t just the title character embarrassing herself in lewd ways. It was funny, but I didn’t see myself enjoying anything more than one episode of it.

GRANBELM (6/10)

This one I got halfway through before realizing that, during my end-of-season catchup, I had absolutely no desire to return to. The plot didn’t really start moving until the fifth episode, and in that time I had not gotten particularly invested in the characters, especially since the show makes fun of the viewer for thinking that the big mecha dream battles actually had stakes beyond “you don’t get to be The Thing”. At least it looked nice and the mecha designs were very original.

Are you willing to fall in love with a pervert, as long as she’s a cutie?

There were four shows this season with questions for titles. Just saying! This one actually had me hooked right up until the end, revealing that not only is it a fanservice show, but a fetish pandering one. That being said, if I were attracted to women, I could have seen myself getting something out of it, what with the decently moody tone and good production values.

I put 2 On Hold:

Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? II

I’ll probably come back to this when the third series comes around, just to give it one more chance to pull me back in, but ditching my favorite character for harem antics and character shilling just did not endear me to this long-awaited sequel.

Re:Stage Dream Days!!

This one’s not actually on hold, but I don’t have any other good place to mention it. This one I’m gonna make it through just on willpower, not because it’s good, but because it starts out as the most shameless rip-off I’ve ever seen in anime, specifically of Love Live!.

And I Finished 7:

Kochoki (5/10)

I thought I was gonna give this one a 7 at least, for nearly the whole season, for being a decently-told and somewhat new telling of Nobunaga’s early life with great production values for Studio Deen...right up until the structure fell completely apart at the end, almost completely out of nowhere. I’m still in awe of the gall this show had to literally skip over the final battle.

How Heavy Are The Dumbbells You Lift? (8/10)

This one came right the fuck out of nowhere and totally blew my expectations out of the way from the very first episode. Looking at the summary, I was convinced I was gonna drop this after the premiere...and found myself totally hooked by its cheery visual presentation and excellent sense of meta-comedy, not to mention its genuine educational value.

Astra: Lost In Space (8/10)

One of two adaptations I was really looking forward to this season (along with Fire Force), Astra was pretty much what I expected - a very good translation of a very good manga that ran for the perfect amount of time to be divided into twelve-ish episodes. A fantastic and memorable cast of characters enhanced a surprisingly twisty story, and Lerche made it all look just as good as I’d hoped.

The Demon Girl Next Door (8/10)

Speaking of defying my expectations, another show I was expecting pretty much nothing from, maybe one I could compare to Gabriel Dropout or something, that was instead an incredibly charming story of a girl trying to save her family by defeating a magical girl...with a very, very loose definition of the word “defeat” in play. I couldn’t have asked for much more from this one, aside from maybe a sequel?

Given (9/10)

Speaking of “Lerche” and “gorgeous”, this profoundly gripping story of a spacecase and a loner hesitantly making music together blossomed further and further as it went on, and became my new go-to reference point for explicit gay relationships in anime. It went where even Yuri On Ice!!! couldn’t, and left me desperate for a Part Two.

O Maidens In Your Savage Season (9/10)

My write up for this show was one of my longest in recent memory, and I stand by it - even if Okada had to write a few plot contrivances in to get where she’s going, at least she presented her cast in an incredibly thoughtful way and gave them a satisfying payoff, with the knowledge that they’re teenagers and all of their problems can’t be solved in one semester. The high water mark for discussions of sexuality in this medium.

BEST OF THE SEASON: Symphogear XV (9/10)

Anime is wonderful, and so am I.

So that wraps up summer! We’ve got a lot to look forward to in fall, even if My Hero Academia and Food Wars’ fourth series will both ultimately end up on a list in the distant future next year. Will Psycho-Pass 3 redeem the series? Will Azur Lane be better than Kantai Collection? Will Beastars beat Aggretsuko as the biggest furry panderer of the year? Only time will tell. And then I’ll tell you all what I think it said.

#summer 2019 anime #anime #symphogear #symphogear xv #o maidens in your savage season #astra lost in space #kanata no astra #given #the demon girl next door #machikado mazoku #how heavy are the dumbbells you lift?#dumbbell nan kilo moteru?

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taehyungiestummy · 6 years ago

Text

Return to Paradise -- Chapter One

Masterlist Next

Warnings: No

Word Count: 2769

“Are you feeling what I am feeling?” I look over at my best friend.

Emily smiles at me, “Anxious? Excitement? All of the above? Yes, I am.” She adjusts her backpack, stepping forward as the airport security line moves slightly.

“Thank goodness,” I smile back, looking to see how much further until we are at the front of the line. “It’s been a while since we have made this long journey.”

“Almost too long,” Emily taps my shoulder so I look back at her. “Attention span is still short.”

I roll my hazel eyes and adjust my new, dark blue, thick rimmed glasses. “So much is different though. I’m five foot two now, and I have glasses. My hair has blue on the underneath pieces. Oh, and I grew up,” I smirk, referring to puberty finally making me look like a woman. Well, somewhat like a woman.

“That is true,” Emily takes half a step forward. “I didn’t grow, so I’m still five foot four. I have purple on the right, just on the top of my hair. And, I grew up a little bit,” her brown eyes sparkle with amusement as she smiles. “You are so dorky.”

“Thanks,” I giggle. “Are you ready for the long ass plane ride?”

She chuckles, “I think we forgot to mention our more frequent use of cuss words.”

“I’m no longer that scared little school girl,” I grin. “I’ll speak my mind, and that includes all the shit.”

“It makes me so happy to see you like this. All proud of yourself and who you are.”

“I’m having a good day,” I place my backpack onto the conveyor belt. “I guess I can thank the whole reason of this trip on that.”

“I’m in a pretty good mood because of that too,” she places her backpack next to mine.

I step through the metal detector with Emily as close as allowed. Then we are slinging our backpacks back on, and making our way deeper into the airport.

“I can’t wait to see Nari, again,” Emily points to a sign that shows the direction of our gate.

“She is overly excited to see us again,” I smile as we turn to get on the right path. “She says it’s been so lonely without us there. She hopes we’ve missed our room.”

“I have. We left so much in that room. Books, video games, stuffed animals, even clothes.”

“We left a part of ourselves in that cute Seoul apartment. I can’t wait to read in my bunk, and enjoy rainy days on the balcony.”

“That does sound lovely,” Emily looks around, trying to catch our gate number. “I can’t wait to take so many pictures of nature, and you. Plus, seven boys that have been dying to see us.”

“Yeah,” my face heats up in seconds, and I grab onto Emily’s arm. “I hope we can see them right when we get there. I’m sick of phone calls, Skype chats, and text messages. I want to see Tae in real life again.”

“I’m sick of all the YouTube videos. They uploaded so many, and then there’s the ones from award shows and what not. I want to see them dance in real life.”

Emily and I let out exasperated breaths.

It has been nine months since we left South Korea. All those months were spent away from our boyfriends, and our first boyfriends on top of that. It’s been hard, and this day has been a long time coming.

“I bet everyone will be shocked that we can speak Korean so well now,” Emily smiles as we take a seat near our gate.

“We worked so hard to learn the language. I hope they are proud,” I lean back into my seat as best I can with my backpack on. “Taehyung is still working on English, and it makes me feel a bit guilty.”

“How come? I mean, you really shouldn’t, but I don’t have your brain.”

“He’s done so much for me, too much. He wants to make me so happy, and he started to learn English more so that we could communicate, even if we still needed someone to help us at times.”

“Well, you learned Korean, so now you can make him happy by speaking to him in his language. As well as the other boys.”

“That’s true,” I turn my head to look at my best friend. “Gah, what would I do without you?”

Emily grabs my hand, “Oh Amber, you ask that too much.”

“I know,” I shrug. “Um, there’s something else that’s been bothering me for quite some weeks, and I need to get it off my chest.”

“And what is that?” She smiles and looks down at me.

“Taehyung and I were Skyping, and it got quiet. Nothing weird, we were both tired, as it happens on weekends regardless of time for me. Anyways, in the cutest voice, he told me he loves me,” I feel my breath hitch on the ‘L’ word.

“Hold on, this happened a few weeks ago, and you didn’t tell me?”

“School was so hectic, we were so busy, and it seemed like I could just push it away until I had time to deal with it.”

“Why is it bothering you? He’s so sweet, caring, funny, cute-”

“I know. I am dating him for a reason. He makes my head spin in happiness, and sets butterflies loose in my stomach.”

“So, I don’t get why it’s such a big deal he said that he loves you.”

“Because, I didn’t say it back. I looked into his eyes, and I know he was waiting for it. But, I didn’t say it. Now, I don’t know where we stand. If he regrets saying it, if he thinks I don’t want to be with him anymore. I do though, he’s amazing and I don’t want to lose him.”

“Well, do you love him?”

“I…” I bite my tongue, thinking about all I have felt about Taehyung in the time I have known him.

Taehyung is one of the best things to happen in my life. He knows how to cheer me up, and how to help me through personal problems. The two of us are beyond comfortable around each other, going as far to Skype in clothes that show a lot of skin, but nothing dirty. I’ve seen Taehyung without a shirt countless times. His group members are now my friends, and happy to see Taehyung in a relationship. This time apart has made me realize a lot about the boy that I met in the park so many months ago.

“Amber,” Emily waves her hand in front of my face. “Earth to alien girl.”

I giggle, pushing her hand away. “Sorry,” I blink and focus in on her again. “I was just remembering why I like Tae, and, there’s so many reasons why our relationship is working.”

“That’s good, but it still doesn’t answer my questions.”

“Oh,” I look away, my cheeks no doubt red as cherries. “Um, yes, I do love him.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Emily brings me into a hug as best she can. “My best friend is in love,” she sings.

“Calm down,” I laugh. “It does feel nice to say it out loud. Even if I’m not saying it to him, saying it to you makes it feel a lot more real. Now, I have to wait an undetermined amount of time to tell Tae that.”

“We should learn to say ‘I love you’ in Korean on the way over. Then you can surprise Taehyung.”

“Why do you need to learn it?” I take a deep breath, trying to calm the heat on my cheeks.

“For when I feel that I know I am in love with Namjoon,” she ruffles my hair.

“Hey,” I laugh, sitting up and fixing my hair. “I have to look good for the plane ride.”

The two of us burst into giggles, not caring there are so many people nearby.

“Now boarding, flight to Seoul, South Korea,” a lady over the intercom says.

“That’s us,” I smile, standing up and getting my boarding pass out. “Ah, it is happening.”

“Still another twenty minutes or so until we take off,” Emily stands up, boarding pass already in hand. “Better get in line, though.”

“No rush with already determined seats, and all that good stuff.”

“Don’t you want to get all settle into your seat?”

“Eh,” I shrug. “It will still take that same amount of time regardless of when we get on.”

“Ugh, so much sass,” Emily grabs me arm and pulls me into the line. “So, lucky you are cute.”

I smile, “I am pretty cute.”

“Oh, shush up,” she giggles, slinging an arm over my shoulder.

“I’m actually ready for this plane ride. We haven’t had that much time to talk recently, so this will be good for us.”

“It will be.”

********

“There’s something about flying over the ocean that is calming and nerve-wracking all at the same time,” I pull the shade down over my widow. “I don’t think I will ever truly get over my fear of flying, but it is getting better each time we go on trips.”

“You haven’t cried when getting on a plane for a few years now, so I would say that you are doing pretty good,” Emily smirks.

“Someone is in a very teasing mood,” I shake my head, looking back to see if the flight attendant is close with the meal.

“I have to keep you on your toes, so you don’t think too much about what is happening.”

“Are you going to stick with that defense?”

“Until I think of something better,” she giggles.

“Here is your meal, ladies,” the female flight attendant sets what we order on our tray-tables. “Do you need anything else?”

“No, we’re good,” Emily answer, smiling up at the woman.

“Enjoy your food then, you two,” she gives a small bow before moving to the row in front of us.

“I’m sure this will taste fine, but I can’t wait until we are cooking with Nari again,” I move my water to the left side of my tray-table for better access.

“Making food without her just hasn’t been the same,” Emily opens her bag of chips. “My birthday meal just felt said without others who enjoy Korean food.”

“Speaking of birthdays, how are we going to celebrate my birthday?” I smile, taking a bite of my sandwich.

“That’s a good question,” Emily takes a sip of her Sprite. “We could go out to eat, and have cake at the apartment. Open presents, and hang out.”

“That sounds like a nice way to spend a birthday.”

“Can’t let you out of my sight, since you could have the sexy times with Taehyungie,” she teases.

“I will kill you,” I give her a shove. “People can hear you.”

Emily rolls her eyes. “They don’t care, and probably aren’t paying attention. It’s nothing to get worked up over.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that,” I pout, shoving chips into my mouth.

“I know, I was teasing you.”

I let out a breath, “Sorry. I know that, I’m just tired and want to land already.”

“Don’t worry about it. We are only halfway through the flight.”

“Tae is going to be shocked with my glasses,” I go back to my sandwich.

“You don’t wear them when you Skype?”

“No, they are so dorky and embarrassing.”

“They are cute and make you look sophisticated. He’ll love them, as does everyone else you know.”

“Confidence back up,” I giggle.

“The boys have grown up a lot in the past nine months, too. They are looking so good, it is unreal. I bet they are so fit.”

“Tae has a bit of a belly roll, but I can see he has abs forming. It is the cutest, I love it. He says his grandma likes him chubby, so he just keeps eating.”

“He is too cute for his own good.”

“I love him because of his silly and outgoing manner. Ugh, I need to be with him again.”

“I know. It has been too long. I have missed Namjoon way more than I thought I would.”

“I just want my first damn kiss. Almost seventeen and no one has ever kissed me.”

“That should go on our list of things to accomplish during this trip.”

“I will put it on there. Hanging out with the whole group at their dorm. Just being able to talk to everyone without Namjoon’s help will be so nice.”

“I’ve been dying to interact with them like it should be. No translator needed, but, Namjoon will probably still need to help us.”

“Yeah, we aren’t perfect yet.”

“I love that the boys dye their hair crazy colors. I don’t think they have much choice, but certain colors look so good on them.”

“The piercings, ah, it is too much. Korea knows how to make good looking groups.”

“I wonder how Nari and Jin are doing,” Emily grabs my trash, and, along with hers, hands it to the flight attendant. “When we left, they had just gone on a date.”

“Lucky bastards get to see each other whenever they feel like it.”

“They must be doing good then, yes? Or, don’t you know?”

“Oh yeah, they are doing good, last time I asked Nari. The boys say that when they are together, it’s overly cute.”

“Like, I have to leave the room because it is too cute?”

“I think so, but that makes my heart swell for them. I’m so glad we set Nari up with Jin. He seems great for Nari. They both work so hard, and need someone to relax with.”

“I agree. Nari probably still can’t believe her boyfriend is in a famous group. I still can’t believe it.”

“All thanks to Tae making sure I was okay when at the park. That boy has such a big heart,” I smile.

“Jungkook is starting to look, hm, manly. I guess that’s the word.”

“I know what you mean. It will be nice to talk to him now, as he is very close to our age. Hopefully he isn’t too shy when around us.”

“Man, I wish I could drop out of school and join a music group,” Emily giggles.

“I do wonder how that all works. I don’t think Jungkook dropped out of school. I bet they had to work super hard to get into the group, and give some things up. Jungkook hasn’t graduated, though.”

“No doubt. It has to be a long process of tests, and to end up in a group is a huge honor.”

“Then you have to get along with your other members. That has to be stressful. Bangtan are so lucky to have hit it off right away.”

“Ah, Big Hit, the men who created BTS,” Emily sighs. “It’s a good thing they did that.”

“Do you think they know about us? Ya know, whoever decides things for the boys. Big Hit is just the big name, ha,” I chuckle. “Anyways, there must be main men who must control some portion of their lives.”

“I would believe it,” Emily takes in a sharp breath. “Are you going to say what I think?”

“What if they don’t approve of us?”

“Making sure the boys are happy has to be on their list, and we make two of the group quite happy.”

“That could be all and well. Still, we aren’t Korean, and look so, um, western. It wouldn’t be good for their image.”

“Screw their image. You are in love, and maybe me too. It is their life, and they will date whoever they choose. That, right now, happens to be two girls from America that don’t look anything like Korean locals. Everyone is just going to have to deal with it.”

“I guess,” I pout.

Emily turns my face to look at her and we lock eyes. “Nothing like that is going to tear our boyfriends from us. You understand?”

“I understand,” I am a bit shocked at how serious she is now. “I just want to see them so bad. It is making me go crazy. Thinking of bad scenarios.”

“You need a nap to calm down. Clear your mind.”

“I do,” I look away from her and settle into my seat. “That should help.”

“I think I will take a nap as well.”

“Then who is going to make sure we don’t miss the landing?”

She giggles, “You don’t worry about it. I will make sure to wake you up.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I am so excited that this first chapter is out, and I am so excited for you all to get to read this! I’d say each chapter will be about this length. Anyways, hope you enjoyed reading! I’d love to know what you thought! :D

#BTS x OC #BTS imagine #BTS fanfiction #BTS series #Jungkook x OC #Jungkook imagine #Taehyung x OC #Taehyung imagine #Jimin x OC #Jimin imagine #Namjoon x OC #Namjoon imagine #Hoseok x OC #Hoseok imagine #Yoongi x OC #Yoongi imagine #Seokjin x OC #Seokjin imagine #My OCs

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selenatorsphilippines · 8 years ago

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Selena Gomez on Instagram Fatigue, Good Mental Health, and Stepping Back From the Limelight

On an unusually wet and windy evening in Los Angeles, Selena Gomez shows up at my door with a heavy bag of groceries. We’ve decided that tonight’s dinner will be a sort of tribute to the after-church Sunday barbecues she remembers from her Texan childhood. I already have chicken simmering in green salsa, poblano peppers blackening on the flames of the stove, and red cabbage wilting in a puddle of lime juice. All we need are Gomez’s famous cheesy potatoes—so bad they’re good, she promises. She sets down her Givenchy purse and brings up, in gaudy succession, a frozen package of Giant Eagle Potatoes O’Brien, a can of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup, a bag of shredded “Mexican cheese,” and a squat plastic canister of French’s Crispy Fried Onions.

“I bet you didn’t think we were going to get this real,” she says, and when I tell her that real isn’t the first word that springs to mind when faced with these ingredients, she responds with the booming battle-ax laugh that offers a foretaste of Gomez’s many enchanting incongruities.

But real is precisely what I was expecting from the 24-year-old Selena, just as her 110 million Instagram followers (Selenators, as they’re known) have come to expect it. Of course, celebrity’s old codes are long gone, MGM’s untouchable eggshell glamour having given way to the “They’re Just Like Us!” era of documented trips to the gas station and cellulite captured by telephoto lenses. But Gomez and her ilk have gone further still, using their smartphones to generate a stardom that seems to say not merely “I’m just like you” but “I am you.”

“People so badly wanted me to be authentic,” she says, laying a tortilla in sizzling oil, “and when that happened, finally, it was a huge release. I’m not different from what I put out there. I’ve been very vulnerable with my fans, and sometimes I say things I shouldn’t. But I have to be honest with them. I feel that’s a huge part of why I’m where I am.” Gomez traces her shift toward the unfiltered back to a song she released in 2014 called “The Heart Wants What It Wants,” a ballad about loving a guy she knows is bad news. The title derives from a letter written by Emily Dickinson, though Woody Allen reintroduced the phrase when he used it to describe his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn. We can assume that Gomez is referring here to Justin Bieber, with whom she ended a three-year relationship at around the time the song debuted.

If you are over 30 and find yourself somewhat mystified by Gomez’s fame, unable to attach it to any art object—apart from several inescapable pop songs and a cameo in The Big Short in which, as herself, she explains synthetic collateralized debt obligations—then you might wish to watch the video for “The Heart Wants What It Wants.” (You will be late to the party; it received more than nine million views in the first 24 hours following its release.) Before the music begins, we hear Gomez’s voice as if from a recorded psychotherapy session, ruminating over a betrayal. “Feeling so confident, feeling so great about myself,” she says, her voice breaking, “and then it’d just be completely shattered by one thing. By something so stupid.” Sobs. “But then you make me feel crazy. You make me feel like it’s my fault.” Is this acting? Is it a HIPAA violation? Either way, there is magic in the way it makes you feel as if you’ve just shared in her suffering. Pay dirt for a Selenator.

Gomez queues up a playlist—Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers—and back in the kitchen, there is a chile relleno casserole to assemble, green enchiladas to roll, and her cheesy potatoes to mix together. As I slip an apron over her mane of chocolate-brown hair, for which Pantene has paid her millions, and tie it around her tiny waist, I wonder whether her legions have felt for years the same sharp pang of protectiveness that I’m feeling at present. Even as she projects strength and self-assuredness, Gomez is not stingy with frailty. “I’ve cried onstage more times than I can count, and I’m not a cute crier,” she says. Last summer, after the North American and Asian legs of her “Revival” tour, with more than 30 concerts remaining, she abruptly shut things down and checked into a psychiatric facility in Tennessee. (This was the second time Gomez had canceled a tour to enter into treatment; in January 2014, shortly after being diagnosed with lupus, she spent two weeks at the Meadows, the Arizona center that has welcomed Tiger Woods, Rush Limbaugh, and Kate Moss.) The cause, she says, was not an addiction or an eating disorder or burnout, exactly.

“Tours are a really lonely place for me,” she explains. “My self-esteem was shot. I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting onstage, or right after leaving the stage. Basically I felt I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t capable. I felt I wasn’t giving my fans anything, and they could see it—which, I think, was a complete distortion. I was so used to performing for kids. At concerts I used to make the entire crowd raise up their pinkies and make a pinky promise never to allow anybody to make them feel that they weren’t good enough. Suddenly I have kids smoking and drinking at my shows, people in their 20s, 30s, and I’m looking into their eyes, and I don’t know what to say. I couldn’t say, ‘Everybody, let’s pinky-promise that you’re beautiful!’ It doesn’t work that way, and I know it because I’m dealing with the same shit they’re dealing with. What I wanted to say is that life is so stressful, and I get the desire to just escape it. But I wasn’t figuring my own stuff out, so I felt I had no wisdom to share. And so maybe I thought everybody out there was thinking, This is a waste of time.”

On August 15, Gomez uploaded a photo of almost baroque drama: her body collapsed on the stage, bathed in beatific light. Whether this was agony or ecstasy, it drew more than a million comments from fans (who have handles like “selena_is_my_life_forever”). It would be her last Instagram post for more than three months. She flew to Tennessee, surrendered her cell phone, and joined a handful of other young women in a program that included individual therapy, group therapy, even equine therapy. “You have no idea how incredible it felt to just be with six girls,” she says, “real people who couldn’t give two shits about who I was, who were fighting for their lives. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it was the best thing I’ve done.” She stayed for 90 days, making her first post-treatment appearance last November at the American Music Awards, where she collected the trophy for Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist and gave a tearful speech about her struggles; it quickly went viral.

In the tearoom at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel, little girls in pinafores and pink high-tops sit on heavily tasseled sofas and drink sparkling apple juice out of champagne flutes. One by one they approach our table, shyness replaced by rapturous giggles as Gomez praises their pretty dresses and invites them to sit with her for a picture. Her seemingly infinite patience with these intrusions is something between a habit and a principle. “Somebody I used to hang out with would always get very frustrated with me,” she says, presumably referring to Bieber, whose name she will not utter. “But I have a hard time saying no to children.”

Donna Gigliotti, who produced The Fundamentals of Caring, a 2016 drama in which Gomez plays the love interest of a boy with muscular dystrophy, recalls the throngs of children ready to engulf her outside the set even in rural Georgia. “They love her because she is so generous and so authentic,” Gigliotti says. “I admit that I didn’t quite understand her huge fan base at first. Now I see her as a sort of third-generation feminist. She’s adorable and flirty and funny, but she’s also kind of kick-ass. I think her young fans go wild for that combination.”

“There’s a vulnerability about Selena,” says Paul Rudd, her costar in The Fundamentals of Caring. “She’s never trying to sell herself or impress anyone. She doesn’t put on airs, and she was a good sport about really long days in sometimes uncomfortable conditions. You’d never know she was so famous by the way she behaved, which, I think, is a huge key to her appeal.”

Doll-like and startled in pictures but almost breathtakingly at ease in person, Gomez was once described by her good friend Taylor Swiftas “both 40 years old and seven years old.” She grew up in Grand Prairie, Texas, raised by a single mother who was sixteen when she was born. Gomez remembers being asked to feel between the cushions in the car for change so that they could buy Styrofoam cups of ramen. But at age seven, after a few years on the pageant circuit, she landed a role on the children’s show Barney & Friends, which shot in Dallas and recruited talent locally. By twelve she was one of Disney’s young players, plucked out of thousands of hopefuls. At thirteen she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and stepfather, and the following year Disney gave her the lead in Wizards of Waverly Place, a sitcom about a family of wizards who own a downtown Manhattan restaurant. The show was a hit, and Disney did what Disney does, fanning Gomez’s talent across music and movies, with her mother, Mandy Teefey, continuing to act as her manager. (Gomez hired a Hollywood management firm in 2014, after her first mental-health crisis, but she continues to develop projects with her mother and prizes her opinion above all others.) “I worked with Disney for four years,” Gomez says. “It’s a very controlled machine. They know what they represent, and there was, 100 percent, a way to go about things.”

No child star enjoys easy passage through the morass of adolescence, and Gomez struggled to shed her blandly perky Wizards persona. “For a guy there’s a way to rebel that can work for you,” she believes. “But for a woman, that can backfire. It’s hard not to be a cliché, the child star gone wrong. I did respect my fans and what I had, but I was also figuring out what I was passionate about and how far I was willing to go.” The first thing she did post-Disney was Harmony Korine’s darkly lurid Spring Breakers, a 2013 film about four college girls on a rampage of sex, drugs, and murder. (Gomez played Faith, the one who can’t quite stomach it all and heads back early.) “My mom wanted me to work with a director who would really push me,” she recalls. “I watched Kids, Trash Humpers, Gummo, and I was like, Mom, are you crazy? But it was fun to imagine how you might behave if you were set free of whatever was holding you captive. I’m a late bloomer. I grew up around adults, but in terms of getting out, having friends—at times I really didn’t know anything but my job.”

In retrospect, Gomez’s childhood successes were always tinged with sadness. “My mom gave up her whole life for me,” she explains. “Where we’re from, you don’t really leave. So when I started gaining all this success, there was a guilt that came with it. I thought, Do I deserve this?” Though she has been in several other films since Spring Breakers, Gomez has enjoyed greater success as a musician. And yet the musician’s life exhausts her. On film sets she is buffered by the ensemble and can retreat into her character, but in a concert, all eyes fix upon her. “It’s weird,” she says, “to get up onstage and have everybody know where you were last night.”

With the tour and treatment behind her, lately Gomez is feeling unusually relaxed. The Netflix miniseries 13 Reasons Why, which she executive-produced, airs this month, and it addresses several issues dear to her, among them teen suicide and the pressures of social media. Eight years ago, Gomez and her mother reached out to Jay Asher, who wrote the novel from which the series has been adapted. Its title refers to the thirteen reasons why its protagonist, Hannah Baker, chose to take her life. “I didn’t know much about Selena back then,” Asher remembers. “I think I watched Princess Protection Program to prepare. She explained to me how deeply she connected to the book, which is really about how there’s no way to know what people deal with. In that very first meeting we talked about Twitter, and I remember her telling me that there’s this idea that celebrities aren’t supposed to notice or care about what’s being said about them. But she can’t help but care.”

Gomez has also been in the recording studio off and on, and in February she released “It Ain’t Me,” a song cut last November, produced by the Norwegian DJ Kygo. It’s both a dance-floor anthem and a polemic against dependency and enmeshment. (“Who’s gonna walk you through the dark side of the morning?” she sings. “It ain’t me.” A few years back, it might well have been Gomez.) She is collaborating with Coach on a line of accessories, out this fall, and Stuart Vevers, the house’s creative director, recently met with her in Los Angeles for a bit of brainstorming. “There’s a very warm and inclusive way that Selena has with her fans,” Vevers says. “That’s the nature of her power. What fashion house wouldn’t want to tap into that?”

There are no movies in the works and no time pressure from her record label. “For a change,” she says, “it feels like I don’t have to be holding my breath and waiting for somebody to judge a piece of work that I’m doing. I’m not eager to chase a moment. I don’t think there’s a moment for me to chase.” Gomez currently lives in an Airbnb in the Valley and honestly doesn’t get out much, except for long drives with her girlfriends: a realtor, a techie, some folks from church. “I think seventeen people have my phone number right now,” she says. “Maybe two are famous.” She is taking Spanish, which she spoke fluently as a little girl but lost, in the hope of recording some Spanish-language music in the future. She sees her shrink five days a week and has become a passionate advocate of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a technique developed to treat borderline personality disorder that is now used more broadly, with its emphasis on improving communication, regulating emotions, and incorporating mindfulness practices. “DBT has completely changed my life,” she says. “I wish more people would talk about therapy. We girls, we’re taught to be almost too resilient, to be strong and sexy and cool and laid-back, the girl who’s down. We also need to feel allowed to fall apart.”

She has hardly been posting on Instagram. In fact, the app is no longer on her phone, and she doesn’t even have the password to her own account. (It’s now in the possession of her assistant.) She sometimes fantasizes about disappearing from social media altogether. “As soon as I became the most followed person on Instagram, I sort of freaked out,” Gomez says. “It had become so consuming to me. It’s what I woke up to and went to sleep to. I was an addict, and it felt like I was seeing things I didn’t want to see, like it was putting things in my head that I didn’t want to care about. I always end up feeling like shit when I look at Instagram. Which is why I’m kind of under the radar, ghosting it a bit.”

Well, not entirely under the radar. A few days after we met, Gomez flew to Italy with her new beau, The Weeknd, and the paparazzi did not fail to notice. (Neither did The Weeknd’s ex, the model Bella Hadid, who took to social media and promptly unfollowed Gomez.) When I ask Gomez about the romance, she tells me that everything she has said about her relationships in the past has come back to bite her, and that she will never do it again.

“Oh, Mylanta!” she wails, watching her cheesy potatoes travel around the table, a whiff of the simpler joys of home. “Look, I love what I do, and I’m aware of how lucky I am, but—how can I say this without sounding weird? I just really can’t wait for people to forget about me.”

Source: Vogue

#selena gomez #vogue #2017 #magazine #article #gallery

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thrashermaxey · 7 years ago

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Ramblings: Is It OK To… Drop Pacioretty? Trade Pettersson? Add Aberg? (Oct 31)

Is It OK To… Drop Pacioretty? Trade Pettersson? Add Aberg?

Those drafting Max Pacioretty hoping for a bounce-back have been discouraged with the fact that he has recorded just two points (both goals) over his first ten games as a Vegas Golden Knight. Now that he is sidelined with a day-to-day injury, fantasy owners might be in the unenviable position of deciding whether to cut bait. Obviously, it’s more ideal if you can bench him or place him on IR (if/when he is eligible) should he need some more time to become acclimatized to Vegas.

The fact is, though, that Pacioretty has been mediocre for over a season now. In terms of points per game since the start of the 2017-18 season, Patches isn’t even among the top 150 (minimum 70 games played). Players with a similar points-per-game-played total include Kevin Hayes, Alexander Kerfoot, Kevin Labanc, Alexander Wennberg, and Bryan Rust – players who were drafted long after Pacioretty in single-season leagues. That’s simply not getting it done, particularly in shallow leagues where a higher-scoring option likely resides on the waiver wire.

Things could get better for Patches in Vegas. He should still be on the first power-play unit once he returns. Paul Stastny will also return from injury at some point. And maybe, just maybe, he even cracks the top line somehow. But when someone in the Forum inquired about dropping Patches for Anders Lee (among other choices he listed), I said I was fine with that. So if you're in a shallow league, go ahead and make the move if you need to.

Is there anything that can stop Elias Pettersson right now? With two more goals, the kid is up to seven goals and ten points in just seven games. At this point, if you think he’s a flash in the pan, then you need to watch him and you’ll be convinced otherwise. Let’s just say he’s far surpassed what I usually draft in the 15th round (176th overall) in a single-season fantasy league.

It got to the point where as I was watching the Canucks/Wild game on Monday night, I was actually considering selling high on him. With just 16 shots taken, Pettersson is shooting at an out-of-this-world 43 percent clip. In other words, no one shoots that high. So unless he finds a way to take even more shots, or his shooting percentage remains sky-high similar to William Karlsson last season, the goal totals will eventually fall. Even if that happens, 30 goals seems like a realistic projection and would be an incredible output for the rookie.

I decided to look up Yahoo’s Trade Market feature to find out what Pettersson is worth on the trade market. Pettersson was traded 1-for-1 for the following players: Jordan Staal, Rasmus Ristolainen, Jonathan Marchessault, Leon Draisaitl, and Aleksander Barkov. The Staal deal seemed like highway robbery, but the other deals seemed fair. Ristolainen can provide help on D in certain multicategory leagues, while the last three are proven commodities that should be able to reach 70 points (barring injury). So if trading Pettersson, I would aim for about that caliber of player.

So with that in mind, I decided to accept the offer that, by coincidence, was presented to me today: Pettersson for Jack Eichel. As much as I would like to marvel at the super sleeper sitting on my roster all season, I’m pocketing the closer-to-sure point-per-game production and crossing my fingers that top-50 pick Eichel doesn’t fall victim to the injury bug again.

After being embarrassed by the Coyotes on Saturday, the Lightning took out their frustrations on the Devils on Tuesday with an 8-3 exorcism of the Devils on Tuesday (Halloween reference intended). Brayden Point led the charge with a goal and four assists. The Lightning have juggled their lines around numerous times this season, so it’s worth mentioning that Point was on a line with Yanni Gourde (3 assists) and Tyler Johnson (2 points).

Although he recorded just one assist in this game, J.T. Miller is back on the Nikita Kucherov/Steven Stamkos line. If someone hastily bailed on him because he was bumped down to the fourth line, he’s worth finding a roster spot for on your team. By the way, Kucherov and Stamkos each recorded three points on Tuesday.

Because he allowed seven goals (on 38 shots by the early third period), Keith Kinkaid was pulled in favor of Cory Schneider. This was Schneider’s first appearance of the season, where he allowed a goal on six shots over the garbage time known as the last 15 minutes of this game. Although Kinkaid has fallen back to earth recently, I think he’s played decently enough over this season and last to at least form a timeshare here. I’ll predict, though, that Schneider will start the Devils’ next game, which is a relatively cupcake matchup against Detroit on Thursday.

Death, taxes, and Kris Letang injury reports. Letang was a game-time decision on Tuesday, but the Penguins appeared to err on the side of caution. But with Letang we can never be too sure it will be “just” one game. How can you tell I have been a Letang keeper owner for several years now?

Tanger’s injury meant that Jusso Riikola drew in on the stacked Penguins’ first-unit power play. Unfortunately he couldn’t record a point, and his presence on that unit will last only as long as Letang’s injury.

Speaking of oft-injured players, Robin Lehner left Tuesday’s game after two periods with what Barry Trotz described as a “strain.”

Torey Krug returned to the Bruins’ lineup on Tuesday, recording one assist while resuming first-unit power-play duties. Charlie McAvoy and now Matt Grzelcyk did not play due to injuries, though.

About a week and a half ago I mentioned that I wasn’t concerned about Jaroslav Halak stealing starts from Tuukka Rask. Well, here we are and Halak is still on a roll. On Tuesday he stopped 42 of 44 shots he faced in backstopping the Bruins to a 3-2 victory over Carolina. The Bruins don’t play again until Saturday against Nashville, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Halak gets the nod again, which would render Rask useless for this week. Rask owners will just need to ride this out, while Halak is worth at least a short-term pickup if you have room and he’s available.

Sebastian Aho continues to pile up assists. With a helper on Tuesday, he ties an NHL record with assists in each of his first 12 games.

With his first goal of the season and an assist on Tuesday, Alex Galchenyuk now has four points in four games as a Coyote. Don’t take the Yotes offense for granted right now, as they have scored 20 goals over their last four games.

Your lowlight of the night was from this game. A nightmare of a goal allowed by Mike Condon. What was funny was watching Derek Stepan skate to the bench as he dumped the puck in!

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A night after being held pointless in Vancouver, Eric Staal scored a power-play goal and added two assists in the Wild’s 4-3 victory over Edmonton.

Of note for the Wild is that rookie Jordan Greenway was promoted to Staal’s line for this game, although he could not record a point. He was briefly sent to the AHL, where he recorded a hat trick during one of his two games. Minnesota has enough scorers for three solid forward lines, which could end up helping Greenway.

Joe Thornton returned to the Sharks’ lineup on Tuesday, but he was held without a point in 14 minutes of icetime. But if you’re holding out hope for him this season, the good news was that he was on a line with Joe Pavelski and the red-hot Timo Meier.

With another goal on Tuesday, Meier now has goals in five consecutive games (six goals over that span) along with a nine-game point streak. Scoring at over a point per game, Meier has been one of fantasy hockey’s top sleepers. But be careful, as his shooting percentage remains quite high (nearly 25 percent). Although he’s now a legitimate option in most fantasy leagues and has been placed with solid linemates, he will inevitably slow down at some point.

Pontus Aberg is red hot, having scored four goals over his past two games. You may recall that he was picked up off waivers on October 1 by the Ducks after being a somewhat surprising cut from the Oilers, who acquired him at last season’s deadline because the Predators couldn’t find room for him. Since the waiver claim, all he has done is match his goal total from all of last season (53 games) over the past three days.

If you drafted Aberg as a sleeper, it would have been because of the outside chance that he would receive the prized Connor McDavid golden ticket. Now he’s on Anaheim’s top line with Ryan Getzlaf and Rickard Rakell, which isn’t quite McDavid but it’s much better than what he’s used to. At the moment he’s still a 1 percenter in Yahoo leagues, which makes him officially worth an add in deeper formats.

John Gibson received a well-deserved night off, with Ryan Miller facing “just” 36 shots. That was the Ducks’ lowest shots allowed total over the past five games. If you’re a Gibson owner, once-a-week rest breaks to allow Miller to start should be considered a blessing in disguise. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m seriously concerned about a Gibson wear-and-tear injury with the barrage of shots the Ducks face on a nightly basis.

That Ducks/Flyers game took a strange turn. With just over two minutes to play, Aberg tied the game with his second goal (on the power play). But 21 seconds later when it was almost safe to assume that overtime was looming, Nolan Patrick put the Flyers in the lead for good.

Happy Halloween! Enjoy your evening, but remember to do so safely. Here’s a last-minute costume idea if you need one.

Why didn’t I find this tutorial 2 weeks ago?! https://t.co/tpcvqyEepI

— Ted Mann (@turkeymonkey) October 31, 2018

For more fantasy hockey information, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-is-it-ok-to-drop-pacioretty-trade-pettersson-add-aberg-oct-31/

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