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flutishly · 2 years ago

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Why I’m not remotely excited about Picard Season 3

All of the SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard seasons 1 and 2. Also ranting. This is very, very long.

I genuinely didn’t realize that Star Trek: Picard was returning so soon. I knew that seasons 2 and 3 were filmed back-to-back, but I somehow still didn’t process that this meant that Picard would leap ahead of the Star Trek queue and be the next show after the absolutely delightful Prodigy ended its first season. (On that note: If you haven’t seen Prodigy, go do that now. In fact, you can probably do that instead of watching Picard season 3, which I obviously haven’t seen because it’s not out yet but for which, as you can probably guess from the title, I am not excited.)

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: The new era of Star Trek has had its ups and downs, but fans rarely agree on what those ups and downs really are. I for instance genuinely love Discovery and think that even with specific flaws in its first two seasons and some sloppy pacing in its most recent fourth, it’s a fascinating show populated with characters that I adore. The vast majority of Star Trek shows come with their own flaws and criticisms, as one would expect of any TV show.

But unlike most other shows (including other new Star Treks), Picard is one that roots itself in a firmly established, beloved character while promising a new story. Legacy characters crop up in lots of different ways in recent shows, but none truly center a fully-fleshed character the way that Picard does. (SNW comes closest with Spock; I will touch on this again momentarily...) Picard also readily reaches into the backlog of TNG characters and arcs in order to further its world.

The problem is that it does so while having promised viewers something new. This, it turns out, is decidedly not true.

The show began promisingly enough. Picard season 1 made an active effort to be an independent show, focusing on a retired Jean-Luc Picard finding a new purpose to his life while surrounding himself with new mentees and colleagues. The season arc questions the humanity of synthetic- or synthetic-hybrid lifeforms. Despite a sloppy ending, the season has a decently coherent thematic structure, integrating elements from both legacy stories and new ones. Soji’s arc is quintessential Star Trek, as she questions her humanity and purpose. Picard’s arc sees him forced to grapple with his longstanding trauma from his encounters with the Borg, alongside reflections of his life, friendships, and role as a mentor/father-figure. Raffi’s arc sees her reclaiming aspects of herself and forgiving others; so do both Rios and Jurati (albeit in very different ways). In between, there are smaller threads of deeply human questions about purpose, doing good, and recovering from trauma. The season doesn’t work so well as a whole because of poor writing decisions in its wrappings (and the sense that it tried to do too much all at once), but it’s still a decently compelling bit of television that tries to give Picard a new perspective, alongside new challenges.

Picard season 2 takes almost everything that season 1 did and throws it out.

The season opening is not bad. It’s a fast-paced, almost whiplash-y set of action sequences that promise to set the plot moving. After watching the first episode, I was asked by someone who had not yet seen it to describe it in three words. I opted for four: “TNG movie meets Picard”. There were some emotional/melodramatic bits, but most of the time was spent on keeping the plotting snappy and the action moving forward. It promised certain themes and character beats. Except none of that came to pass. “The Star Gazer” was a reset episode, taking the characters from season 1 and placing them in new and different places (sometimes in accordance to where they’d been at the end of season 1 and sometimes not). “Penance” reset everything again, as did “Assimilation”. For the entire first third of the season, Picard seemed not to know what its point was.

Yet once it settled into a new normal, the show seemed determined to define these parameters. Soji was obviously gone from the first episode (even if actress Isa Briones was given a small minor side-role) and Evan Evagora’s Elnor disappeared almost as quickly (with even more minor reappearances in the form of baffling, narratively unjustified flashbacks or hallucinations). Rios was isolated from the main team and given his own plot (that can only be described as “extremely obvious” in terms of how it played out and concluded; this is not a compliment), thus also getting sidelined. Raffi and Seven of Nine spent the entire season circling around each other in trying to define their relationship, but the show played it coy for so long that it was genuinely bizarre to watch Rios kissing his new love interest within moments of meeting her, but Raffi and Seven getting dragged out for the whole season (despite... actually having been a couple? and one promised by the season 1 ending??). It made little sense.

There are two arcs throughout the season that work, though to differing degrees. The first is Seven of Nine’s. I’m a devoted Trekkie, but I’ll admit that Voyager is the gap that I’m still filling though I’m decently familiar with Seven’s arc and character. Yet even without having all of the background, from a writing perspective, Seven of Nine’s story is the most immediately coherent. She starts the season in point A and gets to point B pretty directly and understandably. It feels like a more mature version of the classic “what does it mean to be human?” question, taking threads that arose in season 1 and expanding on them. Seven of Nine struggles to see herself as fully human and bears the weight of her Borg past in physical and emotional manifestations. What I liked about her arc is that she never really fully comes to terms with any of it, even admitting as much out loud. Instead, she also learns to accept that despite how she views these as inherently bad pieces of herself, others see them as a whole that is worthy of love and respect. This gives her some space for herself, in a way. It could have been better-written in terms of the specific relationship aspects, but on the whole it works pretty well.

The second meaningful arc is Jurati’s, which mostly survives on the basis of Alison Pill’s excellent acting. I’m not convinced of the writing for this aspect; Jurati starts season 2 at a far lower point than she ended in season 1 and there is an inconsistency in how her character is presented. Her penchant for poor decision-making remains, however, and is the driving force behind her bizarre plot. That said, the core of her arc is not so unlike Seven of Nine’s - it’s one of finding oneself. We have already seen that Jurati is fairly weak-willed, but here it becomes part of a very disturbing bit of internalized play in defining her self-loathing and recreating herself. I didn’t like it, but Pill does an extraordinary job of selling Jurati’s motivations, discrepancies, and horrors. I’m not sure another actor could have pulled it off (given that the writing is still pretty sloppy), but Pill does and so it deserves commendation.

The rest of the season is, quite simply, not good.

There are decent ideas or lines throughout. Picard’s rousing inspiring speech to Renee is a lovely reminder of what Star Trek strives to be; the very premise of Renee’s mission being the linchpin on which humanity’s pluralistic approach to space travel and its environmental future turns is also fairly nice. There’s an important political message buried in Rios’s side story with immigration, as well as Guinan’s dissatisfaction with our contemporary Earth. These little sprinkles only serve to remind us how poorly they fit together.

More than that, there are pieces that could work but don’t, like Picard’s tragic backstory. It’s... fine? I guess it’s fine. It could have contextualized Picard’s emotional reticence and family issues. Instead, it was used with all the subtlety of a serial killer’s axe, in order to further a truly inexplicable romantic subplot that gave Picard absolutely no new depth nor made any sense given the characterizations of season 1. From a technical standpoint, it was also disappointing in its idealized/romanticized framing of mental health struggles. It could have been good; it wasn’t. The recurring theme of season 2.

Same with Q and Guinan in general. Q’s initial involvement is reminiscent of his TNG-era shenanigans. He’s sly and mysterious and his interests are muddled at best, other than the fact that we see their disastrous consequences. Except then... it turns out to be... a sign of love? A misplaced “last hurrah”? I’m all for acknowledging the depth and complexity of the love that Q holds for Picard, but like... seriously? That was the best the writers could come up with? How does it track with any of what we see throughout the rest of the season? All to get Picard to reframe his relationship with love, and with a total disregard for the real people who died to get there?

Guinan’s plot is similarly weird. The idea of recasting a “young” Guinan was cute and I’m fine with it, but... what purpose did she actually serve the narrative? I’m sitting here and thinking about the season and I simply cannot recall what she contributed. Summoning Q, sort of? Existing? Did it have to be Guinan? Was she there just because we know the name?

But the show is called Picard, so let’s focus on the man himself for a moment. What was season 2 about, if we look at Jean-Luc Picard?

On its surface, Picard’s arc was about making space for love. The lifestyle change suggested at the end of season 2 - in which he would no longer resign himself to moping alone around the vineyard and would instead set forth on new adventures with his new crew - was gone at the beginning of season 2. Other than seeing several of the crew newly in Starfleet (Rios, Raffi, and Elnor), there is little indication of how Picard’s synthetic body impacts his life or has affected his perspective. In fact, it seems to come up only haphazardly when he’s physically injured. (Which is itself a bizarre plot point, but sure! Sure.)

In one of the two major threads going for him in season 2, Picard has to come to terms with his parents’ toxic relationship and its complexities. As I mentioned above, this might have been thoughtfully handled, but it mostly wasn’t. The tonal dissonance between the portrayal of mental illness and the murkiness of the abuse/perceived abuse meant that I struggled to take away anything of meaning from the tragedy. It felt like it was constantly just trying to shock and tease the viewer, particularly in how it flipped the script of abuse. Why? What for? Picard might be well-served by a more detailed exploration of his childhood, but was this it?

The other thread is the one that had me rolling my eyes. Somehow, the season’s message of “Picard learns to love!” gets translated into “learns to have a romantic love!”, as though this is the end-all. Picard is certainly a character who has shied away from romantic relationships before and that could have been worth exploring in part, but why does it have to do at the expense of understanding Picard’s general discomfort with acknowledging love? There are so many ways this could - and frankly should - have played out, that didn’t involve a romance with a character that is... well, maybe technically of a similar age as Jean-Luc, but not really the same stage of life? (...synthetic life?) It was weird and uncomfortable and just... pointless. It didn’t make Picard’s character have greater depth, on the contrary - it promoted the extremely silly idea that there is one superior type of loving relationship. Why?

This isn’t a review of season 2, though. No, I didn’t like season 2. I wanted to, at first, but I found myself growing more and more baffled and exhausted as it progressed. Pockets of amusement or entertainment or appreciation (see again Picard’s speech to Renee, which I really did quite like!) appeared for brief moments throughout the episodes and then disappeared again. But the main problem? The main thing that angered me about season 2?

It seemed determined to forget that season 1 had happened, and it did so very obviously at the expense of its own characters. And THAT is why I’m not excited for season 3, or as I call it “the producers went: hey, wait, let’s bring back TNG oh my gosh!!!!”.

Once again: Star Trek has been a leader in the world of reboots and nostalgic callbacks. TNG is a reboot, after all. It opened with a hand-off from an extremely aged-up Dr. McCoy, as a way to tie things together to the Original Series. It found an excuse to include Scotty, Sarek, and Spock in plot-specific ways. Later, it gave Kirk space in its first movie. DS9 and Voyager both played on fan nostalgia in their respective series with the inclusion of legacy characters - Q, Worf, Barclay, Riker, etc. - and indeed even Enterprise tried desperately and disastrously to find ways to milk nostalgia, even as a prequel reboot itself.

As I mentioned at the top, modern Trek has continued this trend. Disco‘s worst earliest instincts were rooted in its attempts to mine nostalgia; while the inclusion of Pike and Spock in season 2 ended up being pretty beneficial for the franchise as a whole (yay SNW! itself an obvious exercise in nostalgia; I’ll expand in a moment), it wobbled in season 1 with Sarek. Lower Decks has consistently been at its most tiring when trying too hard to play to nostalgia rather than telling its own stories (except for the occasional wonderful gag, but the jokes are usually just... too much). Prodigy also felt a little tiring when it tried too hard to be nostalgic for the sake of older fans, rather than just telling its own story, but it did this only sporadically.

And then there’s Picard. Whereas SNW takes legacy characters who have either never gotten their due or are at an earlier stage than what we’ve previously known of them, Picard is the only real sequel to a legacy show, fully centering on a legacy character. In season 1, the show promised that while Picard himself was returning, the show was not a TNG sequel. Indeed, Picard’s biggest season 1 legacy costar isn’t even from TNG, a rather inspired decision on the part of the producers/writers. And with the exception of some cameos and Brent Spiner’s enduring mission to act out as many related characters as he can (a once-mildly amusing trait, now gone sour), the show made a point of introducing new characters: Dahj and Soji, whose stories kick off and define the season. Raffi, Elnor, Rios, Jurati... even the antagonists! Even the legacy characters are fresh! Seven of Nine and Hugh are both in vastly different places than where they’d been in the past. And yes, I’m including Riker and Troi - in their delightful interlude of an episode - who are there to demonstrate just how much things have changed since TNG. This is a new show, a different show, populated by characters who are guiding and interact with Picard in different ways.

So why is season 3 just TNG season 8? Without having watched the trailers, it’s hard for me to say whether or not I’m misreading what the plot actually is, but all of the promotion has been about the TNG crew and their involvement. Soji and Elnor - both wildly sidelined by season 2 - have been fully abandoned; will there be any plot justification for this? Rios and Jurati at least were given send-offs in season 2, but they too were cast aside. I can’t really figure out what’s supposed to have happened to Laris (though while Orla Brady still appeared throughout season 2, the character of Laris... didn’t). This leaves only two of the “new” characters for Picard season 3 - Raffi and Seven of Nine (who is, of course, actually a legacy character). And of course even season 2 seemed more interested in legacy characters, with the returns of both Guinan and Q, and even Brent Spiner’s umpteenth Soong.

Nostalgia can be great. I appreciate a good dose of nostalgia as much as the next person. I cheered at the appearance of Deep Space 9 on Lower Decks. The TOS-nostalgic Prodigy episode “All the World’s a Stage” was excellent. SNW is a great show. But nostalgia cannot be in place of something new. Say what you will about Disco, but it did something new in its first season, even as it tried to link its story to legacy characters (and indeed, failed most strikingly in that effort). Picard seems to have initially understood that lesson and then thrown it aside. Season 3 abandons any pretense of telling some kind of new story about Picard’s post-Enterprise life. It bends over backwards to include the old gang (including Spiner, who I dearly love, but seriously... why?) and to fully center them.

And... much as I love TNG, I find that I am incapable of getting excited about this. I look at how season 2 flailed in its attempt to tell an interesting story, how it fully wasted its potential (2024!!! the Bell Riots! they could have done so much!), how it dismissively discarded its new characters, how it backtracked on any meaningful story about Jean-Luc Picard that might have been told... and I ask myself what season 3 could possibly bring, especially knowing that the seasons were produced back-to-back. Will it rise above season 2′s mediocrity? Will it manage to actually say anything new and meaningful about these characters? About this world, which is the real point of Star Trek?

My sense is no. It’s hard to get excited over that.

#star trek #star trek: picard #tv shows #season analyses #star trek: the next generation #commentary #review #criticism

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hmsannlett · 4 years ago

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Hello! Just scrolling through your blog because I felt like I hadn’t seen you on my dash in a little while. I must have missed a lot! Anyways there’s a Turn ask from a couple weeks ago could you do 266, 299, 560 ?! 💕

Thanks for dropping in! ❤︎ Yeah, I don’t think my queue is posting at a time when very many people are active anymore. I might play around with it and see if I can find a better posting time.

I certainly can do those!

266 (honest) - unpopular opinion about the show?

Whom shall I offend, whom shall I offend.....

I'm not sure how unpopular this is currently, but I feel Andre treated both Peggy and Philomena badly toward the end. I wish he had listened to Peggy’s protests about his going to York City without her and had considered her thoughts more before making the decision for both of them. I feel he rather steamrolled over her concerns. :/ And though I don’t love Philomena, or that he cheated on Peggy with her, his dismissal of her was fairly cold, given that he had led her to believe he was starting their relationship again.

299 (intrigue) - what made you start watching turn?

I just happened to find it on Netflix! IIRC, I was more in the mood at the time for something set during the Civil War, but one can't be too picky with what the streaming gods decide to bestow upon us. I tried it out several months before the 'rona waltzed into our lives, but I didn't have the time to keep watching it until lockdown struck. I finally was able to watch it cohesively then and figure out the twisty plotlines, and I was hooked.

560 (relate) - which character are you most like?

Predictable, I suppose, but I see parts of me in both Anna and Hewlett.

I resonate quite a bit with Anna’s determination to do everything on her own without asking for help, as well as her tendency to suffer in silence, rather than letting others help shoulder her burdens (though, to be fair, she doesn’t have very many people to lean on that she can trust). And she takes no crap from sexist men! I aspire to reach her level of putting sexist men in their places.

And Hewlett, my beloved colonial nerd. He’s a little fussy and pretentious; I’m a little fussy and pretentious. (I should have known he’d be one of my favorites when he melodramatically quoted Romeo and Juliet in one of his first scenes in S1.) And I, too, love stars, books, horses, peace and quiet, and Anna Strong.

Thanks for the ask!! ❤︎

turn (amc) asks pt. 2

#sorry for taking a bit to get to this!#had hoped to respond to this before having a surgery yesterday but rl things kept piling up that I needed to get done before going under #if anything looks a little wonky I'm blaming it on the meds I'm on lol #turn amc #turn: washington's spies #anna strong #edmund hewlett #asks #wellisntthatlovely

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calumcest · 5 years ago

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you and i were fireworks that went off too soon - chapter seven

[ao3]

did i just pull this entire chapter out of my arse tonight? maybe! not that i don’t write these chapters all in one sitting at like 9pm-1am every single time don’t get it twisted i’m not organised i am a binge-writer

i always do my long ass a/ns on ao3 i dont know why feels more REVEALING to do them here because i know people actually read them and i think probably one person on the whole planet has ever read my ao3 a/ns its a safe haven so i’m just going to say my brief thank yous: thank you to @clumsyclifford for literally everything you do always, thank you to @ashesonthefloor for listening too me bitch about this fic and having the most wonderful thoughts and ideas about it, thank you to @kaleidoscopeminds for motivating me to keep writing this fic w your kind words, thank you to @allsassnoclass for always being so wise and understanding of authors dilemmas and encouraging me w your lovely words, and thank you to my spoiler anon for being so lovely about this fic and holyverse and also for asking about another chapter because i swear to u i would have kept putting it off were it not for u. also big thank you to noel and liam gallagher for writing the SMASH hits i wrote this entire chapter to and for being [redacted] and also to richard madden because i just fancy him and feel like i should thank him for existing and allowing me to perceive him

It’s a twin room, thank God, because Luke would have rather slept in the hallway than shared a bed with Ashton for four weeks.

“I’m taking the window bed,” he announces, before Ashton has a chance to say anything, out of pure spite, because he knows Ashton likes sleeping by the window. Or knew, maybe. He’s not sure anymore.

Ashton opens and then closes his mouth, nods curtly, and puts his carry-on bag on the bed nearest the bathroom. Luke puts Clifford down on the bed first, muttering at him to stop fucking yapping (which Clifford, of course, ignores), and then drops his suitcases next to it with a sigh.

“So,” Ashton says, and his voice fills the entire room, too loud and too much, a jarring reminder that Ashton’s here, in Luke’s space, and Luke’s got no option but to live with it. “Should we go out?” Luke blinks at him.

“What?” he says.

“Well,” Ashton says, with an uncomfortable shrug. “Study doesn’t start ‘til tomorrow, and it’s only nine. Thought we could spend the day exploring?” Luke stares at him.

“Think I’d rather spend my last day of freedom alone,” he says, a little harshly. Ashton blinks, and Luke doesn’t miss the flash of hurt that crosses his face, but then he nods again.

“Have you still got my UK number?” he says, and Luke hesitates, and then nods. He’s not sure why it feels like he’s giving something away by admitting that he’d never deleted Ashton’s numbers; he’d been the one to text Ashton about the tattoos first, so clearly Ashton already knows that Luke still had his Australian number, at least. “Well. Text me if you need anything?”

“Don’t think I’ll need anything,” Luke says, and Ashton sighs, and Luke feels a little small, a little stupid, like Ashton’s a patient parent putting up with a melodramatic teenager.

“I’m going to head off, then,” Ashton says, a touch awkwardly, and Luke just nods, busying himself with getting Clifford out of his travel cage, thinking he’ll ask at reception for directions to the nearest park and let Clifford stretch his legs. He steadfastly doesn’t look at Ashton as Ashton gathers his things together, patting his coat pocket to make sure he’s got everything, and then slips out of the room, door clicking shut behind him.

As soon as Ashton’s left, Luke suddenly feels simultaneously relieved and overwhelmed. He feels like he can breathe a little easier, think a little clearer without Ashton in his personal space, making him feel like he has to be alert, on edge, but the hotel room feels strangely empty without him. Luke shakes his head, tries to get the latter thought out of his mind, focusing on Clifford’s insistent yaps to draw him back to reality and distract him.

“Alright, little man, we’re going,” Luke mutters, fumbling around in his bag for Clifford’s lead. Clifford jumps around at his feet, already panting, and Luke rolls his eyes, clips the lead on, checks he’s got his room key and phone in his pocket and heads out of the room.

He decides to take the stairs, since he doesn’t think Clifford’s got the patience to wait for the lift, which proves to be the right decision when Clifford’s straining at his lead trying to bound down the stairs, giving Luke reproachful looks whenever he tugs him back. They’re only on the second floor, so it’s not long before Luke’s back in the lobby, and Clifford finally pulls himself together and trots smartly at Luke’s heel, giving other people milling in the area imperious looks as they pass.

“Hi,” Luke says, and the receptionist smiles politely up at him. “I’d like to walk my dog. Can you tell me where the nearest park is?” She nods.

“Of course, sir,” she says, and pulls out a brochure. Luke mentally pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s going to look like a massive fucking tourist walking around with one of those. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get mugged.

“You just need to turn left out of the hotel, take a right at the end of the road, take the second left after that, take two rights, and you’ll be at the park,” she says, trailing her pen across the streets and ending it with a flourish, circling a rectangle of green on the map and smiling at him again. Luke smiles back, having taken absolutely none of that in, thanks her, pockets the map and decides he’ll probably just walk around the nearby backstreets for a while until Clifford’s worn out to lower his chances of getting lost.

Clifford, it turns out, is surprisingly tired, having apparently spent all of his energy on pestering Luke to take him out. He only manages about half an hour of walking up and down a few streets around the hotel before he’s flagging, sitting down and staring up at Luke beseechingly when Luke tries to pull him along. A passing couple throw Luke an amused look and titter to themselves, and Luke sighs.

“C’mon, little man,” he says, tugging again. Clifford refuses to budge, just stares up at Luke with a look that Luke knows all too well. “Come on, Cliff, you’re embarrassing me. It’s two streets away. You can walk that far.” Clifford stays put, and Luke rolls his eyes, but bends down and scoops Clifford up into his arms. Clifford immediately nuzzles into Luke happily, licking at his neck, and Luke pulls back, wrinkling his nose. “Gross, Cliff, don’t do that.”

Luke pretty much speedwalks back to the hotel because little though Clifford is, he’s surprisingly heavy after a while, and Luke’s much weaker than he looks. He throws the receptionist a polite smile on his way back up to the room, unclips Clifford from the lead as soon as he’s in there and rummages around in one of his suitcases for the bed Michael had shoved on top of all of Luke’s warmest clothes. Clifford watches him patiently, and hops into the bed as soon as Luke’s unfolded it, curls up and closes his eyes. Luke can’t help but smile fondly down at him, bending down to press a kiss to the top of Clifford’s head and scratching behind his ears.

“I’m going to go out again, little man,” he tells Clifford. “I’ll be back to give you your dinner, though.” Clifford just sniffs, which Luke takes to mean ‘yeah, sure, now fuck off and let me sleep’, and Luke straightens again, throws Clifford one final fond look and heads back out of the room, shutting the door softly behind him.

He decides it’s probably fine if he wanders aimlessly, since the brochure in his pocket has the name of the hotel on it and Michael had paid for his phone plan to cover the UK for six weeks so he can look it up when he inevitably gets lost. Having spent half an hour in the streets surrounding the hotel already, he decides to get on the tube and head somewhere new, picking a stop name he recognises - Leicester Square sounds vaguely familiar.

Leicester Square, it turns out, sounds familiar because it’s a tourist hotspot. Luke’s ducking and weaving between people, mumbling apologies as he slips through gaps that he doesn’t actually fit through and splits up groups (but seriously, he thinks, slightly irritated as he smiles politely, who the fuck walks in a row of five?). There are countless little side alleys and back roads leading off the main street, but even those are difficult to walk through, filled with the native Londoners who know their way through the labyrinth of twisting streets and know better than to be anywhere near Leicester Square in the first place.

Eventually, half to get out of the crowds and half because he’s actually pretty hungry, Luke ducks into a Costa and buys himself a ham and cheese toastie, balking at the price when the cashier rings it up. Five fucking pounds, what’s that, ten dollars? For one sandwich? Fucking hell. He’s definitely going to be demanding those reimbursements from the university.

He’s waiting for his sandwich to come out of the toaster, only two baristas serving a queue of at least twenty, when someone taps him on the shoulder a little tentatively, making him jump. He whips around, wondering whether he’s in the way or something, and comes face to face with-

Ashton.

“Are you serious?” he demands, before he can think about it. Ashton shrugs, and looks a little uncomfortable. “Are you following me?”

“I was already here,” Ashton says. “I’ve got a table.” He waves his hand in the directions of an empty table in the far corner, and Luke can see Ashton’s coat bunched up on one of the chairs.

“Oh,” Luke says. Ashton gives him a look, simultaneously sad and calculating, and for a brief moment, Luke thinks fuck, his eyes are pretty. Jesus Christ. Maybe he should have stayed at the hotel and napped.

“D’you want to sit with me?” Ashton says. Luke hesitates - not particularly , is the first petulant thought to cross his mind, before his rational side kicks in and tells him sleepily that he won’t find a seat anywhere else - and then nods.

“Ham and cheese toastie?” the barista calls, and Luke steps forwards, takes it from her hand and heads wordlessly in the direction of Ashton’s table, Ashton in tow.

“Sorry,” Ashton says, when Luke picks up Ashton’s coat off the seat and holds it out for him. He takes it from Luke and his finger brushes against Luke’s, and something like liquid gold rushes through Luke, making him giddy from head to toe. It’s the sleeplessness, he tells himself, averting his gaze and snatching his hand away. God knows he’s felt even more unexplainable things on the same amount of sleep.

“‘S alright,” Luke says, sitting down to avoid thinking about the warmth of Ashton’s finger brushing against his own and the way his finger is still burning from the contact. “You didn’t know I was going to be here.” Ashton hesitates, and then busies himself with tucking his coat behind him, like he’s looking for something to do that isn’t stare across the table at Luke. Luke’s not going to complain about that, and takes a bite out of the first half of the toastie so he won’t have to say anything else.

They sit in silence for a moment, Luke eating his toastie, Ashton fiddling with the bracelet on his left hand. The silence is uncomfortable, oppressive, and Luke kind of wishes he’d just sat on the fucking floor or something. Nothing makes him wish that more, though, than when Ashton opens his mouth and says: “I wondered.”

Luke swallows his last bite of toastie with a frown.

“You wondered what?” he says. Ashton shrugs, tension and discomfort visible in the movement.

“I wondered whether we’d bump into each other,” he says. Luke rolls his eyes.

“Not this again,” he mutters, but it’s more tired than anything. Ashton sighs, and drops his hands onto the table.

“Look,” he says carefully. “I don’t think us bumping into each other all the time is a coincidence.”

“Fucking hell,” Luke says, but there’s no heat behind the words. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes and squeezes them shut. He’s too fucking tired for this.

“Luke,” Ashton says, like Luke’s being unreasonable. “We’ve lived in the same city for years-” Luke opens his mouth to interrupt, because Ashton was always away half the time when they were together, and he can’t imagine that’s changed much “-okay, on-off, because I’m in LA sometimes - but we’ve not once bumped into each other. Then we get the tattoos, and suddenly I’m seeing you every other week?”

“What’s your point?” Luke says, a little irritably. “You think this is some grand plan from the universe to make us fall back in love? What, I’m Cathy, you’re Heathcliff?” Ashton bites his lip, and Luke’s mouth twists bitterly in a humourless smile. “This isn’t fucking romantic, Ashton. You leaving me was-” he cuts himself off. He’s not quite ready to tell Ashton that , yet. “Awful,” he says, eventually. “This isn’t part of some, like, big romantic redemption arc for you. You fucked up, and you fucked me over, and we’ve just got to find some way to live with the tattoos. That’s why we’re both here, isn’t it?” Ashton’s silent for a moment, and if Luke’s not mistaken, looks a little paler than he had a minute ago, and then nods.

“Can we at least be civil?” Ashton says, and then, seeing the look on Luke’s face, adds: “We’re stuck together for four weeks, Luke. I know you don’t like me, and I’m not asking for- for friendship, or anything. I’m just asking for you to be civil with me.” Luke exhales heavily.

“Fine,” he says tiredly, before he has the chance to think too much about it. “Civil.”

“Civil,” Ashton agrees.

(Luke’s pretty sure civil doesn’t involve thinking God, I’d forgotten how long his eyelashes are, and the way you can see a hint of his dimple when he speaks, but he’s also pretty sure that’s entirely to do with the exhaustion, and nothing to do with him.)

-------

Ashton talks Luke into going down to the Houses of Parliament, with a combination of a sincere look on his face, big, serious eyes as he says look, we don’t want to risk another bumping-into-each-other tattoo, and it’ll just be civil, and the fact that Luke just doesn’t have the energy to argue. Plus, he thinks, Ashton seems to know where he’s going, and Luke had forgotten to take his charger with him so he’s kind of fucked if he gets lost.

The walk down from Costa to the Houses of Parliament is only about twenty minutes, but feels so much fucking longer, both of them all too aware of the awkward silence hanging between them, amplified by the noise of the city surrounding them. They walk through Trafalgar Square, and Ashton tells Luke something about art installations and the fourth plinth and Luke just nods along, trying his best to do this whole civil thing by quelling his instinct to snap I don’t fucking know what a plinth is and you know full fucking well I don’t care about art. Ashton seems to sense it from him anyway, though, because he falters and then says, with an uncomfortable laugh, “You probably don’t care about this anyway.”

“Not really,” Luke admits, because they’d said civil, not dishonest. Ashton smiles wryly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Sorry,” he says, and Luke just hums, and they fall back into an awkward silence.

It’s easier, Luke finds, when a man in a suit shoulders into him and keeps walking without so much as a mumbled apology and Ashton turns to him, outraged, and says Londoners really are cunts, if they interact with each other through their surroundings. Talking about people, things, even the fucking weather, adds a sheen of superficiality, a layer of removal that they can both look at and pretend there’s nothing more to it, no years of hurt and pain bubbling beneath the surface.

“How is it this sunny yet this cold?” Luke grumbles, shielding his eyes and squinting up at Big Ben.

“You should be here in April,” Ashton says, stabbing the button at the traffic light repeatedly.

“I’ve got no intentions of being here any longer than I have to be,” Luke mutters. “What are we looking at, again?”

“It’s parliament, Luke,” Ashton says, like that’s supposed to mean something to Luke.

“So?” Luke says. “We’ve got a parliament.”

“And? Have you ever seen it?” Ashton says shrewdly, and Luke scowls, biting back the scathing retort on the tip of his tongue. Civil and Ashton are two concepts that he assumes will take a while to marry in his mind.

“Whatever,” he says, stepping out into the road as the light turns green. “Just don’t get why I’m supposed to care about some random country’s government, is all.” Ashton doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, jogging to catch up with Luke, and they walk the rest of the distance to the buildings in silence.

It’s quite imposing, Luke thinks, up close. The buildings are sort of dirty - or maybe they’re meant to look like that - and incredibly intricate, bordering on fussy. It towers over them, looking more like a palace than a place of governance, Big Ben casting a long shadow across the road. He’s not sure he’d want to be governed from this place.

“I don’t like it,” he says.

“Really?” Ashton says, squinting up at the buildings. “I think it’s kind of pretty.” You would, Luke thinks darkly. Old, ornate and overcomplicated? That’s exactly the kind of thing Ashton would get excited about and find unwarranted symbolism in.

“Yeah, well,” Luke says instead, because he’s pretty sure that thought doesn’t count as civil. “Think it’s just a bit too elaborate.”

“It’s Gothic Revival,” Ashton says, like Luke’s supposed to have a single fucking clue what that means. Actually, Luke thinks bitterly, he’s probably fully aware that Luke doesn’t have any idea what that means, and is hoping Luke will take the bait and ask so Ashton can demonstrate his massive intellect, or whatever.

“Right,” Luke says, a little shortly. Ashton glances at him, looking a touch taken aback, but then looks back at the buildings.

“We can go somewhere else,” he says, and it’s an offer. An olive branch.

“Yeah,” Luke says, because annoyance at not knowing anything about architectural styles aside, looking at an old building is just pretty fucking boring.

“There’s an aquarium not too far away,” Ashton says. “I remember you-” he stops himself, and Luke swallows. Yeah. He loves aquariums. He loves them so much that Ashton had taken him to the Sydney Aquarium for their third anniversary, a month or two before he’d broken up with Luke.

(Two months on the dot. Not that Luke has both dates seared into his mind, or anything.)

“Yeah,” Luke says again, to fill the silence of both of them thinking back to that day. “Let’s go to the aquarium.” Ashton hesitates, and glances at Luke like he wants to say something else, a sort of semi-pained expression on his face, and then he sighs, shakes his head, and throws Luke a tight smile.

“Let’s go to the aquarium,” he agrees.

-------

The aquarium, it turns out, is a much better choice.

Despite the odd screaming child, the aquarium has a calming silence to it, an almost pensive quiet that pierces to the depths of Luke’s soul. It settles the air between him and Ashton, means they’re not silent for lack of civil things to say, but rather because they’re both caught up in the muted beauty of the ocean.

They don’t walk together, because Ashton likes to pore over every single placard and study every creature in minute detail and Luke’s drawn to the pretty, colourful fish. It’s Luke, though, who’s always the last to move on, and Ashton waits for him before they head to the next room. It’s almost nice, Luke thinks, as he heads for the door and sees Ashton slip through it when he sees Luke’s ready to move on, that they don’t have to have awkward conversations about it, that they can just understand and fall into it.

(He tries not to think about why.)

They spend hours in the aquarium, dawdling in every room, because they spent so much fucking money on it and they’re both going to be damned if they won’t milk it for all it’s worth. Luke spends an extra long time looking at the clownfish, for some reason, hypnotised by the way they can weave in and out of the anemones. There’s some kind of symbolism to be found there, he thinks, something about toxicity and safety, but he’s too tired to come up with it himself. Ashton would probably correct him if he tried, anyway.

Ashton’s particularly taken by the sharks, it turns out. He’s already staring at the huge tank in awe when Luke gets into the room, barely even blinking as his eyes follow one shark after the other. The room itself is dark, like the rest of the aquarium, but the tank’s so huge that Ashton’s bathed in light, rippling and shimmering and Luke, for the briefest of moments, feels something sharp stab at his heart, something he remembers feeling the last time he’d stood in an aquarium with Ashton. It makes his stomach clench, twist in on itself, because he knows exactly what he’d identified that feeling as before.

“They’re fucking beautiful, aren’t they?” Ashton says, interrupting Luke’s train of thought before it can take the leap off the cliff edge of panic, and Luke looks up at the sharks.

“I guess?” he says, because he doesn’t really see it.

“You used to like them,” Ashton says, sounding a little surprised.

“I used to like a lot of things,” Luke says. I used to like you, he adds spitefully in his head, and sort of hopes Ashton’s telepathic.

“Guess I’ve got to get to know you again,” Ashton says, and it’s a little wistful, a little sad. Luke doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t know what would sum up I’m not sure I want you to, I don’t think I’ll give you a chance and Good fucking luck in a civil way.

They stand there for a while, watching the sharks, and people filter in and out of the room behind them. It feels oddly hypnotic, being stood there with Ashton, the only two static parts of a moving whole. He wonders if the sharks feel the same, swimming aimlessly in their tank, watching the world pass by and powerless to move with it.

“I’m sorry,” Ashton says quietly, after at least ten minutes have passed. It’s so quiet that Luke thinks he might have misheard it - maybe it was the family behind them, or just the sound of the tank - but he can sense Ashton stiffen next to him, like he’s preparing for backlash of some sort.

“What?” Luke says, just to make sure he’s heard right.

“I’m sorry,” Ashton repeats. Luke pauses, waiting for Ashton to elaborate, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t really have to, though, Luke finds, because he knows what Ashton means.

“I know,” Luke says eventually. Ashton swallows, but says nothing, just carries on gazing at the sharks, but out of the corner of his eye Luke can see that Ashton’s gaze is fixed now, not following the sharks around.

They stand in silence until an announcement blares through the system telling them that the aquarium is closing soon, making them both jump.

“What time is it?” Luke asks, just for something to say.

“Uh,” Ashton says, pulling his phone out. “Five.” Fucking hell. It feels much later than that. “Do you want to go back to the hotel?” Ashton adds, like he knows what Luke’s thinking. Luke nods.

“I’m fucking exhausted,” he admits, as they head back up the steps away from the sharks and towards the exit.

“Me too,” Ashton says. “I wanted to stay up until at least ten, but…” he trails off, stifling a yawn, and Luke can’t help but snort. Ashton smiles, small but genuine. “Fuck off,” he says, but it’s good-natured.

“Yeah,” Luke says, as they traipse out into the little shop. “Think I’m just going to crash when we get back.” Ashton nods, pushing open the door to the exit. Luke’s expecting the glare of brilliant sunlight to hit him, squints in preparation for the onslaught of light, but it’s pitch fucking black.

“What the fuck?” he says, sounding kind of perplexed and kind of outraged.

“What?” Ashton says. Luke gestures up at the sky with one hand, and uses the other to pull his coat in closer towards himself, because fucking hell, it’s freezing.

“It’s five o’clock,” he says. Ashton looks up at the sky, and then at him, an amused expression on his face.

“Wrong hemisphere,” he says, and Luke rolls his eyes.

“Fucking miserable place,” Luke grumbles, tucking his arms in and huddling in on himself. “No wonder they invaded the rest of the fucking world, Jesus. I wouldn’t want to stay here either.” Ashton says nothing, but when they pass under a streetlight, Luke sees the corners of his lips tilted upwards, and something warm and pleasant spreads from his stomach outwards.

“D’you actually know where you’re going?” he asks, when Ashton takes a sharp right turn onto a bridge.

“Of course I know,” Ashton says, in that infuriating, I’m-Ashton-Irwin-and-I’m-an-intellectual manner that Luke had never liked. Luke rolls his eyes, not entirely playfully, and jogs to keep up with him.

Ashton leads them across the bridge, past the parliament buildings again, up a long road that a lot of people are ambling down, and then cuts into a small alley on the right.

“You definitely don’t fucking know where you’re going,” Luke says, standing at the mouth of the road, something uneasy in his stomach. “I’m not going down here.”

“I know where I’m going,” Ashton says.

“Where are you going?” Luke says sceptically.

“Charing Cross.”

“Why is that down an alleyway?”

“It’s just a shortcut.” Luke stares at him, narrowing his eyes.

“Why can’t we walk on the main road?” he asks, because it feels right. Something about the alleyway feels wrong.

“We can,” Ashton says. “But it’ll take longer.” Luke makes no indications of moving, and Ashton sighs, and it’s tinged with sadness. “Come on, Luke, are you serious? You think I’m going to, what, murder you in an alley in London?” Well. Not specifically, but something’s telling Luke not to follow Ashton into that alley. Much more than that, it’s telling him not to let Ashton into that alley, but Luke’s trying to ignore that part of it.

“I just don’t want to go that way,” Luke says stubbornly. “Let’s just go on the main road.”

“It’ll take much longer that way,” Ashton says.

“I don’t care,” Luke says. “We’re not exactly fucking wanting for time, are we?” Ashton takes a step further into the alleyway, almost out of Luke’s line of vision.

“Come on , Luke,” he says, and takes another step, and Luke’s stomach tightens uncomfortably as he does.

“Don’t,” Luke says, before he can stop himself.

“Why?” Ashton says, sounding exasperated. “Look, the longer you stand here arguing, the longer it’ll take us either way.”

“I’m taking the main road,” Luke says. “Just- let’s fucking walk on the main road.”

“You don’t even know the way,” Ashton says. “I know the way.”

“I’m not going that way.” Even in the darkness and despite the distance, Luke can see Ashton roll his eyes.

“There’s nothing fucking down here, Luke,” Ashton calls, taking another step into the alleyway, and Luke edges forwards without even thinking about it, needing to keep Ashton in sight. It’s not really working, though, because Ashton’s walking further in and Luke’s at an angle to the alleyway, and it’s making him panic a little.

“Don’t fucking go down there,” Luke says, through gritted teeth. “Ashton, seriously. Just fucking come on the main road with me.”

“What’s your problem?” Ashton says, and even though he sounds genuinely surprised and curious, it makes a flash of anger flare up in Luke.

“Can you stop being a cunt for, like, two fucking minutes?” he bites out.

“Luke, I-” Ashton cuts himself off with a shout, and the anger’s gone, replaced with pure fucking fear and panic and protect protect protect running through Luke’s mind, and Luke’s barely even aware of his surroundings as he takes off, sprinting as fast as he can to the alleyway, getting to the entrance to it just as Ashton comes running out, wild-eyed. He doesn’t stop or say anything, just grabs Luke’s hand as he passes and tugs him hard in the opposite direction. They run to the main road, Luke’s heart pounding in a way that definitely isn’t just from the exercise, and then they run up it, and they don’t stop running until they’re outside the station. Luke doesn’t even realise that they’re still holding hands until Ashton drops his hand to lean on his knees, panting, hair completely windswept as it falls into his eyes.

“What the fuck was that?” Luke spits, fury beginning to set in between the racing heartbeats and gasped breaths.

“Someone fucking-” Ashton waves a hand, like it’s going to explain what ‘someone’ did. It doesn’t fucking matter, because those two words alone are enough to make Luke’s heart tighten, to make his stomach clench

“I fucking said-”

“I know, but it’s fucking five p.m., and I always go that way-”

“I told you-”

“I know, Luke,” Ashton says, breathing almost back to normal, and he straightens and gives Luke a look that looks almost sad. “Why d’you think that was?”

“Why do I- are you fucking insane? Because it’s a creepy fucking alleyway? Anyone would fucking know not to go down there!” Luke says, throwing his hands in the air.

“You were so fucking adamant,” Ashton says.

“Yeah, and if you’d fucking listened-”

“Luke,” Ashton interrupts. “I didn’t sense fucking anything.” Luke stops.

“Are you trying to say this is another fucking soulmate experience?” he says. “We don’t have three. Most people don’t even have one. ”

“No,” Ashton says. “I think it’s the same one. The first one. The protecting one.”

Oh.

It’s kind of a blur already, even though it’s only been like, three minutes, but Luke remembers the haze of protect protect protect that clouded every single other one of his thoughts, that stopped anything and everything else - including his own safety - from mattering, that made him move without even thinking, running straight fucking into the alleyway he’d been so uneasy about because nothing mattered more than Ashton.

“Fuck,” he says, and Ashton nods grimly.

“Yeah,” he says. Neither of them need to say didn’t realise it went both ways, because it’s both written clearly across their faces.

“You got this on the fucking phone?” Luke can’t help but ask.

“Yeah,” Ashton says again. Luke rakes a hand through his hair, trying to organise his thoughts. All he can really focus on is the what the fuck and Jesus Christ and fucking hell swirling around in a mess in his mind.

“Well,” he says. “Shit.” Ashton huffs out a shaky laugh, raises his eyebrows, and nods, and Luke thinks that about sums it up.

-------

They don’t talk much on the journey back to the hotel. Luke snipes at Ashton when Ashton tries to show him how to use his contactless card on the barriers, because he’d much rather use a paper ticket, thank you very fucking much, and Ashton calls Luke back when he heads down the wrong escalator. Luke asks once what their stop is and nods when Ashton answers him, and then they don’t speak again until they’re in the safety of the brightly-lit hotel lobby.

Luke’s not entirely sure how to take the silence between them in the lift up to the second floor. It still feels awkward, stilted, uncomfortable, but there’s something grander now, something bigger than the both of them that they can both feel but neither of them want to acknowledge.

Luke fusses over Clifford when they get back into the hotel room, pulls out the pack of dog food he’d brought with him because he hadn’t been sure what brands the UK would have, and Clifford munches his dinner happily while Luke carefully removes his coat and plugs his phone in to charge, not looking at Ashton. It feels overcrowded, even though the room is made for two people and certainly big enough to accommodate both of them.

He takes his time washing up Clifford’s bowl, refilling his water, but Clifford seems perfectly content to doze back off to sleep after his meal, leaving Luke with nothing to do but think about how fucking tired he actually is.

“I think I might sleep,” he says, even though he doesn’t really have to announce it to Ashton. Ashton looks up from where he is on his bed, book in his hand, and nods.

“I think I might too,” he says. “Do you want the bathroom first?” Luke blinks at him.

“Oh,” he says. “Uh. Yeah. Thanks.” Ashton nods, and turns back to his book, but when Luke turns his back to get his things out of his still-packed suitcase, he can feel Ashton’s eyes on him.

He makes quick work of putting his pyjamas on and brushing his teeth, only hesitating with his hand on the bathroom door handle to leave as he throws a quick glance at himself in the mirror, because he looks so fucking disarmed in his pyjamas, so strangely small and vulnerable. Whatever, he thinks, forcing himself to push the door open, because what the fuck else is he going to do, sleep in the bathroom?

“Bathroom’s free,” he says, because it feels like what he should say, turning his back to Ashton and making a show out of putting his clothes in his suitcase. He should probably just unpack it, he thinks - he is going to be here for four weeks, after all - but not tonight. He’s too fucking tired for that.

“Thanks,” Ashton says, and Luke hears the sound of a book closing and then feet shuffling as Ashton heads for the bathroom. He waits for the door to click shut behind him before tucking himself into bed, drawing the duvet close to his chin to try and keep the cold out. Why the fuck is it so cold in England, seriously?

Ashton doesn’t take long, or maybe Luke falls into microsleep, or something, because it feels like it’s about two seconds before he’s coming out of the bathroom, placing his clothes on the chair opposite his bed, and getting into bed. He’s got plaid pyjama bottoms and a casual t-shirt on, and he looks just as disarmed and vulnerable as Luke had in the mirror, which makes Luke feel simultaneously better and worse.

“Can I turn the light off?” Ashton asks, and Luke nods. Ashton reaches over, clicks the light switch, and they’re plunged into darkness.

“Night,” Ashton says after a moment, and there’s a shuffling sound from his bed.

“Night,” Luke says, suddenly wide awake. He rolls onto his side and stares at the wall opposite him, willing the exhaustion that he’s felt all day to return. Even if he hadn’t slept, like, three fucking hours, he should be tired; it’s the middle of the night in Sydney.

He feels the time passing, times it by Ashton’s shuffling and Clifford’s even breathing and the noises from the street outside, and he’s sure it’s been at least an hour before there’s what sounds like Ashton flopping onto his back and sighing.

“Are you awake?” he whispers. Luke debates saying nothing, but knows if he evens his breathing out now it’s going to be pretty fucking obvious he wasn’t.

“Yeah,” he says, a little reluctantly.

“I can’t sleep,” Ashton says.

“Me either.” There’s a moment of silence, and then Ashton says-

“We could push the beds together?” Luke squeezes his eyes shut, and Ashton takes the silence as hesitation. “Just for tonight. We’d sleep much better, and we probably need it for tomorrow.”

“No,” Luke says. Civil is one thing, but spending an entire night pressed up against Ashton? That’s something else entirely.

“Luke, I-”

“Ashton, I said no.” Ashton’s silent for a moment, and then sighs.

“Okay,” he says, and it sounds a little small. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to, like. Push.” Luke inhales deeply, exhales heavily, and rolls onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.

“It’s fine,” he says.

Ashton says nothing, but Luke doesn’t hear his breathing even out until Luke himself falls into an uneasy, dreamless sleep, and when he wakes up in the morning, exhausted and grumpy, Ashton’s staring up at the ceiling again (or maybe still).

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kikiofthevast · 6 years ago

Text

Flags

Or: Four Times Someone Saw Pride Flags in Edgeworth's Office and the One Time He Saw Them In Someone Else's

Now on AO3!

CW: None really, minor fear of homophobia, i guess

Pairings: Implied Wrightworth, implied Klapollo

Summary: Read the lid

(Also, I recently read a fanfic with Edgeworth putting the Chief Prosecutor's office on the second floor and he would absolutely do that)

---

Miles Edgeworth did not usually decorate his office for the holidays. If you asked any of the other prosecutors who worked at the office, they would all tell you this, often accompanied by seasonally appropriate insults.

However, there was one instance in which he would decorate his office, and it was a decoration that went mostly unnoticed, or at least, it would have, if it wasn't something that the other prosecutors wouldn't have expected.

---

I. Winston Payne

(Or rather, the unfortunate events that led to the not-as-unfortunate firing of Winston Payne)

Nobody really knew how Payne had figured it out, but somehow he had found Edgeworth's birth information.

The entire office was tense that day, Klavier's smile wasn't as prominent, Simon was stroking Taka a bit more forcefully than usual, and Franziska was unusually quiet.

There was an unspoken agreement to not bring it up to Edgeworth, as that morning, the chief prosecutor had already seemed tense and appearing as if the smallest thing would set him off.

And it did.

None of them really knew what had happened, but Payne was sobbing out crocodile tears as he came back up to his office, and packed up the little things he had before leaving as quickly as he had come.

None of them saw Edgeworth leave, but did, around an hour later. None of them knew why, and none of them asked.

Then the tense atmosphere seemed to lighten slightly and Franziska breathed out a sigh. "I am glad that my fool of a brother finally decided to get rid of that foolish excuse of a prosecutor."

The rest of them sat in silent agreement.

---

II. Klavier Gavin

Klavier hadn't necessarily avoided going into his boss's office, but he was definitely more hesitant to do so, as it wasn't too hard to connect the dots.

At some point in the near past, Payne had seen something in Edgeworth's office that was enough to get him to dig into his personal life.

Whatever it was, Klavier didn't want to get involved.

It was almost ironic, despite his life being drama, he wanted nothing to do with the drama that was happening in his place of work. Especially if it would result in him ending up in a similar situation to Payne.

He didn't have much of a choice, however, when Edgeworth had personally called Klavier up to his office, or rather down, considering that Klavier was going down two floors to see him.

Klavier never questioned it, after all it's inappropriate to ask about trauma.

He could barely even set foot in his own apartment.

Nevertheless, Klavier held his breath as Edgeworth's secretary acknowledged him and he opened the door to his office.

"-it really doesn't matter, Phoenix....no, I have two on me, there is no need to worry....Phoenix, you believed I would have come to work today completely unprepared? You clearly don't know me..." Miles Edgeworth sat at his desk, papers in front of him, phone in his hand and pen in his other.

Klavier cleared his throat, not wanting to interrupt anything, but knowing this kind of thing could and would go on for hours, he had to do something.

Edgeworth looked up at him and said into the phone. "My next appointment has arrived, I have to go...." Whatever was said on the other end caused Edgeworth to blush furiously and grip the phone tighter.

Klavier simply smiled patiently as Edgeworth hung up and turned his attention to him. "Prosecutor Gavin, thank you for being punctual."

"I know that you like everything to be in order, Herr Edgeworth," Klavier said smoothly.

Edgeworth looked away for a moment. "I would like to discuss the nature of your relationship with Mr. Apollo Justice."

Of course it was about that. "What did you wish to discuss about it?" His smile was so forced by this point that it hurt. Luckily, he had practice.

"Well, specifically the health and consent of both parties. I discussed it with Mr. Justice a few days ago, and he vouched that both of you were happy with the relationship."

"Herr Forehead is correct, he is one of the things that I hold most dear and our relationship is one that I greatly treasure."

Edgeworth nodded, a small smile on his face. "That is all I needed to hear. The way you interact makes your statement very clear to me and I simply wished to know if anything...unsavory was happening."

"How would you know then, if I was lying?"

"One does not live with living lie detectors and not pick up a few tricks," Edgeworth replied with a wry smile.

Klavier's eyes left Edgeworth and caught on an unusual spot of color on his desk that he hadn't noticed before.

Two small flags, one containing stripes that were pink, blue, and white, and the other white, purple, and gray with a small black triangle on one side.

"Pardon me for asking, but..." he trailed off as he pointed at the flags and Edgeworth gave him a small smile.

"Let's just say that this year, I finally felt more comfortable in my own skin."

Those words stuck with Klavier as he left, going back to his desk and working. After a while, he caved, and looked up the flags.

He never knew there was so much more than just being gay.

---

III. Franziska von Karma

Franziska had a strange habit of kicking in the door to Miles's office and yelling at him for one reason or another. Once because his useless pining was growing to be too much, once because Godot had spilled coffee on her outfit, once because Klavier was being too loud in the lobby, you name it.

Today, it didn't particularly matter the reason, but Franziska was back from her short trip to Europe (only a few days, simply to check on personal affairs, according to her. It was actually just Franziska taking Adrian Andrews to Germany) and the first thing she did after getting back to work was burst into her brother's office.

"Miles Edgeworth!" she yelled, flashing her whip.

Miles didn't look up from the papers on his desk. "Good morning, Franziska. I trust your trip to Europe was pleasant."

"It was," Franziska looked proud of herself. "I simply came to inform you that I have returned."

Miles smirked. "Phoenix informed me. He told me he could hear the crack of your whip over the horizon."

"That fool is one of the most foolish fools I have ever met. I do not know what you see in him, Miles Edgeworth."

Miles didn't reply, simply humming and stacking the papers on his desk and setting them off to the side.

"What are those?" Franziska said suddenly, pointing an accusing finger at the two flags sitting innocently on his desk in a small cup.

"I thought they would be appropriate. Why, is there a problem?" Miles's eyes were suddenly steely and flashing as Franziska took a step back and Miles stood up suddenly.

"I just believed that they were foolish enough to befit a fool such as yourself," Franziska replied after a moment, genuine care showing in her eyes.

Miles smiled a genuine smile. "Thank you, Franziska."

"It is foolish to thank me for such a trivial matter."

"It is not trivial to me, and so I thank you."

Franziska huffed. "I suppose you are welcome, Miles Edgeworth."

---

IV. Phoenix Wright

"Nice office you have here," came Phoenix's voice from the doorway. Miles looked up to see him leaning against the doorway with a smile on his face.

Miles huffed and rolled his eyes. "You've seen it before, Phoenix." The man in question continued to smile at him.

"Doesn't mean every time I see it, it's less beautiful." Phoenix's words were followed by a blush from Miles.

"Are you flirting with me through compliments on my office?"

"How'd you guess?"

"Maybe years of experience with the way you flirt and fluster me."

Phoenix raised an eyebrow mockingly. "Are you admitting that it actually works?"

"I'm not admitting anything."

"You're terrible, you know."

"Shut your mouth."

"Make me."

Miles shook his head, regretful about the fact that it would probably distract him from his work. He expressed this sentiment to Phoenix, who placed a hand on his chest in mock hurt.

"Of course! How could I be so blind! You're clearly married to your work! I should have known this day would come!"

He flopped back onto the couch resting against the wall, fanning himself.

Miles tried to push down the smile pulling onto his face. "Please take your melodramatics out of my office. You can faint dramatically on Prosecutor von Karma's desk."

Phoenix pouted. "So professional, Miles. Using your fancy titles and names for people. Besides, if I fainted on Franziska's desk, she'd whip me until I couldn't walk anymore. She'd probably tell me 'If you want to faint, then you can just stay like that, fool.'"

"Nonetheless, Phoenix, I do have work to do, unlike a certain attorney."

"Oh ha ha, laugh at the defense attorney who can't get a case."

"You're so famous for your skill, I'm surprised that people aren't queueing up to offer you a case."

Phoenix scoffed. "I'm also known for being picky about my cases. The particularly hopeless ones, especially. I'm such an unpredictable force that I'm usually a last resort."

"You are not a last resort."

"I was your last resort. And that wasn't intended to be self-deprecating."

Miles didn't have a response to that, moving back to his desk instead.

Phoenix's eyes drifted over to his desk, and his eyes caught on the small flags. He smiled again.

"I like the flags," he said.

Miles smiled back at him. "Thank you. It took me a while to find a vendor that sold the ones I required."

"Well, I'm glad you're being a little more open with yourself. Don't ever feel like you have to do more than you already have."

Miles snorted. "You sound like one of those encouraging Tumblr posts."

Phoenix's eyes lit up with the clear sign that he was getting an idea. "You have Tumblr?! What is it?!"

Miles flushed a deep red as if he hadn't meant to say that aloud. "I do not have a Tumblr, Wright."

"Ooh, you aren't calling me Phoenix, this must really be serious," Phoenix joked. "I don't need to have my Magatama on me to know that you're lying, Miles."

"It is irrelevant."

"It is important."

"Please do not tell anyone."

"I won't if you tell me your username."

"Are you blackmailing me, Phoenix Wright?"

"Who can say if I am, Miles Edgeworth?"

They stared at each other for a moment, before Miles caved and put his head on the desk and Phoenix smirked in triumph.

"I would move the world for you," Miles muttered.

"I know," Phoenix replied. "And I'm going to take advantage of it."

---

I. Miles Edgeworth

Miles was out walking Pess, as he passed the WAA. He had really just been wandering, having a sort of vague idea of where he was. He knew the city rather well, and perhaps walking by the Agency was a subconscious effort by his brain to see Phoenix, as he really hadn't spent time with him in a while.

He opened the door, and was almost hit in the face with a marker.

The Agency was a mess, really. Trucy's magic props had been mostly cleared out, leaving Miles to assume they were probably piled up in Phoenix's office. Athena Cykes and Apollo Justice were sitting at a table with Trucy who was showing them pictures on her phone.

Miles cleared his throat, and three heads shot to him.

"Hiya Mr. Edgeworth!" Trucy exclaimed with a smile. "What are you doing here?"

Miles smiled back at her. "I was passing by, and I decided to drop in." His eyes drifted, gaze caught by the large rainbow flag hanging on the wall. "What is that?"

Athena looked embarrassed. "Um, the boss said it was a good idea and, uh, if you don't like it..." she trailed off, and Miles raised an eyebrow.

"You can shove it!" Widget interjected cheerfully.

Miles smiled to himself. "It's quite alright, I do like it. It adds a bit of needed color to this dull palette."

"Says the man whose entire office is pink," Phoenix interjected, stepping out of his office.

Miles sputtered indignantly. "It's wine red, Wright. And this office is so beige, I'm sure even Larry could see it needs improvement."

"Are you suggesting I paint my walls?"

"I'm suggesting that the flag on the wall should be the start of some interior decorating."

"As fun as it is watching you two argue like a married couple-" ("We are married!" Phoenix exclaimed) "-could you take this somewhere else? We're trying to work here," Apollo said, grabbing a marker and throwing it at Phoenix, who ducked it expertly.

Phoenix smirked. "I technically assigned it to you, so I can distract you all I want."

Miles looked over at what they were "working on" and saw that they were coloring in templates of multi-striped flags with different colors.

Athena seemed to be filling in one that he recognized as the aromantic flag, and she had a completed bisexual flag off to the side. Apollo was working on a demisexual flag and had a genderfluid flag completed.

"Justice," he said, not adding a title, "have I been unintentionally misgendering you?"

Apollo looked a bit taken aback by the question. "Um, no, not really. There might have been a couple times, but you didn't know."

"Please let me know if I do so, then."

Apollo nodded, and Miles gave him a small smile.

"What are the chances none of us are cishet? Well, maybe except Mr. Edgeworth." Trucy exclaimed, and Phoenix laughed.

"Trust me Truce, Miles is probably the least straight of all of us."

Miles smiled a little bit more, taking a deep breath. "I am a transgender panromantic demisexual, or you may refer to me as 'distinguished pan'."

Athena snorted.

"I'm glad you decided to share," Phoenix said, slightly exaggerated. He wiped a fake tear from his eye. "I'm just so proud you're coming out of your shell."

"More like the closet," Apollo joked.

"My closet is indeed rather large. It's no wonder I was able to live in it for so long."

They continued to exchange quips and jokes for a while until Miles remembered that he needed to take his dog back home.

#miles edgeworth #winston payne #klavier gavin #franziska von karma #phoenix wright #apollo justice #athena cykes #trucy wright #simon blackquill #ace attorney #pride #fic #4+1

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greyias · 6 years ago

Note

OC Asks 3. How did you choose their name?

Also asked by @captainderyn

Hahahahaha… okay, the short answer?: I’m an idiot. I didn’t realize I was going to love this game or this character as much as I did.

The long answer, well, I’ve alluded to it once or twice in the past, but I guess I should actually delve into it for real. But under a cut, because it’s probably going to get long.

I’m not sure if this should come with any kind of warning, but it’s kind of long and does delve into some personal stuff. So hopefully that doesn’t bother anyone!

Okay, so, when I first heard about this game in 2011, I had been out of fandom for several years, and had played a few MMOs here and there, but never really got into them for very long, mostly because I got bored very quickly with how repetitive they were. And then I read about this supposedly story and character-driven MMO, and I was intrigued. I was talking to my sister-in-law at the time about it, and ultimately realized I’d never be able to play because I didn’t have a PC capable of running it, and I was heavily into debt because of medical issues, to the point where I was having a difficult time affording my car payment, mortgage, and groceries.

So then Christmas rolls around, and my family has just about finished all of the presents when my brother and his wife go and bring in a special gift they’d been working on for several months: a frankensteined gaming PC that had one game installed on it, with several months of a subscription pre-paid: Star Wars the Old Republic

Needless to say, I was kind of bawling because no one had ever done something that nice to me before. And like? It’s kind of hard to describe what that previous year had been like without having a long, long side story but… it was difficult. It kind of sounds melodramatic to say it was hellish, but looking back on it? It kind of was. I was barely doing anything besides surviving, much less having fun. And here my sister-in-law had actually listened to a one-off conversation about how I was interested in this game but probably would never be able to play it, and like… took it upon herself to make that happen.

So of course the first thing I do is hook up my brand FrankenPC, load up the only game on it, and create a character! But it’s a MMO – and even though it’s billed on being story and character-based, I kind of don’t really believe it? Or at least don’t think my character is going to matter. So I do what I did with every other MMO, I used my online nickname to make a character (Greyias) so my friends can recognize me if they’re in-game, create a character that vaguely looks like me, and get to adventuring!

The last name came when they rolled out legacies, and hey, I used “Highwind” for my short-lived Pirates of the Caribbean MMO toon. It’s also the last name for one of the main characters in my abandoned steampunk novel series, but that’s another story for another time.

(And then after about three days of learning the mechancis, re-roll said character on a different server, because OOPS! That wasn’t the server my brother and sister-in-law had started their guild on. She looked a little less like me this time. Probably should have changed the name, but I just wanted to see how the story turned out and eventually quest with my fam)

I realized my mistake around Coruscant when Kira joined up as a companion and I went “…uh oh.”

Because I’ve started to recognize I get a certain feeling when I like something, really like something to the point when I get… ideas. Story ideas. Character conversations and wondering “what if”. Of course, this is still in the open beta period, the game hasn’t even launched yet, there’s still long queues to log in and the grind is real, and I just want to see where this story is going and what Darth Angral is going to do, and why is this character so damn sincere and genuine and I don’t like characters that are the literal embodiment of sunshine, I like snarky snarksters and–oh. No I actually do like the Sunshine Jedi. A lot.

Now, a few of you may be like “I really don’t see what the problem is” – this is kind of an old school thing, and something that seems to have thankfully gotten a lot of pushback in the time since I had left fandom and the time since I rejoined it, and that is: The Dreaded Mary Sue

From about the time I had started writing fic when I was in my early teens and onwards it had been drilled into my head that Mary Sues were a bad thing. And self-inserts were worse. Especially if they were *gasp* FEMALE CHARACTERS. (We can’t have those girls having characters they identify with now, can we?) And like, those very relevant discussions aside, I was kind of… ashamed? That I had made a self-insert without realizing it? Despite the fact that like, the character that resulted from my playthrough was very much not me. Like, a significantly different person.

But I was starting to get story ideas and snatches of character bits, and like, I hadn’t written in so long, I hadn’t been inspired in so long. And honestly I just loved this little do-gooder goober, in all of her naive, happy-go-lucky glory. As well as her red-headed sidekick and this amazing dynamic that I had only really seen depicted between male characters previously. And so I promised myself if I got a story idea, I’d write it out and… just change Grey’s name to something else. So no one would know my secret crime, and I would be free, freeeee to scribble in the margins of canon.

It was a great plan, except, I had been playing with subtitles for the game on, so every time Grey would speak, her name would appear above it. And wouldn’t you know? I associated that name with that face, and well, I didn’t get that story idea yet, so it was. Fine I tell you. FINE.

I kept playing the game. In fact, I played the game a lot in the middle part of 2012, because wouldn’t you know? I had another round of medical issues that put me on short term disability and I actually had to retrain my body to sit in a chair for long periods of time (look, it’s a really long story, and this post is long enough as it is). So let’s just say… I got really attached to my little Sunshine Jedi who could go out and save the galaxy when I could barely walk a hundred feet.

And continued to play it off and on over the following years, until finally, finally the devs removed the grind wall in preparation for KotFE, and I was able to finish the Jedi Knight storyline and see where her story ended up. Then I played the next expansion on Makeb. Which was fun. Then I made the mistake that we all know I was eventually going to make: I played Shadow of Revan.

And met Theron fucking Shan. And my perfect little Jedi suddenly fell in love and oh crap. I’m escaping out of cutscenes to rewatch them. Like rewatching them an absurd amount of times. And as I’m going to sleep I’m like, getting entire bits of narration and brand new scenes and fic ideas in my head, and oh god. It finally happened. I try and resist the pull, but I play up through KotFE and I have no more story to stall any more. And the snippets just keep lulling me to sleep every night and… okay.

I probably need to rename this character now. Like, there’s an actual ability to do that in-game so I should get to it. Chop chop.

Nothing works. Nothing at all works. This should not be that hard, she can have any name, no one will know. Why can’t I think of a different name? I go to every single name site known to man, and none of them are her. Besides the fact, that’s her name, and I’m starting to feel kind of guilty for taking it away from her. Poor girl has been through so much in canon and now I’m taking away her name? What kind of monster am I? Okay, fine. I roll up a different Knight during the Dark vs Light event, gave that one an actual name that was not my online writer name just to see if I could trick my brain into writing about them.

Nope.

Maybe I’ll change my online name? “Let her keep the name Grey and I can just have a different name and…” – at this point I’m starting to realize I might be getting slightly neurotic over this whole thing.

Completely annoyed with myself for spending nearly a year trying to come up with a new name I’m starting to get desperate, thinking up ways to maybe just… write around it and not let people know her name until they maybe fall in love with her and hopefully just forget how it’s weird. That can work right? Okay, whatever at least I’m writing and it’s shutting these two up, and it’s all going good for several stories in and then suddenly I get to a scene that has more than one female character and I’m like “Shit… the jig is up.”

Meanwhile, I’ve started up a Dragon Age Origins playthrough, and like a dumbass, DO THE EXACT SAME THING with a female Cousland, and start whining to poor @for-the-flail on Twitter, on my fainting couch about how I can never write this character’s name because I named her after myself, and, bless her heart, she’s just like: “…um. Why?”

And I’m like “Because… we share a name… and that’s weird for people…?”

She goes “It’s not that weird. Why don’t you just write your stories? People will like them or not.”

And sheepishly, I realized she was right, and stopped being so diligent about hiding poor Grey’s name, and eventually, because you are all such lovely and encouraging people, eventually embraced it. (Come to think of it, I never did wind up writing about poor Cousland!Grey. Oops.)

So! That’s the long and ramble story of how she got her name and why it never changed despite my best efforts.

In summary: I’m an idiot 🤷‍♀️ but I think you guys love me anyway?

#thank you for the ask!#oc: greyias highwind #oc asks #honekitteh #captainderyn #sorry this was so long

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peachasaurusrex · 5 years ago

Text

Ordinary Red

I sit here, enthralled in the lives of the misguided. Feeling like they had no choice but to do what they did, and those, that just wanted to do it. Is it strange to see parts of me in these people? Thinking to myself what makes them different? Other than death row with a crime under their belt, I find myself thinking about all the decisions I've made that have gotten me to this place.

Now if I've mildly caught your attention you might be thinking

What is this girl talking about..what has she done? Are we getting a confession?

Sorry for getting your hopes up readers, I'm just an ordinary girl feeling like every decision she's made is the wrong one.

SO whoa wait, rewind. Death row? Tune me in chick. — I know, it's a weird parallel but my guilty pleasure is homicide. The Death of Versace, The Menendez Brothers, Law and Order, I'm a Killer. If you make a docuseries I will watch it. Anyway as I watch, I hear stories of decisions influenced from someone's past and also stories from the other side of the spectrum who are utterly self absorbed. And there my friends is the parallel — I am both sides of the spectrum. A perfectly misguided girl trying to swim in a thrashing sea of selfishness and despair, never asking for a vest.

( Collapse )

Queue music and insert every melodramatic girl you've met or watched on your guilty reality TV. I don't blame you, that's my perspective — This girl who continues to make foolish choices and ::spoiler alert:: they never go right. And when they don't I'm shook. I like to play that it's not that serious but it's my life.

So if you're still with me, and I hope you are, I want to share my life with you in an attempt to help this misguided girl find her way to become a semi an extraordinary guided woman.

Stay tuned.

— Red

#real life #life #story #personal #truth #ordinary

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cosmic-hearts · 6 years ago

Text

top of the world | kim seungmin

kim seungmin x reader - themepark!au

genres; fluff, friendship, slight romance

warnings; none

summary; in which your best friend drags you to an amusement park despite being fully aware that you hate rides.

“See, Kim Seungmin. This is why I said I’d plan your birthday for you. I knew you were going to pull off shit like this.”

You stand in mortification, trying to prevent yourself from bubbling over into a seething cauldron of anger. It’s Seungmin’s birthday, you say to yourself, just do it for him.

Kim Seungmin, your devil of a best friend, is fully aware of the fact that you hate rollercoasters and amusement park rides in general, and yet he still brings you to Lotte World, insisting that it’s the only place he wishes to celebrate his birthday in. You had offered to arrange a birthday surprise for him, but he simply smiled like a little cherub and insisted that he’d got it all planned out, even telling you not to worry.

Now, as you stand before the entrance of the indoor theme park, Seungmin beaming in anticipation next to you, you don’t have the heart to refuse him. Sure, you’re mad as hell, but it is his birthday, and the way his eyes are alight with childlike excitement softens your heart considerably and douses the flames of frustration threatening to consume you. It’s unfortunate that your best friend is just so irresistibly adorable. You can’t even bring yourself to properly chide him. All you can afford is a weak protest.

“Let’s go!” Seungmin says, grabbing your wrist and dashing straight through the gates that mark the start of your hell and his heaven. Well, to each his own.This is gonna be one hell of a day.

—

“Okay, trust me, this isn’t scary at all. It’s just some lame ass boat ride,” Seungmin says in a manner that does nothing to allay your fears.

“If it’s lame, then why do you wanna ride it?”

“I mean, gotta get a bang for our buck. Might as well try everything since we’re here.”

You sigh and follow him to the queue for the Flume Ride, a strong sense of foreboding curling in the pit of your stomach.

You two get into a small boat, with Seungmin in the front and you in the back.The boat goes up like it’s on an escalator, and you feel your heart falling deeper into your stomach with every passing second. And when Seungmin conveniently asks right then, “Did you by any chance bring extra clothes?” you know that you’re screwed.

This isn’t just some lame ass boat ride as Seungmin so insouciantly put it. It could very well be your ride to the afterlife, if you so choose to be melodramatic.

Just as you expected, the boat reaches a short-lived plateau before plummeting sharply downwards, eliciting an ear-piercing scream from you that Seungmin would never forgive you for. Not that you cared. That little prick deserves to have his eardrum exploded for putting you on this ride. And as if that weren’t enough, the violent splash that you and Seungmin produce gets you wet all over, ruining you from your hair to your shoes.

“I hate you,” you firmly declare to Seungmin, who’s absolutely thrilled about having pranked you into going for the Flume Ride with him. He can’t stop laughing at the sight of you drenched from head to toe, glaring murderously at him, yet restraining yourself as you remind yourself that it’s his birthday. Your level of self control is seriously commendable.

“I’m sorry,” Seungmin says, and you know he really isn’t sorry at all, “but it was so fun! That drop was amazing!”

You bite your tongue to stop yourself from offering a very different opinion.

“Anyway, thanks to my foresight, I brought this,” Seungmin says, fishing out a large grey hoodie from his backpack, which you assume is for him to change into. He did get wet as well, seeing as he sat in front, but he doesn’t seem to mind at all.

“Great. At least you have something to change into while you leave me to rot away into a soaking mess—,”

Seungmin smirks. “Who said this was for me?”

And with that, he pulls his huge hoodie over you. The sleeves stretch way past your fingers and the hoodie itself stops mid-thigh, being seriously oversized. He leans closer to you and tugs at the strings to secure it tightly around your smaller frame.

“Wouldn’t want my best friend catching a cold on my birthday,” he says sweetly before tapping your nose lightly with his finger. You’re trying hard to feign annoyance but it’s getting really difficult to keep up your front of pseudo-fury with the way Seungmin’s beaming down at you like you’re a child who got full marks on a spelling test.

“Can I keep this?” You ask, loving the way it smells and feels like Seungmin, warm and chocolatey and fresh and clean, relishing the way it envelopes you with warmth and keeps you all nice and snug.

“I guess it’s the least I could do after putting you on the Flume Ride. Which I totally don’t regret, by the way.”

And as you look at the way Seungmin’s smiling sunnily in happiness, tugging at your hand to lead you to the next ride, you think might not regret it either.

—

“No way in hell I’m going on the Viking Ship.”

“Yes way! Come on, we need to run if we want to sit in the back. Trust me, it’s the most fun sitting in the back.”

“KIM SEUNGMIN!” You screech at your best friend as he runs towards the Viking Ship, indifferent to the various forms of death threats you yell at him along the way. He doesn’t even care when you threaten to tear up all his DAY6 posters, which is surprising.

“Come on!” Seungmin urges, and seeing as you’re making no move to speed up, he runs over to you, grabs your hand and runs towards the Viking Ship, guiding you to the very last row of seats at the very end of the darned contraption.

You put on the safety belt that does nothing to assure you of your safety, then you close your eyes as you feel the ship slowly begin to elevate. Feeling a terrible sinking feeling in your stomach, you unconsciously grab onto Seungmin’s hand, holding tightly onto it as you squeeze your eyes shut.

Seungmin switches the positions of your hands so that his hand is covering your own, enveloping it tightly. Soon after he laces his fingers between yours, intertwining your hand with this. You try to think not of the fact that the blood practically drains from your face every time the ship dips downwards, but rather, you focus on the fact that Seungmin’s holding onto your hand tightly, and you try to think of the warmth transmitting from his veins over to yours. It actually works for a bit, and you feel yourself releasing some of the nausea that’s threatening to build up inside your system.

Breathe, it’s okay. Seungmin’s right next to you. Funny how he’s the cause of your misery in the first place, but he’s also the one alleviating it.

When you two get down from the ride, he continues to clutch your hand tightly in his, refusing to let go.

“You can let go now. It’s over,” you say, attempting to wrestle free him his grip, but he won’t let you.

“If I let go of you you’ll probably trip over yourself or something. I bet you’re still dizzy from the ride,” Seungmin shoots back, sticking his tongue out at you.

“Yeah, right. You’re just using that as an excuse to hold my hand, you doofus,” you say, but as you look down at your intertwined hands a cosy sort of warmth fills you and you really can’t bring yourself to complain further.

—

Afterwards you insist that you can’t go on another ride and you drag him to a mirror maze, basically a dimly lit labyrinth filled with misleading traps and tons of mirrors, which Seungmin had refused to enter initially, saying that it was for kids. In the end, he’s more into it than you are, even taking it upon himself to lead the way, with all the seriousness of an actor in a Spy Kids film. His level of focus and immersion is strangely endearing to you.

After going on more rides, having dinner and watching the parade together, you two decide to call it a day. Until something catches your attention.

“Seungmin, can we go on that one?” You ask, pulling on his shirtsleeve. Seungmin follows your gaze and sees that you’re looking at the ferris wheel, a large structure adorned with twinkling multicolored fairy lights. He smiles.

“That’s so cheesy, Y/N. But sure, anything for my girl. After all, you did walk through fire for me today.”

You grin as Seungmin slings an arm over your shoulder, leading you to the ferris wheel, your last stop for the day.

“This is seriously the best ride of the day,” you say happily, looking out from the little cabin enclosing the two of you that gives you a perfect aerial view of the whole theme park.

“Really? Not the Flume Ride? What about the Viking Ship?” Seungmin asks playfully and you proceed to attack him with light punches while he feigns an expression of hurt.

“Definitely not, you jerk. God, those rides shaved years off my already-weathered lifespan.”

“You’re not even twenty yet. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Who was the one who insisted that he was a member of the Famous Five back in the mirror maze? Talk about being dramatic.”

Seungmin can’t rebut you, so he simply stays quiet and watches you looking down at the view of the park. A contented smile hangs off his lips as he drinks in the sight of you in his oversized hoodie, your eyes alight at the wondrous view below you.

You suddenly feel a pair of arms snaking around your waist, as well as an added weight on your shoulder. As you look to the side you realize that Seungmin has trapped you in a backhug and leaned his head on your shoulder, pulling you close to him and nestling his chin in the crook of your neck.

“Thank you for coming here with me,” he whispers into your ear, “it means a lot to me.”

“Aww, my little Seungminnie’s becoming all mushy and gross. What’s come over you?”

“Hey, don’t ruin the moment, idiot,” Seungmin chides, hugging you even tighter in response.

“Happy birthday, you fool,” you say, flicking his chubby left cheek lightly with your fingers.

Seungmin hugs you happily to him as you two float over the paradise beneath you, reaching the top of the ferris wheel. From your vantage point, the view is simply spectacular and you hum in contentment.

You feel like you’re on top of the world, and with your best friend right behind you, you know you can conquer anything. Even the scariest of rollercoasters. a/n; just a short, light & fluffy story that was inspired by their reality show when they went to lotte world hehe

#stray kids scenarios #stray kids fanfiction #kim seungmin fanfiction #kim seungmin #kim seungmin fanfic #stray kids fanfic

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coreshorts · 6 years ago

Text

Long Game Short

youtube

BANG!

A shot impacted the rock behind which sat crouched a red-headed woman in a suit and thick-heeled boots, her hair tied up into a tight bun. White gloves grasped a revolver, held ready, though she dared not poke her head out yet, hawkish, dark brown eyes closing tight against the subsequent wash of intense flame that exploded from the magicked bullet. The delay was intentional, the fair-skinned woman knew, intended to draw her from her cover prematurely; she knew better from her opponent.

The shot and the roar of the flames echoed off across the coast, momentarily drowning out the sound of the sea far below. The cliffs were hardly the best place for a duel, especially one of this magnitude, but that had, of course been the point: she was at a severe disadvantage, a single rock for cover and the cliffs to her back. The choices were to jump out into the line of fire or to take her own life by plunging down to the sand yalms below.

She feinted, uttering a spell as she drew a single card from her suit’s jacket pocket which was lined with arcane geometries, to produce an illusory duplicate of herself that stood and took aim. A shot rang out, as expected, and it whizzed through the head of the duplicate, right at the throat - exactly what she needed.

Nicole Sol, known more often as Nico, waited scarcely another moment before pulling back the hammer on her gilded black firearm and, whispering a command word, leaned up over the rock and fired a shot downrange. The bullet screamed as the geometries burned upon it by the revolver lit up, a white aethereal tracer cutting a line through the air toward a smaller cliff a short ways up the hill inland.

Though her assailant had long since fallen prone, taking advantage of the higher ground, the bullet she fired was not meant to strike flesh, but the dirt and stone beneath. It struck true, indeed, several fulms below the grassy hilltop. However, unlike the previous shot that she had weathered behind her cover, this bore no delay, the bullet’s spell activating with a deafening sonic boom which tore through the earth with devastating concussive force.

There he was. Tora’ji Polaali, a miqo’te man with, Nico had known for years, an intense hatred for the woman, had sought to launch a surprise attack on her here to put an end to their rivalry once and for all. Nico had willingly walked into the trap, confident that she could emerge the victor. That confidence remained, even as a bead of sweat rolled down her temple. The rustle of the man’s white coat, its violet pattern of concentric circles like chains and its silver buckles, his short black hair and dark ashen features became visible with the destruction of the ground beneath him. However, as he dove away from the eruption of dirt and stone, the glint of those violet shades he’d always worn tipped Nico off to the fact that she’d been spotted again. With a quick motion, he slammed down the hammer of his own revolver, barked his own command word, and fired.

The resulting shot had Nico ducking for cover once more as the shot multiplied tenfold, a rain of ammunition impacting all around her. If she’d been a second later, she would’ve been riddled with wounds, the duplicated bullets fading and leaving her to bleed out. She had no intention of letting this happen, nor did it. Instead, she used the time that Tora’ji would use to try getting to cover himself to rush further uphill.

As she leapt out of her cover, however, another command word caught her attention, even as the heavy footfalls of the man’s dark-plated boots tore grass up behind him as he sprinted for a new place to hide. Nico recognised it immediately as a seeking shot, meant to curve toward her; the spell would make it much more likely to hit her while they ran.

With the selfsame command word spoken hastily, she pivoted, diving for the indentation in the hill that she had created, and fired a seeking shot of her own. With both bullets magicked to arc toward their targets, they came dangerously close, their seeking magic like opposed magnets, causing them to spiral out of control and create a temporary vortex of aethereal currents that, upon its expiry, left the projectiles falling harmlessly to the ground.

Though neither hit their mark, Tora’ji and Nico had both still achieved their goal in this instance, Tora’ji to find new cover and Nico to gain even ground. There was a long pause before, finally, the man’s youthful voice shouted across the silence to her.

“I know you came here knowing I’d ambush you, Sol,” he shouted, his tone strained and breath short, but still somewhat calm - the man was yet to lose his cool - despite the ongoing firefight, “Out here, though? That hubris won’t help you. You’re no Conservator. You’re a glorified bloody bodyguard for an airhead of a Philosopher.”

“So you’ve said countless times, Tora’ji,” Nico shot back, breathing heavily from the sprint, but otherwise unruffled, herself, “Do you have aught to say that might actually interest me, or can we continue trying to kill one another?”

The answer was another crack of the man’s revolver and a wash of flame that rendered the earth around her blackened and singed, devoid of its greenery. Thankfully, the cover held. The Conservator’s response was quick and ruthless, no command word spoken as she used the time to reload her revolver, leaning out of her cover again to fan the hammer of her revolver, firing six shots in rapid succession as the glint of her self-proclaimed rival’s sunglasses came around the corner of a larger rock just across the hill a ways.

There was silence for a time after, during which Nico had ducked back into that hole in the cliff side. She had heard no response to the salvo - not of pain nor of retreat - and it gave her pause. Had he managed to anticipate her? There was no time to ponder, and so, instead, she decided to investigate the silence. Drawing the same card from before and conjuring another illusory duplicate that went sprinting out of her cover, she stomped her feet for the first few seconds of its flight, hoping to draw fire, back to the dirt and an ear open to listen.

In the next instant, she had her answer. However, it came in the form of another flame wave that hit at the feet of the duplicate as it fled, kicking up dirt and charred vegetation. Tora’ji had seemed to anticipate even the illusion, attempting to create a temporary disruption so that his flight further uphill, which had been silent until that point, would remain unimpeded. She hardly needed him poking out from over top of her, and so she fled, as well, using the man’s own distraction tactic to her advantage.

“Got you!” came the miqo’te’s voice, and, in the next moment, even as Nico took that queue to lunge out of the way, the blinding pain of a bullet impacted her right side, thankfully dampened by her suit’s enchantments and the armoured carbonweave vest beneath the jacket. It still hurt, though, causing her to stumble and gasp for breath, her ribs pounding with pain just for another bullet to soar past her head. The second shot would have hit her if she hadn’t partially-doubled over, and so, she pushed herself and kept running, pulling back the hammer on her revolver and firing blindly in the direction of Tora’ji’s voice to try and buy herself some time.

Whether by luck or some divine providence, she heard a hiss of pain at her fourth shot. Though the Keeper of the Moon that was gunning for her had similar protections, she managed to keep the score even, as it were, as she managed to make her way to the top of the hill, ducking behind a tree.

“You’re not gonna kill me with shots like that, Sol!” he snarled, pain evident in his voice. Had she wounded him enough to break his stride that much? She smirked a bit despite the continued pounding in her ribs. The bullet with which he’d struck her was still lodged in her suit jacket, and, much as it vexed her to allow it to remain, she let it; despite her commitment to her appearance, her life - and victory over a long-time thorn in her side - was far more important.

She didn’t respond to him, instead just using his taunts to keep tabs on him. He’d always been mouthy, and, as much as she and her partner, Odellia, enjoyed playful banter during confrontation to keep up morale, it was always simply too much, too melodramatic.

Silence ensued again, and, she determined, he was looking for her. She’d lost him. If she hadn’t, he’d have immolated her cover long ago. The tree wouldn’t last to such a blast at he’d prepared for her. Checking her remaining bullets in the pouch hidden beneath her jacket at her belt, she frowned. She’d only three shots left, not counting the two in her revolver. She loaded the remaining three in and took a long breath.

It was just as Tora’ji had planned. It was a long game he’d been playing. First, he’d separate her from Odellia, using the Philosopher’s errand to deliver her report to his advantage. While she was back in the Sharlayan motherland, he’d arranged for a falsified report to demand Nico’s attention: an anomaly in Vylbrand was reported, remnants of the Calamity not moons ago causing an upheaval on the eastern coast to the far south of Costa del Sol. He’d slipped into her inn room just before she was to leave to investigate, depriving her of all she didn’t immediately have on her person: her spare ammunition, her aetheryte pass, her money, and her linkpearls. Though he didn’t get her revolver or the ammunition she’d had on her person while she was at the front desk, dealing with a complaint lodged against her for “suspicious activity” with the Yellowjackets, she’d been completely deprived of all but her firearm and a handful of bullets. With the Yellowjackets performing an investigation of her room and time running short, she had no choice but to appear where Tora’ji lay in wait to ambush her. It had all dripped of his underhanded sabotage, but she’d little choice. She knew he’d have gone through the investigation agency’s reports linkshell, and, when she’d been assigned, she’d play into his hands whether she went or not.

It had been like that for years. Ever since she had been promoted to Conservator, partnered with Odellia - at the time, a budding, but prodigal, Philosopher - and assigned to keep her safe both through assuring her silence on the motherland’s closely-guarded secrets and as an asset, herself. The pink-haired woman impressed her from the start, her apparent spaciness a very clever and convincing front that concealed one of the sharpest women she’d known in a long time. However, Tora’ji had his eye on her, too, and when Nico was promoted from their shared position as Observer to Conservator, then, just moons later, began dating the woman, he became enraged. He began to deny his fondness for Odellia and became hostile to both her and the red-headed Conservator, often sabotaging their jobs, even succeeding, at first. For the first year of Nico’s career as a Conservator, she was constantly in danger of being sent to remedial training or, worse, terminated. After a while, though, she got wise, avoiding the pitfalls her so-called rival had been setting for her, forcing him to engage in a longer, more drawn-out game. This was to be the final scene for it, she knew. Nearly two years had passed, and not even the Calamity in Eorzea stopped him.

It all came down to this moment. She knew she could still gain the upper hand, and, while she was yet unseen, she peeked out toward the last direction she’d heard his voice. However, just as she did, another shot rang out, and, though she managed to avoid taking a worse hit, the shot glanced off of her revolver, the next seeking shot arcing right into its side. The impact wrenched the firearm from Nico’s grasp, the weapon clattering to the ground as she flinched back behind the tree.

Tora’ji laughed triumphantly. “You know, that might’ve been my last shot,” he taunted, walking up the hill in plain view, “if you weren’t such a generous sort.” He opened the cylinder on his own revolver and begin reloading with Nico’s stolen ammunition.

“Now why don’t you come out before that poor little tree turns into a charcoal with you,” he snarled, holding the revolver level and leering over his sunglasses at her. That was that. She had no choice. If she dove for her weapon, the explosion from his firebrand would cook her alive, and if she stayed behind that tree, she was just as helpless as she’d be facing him.

With a resigned sigh, she held her hands up in a motion of surrender and paced out into the open, a stoic expression on her face. She took a long breath and tensed as the miqo’te pulled down the hammer and barked his command word once more. With a brilliant flash and a burst of flame, all Nico could see was fire as the man’s revolver exploded in his hand, sending him reeling backward, just barely escaping his own fireball.

Nico quirked a brow, hawkish brown eyes watching as the plume dispersed. Though he was mostly unharmed thanks to the enchantments he had on his own gear, rendering him untouchable to his own spells, her was clearly stunned, and his firearm was blown to pieces on the ground before him.

“How-?!” he sputtered, looking at his hands in disbelief, rubbing fingers to palms to rid himself of the explosion’s residue, “You-! You did that! You-”

“Knew,” Nico finished, adjusting her gloves and finally pulling that troublesome bullet from the magicked weave of her suit jacket, the hole mending itself as soon as the intrusive piece of metal was removed. “Yes. You give O too little credit. Before she left, she befouled the powder in those bullets you stole from me." “What? They’re... they’re duds?” he asked, straightening up, rigid in shock.

“Of course. Though, that you had to overdo it and attempt a spellshot with foreign ammunition is your own folly,” she replied, brushing off her shoulders, walking calmly toward the miqo’te, who responded by reaching to his belt and drawing a hunting knife, snarling defiantly.

“Fuck it. I don’t need a gun to kill you, Sol.”

“I beg to differ.”

With a howl of rage, the rancorous Observer charged Nico. Bringing the knife up to attempt a slash across her neck, he found himself blocked as the Conservator had seamlessly brought up a hand to strike his forearm, stopping the swing short and sending a shock up his arm. With her right, she brought a fist to his chest, the impact leaving him gasping for air. Trying to recover, the miqo’te flipped the knife and brought it down from overhead in an attempt to stab her, only to have the woman slip around to his side and bring an elbow to the back of his head.

“Ungh...! I won-” he started to say, but was cut off as he whirled around by the hell of a boot colliding with this side of his face, knocking him unceremoniously to the ground, where he barely caught himself on all fours. His sunglasses came free of his head, previously held within his hair, rather than on his ears, given his anatomy, making them far too easy to dislodge. The man hissed, bright sunlight causing his nocturnally-attuned jade eyes to squint despite his efforts to keep them open.

“You waste far too much time talking.”

Turning on her heel, Nico made for her gun, walking at a rather patient pace. With Tora’ji scrambling for his lost eyewear, she was under no pressure to recover her revolver quickly, even as he recovered and came charging her again.

“Don’t turn your back to me, damn you!” he yelled, but, as he got close, the red-headed Conservator dropped to the ground, scooping up her revolver, turning on the spot, and fanning the hammer, a knee to the ground.

The first shot went wide. The second just barely grazed the man’s leg. However, the third impacted his hip, throwing him for a loop. The fourth hit higher, slamming into his arm as it came down due to his wild stumbling. The fifth and last shot she had, however, also went completely wide when Tora’ji let himself drop to the ground, rather than keep stumbling, dropping into a roll that brought him within striking distance with that knife of his.

Nico huffed in annoyance, her calm disrupted slightly as she launched herself backward to avoid him and stand up straight. She clipped her revolver into its holster and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Taking a long breath, she held her ground, Tora’ji springing back to his own feet and charging her again with that knife.

He swung hard for her side, and she hopped to the side with the swing, carrying herself out of its range while giving herself more time to avoid it. In the gap left by the enraged strike, she charged forward and brought a palm up for the Observer’s face. The base of her palm impacted his nose, and, with a sickening crunch, he staggered back with a scream, a stream of blood pouring down his face and staining his shirt and jacket.

“Augh! By face! You bitch!” he roared, sounding as if he’d suddenly developed a nasty cold. However, before he could recover enough to make another move, the toe of Nico’s boot hit him beneath the chin, snapping his head backward and sending him onto his back as she hit again with the sole, shoving him hard.

With Tora’ji on the ground, she stomped down hard on the wrist of the hand holding that knife, causing him to release it before she kicked it away from him.

“Kill be,” he said, still holding his bleeding, broken nose with the other hand, staring hatefully at her from the ground, eyes watery behind those sunglasses of his, “add Sharlayad will doh. You’ll be a pariah. Burderig a fellow Idvestigator.”

Nico shook her head, a small, amused smile forming as he spoke. “You’re really a lot less threatening when you sound like you should be abed with a hot water bottle and some medicine.”

“You broke by doze!” he howled in indignation, met only by a nod. “Fide. Do it.”

“Oh, doh- ah, pardon. Oh no. I’m... quite alright,” she said, readjusting her gloves, shaking off the bit of blood from her right hand, the glove magically pristine once more afterward, “After all, you’ve talent. It’s just wasted on pettiness. Killing you would still be a waste of life. I’m, frankly, against it.”

“You sdide little...” he muttered, pausing, as if in thought before he backed off a ways, rifling through his pockets before pulling out Nico’s stolen linkpearl and speaking into it, “This is Tora’j-”

He was cut off as the pearl glinted brightly, bursting next to his ear with such force that bits of his skull went flying from his head, his sunglasses dislodged once more. With blood pouring down his head from the missing chunk the rigged linkpearl took from him, his fingers blown to ribbons, the miqo’te fell to the ground with a heavy thud, dead.

Nico took a long breath and sighed, stepping forward to pick up the fallen shades. She looked at them for a long time, closed the arms, and slipped them onto her jacket pocket. Reaching up to an ornate earring, she activated the hidden linkpearl within it.

“Observer Tora’ji Polaali has been confirmed killed in action,” she said calmly as she drew a small prismatic crystal from a black silken pouch in her jacket, “Target eliminated. I’ll begin cleanup immediately and prepare my own report.”

With a flick of her wrist, she cast the fire crystal toward him, and, as it impacted him, the body combusted in a flash of brilliant, white arcane flame, burning away enchantment, armour and all. Within time, naught remained of Tora’ji Polaali, save for his sunglasses.

This would call for an aesthetic change, for sure. She’d earned it.

#nico sol #nicole sol #ffxiv #rp #roleplay #final fantasy xiv #balmung #nico #odellia sol #o sol #odellia #gun mage #sharlayan #conservator #observer #philosopher #international investigations

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dangerscully · 6 years ago

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Yesterday I was asked to elaborate on my thoughts on All About Eve, having been lucky enough to see it on Wednesday evening - the first night after the press night.

First off - I haven’t seen the film yet. I’ve heard that it keeps a lot of the script and ideas the same, but as of yet I can’t comment on those similarities or differences.

This turned itself into a long post and I accept no responsibility for that.

Spoilers below the cut. (If the cut doesn’t work on mobile and you want to avoid spoilers, now’s the time to scroll quickly down).

I’m gonna go all in here and start with a seriously unpopular opinion.

I didn’t particularly enjoy Gillian Anderson’s Streetcar performance. I found it largely cringeworthy.

I acknowledge that it was good. But it was so melodramatic - and yes I know that’s what the role demands! - that it made me uncomfortable because I was constantly aware that I watching Gillian with a capital G perform it, something that she’s an expert in making the audience forget, usually.

And a large part of my discomfort could well be thanks to the fact that I watched it via NTLive, rather than in person. I had a similar experience watching David Tennant in a televised performance of a stage production of Macbeth, and yet I found him incredible on stage in Don Juan in an equally hammy role.

But anyway, I digress. I went in with lowered, slightly nervous expectations, due to this.

Gillian Anderson. The main reason I attended the play, let’s be totally honest here. And boy did she deliver. A masterclass in acting, from subtleties to quiet melodrama.

And now that part has been said, the main reason that most of you will have clicked through(!), lets go a little deeper into the show.

***

All About Eve is a hybrid between a theatre production and a cinematic one. It is done through the very clever use of camerawork that is projected live onto the lifted back wall of the stage, allowing action to happen off-stage while still enabling the audience to experience it live.

Over time, actors have found themselves having less of a restriction about into which box they categorise themselves. Film? Theatre? TV? Choose one - you can’t have more than one field! Luckily that is less so now, and Ivo Van Hove’s production is a way of celebrating that.

The live camerawork and editing is done so impressively and seamlessly that it’s almost unbelievable at times that you’re watching a live, single take of these scenes. It also allows for new ways for each performance to be slightly different each night. And it melds the intimacy of watching a live performance on stage, with the different kind of intimacy allowed by close-up, slow shots.

It’s also a great nod to the voyeurism and a lack of privacy that is a key theme in the show, thanks to fan culture. Scenes behind literal closed doors are still shown in detail to the audience.

And that live camerawork begins in the very first scene. Addison takes the stage, to introduce you to the story. And after a brief monologue, he walks off stage, with the camera following him. He is projected onto the empty stage, while he walks around “backstage”, introducing you to many of the characters and setting the scene.

I found that so innovative. And immediately impressive as a single take one-shot. (It had a very Birdman vibe to it!) The audience is told from the very first scene that cameras are going to be an important part of the play. This scene was the last minute addition that was not in any of the previews, and I’m so glad that they put it in. Hopefully it will be kept!

Coming to the play from a fandom perspective - although I’ve taken a fairly healthy step back in recent months - felt hilariously meta. So much of the obsessive, embarrassing behaviour exhibited by Eve towards Margo was recognisable in more extreme areas of this fandom! We didn’t queue up for the signing on Wednesday (the jury’s out on whether or not we will do the second time we see it) but we did feel - probably unfairly - a sense of irony as we walked back to the tube station past the long queue of fans waiting to meet the cast of a play that is essentially about the dangers of obsessive fan behaviour!

My favourite scene was, perhaps (lol) unsurprisingly, one of Gillian’s. And she’s not even the focal point of the scene. She is off-stage, in the bathroom which is totally shielded from the audience. And while a scene plays out on stage, a projection of Gillian in a very Blanche-esque moment - despite having no dialogue - absolutely steals the scene via a single-camera projection that ends in a graphic display of vomiting.

Another particularly memorable scene happened again in the bathroom. This time, a two-camera set-up was used, increasing the feel of watching a film or tv show even more, as it cuts between Karen and Eve’s faces as they have a crucial confrontation in the bathroom.

Karen. Karen Karen Karen. Monica Dolan, wow. Really, honestly incredible. No real words beyond that. This feels a particularly ineloquent reaction but she blew me away.

I’m gonna go back to the camerawork now; yes I keep focusing on it but it’s such an integral part of the overall production. After several live action projections from the same angle, we are greeted with a projection of Margo looking into the mirror, facing fears about her age and how it is affecting her career. Slowly, the projection shows her ageing. And it almost tricks the audience’s eye in that it takes a while to even realise that this projection isn’t actually a live one!

A similar CGI projection is used later in the show, to show Eve’s face transforming into Margo’s as she slowly takes over her life. It’s a simple concept, used over and over again in film and TV, but bringing it to a theatre stage was a new and exciting use for it.

I’m a big fan of PJ Harvey’s music. The music for this show was more like an atmospheric film score than a theatre score for a lot of it, again blurring the lines between a stage and screen production.

A lot of hype has been built up for Gillian and Lily’s moments of singing. Gillian was surprisingly good! You can tell she’s not a trained singer, but given that she is highly intoxicated at the point she takes the metaphorical mic, that doesn’t matter at all, and she still hits all of the notes in an authentic way.

Lily James, of course, has more of a musical background, but her performance was still to me, more lacking overall. I did listen to a podcast that said that PJ Harvey heard that Lily is able to play the piano, so planned her song around that. Lily is then asked about it on the podcast, and laughs that she’s not played since school and it must have been something she told a white lie about to embellish her acting CV! And fair play to her, she pulls it off very well if that’s the case!

I don’t want to write a totally unbiased review, so I’ll touch on the aspects I was less impressed with. My main criticism of the first half in particular, was the number of jumps, in both time and location, without any real indication given to the audience. The set remained the same, and the time jump could apparently happen mid-dialogue. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s easier to keep track of this next time I see the show.

It would have also been cool to see a more modern take on obsessive fan culture. There’s plenty of research material for that around these days! Social media creates armies of fans, obsessing over minor details about a celebrity’s life in ways that weren’t as widely possible when the script was originally written.

Lots of the reviews have criticised the fact that Ivo was trying to be “too clever” while putting this show together. And it could easily be argued that they have a point. Personally, I think it works, and as such the idea of it being “too” clever is voided. But it’s understandable that people may agree with the critics on this.

***

I think that’s most of what I have to say about the show! Given the number of changes that happened during the preview run (which, please remember, is essentially just a series of rehearsals to an audience), it will be interesting to see if the show develops any further. I will be seeing it again in April, over two months away, and I’m looking forward to comparing the two!

#all about eve #gillian anderson #all about eve spoilers #lily james

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rey-skywalkin-away · 7 years ago

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Kanera Fix-It Fic I was Talking About

Y’all thought I was joking when I said I had 3000 words of a fic all lined up to fix this, right? GUESS AGAIN. 4117 WORDS. I had to delete 90% of my original 3000 words and re-write it just now to conform to what happened in the midseason premiere, and it took me four hours, but I did it! Anyway, I put myself into the queue to make an archiveofourown account, but that’ll take a month to activate, so until then, I’ll just post this chapter-by-chapter on here. I got part 1 done tonight, and it might be a few days before chapter 2: I have college life and work that’s going to be occupying my time this week. But I’m not abandoning this. I am FUELED BY PAIN.

@secrettunnelyeah you’ve been losing your shit with me, so I hope this helps. @fluffyapplecat thanks for all your support! @commoner64 because you said “please””. @blueboxdrifter you expressed support for this a few weeks ago, so here you go! @brickhawk you gotta help read this shit before the next chapter. I can’t post again without a second opinion.

Um, I hope you all enjoy.

Fair warning to everyone else: this is my first time posting any kind of story online, and it’s as rough as any story can be. I normally spend time editing my chapters, as any writer should, but I was just hammering it out as fast as I could to a) get it done before I fell asleep and b) to give you all a little hope after this agonizing premiere. So I’m sorry if it’s full of errors that I’m too tired to edit right now, and that the format under the cut is kind of wonky. I’m not entirely happy with the content, either–it’s kind of melodramatic and rushed for my taste, but I’m running off pure emotion right now. Hopefully I’ll find time to edit it before I before I post it on Archive. The chapter and some explanations for various things are down below. Happy readings, and everyone be okay out there!

*Writer’s Notes*

First off, I had literally 20 ideas for how Kanan would survive this premiere, and I had “explosion” down for two of them. Here, he survives by basically copying Ahsoka during her fight with the Inquisitors and Force-clapping backwards into Hera’s arms. He gets burned up and spends 3 weeks recovering in a bacta tank. No one’s going into much detail about it in the story, because they don’t want to re-imagine it all over again, but that’s what I was envisioning happening.

Second, Kanan is still blind: him getting to see Hera before he died was painful and sweet, but I honestly felt he had a lot of growth because of his injury, and it needed to stay. (And disability representation is important).

Third, I can’t start calling him “Caleb Dume”, guys, I’m sorry! I’ve spent four years calling him Kanan, and I can’t get into the habit of calling him Caleb.

Fourth, his beard and ponytail are coming back.

Fifth, I have a very large, multi-fandom, decades-long (in-universe) fanfiction world that I’m always playing with and developing to further my own writing prowess, character development, and storytelling skills. I’m going to make references to that multi-fandom work in this story (not a lot, but if there are moments where you’re thinking “where did that come from? I don’t remember that in the show or comics”, well, it might be from the multi-fandom). I’m including this story in my collection of works, and I don’t feel like editing it all over again just to include references to it. So you should all be able to follow what’s going on, but there might be a few odd moments.

————————————–

Chapter 1

Hera checked her calendar again, counting down days and weeks and making notes as she went. Nine weeks ago…captured. Eight-and-a-half weeks ago…rescued. Five weeks ago, we…and four weeks ago…well, I’m now very late. I should’ve started another cycle by now. And on a regular diet for over eight weeks, with additional nutritional supplements to get back to full strength after confinement. And we’re hardier than humans; we don’t get so out of sync after missing a few meals and getting a few electric shocks. So that shouldn’t explain why I’m late. She then checked her star charts for any habitable systems nearby, and winced when there weren’t any. Should I divert our flight path to go to the nearest star system just to buy a test? No, we’re fine on other supplies, and everyone will ask questions as to why I think we need to make a stop. She would’ve killed for a certified medical droid onboard her ship in that moment, but she was out of luck. They’d left the medical system on that nameless little asteroid five weeks ago now, and they were back to their own devices out in space. Great. Just great. Gonna have to go on instinct this time. And she wasn’t liking what she was coming up with.

Hera opened her mouth to say the word out loud, but couldn’t do it. Pregnant. You’re pregnant. You’re four weeks late, and your idiot self didn’t want to think about protection after you were saved by Kanan and the others. And after what nearly happened to Kanan…

After her rescue, after telling Kanan that she loved him, after he nearly died and had to spend three weeks in a bacta tank, the minute he’d showered off and went to his own bunk to be alone, she’d slipped into his room and reiterated her love for him. Free of drugs and pain, she’d finally broken down for once in her karking life and loved him, not as a general, or a pilot, or a freedom fighter. Just him and her, together, as it should always be. To remind herself that he’d been blasted back into her arms instead of dying in the fuel explosion, that he’d survived three flatlines before they could find him a bacta tank. That he’d eventually woken up and immediately began to listen for the sound of her voice. And afterwards, curled up in each other’s arms, she’d whispered that, now that his beard had grown back and his hair was beginning to return, he’d better keep it that way. Kanan had laughed, but they’d clutched each other in the semidarkess and just listened to each other breathe. No, of course you weren’t thinking clearly. He needed you, and you needed him. But look what came of it.

Hera rubbed the corners of her eyes and tried to think past the rising panic in her gut. What am I going to do about this? Pills? A clinic visit? Which is cheapest? What’s safest and gets me back into the pilot’s seat without anyone noticing something was wrong? She thought back to the pamphlets and medical texts she’d memorized when she’d left Ryloth to strike out on her own in the galaxy. Twi’leks were always targeted anywhere one went in the galaxy, and she’d prepared herself for what to do if she was attacked and how to handle any possible outcome. But thinking about the next few steps right now made Hera’s heart hurt. A few years ago, this would’ve been an easy decision for her. Three months ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated. Today…

Hera knew why she was conflicted. Will there ever be a tomorrow? We got lucky this time—will I be next? Or will the Force finally decide to call Kanan back to wherever it is Jedi go when they die? Will there ever be a second chance for us to conceive? She hadn’t given much thought to the end of the war, to her future, but sitting next to Kanan’s bacta tank and listening to his pulse monitor for several hours a day had broken something inside her, and she’d begun to think. A mild, deserted little planet. Not dry and harsh like Ryloth. Someplace cool and wet and green. A little home, with rooms for the rest of the family. Sabine can paint the family room with murals of our adventures. Maybe little tookas frolicking on the baby’s nursery walls. Zeb can carve us furniture with all the designs of Lasat that he’s lost. Whatever he can remember. Ezra…he can have a real bed, not a bunk. And a home-cooked meal that didn’t come out of a ration pack. When was the last time he had one of those? Chopper can have a nice oil bath and shut down without worrying that we’ll wake him up for an emergency. And our baby will run in the grass and will never know war, and…

Hera swallowed back tears and controlled her emotions. You’re dreaming again, Hera Syndulla. It’s one thing to admit your feelings for Kanan and finally be open in your relationship, and it’s another thing to abandon the rest of the galaxy to pursue your selfish dream. How many people want the same dream as you? How many people have the skills and resources to make that dream come true for everyone else that can’t help themselves? Your little fantasy will have to wait. Get rid of this and get back to work.

Her heart broke as she made up her mind, and a sudden fatigue overcame her. Raw emotion? Something related to the pregnancy? She knew nothing about pregnancy, come to think of it. Or how to be a mother. What makes you think you have time to learn? Especially now? You aren’t ready for this. You know what you have to do.

Hera wearily glanced at her chrono. A few hours until your shift. When I’m back in the pilot’s seat, I can tell the others I’ve got nerve damage from torture, and that I need to see a specialist somewhere. Maybe I could say we all deserve a treat after what we’ve all been through. She shuffled to her dresser and opened the secret panel on the side to check how many credits she had left in her emergency fund. Enough for the procedure and a little left over for the others. This could work. Damn it. This’ll have to do. There will be other opportunities, Hera. Just have hope.

But it could wait. The fatigue was seeping throughout her body, fogging up her mind and turning her limbs to jelly. A few hours to nap, and then it’ll be time to call everyone. In twenty-four hours, this will all be over. A few tears blurred her eyes, and she roughly wiped them away. Either get out all the sorrow now, or sleep and cry afterwards. Hera chose the latter, and she barely made it to her bunk before she collapsed on top of the covers and sank into a deep, misery-filled slumber.

———————————-

It only felt like a few minutes had passed before Hera was startled out of her uneasy sleep. “Who is it?” She rasped. She groggily sat up and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

“Hera? It’s me.” Hera shivered at the sound of his voice. Every word that he spoke seemed like a precious gift after what nearly happened. But now, after what she’d finally admitted to herself, he was the last person she wanted to see right now. Or, maybe she needed him most. Can he feel it? In the Force? Does he already know? Does he know what I’m planning to do?

“Kanan.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she couldn’t keep going.

“Can I come in? Please?”

Hera hesitated. Either you don’t tell him now, and you don’t involve him at all, or he knows what you’re planning to do. Could she do it alone? Without him? She didn’t know if it would be more painful to involve him, or to never let him know what could have been.

But Hera had made a commitment to Kanan when she’d told him she loved him, and there was no backing out of that commitment now, no matter how she’d chosen to handle her pregnancy. “Come in,” she whispered.

Kanan was framed in the light of the hall for only a second before he shut the door and crossed the distance to her bunk. He sat down next to her, his hands automatically wrapping around her shoulders; he froze when his hands met the rough fabric of her blanket. “Hera? What’s going on? Are you ill?”

Not in the way that you’re thinking, but yes. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, I…” He hesitated. “I know it’s getting pretty old for me to say it, but I feel a…disturbance in the Force. Around you.”

Hera tensed up. Oh karabast. He knows. “Tell me what you feel.” In their first years together on the Ghost, if they had time to rest, they’d park the ship in the first meadow they could find. Stretched out on the hull, in the light of the stars above, Kanan would describe the world to her as he felt it in the Force. A web connecting all living things, from the deadly dance of predator and prey in the grasses below them, the cries of the plants as they cried out for rain, jostled to and fro by the silent paws of some canid beast, to the needy, incessant hunger of newborn chicks in the trees at the edge of the meadow…

This time, she couldn’t control her tears, and Kanan’s fingers were immediately brushing them away from the corners of her eyes as soon as she sucked in a strangled breath of air. “I feel…you’re so unhappy. You’re full of…pain, and despair. Hera, I don’t understand. Why do you feel like you’re losing something?”

He doesn’t know. Oh stars, if there was only another way…But there wasn’t. She gently took one of his hands away from her face and held it in her own. “You can’t understand because you’re looking in the wrong place.”

Kanan cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“You’re looking into my mind…” She held his hand up, paused, and pressed his fingers against the still-flat skin of her lower torso. “Try feeling here, and you’ll know why I’m so conflicted.”

Hera wasn’t sure if he felt something in the Force or if he immediately understood her implication. “Hera–!”

“Only five weeks,” she whispered. “I wasn’t assaulted in prison, so I definitely know it’s yours. And I know the date of conception. But only five weeks. Not that far along, really…” She trailed off as she noticed Kanan’s face shutting down, closing off all emotion. Oh no. She waited a few moments to allow him to process the news, to say something, anything, but he didn’t. “Kanan? Luv? Tell me—what’s going through your head right now?”

He coughed. “Do you have any water?”

“I—uh—yes. There’s a pitcher and some cups on the dresser. To the left of my ‘fresher.” He nearly banged his head on the top of the bunk as he stood up and held out his hand to feel his way along. “No, your left.”

He bumped against the edge of the dresser and winced. “Do you want any?”

This was definitely not the reaction she was expecting. “…sure. I guess.”

Kanan poured two cups of water, spilling what seemed like half the jug before he was done. Hera took the cup from him so he could have a free hand to feel his way back to her side without hurting himself further. She sipped her water while he chugged his straight down and tossed the cup aside. “Kanan. Please. Talk to me.”

He sighed. “I don’t…I don’t know where to begin.”

“I don’t either. But we have to start somewhere.”

“Well then…I suppose…did you ever want to be a mother?”

Hera sat down her cup and wrapped the blanket tighter around herself. “I wasn’t lying when I told you that I hadn’t given much thought about my future after the war. But I started thinking about it when you nearly died.”

Kanan’s breath came in a soft, weak gasp, and he pulled Hera into his arms. She melted into his embrace and felt his trembling. At least he doesn’t hate me. And he knows me well enough to know what my feelings are on this. Somehow, she allowed herself to speak about her dream life after the war: their quiet home together, the rooms for the rest of the family, their child playing in the yard outside. She felt his tears begin to run down his cheeks and drip on top of her lekku, and she knew that he could feel her sorrow in the Force.

“You know,” he said slowly. “I hadn’t thought much about kids, either. But I started thinking about them more when we found the others. Especially Ezra. We’re like their parents already, aren’t we?”

Hera chuckled, in spite of her pain. “We definitely are.”

“And I started to think…it wouldn’t be so bad, to do it all over again. But with a baby of our own…”

Hera closed her eyes and pressed herself against his chest. “But…?”

Kanan swallowed; she could feel the effort it took him. “But I know you. And whatever you choose to do, no matter my feelings…I’ll support your decision. You’re the pregnant one, after all. You’re the one at risk. Its—it’s up to you.”

“What are your feelings, Kanan?”

“They don’t matter.”

Hera sat back and cupped his face in her hands. “Yes, they do. I love you Kanan, and I wouldn’t have told you about this if I didn’t want to involve you, no matter what. So please, tell me your honest, true feelings.”

“Honestly…I’d love nothing more than to have a baby with you. I don’t know when we’d get another chance, with the war…”

Hera sobbed, half with relief and love, half with pain. “This damn war. It poisons everything it touches, including us. Our futures…”

Kanan started to cry again. “I know you. And I know what you want to do. I know it already.”

“I want this baby, too, but I don’t know how we’d make time. We can’t have a baby here, on the Ghost. It would be cruel just to bring it into the world and have it blow up with us in battle. Or die from some sickness.” Everyone knew babies didn’t thrive in prolonged periods in space. “And we can’t send it to my father; you know how dangerous it is on Ryloth.” She’d told him about her brother before, and he nodded. She started to cry again, and they held each other for long, painful minutes. Stang, I don’t want to do this. But I have to. What other choice do I have? I can’t leave the war. Not while others suffer. But at least I won’t have to do this alone.

But, for some reason, she felt tension in Kanan’s arms. Hera pulled back again. “What is it?” Why do you look so…guilty?

“We could leave the Rebellion and raise the baby together. Or get an abortion.” Hera made a sound of assent in the back of her throat. “Or…there’s another option.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What if I were to leave the Rebellion, maybe with Ezra, and the two of us raise the baby while you and the others keep fighting?”

Hera gasped. “Leave? Are you serious?” Was he so upset about what happened at the fuel depot that he wants to run away?

“I don’t know how to put this into words. When I was in the bacta tank, in the coma, I remembered something. Something from…right after Master Billaba died. I’d forgotten it until I was at the edge of death. I don’t remember what happened, but… I woke up with the sense that I was supposed to die at the fuel depot.” He choked on the last few words, and Hera couldn’t have spoken if she tried. “And I feel that, whatever happened in that blank in my memory as I was running away from her body, it saved me. Not…oh karabast, I don’t know how to explain it. But whatever it was, it gave me a feeling: that I needed to leave the conflict, or else I wouldn’t get a second chance to live. For some reason, Ezra’s been getting a weird feeling, too. Not quite the same as me, I don’t think, but he’s been hinting that we need to leave and do more Jedi work away from the rest of the group. Maybe something similar happened to him when he was younger. I don’t know. I haven’t been able to ask. But…”

Hera stood up. “After everything that happened, you were just going to leave us?” Leave me? She couldn’t fault him for listening to his visions, but it stung, especially after she’d finally opened up and bared her soul to him for the first time in years. I give you my love and you leave. “Whatever happened to being careful about listening your visions? Or was that all just a bunch of Jedi nonsense you were feeding to Ezra? Hmm?”

“Absolutely not. This feels completely different from a Force vision. Like…someone physically told me these things and blocked my memory. Not the Force. Not some cosmic energy. A person.”

“So you’re going to run away because of some half-remembered whispers?”

He felt for her hand and pulled her back onto the bunk. “Hera Syndulla, I love you. I love you more than I ever knew I was capable of loving someone. And I wouldn’t leave you and the others unless I was absolutely certain that this vision was something I needed to listen to. It’s going to kill me inside to do it, but I believe it’s what must be done if we want to survive. What if there are other Inquisitors out there? And what if Vader decides to end us once and for all, especially with what happened at the fuel depot? I’m stronger now, Ezra and I both are, but we couldn’t defeat him. And I couldn’t let the rest of you be put in jeopardy because you’ve got two Force-users leaving a trail for a Sith Lord to follow.”

Hera squeezed his hand. Just a bit. “So…you’d leave? And raise the baby? Are you sure you could do it? With your blindness?”

“Ezra could be my eyes and help out. And think about it: we could keep the house while you’re all away, and you could visit whenever you wanted, and keep fighting. And you’d know that there’d always be a home for you to return to, and the minute you wanted out of the fight, we’d be there, waiting for you.”

Hera turned away. “Could you really do that? Wait at home while we risked our lives out on the battlefield?”

Kanan sighed. “I’d be happiest if you were home with us. And I want to keep fighting, same as you. But if we could make some of your dream come true this way…I’d bow out.” His voice caught, and Hera suddenly realized how hard this all was for him. “Just…promise me one thing. Could you do that?”

Hera took his hands again. “Ask me first.”

“If this war keeps dragging on…will you consider finding a window of opportunity to leave? And be with us?”

Could you do that? Leave the fight, even if it wasn’t over? But Kanan was sacrificing part of his happiness, too. He’d be worrying every day, watching their child, waiting for her to come home. And if she never did, all he’d have was their baby to remind himself of how happy they could’ve been. Hera reached over and cupped his cheek in her hand, her heart bursting with love for him. “Yes. I will consider it, Kanan, knowing that you’re waiting for me. You’re the only one who could make me leave this fight. You…and the baby.”

Kanan sobbed with joy and pulled her into a crushing hug. They cried together again, but Hera’s joy was bittersweet. Why can’t I get to fully enjoy my dream? I want to be at home with Kanan and the baby. But I can’t. Not just yet.

But this way, there was a chance to have that future, when there otherwise wouldn’t be. And Hera Syndulla’s life was never fair from the moment she was born; she knew it, and wasn’t one to dwell on it for long. Besides, there were much more wonderful things to think about. A baby. We’re having a baby. “If I don’t miscarry, that is,” she muttered to herself.

Kanan frowned. “What was that?”

Hera wiped her eyes and looked around to find some tissues for them both. “Sorry, thinking out loud.”

“About miscarrying?”

Hera found some tissues and grabbed them. She passed a few to Kanan and blew her nose. “Just…it would be awful for us to go to all this trouble just for me to miscarry after the stress of a fight.”

“Hmm. You’re right. Maybe we could hang back for a while and do some logistics work. At least until you’re further along.”

“I’m going to have to find a way to hide this pregnancy, Kanan. If Inquisitors are still out there, hunting down Force-sensitive children, they’ll come for our baby, I’m sure of it.” She paused. “Is there a chance the baby could be Force-sensitive?”

Kanan blew his nose and she took it from him to throw in the trash. “I don’t know. There was a pretty big taboo about getting pregnant at the Temple, if you could imagine that. But I guess there’s a strong possibility of it.”

“Then we’ll have to hide my pregnancy. No one can know about it. Well…maybe Mon Mothma. But she’s it, outside of the crew.”

“I…oh damn, I think that means that I’ll have to fake my death. Ezra, too, if he comes along to help out.”

Hera banged her head on the top of her bunk. “Ow! What?!”

“Careful, careful—the baby—“

“A bruised lek won’t kill the baby, Kanan. But faking your death—“

“Well, that’s what we’ll have to do if we want to make sure we’re not tracked down. If everyone believes without a shadow of a doubt that we’re gone, no one will come looking for us. And your “grief” will give you an excuse to pull back for a few months, while you need to hide the bump.” Kanan suddenly moved off the bed and ran to the tiny ‘fresher.

“Kanan!” But he waved her away, and she hung back, waiting until he was done vomiting. Then, she found a rag and wet it from the remaining water in the jug. She went over to Kanan, who was still slumped over the toilet. She pulled him away from the bowl and gently began wiping his face. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be getting morning sickness, remember?”

He snorted, but let her keep tending him. “It’s just…we’re going to have to make sure everyone thinks, beyond a doubt, that we’re dead. And that means leaving no body— ” He turned around to retch again, but nothing came up. “And that means—fire, and explosions—“

“Oh, Kanan…” She held him until the panic attack—or flashback, whatever it was—subsided, and he’d calmed down again. “We’ll find a way to make it work. A safe way. If there’s anyone who could do it, it would be Sabine.”

“And how could I do that to Ezra? Put him at risk like that?”

“Well, we have to tell him about the baby, first. We’ll have to tell everyone. But, for right now, let’s just go lie down.” She helped him to his feet and into her bed. They crawled under the covers together, and Hera settled comfortably into his arms. I don’t know how I lived without this for so long. This feels so right, to be here with him.

Kanan’s eyes were drooping. “Don’t you have a shift soon?”

Hera’s fatigue was setting in again. “I’ll just tell one of the others that I have a call to take from someone in Rebel command. They’ll understand. Or Chopper can take the shift.” She yawned and couldn’t keep her eyes open. “I’ll deal with it later.”

They fell asleep, wary about the future, but both full to the brim with love for each other and the life beginning in Hera’s body.

—————————-

Okay, so I promise that this story is going to get happier, okay? There’s just a lot of depressing stuff that needs to be ironed out in this first chapter. It’s not going to be all sunshine and roses, but it will have a happy ending.

I also was originally going to have Kanan and Ezra faking their deaths by pretending to blow up when the rebels attacked a weapons supply store. They were going to dig tunnels underneath and be well-away before the explosion happened, but were going to pretend to be killed by the fire/explosion/falling debris. It hits so close to home in light of the midseason premiere that I don’t know if I can do it.

Or maybe I will. Because I’m kind of sadistic.

Also, the reference to Kanan being “warned” to escape is the reference to my multi-fandom story. There’s some Prisoner of Azkaban-level time travel shenanigans that go on, but it’s not “adult Kanan visits ‘lil Caleb”. It’s a lot more complicated and I don’t feel comfortable explaining it.

#kanera #star wars rebels spoilers #kanan jarrus #hera syndulla #swr spoilers #i'll tag more characters as they appear #but here ya go #my rough stories #star wars rebels

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frogsandfries · 4 years ago

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Dumpster fire

I hate everything and everyone. I feel like that sounds a bit teenager and melodramatic, but I just really want to be alone and be left alone so I can wallow in negative self-negativity. I just want to take like, a week off work, but the last time I took a number of days off work, the effect was negated by having to literally make up more of those days than I didn't.

I'm currently looking for a new job. I've kind of given up trying to get hired at Target, and I need something more reliable than part-time and temp at Walgreens. I had a temp agency contact me about working for a retail client. I have a particular job in mind that I'd love to try out. About half an hour commute, so I'm definitely going to make some time to call Monday. Probably also call the temp agency; I want to know if it's a local retailer and if there's a possibility of hiring on.

I felt genuinely almost cheerful after I got off work, even though today was over-the-top stressful. It helps that my queue is up to eight items and I'm scheduled out till March twentieth. Which is ridiculous. What's even more ridiculous: I'm finishing frames even faster since I decided to mostly give up trying to enlarge frames that I'd patterned for cross-stitching.

Speaking of cross-stitching, I keep getting so nostalgic over freehand embroidered pins that I made and my dad threw away because they were ruined by roaches. It would be super easy to run over to Walmart, grab some floursack towels (we need some new ones anyway), and just, go to town. Particularly, I worked really fucking hard on my 3D fluffy clouds for this rainbow I made, and my Captain America shield would be even cooler in all metallics. On black felt. I could do the Deathly Hallows symbol again.

Plus, my #NotASaint pin 😍 I waaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnt that pin back. But I'm never getting it back. So I'll just have to remake it.

I don't want to be too much like that, but I have absolutely tons of time to produce more frames--honestly, probably too much time, given that apparently, I can pixel art like, three frames a week. So, yes, I should probably suck a lemon and finish gluing my sister's mug back together, and then finish turning all the bags we currently own into plarn, so I can finish my plastic bag monstrosity of a project on gawd why did I do that to myself. Honestly, I'll probably run out of plastic bags before I finish this bag. Then I'll just steal extra bags when we go grocery shopping. I'm saving the nice heavy bags for........... something special. Probably a basket, if I ever finish this bag....... I don't think it's possible for one household to use as many bags as I imagine being necessary for this bag project.

So maybe............. maybe one day...... I'll finally remake all my handmade patches/pins.

My logo should be a pretty straightforward start........>.>

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hipsterfrankcastle · 8 years ago

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kastle ship meme

their ringtones for each other:

karen and frank both hacked into one another’s phones and changed their ringtones to tunes that would provide maximum embarrassment. frank thought he’d won by changing karen’s to the magic mike song, but then he was getting some info from micro in a diner when they both had to sit through this.

their FB relationship status:

oddly enough not something they’d put on facebook, even if they both had it. frank has a strong aversion to all things social media and karen has three facebook friends (matt, foggy and ellison). every so often she does post vaguely cryptic shots of shit like his arm in front of some national monument when they go on road trips, but that’s the closet they get.

whether they’re addicted to couples selfies:

you think frank castle isn’t OBSESSED with pictures of him and karen? he has a phone from 2008 the size of a small brick with the crappiest camera function imaginable and he’s contemplating buying another one just to fill with more pictures. he never does anything with them (see previously mentioned social media aversion), he just likes having them. (he doesn’t mention the one in his wallet, one of those cringy strip-set of photos they’d taken at the mall. karen had pinned them up on the corkboard in their pokey kitchen but he’d torn the last one off; the one where she'd leaned over, quick as a whip, and pressed a kiss to his cheek and he’d been so surprised that he hadn’t had time to hide his blush, grin splitting his face in two, staring down at his knees just as the flash had went off)

which of their friends is the over-joyed shipper trash that they are together:

FOGGY CONSISTENTLY PRETENDS TO BE HIGHLY DISAPPROVING BUT SECRETLY LOVES THE WAY KAREN IS 90% SMILIER EVER SINCE THEY GOT TOGETHER. but look, if matt asks it’s awful, okay?

who overshares intimate relationship details:

karen once made foggy and matt simultaneously spit-take their beer with an offhand comment she hadn’t quite meant to make (but seeing matt turn bright red the next time he’d seen frank because he may or may not have been thinking about the dick joke karen had made was somewhat satisfying)

who steals the other’s clothes:

karen, literally all of the time. it drives frank nuts, even if she does look adorable bundled up in his sweaters (“i don’t care if you look cute, that’s not the point, karen!”)

who’s the PDA fan:

frank, which karen had not seen coming at all. he doesn’t do it in a gross way, just a hand tucked around her waist when they’re in the queue at starbucks, or a little kiss pressed to the top of her head at the library and she digs out the book he’s been looking for for hours (she doesn’t usually initiate pda apart from the one time she’d started play-wrestling with him at the mall and the security guard had to come over and check frank was okay after she ended up rugby tackling him and winding him in the process)

who proposes:

THEY’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A SHOOT-OUT AND HONESTLY KAREN DIDN’T MEAN TO BE SO MELODRAMATIC BUT SHE SERIOUSLY THINKS THEY MIGHT DIE SO IT’S ALL SHOUTING OVER GUNFIRE hey, if we don’t make it out of here - don’t say that, karen - no, but if we don’t, i... i want to get married - karen - frank, really, listen - ARE YOU SERIOUSLY PROPOSING TO ME RIGHT NOW - YES - I LOVE YOU - I LOVE YOU TOO BUT IF WE DON’T MOVE WE’RE GOING TO GET SHOT

later on down the road they have an engagement party which only foggy, matt, micro and the guy who works down the road at the pet shop attend and it’s the single most awkward thing on the planet

#kastle #karen page #frank castle #punisher #jon bernthal #deborah ann woll #au #kind of?????#forgive me #this was lame

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safestsephiroth · 8 years ago

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An Explanation for My Departure from The Riskbreakers, or: A Tale of Failure

This is my story with FFXIV to this point, an explanation of the current situation, and my plans for the future. The only person “indicted” or “called out” here is me. Should you feel the need or desire to contact me about this subject, and what I’ve written below does not feel comprehensive enough to you, please feel free to.

CW: extreme depression, suicidal thoughts

I joined Final Fantasy XIV against my better judgment. I hated MMOs as a genre. Paying for the subscription would, at the time, be a dicey prospect. I had plenty of other games to play, plenty of other things to do.

But I was lonely. Terribly lonely.

What I saw in FFXIV was a chance to play a game and make new friends. When I first got the game, the only person I knew in-game was @onwesterlywinds. But there was more than just that. I didn’t know anything about the community whatsoever. I didn’t even follow many Final Fantasy blogs in general at the time. I got the game at Livvy’s behest and specifically to play it with her.

I had never roleplayed in a game before. My prior experiences with text-based RP (except those linked to a tabletop game system, such as Vampire: The Masquerade) were universally terrible. Embarrassing. I had horrible associations with those memories. I was terribly nervous when I first RPed, and the first character I made in FFXIV, Blaetlona Isilmynawyn, was intentionally made in response to this and my general lack of knowledge of the game or its world. Blae was overwhelmingly cheery and optimistic to the point of obliviousness, which gave me a free out of any nervous situation, as well as being completely naiive about the world so I would be able to slide on not knowing important things.

I made more characters over a long, long period of time. It was a crawl, really. I gave each character tons of effort, plenty of introduction, and loved them dearly. But in all honesty, I was terrible at RP for the first year or two. Just abysmal. A bad RP partner who overstepped boundaries constantly because I was used to GMing games, making decisions about the game world to make for interesting plots.

I am embarrassed and ashamed of how long it took me to learn that lesson.

Over time, my connection with The Riskbreakers grew into a wonderful friendship. I did everything I could to be pleasant to be around - farmed gil I spent on in-game birthday presents for other company members, was a positive presence in /fc, and helped out with PVE content when I could - I was terrible and hated the endgame gear grind, hated the very idea of dropping either weeks of time or shitloads of gil so I could experience something I didn’t give a damn about. Because it was never about the gameplay, it was about the story - of the game, and of the RP.

It was glamour that got me out of that shell and into the Crystal Tower. That led to me doing MSQ through the abject misery of 2.1, well into 2.3 or 2.4′s time.

The problems, all along, were my fault. I didn’t want to play the endgame when I could instead level alts or RP. I didn’t want to waste time on parts of the game I was sure to just find frustrating. I hated the weekly cap, hated the tome grind, hated the very idea of doing coil.

In Heavensward, I started to care so much more about the gameplay, in large part because it was made better pretty much across the board. I remember I didn’t even do the MSQ for like two months - I was too busy leveling DPS jobs in the magical dungeon queues that happened right at Heavensward launch, where DPS was always adventurer in need.

What I always loved about The Riskbreakers (RISK) was the atmosphere. Everyone was friendly towards everyone, the RP was fairly loose and there was a lot of room for creativity. I made so many characters with such variety - nowhere else would my cast include a privateer, a melodramatic bard, an ages-old assassin hiding in plain sight, and a fangirl! Every step of the way, it felt fantastic to be supported. To be respected.

About a year and a half ago, towards the tail end of May 2016, as I recall, I feel I lost that respect irrevocably. I was struggling with severe depression at the time and I had so many difficulties suppressing my agitation in the company Skype chat that I followed an implicit suggestion and voluntarily left said Skype chat with the promise I’d be allowed back in whenever I wanted. To be frank, this was the worst decision I could have made. RISK was practically all of my daily socialization. Without access to the Skype chat I missed planned events, I missed out on the lives of people I cared deeply about. And I really, truly cared, with all my heart. In the darkest times, when FFXIV was all I had in my life that I could still count on enjoying, I tried to cling even harder to the community of friends I had. But I’ve always been a shy person, and that meant the only people I really knew at the time were in The Riskbreakers.

By sequestering myself, I killed my social life. You may be able to imagine that this did not help my depression. It was a terrible decision I had made, but the damage stayed done. I ended up installing Discord, a program which at the time I had zero interest in, because there was a RISK Discord server and I’d hoped to be able to reconnect through that. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t. I found myself afraid to talk to people I’d known for years because I thought, deep down, they all knew I deserved the isolation.

It was irrational of me, sure. But I was far beyond the point of rationality for a long, long time. Maybe I still am. Probably. I still remember there was a resistance to the movement to Discord because of past experiences by some of the membership, people who’d seen that cliques tend to form in situations where not everyone can/wants to be on mic. I tried. I really did try to be of use, to be a positive presence.

But after days of getting up my courage, the first call I joined ended quickly thereafter. As did the second. Thusly convinced it was my fault, and that I was secretly hated, I elected not to join calls uninvited. It felt rude, like intruding into a conversation at a restaurant. It wasn’t talking with friends anymore. There was only so much I could take.

My depression grew worse, and worse, and worse, as my life fell further into a downward spiral. I took increasingly long sabbaticals from RP or even all of FFXIV. I found other games to dive into. I found more distractions to keep back the voices telling me they all hated me and suicide was the only option I had left.

Even as Fanfest approached, I didn’t feel much better. I think everyone remembers that in general 2016 was a shitty year for most people, and it was especially bad for me. Much of my good cheer and will to carry on came from The Crucible. Much of my will to live came from the handful of people I was deeply entrenched in RP with, who I decided to trust.

There were a lot of sins I committed, then - abandoned plots, failure to show up for company plans, missed events - and I regret them all. I don’t feel I can or should be forgiven for what a sorry excuse for a company member I was at the time and since. After the first Heavensward MSQ RP arc which I didn’t much enjoy, something I never once voiced properly because I was hoping the problem would just go away, I skipped a major RP arc in Palace of the Dead for a reason so petty and selfish I won’t mention it here. I jumped into the next one because I felt that my connection to the company was slipping. Sometimes I wanted to leave so I could have less reasons to live.

For all I wanted to blame other people, it was me. It was always me. Every step of the way. If I had just reached out and asked for help, maybe it would’ve been different. If I’d been bluntly honest, maybe it would’ve been better. But I didn’t want to be a problem anymore. I already bothered people so much they’d leave calls if I showed up, right? So reaching out at all, particularly publicly? Not an option. I didn’t want to hurt others. I didn’t want to be selfish. But maybe I should have been, just a little.

For a long time, I lived thinking I would never reconnect with FFXIV RP outside the three (and, over time, two, then one) people I had frequent RP with. Instead of enjoying RP with RISK I found it stressful and unfulfilling, both out of a fear of fucking things up and a general dislike of where things were going. My favorite part of the company was the generally loose standards it played by, after all.

I used Rydia Misuto as a way to cope. By making a character with so much effort put in, so much potential for growth, and a story of so much more grand a scale than I usually did, I expected people to be impressed with me. Rydia came in December 2015, at the cusp of the depressive phase that never really went away completely since it started, but I was proud of her. I loved writing her. I was so inspired by her. Brohamut and I planned great things for her and Cecilia Harvey, and we elected to keep our plans largely a secret so others could be surprised by this story we were collaboratively telling. Suddenly the magic had returned before it had faded.

But I shot myself in the foot. I fucked myself over before I’d begun, because I was so casual about her character that she was quickly just the “lettuce brat”. I tried my best to depict a character who had gone through hell and lived, and came out severely traumatized and unable to adequately cope with it. Someone in need of help they were reluctant to seek. I had hoped that something this different would be of interest to people.

It was a mistake.

A depressing story like hers? Nobody wanted that. Not really. There were lots of expectations heaped upon her because of the association with the character from FFIV. Though I did my best to clarify she was inspired by the character and never meant to be anything close to a 1-to-1 transition, I clearly screwed that up, too.

Rydia, a character written extremely seriously, became ‘the lettuce brat’. She ended up little more than comic relief in the eyes of most people, I feel, and the more I struggled to RP her more and get her taken more seriously the more I lost the fight. I misread the situation. Nobody would have wanted to RP with her no matter how I’d played her. Some things are just uncomfortable, and it’s not really other peoples’ obligation to explain that things make them uncomfortable.

The final nail in the coffin of my membership with RISK was the reformation leading into Stormblood RP. The free and open company of eclectic, bombastic personalities became a paramilitary and overnight practically none of my characters fit anymore. Jaraku doesn’t belong in a uniform taking orders. Grey didn’t want to fight. The only IC RISK member I had that was cool with it was Resh Viqqoh.

And even writing for The Crucible, carrying on other RP plots, playing Stormblood, I still tried to make Resh interesting. It was a new lease on the character who’d for so long been a nothing presence. Making her a full-on engineer wasn’t just logical, it was beautiful. It was a great evolution from her involvement in prior RP. It was a great thing.

I was so, so happy to be able to contribute, but once again I sank myself. I didn’t hunt people down to ask for RP, and the weapon dossiers I made just weren’t interesting enough to hold attention. Not one person wanted anything to do with the ‘engineering department’, which consisted of who I now see was mostly considered a kooky side character and an actual, literal child. I was doomed from the start.

Thanks entirely to Brohamut and The Crucible, I was able to find RPers outside the FC who were interested in RPing with me. I got over a lot of my shyness and came out of my shell a lot more because it felt less like one mistake would get me kicked. In my depressed state, I was convinced I was always a hair from being politely asked to leave RISK.

I never wanted to worry anyone, so I kept it to myself, almost entirely.

When my last-ditch effort with Resh failed and I found myself (on my second account) in other free companies who I felt more kinship with than RISK, the end was inevitable. If I wasn’t going to be allowed to RP with RISK as Rydia, if my characters were doomed to languish (because of my mistakes, because of my writing, because of my crippling sleep disorder I still don’t have a handle on) in a company with which I had precious little business RPing, then why not leave?

When I first broached the topic to Livvy, I told her I wanted to leave in small numbers, a bit at a time, so nobody would panic. And because I wanted to have the option open to come back. But that was me being a coward again.

So instead, I’m leaving in total now. And I want this explanation visible to the company I loved more than I had ever loved myself so that there’s no doubt or rumor about why I did it.

Now, as far as what I’m planning for RP purposes:

Any character who ends up retired/replaced will have a public post of their epilogue. I hate retcons, hate them, so I would rather write the end of their story than do what it would take for them to continue on outside the company, i.e. deny it existed IC. I’m not going to do that.

-Blaetlona Isilmynawyn is up in the air. I’ve had no real reason to RP her in any meaningful way in about a year. She’s tentatively considered an ‘open’ slot for new character creation

-Grey Riot will be retired. This has been a long time coming and was discussed in advance with relevant parties.

-Jaraku Drake is moving on from RISK, and IC has more plans now than ever. Apparently leaving the company was the best thing to happen to him from my perspective because now he has much more freedom to go different places and do more things.

-Zwynmaga Doesmagasyn, as the ‘biker gang’ RP series is completely abandoned/concluded, is up for replacement for new character creation should this be necessary.

-Bernard Undertaker, an integral part of the Undertakings arc, will remain involved in that arc so long as he lives IC. However, as I am neither able to afford nor justify spending $50 on him at this time for a story + job jump just so he can do one in-character action, I will not be taking him to Stormblood.

-Natalya Nibiru is up for replacement or radical shift in attention/direction. Potentially, I’ll keep her on to RP with Gaelle.

-Resh Viqqoh is going to require either EXTREME shift in character, or, more likely, replacement.

-Rydia Misuto will be one of my highest-priority RP characters because I owe it to her to give her a serious story that will be worth reading about, especially now that I am free of any burden of worry about how her story will conflict with others’.

-A’sato Clueless, made specifically for an RP arc I completely ruined immediately out of panic (which is not an excuse), will be replaced with a much better character for an arc I intend to go well which will be wholly unrelated to RISK.

-Gaelle Troyes will either continue to RP alongside Natalya/doing her own thing or be returned to retirement. Likely the former. I do enjoy those two and their dynamic.

-Gerrith Gaffgarion will be taken in other directions, as it was made clear to me (tragically late) that plans changed and he will not be needed or wanted in any RP involving RISK. He has already continued his successful career via a job which was part of a story arc conceived, planned, and carried on by @sasha-rochester and their closest RP partner, who are both phenomenal writers I have nothing but good to say about.

-Tange Shishido remains a willing teacher to anyone in the Far East who desires to learn how to use a katana to kill Garleans.

As the rest of my characters are not directly affiliated with RISK in any meaningful capacity, I feel no need to address my plans for them.

I hope those of you who took the time to read this can understand my decision. I hope I can be forgiven. At this time, I don’t know if I’ll attend any future company events. I will be leaving the skype chat and discord server, however, as it seems appropriate to do so given the circumstances. I never used the RISK server to play Overwatch, anyway, and it’s not as if I ever felt welcome in calls there.

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