#stage: statements

[k9punkout]

very interesting how rude gestures and foul language are publicly censored, but the gore and death of humans is considered not only okay, but the best part of the show

smth smth cruelty is the norm when it's against a certain demographic that is considered inferior, but the second anyone under said demographic shows any sort of resistance to that system it's seen as beastly and uncouth

might elaborate more later

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

realised. dean is the perfect viewer avatar for a horror show. he gets to be both the action hero and the quippy, self-aware wiseguy who knows he's in a horror show. he provides a safe point; a comfortable power fantasy for you to experience a story through. he's ash in the evil dead. he's a gunslinging tough guy, and you get to see those moments where heroism sits on his shoulders like an ill-fitting leather jacket. and even when he gets his turn at being captured and victimised by the narrative, it's filtered through this mythic lens first. he's the tormented hero; tortured by villains, tortured by the constraints of his role. yeah he gets bruised, beaten bloody to a pulp, torn to shreds and killed, but his perception of reality never gets thrown into serious doubt (unless it's played out as a gag). the narrative valorises his sense of right and wrong, because that's what heroic stories do. their heroes provide moral center, regardless of how we might judge them. the lines dividing hero, anti-hero, and villian are paper thin, and dean isn't truly ever allowed to be ambiguous. and the hero always wins in the end, even when he dies.

meanwhile sam is the abject object of the horror show, a character who gets trussed up, chased, tied up, ripped apart, cut into, possessed, exploited, manipulated and psychologically hounded. he's carrie covered in pig's blood. he's the marginal person people are cheering on either to die - or to live past it all. he gets his turn at playing both movie monster and victim, always occupying the liminal space between both. abject horror lives within him. he's violated with demon blood, he consumes demon blood. he hates halloween because he vomited his guts up in front of a room of normal children. he will never get to be normal, he's designated the freak on multiple levels, but most significantly, by the way his narrative frames him. he's living inside a world that is at its core, fundamentally frightening and horrifying - full control over himself and his surroundings is always slipping away, just beyond his reach. his grip on reality and the world around him gets thrown into question by the story consistently. what's right? what's wrong? what's real? what isnt? the narrative punishes him - because that's what happens to you when you're living in a horror. he can never run away from his nightmare reality, it catches up to him like a curse nipping at his heels. the only way out for him is through the punishing fire. in order to survive, he's required to be pushed to the absolute brink of instability; emotionally, physically and mentally. he emerges out the other end, barely holding it together but somehow alive - like the bloody final girl, changed irrevocably by what she's experienced.

[bananafishdepression]

Apparently Yoshida Akimi fell into depression or something so she speed-ran some of last volumes of Banana Fish manga and it shows, everybody had the same face and an ugly one on top of that, and honestly I'd be depressed if I had to write a story like that for 10 years and make the most likable characters suffer the most 💀

[aq2003]

archive dive #5: hamlet (2008) - stage version

it's been my dream to see the stage version of this hamlet in some way shape or form and i'm so happy i got to do it. it's so fascinating to compare how david has portrayed the character early on in the run to the film version, seeing the original staging and getting a taste of how it was like watching it live. i think the look and feel of the production really shine, it has some super creative stuff going on that was unfortunately lost with the medium/the shoestring budget of the film version so i'm so glad i got to see this! there will always be a special place in my heart for hamlet, it was the first shakespeare play that i fell in love with, it was the first one i went back and made notes on, and doing that basically catapulted me to where i am now (full shakspeare hyperfixation). and this production is really special to me too; obviously david tennant is my One Perfect Hamlet, but it's not just him, nearly every single member of this cast has remained my favorite version of the character even after watching so many others. rsc hamlet 2008-2009, my beloved, i will love you forever <3

prev / archive dive tag

this was one of the few recordings that also had a prompt book that i could look at alongside it (i asked for it when booking the appointment). and i got to see what i think are greg doran's notes! this is the only prompt book that had notes scribbled on the backs of the pages, and some of the observations are things ik greg has specifically talked about before like the cold biting air being an establishing element of the setting

at the beginning there's a note saying "the genius of hamlet consists, perhaps, in the fact that the play can serve as a mirror. an ideal hamlet would be one most true to shakespeare and most modern at the same time. costumes do not matter. what matters is that through shakespeare’s test we ought to get at our modern experience, anxiety, and sensibility"

so true bestie. greg doran loves his mirror symbolism and i thank him every day for it

the lighting!! is so good!!! when the play opens it’s almost pitch black, lit only by the flashlights, it’s genuinely a bit unsettling and i love it. i have never been more jealous of the people in the audience etc etc

it's in the film version but i never noticed it until i watched this: i love gertrude's dress in 1.2. i love how it spills onto the ground. it's very royal and elegant and it tickles my brain (alsp the color grading in the film version is very desaturated so in this recording the blue of her dress sticks out more, esp againt the pitch black mirrored stage)

the way gertrude speaks to hamlet in 1.2 feels less gentle and more scolding, like she's a bit more fed up with hamlet's grieving already. and it contrasts really well with hamlet being more of a fragile mess

the too too solid flesh soliloquy works soooooo well on stage. it's like. it's such a raw display of emotion, hamlet is curled up in a ball and sobbing and he wants to be left alone, but he's still being watched. and there are no security camera shots interspersed to convey that here but you still get that feeling from all three sides of the stage being surrounded by an audience and the back of the stage being a mirror. there's nowhere he can hide and that adds a whole other Layer to it

tbh if i was shooting the film version i would film it similar to the angle in the archive recording, i.e. from the side and swamped in the set of the castle (and then moving/cutting closer as he stands up). there's lots of moments in the stage version that do a really good job in conveying how small hamlet feels in this inhospitable prison-like elsinore

the line delivery on "no more like my father, than I, to......HERCULES" was so funny. i love it. hamlet racking his brain for a second for a figure that is the most impossibly different from him and landing on hercules. really good

i really like having an audience here to laugh at hamlet's jokes... like not to say hamlet is better with a laugh track BUT david's hamlet is really witty and funny and him having an audience to bounce off does a lot

ophelia really shows off the condoms in laertes' suitcase for everyone with eyes to see LMAO. i get that it's for the stage and you gotta be able to see what she's holding even in the seats furthest back but my god is the energy for that moment different dhhfjshwjsjdhw

the lighting for the fireworks is so good. mwah. also re: hamlet's lines ripping into claudius' drinking habits, it's very funny to see hamlet shivering + his voice wavering from the cold and squinting from the bright flashing lights of the fireworks and generally being a sad pathetic wet cat kicked down the stairs out into the cold, but still being really uppity about a royal's dignity and honor. a very hamlet thing for him to do tbh

hmmmmmg the way hamlet spreads out his arms when he says "i do not set my life at a pin's fee, and for my soul what can it do to that". feels like it's leaning into the interpretation of like. he is kind of setting his life at a pin's fee. he doesn't care about what the ghost could do to him

also the way hamlet tries to run after the ghost after he exits in 1.5, how the mirrored doors shut in his face and he collapses to the ground. this flows REALLY well into how the production rearranges the scenes, i.e. hamlet's next appearance after this being to be or not to be. there's a part of him that just wants to follow his father in death but now that he's been tasked with killing his uncle he can't do that. he has to make good on his promise. even though he doesn't really want to

really interesting note from the prompt book: the ghost never calls hamlet "son" (or addresses him by entirely familial terms. the closest he gets is saying "thy mother" in 3.4). definitely feeding into hamlet's insecurity and feelings of failure, a "he doesn't even think me worthy enough to be his son" kind of deal, i think

this version of to be or not to be is reallyyyy good. best way i can describe it is that hamlet feels very lost and alone. it's raw and vulnerable and sad. in the film version he whispers it and stares into your soul and makes you feel his exhaustion and horror but onstage he plays into hamlet being this exposed nerve, very close to just breaking down into sobs, feeling defeated and miserable and very much Needing A Hug But Not Getting One Because He's Supposed To Be Killing His Uncle Right Now

generally in this recording you see more of how hamlet reacts to things via his body language rather than his facial expressions (obviously), and what really struck me abt the beginning of the nunnery scene is that hamlet is still trying to soothe himself, he's kinda wrapped his arms around himself like he's still haunted by his thoughts of the afterlife and he wants the intimacy and safety that he used to have with ophelia but now because of everything that has happened he can't (and that feeds into his paranoia, him lashing out at her, etc)

ophelia is ANGRY in her soliloquy after the nunnery scene. i'm so sick and twisted

when polonius asks "what is the matter, my lord?" and hamlet says "between who?", he looks at the two opposite sides of the audience surrounding him. really nice touch

yeahhhh the rosencrantz/guildenstern scene works so well here. the funny suspicious awkward pauses!! (where the audience is also given time to laugh!!) they don't know how the fuck to respond to hamlet's prodding and it's hilarious!!

rosencrantz’s "well if you delight not in man" + talking about the players feels like a super awkward pivot from laughing at hamlet saying "man delights not me", this is how i imagined this bit when i was reading it for the first time so it was very nice to see

the table thing that hamlet stands on when reciting the lines from the aeneas speech creaks loudly every time he moves around (and he moves around a lot). on top of this being a good way to liven up this bit i just know the players think hamlet is so fucking annoying god bless

during the coward soliloquy hamlet keeps looking around at the audience wildly, like instead of fixing his gaze in one place he keeps moving around and he's filled with such a nervous energy and it is very "average college student who hasn't slept in a few days" vibes

when hamlet does his "hold a mirror up to nature" bit, he shines a light on the audience rather than the players!!

hamlet doesn't say the passion's slave speech to horatio up close to his face while he's doing his tie, yaoi stocks have fallen -500 pts. however when horatio says his "if he steal aught the whilst this play is playing and 'scape detecting, i will pay the theft" line he holds hamlet's hand and then hamlet grabs onto him back like he's so severely starved of touch and affection (because he is) and there's a hot 2 seconds where they just look into each other's eyes. yaoi stocks back up 500 pts

the "country matters" line is played as hamlet doing this crab-walky-hip-thrusting motion which is funny, but i do like the film version (ie hamlet chomping on ophelia's arm) better because i think the unhinged clinginess fits david's version of him better

the ghost in the dumbshow flies all the way up into the ceiling !! hamlet really put in the work for the mousetrap's special effects lkmgsdlkfflw

hamlet doesn't have his funny little camera! for either this scene or the eggshell soliloquy. i wonder if the camera was something that became a thing during the west end transfer or if it's smth exclusive to the film version (if it was the latter, it was probably a way of translating over the production's play-within-a-play elements into a "film-within-a-film")

you see it in the above image but hamlet takes out his pocketknife for the "when churchyards yawn" soliloquy! (because he doesn't have his funny little camera with him, it's played pretty differently). he flicks it open when he says "now may i drink hot blood", and holds it up when he says "i will speak daggers to [my mother]". ooooo very murderous very scary. and it works really well with the cut to the intermission on "now might i do it pat while he is praying", because it's more convincing to the audience that killing claudius is something hamlet could potentially do in that moment

when hamlet shoots polonius, the glass panes of the mirrored back wall "shatter" and the cracked glass stays there for the whole rest of the play!! i love it, it's such a good way to communicate this moment being this real point of no return for all of the characters

i think it might've been bc this was pretty early in his run, but david's portrayal of hamlet here is much less loud/wild/shouty than his film version. which isn't necessarily a bad thing; in moments it even enhances the portrayal—like lack of confidence in himself is hamlet's whole thing, and there are moments that feel more reined in and grounded. but the tradeoff is that imo hamlet's really important moments of genuine rage and frustration don't hit as hard, and you feel that the most in 3.4 (and in the nunnery scene, the coward soliloquy, ophelia's funeral, and claudius' death, but mostly 3.4).

hamlet's voice wavers and breaks when he said "for this same lord, i do repent", he actually feels bad for killing polonius here :(

note from the prompt book: "'damned fingers'—even tips of fingers are damned". Yeah... yeah

claudius is wearing a bathrobe in 4.3. hamlet is really doing all this at 2 am

as described in that one comment i saw from the person that watched this live: after hamlet is sent to england he stays in the audience! and in 4.4 he walks down the aisle and talks to the captain of the norwegian army while standing next to the front row seats

for the graveyard scene horatio is just kinda vibing on the ground while hamlet stands and talks to the skull. tbh i like it in the film version a lot better bc it's framed more as hamlet having an honest conversation with horatio rather than "oooo the yorick speech, take your photos now". even if said photos are so iconic..

gertrude turns to stare right at claudius before drinking from the poisoned cup, penny downie really was making sure the audience knew gertrude did all that on purpose

also the way gertrude sort of stumbles over to wipe hamlet's face as like a last gesture of affection bc she knows she's going to die??? and hamlet pushes her off bc he doesn't know anything is wrong??? help me ???? my feelings??????

fortinbras actually walks out on stage at the end of the play! horatio still has the final line of "flights of angels sing thee to thy rest", but we get to see the transfer of power in denmark in addition to horatio cradling hamlet in his arms as the final image of the play

anyway. the hamlet huh

[ozcarma]

In light of the TGWDLM remount I’m tempted to make a compilation of my favorite parts of various student and community theater productions that have been uploaded onto YouTube…

[slow-reader-reads-books]

With the rise of the romantasy genre in Western anglophone fiction, and influenced by my personal love of Scum Villain's Self Saving System, for fun I've tried to imagine the same type of comedic transmigratory deconstruction of svsss applied to a romantasy story a la Sarah J Mass, and honesty it's kinda hard to imagine how that'd be done (if done by me). And I realize that that's bc svsss toes a very delicate line of criticizing a genre (stallion novels) while technically being in one, but it turning into a different genre (danmei) without losing its basic characters or worldbuilding and basic feeling of "love".

Shen Yuan as a pov character toes a very fine line, as his purpose as a protagonist is to color how we the readers view the story he's in. If his derision towards stallion novels was truly a 100% thing, he never would have read the book. And if he never read PIDW, how is he supposed to care about the world? How is he supposed to love Binghe? But if he loves it completely, then he'd not want anything to change. Of course him being put in the role of the villain forces him to care about changing things in order to survive, but he also personally has issues with the story other than his personal livelihood that extend beyond that scope.

In the end, though we the real readers never actually get to read PIDW for ourselves, we are taught via Shen Yuan (and to an extent Airplane) that while it has issues and is shallow and faulty in many regards, we don't actually devalue it. We see the value in it via the exploration of its lost potential through the lens of a danmei romance.

And the framing of stallion novels is subtextually (basically text honestly) equated with compulsory heterosexuality. And Shen Yuan reading PIDW yet having so many issues with it subconsciously takes on the character of a uncracked queer engaging with relationships and senses of self they're not actually suited for simply bc they think it's the normal thing to do, and of course they themself are normal. And of course someone who doesn't subconsciously buy it (but consciously chooses to) would "stick with it" yet complain all the while.

Which greatly sets up Shen Yuan to be in a position to find himself within the thing he used as a tool to run away from himself, making the journey towards self discovery still rooted in who he was before, as it's not as if he was straight and then gay. He was always just himself, but now seen through a different lens. Much like the PIDW-SVSSS dichotomy. They're not actually inherently different, they're just happier and more honest with themselves, or less so. They're not different worlds, in the end, just happier or sadder ones. Their building blocks are near identical (save the odd transmigrator).

All of this to say... I can't say I'd be able to do what mxtx has done with stallion novels and danmei to romantasy turned queer isekai. It'd be hard to do with my personal lack of faith in the grounds of romantasy as fertile soil for a queer reframing that explores compulsory cishetnormativity within its own world building and literary genre. Perhaps this lies in the fact that romantasy is often not a male fantasy like stallion novels, and Shen Yuan is a male character entering the world of a male fantasy he had massive critiques of, and NOT as the protagonist who is the receiver of the male empowerment fantasy (while simultaneously entering the female oriented danmei genre as the male protagonist who is indeed set up to eventually get his man... Layers man, svsss has got them).

The equivalent of that for western romantasy is something a bit too vague in my mind, even though the concept of it fascinates me.

Shen Yuan's funky psychology suits the framing of the story perfectly. He's emotionally involved but in a constant state of tension. If he were a healthy person, he'd simply not involve himself with a story that frustrates him so much, and yet he loves Luo Binghe's existence too much to let go. He's found a point of soothing within the otherwise tar pit of a story. And that turned into him finding his true self and true happiness through him, while learning to let go of the "original version" of both himself and PIDW'S world. He need not attach himself to those things anymore, they're not what makes himself happy. And to find your happy ending not in some foreign world unfamiliar to you (going out, dating strangers, facing others with honesty, facing the unknown), but actually just secretly hidden in the world you're already immersed in, isn't that pure wish fulfillment, the very thing stallion novels are meant to be?

In a way, the stallion novel of PIDW indeed did eventually fulfill its purpose of "wish fulfillment for its male audience", just in a different way (and in a way that sort of bridges the binary gender gap of the male and female audience by having a diagetic male audience/reader character who is meant to be perceived by a real majority female audience/readership, bringing a sort of narrative androgyny to everything, albeit one that Shen Yuan doesn't quite perceive, bringing in fun dramatic irony). And that sort of framing in a way validates stallion novels as a genre, while still communicating that they still kinda suck and have issues.

To imagine this same sort of framing repurposed for a transmigration story into romantasy... I can't quite envision how that would work. I'd love to see it attempted though.

And this as a thought excersize has made me rerealize how great Shen Yuan's character is and how suited he is to his specific story, and how well it works as a multilayered metaphor of... basically all kinds of queerness but especially and textually gayness.

[floridazcrazy]

Chat MACKLIN HAS SHARK TEETH

[perfectthewayyouare]

You can't have main character deaths on a tv show where they never talk about or address their traumas and grief for more then five minutes!!! Will we see any of these characters in therapy again, you bet your ass we won't. Season 9 will open with a fucking bee-tornado like ridiculous major disaster and then it'll be back to regular 911 story lines that get So Close to actually talking about the important things, then cut away to someone with their hand stuck in a vending machine with jaunty music in the background. Just you wait. I am so angry

[jesseisstuckinside]

right so. a friend of mine loves The Magnus Archives but HAAAATES the Web. absolutely HATES it. cuz in every statement it's never about control or manipulation it's just "heehoo spibers following The Plan" and whenever there's spiders it's immediately a Web episode cuz spiders are never the Corruption and there's no Mother of Puppets with just the puppets and no spiders. so she's CONSTANTLY flaming The Web for its bullshittery.

so she got this mug for Christmas.

her favourite <3

[despazito]

"going to therapy makes you a worse person because you learn the words and therapy incantations to be more evil and manipulative" ok I guess we should all just kill ourselves

[threetrenchcoatsinatrenchcoat]

i wanna see a play with a dozen women and one dude advertised as a one-man show

[nazbruhh]

I just have to make things clear about next Mizuki5 focused event:

Personally, even if Mizuki ended up being a crossdresser ,not trans, I wouldn't find this a problem AT ALL. There, I said it.

The only thing I care about here if I really hope the writers will handle Mizuki's situation properly, this shit scares the hell out of me.

Without being said, I suggest to be FAR away from fandom cause when it'll come out, it might be a big chaos or whatever can happen in the future.

I LOVE Mizuki's charecter, they're knowing to be funny and iconic charecter despite being depressed and going through a lot. So please Sega, please do GOOD for them. :')

[omniblades-and-stars]

LAST LINE / WIP WHENEVER

Tagged by @commander-krios.

Fuck it. It took me so long to write just THIS. That's normal, right? To take like an hour to write something this simple?

And Maker, he was handsome - the Antivan ideal of seduction distilled down and walking around on two legs like it was the most natural thing in the world to just be that beautiful. Caught somewhere between envy and desire, [Selae] abandoned their quest for dessert in favor of chasing (or being chased by) something more interesting and far more sinful.

Tagging: @teamdilf, @sparatus and @thetrashbagswasteland

[windwardstar]

Listen. Listen. If you're thinking I like bottom surgery option except x thing. Chances are you can either not do or actually do x thing. Especially if you've not actually done research into it. Look into your options before you decide x thing has to be true.

It might make healing harder or be more difficult to find a surgeon who is willing to do so, but most of the time x thing isn't actually a hard and fast element.

[dandelion-wings]

Hi! I might be a bit late to the party, but for the kiss snippet ask game: 💜 for Fredrica x Seamus? I thought it could be Jean related enough to fall under your area of interest, but if it doesn't, Jean x Lisa instead please?

You were in fact the only one who came to the party, which is the unsurprising result of having thrown that up during a Saturday afternoon. XD But you are well within the statute of limitations for the meme, and I am delighted to write you those two! (I do in fact write characters that aren't Jean now and then! :P Though I won't pretend she isn't my favorite.) I in fact have a complex and completely baseless headcanon about young Fredrica and Seamus, and this let me delve into that, so it's kind of packed with ~extras~ since I don't know if or when I'll ever get to do that again, but thank you for giving me the chance. :>

---

ETA: Now on AO3!

---

The Ruin Grader wouldn't be such a problem if the goddamn adventurers weren't in her goddamn *way*.

"Get him out of here!" Fredrica snarls, for the third time, at the cowering girl who should never have been out on this job and the blond healer who, to his credit, is calmly weaving Anemo around his injured comrade despite the Ruin Grader stomping closer and the score-mark its eye-beam had left in the rock just above his head. Seamus is the only one qualified to be here, and she's going to tear him a new one for not tearing the Guild a new one for letting these other two take the job--just as soon as they're all safe.

It's a chokepoint for all of them. Short of climbing the sheer walls, which the injured adventurer can't do and his friends don't seem willing to do without him, the only way out is through the Ruin Grader who had pinned them into this narrow space in the first place. It's narrow enough between them and the Grader that it, in turn, is progressing only slowly, grinding its heavy feet against the narrow gap and shaking more stone off with every stomp. And she could get at and under it to disable those stomping feet if there weren't *three fucking bodies* in between her and said feet.

"Sir Fredrica, the eye beam,"  Seamus calls out, looking up from his work. He's right; it's charging up again, and this time it's carved enough obscuring stone off that it won't miss.

"Pull him back, *then* heal him!"

Seamus only shakes his head at her. Fredrica grits her teeth. The man drives her insane.

This is the third time she's run into him in the field in as many months, and it's always in situations like this--shepherding younger, more inexperienced adventurers who signed up for more than they could handle and, all three times, would have died without him there. He's calm and clever and tactically-minded and obstinate, respectfully thanking her for her help when the battle's over despite the fact that he acts as if her instructions are mere suggestions while it's on.

She's lost count of how often she's run into him out of the field, cheerful and friendly, always waving her over for a drink and introducing her to his adventurer friends as 'the best knight in the Ordo' as if Varka isn't winning every honor she's ever tried for and Seamus himself isn't so world-reknowned in the Adventurer's Guild that Fredrica herself recognized his name on first meeting. Cheerful and friendly and just as obstinate out of the field as in it. Fredrica doesn't think she's ever escaped without being talked into at least one drink. Only Varka has ever been able to do that to her before. She doesn't like it. A virtual stranger shouldn't have the same magnetic pull as her childhood friend.

"Go up," he suggests, as if a Ruin Grader isn't about to burn a hole in his stupid heroic back.

Fredrica clenches her teeth harder on a most unknightly thing to say, because he's right. Normally it would take an archer to get a Grader in the eye, but by grinding itself up against the cliff it's put itself at just the right level for her blade.

She scrambles upward, flinging herself over the edge of the cliff and then spinning about, Pyro beginning to limn her blade as she plunges it towards the glowing eye. It flares bright as elemental energy touches whatever it is that makes Ruin Graders run, and then its head sags, temporarily disabled.

It hasn't stopped moving, though, and Fredrica isn't done.

She dashes past the Grader, then plunges back down into the little canyon, a perfect three-point landing from which she rises, pivots, and stabs the point of her blade into the glowing ankle joint in one smooth motion. A step in, swinging savagely into the other leg, and it totters and starts to fall. Fredrica steps backwards, out of its way-

Her heel catches on a rock. She falls, too, tumbling backward, unable to stop herself in time, and watches the massive weight of ancient metal and petrified wood tumbling down on top of her.

Something else hits her first. *Someone* else. Wind rushes around them, deafening her, slowing the Grader's descent, and she and Seamus roll sideways, together, out from under the Grader's shadow just as it hits the ground.

"Thank Barbatos," Seamus breathes as they come to a stop, wide-eyed and more alarmed-looking than she's ever seen him. "I thought-"

Fredrica can feel his weight on top of her--she's always known he had broad shoulders for a man who uses a catalyst, but there must be even more muscle than she'd thought under that green uniform--and the heat that rushes through her has nothing to do with her own Pyro. He's still looking down at her in alarm and concern, breathing hard. She's never been so embarrassed, and she's never before noticed the blue of his eyes, the same color as the sky overhead.

She *has* noticed before this the long, straight, golden fall of his hair, of which he's famously and righteously vain. She's pricked him before, when he's cajoled her into a drink together, about how impractical and dangerous it is in combat, how he should at least wind it into a braid like her own. In this, as in everything else, he remains obstinate. Which means that his hair is falling now around them both, gleaming bright in the sun and shielding her, for a second, from the battlefield.

"You idiot," she tells him, reaches up to wind her fingers into that foolishly loose hair, and pulls him down into a fierce kiss. He makes a startled noise, but after a breathless second, kisses back with equal passion.

Then he abruptly pulls back and rolls off of her, up onto his knees, reaching for his catalyst. A noise from the twitching Grader suggests that it was the first twitch that roused him, so Fredrica tries not to feel rejected, nor frustrated, by that sudden loss of his weight and his touch. She scrambles to her own feet and draws her sword, looking his way.

"Can you Swirl my Pyro for me without hitting the feckless fools over there?"

"They aren't," he starts to say, mildly, then stops and smiles at her and nods. "Of course."

Good enough. She's still shouting at both him and the Guild for this later, but for now, Fredrica leaps back into the fight as the Grader starts shakily to stand, flames flaring around her, a wind at her back, the memory of his lips on hers lingering even as the battle consumes her thoughts.

[merp-blerp]

Wait, so Betty herself openly talks about Taylor for the first time in years, a story so real Tree's go-to magazine People talks about it, and Taylor just so happens to start selling the og Folklore cardigan again the next day? Okay. It's fine. It's cool.