#I just miss connecting with my reading audience

[katytheinspiredworkaholic]

I was going to make a poll to ask if I should resume WIP Wednesdays despite whatever I’m working on, and then answered my own damn question. Because I’m an adult and this is a multi-fandom blog and I’m writing things that make me happy and I want to share with my followers so... it’s that simple, right?

Right.

[cy-cyborg]

Toph Beifong doesn’t hold up as disability representation - Disability in the Media

[ID: A screenshot of Toph, a twelve-year-old girl with black hair in a loose, green and tan short-sleeve shirt and shorts, cheering in an arena. Next to text written in a rough, blocky font: "Disability in Media - Toph Beifong Doesn't hold up as disability representation" /End ID]

Avatar the Last Airbender is one of my all-time favourite TV-shows, and Toph is still easily one of my favourite members of Team Avatar. I was a few years younger than Toph when the show first started airing, and being a disabled kid who was into martial arts, constantly being dismissed by my able-bodied opponents and teachers, meant that I connected very strongly with her right from the get-go.

But upon my last couple of rewatches of the series, I began to come to the realisation that my opinions on Toph as a shining example of good disability representation were... well, pretty heavily influenced by my nostalgia for the show and that many aspects of Toph's character just don't hold up today. Which, honestly is fair, the show is nearly 19 years old (if it were a person in my country, it would be old enough to drink) and I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect every part of every character from an 19 year old show to age well. So today I wanted to talk about the things I think Avatar the original Last Airbender did right with Toph, where I think they missed the mark, and what changes I think would need to be made to Toph to make her work for a modern audience.

So let's start with why I think Toph doesn't really hold up as "good disability representation" today, and the elements of her character that just haven't aged as well.

For me, one of the biggest issues I noticed upon rewatching the show, is how often we are told (often by Toph herself) that she is blind, but how infrequently we are actually shown it's impact on her life beyond her bending or outside of jokey contexts. Outside of her bending, we only ever see her blindness impacting her ability to do things like read or write, otherwise, she functionally has full vision -so far as the audience is informed - with the only exceptions being when she's in the air or water (e.g. on Appa or in the submarines) or in loose soil (e.g. the desert). Having places and circumstances where she doesn't have access to her power that allows her to "see" was a step in the right direction, but I do think it would have been better if her seismic sense wasn't quite as accurate, even in the most ideal of circumstances.

But why? Well, I think Suki explains it really well, long before Toph is even introduced. when Sokka says "I should have seen you as a warrior instead of a girl" Suki stops him and says "I am a warrior, but I'm also a girl". Being a warrior and a woman are both important parts of Suki's character, and only recognising her as one or the other means ignoring a big part of who she is, and the same is true for Toph. Being blind is a big part of toph's character that has informed a lot of her life, but so is being a warrior and bending master. Many people see Toph as a warrior or fighter, but ignore her disability, but both are important. She's disabled, and a warrior, and those things don't cancel each other out, the same way being a warrior doesn't diminish Suki's status as a woman.

When the show was still airing though (and even still today) it was very common to see non-disabled fans of the show exclaiming that they honestly forget that Toph is even blind sometimes, with many people going so far as to say that she's not even disabled (and that this was a good thing). While I do think some of that comes from the fact they weren't used to seeing a disabled character as both disabled and an active participant in these kinds of stories, I do think this mostly happened because of the show's lack of, well, showing the impact of her blindness on her daily life and allowing her earthbending and seismic sense to erase the effects of her disability to some extent. It's much harder to forget a character is blind when it impacts their daily life in ways that are shown to the audience. This doesn't have to be in big, showy ways mind you, showing things subtly but consistently works way better than one "very special episode" type setup.

In the show as it is though, the seismic sense functionally gives Toph a perfect image of her surroundings until it's just not available anymore for *plot reasons*.

[ID: A black and white shot of Toph and how she sees the oponent she's fighting, with shockwaves radiating from him towards her to indicate how she's interpreting the scene. Her foe has jumped into the air and now has his hand dug into the ground of an arena, about to launch rocks towards her. /End ID]

In many ways, her picture of the world is better and clearer than what the non-disabled characters can see, leading to this feeling of her disability being erased. It may have been better though if the seismic sense could give her a general idea of big things in her immediate vicinity but she still missed the finer details, functioning at least a little bit more like a tactile/earthy-vibration version of the limited sight some legally-blind people have in real life. Things like a person's position, movement and overall pose would still be "visible" to her in a general sense, as well as big things in the environment (including things underground, since there are a few plot-points that require that), but smaller things like details about objects and creatures, people's facial expressions or what they're doing with parts of their body that have no direct contact with the ground (like their hands) is less clear. On top of this, she may struggle to detect smaller, lighter objects or creatures that realistically wouldn't cause much of a vibration at all. creatures as small and as light as Momo and Hawky for example might be detectable, but "fuzzy" to her, and anything smaller might make enough of a vibration to tell her it's there when it moves, but not enough for her to be able to tell what specifically it is without some other cue (such as sound). There are a few moments in the show that seem to imply this is what they were initially going for, but it's not really consistent, and is directly contradicted in her debut episode, "the blind bandit" when she explains that she can even "see" something as small as the ants off in the distance.

[ID: A shot of Aang, a twelve-year-old bald boy with an arrow tattoo on his head, dressed in a yellow and orange outfit, standing with Toph at night. In the foreground is an anthill will a trail of ants, which Aang is looking for. /End ID]

With an adjustment like what I'm suggesting though, she still serves her narrative purpose of teaching Aang the importance of being able to wait and listen - possibly even more so, as her needing to wait and collect more information in order to get a clearer image before striking, would back-up what Bumi tells Aang that he needs in an earth bending master. It would also still help to illustrate the connectedness of the world, a theme Toph continues to embody heavily in The Legend of Korra, while still showing the ways her disability impacts her more frequently.

When I talked about the "super-crip" trope a while back, I mentioned that one way to avoid the more harmful elements of the trope (where the character's disability is erased by their powers) is to use the ability in question more like a mobility or disability aid than a straight-up cure. The power should help them, but shouldn't make their disability redundant. People are creative and we would find ways to use a superpower or magic to help with our disabilities if it were available in real life, but what's the point of including a disabled character if you're just going to functionally erase their disability? For a character like Toph, I think this is the kind of approach that should be taken with her. Her seismic sense still helps her, but it's not a perfect replacement. (Ironically, I did use Toph as a "good" example of that trope, but I do think after this last rewatch, for the reasons I'm discussing here, I might have to backtrack that a bit).

I considered giving an alternative approach here, to keep the sensitivity of toph's seismic sense as it is in the show as is, but giving it draw-backs such as making her susceptible to sensory overload similar to what autistic people experience. However, while replacing one disability with another can work for some characters and stories, I don't think it's the best adjustment to make for Toph or any blind character, largely thanks to this also being a trope. The "blind (or d/Deaf) person who's other senses become super-human to make up for it" trope is very common in fantasy, sci-fi as well as older martial arts films, and while I'm not really the best person to cover it, I do know that members of both the blind and deaf communities have expressed a lot of frustration with it. Toph already falls into this trope quite a bit, and any suggestions I could make would have just dialled that element up to 11, and fixing one problem with another is never a good idea.

Another thing that actually did bug me for a while, even before my most recent rewatch of the show, is how Toph is treated on the rare occasions she does point out something won't working for her. There are a number of times where Toph advocates for herself and points out that something The Gaang is doing isn't accessible to her or sets a boundary to do with her disability, and she's either left behind, her concerns are brushed off or she's ignored entirely. The three most noticeable examples of this are in the Episodes "The Ember Island Players," "The Library," and Toph and Katara's segment of "Tales of Ba Sing Se."

In the Ember Island Players, Toph complains that the seats they have for the play are too high up and too far away, and she's unable to "see" what's happening on stage. Her friends don't really take any notice of her though except for Katara who tells her not to worry, "I'll tell your feet what's happening."

[ID: A shot of Katara, a fourteen-year-old girl with long brown hair and blue eyes, sitting with Toph, who is sitting with her arms crossed, annoying in a theatre seat. Both Toph and Katara are wearing red and gold, fire-themed outfits. Katara is looking at something off-screen. /End ID]

My problem here is that this particular kind of situation is something that is familiar to a lot of disabled people. Even the least independent disabled people I know get annoyed when their access needs or requests for accommodations, even among friends, are ignored and their pushback is brushed off with "don't worry, I'll just help you!" It's one of the first things that many disabled people tell non-disabled folks wishing to be better allies to us: you offering help instead of actually accommodating us isn't a good thing. We don't want to rely on others if we can avoid it, because honestly, non-disabled people often aren't very good at actually helping or in this case, relaying information to us without training and more often than not, it just results in us being left out. I find it very hard to believe a character as independent as Toph would accept that without any protest, especially considering that is pretty much exactly what ends up happening (even if the show didn't really acknowledge it). Katara never actually conveys anything about the play to Toph, except when she's attempting to throw Toph's words back in her face when she asks for clarification about the actor playing her - which ends up backfiring on her.

[ID: A shot from the same location as before, this time Toph has a huge smile on her face and is leaning on the balcony excitedly while Katara is leaning towards her, annoyed by her reaction. /End ID]

While it would have been better if Toph was actually listened to, it would have been…fine? if a justification was given for why they had to sit there (e.g. to avoid being recognised), if Katara had actually described the play for her. This wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have been better at least. In real life, many movies, TV shows (including this show's sequel series, The Legend of Korra) and other forms of visual media have an Audio Description track that does exactly that. If they weren't going to move for Toph to be able to see better, having Katara describe the play could have introduced kids to the fact this is an option. but instead it's brushed off, and I'll admit, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, even back in 2006.

The Library is a bit more forgivable in my opinion, since Toph is still new to the group, but in this episode, she states that she doesn't want to go inside the spirit library because she isn't able to read and therefor there wouldn't be anything for her to do. However, it still would have been nice to see her friends consider this at all before they actually arrived. They could have (and should have) still gone, but some acknowledgement that they at least thought about the inclusion of their disabled friend would have been nice.

[ID: A shot of Aang, Katara, Sokka and another man are talking while looking down at a map on the table. Meanwhile, Toph is sitting on the other side of the table, completely disinterested as she sips from a large ice cup with her feet up on another chair. /End ID]

Alternatively, I do feel like Wan Shi Tong, a self-proclaimed all-knowing-spirit or his assistants would have been able to point her in the direction of something to interest her, since he does imply books aren't the only form of knowledge he collects.

The reason I mention this though is two-fold. In real life, disabled people are very often left out of "fun" group activities, whether that be in formal settings or in casual ones, like hanging out with friends. If the episode had been framed as "the Gaang learns about the library and decides to track it down," I might have been less critical, but it's specifically framed as something that at least starts out as a kind of break for the team where they all take turns picking out fun things to do so they can rest, and Toph's access needs not being considered at all until they're already there hits a bit close to home, especially since they just end up leaving her outside. Secondly, there's also a stereotype that disabled people (and especially blind people) don't belong in academia and places of learning, such as in this case, libraries. This stereotype is about as old as the concept of organised institutions of learning, and definitely isn't unique to AtLA, but the assumption is often that disabled people wouldn't be interested in more formal methods of learning, so it's not worth accommodating us. With blind people in particular, when I've seen this in media, the premise is often "well I can't read anyway so why bother?" which Toph definitely falls into here with no push-back against the trope.

[ID: A close up of Toph and the rest of the group, Katara, Sokka and Aang standing in a desert. Toph shrugs, looking bored, while the others looks confused and surprised with the exception of Katara, who looks mildly annoyed, standing with her hands on her hips. /End ID]

It does make sense that she would have been resistant to going in, and I'm not saying this episode should have turned Toph into a bookwork akin to Wings of Fire's Starflight (another blind character) or anything. But there was a chance in this episode to push back against some of these assumptions, and I think it's a shame they missed it. How cool would it have been if Toph had mentioned not feeling welcomed in more formal learning spaces because of her disability, which was just reinforced by the way her old earthbending instructor and her parents treated her. She decides to go inside the library anyway as "backup" in case something goes wrong, grumbling about it the whole way down. Wan She Tong starts his introduction mostly the same way, saying humans aren't welcome and Toph makes a snarky comment about it. Wan She Tong, equally offended that this human thinks he, the all-knowing-spirit, wouldn't have considered something, shoots back with an annoyed comment about humans being so self-centred. He explains that spirits come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them have eyes, but they can still access his library. She's not the first sightless being in his study, and he-who-knows-ten-thousand-things knows this too. Once everyone is permitted entry, one of the knowledge seekers shows her to a series of slates about a lost earthbending form that she can actually read (or at least, "see" the pictures on) because it's carved. Or instead of a slate, it's a series of statues outlining the form, similar to what Aang and Zuko find in the episode "The Firebending Masters". Perhaps this form is something that helps her develop metal bending later on, and lays the groundwork for Toph becoming interested in teaching in the comics.

And finally, Toph and Katara's segment of Tales of Ba Sing Se. Katara convinces Toph to go get a makeover with her as part of a girl's day. Overall, this segment of the episode is pretty nice, and I liked that they showed that a person's gender expression (in this case, being a tom-boy) doesn't mean they can't like things outside of what we usually associate with that. Tom-boys can like girly things on occasion, and vice-versa, and I think this is an example of an episode that would seem a bit ham-fisted today, but honestly, was needed in 2006. However, there's a throw away joke where Toph says "as long as they don't touch my feet," and it immediately cuts to show spa workers filing down the calluses on her feet in a way so painful several staff are required to hold her down.

[ID: An image of Toph in a bath robe being held down in a chair by two spa workers while a third scrubs at her feet so hard that she is sweating. Meanwhile Toph is fighting against the two holding her down and has a facial expression like she is in a great deal of pain. /End ID]

this might be a minor thing in the grand scheme of the show, but it's still another example of Toph's boundaries about her disability and her access needs being disrespected by her friends, which the show just doesn't acknowledge it at all. People ignoring Toph's wishes about a part of her body she depends on in a much more direct way that others do is played off like a joke in a montage of otherwise enjoyable and goofy activities and this is a very, very common experience in disability circles.

There are a number of other, much more minor issues that show up with Toph as well, such as the fact she's the only one of the main cast who never has an on-screen (or on-page) relationship. not in the original show, not in any of the comics and not in The Legend of Korra. Again, it's not a big issue on it's own, especially because in AtLA, she's young enough where it's possible that she was just not interested yet, and she does have kids in The Legend of Korra where she mentions a relationship with a man named Kanto (Lin's father). So it is implied she does have some form of relationship eventually, but the issue is that it's never shown on screen or on the page. This feeds into a wider pattern in media of disabled characters being the only ones in their respective cast not given on-screen romantic relationships in stories, and so I still think it's worth pointing out, especially since the creators have had a lot of opportunities to correct that by now.

Toph is also portrayed, pretty much undeniably, as the best earthbener in a way that, at times, comes across almost like the creators felt like they need to compensate for her being on the team "despite" her being blind. This trope is one that I think Toph, at least partially, helped to popularise with the current generation of story tellers: The Disabled Savant. In this trope, disabled characters aren't really given the same room for growth as other characters; they aren't permitted to be average or still learning, they start good and get better. If they do progress, they often become the best, which is the case for Toph. To be fair, everyone in the The Gaang is the best at their respective skill by the end of the first series, which is why I say this is a minor point. She dose, however, have the least amount of on-screen growth in skill out of the whole team. Katara starts out barely able to lift any water at all, let alone actually bend it. Sokka is skilled with weapons from the start but does get his butt handed to him a number of times by others with more experience than him whom he learns from throughout his story arc. Zuko spends most of the early-to-middle of the show having things "blow up in his face" (to use his own words) and being belittled by his family of prodigies. While Aang is an airbending and, to a lesser extent, waterbending prodigy, he fails at pretty much everything else for a while before he starts to find his confidence - especially earth and firebending, not to mention the entire situation with locking himself out of the Avatar state. Toph is the only one who doesn't seem to fail or struggle all that much from a combat perspective. She does grow and improve in her bending (she invents metal bending after all) but she never has any moments where she really messes up or even struggles in combat all that much compared to the others.

All of these points and criticisms I've mentioned are not necessarily big in and of themselves, but when looked at together, they build up to create some issues with how Toph is depicted and how the people around her treat her disability

So that's it then? Toph is bad disability rep and Avatar should be "cancelled"?

God no. Like I said at the start, I still adore Toph and Avatar as a whole, but the show is a year away from being two decades old, it's bound to have some elements that don't hold up and I think it's worthwhile discussing them, specifically because I love the show and it's characters. Despite all the negativity I've brought up, I do think there are a lot of things AtLA did well with Toph too.

I've mentioned a few times that we rarely see how Toph's blindness impacts her life outside of her bending and combat abilities, and there's a reason I made that specification. Unsurprisingly, if you know much about the show's development, the ways in which Toph’s blindness and seismic sense impacts her bending and fighting style is one area where the show really does shine, and I still think that is worth a mention. The various types of bending are based on different styles of martial arts, specifically, different types of Kung Fu. Most earthbending in the show takes heavy inspiration specifically from Hung Ga, but Toph is different. Her bending heavily references Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, something unique to her within this world.

The reason for this (outside of simply wanting her to be visually distinct) was because the show’s creators made sure to consider what limitations Toph might have and what parts of the more common earthbending styles wouldn't work for her. Since her connection to the earth was critical in order for her seismic sense to work, they decided on a style that would keep her feet on the ground more, prioritised strong stances with minimal jumping and put more focus on attacking with her upper body. While not an intentional choice, the style they went with for Toph, according to the show's head martial arts consultant, Sifu Kisu, was supposedly developed by a blind woman in real life, at least according to legend. The creators also made further adjustments to the style with the help of martial arts consultants and just watching Toph fight is evident that a lot of love and care was put into the decisions made on that front.

I also appreciate that Toph's disability wasn't off-limits to joke about.

[ID: A picture of Toph waving her hand in front of her face with an exaggerated smile to remind the others she's blind. /End ID]

As I already mentioned, they didn't land 100% of the time, but lot of shows are afraid to use disability as a source of jokes, which would have felt weird and out of place in a show like Avatar. I see this hesitance in real-life too; people get extremely uncomfortable when I joke about my own disabilities and I've heard several people and even disabled comedians talk about the same observation. My last video on Tik Tok that got outside my usual audience was a joke about my prosthetic leg, and every single stictch and duet I received was people saying some variation of "I'm such a bad person for laughing!" "I'm going to hell!" or just straight up asking if they're aloud to laugh. If I didn't want you to laugh, I wouldn't have posted the joke! But joking about disability does make it more approachable. Despite how often Toph and the others made blind jokes though, outside of the one instance I mentioned earlier, they never felt mean-spirited or like they were punching down. Even when a very sleep-deprived Katara was intentionally trying to be.

I think it's also worth keeping in mind the context of the media landscape when Avatar The Last Airbender was airing. Today, characters like Toph are very common, so much so there's a whole trope about them (super-crips) but at the time, having a character with a major disability be a main character in an action-orientated kids show like Avatar was really rare. She wasn't the first of course, but a lot of the time, if they were included, they were almost certainly sad and depressed, wishing for a cure or they were designated to the roles of "Guy in the chair" (which is a character, usually a tech person, who helps from the background), inspiration, scary villain fake-out (or other variations of "creepy" character) or the actual villain. Having a character that was not only comfortable in her skin as a disabled person, who didn't want or need to be "fixed" or "cured" to be directly involved in the story, and who's main obstacle (at least in season 2) were how the people around her treated her, was pretty ground-breaking at the time (pun not intended) and went against the most prevalent stereotypes of it's day.

And I really want to emphasise that. For many Millennials and older Gen Zers, myself included, Toph was the first character that didn't tell us we were broken and needed to be fixed in order to be part of the group (even if they slipped up with that messaging occasionally). Prior to seeing Avatar, I honestly thought there was something deeply wrong with me for being happy with my life (a reminder, I was 10 years old when this show first started airing), because every other disabled person in the media only ever talked about how much worse their life was because of their disability, how much they hated it and how much they hated themselves. Many outright said that they wished they had died rather than become like me. Toph wasn't the first to go against those tropes, but she was the first example of a disabled character who wasn't like that many people my age saw. Did she do it perfectly? Hell no, but personally, back then, I was happy to have a character who maybe over-corrected and took things a bit too far than another sad character talking about how lives like mine weren't worth living.

I also deeply appreciated that Toph did struggle with her independence, at least initially, and where to draw the line with accepting help. Because of how much she'd been coddled and overprotected as a little kid, she saw any attempt at people being helpful and working as a team as them trying to baby her. It was very on the nose, but I liked that the show gave her an episode just dedicated to realising that it's ok to accept help. Again, this is a bit of a story telling trope today, but having the disabled character realise that it's ok to accept help, and to do it without talking down to them or saying that them wanting independence was bad, was a refreshing change compared to what was around at the time.

[ID: a zoomed out image of Toph, standing before her parents with Aang, Katara and Sokka standing behind her. /End ID]

While I think the show's creators could have benefited from consulting with disabled people and specifically blind people the same way they brought in consultants for the martial arts featured in the show, it's very clear to me that the intention behind Toph's character was good, and that actual effort was put in to make sure they depicted her well, even if some of it was a bit misplaced. It's also worth noting that the groundwork for a lot of my suggestions is already in place, they just didn't follow it all the way through. Overall, I'd say Toph was good for her time, and she's what was needed in the 2000's, even if she doesn't hold up as well today. I also think it speaks to how far we've come in terms of disability representation. When I first started engaging with the online fandom directly, almost no one, even other disabled people, argued that Toph wasn't good representation, because honestly, the bar was on the floor and we were just happy to have something different. But now there are options, and the standards are higher, and that's so, so good. It means that people, even in the media, are starting to listen and be more thoughtful about their depictions of disability than we were in 2006.

And finally, I want to really quickly mention The Netflix adaptation of Avatar. A few people have asked me now what I think they should do with Toph when they get to her, and what my predictions about the show are. I'm not going to talk about my predictions here, because this post is already way too long and that's not what this is about, but I don't think the suggestions I made today would necessarily work in this particular remake, primarily because of the tonal differences. Some adjustments definitely could, such the other characters doing a better job at listening to Toph when she points out inaccessibility and them actually considering her in the first place, but others might be harder to balance. The original show could get quite dark and serious at times, but it was primarily a light-hearted adventure story for kids. From what I've seen of the live action remake though, they're more heavily leaning into those serious elements - for better or for worse, and as such, trying to tone Toph down in the specific ways I mentioned might not balance out as well as it would in the original show. At the very least, the specifics would need to be different. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what approach they should take, that's not really the point of this post, but I did want to quickly address it to avoid confusion. My suggestions today were specifically on how to approach the cartoon version of Toph for a modern audience, and were not meant to be read as suggestions on how her live-action counterpart should be depicted.

[81folklore]

dress - SV5 - part 2

pairings: sebastian vettel x famous!reader (fc: taylor swift)

summary: its known that seb has been married for a few years now despite the public never seeing is wife, its also known that yn is in a committed relationship and has been since she disappeared from public eye. maybe they are more connected than people realise

authors note: part two because i didnt realise how long it had gotten but im allergic to actually writing.. also i apologize for the first part literally just being build-up.. i honestly didnt know about the 30 pic limit so...

authors note 2: i used google translate for the german so i hope its correct, also i dont know if petnames like darling or sunshine are used in germany but i had to use them

authors note 3: i actually hate how this turned out :/ but it was very hard to actually get my thoughts onto the page so this will do! this is part 2 so go read part 1 first!!

part 1 part 3 masterlist

ynupdates

liked by user5, user77, olliebearman and 45,920 others

YN IN THE F1 PADDOCK TODAY, I REPEAT YN IN THE PADDOCK

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user77: sorry i dont follow f1, i thought the races were on sundays?

user5: dont be sorry! today is qualifying and tomorrow is the race!

user5: SHES THERE I CANT STAY CALM

user91: does anyone know who she was with in those photos of her by the track?

user5: sebastian vettel and mick schumacher!

user6: SHE WAS WATCHING QUALIFYING WITH SEB AND MICK?? SEB VETTEL?? AND MICK SCHUMACHER?? OH LORDDD

user12: i thought i would survive.. i lied

ynupdates

liked by user5, user20, user99 and 101,782 others

seems like yn is with redbull at todays race looking as gorgous as ever!

view comments

user5: OH OH OH OH

user5: SHE IS STUNING HOLY

user20: her style recently has been AMAZING

user68: out of every team i think redbull would have been one of my last guesses

user6: THE WAY SHE IS WITH REDBULL AND SPENT QUALIFYING WITH REDBULLS GOLDEN BOY OH I FEEL SICK

user99: i love her so much

user42: at least her team will win

user591: IS SHE WEARING A WEDDING RING??

user618: i think so?? honestly i wouldnt be surprised shes very private and has been with her partner for almost 8 years so no wonder he popped the question

user90: i need her to be at every gp

ynupdates

liked by charles_leclerc, user55, user81 and 234,891 others

yn on stage performing dress during the post-race concert at suzuka! as far as we know it was a complete surprise, she came on to sing dress then left. this is her second time performing it to a live audience!

view comments

user81: WHEN IS IT MY TURN TO HEAR DRESS LIVE

user5: charles and seb were both spotted watching her from the side of the stage!

user81: charles taking seb to see his favorite artist..what if i cried

user55: i cant believe i lost dress twice without even knowing i could lose it😭

user8: i hope she had so much fun, ive missed her doing stuff like this :’)

user12: apparently she was laughing and looking off stage at someone throughout, possibly her partner?

user1: SHE AWLAYS LOOKS SO GOOD

user13: so much content this weekend..im going to have major withdrawls

yourusername

liked by sebastianvettel, mickschumacher and 13,712,847 others

four years ago i was given the pleasure of marrying my best friend

i am unable to really put into words how much meeting you and getting to spend the rest of my life with you has changed my life seb, but i tell you i love you enough daily that i hope you understand

when we first met i had no idea how much you would impact me and the way i think, but you have helped me become the woman i am today and i am forever grateful for that

i often feel unworthy of the life you have given me, the life we have together. i wonder how i got to be the one you love and cherish and i know how lucky i am to be the one you spend your life with

you gave me your heart and i promise to look after it for as long as im here, i promise to keep it safe and i know you will look after mine

danke, dass du mich liebst, danke, dass du dich um mich kümmerst. (thank you for loving me, thank you for taking care of me) Ich verspreche, dich bis zu meinem letzten Atemzug zu lieben. (I promise to love you until my last breath) Ich werde nie aufhören, dich zu lieben, Mein Sonnenschein. (I will never stop loving you, my sunshine)

tagged: sebastianvettel

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sebastianvettel: Danke, dass du dein Herz geöffnet hast und mich dich lieben lässt, mein Schatz (Thank you for opening your heart and letting me love you, my darling)

sebastianvettel

liked by yourusername, lewishamilton and 8,728,712 others

I won the most important race. It was the race into the heart of the love of my life, yn. I love you.

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yourusername: 🩵🩵🩵

user5: I CANT DO THIS STOP

user12: hes so sweet :(

user18: ive known about them for a total of 2 minutes but i love them already🫡

user6: dress was written about him…

user71: i feel ill wehn will i get posted like this

sebastianvettel

liked by charles_leclerc, yourusername, landonorris and 10,120,859 others

the sunshine of my life

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yourusername: i love you so much

lewishamilton: very happy for you mate!

user13: THEY LOVE EACHOTHER SO MUCH OH MY GOD😭😭

landonorris: 🥹🥹

user82: DRESS WAS WRITTEN BY HER FOR HIM AND HE WAS PROUD OF IT OH LORD

user5: literally my favorite people in the entire universe🫶

user19: still in shock that theyve been married for four years

[austinswife]

INSIDE Y/N BUTLER’S BAG

FROM SERIES — THE BUTLER FAMILY CHRONICLES

SYNOPSIS — You, Y/N Butler, take the audience on a sentimental journey through the special items in your luxury handbag. Each piece tells a story—whether it's the vintage film camera from Austin, the love letters you've exchanged since the beginning of your relationship, or the precious heirlooms that connect you to family. When asked to read aloud one of Austin’s love letters, you share a touching moment, recalling the first time he asked you out.

WARNING(S) — Pure fluff, deep family ties, romantic gestures, wholesome vibes.

𝜗𝜚 ALL FEEDBACKS, IDEAS SUGGESTION — TO AUSTINSWIFE

You glance toward the camera, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear as the team adjusts the lighting. The energy in the room is warm and casual, perfect for what you’re about to share. The set is cozy, filled with soft light and neutral tones, making the space feel intimate.

"Hi!" you say brightly, leaning back into the plush leather chair. "I’m Y/N Butler, and today I am here with VOGUE to do ‘What inside Y/N’s bag.’"

Your smile softens as you say their names, a genuine warmth radiating from you. "Today, I’m going to take you all on a little journey through my bag—a peek into some of the things I carry with me every day. Some of it’s practical, but if I’m honest, most of it is sentimental. I think that’s how I am—I like keeping pieces of the people I love close, even when I’m on the go."

You glance down at the luxurious handbag in your lap, running your hand over its soft leather exterior. "This bag is one of my favorites—it’s been with me for years now. I use it for pretty much everything, especially when I’m traveling. It’s got a lot of personal things in it, so… let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?"

With a playful smile, you unzip the bag and peer inside. The first thing you pull out is a film camera—a vintage, well-loved model. You hold it up for the camera to see, the smile on your face growing as you turn it over in your hands.

"This right here is a gift from Austin," you explain, brushing your thumb over the camera’s edge. "He gave it to me on our second wedding anniversary. I remember him saying he wanted to give me something that could capture the moments that mattered most in a way that felt… timeless. And that’s exactly what this camera does. I love the process of using film—it makes every picture feel like a little treasure."

You laugh softly, remembering the many times you’ve pulled this camera out during family moments. "I take so many pictures of Austin and Wren on this. They’re some of my favorite memories, and there’s something really magical about having them on film rather than just on my phone. It’s almost like you’re holding onto the moment itself."

Setting the camera down gently, you reach back into the bag, your fingers brushing over a small, plush item. With a soft smile, you pull out a tiny bird toy—Wren’s favorite.

"This little bird has been with me on every trip since Wren was old enough to realize I was leaving," you explain, holding the plush toy up to the camera. "She calls it her ‘guardian bird’ and gives it to me whenever I have to leave for a shoot. She’ll say, ‘Mommy, take this with you so you don’t miss me too much.’ And of course, I bring it with me everywhere."

You hold the toy for a moment longer, your smile deepening as you think of your daughter. "It’s funny how something so small can make you feel so connected, even when you’re miles away from home."

The next item you pull from your bag is a tube of lipstick, the deep rose color a familiar favorite. "And then, of course, there’s this," you say with a chuckle. "I’ve got a few shades in here, but this one’s my go-to. Austin always says it’s his favorite, so naturally, I wear it all the time."

You pop the cap off for a quick look at the color before setting it aside. Then, your hand grazes something that immediately makes your heart flutter. You pull out a small stack of love letters, neatly tied together with a worn ribbon.

Your expression softens, and you hold the letters up for the camera. "These… are love letters from Austin. We started writing letters to each other early on in our relationship, and it’s something we’ve kept doing. I love that we’ve kept it going. It’s a beautiful way to remind each other how much we mean to one another, even when we’re not physically together."

You pause for a moment, your eyes scanning the familiar handwriting on the top letter. One of the crew members behind the camera asks if you’d be willing to read one aloud, and you glance up with a shy smile.

"Of course," you say softly, carefully untying the ribbon and unfolding the top letter. "This one’s actually the very first letter Austin ever wrote me. It was right before he asked me out on our first date. I still carry it with me all these years later."

Clearing your throat gently, you begin to read.

Austin's Letter:

“Y/N,

I’m not sure how to start this, but I’ve been thinking about you all day—actually, since the moment I met you, if I’m honest. I don’t know if you’ve felt it too, but I can’t shake this feeling, like something shifted in my life the second you walked into it.

I’ve never been great with words, and I hope this doesn’t come off as too much, but I feel like I need to tell you. From the moment we met, you’ve been on my mind. I keep replaying your laugh in my head, the way your eyes light up when you smile. It’s like you’ve left this imprint on me, and I’m not quite sure how to move forward without doing something about it.

So, here goes. I’d love to take you out—on a real date. No pressure, but I can’t help but feel like we’ve got something special. I don’t want to let it slip away without trying to explore it, to see where it leads. You’ve got me, Y/N. I’d love to know if I’ve got you too.

Yours, if you’ll have me,

Austin”

As you finish reading, you let out a soft, breathy laugh, your cheeks warm with the memories. "That letter… was the start of everything. I remember reading it and feeling like my heart was about to burst out of my chest."

You glance up at the camera, a warm smile still on your lips. "Austin and I still write letters to each other. It’s something we hold onto, something that keeps the romance alive no matter how busy life gets. I think there’s something really special about putting your feelings down on paper. It makes it feel more permanent, like a snapshot of that moment in time."

Gently, you fold the letter back up and tuck it safely into your bag. "Those letters are some of my most treasured possessions," you admit, your eyes twinkling with affection.

Your hand reaches into the bag once more, and this time, you pull out a delicate ring—a family heirloom that Austin’s grandmother passed down to him. The camera zooms in as you hold it up, the light catching on the simple, yet beautiful design.

"This ring is incredibly meaningful to both Austin and me," you explain. "His grandmother gave it to him when he was younger, and she told him to give it to someone special one day. Now, it’s one of the things I always carry with me. It’s like having a piece of his family with me wherever I go."

The ring feels cool in your hand as you set it down, the memories attached to it making your heart swell. Next, you reach into your bag and pull out a pair of vintage sunglasses—a gift from your mother, and one of the items you cherish most.

"These were my mom’s," you say quietly, holding the sunglasses up for the camera. "She wore these all the time, and now I keep them with me. It’s like having a little piece of her with me."

Your fingers linger on the sunglasses, a soft smile playing on your lips as you think of your mother. "She had this incredible sense of style," you add, your voice a little wistful. "Whenever I wear them, I feel like I’m channeling a bit of her."

You pause for a moment, taking in the collection of items in front of you—the letters, the camera, the ring, the toy, the lipstick, the sunglasses. Each piece holds so much more than its physical presence; they are pieces of your heart, your life, your family.

"I guess, in a way, I don’t just carry practical things in my bag," you say with a soft laugh. "It’s more like I’m carrying memories and pieces of the people I love most. That way, no matter where I go, they’re always with me."

With a warm, heartfelt smile, you zip the bag back up, gently patting it as you close the segment. "Thank you for letting me share these little treasures with you. It’s been fun to take a trip down memory lane."

And with that, the camera fades to black, leaving behind the lingering warmth of love, family, and cherished moments.

[therhythmafterthesummer]

Five-Point Star (M) ~Bang Chan

Pairing: Bodyguard/Assassin!Chan x Mercenary!F.Reader Themes: Smut | bit of Fluff | Angst | Strangers to lovers to enemies but lovers? (i don’t even know how to categorise this one) Word Count: ~6k | AO3 Synopsis: With a career like yours, you knew you shouldn’t let yourself fall in love. But honestly, in retrospect, there was no way you wouldn’t have fallen in love with Chris. After meeting him, you couldn’t help but hope that he’d be the last person you fell this deeply for–maybe foolishly so… Warnings: pet names · cold weapons · firearms · questionable morals · graphic depictions of violence · graphic depictions of intercourse (smut warnings under the cut) · open ending.

Author’s Note: as soon as i watched the 5-STAR trailer my creative juices started flowing, and i set camp in my google docs until this piece was born. please don’t hesitate to let me know if i missed any warnings… this one’s a bit sad (or, at least, it made me sad). i apologise in advance. thanks once again to @straylightdream and @cursed-mars-bars for reading this and letting me know it didn’t suck💜

Due to all the abovementioned warnings, this story is intended for an adult audience only. Minors please do not interact.

Part 1 (you're here!) | Part 2 >

Smut Warnings: unprotected penetration [piv. no barrier method, but the reader is presumed to be on birth control] · finger sucking · some praising, of course · oral [F&M Rec] · rimming [F.Rec] · nipple play · creampie · overstimulation · multiple orgasms

Disclaimer: the story represented in this work does not represent Stray Kids in any way; anything described in this story and all actions performed by the characters are purely fictional, this was created just for good fun.

In your line of work, it was hard to have any kind of interpersonal relationships. Having either platonic or romantic connections posed a risk, not only to you, but also to the others involved. 

Even then, you were a firm believer that, as long as no one knew your identity while you were ‘on the clock’, was enough for you to keep at least a handful of people close to you. You had a few close friends, some with a similar profession to yours, some just office or retail workers that had no idea what you did for a living. What you didn’t have, though, was a romantic partner.

It was tough to keep a relationship going when you couldn’t tell them what you did to bring food to the table. You’d always dance around the topic fairly easily, but, eventually, the situation would become unsustainable, and either you or the other person decided to break things off.

You’d been single for a while now–a long, long while–and you honestly had no active desire to find yourself a romantic companion. That was…until you met Chris.

Chris was a friend of a friend of a friend, someone you had seen once or twice at the odd social gathering you attended. He was incredibly handsome, but, most importantly, he was funny, always made you laugh whenever you interacted, and also seemed to have similar interests to yours. 

In a twist of fate–and against your better judgement–you ended up going on a date with him. A date that, surprisingly, ended with you and him tangled in his bedsheets. That night, you discovered that, not only were you compatible with Chris when it came to opinions on the current state of the world, on the theories for the next season of your favourite shows, but also in bed.

It was honestly almost crazy how good he made you feel, how there seemed to be sparks flying in the air whenever your bodies touched in any way, and, not to throw roses on your own garden, but you were confident that you made him feel good, too. So much so, the next morning, when you had to leave and he’d kissed the oxygen out of your lungs before dropping the most adorable ‘You’ll call me back, right?’ you knew you had no escape, that there was no way you’d pass up this opportunity.

Five months down the line and you already had a Christopher-shaped hole in your heart. You knew it was stupid, that it was dangerous, but you just couldn’t help it. Not when he was quite possibly the best romantic partner you’d ever had–to be fair, the bar was already quite low, but he still managed to jump ten metres over it.

In any relationship you’d ever had you always avoided the topic of work, not only yours, but the other person’s, too. If you avoided asking about their job, maybe they wouldn’t ask about yours, that was your reasoning. However, you’d discovered that people loved to talk about their jobs, that some people even made them their one and only topic of conversation, which was incredibly inconvenient.

Thankfully, Chris didn’t talk about work at all. Not his, nor yours. You had no idea what he did for a living, all you could infer was that it paid enough for him to live comfortably in his cosy flat. You honestly didn’t care, he could keep that information to himself as long as you could keep yours as well.

What you did for a living was probably not the most morally right career path, but it was your family trade. You’d been trained for it since you were very young, so it was honestly a no brainer for you. Some people called it a gun for hire, some called it being a mercenary, you, personally, didn’t particularly feel like calling it anything at all.

People hired you whenever they needed someone kidnapped, tortured, or killed. And, although you had killed for your job before, you almost always tried to turn those offers down. Clean-up was messy, and even if you hardly had any empathy for your targets, killing them always made you feel a bit uneasy.

Two nights ago you were called in for a job, the kidnapping of the eldest son of the Kim family that ruled the capital city. Seungmin, his name was. Based on the investigation you’d done he was younger than you, a bit rowdy, and an apparent oddball. He, very inconveniently for you, also had a handful of very skilled bodyguards protecting him at all times.

You couldn’t find any records of those bodyguards of his, only that they called themselves the Five-Point Stars, and that they were good at what they did. Regardless, you had a lot of confidence in your own abilities. After all, never once had you lost a fight, nor been unable to finish one of your jobs–although you’d been close to being killed sometimes, you’d admit.

As soon as you woke up, you started to recount the plan you had put together for your mission tonight.

After wiretapping his personal tailor’s phone, you heard him tell someone how he had prepared Seungmin’s suit for the night. You knew Seungmin was going to attend a screening of a new movie that was financed by his father. It’d be dark, crowded, and the perfect setting for you to sneak in, get him unconscious, take him out of there, and hopefully outsmart his bodyguards.

A particularly loud snore next to you snapped you out of your focus, and you turned around to find Chris on his back, with an arm over his eyes and his mouth slightly open. You couldn’t help but smile at the sight, and, for a moment, even if just for this morning, you decided you wanted to enjoy being just a regular civilian instead of a trained assassin.

“Baby…” You reached for Chris’ shoulder to lightly shake him awake. “Baby, wake up”.

Chris’ whole body tensed. His hand flew to catch yours that was shaking him awake, and he held it in a tight grip. Throughout your relationship you’d discovered that Chris had incredibly quick reflexes, and a very intense fight or flight response, so his sudden movement didn’t faze you in the slightest. “W–what?”

“You were about to choke, baby. You need to move”, throughout your relationship, you’d also learnt that Chris suffered from a sleeping disorder. You found out about it the first time he woke you up in the middle of the night gasping for air.

Poor thing, he’d been so embarrassed while he told you about it, but you were quick to reassure him that you didn’t mind, if anything, it only made you worry about him.

Because that was how important Chris was to you. Important enough for you to care about his sleeping habits, important enough that he warmed your cold heart.

So now, any time you were awake and you heard him snore particularly loudly, you woke him up before he could choke on his spit.

“Ah… Thank you, sweetheart”, he mumbled, clearly still half asleep. 

Chris turned to his side, scooting closer to you and pulling you into his arms. You couldn’t help the small giggle that left your lips as soon as your head was tucked under his chin, just like he seemed to not be able to contain his at all, either. 

The feeling of his bare skin against yours was incredibly comforting, his warmth seeped into you, reaching areas deep within your heart that no one else ever had before.

As you laid there in his arms, as you heard his heartbeat under your ear, and as you felt the minute rumbles of his snoring resume, you realised this was probably the happiest you’d ever been with a partner, and you hoped that your relationship with Chris would be the last one you ever had.

Getting into the movie screening was easy. Your specialty was sneaking around undetected, you’d learnt to walk without making a sound–no sound from your feet hitting the ground, nor your breath going in and out of your lungs, nor your clothes moving with the wind…

You’d also heard from Seungmin’s tailor–whose name was apparently Hyunjin–that the Kims had a special, private room in this particular cinema, so that was likely where the eldest son of the family would be.

Finding this room was the hard part. It wasn’t in any of the blueprints of the building, so you spent a good hour surveying the place, until you finally saw a waiter coming out from what seemed to be a simple wall.

Tightening the hood over your head, making sure the lower part of your face was covered properly by your kerchief, you made your way to that wall to inspect it closely. There was a tile on the wall that was shaped differently than the others. It was barely perceptible, just a tad smaller than the ones around it, so you pressed on it, and immediately you were able to push what you now knew was a door camouflaged as part of the wall.

As soon as you stepped into the room, you saw Seungmin, sitting on what looked to be a very comfortable armchair, watching the movie from behind the glass that kept this area hidden from the rest of the auditorium. 

Slowly, you approached him, careful to not make a single sound as you unclipped the rope you had attached to your belt. Before you could use it, though, you felt a slight disturbance in the air around you, and every single one of your senses zeroed in on the direction of it.

In a second, you ducked, just barely missing the bat that had been swung your way.

“Chan!” You heard Seungmin scream, but you didn’t dare turn to look at him, not when his bodyguard had all his attention on you.

It was just one man. You could barely make out the features of his face, not only because it was dark, but also because he had a mask covering the lower half of his face, and because he was moving so fast you could hardly take in anything else.

The man, Chan, based on the name Seungmin had screamed, certainly put up a good fight. Any blow you sent his way he blocked without much difficulty, just like you did his. It was a pretty on par encounter, but you were running out of time. The longer you stayed there, the more time you were giving them to get back-up, so you reasoned the wisest choice was to retreat. This mission was getting way too dangerous, and if they captured you it’d all be over.

Chan wasn’t giving up, though, and he was making it incredibly hard for you to make your escape. You managed to kick him in the chest, but aside from a grunt of discomfort he didn’t relent, and, with a swing of his bat, he was able to land a hit on your arm.

It was painful, yes, but you could hardly feel it with the adrenaline pumping through your system. Taking a knife from their designated place on your bodice, you threw it in Chan’s direction. It didn’t stab him, but it did manage to cut one side of his mask, enough to distract him so you could make your escape.

By the time you were out of the cinema the place was full of guards, so you knew your night was over.

It didn’t matter. 

You hadn’t lost. You were just experiencing a set-back.

“Missed you so much, gorgeous”, Chris mumbled between kisses, further pressing you against the back of your front door.

“Missed you, too”, was all you mumbled back, unable to keep your lips away from his for too long.

You hadn’t seen Chris for seven whole days. It wasn’t because you didn’t want to, you were honestly desperate to see him, but once you were back at your place after your failed attempt to kidnap Seungmin you realised how hurt your body was.

That guy Chan had certainly done a number on you, and the only thing that kept you from bursting into flames by the rage you felt, was the fact that you were sure you’d done a number on him, too.

Your bruises had now just started to fade, so you figured they were now normal-looking enough that your boyfriend wouldn’t think much about them. 

You were supposed to go out for dinner tonight, but as soon as Chris was at your doorstep, as soon as his lips were on yours, you both quickly realised you didn’t want to go for dinner anymore. How could you, when the taste of each other was much better than any meal you could possibly have?

“Come here”, Chris pulled himself away from you, taking a hold of your hand and tugging you towards the sofa. “Haven’t been able to stop thinking about those nudes you sent me”.

You couldn’t help the smirk that came to your face. Of course he couldn’t stop thinking about the pictures you sent him. That was their entire purpose, after all. They were simple, really, but clearly enough to rile him up. It was just you riding one of your favourite dildos, with your ass on full display for him to ogle.

Chris pushed you to the sofa. As soon as you were seated he dropped to his knees, and spread you open for him. Wearing a skirt to your date was certainly the wisest choice you made tonight.

“Maybe I should send you a video next time. I’ll ride it just like I ride you”, you said, just as you lifted your hips enough for him to pull your underwear down your legs.

“Fuck, you spoil me too much”, was the last thing to come out of Chris’ mouth before he dived between your legs. His lips found your clit with expert ease, gently sucking on it.

Your entire body came alight, a moan of his name escaped your mouth, and you brought a hand to his head so you could tug on his curls, just how you knew he liked it. “So fucking good with your mouth, baby, fuck…”

Chris simply hummed in response, sending vibrations through your body, making you whine.

With his hands on the back of your thighs, he pushed your legs further towards your chest, getting better access to your centre. Chris had very quickly learnt his way around your body, and he’d even shown you new ways in which you could feel good, ways you’d never even imagined you’d get to experience.

His tongue changed focus, from your clit to your entrance, diligently licking your folds, and he groaned at the taste of you on his tongue once he pushed it within your walls. He stayed there for a while, occasionally coming back up to lick and suck on your clit only to come back down to slurp you up. Until he finally moved further down so he could lick the tender skin of your ass, all while he stimulated your clit with his fingers, making you shiver. 

Desire pooled in the pit of your stomach, and the most pathetic whine left your mouth as soon as he started to lave at your skin. You would’ve never thought how good this could feel, never let a partner come anywhere near your ass, but one night, after drinking one too many beers, the topic of things you would’ve liked to try in bed came up. 

You could still remember the look on Chris’ face when he confidently said ‘I’d really like to eat your ass. Like, would love to, honestly’. And maybe it’d been the fact that you were a bit tipsy, or the fact that he was so utterly unashamed when he said it, or maybe even the fact that you trusted Chris like you’d never trusted anyone else before, but you weren’t entirely displeased with the idea… So you gave it a try, and now you couldn’t even fathom getting head if you didn’t feel his tongue on your ass at least once.

Without detaching his mouth from your sensitive skin, he brought two fingers to your mouth, and you wasted no time on wrapping your lips around them, sucking on them, licking them. You couldn’t help but moan around his digits, and Chris simply gave you a satisfied hum in response.

He let you enjoy the feeling of his fingers in your mouth for a while, until they were thoroughly coated in your saliva. As soon as he removed them from between your lips, he brought them to your entrance and pushed them into you, to the last knuckle. “C’mon, baby. Show me your pretty tits. Hm?”

You just nodded in response, unable to form a sentence with the now relentless pace of his fingers continuously hitting the most sensitive areas within your walls. With trembling fingers, you unbuttoned your blouse and squeezed your breasts over the fabric of your lace bralette before you pulled them out of the cups.

“Shit, look at you… Touch them, baby. Just how you like it”.

So you complied, lightly dragging your fingers over your now stiff nipples, sending tiny shocks of pleasure up and down your spine with the motion. The stimulation you were giving to your chest, Chris’ fingers going in and out of your cunt, and the dirty words coming out of his mouth brought you close to the edge, and you started to feel incredibly desperate for your relief.

“Chris, baby…” You whined as Chris sped up his motions, as you rolled your nipples between your fingers.

“Yes, sweetheart?” Chris’ voice was so soft, a complete contrast to the brutal pace of his fingers.

“Want your–Your mouth”, you could barely hold eye contact anymore, seeing the desire in his eyes brought heat to your cheeks. It was always the same when he found himself between your legs, he always looked at you like you were the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, and it made you feel incredibly wanted. 

“Hmm… You sure that’s what you want?”

You nodded, a bit frantically, you’d admit. “Want your mouth to…make me come, please, love–”

You knew that the second the word ‘please’ left your mouth you’d get exactly what you asked for, and you barely registered the broken moan that flew past your lips as soon as his lips attached to your clit once again.

Chris’ movements didn’t relent until you were coming. They didn’t even relent while you were coming. He kept sucking on your clit, fucking you open with his fingers, turning you into a whimpering mess as he pushed you past the brink of overstimulation, and making you fall face first into a consecutive high.

When he was done with you, you were still trembling, panting, and he finally left his place on the floor to sit next to you on the sofa and pull you into his chest so he could softly caress your hair, mumbling sweet words of encouragement. ‘Mmm… Such a good girl, aren’t you, love? So good to me. You did well…’

You just hummed, burying your face in the crook of his neck to leisurely press kisses on his skin. 

As soon as you regained some of your composure, you kissed him. You kissed him with such want one would’ve thought he hadn’t just made you feel like you’d gone to the moon and back four times. You quickly undid his belt, unbuttoned his jeans, and tugged them and his underwear down just enough to let his length free of its confinements.

In no time, you had straddled him and sunk yourself on his cock, eliciting a shared sigh of relief.

You sneaked a hand under his shirt just as you leaned in to kiss him again. His abdomen tensed and relaxed while you slowly traced every muscle with your fingertips, your soft caresses eliciting content sighs to fall from his lips and get lost in your mouth. Taking a hold of the hem of his shirt, you tried to get it off of his frame, but Chris shook his head, pulling your hands away and mumbling a “no time for that… God, bun, move…”

Chris held your ass tightly in his hands as you bounced on him. His mouth attached to your chest, sucking your nipples into his mouth so he could lick them, nibble on them. Under the unfaltering pace of your hips, it only took a handful of minutes to turn him into a moaning, whining mess.

“Fuck, baby… If you don’t slow down, I’ll blow”, Chris nuzzled his face on your chest, and you brought your hands to the back of his head, further pushing him into your cleavage.

“Good”, was all you told him, admittedly a bit breathless. “Need you to fill me up, Chris, baby… Need it so bad…”

Chris swore under his breath, and his hold on your buttocks tightened. It wasn’t long until you got exactly what you wanted. With a moan of your name, your boyfriend pumped you full of his release, making you whine at the warmth of his cum reaching deep inside you.

You didn’t stop moving, though.

Even if your thighs were burning, you kept bouncing on his cock, until his groans of relief turned into desperate whines, until he was whimpering against your chest and digging his short nails on the supple flesh of your buttcheeks.

“P–please…” You heard him whine, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t felt accomplished by the sound. That was when you took pity on him, finally sitting down fully on his lap and stopping your movements.

Chris groaned, exhaling all that air he’d been holding in while you overstimulated him. He threw his head back to rest it on the backrest of the sofa, looking eighty shades of fucked out of his mind. He was breathing heavily–as were you–and he could barely keep his eyes open, but he still let out an incredulous laugh, giving you one of his blinding smiles, making you smile in return.

Cupping your cheeks, he pulled you down for a kiss before he whispered, “I fucking love you”.

And once he said it, you finally let yourself voice those thoughts that had been roaming your mind for a while now, just before you leaned in for another kiss. “I love you, baby”.

By the time you had both thoroughly enjoyed one another, you were too tired to leave your place. So you ordered takeout, got into your comfiest pyjamas, and decided to have your dinner date in the warmth of your home while watching your favourite show together.

Although, to be fair, you didn’t get very far into the show. With your now full stomachs, Chris pulled you into his arms while you both laid on the sofa, softly caressing your hair as he sang to you, inadvertently lulling you to sleep.

This Chan guy was seriously testing your patience. 

Every time you tried to get to the Kim kid he’d always be there, he’d always manage to get you to back off. It was starting to hurt your pride, and, even if you were one to avoid killing, you started to genuinely consider taking his life just so he could stop being a nuance.

You’d had three other failed attempts at your task since that fiasco in the cinema, so tonight would hopefully be the day you succeeded. Seungmin was to attend a piano concert at one of the classic theatres his family owned, meaning he’d once again be in a dark, crowded place. There was no hidden room as far as you could tell from your surveillance earlier this week, so that gave you some semblance of peace.

You weren’t sure if it was the fact that this particular job was taking longer than usual to get it over with, or if it was the fact that you kept being forced to retreat by that one bodyguard of Seungmin’s time and time again, but lately you’d been incredibly frustrated, and it seemed like the only way to get that frustration out of your system was to get it fucked out of you. Luckily, even if your boyfriend didn’t know what was going on, he had been giving you exactly what you needed and more any time you asked for it.

The droplets falling down Chris’ pecs and his toned stomach added a delightful shine to his physique, yet you could hardly focus on any of it. The only thing you could focus on was the feeling of his cock on your tongue, heavy and warm, the delicious sounds coming out of his mouth and bouncing off of his shower’s walls as you took him in and out of your throat, and the dark, lustful, but somehow still loving look in his eyes. 

“Shit… You always tell me how good I am with my mouth… But what about you, baby, huh?” Chris leaned his head back on the tiles, holding your head in place so he could start slowly thrusting into your mouth, making you moan.

You just couldn’t take it anymore, you needed him to fuck you dumb, you needed to further disconnect your mind from reality outside of these walls. So, with a tight grip on the base of his cock, you pulled your mouth off of Chris and started pumping him in your hand, looking him right in the eyes.

“Fuck me”.

Chris just laughed as soon as the words were out of your mouth. He swiftly helped you to your feet so he could turn you around and push your chest against the cold tile wall. “Someone woke up a bit needy today. Hm?”

“And what if I–Fuck…” You completely forgot where your sentence was going as soon as you felt your boyfriend push himself into you, stretching you open just so perfectly all you could do was rest your forehead against the wall when he started to move.

“Maybe you should move in…” Chris attached his lips to your shoulder, kissing and sucking on your skin as his hand found its way towards your front, right between your legs to diligently rub that sweet bud at the apex of your thighs. The mix of his motions between your legs, of the words he mumbled against your skin, and the obscene sound of your wet skin colliding time and time again was steadily clouding your reason, enough to genuinely consider what he was offering. “If you did, we could do this every day, sweetheart…”

“Maybe I should…” You were certainly delirious, there was no way you could live with another person while trying to keep your trade a secret. But the longer you stayed in that shower, relishing the company and precise motions of your boyfriend, the more you wanted to believe it was possible.

Even after he’d coaxed a mind-numbing orgasm out of you, after he’d stuffed you full of his cum, and after he’d helped you dry your hair with the hairdryer he kept in one of the drawers of his bathroom, when you both were getting dressed in his bedroom, you desperately wanted to believe it was possible to have a normal life. Maybe you should start considering retirement… But would you be able to live a civilian life without the thrill of your job? You weren’t too sure. For Chris, though, you might try…

“Come here, bun”, Chris suddenly held your waist and dropped to his bed, bringing you down with him. All you did was laugh, scrambling to find a comfortable position on top of him so you could kiss him.

He was really giggly today, and the sound warmed you up. You dragged your fingers over his still damp curls as you peppered his face with kisses, chuckling with mirth and an immense amount of love for this man that had managed to make you feel a bit normal again. 

“Pretty?” Chris tried to get your attention. You just hummed in response to let him know you were listening, but you didn’t stop pressing kisses on his cheek.

With his hands on your waist, he tried to get you to look at him. “Listen, baby. There’s…there’s something I’d like to tell you…”

You finally pulled yourself away a bit, enough to look him in the eyes. He looked incredibly serious, more than you had ever seen him over the course of your relationship, and it gave you pause.

Chris opened his mouth to speak, but before any words came out, the obnoxious ringtone of his phone interrupted him. With a roll of his eyes and an annoyed sigh, he gently pushed you off of him, muttering a ‘Gimme a sec, gotta take this…’

You watched Chris leave the bedroom entirely before you stood up from his bed and continued getting dressed. You could hear your boyfriend’s hushed voice coming from the living room, but you couldn’t make out a single word. Maybe it was for the best, you honestly didn’t like to pry on his private conversations. After all, you’d hate it if he tried to eavesdrop on yours, all things considered.

By the time he was back you had already gotten yourself into a fresh set of clothes. There was a frown on his face, but it quickly disappeared the moment he spotted you by his mirror.

Standing behind you, he placed his hands on your belly, pulling you back towards his chest as he pressed kisses on your neck. You just hummed, watching him through the mirror and melting in his hold. 

“Babe”, you mumbled, getting him to open his eyes and look at you through the mirror. He rested his chin on your shoulder, intently listening to you. “What’d you want to tell me?”

Chris took a deep breath, pulling himself away from you to take a hold of your hips once you turned around and looped your arms around his neck. “It’s nothing urgent. Say… What if we go on a little vacation to the coast this weekend?”

“Mmm… A little escapade?” You chuckled, and Chris hummed in response, cupping your cheek with one hand to pull you in for a kiss.

If everything went well tonight, you’d more than appreciate some time to wind down from the entire thing, and spending the entire weekend relaxing, barely even clothed, listening to the waves crashing against the breakwater with Chris sounded like absolute heaven. It’d be like your own little celebration for your win over that insufferable guard dog of Seungmin’s.

“Sounds like a great idea, baby”, you told your boyfriend as soon as his lips detached from yours, smiling brightly at him.

The sound of the piano could be heard perfectly even outside of the theatre. You didn’t know the name of the piece, but it was clear that it was being played by expert hands. Even if you were mostly impassive whenever you fell into your…professional mode, you were still a bit on edge after months of having your plans ruined by Chan, so the melody floating in the air certainly helped soothe you a bit.

The corridors to the main hall were empty, completely quiet save for the sound of the piano bouncing off of the walls. The old construction was a bit difficult to navigate, but you’d gotten well acquainted with the place throughout the past week, so you found your way to the concert hall with ease.

Everything was dark, save for the lights shining on the stage, illuminating the silhouette of the musician sitting on one of the three pianos that’d been set on the podium. 

Something felt odd, though.

In an instant, you noticed the emptiness in the hall. The music stopped, replaced by a loud bang and the sound of the bullet hitting the wall, right where your head had been just seconds before your instincts kicked in and you moved away.

It was a trap.

You’d stupidly let them lure you in here, where Seungmin was, very clearly, not even present.

No matter. You might not get your target tonight, but you could still get your peace back.

Chan kept firing at you from the stage, and you continued to expertly dodge his bullets as you swiftly got closer to him. Somewhere in the back of your mind you could hear your father’s voice from back when he was training you, telling you that chasing after someone that wasn’t the one you’d been hired to attack was foolish, that it’d put you at risk. You didn’t care, this was personal now.

Taking one of the knives from your bodice, you threw it in Chan’s direction, just barely missing his form when he ducked out of the way. It felt like it lasted for a long time, you throwing knives at him, and him shooting at you, until you made it to the stage and he had no option but to physically fight you.

He was incredibly agile, but so were you. Especially after having fought him so many times. You’d picked up his tells, how he shifted his weight on his heel before he threw a punch, how he moved slightly to the left when he kicked, so it’d gotten easier to counterattack each and every single one of his moves.

Chan was good at what he did… But you were better.

With a kick to his knee and a push on his chest, you managed to send him to the floor and pin him under you. He tried to move, but you swiftly pressed one of your knives to his neck, effectively stopping his movements.

There was a moment of silence, a moment of you staring down at him, and a moment of him staring up at you.

This was the first time you’d actually gotten to see his face this clearly. There was usually barely any illumination whenever you’d fought before, and both of your quick movements made it easy to miss the details on the exposed areas of your faces. His straight hair pushed off of his forehead–save for one single piece that seemed to always be out of place–gave you plenty of room to see the blue contact lenses he wore. You couldn’t help but wonder if those were simply for aesthetic purposes, or if they held any sort of special tech quality to them–he worked for the Kims, after all.

There was something eerily familiar in the way his eyebrows furrowed, in his eyes, even with the obviously fake blue colour. Whether you were going to kill him or not, you suddenly felt an intense need to see his face. All of it. So, with your free hand, you hooked your finger on the side of his mask so you could pull it off.

For a split second, you couldn’t help but wonder if your eyes were playing a trick on you. Despite the straight hair and the blue contacts, the curve of his lips and the shape of his nose were so distinct there was just no way this man could be anyone else.

You tried to never speak while on the clock. After all, your voice might be a very good indicator of your identity. It might’ve been the shock of seeing such a familiar face, but you really couldn’t help the name from coming out of your mouth, as a barely audible whisper. “…Chris?”

Confusion crossed the features of the man under you. His eyes jumped all over your face–or what could be seen of it, at least. His angry frown turned into a look of shock, mixed with some concern, and you saw his Adam’s apple bob in your peripheral vision when he swallowed, almost audibly.

You still had the knife pressed to his neck, but you were honestly unable to move at all. So much so you didn’t even flinch when he slowly started to move himself.

With a trembling hand, he reached for the black kerchief that covered the lower half of your face. You didn’t stop him, you just let him tug it down to your neck and reveal your face to him.

The sound of your name, coming out as a breathless whisper out of his mouth hurt more than any hit you’d received throughout the past handful of months.

“What the…fuck”, the hurt tone in his voice broke your heart, and you could feel the lump form in your throat. “All this time…?”

“I had no idea”, you couldn’t help the tremble in your voice, and you weren’t sure if you hated yourself for being so vulnerable in front of the enemy. But then again, he wasn’t only an enemy, he was also the man you’d fallen madly in love with.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to get to Seungmin?” His voice trembled, yet neither of you dared to move further.

“I was hired to do it”, you replied simply.

“By whom?”

“I won’t tell you… I…can’t”, you could feel them. The treacherous tears that pricked your eyes… Crying in front of the enemy was unheard of, but you supposed these weren’t normal circumstances.

Chris swallowed again, and you could see tears of his own well in his eyes. “So…what now, bun?”

The sound of the pet name coming out of his mouth fully obliterated the remaining pieces of your heart, and you couldn’t stop the tears from falling anymore. So you didn’t. “I–I don’t know…”

“You should kill me”, Chris said, very confidently, without any semblance of doubt in his voice. And even though your grip on the knife tightened, you didn’t move it, you just shook your head in response, trying to contain the sob that threatened to come out of your mouth.

“You should”, he repeated after a few moments of silence. “I’ve done…many horrible things in my life. I’ve killed people, tortured people… I’ve done it proudly, too”, Chris brought a hand to your wrist, holding it gently, but firmly. “I’ve made peace with all that a long, long time ago… But knowing I’ve spent months hurting the woman I love is something I can’t live with…”

“You didn’t know”, your hand started to tremble, too, and Chris’ hold on your wrist tightened to keep it steady.

“Doesn’t matter”, finally, tears started to fall from Chris’ eyes, and his voice broke a bit when he spoke to you. “I wanted you dead. Even if I didn’t know, I was trying to kill you”.

You shook your head, closing your eyes tightly.

Maybe, if you closed them hard enough, you’d realise this was all a dream, a horrible nightmare you could still wake up from.

“Why don’t you kill me instead?” You mumbled after a while, when you finally opened your eyes. “I, too, was trying to kill the man that I love…”

“I can’t stop protecting Seungmin. I won’t stop. I’m the only thing keeping you from reaching your target, pretty. Look at us…” Chris’ thumb softly caressed your wrist, right on the sliver of skin your gloves exposed. “Look at our positions. You know you already won”.

You shook your head again, and Chris pushed on your wrist, further digging the blade into his skin as he mumbled, “Do it…”

He was right, you had the upper hand. Logically, it made sense for you to kill him, but there was no way you would. What a selfish thing for him to ask… Did he think getting to Seungmin was more important than his own life? That you’d be fine just…taking it?

Yanking your wrist out of his grip, you threw your knife to the side, as far away from you as possible. Chris just looked at you, confused, hurt, and you just couldn’t bear to see that look in his eyes. In an instant, you were standing, finally getting off of him.

“Baby…” You mumbled, trying to steady the sound of your voice. You turned your back to him, unable to look at him any longer. “I’m sorry… I don’t think I’ll make it to our vacation this weekend”.

With that, you started walking, trying to get as far away from that stage as possible.

The last thing you heard before you left the theatre altogether was the cacophony of sounds produced by what you knew to be the erratic smashing of piano keys, a complete contrast to the soothing melody you’d been listening to when you came in here… That soothing melody that you now knew was being played by Chan, by Chris, by your biggest rival who turned out to also be the love of your life.

As you left, with tears in your eyes, with your heart shattered in your chest, you realised that this was the first time you’d truly lost. There had been no room for you to win since the very beginning.

Part 1 (you're here!) | Part 2 >

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General Masterlist

[marksbear]

Cod Ghost with a bf who is a pornstar?

(Gay porn to be exact)

This just crossed my mind and I was like “hell yeah”

It will be something else if tumblr doesn't flag this one. I'll do it even though there's a 99% chance of that happening lol. It feels like i'm sinning writing this 😭.

Warnings! A lot of NSFW

SIMON "GHOST" RILEY X PORNSTAR MALE READER

-When you told him about your job during yall's first date he was beyond shocked and a little jealous.

-He makes comments about the job since then, but doesn't fully judge you because of it.

-The fact that you're famous for it scares him a little.

-But once you two get more serious and dating long he'll begin to warm up to it. BUT he made rules for you to follow. Like make sure the man is clean from any disease, nothing too romantic/intimate or personal, AND especially the guy can not hurt you in any shape or form or wear protection or at least pull out.

-Feels awkward if hes at the set.

-If hes there while you're working he'll keep a protective distance. Not too close for you and the other workers to be distracted, but close enough to step in if anything happens.

-If anyone in the military making fun of one of your videos he would literally lash out. He'll beat the living shit out of anyone who says anything bad about you.

-Sending him your solo sex videos while he's out serving.

-He watches your videos while he touches himself every time he misses you/ horny.

-He's a little embarrassed to feature in your videos, but he'll do it ONLY if he's faceless. So really under the neck he's comfortable showing. What he didn't expect that the video would go viral on the platform.

-Your fans going crazy about the two of you. They love the energy and connection you two had.

-You convincing him to make more videos with him.

-During the live streams you sat on his lap as you answered questions etc. One of the questions asked "Are you and faceless dude dating?" You gave Simon a quick look before answering. "Uhm yeah! He's my boyfriend everyone!"

-The whole platform broke at the news.

-Him feeling insecure once in a while and thinks that you'll leave him for someone better or than your getting bored of him. And especially while hes in the military.

-So to try and ease him by only making a few videos with different actors or by yourself for your audience while he's out fighting. Buut when he's back you make however videos you want.

-Would never ask you to quit. He'll feel selfish asking it even though he'll probably won't quit his own job if you ask.

-Showing him your old videos before you got famous.

-He isn't ashamed of you.

-He won't hesitate to fight a creepy fan/ actor.

-You started his porn addiction. BUT he only watches your videos don’t worry.

-Making him cum early/fast just from a few teasing/moves.

-Doing things with him he’ll can never imagine doing with a different partner.

-He tries to mind his business with your work life and everything, but once in a while he likes to read the script about a video.

-if you have a specific company he doesn’t like it. I mean he likes how your getting famous and a lot of money, but he doesn’t like the way the company control you.

-You satisfying every thing he likes and what he didn’t even knew he liked until you.

I’m summary hes a keeper. 9.25/10 to have.

[x-reader-theater]

Secret Messages from a Lover

summary: While you're streaming, your boyfriend sends you a message.

pairing: Corpse Husband x Gender Neutral Reader (no pronouns are used.)

word count: 670

warnings: none.

a/n: i really just needed to write something so self-indulgent because god i want this so bad. i figured others want it too. i've been so depressed lately that I just need a little fantasy, you know? my requests are open, and you can find my request rules here.

“God, that video is so fucking funny,” you say, pulling your blanket around your shoulders tighter with one hand while the other brings your patterned tumbler with the sparkly straw up to your mouth, so you can drink your water. Your knees pull further up to your chest, which is easily done in your very spacious gaming chair. “OTV never fucking misses.”

You press a button on your stream deck, switching from the video you were just watching to your face, with chat scrolling in the top left-hand corner. You take another sip from your tumbler and pick out one of the comments passing by, scrolling to stop it from moving as you read it aloud.

“Were you on the newest Fear& episode? I was. QT, Hasan, Will, and I just kinda chatted for a bit. That was a good fucking episode, though,” you say with a grin. “Love those guys. QT especially, she’s fucking hilarious. She makes me laugh so fucking hard whenever I talk to her, even if we disagree on Taylor Swift.”

You keep scrolling back down, so you can keep seeing the comments when another one jumps out at you. “Are you gonna keep streaming? Yeah, chatter, I actually just started before that OTV video. I think Toast is gonna invite me to some Pico Park today? If not, I’ll just play some Valorant or something to pass the time. I gotta git good if I wanna beat, well, anyone,” you admit with a laugh, hiding your shame by taking another drink of water.

You see your phone light up in front of you. It’s a Discord notification, which you quickly check on your second monitor, assuming it’s Toast inviting you to the Discord call.

It’s not. It’s your boyfriend, Corpse.

“You look so cute today babe. You look so cosy wrapped up in your blanket and your smile is so bright. I'll never get tired of seeing it. I love you and have a good stream 🖤”

You feel your cheeks heat up at that, and you take a sip of your water to try and hide your reaction. You haven’t told anyone you're dating Corpse yet, and you have no plans on it any time soon, but he makes you so happy you find it hard not to blurt it out whenever you can.

You send back a bunch of yellow hearts and an “I love you too!!!!!!! 💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛”, biting your lip as you type on your very satisfying, clack-y keyboard.

That’s when you get the notification from Toast to join the shared call.

“Ah! Toast’s calling!” you exclaim for the benefit of your audience.

You quickly join the call, the connection sound filling you comfortable, over the ear headphones.

“Hey! What’s up!” you say into the call, getting a couple of “Hey!”’s and “Hello!”’s back.

Then you hear a familiar voice say, “What’s up.”

“Corpse!” You’re grinning at this point as you continue, “I didn't know you were gonna be playing!”

“Uh, yeah. Toast invited me last minute. Surprise?” he says like it’s a bad thing.

“We haven’t played anything together in a while and I saw him online and thought, ‘Fuck it,’ yaknow?” Toast asks and you chuckle.

“Well, it’s good to talk to you again, Corpse,” you say, setting your tumbler down on your desk. He got you that tumbler for your birthday not long ago, and it’s your favourite thing you own. He also got you the blanket that’s wrapped around your shoulders for your six-month anniversary, and it’s the warmest blanket in your house. You always wear it when you stream because the A/C is always blasting.

“It’s good to talk to you too,” you say, shivering as your heart hammers at his words.

You begin loading up Pico Park, just listening to everyone talk to each other, when you get another notification on Discord.

“I love you 🖤” it says.

“I love you too 💛” you reply, smiling into the camera for just a moment, just for him.

[accio-victuuri]

xiao zhan elle september issue cover story Q&A

ELLE: During this rest period, do you think about things that happened on the set?

Xiao Zhan: Of course, I remember a few days after the filming was finished, I had a dream that we were still filming, and the director and I were still discussing how to say that word? How to handle that scene?

ELLE: Do you actually miss the atmosphere on the set?

Xiao Zhan: I like it very much, because I like the feeling of everyone creating together and working together to get something done.

ELLE: When you first entered the entertainment industry and your popularity grew rapidly, you said that it felt a bit unreal and magical, but now you seem to be quite relaxed. How did this change happen?

Xiao Zhan: Rather than saying it’s unreal or magical, after so many years I feel that I haven’t had time to adapt to the fast pace at that time, so when I wake up from sleep, where am I today? What am I doing? I think it’s a process, just like when you first enter the workplace, everyone is very excited, "I’m here to work, please take good care of me", "I’m here, everyone get out of the way", "I can do it, I can do it". (Laughs) But after experiencing a lot of things, I feel that everything needs to be planned for the long term.

ELLE: In several interviews you mentioned that you like to play roles that "can convey energy". Why do you have such a preference?

Xiao Zhan: Because I think it is the life of the character. The kind of energy I am talking about is not just a single positive energy in the general sense. I mean the nutrition that can be subtle and silent. I believe that every character has a complete story line in his heart. This is what I like very much. As long as you dig deep, you can move people. I don’t like to call the villain a "villain", as if it is defined as a bad character from the beginning, but it is not. He may have his own difficulties.

ELLE: It sounds like “transmitting energy” is just a general term. Is it actually about understanding different people through performance?

Xiao Zhan: Yes, if we break it down to each character, they all convey different things. But if we say they are “good guys” or “bad guys”, I think that’s meaningless.

ELLE: So do you think acting is a form of communication?

Xiao Zhan: Yes, you can say that. I think it’s great to say that (acting) is a bridge to communicate with the audience. Just like when a play is broadcast, I will read some of the audience’s comments and impressions, and feel that they have a rich feeling about the work. When I see some comments that are exactly the same as my thoughts when filming, I feel very magical, as if this bridge is really connected. We don’t know each other in life, and we haven’t communicated, but he suddenly got my thoughts at the time, and I felt that, oh, acting is a very beautiful and magical thing.

ELLE: Do you watch some science fiction movies, TV shows, and literary works?

Xiao Zhan: Yes, I used to like watching "The Three-Body Problem". I have watched some science fiction movies recently, the American TV series "The Stars", and recently I am watching "The Replica". They are all about infinite flow and parallel time and space. Because I think there may really be parallel time and space. Every choice you make will split into a different parallel time and space.

ELLE: Do you imagine Xiao Zhan in a parallel universe?

Xiao Zhan: I really wonder, for example, is he still an actor? Maybe, is he still filming now? Is he still singing now? Or is he still a designer? Is he working for others or is he his own boss? (Laughs) Really, I really wonder.

ELLE: What do you think the future will be like?

Xiao Zhan: Wow, I think the world might return to its original state at that time, and the world might become a better place, and people would return to the most basic communication with each other.

ELLE: This is very interesting. Why do you think so?

Xiao Zhan: Anyway, at least now I am a little disgusted with the ubiquitous Internet. When we were young, when there were no mobile phones, we would chat while eating, and we would call our friends downstairs to play hide-and-seek and various games. I think that time was very precious.

ELLE: Will the profession of actor still exist by then?

Xiao Zhan: I think there will be. I believe that as long as life goes on, drama will continue. Because everyone needs an output, needs emotional resonance and sustenance, whether it is images or sounds. So I think that even if the world is destroyed, as long as there are still people, drama will definitely exist.

-END.

source

[bloomeng]

I know MXTX is a good author I want to get that out of the way before I get into this. She’s a fantastic (male) character writer and she has a great grasp on interpersonal connections. Though she’s working in an established niche genre she’s still very creative, I think SV especially is evidence of that. But there’s one thing that I just can never seem to get a pulse on, and that’s how much she means to comment on classism.

Author’s intent is always gonna be tricky especially when I have to rely on translated texts and interviews. There’s probably a lot of nuance that I miss, not to mention literally interviews I’ve never seen etc. It also doesn’t help that I haven’t read most of TGCF yet, so I can’t comment on that series, and with SV this conversation is less applicable, so for the sake of what I know best I’m gonna be using MDZS as my main example.

Classism is undeniably at the heart of MDZS’s themes, however for years anytime I analysis the text I’m usually fairly cautious to note that I don’t know if this was intentional. This isn’t because I think MXTX is stupid or can’t handle deep conversations, it’s simply because I can’t tell if it was her intent. On paper it seems obvious; WWX, JGY and XY’s wealth disparities, how privilege drives the plot, literally everything about the Wens as a whole. So much of the novel’s runtime is spent showing us how corrupt the feudal system can be, going so far as to have a protagonist who dies for the cause and two antagonists who are driven to be awful because of their poor circumstances in life. It feels intentional that WWX was granted a certain amount of privilege based on something he was born with (his parents connections) and how easily people turned on him. Sure he does unethical things but if not for his status it’s likely he wouldn’t have had to do half the things he ends up doing, not to mention that plenty of people didn’t like before the demonic cultivation started. JGY acting as a foil for WWX feels intentional and I would absolutely consider them foils regardless of intent. With all this in mind I would be inclined to say that yeah, MDZS is commenting on classism, but then WWX marries into the corrupt system and we the audience are supposed to read this as a good thing.

This has always been my biggest qualm with the book. We spend so much time showing how awful this system is and the two people who do anything to try and save it are punished for it by death. Sure WWX is brought back but as soon as he’s in Mo’s body he’s aimless. JGY is of course the secondary villain of the series, but MXTX goes out of her way to make us understand that even when JGY had power, his birth kept him from actually holding any real control, and what control he did have he mostly used to get bad people out of power and make the community better (he was biased and paranoid and vengeful but MXTX’s characters are nothing if not nuanced). Why set all this up to end up in such a contradictory place?

I get that solving such big issues such as classism isn’t easy and we want a happy ending but does MDZS even have a happy ending? None of the mc’s besides LWJ and (supposedly) WWX and LSH and LJY are in good positions by the end of the story. I remember reading MDZS for the first time and thinking that LWJ would fall for WWX because of his radical ideas and eventually see that the Lans were contributing big time to this awful system that favors wealth over everything. Especially because we have a second plot line about whatever was going on with LXC and JGY. And then it just never happens. Instead the Lan sect are painted as ok just because they’re monks. The system wasn’t the issue actually it was the people in charge but don’t worry they’re gone. Life is great now that the most powerful sects are in the hands of a 15 yr old, a man with unchecked anger issues, a council of elders that think corporal punishment is the solution to everything and a man who committed to a life long bit to get out of all forms of responsibility. What could go wrong?

I’ve always thought it was strange and ooc that WWX just accepts going back to Cloud Recesses. His literal incense burner fantasy was a cottage in the woods away from society. He never really warms up to the rigidity or their bland ass food, and he doesn’t even really respect the Lans culture more than he has to. It’s clear he only lives there for his husband and son’s sake. So why am I to believe this is his fairy tale ending?

The only answer I’ve been able to grasp over the years is that the romance genre of the novel overpowers everything else.

This is what brings me back to my original point. I don’t know if MXTX’s intended to comment on class, because if she did I struggle to understand how the ending of the story fits this intention. Which means by default it wasn’t the intention, at least not the priority. I mean ok duh, obvious conclusion, this is a danmei, it’s the bl genre, of course the romance comes first, but that’s not exactly what I’m getting at. You can absolutely have a romance that comments on other things at the same time and I think MXTX’s writing is smart enough to do this, except it fumbled so hard at the end it left me questioning if she even meant to comment on classism in the first place.

A part of me thinks that all of this commentary was just a coincidence of the genre conventions. Cultivator/ historical fantasy tends to just have classism baked into setting, so maybe that’s all it was. Perhaps she was just borrowing what was already there to make interesting character motivations and it wasn’t done with any intention of commenting on any sort of greater societal issue. Which for the record would be ok. I’m not policing what MXTX should write and romance for the sake of romance is perfectly valid, but as a reader I’m allowed to say this particular instant made me dislike the actual romance she set up. These issues in the book made me actively dislike LWJ. I’m on an island about that though. Getting back to my point, I struggle to call this commentary intentional and thus things like WWX and JGY suddenly feel unintentional as well.

I also find MXTX’s own words to be contradictory at times. For instance, she’s mentioned that after SV she found writing more than one couple to be too taxing. When asked if other characters in MDZS were gay she said explicitly they were not, yet both MDZS and TGCF have unofficial side couples that are an inch away from being canon. She’s also mentioned that XY, Sl, and XXC were old characters of hers and were originally going to be the focus of the book, which leads me to believe that they would’ve been a canon love triangle. So I am skeptical when she said all the characters besides WWX and LWJ are straight. I’m not accusing her of lying or anything like that. Tolkien contradicted himself so many times in his letters and essays, it’s sort of par for the course in my opinion. What it does mean though is that I can’t get a read on her intentions. What I can gather from what she tends to focus on in her extras, interviews, and just the fact that this is the BL genre, I’m inclined to believe that a lot of these parallels are unintentional but then I circle back to just how heavy handed it all is and I’m unsure again.

Anyway this was just the world’s longest way to say that actually we don’t have any idea what her intentions are and this is why when I’m analyzing her work I make a point to not put words in her mouth.

[pastshadows]

Shadows of the Past

Chapter 10: Eclipsing Shadows

Summary: After a year of blissful cohabitation, Astarion disappears without a trace, leaving behind a heartfelt letter explaining his departure. Determined to find him, you traverse Faerûn in search of your lost love, only to realize that some absences are meant to be permanent.

Returning to Waterdeep, you find solace in the company of Gale as you come to terms with Astarion's absence. But just as you begin to heal, Astarion reappears, begging for a second chance at love.

The question looms: can you forgive his abandonment and trust him once more? As you grapple with your emotions and trauma, a sinister force lurks in the shadows, targeting you for unknown reasons.

With danger closing in, you must navigate the treacherous waters of trust, love, and betrayal to uncover the truth behind the mysterious entity's motives. Will you be able to reunite with Astarion while facing the demons of your past? Can you unravel the secrets that threaten your very existence?

Setting: Post End-Game. Mostly canon compliant.

Word Count: 6.6K

Content: Explicit 18+ - intended for mature audiences.

Warnings: [Additional tags will be added, but expect mature content / read at your own risk.]

Spoilers. Mentions of in-game missable content. Violence. Sexual Assault [Implied/attempted sexual assault: Chapter 7]. Past Trauma. Murder. Death. Longing. Sexual themes. Smut. Blood drinking. Angst. Innuendos. High use of sarcasm. Completely fabricated camp interactions. Panic attacks. Anxiety.

64.media.tumblr.com

Please note:

There are mentions of Astarion's trauma in this chapter.

Mr. Blackwell’s green eyes look like murky poison puddles that drip with corrosive contempt. His burgundy garb is wrinkled, creased and stained, clearly unchanged for some time. Whatever remains of his sparse, dingy-grey hair is slick with grease, dishevelled, and unkempt. He’s in a plight of disrepair not often seen in the noble class, eliciting wide-eyed stares and snickers from the crowd in the ballroom.

Guards are warily observing the onset of the altercation with avid attention. Their hands instinctively drift and sit precariously on the hilts of their weapons. You can hear the clinking of metal amour as they inch closer, ready to spring into action. From what you know of Mr. Blackwell, he is well-connected and an influential figure in Waterdeep. If you allow the quarrel to escalate, the guards will likely take heed of his requests and pay little attention to yours. You must tread carefully, a daunting prospect as your palms heat and your temper bubbles under your skin like an overboiling cauldron.

Your eyes scan the mob roving through the ballroom, subtly looking for Astarion. Aldous spoke to his father about the pale Elf with red eyes. You cannot allow Mr. Blackwell to gleam a view of Astarion. Quick and practiced, you take inventory of all possible exits and escapes while you count the guards.

Your neglect to answer him only irritates Mr. Blackwell further, and he crams himself into your line of sight. He is not a small man and towers over you. “Did you hear me, girl?” He squalls, gruff and strident. His hands slam into the wall beside your head with an ear-splitting boom as he barricades you in. “What have you done with my son, you fucking miscreant!”

Girl? Miscreant?! Why did I tell Astarion that murder was off the table?

His fetid breath feathers over your face. An inhuman, snake-like grin splits your lips as your adrenaline spikes. You’ve rivalled devils in the Hells, eradicated a vampire lord, euthanized countless fiends, and rained death down on hordes of shadow-cursed creatures. You will not be intimidated by the likes of this cretin.

“Mr. Blackwell,” you purr unenthusiastically, straightening your back, squaring your shoulders, and bedecking your face with a saintly visage. “Welcome home. It’s good to see you. What’s this about your son? Is Aldous missing?”

“Don’t play stupid, sorceress.” Mr. Blackwell roars. His face reddens further as he descends deeper into his fit of rage. Blue-hued veins pop from his forehead and neck as he snarls in your face with bared teeth. Your palms heat until blisteringly hot, and you resist the urge to shove him. “I know it was you. Where is he? Where is my boy?!”

Dead, and rightfully so.

The guards are getting antsy, shuffling from foot to foot, and the other patrons gape at the dispute before them. A crowd of onlookers is starting to form behind Mr. Blackwell. They stare and laugh with gleeful tittering as the show plays out. Your heart crashes against your sternum, playing your ribs like a drum. Your blood is broiling in your veins, and your fingers twitch with the urge to incinerate the threat.

Where in the Hells is Astarion? He would have heard this as soon as it started. You’re surprised and infinitely relieved that a dagger has not skewered Mr. Blackwell yet, but his absence is starting to make you uneasy. Have the guards already apprehended him? Did Mr. Blackwell recognize and have him arrested? Astarion would not go quietly, and you haven’t heard or seen any evidence of a struggle elsewhere. Astarion is far from stupid. He may know that his presence will only magnify the issue, but it’s unlikely to stop him from stepping in. You grumble under your breath at the thought. No matter what he’s seen you do or how powerful you are, Astarion protects you as if you’re a fragile wildflower, but you are not fragile like a flower; you’re fragile like an unstable explosive.

I protect him with the same ferocity, and I will never stop. Perhaps we are even.

You lean close to Mr. Blackwell, almost nose to nose, and growl under your breath, “You would do well to get out of my face lest I introduce you to the fire of my ancestors.”

Mr. Blackwell gnashes his teeth, narrowing his eyes as his forehead pinches, “You dare to threaten me?!”

Oh, yes. I dare.

Your temper is getting away with you. A hand clasps Mr. Blackwell’s shoulder, and you almost lurch forward, preparing for the fight that is sure to ensue, until you see Gale, wearing an elegant and regal mauve suit with one arm behind his back. You’ve never been so damn relieved not to see Astarion.

Gale’s face is composed with a cordial smile, and he laughs kindly as if nothing is amiss. You see the pink current of the Weave wash over Mr. Blackwell and recognize Charm Person as Gale casts imperceptibly with naught but a murmur.

“Of course not, Mr. Blackwell,” Gale assures in a charitable tenor. “Such a thing would be crass. Isn’t that right, my friend?” Gale prompts you. Gale is skilled, but his charisma is not nearly as honed as yours, and you recognize the petition for assistance charming the man.

Cloaking your voice in an alluring baritone, you put your silver tongue to work, “Quite right, Gale. I would never dare utter such ill-portent to our very good friend here.”

Mr. Blackwell’s eyes glass over as the spell and your charm ensnare him, dousing his rage like water to flame. Mr. Blackwell leans back, tottering on his legs, and mumbles through numb lips, “Of course not. I must have been mistaken. Please, forgive the outburst.”

“All is forgiven,” you shrug while revelling in the influence you have over feeble minds and continue your coercion. “Mr. Blackwell was just telling me he was on his way home. He is ever so weary from his travels. We should not retain him, Gale.”

“Yes.” Mr. Blackwell stammers, blinking hard as your suggestion plants and grows roots. “Yes, I was just about to retire for the night.”

Gale nods curtly to Mr. Blackwell while offering you his arm, “Get some rest. We should be going as well. It’s getting quite late. Dawn is almost upon us, after all.”

Taking Gale’s offered arm, he leads you away from the onlookers ogling you. The guards have relaxed as tensions decrease, but they still watch you with a keen eye. Gale’s warning starts to sink in.

Dawn? Fuck! Where is Astarion? He must get home.

Your grip slips from Gale, but he catches it and pats your arm, “Keep calm. Your panic will only further alarm the guards, and I fear they will not be as easily swayed as Mr. Blackwell. We are quite a team, but we cannot charm them all without someone taking notice. Astarion is waiting for us outside, just beyond the grounds.”

“Astarion is outside?” You query with an arched brow.

Gale nods, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with people who take notice of him. Once he’s managed to excuse himself from the tedious small talk, he leans close. “I sought him out as soon as I arrived. He is ever so antagonistic and easily provoked when it comes to you. The man would brave the sun if he thought you were in danger. It was considerably difficult to convince him it was best to leave it to me. I apologize I did not come to your aid first. I know you have more sense than he and would a keep cool-head. When I found him, the idiot had already drawn his damn weapons. Always violence first with him, isn’t it?”

You swallow hard and keep your mouth firmly shut. Gale knows you, but perhaps not as well as he thinks. You would have incinerated that man as soon as he stuck his face in yours, guards and onlookers be damned. You do not take life unnecessarily, but you take it without guilt when there is a threat to your friends. Mr. Blackwell is a danger to Astarion, and you can be impetuous when it comes to him.

“Thank you, Gale.” You breathe a long sigh as relief sates your nerves. “How did you know?”

“Mr. Blackwell came to the manor looking for you. I tried to appease him, but I am neither as intimidating nor convincing as you are, and he stormed off before I could get more than a word or two in. I knew he would go scouring the parties for Aldous and more than likely come across you.” Gale chuckles, “I’ve been through several of these celebrations tonight. I should have known to go to the most extravagant one first.”

“Mr. Blackwell will be back.” You point out, mouth twisting into a grimace as your mind tries to piece together some semblance of a plan. “We have not heard the last of this.”

“No,” Gale murmurs. “We most definitely have not. It is my hope that he doesn’t realize I charmed him tonight. If he does, it will only compound his fervour. We will have to tread these waters carefully. If this reaches the Masked Lords of Waterdeep…” Gale trails off with a sullen shake of his head, “May the dice roll in our favour.”

Your eyes bulge. You don’t know much about the government of Waterdeep, but everyone has heard of the masked lords. A ruling council whose identities were well hidden and carefully guarded.

“Could he really do that? Take it to that height?” You wheeze breathlessly as an invisible hand grips your lungs and clenches, “The Lords of Waterdeep surely wouldn’t concern themselves with such a trivial matter of a missing boy. Would they?”

Gale shrugs, “I wish I could say. Mr. Blackwell is exceptionally renowned. It’s plausible that he will go to great lengths, and I’m unsure how far his reach extends. I will do what I can to protect you and Astarion, but even my influence has limits.”

The brisk air bristles against your skin, giving you goosebumps or perhaps that’s due to Gale’s mention of the lords, as you and Gale continue your hastened retreat. Gale takes long strides, making you trot beside him to keep pace since you are considerably shorter than he. What is with men and walking as fast as they can? You would ask Gale to slow down, but you’re in a hurry to get away. The rapid click, click, click of your heels on the stone makes you uneasy, as it sounds like a clock counting down your final moments.

There’s an eerie reticence in the courtyard this evening, as silent as the sheeted dead, as if the city beyond these stone walls has ceased to exist. A ghostly wind causes your modest steel-silver dress to flutter around your knees. The scent of incoming rain hangs thick in the air while drab clouds swarm the sky as a storm coming off the ocean makes landfall, and the weather fronts interact.

Magic glows in your eyes and fingertips as you practice the various spells in your repertoire. Your fingers are a spectacular florid ballet, the Weave tiptoeing over the pads as you rehearse the movements for Sunbeam, Chain Lightning, Cloudkill, and Blight and recite the incantations in your mind like a sermon without ultimately casting as you drill yourself. Weaving the intricate web of the Weave is ingrained in your soul, and this is not an exercise you need to practice, but the recent events and Gale’s mention of the Masked Lords have caused anxiety to breed in your muscles. You need to make sure you’re ready for war. You’re an incredibly gifted sorceress with the ferocity of your draconic ancestors dwelling in your blood. You can be death incarnate, and you will be if it comes to it. You will raze this damn city to the ground if it means to harm Astarion. No one will hurt him again if your lungs still draw breath.

You’re glowing so brightly, the Weave shimmering around you like an aurora, that you don’t notice that day has fallen victim to night when Astarion breezes into the courtyard. He looks at you, brandishes his dagger with a finesse that never fails to impress and descends into a defensive stance. He observes the surroundings with an acute eye and gives you a questioning look after he’s assessed there’s no danger.

With a quick step you learned from him, you pivot and toss a very weak Fire Bolt straight toward him. Astarion whirls, his propensity for dexterity evident in his movement, avoiding the spell.

“Impressive agility. I’m glad I taught you something at least, but what in the Hells was that for?” He smirks with a tsk and clicks his tongue. “At least, I ask before I bite. I am civil - unlike you.”

“Just making sure you’re not getting sloppy,” you giggle with a virtuous shrug.

“If that would have hit me, I would have deserved it,” he chuckles and glowers at you with an amused grin. “That was far too slow and weak. I did not even feel the heat from it. You can do infinitely better than that. Even I can cast that cantrip. Come on, darling. If you’re going to spar with me, you could at least give me the decency of a challenge.”

“A challenge, hm?” You smirk wickedly. Sparring with him isn’t a new activity. When you lived with him, you two would often spar long into the night until you were both sweating and tired. He craves thrill and danger as much as you, and you keep each other on your toes. “As you wish.”

Astarion’s rapscallion smile and the way he bends lightly at the knees indicate that he welcomes this exchange. The Weave brightens around you, and you cast Fire Bolt repeatedly in quick succession with a little more power and speed behind it with lithe steps. Astarion swings his body, nimbly ducking, dodging and avoiding everything you throw at him as he advances toward your position until he’s in front of you and takes you into his arms while he laughs.

“You caught me once. It tickled.” He glances toward a small burn mark on his shirt, “If anyone has gotten sloppy, it’s you.”

“What you call sloppy, I call careful casting,” you giggle.

“Sloppy,” he corrects, narrowing those scarlet eyes glinting vibrantly with excitement and adrenaline. “You’re already a veritable sovereign when it comes to magic. How about we work on expanding your skillset?” He twirls a dagger at his side without so much as looking at it, catches the blade between his fingers, and settles the hilt in your hand with a devious grin. Astarion takes a few steps backward and motions you forward, “Come on. Attack me.”

You stare at the dagger, your fingers sliding over the metal hilt, “You want me to come at you with a knife? Have you gone completely mad? There are training dummies right there.”

“Oh yes, those will surely help you.” Astarion rolls his eyes and clicks his tongue with audible disapproval of your reluctance. “I am positive your attacker will stand stationary for you so you can stab them - if you ask nicely enough. You will learn nothing from those.”

It’s unlikely that you’ll hurt him. Hells, if you did somehow manage to so much as nick him, Astarion would probably be proud of you, but you stare at the shiny steel with trepidation, “What if I cut you?”

Astarion’s head tilts back, and he laughs loudly, “Oh, you are adorable. Thank you for your concern, but I assure you, I will be fine. You’re more likely to hurt yourself, and if you somehow do cut me, what does it matter? It’s not like you can kill me further.” He giggles, “Now, remember your footwork and keep the sharp pointy end directed toward me and not yourself, love.”

Well, multiclassing never hurts.

Slipping off your sandals, you recall everything he’s ever taught you or tried to, at least. Bending your knees and rolling your weight into your heels for balance, you lunge toward him. You and he spar while he deflects your attacks with an ease that vexes you, and he barks various instructions - straighten your back, keep your weight centred, don’t lean forward, and use your momentum until your heart beats hard, a prisoner in a cage constructed of bone. Exhausted, you sit on the ground, gulping down ragged breaths.

Astarion crosses his arms with a chuckle, “Done, are you? Well, I’ve certainly seen worse - from a babe. Do not go getting into any knife fights without me. You will surely get yourself run through.”

“Astarion,” you throw your head backward exaggeratedly with the back of your hand against your forehead, “you wound me. I think I could rival you with one or two more lessons.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes, “One or two centuries of lessons, perhaps. You stick to magic. I will happily do any required stabbing.”

The man doesn’t need to breathe, and you know it, but he’s not even sweating. You frown at him while wiping your brow, “Could you please pretend to be winded at least?”

“Apologies. Where are my manners?” Astarion drops to his knees and gives you a gentle shove, sending you sprawling to your back. Crawling over you, he mimics your heavy breathing with a smug smirk, “Better?”

Rolling your eyes, you stick your tongue out at him frivolously, “Kiss me, you fool.”

“Blood running a little hot, sweetheart?” He purrs sensuously, pressing his body into you, grabbing your thigh and guiding it around his waist, “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Astarion’s lips mould to yours, cool silk against your heated pout and as delightful to the senses as plunging into cool water on an arid day. His tongue traces your lower lip, enticing your mouth to part. His taste is rich and hypnotic, a firewater of desire and good Gods, it’s intoxicating. His fingers trail up the delicate skin of your upper thigh with firm pressure, leaving blazing trails of icy fire, coalescing between your legs and making you throb. Bolts of electricity amble up your spine in a slow progression, making your body shiver awkwardly as bumps rise over your skin.

Astarion wraps an arm around your waist and hauls you to your feet, tugging your dress back into place, and you give him a quizzical look.

“Gale has returned,” Astarion says, smoothing your hair down. “That man has the worst timing. Also, a bath. You smell.”

Heat rises to your cheeks, and you groan at his candidness. With a gentle shove, you grumble under your breath and stalk away from him to your room.

There’s a chill in the air that sinks its teeth into even his already frosty skin. Winter is drawing near. The trees have shed their leaves, preparing for dormancy, and the ground is stiff beneath his boots. He’s tired and filthy, spending much of his days lately in caves or held up in shabby barns or abandoned shacks during the day as he continues to run from the only love he has ever known. He has been lucky so far. He can often make it to the next godforsaken hovel to find shelter if he travels fast enough through the night, but as he progresses, the little towns are growing further apart. One of these days, he may not be able to find shelter before dawn, and the sun will consume him - a rather painful demise for a vampire.

Before Astarion enters the ramshackle tavern in this puny rural town in the middle of nowhere, he casts his eyes skyward and looks at the silvery moon as he does every night. If nothing else, he can take comfort in the fact that she is somewhere, under the same stars, and maybe, just maybe, she is looking at the moon, too.

The tavern is as destitute as the rest of this town, with low ceilings and lit by only a few oil lamps, giving it a gloomy atmosphere. It’s quiet. No minstrel or bard plays music here, and the only sounds that can be heard are the dragging of flagons across the rough tabletops and the grotesque gulps and burps of the few downtrodden labourers and drunks. It smells of mildew, fetid spirits and vomit. He crinkles his nose. He usually mimics breathing out of habit in public, but for this place, he will make an exception.

The floor is absurdly tacky, and even he can’t help the sound his boots make as they peel off it. He orders a pint and sits in a rickety chair that wobbles underneath him. Calling the ale rotten would be an understatement. He’s never tasted anything quite so vile in all his two centuries, and his diet once consisted of dead, putrid rats. It’s hard to say which is worse.

A pair of ne’er-do-wells attempted to extort some coin out of him by betting they could juggle more daggers than he. Fools. Even if blind drunk, his dexterity would be vastly superior to theirs. They could scarcely juggle two - child’s play for him. They left quickly with superficial lacerations to their fingers and hands. He wishes she had been here to witness this. They would have had a good laugh. She always loved watching him.

Even though the ale is terrible, the little table is starting to fill with emptied flagons. Tonight, every iota of him aches loudly in the silence of her absence. He does not need to trance, not since the tadpole no longer wriggles in his skull, but he will, if only so he can fall into a memory where they are sure to meet.

His vision is blurred, and his mind thinks of nothing but her. What would she be doing right now? Reading by the fire and sipping wine? Trying to mend her clothes and doing a terrible job now that he is no longer there to do it for her? Sleeping in their bed? Would she be alone, or would Halsin or Gale have come to console her? With him out of the picture, perhaps she could find happiness with one of them. The thought makes his very bones throb, and his fingers wrack through his hair, unsettled by the notion of any but him with her in their bed.

Astarion empties the next flagon and frowns while he grinds it across the table, clinking it against its fallen brethren.

Gale would be the most likely. Gale was a powerful wizard, but he had always been fascinated by her innate authority over the Weave. Where Gale had to read books, scrolls, practice and study spells, she could simply cast them reflexively with little effort. Early in their adventure, Gale had tried to beguile her, boasting his control of the Weave with a demonstration. Astarion watched with curiosity to see if she would reciprocate the obvious flirtation. She kept a straight face, smiling politely and copying as instructed until the foray was completed. She walked away with her arms crossed and a hard roll of her eyes in exasperation while Gale watched her all dew-eyed. It made him snicker at the time.

Despite his prowess, wealth and renown, Gale would probably bore her into an early grave. She craved excitement, risk, Hells, even danger. She needed someone not afraid to get into a little, or a lot, of trouble. She would not be satisfied sitting idle in a library for the rest of her days. She loves fiercely and deserves to be loved fiercely in return with untamed, unbridled passion.

Hot baths. Animals. Fresh fruit. Red roses. Long walks through moonlight forests at night. All the things she loves flit through his mind.

Her face appears in his blurry vision, laughing as she runs through the forest with him hot on her heels. Her modest pastel green dress waves in the wind. She casts Misty Step and disappears from his view. She is not quiet in the forest and knows it, but she pops out from behind the large trunk of a tree and yells, “Boo!” He pretends to be startled, but she doesn’t believe his facade and dissolves into adorable giggles.

She strolls up to him, smiling brightly, still laughing, and the stars themselves descend from the heavens and twinkle in her eyes. Her voice, majestic like a siren’s song, fills his ears as she says, “You’re an adorable idiot. I love you, Astarion.”

He smiles, blinks, and the memory dissipates. He tries to hold onto it, but it withdraws despite his efforts to keep her with him.

A woman’s voice catches his attention, “Stop, please. I said no.”

In Astarion’s drunken daze, he almost hears her voice, but it’s a hint too breathy and modulated. He narrows his eyes and tries to peer past the film of inebriation, mucking up his vision and making him see double. A young woman sits at the bar, and a man much older and ragged-looking pets her hair with clumsy fingers, muttering slurred, vulgar innuendos. She tries to push him away from her, but it’s futile. The man stumbles and chortles, taking another noisy sip of his ale, missing his mouth and washing his beard with it.

He cringes with a roll of his eyes. This is not his business. He does not fancy himself a hero, and he is not foolish enough to get caught up in such a quandary. He peers into his empty flagon. A deep, dark well of sorrow gazes back at him from the bottom. He should leave and return to the inn, where he can slip into his trance and be with her until the sun dips below the horizon.

“I said stop!” The woman’s voice rings out higher, making his ears twitch and grating on his nerves. It’s so close to hers that he has trouble reminding himself it’s not. It can’t possibly be because he... he left her.

He looks around the tavern, hoping someone else will step in, but no one even lifts their sagged heads to assess the situation. He leans back in his unsteady chair, and his fingers rap against the table with hard, rhythmic thumps portraying his increasing frustration.

He is no hero.

“No! I said no!” 

Is no one going to do anything? Really? He growls, clenching his jaw and grating his teeth. The woman’s voice is just too close to hers. It’s making his fingers twitch over the hilt of his dagger, and his muscles tense.

“No! Please, stop. Help!”

The woman’s shoes drag across the floor, and he’s already out of his chair, stalking toward the commotion with a haunting scowl. He ignores the itch to draw his blade. If she taught him anything, it’s that talking is often all that is necessary, but if all else fails, he has no issue with killing.

He is a little peckish.

He stands beside the woman with his practiced liar’s smile, “My friend, how lovely to see you again. Funny we should meet here of all places.”

The man glowers at him through droopy, glassy eyes, releasing the woman’s arm. The woman simply stares at him, her cheeks tear-streaked and ruddy, unsure of what to do.

Gods, these people are dull. All she must do is play along. He attempts to make his intentions plain, “Allow me to walk you home. We can catch up on the way.”

“That lady is coming home with me.” The man snarls, poking his shoulder with a finger that he can’t even keep straight.

This man would be easy pickings indeed if it came to it.

“No.” Astarion stands tall, squaring his shoulders and layering on his most intimidating intonation, “I will be taking her home. If you try to stop me, I know a thousand ways to gut you before you can so much as blink. Do not tempt me.”

“Ah Hells,” the man snickers after sizing him up and stumbles back, “She’s not worth the trouble. She’s all yours.”

He hoped the man would force his hand, but this is probably for the best. He is looking forward to resting indoors today. It has been many days since he was able to wait out the day in a room with a bed that did not smell like some form of livestock.

The woman turns to him with big, round eyes full of adoration and grabs his arm, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Astarion doesn’t quite know how to react, and he does not like the way she is eyeing him. He pulls his arm out of her grasp, “I’ll walk you home. Let’s go.”

The night feels too silent and still around him as he walks the dim streets. The woman follows on his heels, blabbering and stuttering her praises and gratitude. He doesn’t speak another word to her as he fights his mind. Emotions are stirring in his head. He's unsettled, angry even, and he doesn’t understand why. At least the walk isn’t long in a small place like this.

As soon as the woman opens her door, he turns to walk away.

“Won’t you come in?” Her eyes slink over him, and he feels revulsion. No one but her should be looking at him like that, and it only increases his discomfort further, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t give it,” he snaps back gruffly.

He keeps walking until he feels the woman’s hand clutch the back of his shirt, her fingernails grazing over his scars. Those old emotions flood him - fear, loathing, disgust, and he whirls with a fanged snarl.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Oh! I-I’m sorry, Astarion.” Her hand recoils from his back, and she jumps away, pressing herself to the headboard with eyes rounded in confusion. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Do you want me to go?”

Shit.

He let his mind wander off with him, and the memory bled into reality. Blinking hard, he reorients himself. He’s safe in Gale’s manor. He is with her. It was her touching his back - at his request, of course.

He jumps off the bed, flexing his hands as he paces the room. He needs time to get his head straight, but the raw anguish in her eyes is gnawing at him. This is why he left in the first place. He keeps hurting her when the storm sweeps him away in a flash flood, and he’s lost in it.

“I’ll go and give you some time.” She slips into her housecoat, cinching it at her waist and opens the door. Before she closes it, she turns to him, “I’m so sorry, Astarion. If you need space for the night, I understand. I will rest in my room tonight.”

He can’t get his godsdamned mouth to move or his tongue to form words. He stands idly as she closes the door behind her. He listens to her bare feet pad down the hallway at a quick trot and then the click of her door closing. His hands wrack through his hair, fingers curling into it. He knows better than to let his mind drift aimlessly, although the fact that it did roam is an interesting development. He’s used to being able to think of nothing but withstanding the sensation of her hands on his back. He’s improving, albeit slowly.

He laces his hands behind his head, arches his back and stretches his tight chest, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. Astarion closes his eyes and shakes out his arms.  He feels panicked and tense. His skin squirms as if snakes are writhing below the surface. Patrolling his bedroom, he tries to mollify his unease, taking deep breaths of air he doesn’t need. The memory has agitated him for some reason that he can’t quite put his finger on.

His ears twitch as they catch suppressed weeping from her room. Fuck, he’s upset her. This was not her fault. It’s been a while since he went and fucked things up like he always does. He leans on the wall and closes his eyes. Did he make a mistake returning? For months, his singular goal was to find her, but now he wonders if this was selfish. He could not stand living without her, but she may have been better without him.

Astarion is sliding down an icy hill made of doubt, and he can’t stop his descent. Has he doomed her to a life sharing his pain? What does he have to offer her other than his unconditional love? The shadows have claimed him once more.

No.

He can’t let himself fall back into old patterns. She can handle his darkness.

The silence of this room without her heartbeat is dark and heavy. She should be here with him. A chill like an electric bolt runs down his spine at the sight of the empty room when he opens his eyes. It reminds him of when he left, a year as nightmarish as the one he spent in that tome, alone and hungry. He aches to hold her.

He takes long strides and taps on her door lightly.

“Are you okay, Astarion?” She sniffles, trying hard to confine the tears, making her eyes shine.

“I’m fine. Come here.” He wraps his arms around her, kissing her forehead and pressing his cheek against her. She hugs him awkwardly, more awkwardly than he hugged her the first time they did this. She keeps her hands off him, arms stiff at her sides. “It’s okay. You can touch me.”

She hesitates before placing her hands on his waist. He kisses her temple, gently grabs her arms and guides them around him, “A proper hug, yes? You can touch my back, love. It’s alright.”

He can feel the warmth of her hands hovering over his back, unsure, but slowly press into him, and she hugs him tightly. He’s surprised to find that it soothes the agitation. The spring coiled around his chest, constricting it, dissipates in her arms. He takes a deep breath to test how good the looseness feels.

“Come back to our room, hm? I will explain what happened.”

“You don’t have to explain,” she murmurs against him.

“I know,” he rubs her back, “but I want to - if you’re willing to hear it, of course.”

“Always.”

They sit on the bed as he describes the memory in as much detail as possible. She stays quiet as she always did, waiting patiently when he must take a moment to collect himself, offering him her hand. When something he recalls upsets him further, she squeezes his fingers, grounding him and encouraging him to take a break - when and if he needs to.

“I don’t know why it agitated me so much. It made me afraid,” he rasps faintly with a shaky breath as his brows pinch together, perplexed. It’s still troubling him. “Her touching my back was not the only reason, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

She nods with a contemplative gaze. Her beautiful doe-eyes blink as she ponders, and the candlelight scintillates in them. She grabs a blanket and pats her lap, “Do you want to put your head in my lap?”

He smiles. She always knows exactly what he needs. Astarion rests his head on her legs, and she covers him with the blanket, making sure his back and scars are entirely cloaked. Tucking it around him, like he tucks her in at night to ensure it doesn’t slip.

Rubbing his arm, she keeps her voice to a solacing whisper, “Do you want to know what I think, or would you rather I just listen?”

She has always been keenly observant and deeply perceptive. Often able to gleam the tiniest subtleties in inflection, tone or body language. It is what makes her a master at persuasion and intimidation. Her insight is as boundless as the cosmos. If anyone can help him shed light on this, it’s her. If he is to heal, he needs to know what provokes these feelings.

“I have gone over it in my mind time and time again,” he sighs. “I cannot figure it out myself. Tell me what you think.”

“Stop me at any point if you no longer wish to hear it,” she urges. “May I hug you closer?”

With the blanket covering his back and scars, he feels protected and secure. He nods, “Yes.”

She curls around him. Her warmth seeps into him, forcing back the gloom. “You said you did not like the way she looked at you. You mentioned it twice. What look did she give you, and what did it remind you of?”

Flashes of the woman’s greedy eyes play out in his mind. She stared at him as if she wanted to devour and lose herself in him. She stared at him like he was her saviour. She stared at him like they used to stare at him before he brought them to Cazador.

Hells.

Will he ever stop being astounded with how clever she is? She’s not telling him what she thinks. She’s bringing his attention to details he skimmed over so he can work it out himself.

“It… it reminded me of the way my victims used to look at me,” his voice quivers and cracks, tears spring to his eyes, rivulets rolling out the corners. Good Gods, his body is trembling as he fights to keep his emotions from giving way. “The bloody dingy tavern, the way she simply trusted me to walk her home, the quiet, dark streets and the ardent lust in her eyes… It all felt like I was back to doing his bidding as if I was the fucking rake again.”

She rescinds her pressure on him slightly. He used to hate being touched when he felt like this, but not anymore, as long as it’s her touching him. He pulls her back around him. His body shakes more violently now as he continues to fight the overwhelming emotions.

“You don’t have to fight, Astarion. Don’t be afraid to break. We all fall.” She soothes him with an almost ethereal voice like an angel whispering, “I’ve got you. For as long as you need. I’ve always got you.”

Sobs wrack his body, tears streaming down his face, and he falls to pieces in her arms. She’s not close enough like this. His body is painfully bare without her skin on his. She is the light that drives the shadows back. She is sunshine. She is his. He shrugs off the blanket with haste. She gasps at his quick movement, and his fingers find the hem of her nightdress.

She stops him with a confused look, “Astarion, what-”

“I don’t need it,” he chokes out, hoarse and urgent. “Not with you. Not anymore. I want to feel you. Will you let me?”

She removes her nightdress and opens her arms with a smile, tears streaming down her face. She wraps her arms around him, limbs cocooning his body, and pulls him securely to her, his bare back against her warm chest, choking away the fear.

With her, he is seen. He is understood. He is safe.

“I love you, Kamena. Ai armiel telere maenen hir.” He speaks to her through sobs in Elven, their mother tongue, meaning “You hold my heart forever.”

“I love you too, Astarion. Ai armiel telere maenen hir,” she chimes with a featherlight kiss to his shoulder.

Safe in her arms, he shatters and breaks.  

Thank you to all those who read/like/comment/follow/reblog/etc. I'm forever thankful for the support. I've loved writing since I was a child but have never been confident enough to post anything for others to read. The encouragement I've received has been positively incredible, and it's been helping me through some hard times in my life - sincerely thank you so much! :)

Chapters Master List - Shadows of the Past

AO3: Crossposted

If you're interested, I also write fanfic for Ascended Astarion x Spawn Tav - Fangs and Fractured Hearts

Small Notes:

We did name Tav in this chapter. I apologize if it's not well received but I think it will make senes going forward. I did try to do it in a natural-ish way.

[luckybunny555]

⋆｡˚⋆ Little artists - Spidey Squad ⋆｡˚⋆

You had to take care of Mayday while at the Spider Society, so you decided to have an artistic play date, but you caught someone's attention

Characters: Miles 1610!, Hobie, Gwen, Pavitr. Not necessarily romantic, can be read as platonic too! GN! reader(lmk if the compliments I used aren't gender neutral, english isn't my first language!)

A/N: this is my first time writing for Miles and Pav, I have no idea how to write accurate dialogue for them(and maybe Gwen and Hobie too lol) but I tried

Peter B. had to participate in one of Miguel's meetings, and Mayday wouldn't be quiet, she's got the explorer instinct and curiosity in her

You were bored of Miguel's voice, always complaining or scolding or something, you didn't really know because you totally tuned him out a while ago

Since you got along well with kids, and you clearly weren't paying attention to the meeting, he asked you to take care of her for a little while – and how could you say no when she's almost begging you to hold her, adorably extending her arms to you?

You totally accepted

So you had an idea. You remembered you kept some colorful markers in the bottom of your bag, because who knows when you might get the urge to draw something, right?

You take your markers, but you don't know where to draw, can't find any paper

Then you had another idea

Why not leave your and Mayday's mark on the wall? A sweet, sweet gift for Miguel to find at some point

You sit down on the floor, legs crossed and Mayday on your lap, markers scattered all around you

You give her a hand when she needs it, but we've seen how agile and quick to learn she is, she'll get the hang of it in no time

You draw on the wall too. Maybe you have a petty distaste for Miguel, maybe you like to defy authority and break rules, maybe you just wanna give the place a bit of color... You have your reasons(or maybe you don't? you do you)

You make sure your drawings don't overlap with hers, giving her plenty of space to express herself and create her colorful little masterpiece

And you add your little details to your drawings, personal touches to mark it as yours

But you weren't the only person who got bored at the meeting

Miles

He was sick and tired of hearing about canon events and whatever else Miguel had to say

He was looking around, not thinking about anything, just trying to find something interesting to distract him with

Then his eyes landed on you

When he saw you and Mayday surrounded by a bunch of markers, drawing on Miguel's wall? He just had to join

Dude just walks over with that big smile of his, sits next to you and starts asking you about your "play date"

"What're you guys doing over here?"

You stop to take a look at him, unaware that you had a (one man) audience, and explain your idea to entertain Mayday

"Oh, that looks cool! Can I join?" He grabs a marker and waits for your answer, you could see how excited about it he was

You playfully slap his arm and nod

When he starts, you take a few moments just to look at his process, observing the way he looks when he's all concentrated in his drawings and wondering about how it'll turn out

After a while, you continue yours, you and Miles sharing a few jokes and tips as you both laugh

Occasionally, you guys would help Mayday, and you couldn't help but smile, seeing just how great with kids Miles was

He's just so careful and friendly with her, not to mention he also has that "childlike wonder" and youthful energy that makes him connect so well with kids

When you guys are done with it, he'll take a selfie/picture of it(with you and Mayday in it), so he can take a look at it in his gallery whenever he misses you – never fails to make him smile

Hobie

He's sitting on a table, legs extended over it, not caring about the meeting since the moment Miguel opened his mouth to speak, even though he's still listening

He's an observer, so he already had his eyes taking in everything that was going on in the room, his gaze occasionally turning to your bored expression, or to Peter when he handed Mayday to you

His attention would shift from time to time, but when you sat down in front of the wall with all those markers, he was too intrigued to take his eyes off of you

A little while after you started drawing with the kid, he got up from the table and made his way to you, leaning casually against the wall, clearly observing you and Mayday

"Adding a lil' punk flair to Miguel's boring old wall?" He says with that signature smirk of his

You look up, stopping your drawing for a moment, and let out a chuckle

You hold out one of your markers, asking if he wants to join

He obviously accepted. Leaving his mark on Miguel's wall? it's a surprise if he hasn't done that already

He'll make it as vibrant and punk as possible

And he's damn good at it, like c'mon, you've seen his guitar, his jacket... the guy's an amazing artist

Every once in a while you'll stop just to admire how the drawings are turning out, or how cute and caring Hobie looks when interacting with Mayday

The three of you make a colorful mess on that wall, and when you're done, oh, does it look awesome

He'll friendly fist bump you, praising you for your artwork – and your "defiant artistic expression" idea or something like that ;)

Gwen

She was trying to pay attention to the meeting, she really was

But she couldn't help but be curious and intrigued by what you and Mayday were doing, sitting on the floor in front of a wall

So she quietly made her way towards you, careful not to draw anyone's attention and get you into trouble

She leaned against the wall, a slightly amused(admiring) grin on her face as she observed the scene

The both of you looked up at her, and she just admired how cute you two looked for a moment

She noticed how good you were with kids, and it kinda gave her butterflies, you were so adorable

You asked if she wanted to leave her mark on the wall too, but she didn't wanna get into trouble with Miguel, so she kindly refused

"I'm not much of an artist anyways"

But she did sit next to you to help Mayday with her little drawings

So the three of you just sat there for a while, Gwen lovingly admiring you while you were so focused on your artwork there, and you guys would talk about a bunch of stuff

Very supportive of Mayday's artistic expression as well, compliments even the ones with uneven, crooked lines and messy coloring

She completely forgot about the meeting btw, she'll ask someone later what it was about, but right now she just wants to talk to you and watch you do your thing

She kinda can't take her eyes off of you, you look so fascinating and beautiful when you're focused on your "creative project"

She'll totally compliment you when it's done, she genuinely adored it and she appreciates your talent, it's really impressive to her

Pavitr

My logic is that if dogs love him, kids must love him too(who wouldn't love this sunshine of a boy tbh?)

You caught his attention when he saw Mayday in your arms, how adorable she looked as you played with her

A few moments after you sat down to start drawing with her, he had to approach you out of curiosity

Mayday immediately smiles at him, doing that "hand grab" reach thing that kids do when they wanna be picked up

He just wins kids' heart so easily, ok? It's adorable, really

He'd start off just helping Mayday, but then he wouldn't resist to add his own touch to the wall, and he's so excited about it, smiling and laughing while you guys talk and draw

"Aaah this looks amazing! You're such a great artist" this boy gives the most excited compliments, he genuinely appreciates your art style

Every few moments he'll take a look at what you're doing and comment on it, so much praise and excitement from him

And he'll be Mayday's biggest cheerleader too, anything she draws he'll be like "Yeess, it looks great, little one!" and give her a high five

And his drawing looks hella cool too, I totally see him as an "arts and crafts" guy, so he totally has some experience

You'll see the pure joy and pride in his face once you guys finish your artwork, he totally loves it and he enjoyed every second of it with you and Mayday

[nobie]

I need to talk about Morgan Elsbeth and the connection to Thrawn. Along with some other questionable narrative choices Filoni has made with Thrawn.

I want to preface, this is not going to be a hating Morgan Elsbeth post nor hating on the actress or any bts production of her character. There is enough hate towards characters like this in this fandom and I will not be perpetuating that (take that negativity somewhere else). I only want this to be an open discussion on this part of Thrawn's story.

Morgan is a character that has been placed into Thrawn's canon timeline. She was not written in (everything is written obvs but let me explain). The distinction I want to make between those narrative ideas is, placing a character into a story means they are important in supporting the main character, but no one cares if they are replaced or removed from the story. Writing a character into the story means they are so important to the direct development of the mc, if they are replaced or removed it feels like a piece of that character is missing. Some examples for Thrawn would be Eli Vanto or Ar'alani. Morgan was removed from the story in the Ahsoka series and it didn't even effect Thrawn himself.

So why create this character and push a narrative that makes her seem like the most important part of the story? Like without her Thrawn wouldn't be able to get back to the galaxy? Thrawn is a genius, a warrior, and a survivor. He could've figure that out himself, or with the help of Ezra (an established character that the audience loves). Instead he's had to rely on Morgan.

This is where my qualm with Dave Filoni comes into play. I love Filoni's work he has created some of my favorite stories in the Star Wars franchise. But he does one thing that I despise. Ignores the work of amazing authors. In this case Timothy Zahn. I can't say for sure that he hasn't read the Ascendancy Trilogy or the Thrawn (2017) trilogy, but it feels like it when analyzing Filoni's characterization of Thrawn. If he did read those books or least consulted Zahn on them he would know Thrawn's true motives for what he does. He is a protector for the greater good. He goes against many higher powers to make the right choice, not the good or bad choices. He shows the characters around him time and time again that he will always do what is right even if it means his downfall. He is not a villain in his own story just himself, not good or bad, the one in the middle. He evolves, learns, observes, and understands things on a completely different level. And we only see a sliver of this characterization in Filoni's story. I understand the narrative built around Thrawn being the ultimate villain for the ghost crew because a good story like this should have an interesting dynamic between protagonist and antagonist. But the fact that you'd have to read his books to know who he is, is a clear indication to me that his novel characterization wasn't researched enough.

It also shows me that Filoni favors the legends version of Thrawn more. Especially with the inclusion of Pellaeon in Tales of the Empire and not Eli Vanto. Who could have easily been placed into that role. Although, he his Thrawn's aide he can and has done things like that for Thrawn.

Now in Tales of the Empire we see that he isn't the original creator of the TIE Defender. Trying to place Morgan into a characters story that is so beloved [Thrawn] feels so forced through this idea that she created the TIE Defender. Why would someone who is trying to get revenge for her people go to the Empire with an idea like this. If she is so angry why she is relying on someone else's power to get her revenge? And even when she got in the good graces of the Empire with Thrawn what came of it? The Defender project was ruined, shouldn't her allegiance to Thrawn be in ruin too. The deal they made implied she would get what she wanted, but she never did and was still loyal to him. Thrawn does have this quality about him though, you'd follow him off a cliff, the gravity in which he attracts people to his cause is so alluring. But that still doesn't explain where Morgans revenge story went. And in the end she really does feel like a character that can be replaced.

Trying to make a character that was placed into the story important to the audience does a disservice to the story as a whole. Thrawn has an established world of characters in the novels that are readily available to use in the narrative. So why aren't they in it? Eli especially in one I cannot ignore the absence of. From the moment Thrawn is found in exile Eli does not leave his side. Eli follows him into battle again and again. Even after realzing his initial career choice will amount to nothing now that Thrawn has taken over his duty in the Imperial Navy. Thrawn himself says "you hold my words in your hand, and their meanings," and although that was in relation to his survival with the Empire it still held true throughout the story. Eli is an extension of Thrawn, whatever is said to Eli is said to Thrawn and vise versa. So where is he?

(Ok that's all my ramblings for now. Hopefully this made sense. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the tags or replies. Thrawn was the first sw novel I read, I'm fiercely protective of him. So when his characterization is kinda ruined like this it upsets me. But I'm always excited to see him in any media and hear that silky voice of his, thank you lars.)

[canonicallyobserving911]

Buck & Eddie:  Two emergencies in 7x1 illustrated Buck hasn’t dealt with his death

It appears the first call with the older onery couple and the second call with the burned car relate to Buck’s death and they seem to illustrate how he’s not over it yet.

These are my OBSERVATIONS and INTERPRETATIONS of two scenes included in 7x1 and other people’s may differ since everyone consumes and interprets media differently.

Now back to the regularly scheduled program…

Before I delve into this, I have to mention that I don’t think Buck’s over his death yet.  Does he want to be?  Yes but the fact is he hasn’t dealt with it and the first two emergencies in 7x1 alluded to it.

For those who read my post about my frustrations surrounding the fact that TM (showrunner) said Buck was tired of talking about death and he just wants to be happy (linked here), I’ve elaborated on why I believe he hasn’t dealt with it yet in this post.  I found two things in the first episode of season 7 that seems to prove my theory associated with the way TM might be saving Buck dealing with the fact that he ACTUALLY DIED in season 6 until after 7x6 airs since that’s Maddie’s wedding and the Buckley parents are scheduled to return.

I live blogged during last week’s episode but while doing so, I noticed so many things that I wanted to expound on but I wanted to analyze them first to see how they connected to previous seasons and episodes.  I watched the episode three more times for multiple reasons but mainly because I wanted to make sure I understood all the callbacks, hindsight, metaphors and foreshadowing.  This post will not include everything I found because it’s a lot but I will do several posts to cover the others.

While Buck and Eddie were in the locker room talking, Buck said all ND wanted to talk about was his death, it got boring after a while and he didn’t know why he thought dating a dEaTh DoUlA was a good idea.  Eddie responded, “Well you had just died” but then he said something else that caused me to pause because it was JARRING.  He said, “Welcome back to the land of the living Buck, you were missed” (more on this topic below).

Be clear, I’M GLAD SHE’S GONE AND I WISH THE SHOW WOULDN’T HAVE SHOVED THEM INTO A RELATIONSHIP.  If she would have helped Buck with the fact that he died like she was supposed to then all that screen time spent on whatever they had in season 6 could have been used to SHOW how he arrived at a point of just wanting to be happy at the beginning of season 7 but the audience didn’t get that.  The truth is, if he wasn’t opening up and talking about it (it’s likely he wasn’t since he’s not in therapy) then of course it got boring for him because he was doing what he always does, avoiding dealing with his own issues by trying to fix everyone else’s.  Reminder, he’s the guy who likes to fix things except for when it’s his own problems.  He avoids them the same way he avoided moving on from AC in season 2 which equates to the way he avoided talking to TK for a week so he wouldn’t have to break up with her at the end of season 5.

Also, Buck hides his true feelings and he said so in 4x2 when he was in a FaceTime therapy session with Dr. Copeland.  He said, “How I hide my true feelings from others”.  Additionally, in 6x15, he told Eddie, “The truth is I am different.  But I feel like I have to be the same old Buck, mostly for the sake of everyone else.”  These two statements he made along with the way he avoids things further substantiates the fact that Buck is hiding the way he really feels about his death and he’s pretending to be happy.

IMO, the first and second emergencies in 7x1 the 118 was dispatched to appeared to show where Buck is mentally.  I’ll start with the chair and the car metaphors in this post because they’re the ones I couldn't forget when I watched live.  After my initial viewing, I kept wondering why the man in the first call was not only sitting in a reclining chair but he was ALSO TRAPPED IN IT.  Additionally, I couldn’t get over the fact that Buck and Eddie were the only two on the scene of the second call with that burned car.  Not only was the car destroyed from the inside out; it was the question the owner of the car asked Buck that I couldn’t forget.  The chair and the car are the two items I’ll expound on in this post to illustrate how they relate to Buck’s death and I’ll include my opinion to explain how they might relate to what could possibly happen with him before the end of the season.

Call #1

Do these two GIFs look familiar?

They should because Buck and Abe are both sitting in arm chairs that are suited for only one person and they mirror the way Buck’s life could end up if he lives it the way other people want him to instead of him living it the way he wants to. The darker color in the suede of Abe's chair is similar to the color of Buck's leather chair. Also, Abe's chair is outdated but he still uses it so he doesn't have to deal with Edna.

In 7x1, Abe just wanted to be at EASE with his life while sitting and relaxing in his chair but his wife wouldn’t let him.  He was trying to watch TV but she kept knit picking at everything he was doing.  She was doing the whole “pay attention to me or else I’ll force you to do it and make your life a living hell while I'm at it” dynamic and it was annoying AF. They had been married for more than 30 years and they never had any kids but they were also miserable.  They hated each other and it appears they were in a marriage neither of them wanted to be in.  After the 118 arrived, Edna said, “He loves that chair more than the loves me”.

Furthermore, they had a couch in their home but it was just sitting there which means ABE REFUSED TO SIT ON IT WITH HER.  He told Chimney the fighter jet should have put one of them out of their misery.

Was the depiction of their relationship reminiscent of one from season 5?  YES!

In 6x1, Bobby told Buck he needed to take inventory of his life so he could be at EASE and when he did, he sat in his chair but at the time, since he had already given TK the boot, he didn’t have to worry about her doing to him what Edna spent 30 years doing to Abe.  If Buck would have kept on clinging to TK, then that could have been his fate.  TK was shallow and wanted all the attention on herself the same way Edna did and she proved it with her raggedy and immoral journalistic behaviors.  She had planned to throw the 118 under the bus in 2x6 but she didn’t get the chance to do it then since the LAFD’s lawyers were more powerful than her news station’s lawyers.  However, she jumped at the opportunity to do it a second time in season 5 when she didn’t have anyone to stop her.

Abe’s relationship with Edna gave the audience a future flash forward of where Buck could end up if he follows what some GA viewers want him to do.  Before he died, in 6x2, Lev told him his life went by in a blur and it was the reason he went to the happiness convention with his friends.  Abe chose the life he felt like he was expected to live with a wife and a house too but based on the way he was acting; it clearly wasn’t something he would have chosen for himself.  And he was so far from being at ease that he was miserable.

Additionally, Edna was a combination of every woman Buck’s ever dated.  She was older and had red hair which coincides with AC.  She didn’t care about what Abe was doing because she wanted him to do what she wanted which coincides with TK and also, she had red hair.  She was frustrated with him and what he was doing which correlates her to AM, reminder she didn’t like Buck’s job which is the reason why she left him with a cast on his leg after the ladder truck explosion.  Finally, ND was fascinated by Buck’s death the same way Edna was fascinated by the fact that Abe might not be ok.  She cared more about the chair being out of her house than she did about his well-being.  Their lives were miserable but instead of ending their relationship, they clung to each other just like Buck and TK did in season 5.

IMO, the couple represented the life Buck would have if he follows the path some people in the GA want him to.  Believe it or not, there are still viewers who want everyone to do things the way they did them, i.e., get married, have a house, have kids and work a job until they die and instead of wanting Buck and Eddie to experience the true love they clearly share to flourish and grow, for WhAtEvEr ReAsOnS, they’d rather they stay in relationships with the women who wronged, abandoned and ignored them. It appears they're choosing not to see how much they love each other and they would prefer them to “stick it out” in relationships with people who clearly make them miserable.

Reminder, in 6x15, Buck told Eddie, “I still don't know how to act. I am different but I feel like I have to be the same old Buck, mostly for the sake of everyone else” and I’ve always believed he was saying that directly to the audience.  It was aimed at the women who wanted him to keep waiting around for AC or those who wanted him to stay with AM because she had an adult conversation with him before she dipped.  Then there are those who wanted him to stay with TK because she was career driven (that’s a bunch of BS because journalists can be driven in their careers without being immoral, vindictive, callous or using people to get popular by writing a crappy book) and then there are those who wanted Buck to stay with ND (I know this may be hard to believe but there are posts that indicate “he knew what he was getting into when he dated her” 🙄).  Like seriously, they wanted him to stay with her because in their minds, she was perfect for him but haven’t all his girlfriend’s stans said that?  They have and the question they should ask themselves is, why haven’t any of Buck’s relationships worked (related post linked here and here) instead of acting like the women who treated him poorly deserved to stick around.  Also, Buck’s a ticking time bomb waiting to explode the same way that dummy bomb would have if it had gone off. However, just like on the call, Eddie’s going to be there for Buck but it’s unclear when or if he’ll be able to stop it from happening.

Call #2

The burned car was still smoldering but it was also hollow and charred to the core.  IMO, it was included as a call that only Buck and Eddie were allowed to extinguish as a way to illustrate how it’ll take both of them working together to repair Buck’s charred, burned and smoldering insides.  Reminder, in 6x10 he was struck by lightning and he died which means he’s probably feeling hollow on the inside and I think he feels all cored out just like that burned car.  While they were in the locker room, it appeared he was ready to talk to Eddie about the way he feels which is the reason why he may have invited him to go out so they could be alone and he could speak freely.  But he backed off when Eddie mentioned “Big date” and reminder, Buck was the one who assumed Eddie had a date with M (more on this below) but Eddie was talking about Chris' date.

After Eddie left, the audience didn’t see Buck leave so apparently, he went somewhere but who knows where since he wasn’t shown again until the next time they were at work.  If they had gone together, it would have been a date but IIRC, other than the poker date in 6x13, every time Buck and Eddie hung out in the past, they were at Buck's loft or at Eddie’s house.  Additionally, Eddie admitted he’s a nester which means he’s ok with them staying in like they did when they played video games and drank beer in the past.  The one time they went to a bar together in 3x11 doesn’t count as a date because the rest of the 118 was there with Albert.  I think Buck was extending an olive branch and trying to let Eddie know he needed him the same way Eddie tried to let Buck know he needed him before his breakdown in season 5 but when he finally broke, Chris called Buck and he came running.  I’ve always wondered how it will play out if Buck breaks down while he’s alone in the loft and I have an idea of how it will happen but I haven’t decided if I’ll post it on here.

When they were done, the car owner asked, “Is it a total loss or is…?” and Buck responded, “Uh… not total.” then he smiled, held up a pine tree fragranced car freshener, which is symbolic of an actual family tree because of the ROOTS, then said, “Have a good day”.  Buck’s biological family roots are about to come into question AGAIN (related post about the Buckley parents other deep dark family secret linked here) and guess what?  When they do, it’s going to rock him to his CORE and the only person who’ll be able to help him is EDDIE!  Buck’s not a total loss as the phrasing in the scene alluded to and Eddie KNOWS that! However, Buck will need for Eddie to tell him that over and over again until he starts to believe it.

I think the confrontation OS mentioned that’s supposed to occur between Buck and Eddie will be in relation to Buck’s self-worth and how he views himself.  There are a lot of people who want to move on from the fact that Buck died and rightfully so since he along with the viewers had to endure an entire season of him not dealing with his issues.  But the truth is 9-1-1 hasn’t moved on from it either and even though TM said Buck’s ready to find happiness, the fact still remains that Buck hasn’t dealt with the reality of his own death.

IMO, he will find happiness when he’s in a relationship with Eddie and reminder, Eddie’s the one who’s always trying to encourage him.  He did it in 7x1 too after Buck said, “You don’t want him to end up like me” but Eddie was quick to respond, “You didn’t end up like you”.  It was soft, pure and so full of love that it took Buck’s breath away.

Now be honest, would AC, AM, TK or ND have said that to him?  The answer NO!

I stand by the things I included in a previous post because Connor and Kameron are supposed to return some time around or after 7x5 and that’s when I believe the proverbial $hit regarding Buck’s self-worth will hit the fan since it’s likely they’ll have some devastating news for him about the baby.  Then the Buckley parents are set to return for Maddie’s wedding and nothing good ever happens to Buck when they do so it's looking like a trifecta of bad news for Buck (related post linked here).

Other than the time he spent talking to Chris at Eddie’s house, Buck was only shown at work during the entire episode and I believe that was on purpose.  It’s unclear when he’ll be shown in the loft again but when he is, that could be when the audience sees he’s not doing as well as he’s trying to get people to believe.  It’s likely the way he really feels about the fact that he died will be shown and if he feels like that burned car… it’s not going to be pretty or pleasant.

Eddie KNOWS Buck’s not doing well but he’s not going to push him to talk just like he didn’t in 6x12.  He’s going to wait until Buck’s ready then, he’ll have the heart-to-heart talk with him the same way he always does.  Reminder, Eddie takes care of Buck (post linked here) while Buck listens to Eddie and makes him talk (post linked here).  In 7x1, Eddie said, “Welcome back to the land of the living Buck.  You were missed” and I kept wondering why he phrased it like that but then I realized it’s because he knows Buck hasn’t confronted the fact that he died but he’s not going to push him, he’ll wait until he says he’s ready then Eddie will be there to take care of him like he always is.

Make no mistake, Buck’s happiness is with Eddie but he thinks he’s off limits since he’s “dating” M (please understand I don’t think Eddie and M are "seriously dating" and that's based on RG's responses about the character of M in his interviews. I’ll do a separate post on it explaining how the show and the actors have explained it in so many words).

TM used two BOLD contrasts in the first episode, a chair and a car, to show Buck has to deal with his death and it’s likely he'll continue to include these types of metaphors until he does.  Also, TM's comment about Buck being tired of talking about dying seems to be a bait and switch and he's trying to get viewers to look away from Buck’s death so they’ll forget he’s been hiding it, then they’ll be blindsided by it when he finally breaks. Reminder, after the Madney wedding, there will still be 4 episodes left in the season and what exactly will TM fill them with🧐?

Will Buck finally deal with the fact that he died this season since he didn't in season 6?  Who knows but based on the chair and the car, it appears his process of dealing with it has just begun.

[anthroposeen]

tmagp 12 relisten notes

Celia:

- requests tea, not coffee, the OIAR custom. points to her being from the TMA universe + bonus thing! there was no tea in the OIAR and sam lended her some. potentially a demonstration of their relationship dynamic lore-wise (celia representing other-wordly things and sam's insistence on interacting w them. this is definitely a reach, though, since im very much a 'the curtains are never just blue' person)

- she agrees to go out with sam but needs to "sort some things out" maybe related to jack, georgie, or her individual research

Sam:

- he asked her out! oh my god (alice's father)!

- is trying to distance himself from the magnus institute (TMI) but is still unable to break his curiosity about it

Alice:

- watched sam ask out celia (we can assume it was with the manner of a deer in the headlights)

- "its rude to have no game" i love you maam

- no glitch after she says "i cant believe im missing out on all of this- devastating" but could be because it comes off as more sarcastic than a blunt lie

- "we dont always get what we want, do we?" potentially a hint at her feeling about sam

- "i go by alice, now, actually" important only because i adore you miss dyer

- seems to genuinely care about gwen, lending to the idea that shes protecting her coworkers

- "i dont wonder. i know" no glitch followed this statement. it could be because it was meant as a joke and not to deceive gwen, but who is to say

Gwen:

- she's trying to discuss the morality of their roles and seems to be unhappy to participate in mascot strip club murder

- "you dont wonder what the point is? who benefits from all this awfulness?"

Glitches/lies:

- "dont worry about it, it wasnt that bad" alice, referencing TMI

- "no." sam, lying about not being interested in information about TMI

Incident:

- this is the result of gwen giving mr bonzo the hit, and it seems to have been read at her computer (once again implying theres a consciousness within FR3D1 or jmj)

- incident made by jordan bennett -> maybe related to this universe's bennett family (connection to barnabas bennett) but i doubt its lore relevant

- no obvious alchemic ties in this incident

- this case is narrated by norris/martin, but goes against the regular theme of his incidents (lonliness, loss of a loved one)

- the robotic sound of the narration seems to be diminishing, with very little of the beginning and end of the incidents being read in a monotone and robotic voice

- i want to voice my deepest appreciation for the title being "getting off", along with mr bonzo initiating a hit for the uk government in a strip club. incredible. absolute cinema from the minds of AJN and johhny sims truly

The target:

- before this episode, my theory was that klaus, colin, and teddy were the most likely to be the hit

- based on this list, if the target is the groom, it makes the most sense for it to be klaus, since there has been no mention of colin or teddy being engaged, and thats a clue i dont think the writers would leave out. however, the groom is called "baz" by his friends, which is a nickname i dont recognize (but its potentially on the rpg somewhere?)

- im not very convinced that klaus was the groom in this incident. i think the hit may have been obvious to lena, but gwen has yet to connect all the dots, leaving the audience a bit in the dark as well

[toastofthetrashfire]

DFF, Found Footage, Technology, and the Real

Okay so I've been slowly looking into horror and technology since watching Shadow, and now DFF has me going down a related research spiral. So let's call this a sibling post to my Shadow technology series (which I am slowly working on I promise).

I just thumbed through a great book on found footage horror and a few other pieces on technology and wanted to use these as a lens to think about DFF and how it's navigating a number of themes including the distinction between reality and fiction.

DFF draws on the concept of found footage films like The Blair Witch Project. Even if DFF's main framing and style isn't found footage, the film the characters are working on is. And we get our most direct reference to a horror film when Jin references The Blair Witch Project--an iconic found footage film. So I want to start by thinking about the Blair Witch Project.

Part 1: The Blair Witch Project and DFF

Part 2: Paranormal Activity, DFF, and the Myth of the Real

Part 3: Films within Films, Surveillance Technology, and Other Connections (Man Bites Dog, Cabin in the Woods, Shutter)

Part 1: The Blair Witch Project and DFF

While found footage horror doesn't purely originate with the Blair Witch Project it certainly rocketed the concept into the popular zeitgeist. I watched the film for the first time this week, and while it didn't scare me*, I could easily see how influential it would've been at the time. The media landscape looked very different in the late 90s, and the film's marketing deliberately played up the idea that this was real footage in a way that simply couldn't be done today with our current media landscape and familiarity with the found footage genre. We're now much more familiar with fakelore as a concept in general.

*The scariest part of watching was the censored subtitles! Stop that please! They seriously were replacing things like "Oh, fuck" with "Oh, boy." I also got a car add about going out to enjoy national parks, and how they can be accessible to Deaf people, which was an interesting moment of double irony.

In her book Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality, which I will be citing quite a bit in this post, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas notes that the Blair Witch Project came out at a time when amateur films were still relegated to home videos but entering public viewing through shows like America's Funniest Home Videos. The style was thus associated much more closely with trying to capture reality than tell a fictional story. The marketing played into this heavily--for example: using the actors' names for the characters, circulating missing persons flyers in areas where the film was being shown, and creating a website that gave background on the Blair Witch myth and information on the "missing" trio of amateur filmmakers. I chatted a bit with @slayerkitty who saw it in theaters. She explained how part of what made the film scary at the time was how real so many people thought it was and the tension of being in the audience.

TBWP and DFF Similarities

Let's start by going over some of the ways DFF might be directly pulling from the film or making homages before jumping into what I think are probably the more significant thematic connections with found footage.

Myths and an Ambiguous Antagonist:

The Blair Witch Project is set against the backdrop of a local myth about a witch in the woods. Three young adults (Heather, Josh, and Mike) go to make an amateur documentary about the witch, get lost in the woods, and are then hunted by an unseen presence. We get information about the myth through interviews with locals and a book Heather reads aloud briefly called The Blair Witch Cult. We learn about the slaughter of 5 men (which is described almost like a ritual), disappearances and deaths, and a man who was compelled by the witch to slaughter children. Similarly in DFF we have our Janta cult, which slaughters people in the name of a supernatural or spiritual force. Now I'd say this could be a nod to TBWP but it also draws on plenty of other ghosts stories and urban legends about the woods. I'm sure there are also particularly Thai valences as well beyond just being Buddhist on the surface.

Like the trio in The Blair Witch Project, the group in DFF goes into the woods to film--though they aren't traipsing through the woods, and the horror they're filming is a story of their own creation. In the present, however, the horror becomes much more than fiction, just like in TBWP. In the film, we see and hear signs that something or someone is following the trio but it's ultimately unclear if it's supernatural, locals scaring them, or them slowly cracking and turning on one another. In DFF's opening episodes it's likewise unclear if what's happening is being caused by a person, hallucinogens, or something supernatural.

Maps and Marketing:

TBWP also shows the characters turning on one another, arguing, and cracking in a way that fundamentally sabotages their survival. At one point, Mike reveals that he threw their map, their only lifeline, into the river. This is paralleled in Fluke turning away their transport and means of leaving. The map is an important focus in the film. We see Heather orienting the group and insisting she knows where they're at, while Mike insists they're lost. This culminates in them losing the map as things start getting worse. DFF slips in what I read as a potentially more direct reference to the film in episode 8. An odd new detail in the group's film where they rely on the hope of a map to get out before they're attacked by the masked killer again.

Another potential similarity to draw on has more to do with the outside marketing of TBWP. Interestingly it was marketed to appear like an indie film despite having pretty extensive funding. This makes me think of the group's film in DFF. This is meant to be a student film but they received a huge boost via Por's dad giving them extra money for a camera.

Smoking and Being Alive:

One other parallel I find interesting is the emphasis on smoking. To be fair TBWP is probably not the first or last horror film to have people smoke (the pot head is a character trope of it's own), and I was likely primed to notice because we already had "Tan smokes and has asthma" on our list of clues for DFF. Now clearly the writers of DFF are smart and are using Tan/New smoking in plot relevant ways. These details feel purposeful to the story they're crafting. But let's briefly look at how smoking shows up in TBWP.

The characters all smoke and drink alcohol. As they get lost and the days tick away they run out of food and smokes. Josh has moments that could be attributed to withdrawal where he laments that they're out of cigarettes. However, after he disappears, Mike finds some remaining cigarettes at the bottom of one of their bags. Mike comments "We're still alive cause we're smoking." For him, it signals even if briefly that they are still alive, that they're surviving.

But in DFF, smoke seems to be attached to death and dissociation. We know that New is a smoker, something he perhaps picked up in England. It starts then as a sign that he has a life, one outside of being Tan. Yet it's that very life, being abroad, that led him to be so far from Non when he disappeared. For New, his life is now tinged with guilt and loss. As @syrena-del-mar noted here, there are moments where he forgets he is supposed to be New. But the smoking becomes his one reminder that "New" is still alive.

Yet this reminder turns more and more painful. Under the exterior of Tan, he is haunted by New, the brother who didn't make it in time. And this spirals further when his mother and father die. Each time he's a step closer but still too distant to stop their deaths. At this point, he starts getting high to a dangerous degree--dissociating, hallucinating, torturing himself with visions of Non. When Phi steps in we have a parallel moment to Phi stopping Non from taking pills. Smoking turns from a sign of life to one of death as New tries to commit suicide, telling Phi "I don't want to live anymore." And New takes this further when he drugs the rest of the boys. Perhaps he didn't intend it to go so far, but he certainly is happy with the result. His drugs, his smoke have caused fear and death, rather than hope and life.

Except for the map I feel like most of these parallels can as easily be chocked up to direct inspiration as they can be attributed to both pulling on a similar well of genre conventions. What I find more interesting is the thematic conversation TBWP brings to the table for DFF.

TBWP and Thematic Resonances with DFF

Filtered Reality:

In her work on horror, Brigid Cherry remarks that The Blair Witch Project is "about the way in which technology gets in the way of seeing" (qtd in Heller-Nicholas 23). Heller-Nicholas further notes how the camera is constantly in contention with the audience's desire to look at what we want to see. In the film itself, one of the characters even remarks that looking at the world through the camera is "like a filtered reality" because you "can pretend everything isn't exactly like it is."

This looking but not seeing resonates to me with Jin. He looks at Non through the camera, seeing him as innocent, in need of protecting. But there's so much he doesn't see about Non, including the reality of poverty. Jin's perfect view of Non breaks at the moment he sees Non with Keng. But as Jin's filtered vision of Non cracks, he adds a new filter. He frames Non as a slut, someone guilty in his mind, at least in the he heat of the moment. So he records him. In doing so, he papers over the nuances of the situation, that it is SA and that there is so much of Non's life that is outside of Jin's lens.

After Non's disappearance Jin doesn't stop using his camera lens to view the world. In episode 9, he watches the others play soccer and then Phi through his camera. He is pretending nothing happened just like the rest of the group, but for him to do that he has to filter his reality. And just like with Non, Jin isn't able to see the full story around Phi from this small frame of a perspective.

I also think it's worth noting how the show, especially in the flashbacks tends to use strong framing (I note some of this in episode 5 but it persists strongly at least up until episode 9). While they aren't using a found footage style, there's still a sense at times that the camera is limiting our view as it closes in around the characters. It's as if the camera frame becomes hyper-visible, similar but not exactly like in found footage. I'm not entirely sure how to read this just yet, but it feels appropriate for both a mystery and for a story so deeply invested in perceptions. There's a strong focus on what is made visible and what is rendered invisible by the characters, by the story structure, and by the frame of the camera itself.

Gender, Space, Control:

In her discussion of TBWP, Heller-Nicholas discusses the gendered dynamics of the film and how scholars have read the film as invested in the horror of female control. This is captured in two ways. First in the way the woods as a space become imbued with the horror of the Blair Witch (pulling on a tradition of witches being women), and thus the feminine. Second, in the way that Heather, who is the director of their film, leads the group to folly. Scholar Linda C. Badley, has argued that "Heather represents a serious breach in having taken possession of the conventionally male--and often murderous--gaze" (qtd. in Heller-Nicholas 108). Heather thus enters the domain of the typically masculine and the results are disastrous.

I find it interesting to compare DFF with TBWP in this respect because they've taken a genre that often is infused with binary gender dynamics and given us all men, and predominantly queer men. This is obviously a dynamic of BL, but it's interesting to consider how this plays with the themes of gender that often proliferate in horror. This is a much broader topic, and @brifrischu and I are currently reading through Carol Clover's seminal work Men, Women, and Chainsaws so I wager we'll have more to add to the discussion at some point.

But let's look at a few things. First, if the Blair Witch imbues the woods as a space of feminine horror, DFF paints the woods as masculine. After our cold open, we are introduced to the group as they ride into the forest via Por's narration about the legend of Janta. The subtitles at the very least, refer to Janta using masculine pronouns. I don't want to assume that Thai gender coding and dynamics are identical to western ones but we might consider the way that the group of boys, packed into the back of a truck paint this as a masculine, homosocial space.

This is reinforced by the mention of Por's father. Por says "My dad warned me that, so I had to listen to him." This masculine authority is doubly highlighted by the campaign posters that literally mark his control of the space. To go any further the group must pass through these signs as a threshold to the space. Here we have not just masculinity being signaled but wealth, power, and control--something that contrasts distinctly with Non, for example, who has none of this. And of course, as we move through the story much of the horror comes from the actions of the core group of boys rather than the masked person we started with.

I find it interesting too that as Por tells the tale, it's White who comments "You almost had me scared." They then have a discussion about Tee liking to teaser "the younger ones." This focus on White as the most vulnerable is interesting given that he reads as perhaps the least traditionally masculine of the group*.

*Another reason why I'm excited to read Clover's work, is because she came up with the final girl formula in her discussion of gender in horror. I'd love to think about how we apply that in a queer context, especially given how so many of us have collectively felt White will be final girl. What might DFF be doing re: gender within the context of queerness, and what might it be asking of us as an audience?

The second aspect of this is the directorial gaze. In TBWP we have a woman taking on the control of a film project. This is important not just because Heather takes on a typically male profession but also because of the way films are imbued with what Laura Mulvey has termed "the male gaze." The view from which we see the world and the terms on which stories are told are traditionally male, while women are objects to be looked at--something Heather bucks and is punished for.

In DFF we have a similar struggle over authorship and directorial control. Instead of a strict division between feminine and masculine gazes, we get a struggle that is imbued with distinctions of class first and foremost. Por stands in as the more traditionally masculine director. We see the violence he does in trying to maintain control of the project. Of course he mostly does this through exerting his wealth. In contrast, Non doesn't fit the more aggressive masculine role, he comes from poverty, has mental illness, and is generally at the bottom of the social pyramid. His authorship comes into tension with Por's desires for directorial and social control.

There's a strong thematic exploration here of not just who gets to tell the story, but who's story gets to be told. In the end, the camera is Por's, his wealth and framing win out, and Non's authorship is buried. Much like the male gaze relegates women to objects rather than directors or authors, the only film that Non gets credit for is the sex tape in which he becomes objectified by the camera.

Of course we then have the fact that, in the present, Non's revenge script is being played out. There's a new director here, and clearly it's not entirely Phi (who tries his hand at directing in episode 1). Regardless of who is orchestrating these moves, we have an inversion of power happening. While we can't say for sure until the show has wrapped up, I suspect that DFF will lean into this inversion, rather than, like in TBWP, punishing this transgression of the norm.

That's all for now on TBWP, but certainly not all on DFF. I'm going to turn now to another important found footage film, Paranormal Activity, to unpack a bit more about DFF and it's themes.

Part 2: Paranormal Activity, DFF, and the Myth of the Real

In her work Heller-Nicholas notes how, after Paranormal Activity hit the screen, our view of found footage as a genre shifted. It was no longer seen as necessarily authentic per-se but a stylistic form. Heller-Nicholas puts it like this:

As these more popular found footage horror films made their way to the forefront of the genre, what became important was not that the audience necessarily believed that they were real, but rather that they offered a framework to knowingly indulge in a horror fantasy of the real. The solidification of a recognizable found footage horror style meant that horror audiences understood and identified them as such, defining a subgenre where an authentic style (rather than claims of authenticity itself) prevailed (Heller-Nichols, 128)

I won't go into smaller parallels between the film and DFF (partially because I haven't seen it, so if you have please add anything you notice), but I want to cover a few thematic resonances.

Heller-Nichols sketches out a few ways that critics have interpreted the film. First, as an allegory for materialism in the context of the US housing market crash of the time. Second, as a reflection on surveillance and the way changes in technology changed our relationship to cinema.

The first theme, materialism and consumption play out in the film through both the financial disparities of the characters and the more metaphorical spiritual/demonic possession that takes place. Both DFF (at least episodes 1-4) and Paranormal Activity take place in a luxurious house and themes of greed and materialism are present. In DFF, Por takes this role, flaunting his wealth and using it to get what he wants. Of all the characters, he is the one most willing to steal credit from Non. In Paranormal Activity the wealthy boyfriend even brags about buying a nice camera on only half-a-day's pay. Similarly Por brags about getting the nice camera for their film with his father's money.

One thing that set Paranormal Activity apart from earlier found footage films like The Blair Witch Project, was it's use of security camera footage. It relied on a new type of gaze that made the private public in the context of shifting surveillance technologies. While DFF largely centers itself around a film camera, it also includes other forms of technology in the background, including surveillance cameras. The CCTV cameras in Por's house come to mind as a significant way this technology comes into play. On the one hand, it helps Por identify that there is an intruder, and it helps the group find him when he is hurt. On the other hand, it encroaches on the private, capturing White and Tee having sex. This private vs public line is of course horrifically crossed when Jin records Non and Keng and when this video is circulated--surveillance right in our hands via cell phone.

Heller-Nicholas notes that post-Blair Witch, and by the time Paranormal Activity was released, audiences were much more genre savvy. She notes that the genre's "pleasures are not reliant on our gullibility, but rather our willingness to succumb to the myth of the real that these films offer..." (26). Relevant to DFF, I want to stress the "willingness to succumb to the myth of the real." I discussed earlier how Jin doesn't see Non; instead, he is happy to succumb to a myth of what could be the real Non.

But it's not just Jin who does this. Almost everyone around Non believes they see him correctly--as "Greasy", as a bad son, as a cheater, etc. This takes on even more public dimensions as the police enter the picture, as the sex tape circulates, and as the police report that he has run away with Keng. What people see and believe about Non, the narratives they tell about him, help reinforce people's existing understandings of the world--their prejudices, their assumptions, their myths of how the real world works.

And of course, film is at the center of this. The police believe that Non wasn't with the group when he disappeared because any footage he was in was hidden from them. Non is erased from the film (both in the footage and in terms of credit). The entire film premier is one big moment where everyone in the group is playing into this myth. It is taken as fact that Por's name being in the credits means this is his work--that nothing or no one of note was hidden behind the frame.

In her work Heller-Nicholas points to discovered manuscript fiction (such as Dracula) as a precursor to found footage horror. This connection highlights the way these works rely on the fiction that someone has organized the documents apart from the original author. The fictional framing of found footage as pretending to have an original author or filmmaker other than the actual director, hides the fact that The Hidden Character has in many ways literally stolen credit from Non. The genre expectations obfuscate the real story.

And then there's the sex recording (the only film Non gets credit for). We see a number of reactions to the recording from people in Non's life as well as those outside of it. The social media posts in particular stress the way Non's vulnerability is quickly slotted into pre-held narratives of sex and sexuality that refuse to see the reality of SA.

Non's SA is taken as truthful evidence of his consent via social media, while the film the group made is found footage but not seen as real. I think this marks an interesting change in the aesthetics and narratives we find "real." Horror and found footage are legible, a chance to engage in "a fantasy of the real". Meanwhile, the real story behind the film is erased, just like Non. Sadly, the most legible narrative of a young queer boy is that the phone footage is slutty or even hot. No one questions the authenticity of the recording, it is viewed as real. Ironically, compared to the horror film the group shoots, the sex tape is the real found footage film. Yet the "reality" it shows is filtered through interpretation. Non's reality gets buried.

Meanwhile, as an audience, we have the opposite reaction. We are slowly given insight into the discrepancy between Non's reality and the myths people hold. We keep asking why other characters can't or won't see the truth, why they won't help Non until it's too late.

DFF may not be found footage itself, but it is certainly interested in exploring and extending the thematic conversations about authenticity, reality, and narrative.

Part 3: Films within Films, Surveillance Technology, and Other Connections

Despite the fact that DFF references and dialogues with the found footage horror genre, it formally has more in common with films that center around technology and films within films. So I wanted to cover three more films that I think dialogue in interesting ways.

Man Bites Dog:

I'll start with Man Bites Dog since I have the least to say about it. It is a 1992 French mockumentary and black comedy, that Heller-Nicholas notes is a pretty significant and well-acknowledged precursor to the found footage horror genre. I'm not sure I want to get to deep into themes with this one. But I thought the parallels were interesting. A film crew decides to make a documentary where they follow a serial killer named Ben around only to be pulled into the crimes and become culpable themselves. That is, until Ben is killed and the film crew are taken out one by one by an unknown killer. We have a film crew that slowly gets involved and more culpable in wrong doings, just like in DFF we have the group working on a film while slowly becoming more and more culpable in harming Non. Meanwhile in the present both "film crews" are suddenly being hunted and picked off by an unknown party.

Cabin in the Woods:

Cabin in the Woods is a 2011 film that satirizes horror. A group of college students go to a cabin in the woods and are slowly picked off. The twist is that this is all orchestrated by an organization that is simultaneously surveilling and orchestrating their deaths to appease ancient deities. Many of the shots are done through drone's and other similar visuals to highlight the way the group is being surveilled. In a chapter from a collection on horror and gender, Hannah Bonner looks at Cabin in the Woods and a few other films that include surveillance and social media. She discusses the way technology in these films revolve around slut shaming young women. As she puts it, "It is the 'fact of being constantly seen', whether by high key government surveillance systems or by judgemental peers, that throws these characters into disarray or death" (89).

For Cabin in the Woods one thing Bonner examines is the way the film frames the group's "slut" character Jules. Jules and one of the guys go outside to get intimate. And the film moves between this scene and the men surveilling them who watch eagerly. Bonner reads this as a commentary on the violent gaze with which horror frames women. She makes a distinction, noting that "The voyeur is no longer just the audience, squirming in their seats from Michael Meyers's point of view as he tracks down his naked sister and her boyfriend in Halloween...now the audience as voyeur watches the voyeurs watch the surveyed" (90).

DFF makes a similar move by staging multiple instances of filming (a film within a film, or in this case a film within a show). We get a moment in episode 1 where Tee steps forward to block the group watching the CCTV footage of him and White. But this denial is in contrast to other moments. The show draws us most into being voyeurs watching voyeurs, when Jin films Non. I think it's important to note that both the moment that Bonner discusses in her chapter and this moment in DFF are sexual. In CITW, Jules is literally labeled by her surveillers as "the slut", a role she must fulfill and be killed for to appease the gods. Her lack of agency is made quite apparent. In DFF, Non is also slotted into the role of the slut by those around him, including Jin when he films the moment out of anger. While the show is not as on the nose about the whole thing, it's still clearly establishing a discrepancy between how Non is viewed by those around him due to the tape and the lack of full agency he possesses.

Moreover, by making us viewers voyeurs of this voyeurism, DFF creates a critique rather than simply a simulation of voyeurism. I am considering how this might not just be a commentary on sex shaming, but sexuality within a space where BL has historically crossed the line at times in terms of depicting SA. Or even the way that BL actors in Thailand are often expected to blur the line between the private and the public through fan service. It's interesting because clearly the show also doesn't shy away from letting us be voyeurs to sex. The show perhaps draws a distinction between representing queer sex and SA. But it's fascinating how this is mediated through voyeurism and the camera's gaze.

Shutter:

I couldn't wrap this post up without talking a bit about Shutter. Shutter is a 2004 Thai horror film (and probably Thailand's most well known horror film globally). It was part of the horror boom of the late 90s and early aughts in Thailand and Asia. If you throw Thai horror and cameras my way, I will think of Shutter. I watched it as part of some research I've been slowly doing on late 90s/early 2000s Asian horror and technology (writing meta for Shadow the series). It's a story about haunting that takes inspiration from the idea of spirit photography.

The film follows a couple, Jane and Tun, both photographers, who start seeing shadows and faces in their photos. Jane discovers that the ghost is a girl named Natre who Tun used to date in secret. They proceed by trying to figure out how Natre died (suicide) and how to get her to move on. Meanwhile Tun's friends suddenly start killing themselves. Ultimately Jane learns that Tun's friends raped Natre, and Tun not only didn't stop them but even photographed the assault at his friends' request (so Natre wouldn't snitch). Jane confronts Tun who expresses his regret, that he "never forgave [himself]." In the climax of the film Tun uses a polaroid camera to try and find Natre's ghost in real time before being driven out the window. Natre let's him live, in a near catatonic state, unlike his other friends because his betrayal hurt the most.

We once again come back to themes of voyeurism, SA, peer pressure, and culpability. The film has strong focus on the effects and betrayal of being a bystander, much like DFF does. Again this parallel is made quite strongly with Jin. Non may not have had feelings for him, but he is the kindest of the group, making his betrayal hit strongly. Jin filming Non and Keng has it's own nuances within DFF, but it certainly parallels Tun photographing Natre's assault. Similar to Non, Natre disappears in the aftermath, while Tun and his friends go on with their lives.

On a smaller note, both Tun and Jin use polaroids in what is potentially a reference to the film.

As the truth is revealed, Tun goes from a protagonist to a villain, and Natre goes from the horror of the story to the victim. DFF seems equally interested in the idea of how truths get hidden and justice withheld. It also gives us an inversion of the source of horror. By the time we end episode 5, the group we've gotten to know over four episodes are clearly villains in our minds, their cruelty becomes the horror rather than the masked killer who we come to empathize with (or at least root for to some degree). Now how this fully plays out in the end might shift things. But currently (up through episode 9) this is a horror story locating horror in power and cruelty rather than simply reinforcing a more conservative world view of the non-normative monster.

Concluding Thoughts

Dead Friend Forever is mixing genres in a smart and deft way. It's clear that the writers and director are well versed in horror and are ready to play with genre conventions to deliver their ideas and themes. Some of the connections I'm making here might be happy coincidence where the works speak to each other mediated by my own perspectives and interpretation. But I also believe that the show is building on themes and traditions in horror and found footage horror specifically in smart ways. From the framing of shots, to the way they deftly speak to themes of (in)visibility, power, reality vs fiction, agency, and sexuality (among others).

Through all this, DFF has been incredibly genre savvy. While found footage plays on the idea of reality, DFF shakes that up by throwing a who-done-it mystery our way. Like in The Blair Witch Project, for much of the show, we don't know what's real or what's in the characters' heads. DFF, however, picks up where TBWP stops. At the end of TBWP, the characters are likely killed off camera, the source of the horror still left up in the air. DFF gives us this ambiguity, but then pivots and makes the show a mystery to solve rather than locating the horror in ambiguity. This is because the horror lies elsewhere. Like in Shutter, the monster becomes the victim, our sympathies are played with, and we're left with a show that is as interested in social and political critique as it is in having fun playing with horror tropes.

Sources:

Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality. McFarland & Company, 2014.

Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic: Praeger, 1995.

Bonner, Hannah. “#Selfveillance: Horror’s Slut Shaming through Social Media, Sur- and Selfveillance.” Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film, edited by Samantha Holland et al., Emerald Publishing, 2019, pp. 85–99.

Cherry, Brigid. Horror. Routledge, 2009.

Shutter (film, 2004)

Cabin in the Woods (film, 2011)

Man Bites Dog (film, 1992)

The Blair Witch Project (film, 1999)

Paranormal Activity (film, 2007)

[tiny-tini-imagines]

Hi, read your headcanons about the fellowship and wanted to ask for some HC's about Legolas being in love with an elf reader. Preferably female, if that's possible. THX

Re.: Of course, Thank you for asking. I often thought about that, so I hope it's alright.

Headcanon Request - Lord of the Rings summary: Legolas is in love with a female elf

(added: character art, what they would say to them, or about them)

Stolen Glances: Legolas can't help but steal glances at you when he thinks no one is looking. His eyes find your effortlessly, and he cherishes the moments when your gazes meet, a silent exchange of your affection.

"In your eyes, I see a world of wonder and courage, and in your heart, I find the most beautiful melodies of love and strength."

Whispers in the Woods: You often communicate through soft, whispered conversations in the heart of the forest. The tranquility of the woods mirrors the serenity of your love. Although you don't need words at all to comunicate.

Language of Flowers: Legolas memorizes your favorite flowers and leaves them where you'll find them, each bloom carrying a message of his love and admiration. (And he definitely knows the meanings of every single flower, everytime you get a bouquet it's like a poem)

Hidden Keepsakes: In his private quarters, Legolas keeps small trinkets and tokens you've given him over time, treasures he holds dear and takes comfort in during lonely nights, or when your away/ when he misses you.

Stargazing Together: One of your favorite pastimes is stargazing. You find constellations together, creating your own stories in the night sky and lay there for hours.

"Among all the stars in the night sky, it is your radiance that guides me through life's journeys, and I am forever grateful for your presence in my world."

Comfort in His Presence: Your presence brings Legolas a sense of calm and contentment. He often seeks solace in your company during moments of reflection. (You'd often find youself with him in your arms, stroking his hair, comforting him - especially after disagreements with Thranduil)

"My loyalty to you and our people remains steadfast, but my heart has found a home in a world beyond the borders of the Woodland Realm." Legolas to Thranduil

Loving Affection: He expresses his love through affectionate gestures, like gentle caresses, forehead kisses, and tender embraces. He's very soft, always making sure you're comfortbale

Your Laugh: Legolas adores your laughter. He often finds ways to make you smile, cherishing the sound as one of the most beautiful melodies in Middle-earth. It is not just the sound but also the sign, since he loves to see you smile. (He goes to great lengths to bring joy to your life, whether through humorous stories or playful antics.)

Shared Silences: You're comfortable in each other's silence. Sometimes, words aren't necessary as your presence alone brings peace and contentment. You just need to know that you're close.

Fingers Intertwined: Legolas has a habit of gently intertwining his fingers with yours whenever you walk side by side, a silent declaration of your connection. He'd also do that during audiences and other commitments he must attend.

Attentive Listener: He's a patient and attentive listener, valuing your words and insights and seeking your opinions on important matters. However sometimes he just enjoys listening to your voice, that gives him a sense of comfort

Your Elegance : He admires the way you handle your bow and arrows with such grace. It's a skill that he finds endlessly captivating. He'd often say that you're much better than him (something he would tell no one else).

Pride in Your Strength: He takes great pride in your strength, both physical and emotional, and often tells you how impressed he is by your abilities

Gentle Respect: Legolas treats you with the utmost respect, always considering your thoughts and feelings in any situation.

Secretly Protective: While you are a formidable warrior on your own , Legolas can't help but be secretly protective, always watching your back in battle and ensuring your safety. (You're definitely more important than him)

Your Name in Elvish: He often murmurs your name in Elvish under his breath, finding comfort in the way it rolls off his tongue. You can catch him smiling whenever your name is said.

Eternal Commitment: Legolas contemplates the idea of eternity together, envisioning the ages you'll spend side by side, facing whatever challenges comes your way.

Confidant and Supporter: You're his confidant, and he turns to you for advice and solace in times of uncertainty. Your unwavering support is a source of strength for him.

Shared Adventures: He involves you in his adventures, wanting to create memories together and share the thrill of exploration.

Unspoken Promises: You share unspoken promises of a future filled with love, adventure, and unwavering devotion, with every glance and touch reinforcing your commitment to each other.

"Every day by your side is an adventure worth cherishing, for you bring light to the darkest of places and joy to my soul."