#I think i might need to reorder them

[ambersky0319]

I've never actively tried making a story a certain amount of words and I'm doing it for 15 stories for an English project suddenly and mad respect to people who do that regularly could not be me, I'm lucky if I set a minimum won't count goal for something and reach that

[yoongiseesawmp3]

too sweet - san

summary: model!san x designer!reader. it's love at first sight when you see san. he's perfect...for your runway show! he's the top model right now, and everyone wants him. you want him a little more, but we'll unpack that later. can you get the it boy into your collection?

word count: 8.6k

warnings: afab reader

masterlist

"how many more?" you whine, collapsing onto the table in front of you. your dramatics shuffle all of the model cards out of order after you spent the last hour organizing them. your system is ruined, so your mood goes too. the only thing to pull you back to reality is jen, your right hand man. she pulls you up, encouraging words on her lips, and gets to reordering the cards you just messed up.

"we only have a few more," she reminds you. "and the last few have been good! i think we'll have plenty of options for your show."

"yeah, the girls have been great," you agree. "but the guys are all meh. i thought i was being all forward thinking doing a coed collection but now i wish i hadn't."

"oh come on," jen nudges you. "these guys were hot!"

"they're pretty, but this guy tripped, this one didn't bring a portfolio, and this one has conflicts from now until the show," you list off. "i need at least two more, or i'll have to cut the men's pieces."

"we'll find one," jen ruffles your hair. "you want me to go bring in the next model?"

"nah, we've got a few more minutes on our break," you tell her. "i'm gonna go get a coffee, do you need anything?"

"a water is fine," she replies as you slip out the door. you try to avoid the waiting area so you won't run into any potential models. you make it to the coffee machine down the hall, and of course it's just your luck that there's a tall skinny man already there.

"y/n?" he smiles. "i didn't know this was your show!"

"seonghwa?" you smile back. "i swear, you get taller every time i see you."

"what can i say? i eat my wheaties," he jokes, pulling you in for a polite hug. "how long have you had this gig?"

"few months," you reply. "i've been shitting bricks the whole time."

"i'm sure," he nods. "but you're doing a great job. i've never seen this many top models in the same place for years. everyone wants to walk for you."

"well that's very flattering," you mumble. "but you'd think 'top models' would come more prepared. half of these bozos have not impressed me."

"she's talented and determined," seonghwa notes. "guess i gotta bring my a game."

"i guess you do," you tease him. "hey, you don't know anyone who could come audition before the end of the day, do you? i need more guys."

"i could make a few calls," he thinks. "what do you have in mind?"

"is it too vain to say someone sexy?" you laugh. "we're looking for someone intimidating, good walk, strong features. it's a dramatic piece so i want someone unique."

"i might know a guy," seonghwa nods.

"anyone i'd know?"

"i guess you'll know when you see him," he replies. "i gotta go, i think i'm next, so-"

"right, right, go make yourself pretty," you tell him. "it was so good to see you!"

"you too," he smiles at you genuinely. "proud of you."

"hey, no shmoozing before your audition."

-

seonghwa got a place in your show, obviously. now you only need one more guy. jen convinced you the tripper could work with some help, and there was another model from earlier in the day that you think deserves a call. you still need someone for your final piece, though, and you're running out of hope.

"so how do you know seonghwa again?" jen asks as you wait for the last model to show. "and how well do you know him? and how well would he like to know me?"

"we worked together a few years ago," you laugh. "he was one of the models in my first show."

"so you gave him his big break? he's indebted to you?" jen asks. "he has to make it up to you by, i don't know, going on a date with your best friend and best stylist?"

"we'll see," you frown. "you know i don't like messing with models."

"i hate that rule," jen mumbles as she sits back in her seat. "where's this last model? i wanna go home."

"seonghwa said he pulled a favor getting him here," you explain as you check your phone. "so he might be running behind. i can wait for him if you wanna go."

"no, if he's anything like seonghwa i want to be here to ogle him."

at that, there's a knock at the door, and you call out for them to come in. who steps through the door is maybe the most beautiful man you've ever seen. he's striking, strong, and smiling shyly like he's not used to having eyes on him despite his profession.

"hi, i hope i'm not too late?" he asks, standing by the door.

"no," you quickly reply. "not at all, come in. you're seonghwa's friend?"

"yep," he confirms, walking up to hand you the most professional looking portfolio you've seen all day. and this guy wasn't even expecting to walk! no way you're hiring those other losers now. "i'm san."

"san, hi," you smile at him, and jen stifles a laugh next to you. somebody's smitten, she thinks, but she won't say anything just yet. "i'm y/n, i'm the designer, and this is jen, my stylist."

"nice to meet you," jen presents her hand, and san tentatively shakes it. "firm handshake, i like it. you have soft hands."

"thanks?" he laughs nervously. "um, so do i just-"

"yes, yes," you motion for him to head to the back of the room. "whenever you're ready."

as if you weren't already convinced this was the guy for you (i mean, for your show) then his walk sold it. his presence is so commanding, his movements so precise, and you've never seen someone with such perfect posture. it makes you sit up straighter as he walks toward you, and you almost swoon when he winks at you before turning around. you squeeze jen's hand under the table, and when san finishes his walk you fight the urge to applaud.

"that was great!" jen comments once san is finished. "y/n, what did you think?"

"you're perfect," you breathe out, and jen nudging you brings you back to earth. "uh, for the collection."

"thanks," san smiles proudly. "hopefully i'll hear from you soon."

"hopefully you will," you smile back. "thanks for coming on such short notice."

"it was my pleasure," san says, waving as he ducks out into the hall. as soon as the door is shut, you turn to jen and say, "i love him."

"i know you do," she laughs. "so is he in the show?"

"in the show?" you scoff. "he is the show. he's exactly what i was imagining. i want ten more of him."

"i'm sure you'd like that," she says with a waggle of her eyebrows.

"stop," you roll your eyes. "i just said i don't mess with models."

"mhm," jen nods. "so who else are we casting? we have one spot for sure..."

-

san and seonghwa were cast immediately. well, maybe not immediately. you both looked through their portfolios, ooh'ing and aah'ing over their looks before deciding they had to be in the show. when you and jen decided on the next two male models quickly, you figured this would be an easy discussion. wrong! you have four female models you're willing to fight tooth and nail for, and jen has her own four that she's just as committed to. you've been deliberating for a while now, so you decide to take a break. you head to that same break room you met seonghwa in earlier, and you thought briefly about taking san's portfolio with you. for research purposes, obviously, but you decided against it.

as soon as you step into the hallway, you hear faint sounds of music. not unusual for this studio space, but still, you proceed with caution. you don't want to interrupt anybody, so you walk quietly until you find the the source of the sound. it's san! and he's...dancing?

"oh god, sorry," he bumbles as soon as he sees you. he rushes to his phone, propped against the window in front of him. "god. that's embarrassing."

"what were you doing?" you smile at him.

"embarrassing myself," he mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck. he wiggles his phone in the air and explains, "my agent wants me to post more, says it'll help me get booked, and he sent me a couple tiktok trends he wants me to do. so i was.."

"dancin' your heart out?" you tease, and he blushes.

"you could say that," he smiles shyly, again making it seem like he's not used to having attention on him. does he know he's a model?

"wait, how long have you been out here?" you ask, worried he might have heard you and jen (mostly you) gawking over his portfolio.

"just a few minutes," he shrugs. "part of why i was able to come walk for you is because of another audition i had on the other side of this building. so i was over there for a while, and came back here to humiliate myself in front of my favorite designer, it seems."

"your favorite, huh?" you ask. "good thing we've cast my show already, otherwise i'd think you're sucking up."

"damn, so i'm too late?" san laughs.

"who else is auditioning models here?" you change the subject.

"kim hongjoong?" san says it like a question, and you nod in recognition.

"he's good," you hum. "i hope you don't get it though."

"what?" san balks. "why?"

"because i want you in my show," you shrug. "and i don't wanna fight hongjoong for you, even though i know i'd win."

"you sure about that?" san asks. "he's been working out, i hear."

"oh i could so take him," you assure san. "i'm a biter." you notice a flicker in san's eyes, a hint of something, but you feel yourself blushing and cough so you have an excuse to cover your face. "excuse me. i should probably go, we've got a few more models to cast.."

"wait, so you just drop the bomb that i'm in your show and then you're gone?" san asks, following you down the hall. "how do i know you're serious?"

"because you have my word," you furrow your eyebrows. "but if you really need the confirmation, i'm sure my people will call your people soon." as if on cue, san's phone starts buzzing, still perched on the window. san looks to it, then you. you feel vindicated as you turn and walk on to the break room with a flick of your hair over your shoulder, leaving a stunned model and the smell of peaches in your wake.

-

all the models have been cast, and it's the morning of your first fitting. you slept in your studio last night because you had so much work to do. it was mostly tiny alterations to ensure the pieces fit their new models, but you also spent half the night cleaning. you don't let people into your studio usually, or if you do, it's people that know you well enough to know you and your work are a mess. but today, you're the boss. you need to look put together, and so does your studio.

you're standing by the door, taking everything in, and decide that this is as clean as you'll get it. there's still fabric, zippers, stray threads strewn all over your work tables, but you're a designer. that's normal. if the models have complaints they can deal. being next to the door, you hear something in the hall, but write it off as one of your artistic neighbors at work. you start to walk away, toward your coffee station in the back, when the doorknob to your studio jiggles. you hear a quiet "shit" and then a polite knock, so you walk over cautiously. one look through the peephole reveals who it is.

"san?" you ask, opening the door. "what are you doing here?"

"realizing i am," he checks his ridiculously expensive watch, "an hour early for my fitting. sorry." he adds a sheepish smile at the end and you fight the urge to coo. he looks like he just woke up, and that he definitely rushed here. his clothes are mussed, hair in a beanie to hide it not being done, eyes puffy with sleep. still, he looks perfect.

"was the email confusing?" you ask. "i was worried that-"

"no," he shakes his head. "no, i was just, um, i'm really excited," he explains shyly. "i almost couldn't sleep last night, so when i woke up this morning i thought i had overslept. i should've checked."

"no worries," you say as you blush. he was excited? for a fitting? man must love his job. "here, come in. i just finished cleaning, so you get first dibs on space. there's a couch in the back if you want to nap before we get started."

"how long have you been here?" san asks, looking around at the studio. he sees a lot of chaos, but it's beautiful chaos. colors that compliment each other perfectly, strange techniques that have made something stunning. he can't believe he'll be part of this show.

"uh, since last night," you admit, finally reaching your coffee machine. "i had a lot to do."

"you slept here?" san frowns, tossing his stuff onto a table before joining you. he leans against the wall as he watches you.

"yeah," you shrug. "i hate waking up early, so it saved me from getting here grumpy if anything."

"but did you rest?" he asks, looking out at the studio. "this is a big space for one person to clean."

"jen helped," you tell him. "she was here last night to bring over the shoes for each outfit."

"which one is mine?" san asks with an eager smile.

"wouldn't you like to know?" you stick your tongue out at him for good measure. "yours isn't out here. it's so big i had to keep it in my office, i couldn't move it out here by myself."

"it's big?" he looks a little scared.

"that may not be the right word," you think. "it's heavy, so that's why i needed someone strong to wear it."

"you think i'm strong?" san smirks, and you blush. "how'd you know?"

your mind thinks to his portfolio still sitting on your desk, full to the brim of him in scantily clad photoshoots. you've seen pictures of his chest, his abs, his arms. muscles that had to take hours in the gym to sculpt. you wonder shyly if his portfolio is still on your desk, open to a picture of him in a pink outfit with a hint of his chest on display. you'll have to cover it quickly if it is.

"i asked seonghwa how you two met, and he said you go to the same snooty model gym," you explain, which is the truth. seonghwa had been in a couple shows with san before they became friends, but it took the two of them working out together to actually become buddies. they've been looking out for each other ever since, seonghwa told you. san seems to think your explanation was enough, so he hums and nods before turning his attention back to your collection.

"so how did you and seonghwa meet?" he asks casually. you tell him about your first show, as an independent designer no less, and how seonghwa found you stress crying backstage. as you always do when describing seonghwa, you stress how your relationship was friendly, but nothing more. you never want anyone to think you're fooling around with one of your models. but san finds himself thinking, hm, that means seonghwa isn't his competition.

"do you want anything to drink?" your voice pulling san from his thoughts. he looks at you, cupping a warm mug of coffee, and smiles.

"no, thank you," he says. "i try not to have anything before a fitting, i never want to mess up the sizing and put more work on the designer."

"san that doesn't sound healthy," you frown. "and what kind of designer is sticking you in clothes so skin tight you can't have a glass of water? i need names."

"it's a lot of them, i'm afraid," he laughs. "most people cast me expecting to show off my abs, or something else, so i don't have much space to mess up during show season."

"yeah, you are always showing some kind of skin," you think about it.

"you been studying me?" san teases, and you blush.

"i'm a designer, it's my job," you mumble. "i reviewed everyone's portfolio thoroughly."

"what was seonghwa's last shoot then?" san quizzes you. you make a guess, but you get it wrong. "and what was mine?"

"vogue, right?" you answer immediately, and san responds with a shit eating grin.

"i'm so telling hwa i'm your favorite model now," he says, resting against the wall again as he folds his arms over his chest. his very muscled arms, and his broad-

"knock knock!" jen shouts from the door. she steps inside and asks, "you know you didn't lock this- oh hey san."

"good morning," he nods to her. "nice to see you again."

"nice to see you too, so bright and early," jen says as she looks at you. "how long have we been here?"

"me since last night, san since a few minutes ago. he didn't read the email."

"i read the email!" he whines. "i was just excited!"

"that's sweet," jen coos as she dumps bags onto one of your worktables. "i hope i'm not interrupting anything?"

"jen, do you have a favorite model?" san asks, and she thinks for a moment.

"no, i don't," she shakes her head. "there's too many good ones, so it depends on the day. why do you ask?"

"i just found out i'm y/n's favorite," san explains with a smile.

"you just found out?" jen laughs, and you groan. san looks like he's gonna say something else but you speak before he can.

"hey, since y'all are both here, come help me move this table," you command. "we need space for the models to walk." they do as you say, but share a knowing look while you're distracted. it's a bad thing to have your best friend and your crush in cahoots, but you'll figure that out later.

-

since san was here early, you got to work on his fitting first. jen finished setting up the workroom while you and san went to your office. jen made a show of putting headphones in to listen to music, and you wanted to pinch her so hard. she's making it obvious that you have a thing for san, and you're hoping beyond hope he doesn't notice.

"oh my god," he whispers when you open the door to your office, revealing the piece you've dedicated the past few months to. "that's incredible."

"you like it?" you turn to him, unsure. "it's a lot, i know."

"i love it," he smiles from ear to ear. "i've never worn something like this before."

"i hope no one has," you laugh nervously. "i tried a technique to emulate fur, so i'm hoping this is a super cool fashion innovation that'll take the industry by storm."

"how'd you do it?" san asks, looking at the piece in awe. "and how long did it take?"

"so, i shredded pounds and pounds of natural fabric until it looked so fine it could be a better alternative to faux fur," you explain. "and it took me about...four months?" san whistles lowly, his hands twitching at his sides. "you can touch it if you want."

"i want to put it on," he turns to you excitedly. "how do you want me to wear it?"

"don't hate me," you beg. "since this is such a big piece, and i want it to draw attention, i don't have a shirt for you."

"that's ok," san nods. "adds to the natural element."

"exactly," you smile, blushing anyway. "and there's just white pants underneath, for contrast. they should be super comfy, to make up for the workout you'll get walking around in the jacket."

"i can't wait," san says happily. he turns to you fully, looking between the outfit and you. "do you want me to strip, or...?"

"oh god, let me turn around," you say. "the pants are on the desk. let me know when you have them on."

"you're very polite," san chuckles. "most designers try to manage every single thing, including how models get dressed."

"it's pants," you scoff. "if you can't put pants on how did you get out the house?"

"i'm ready," he says, and you turn back to find him in the pants, yes, but still with his shirt on.

"um, do you mind?" you ask, tugging at the neckline of your own shirt hoping he gets the hint. it distracts him just enough that you have to call his name, and he looks at you with a hum. "can you, uh, take your shirt off?" he responds with actions, pulling his shirt off in one swift motion. you squeak out, "great!" and then shuffle toward the mannequin. "i might need help lifting this."

"no worries," he hurries to your aid, his hands brushing yours as you push the jacket off the form. "wow, this is no joke."

"if it's too heavy i can-"

"i can handle it," san says firmly. "help me into it?"

you hold up one side while san slips his arm in, and then help him into the rest. you take a step closer, trying to fasten the clasp on the front, but it won't meet. you struggle for a minute, hands ghosting so softly over san's chest. he doesn't realize he's holding his breath until your voice pulls him from his focus.

"what?" he looks down at you. "why are you frowning? it looks great."

"it doesn't fit over your chest," you pout. "i thought i had your measurements right-"

"oh, sorry, i've been working out," san admits. "and i think i gave you an old portfolio since i was in a rush, so my information may not be up to date..."

"shit," you mumble, and san tries to fix the situation. he starts tugging at the jacket, but you gasp and grab his hands, stilling them instantly. you look at him sternly as you instruct, "i'll make it fit, you just have to wear it. please don't do my job for me."

"sorry," san whispers. you're so close he could just lean down and kiss that pout from your lips, but that wouldn't be professional of him. but boy does he want to.

"before you take it off, let me find your shoes," you look around. "i want to see the whole look together...maybe jen knows where they are."

you open your office door and peek your head out, gasping at what you find. jen is pushed up against one of your work tables, and seonghwa is standing before her holding her waist like she could slip away at any moment. they're making out like they've done this before, and you clear your throat to get their attention.

"hi," seonghwa mewls. "this isn't what it looks like."

"looks like two of my employees are goofing off when they should be doing their jobs," you mumble, wandering around the studio. "jen, where are san's shoes?"

"um, by the door?" she guesses. "i didn't see his outfit in here, so i didn't know where to put them."

"it's in my office," you respond. "that's why i took him in there."

"i didn't know," she shrugs. you find the shoes and then glare at them, but neither one takes you seriously.

"seonghwa, your outfit is labeled with your name. it's an easy piece, simple closures, so you shouldn't need any help getting it on," you explain. "jen, come here. we have a problem."

"holy shit, you look awesome," jen says as soon as she sees san. she looks at you and asks, "what's wrong with it?"

"his chest is too broad," you frown again, staring at san's chest. "i can't get the jacket to close."

"he can't hold it when he walks?" jen suggests, and san tries it out. you start shaking your head before he finishes, and he actually whines when he sees your reaction.

"no, it's gonna fall off your shoulders if you do that," you say. "i want it to stay in place, and i need the clasp to work for that to happen."

"so what are you gonna do?" jen asks.

"not sleep until i fix it?" you reply. you look at her in defeat and add, "i don't know what else i can do."

"can i help?" san offers, but you shake your head again as jen says, "yes, you can." you try to protest, but she cuts you off.

"he can cut the initial shreds!" she offers. "then you do your magic putting them into the jacket. it takes out a step for you so hopefully it'll be quicker."

"what she said," san butts in. "let me help, please."

"i can't pay you for your extra time," you say softly. "i don't want to impose-"

"don't care," san shakes his head. "i've got nothing else going on."

"perfect!" jen claps her hands together. "you two figure that out, i'm gonna check on hwa..."

-

the rest of the fitting goes well. it's perfect, actually. you have the best models you've ever worked with, every piece fits, and the collection looks beautiful all together. you tear up watching them all walk before you, and the piece san is wearing literally makes a hush fall over the room. he still walks toward you with a wink, but this time it doesn't affect you as much. you're too focused on how much time it'll take to add a couple more inches to the coat. when san finishes, everyone looks to you expectantly, and it takes jen calling your name for your mind to catch up with your mouth.

"i don't know what to say," you admit. "you all did an amazing job, and this was just a fitting! imagine what this show will look like on a real stage. um, a couple things to note..."

once you finish your boss spiel, the models all start changing and leave one by one. you make sure to thank them all before they leave, and in a few minutes it's just you, jen, and san left.

"seonghwa didn't wanna stick around?" you ask jen.

"you scared him," she replies. "he left so fast i'm surprised he didn't leave a trail of smoke."

"i'll talk to him," you brush it off. "keep your paws off him in my studio though."

"no promises," jen sighs, gathering her things. "i need to go get another pair of heels for our tall girl, so do you need anything else from me before i go?"

"a hug?" you think. "i couldn't have done this without you."

"she loves me!" jen says to san, and he smiles encouragingly.

"you two are amazing," san says. "i don't know how just two people put together such a stunning show."

"lots of work," you say.

"i cried a few times," jen adds.

"we both did," you conclude. "but it was fun, so it was worth it. right?"

"fun, sure!" jen agrees.

"get out of here," you push her playfully. "please rest. no boys."

"you too," jen wags her finger at you. then to san, "don't let her work too hard!"

"i'll try my best," he salutes her, and jen leaves with a laugh. he turns to you and asks, "what can i help with?"

"i need to buy more fabric," you think. "so if you want to grab food while i-"

"no, we'll both grab food, and then fabric," san decides. "or fabric then food. either way, i'm buying your lunch."

"but-"

"nope," he pulls you into his side and walks toward the door. "can't work hard on an empty stomach!"

-

you find yourself enjoying san's company more than you were expecting. he's easy to talk to, easy to laugh with, and he's so kind. he insisted on buying your lunch, even though that was going to be your payment to him for helping. he even tried to buy the extra fabric, claiming it's his fault you had to buy more anyway. you get back to your studio, smiles on both your faces, and get to work.

"so we need these in strips about an inch wide," you explain as you lay a few yards of fabric out on a work table. "tear them into strips, then we'll cut them in half, and then i can start shredding and adding them to the coat. sound good?"

"got it, captain," san nods. "how many do you need?"

"i don't know yet," you make a face. "you're a big guy."

"i'm just so strong," san rolls his eyes, flexing a little bit as he does.

"stop that," you laugh. "get to work. you want music on?"

"yeah, whatever you wanna listen to," san says as he straightens the fabric. you watch as he measures carefully, taking the fabric cutter over the material slowly. he holds up his first strip, looking to you for approval. "is this good?"

"perfect," you tell him. "now make like a thousand more."

"what are you gonna do while i work, hm?" san asks. "i've got a lot to do and you're just gonna watch me?"

"gotta make sure you're doing it right," you reply. "but i need to pack up some of these other pieces, they're getting shipped to the venue in the morning. my least favorite part of the job."

"how many shows have you done now?" san asks, and you fall into comfortable conversation with him while you work. you get most of the collection packed up before you know it, so you walk over to his table to check on his progress.

"not bad for a model," you say as you inspect the pieces. "you could make a mean designer's assistant."

"you in the market for one?" san asks, and you notice how close you are. he's a little taller than you, so all you'd have to do is stand on your toes and- "what are you thinking about?"

"what?" you whisper, taking a step back. san's hand catches your waist, holding you in place.

"what were you thinking about, just now?" he asks again. "you were staring."

"you're a model, i'd expect you'd be used to everyone staring at you," you whisper back.

"you're not everyone," he says softly. his eyes flit down to your lips, and before you can think you lean in and kiss him. it's quick, barely a touch, but you kissed him, and his hand on your waist tightens. when you look up at him, he's blushing. "what was that for?"

"um, for helping me with your outfit?" you reply.

"anything else you need my help with?" san smirks.

"san, i'm sorry, i shouldn't have done that," you whisper.

"yeah, you pulled back too quickly," he pouts.

"no," you laugh shyly. "no, um, i have a rule that i don't mess around with my models."

"got it," san sighs. "bummer, but i understand."

"i should start shredding these," you say, grabbing a pile of fabric. san's still holding onto you though, so you look at him expectantly. "you gonna let me go?"

"you don't mess with models, ever?" san asks. "or is it just models that are working for you?"

"um, the second one," you think. "but san-"

"then we'll talk about this again when the show is over," san says with finality. "i don't mind waiting."

"as long as you can keep things professional," you tell him.

"says the one who kissed me," san teases.

"whatever," you roll your eyes. "i'm gonna go work on the jacket."

"um, do you think these are enough strips for now?" san asks sheepishly. "i actually have to leave for an audition..."

"my god," you look at the time. "please, go. i'm sorry i kept you for so long."

"i'll come back when i'm done," san says like it's nothing. "i don't really want this show anyway, but my agent booked it, so i have to go."

"that's good to hear," you mumble. "because i don't like sharing."

"make sure you take a break while i'm gone," san points at you accusingly.

"go to your audition," you say as you walk to your office. "i'll be here when you get back."

-

san thinks about you the whole time he's gone. he breezes through the audition and gets an offer before he leaves, but after being in your show this designer seems scattered, unprofessional, and just not as good as you. his collection is fine, but it's nothing impressive. san can't wait to get back to your studio and see the progress on your coat, but when he knocks at the door there's no response. he waits, tries again, and still nothing. he tries the door and it opens easily, so san wanders in calling out your name. he doesn't see you in the work room, but there's a light on in your office.

"y/n?" he calls, stopping at the door when he sees you slumped over your desk, snoring softly. he looks at the mannequin next to you and lets out a gasp. it's more dramatic now with more fabric, and san thinks briefly it'll be even heavier to wear. he doesn't care though. right now, he's more concerned about getting you to someplace you can rest.

"you're back," you mumble, sitting up as you rub your eyes. "i fell asleep."

"i see that," san chuckles. he walks over to you and holds his arms out. "come on, we gotta get you home."

"what are you doing?" you ask, letting out a shriek when san picks you up. you hit his back weakly, but he carries you out of your office, through your studio, turning lights off as he goes.

"where's your bag?" san asks. you point and he carries you still, handing your things to you before doing a sweep of the studio. "ready to go?"

"where are we going?" you mumble into his shoulder. "i was sleeping just fine-"

"i'm taking you home," san says. "you need to sleep in a bed. not hunched over your desk."

"why are you being so nice to me?" you whisper as you nuzzle into him further. he doesn't reply, but you wouldn't hear it anyway. you drift off in his arms, only waking up when san slides you into the passenger seat of his car.

"you know how to get home from here, sleepyhead?" san asks as he ruffles your hair. you type your address into your phone, handing it to him before he closes the door carefully to rush to the driver's side. he laughs nervously when he sits down and finds you staring, so he asks, "what? too much?"

"i really want to kiss you again," you admit.

"but you can't," san coos. "remember your silly rules?"

"hmph, i was gonna say screw my rules, but then you made fun of me, so-"

"no, no i take it back!" san cries, but you turn and lay your head against the window. you smile to yourself as san begs you to turn back around, giggling as he tugs on your arm. you pretend to snore and san gives up, but his hand has moved from tugging your arm to just holding your hand. you stay like that the whole way home.

-

the runway show is tomorrow. you still aren't done with san's jacket. and you still aren't sure what to do since you kissed him. jen has ideas, though.

"climb him like a tree," she tells you for the nth time as she helps you unpack outfits at the venue. "he sooo wants you. and you sooo want him."

"doesn't matter who wants who," you mumble as you try to hold at least three pins by your teeth. you're securing a new zipper to your favorite dress. it wouldn't be a runway show without things falling apart last minute, and you could have punched a wall when you unpacked this dress to find the zipper literally holding on by a thread.

"the show is tomorrow, y/n," jen says sternly. "you can't hide behind your silly 'no models' rule for much longer."

"i won't," you assure her. she looks at you surprised, but she can't ask any follow ups because there are voices coming from the entrance.

"hello?" seonghwa calls out. you yell back that you're backstage, and when he appears he immediately finds jen to pull her into a hug.

"what are you doing here?" you ask him. "you don't have a fitting today."

"i brought him for moral support," san says from behind you. he's so close, and you didn't hear him come up, so it makes you jump. his hands fly to your waist, trying to soothe you, but the touch makes you jump too. "why are you so skittish?"

"i'm stressed," you respond, stepping away so you can find his coat. you look over your shoulder as you tell him, "the jacket still isn't done."

"what?" he whines. "do i need to tear more fabric?"

"no," you laugh. "just come here." he joins you further among the mess that is your collection, following closely behind you through the maze of clothing racks. you stop by his mannequin, turning to find him still incredibly close to you. "it just needs a clasp. as long as you didn't get broader over night."

"no promises," he smirks before pulling his shirt off. "can you help me get it on?"

"you've never needed my help before," you frown as you try avoid staring at his chest.

"yeah well, it's like ten pounds heavier now," san says. "and i'm just so weak..."

"bullshit," you laugh, helping him lift the coat anyway. you hold one side for him while he slips his arm in, then help him hold onto the other. "ok, stay here." you scurry off to get your sewing kit, and san finds jen's gaze through the clothes. she gives him a thumbs up and an exaggerated wink, and he stifles a laugh as you come back. you're holding more pins between your teeth, and san cries out. "what?"

"that can't be safe," he says as he reaches for one, but ends up pricking himself. "ouch."

"no touching," you mumble. "and hold the jacket like this." you guide his hands to hold the coat in place, and san watches intently as you work. you have to hand sew extra buttons on to support the new weight, so it takes a while. san tries to talk to you, but he's so worried about the pins in your mouth he can't focus.

"let me hold these," he grumbles, carefully pulling a pin from your lips. he takes the rest and cups them in his hand, accidentally pricking himself again. "ouch."

"that's what you get," you laugh. "you didn't have to hold them for me, i'm an expert at this by now."

"yeah, but if you had pins in your mouth, i couldn't do this," san says as he uses his free hand to cup your chin. he looks down at you with a smile before he kisses you. he kisses you and holds you against him, his lips so soft on yours. you sigh into the kiss, lost in the feeling of having him so close to you. you can feel his heart beating in his chest, and your hand that had been gripping the coat falls to his warm skin. you push him away, a little gasp on your lips when it hits you what's happened.

"what happened to being ok with waiting?" you ask him, and his head falls to your neck, leaving one kiss against your skin before he pulls back.

"i forgot," he whispers.

"well remember at least until i finish these buttons," you tell him.

"and then what?"

"then you gotta show me your walk," you say. the way you look up at him makes san want to kiss you again, but he does his best to refrain. you hold your hand out for the pins, and you put them back in your sewing kit as you say, "in a few minutes, your coat will finally be done."

"can't wait," san hums, his hands back to holding the jacket in place. "but i admit i'll miss having a reason for you to be so close to me."

"i'm sure you'll find more," you mumble, focusing on the last button. when it's sturdy enough to hold weight, you try securing the jacket together just enough for it to stay on san's shoulders. "hands off," you instruct, and san moves his hands from the coat to your shoulders. "hands to yourself."

"aw," he pouts. you start to walk away and he follows, but you tell him to stay put.

"stay there, then walk toward me," you direct him. "i wanna see how it moves now."

"you want me to go full model mode?" san asks. "can you handle it?"

"just show me," you groan, and the cocky grin on san's face should've warned you. it's like he changes into another person, his demeanor completely different. you realize now that the san you know is not model san, because the man before you is...intimidating? you almost back up as he walks toward you, his gait powerful and his stare petrifying. everything is so dramatic and the movement matches the coat perfectly. he still winks at you as he comes closer and turns, moving the coat so each layer of fabric, each shred explodes into an arc before you. san finishes his walk, turning over his shoulder with a shy smile on his face. he's back to the san you know as he asks, "how was that?"

"you're perfect," you stammer out, mimicking your words from the first time san walked for you. "for the collection. for this piece. everything. this is exactly what i imagined."

"good," his smile widens. "and the weight isn't too bad. it's distributed better now."

"good," you cough, trying to calm yourself down. watching that made everything real to you. this show is happening tomorrow. your nerves are hitting you now, and san can tell.

"are you ok?" he asks, rushing to your aide. he looks like he's going to pull you into a hug when you hear jen calling for you somewhere, and you disappear before san gets a chance.

-

the hours leading up to the show are a blur. in the hours leading up to the show, you are a blur. you don't stay still for more than a few minutes at a time. there's just so much for you to do, so many people to talk to, and so many people that need your help. a stylist asking your opinion. a model with loose threads down her back. a man with pleading eyes that you know is watching you from afar, ready to jump in if you collapse from nerves, or exhaustion, or both. you find jen at the accessories table, helping a model find bangles that won't fall off her arm as she walks. you grab onto jen, leaning in closely to rest your head against hers.

"i'm so tired," you whine. "and scared. and sweaty."

"ew, then get off me," jen pushes you away playfully. she finishes up with the model and sends her away before asking, "are you ok though? really?"

"why did i think dressing san without a shirt would be a good idea?" you whisper to her, watching him as he laughs with seonghwa about something. it's like he can feel your eyes on him, because he looks toward you and winks.

"because it is a good idea," jen says. "and he's not gonna be shirtless for long. you need to go help him into the coat, the show's about to start."

"shit," you curse, checking the time. "i have so much to do-"

"wait!" jen shouts, holding you in place. "something's missing."

"my will to go on?"

"no, you need lipstick," jen decides. she digs into the bag at her hip and finds the perfect pink shade for you. it matches your dress (that you designed) and it matches the warm pinks that you sprinkled into the collection. "there. you're ready."

"no i'm not," you mumble. "i didn't get to practice my welcome speech."

"go practice it with san!" jen pushes you in his direction. "five minutes!"

your palms get sweaty the closer you get to san. you're not sure if it's him, or the running countdown in your head reminding you that your show is about to happen. when you finally make it to san, he's alone, and he's smiling at you nervously.

"time for the coat?" he asks. you nod, and he follows you to the mannequin in the back. "how do you feel?"

"like i'm gonna pass out."

"i'll catch you," san jokes.

"arms up please," you squeak out. he helps you lift the coat silently, sliding into it like it's the most comfortable thing in the world. "and just let me secure it..."

"y/n," san whispers. "look at me." you don't listen, fussing over the buttons instead. you're smoothing out the warm pink fabric as san's hands cover yours, stilling them over his chest. "breathe for a second."

"i'm freaking out," you admit, looking up at him. "i have to go out there, and do a speech, and then watch my clothes, my life for the past year, all be judged by these strangers, and-"

"and you've done it before, and you survived," san smiles softly. "you're pretty great at this, in case you didn't know."

"but-"

"nope," he shakes his head. "it'll be great."

"it will," you say unsurely.

"say it like you mean it."

"the show will be great," you declare, and san squeezes your hands before he lets them go.

"and then after the show..." san trails off, and you feel your heart start to race. "i don't know, maybe i could take you out to celebrate?"

"san, i can't think about that right now," you shake your head. "i can't-"

the stage manager starts calling out models for the line up, and san looks away sadly. he nods like he's got his answer and starts to walk away, but you pull him back. you don't say anything, just cup his chin and leave a delicate kiss on his cheek.

"we'll talk after the show," you whisper. the stage manager calls for him again, and he looks at you one more time before he leaves. you let out a nervous breath, checking your reflection in the vanity next to you. it's now or never. you walk up to the side of the stage, and your heart drops to your ass. something is wrong.

"what's going on?" you hiss, walking up to find make up artists swarming san. "this can't be happening."

"you did this," one of the artists whisper shouts back, pointing to san's cheek. fuck. the lipstick. your lipstick left a bright pink mark on his skin. "we don't have time to fix it!"

"then don't," san shrugs. "i like it."

"y/n?" the stage manager looks at you. "we have one minute. are we fixing this?"

"uh, n-no," you stammer, and the crowd disperses, leaving you and san again. "here, i can wipe it-"

"don't," san swats your hands away. "now i'll have a piece of you with me while i walk."

"you're wearing my clothes, you already had a piece of me with you," you tell him.

"yeah, but this one's just for me," he smiles. "plus the lipstick matches my jacket."

"y/n, you're on!" jen grabs you, a gleeful look on her face. "oh, your lipstick is smudged."

"i don't know how you planned that, but i hate you for it," you say as you try to hide your smile.

"i just thought it would be a cute touch for photos later," she smiles as she fixes the smudge and reapplies more. "i didn't know you'd go around kissing him, marking your territory."

"that's not what i did," you blush.

"we don't have time to argue about this," she pushes you toward the stage entrance. "go be great!"

-

you're able to introduce the collection without tripping or fumbling over your words, so you'll call that a win. even bigger win: the collection is a hit. each piece got the reaction you wanted, but the show stopper was definitely san. the crowd hushed when he walked out, and they went wild when he got to the end of the runway with his flourish move he showed you the other night. as you watch the show backstage, you blush when you see the lipstick mark shining under the bright lights.

it ends up being a hit, almost as much as the coat itself. fashion bloggers lauded it as a perfect touch, basically sealing the collection with a kiss. they also speculated about your relationship with san, which certainly wasn't helped by the fact that he held your hand tightly in his as the collection walked the runway all together. san lifted your hand in triumph as you made it to the end of the stage, and he lets go, stepping back so you can have your moment. you soak it in as long as you can take, then scurry back to his side and grab his hand as you run backstage. he lifts you into a hug as soon as the curtain closes behind you, surrounded by cheers and models talking about how great the show was.

"put me down!" you squeal, swatting at san's chest so he'll let you go. "i need to talk to everybody."

"you can do it from up there," san says. you don't think you'll win this one, and he's right. it might be easier to address your models and your team from a few inches higher up.

"first of all, thank you," you say sincerely. "i wouldn't have a show without you all, and i had the best show because of you all. so thank you. if i could make you all vow to only ever work with me forever until the end of time, i would, but that's not ethical. so instead i'll say: you all have a spot in any show i do for the rest of my career. thank you. thankyouthankyouthankyou."

the crowd thins out as models get undressed, artists pack up their things, and the stage crew follows everyone around to remind them to clean up after themselves. miraculously, you and san are alone again.

"so," he hums. "i walked good?"

"you didn't trip," you nod.

"everyone loved it," san smiles.

"they loved you," you say, busying yourself with straightening the coat again.

"all i care about is what you thought."

"i've told you already," you start. "you're perfect."

"you say that, but earlier i think you were about to turn me down," san laughs nervously.

"what?" you're confused. "oh, i didn't finish. i was gonna say i can't go out with you tonight, but i'm free tomorrow."

"tomorrow? you'd make me wait so long?" san smirks.

"i have a business dinner to go to tonight," you explain. "so unless you wanna be my arm candy for the people who sponsored the show, then yes, you have to wait so long."

"i'm good at being arm candy," san says. "it's basically my job."

"fine," you shrug. "then put a shirt on and come with me?"

[gatheringbones]

[“People are attracted to the concept of a Nordic-style law that criminalises only the sex buyer, and not the prostitute – but any campaign or policy that aims to reduce business for sex workers will force them to absorb the deficit, whether in their wallets or in their working conditions. As a sex worker in the Industrial Workers of the World observes,

I find that how easy, safe, and enjoyable I can make my work is directly related to whether I can survive on what I’m currently making … I might be safer if I refused any clients who make their disrespect for me clear immediately, but I know exactly where I can afford to set the bar on what I need to tolerate. If I haven’t been paid in weeks, I need to accept clients who sound more dangerous than I’d usually be willing to risk.

When sex workers speak to this, we are often seemingly misheard as defending some kind of ‘right’ for men to pay for sex. In fact, as Wages For Housework articulated in the 1970s, naming something as work is a crucial first step in refusing to do it – on your own terms. Marxist-feminist theorist Silvia Federici wrote in 1975 that ‘to demand wages for housework does not mean to say that if we are paid we will continue to do it. It means precisely the opposite. To say that we want money for housework is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it.’ Naming work as work has been a key feminist strategy beyond Wages For Housework. From sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s term ‘emotional labour’, to journalist Susan Maushart’s term ‘wife-work’, to Sophie Lewis’s theorising around surrogacy and ‘gestational labour’, naming otherwise invisible or ‘natural’ structures of gendered labour is central to beginning to think about how, collectively, to resist or reorder such work.

Just because a job is bad does not mean it’s not a ‘real job’. When sex workers assert that sex work is work, we are saying that we need rights. We are not saying that work is good or fun, or even harmless, nor that it has fundamental value. Likewise, situating what we do within a workers’ rights framework does not constitute an unconditional endorsement of work itself. It is not an endorsement of capitalism or of a bigger, more profitable sex industry. ‘People think the point of our organisation is [to] expand prostitution in Bolivia’, says ONAEM activist Yuly Perez. ‘In fact, we want the opposite. Our ideal world is one free of the economic desperation that forces women into this business.’

It is not the task of sex workers to apologise for what prostitution is. Sex workers should not have to defend the sex industry to argue that we deserve the ability to earn a living without punishment. People should not have to demonstrate that their work has intrinsic value to society to deserve safety at work. Moving towards a better society – one in which more people’s work does have wider value, one in which resources are shared on the basis of need – cannot come about through criminalisation. Nor can it come about through treating marginalised people’s material needs and survival strategies as trivial. Sex workers ask to be credited with the capacity to struggle with work – even to hate it – and still be considered workers. You don’t have to like your job to want to keep it.”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

[kaiasky]

Complete-ish Guide To Settings You Might Want to Change

These instructions will be for desktop, because the settings are easier to find there. You can do the same on mobile, but it might be in different places.

Dash settings

Your dashboard is broken down into several feeds, including "Following" and "For You".

"Following" is primarily the posts of people you follow, "For You" is algorithmic.

If you just joined, "For You" is default, if you're a longtime user it's "Following". You can change this in the settings on the right

A lot of longtime users will tell you that the Following feed is where we spend most of our time. But try out all the feeds, and see what you like most.

The settings that are settings:

To start, click the settings gear under the account icon (the abstract person head).

This should take you to the General tab. Key settings:

Community Labels: By default anything NSFW is silently hidden. You can change how each subtype is handled.

Hide Additional Mature Content: If you have an iPhone disable this or it'll hide every post from you on the off-chance it contains porn.

If you're under 18 as determined by the birthdate you entered on signup, you can't change these. (If you want them on, you'll have to make a new account and lie)

Under the "Dashboard" tab, you can enable timestamps, which is mostly just nice information to have. sometimes a post is from 2010 and you can be like wow.

The next four probably have the biggest impact on your tumblr experience, so I'm gonna do a breakdown.

Best Stuff First reorders your "Following" to have popular posts at the top. Disabling it makes your feed chronological. I like it off, but up to you.

Include Stuff In Your Orbit and Based On Your Likes put various content from "For You" into "Following". Personally, I disable them to keep "Following" purely posts by people I follow, and then switch between feeds to get what I want.

Followed Tag Posts will put content from the "Your Tags" feed into your "Following" feed. Since you can go to the separate tags feed, I usually turn this off (it tends to show me a lot of duplicate posts), but up to you.

Under the "Notifications" tab you can tell Tumblr to stop sending you emails.

I'd recommend disabling all the emails--if you get a bunch of replies, Tumblr will happily send you dozens of emails, and you don't need that.

Notifications is the push-notifications in-app/in-website. The mobile app, for some reason, has a much better interface for controlling these, including the option to only get activity-notifications for mutuals. You can leave these on, or turn them off if you find the flood of notifications is distracting.

Tumblr News is a newsletter, it usually just has content from @fandom and the other staff-run recap blogs.

Conversational notifications sends you more emails.

Under the "Tumblr Labs" tab you can enable a bunch of cool beta tests.

I particularly suggest Reblog Graphs, What you Missed tab, & Popular Reblogs tab, but they're all fun to try out. A lot of these are honestly better than the For You dashboard.

For each blog you have, you can customize it's Blog Settings. Beyond things like setting an avatar or description, there's a few settings that are fun.

Custom Theme gives you your own subdomain at [blogurl].tumblr.com.

This makes your blog easier to search, and a lot of 3rd party tools depend on you enabling it. It also makes it easier to link your posts to people who don't have tumblr accounts.

You can completely customize the CSS/HTML/Javascript. you can go legitimately crazy. It's not a requirement, but if you want unlimited flexibility, go wild.

On the contrary, if you wanna run a more private blog, you can disable this and then hide your blog from search results/non-registered users.

Likes and Following are public by default. I like to turn these off so I don't have to worry about like, "what will people think if they see i'm following [...] or liking [...]". But it's also fair to keep them public if you'd like.

The other Blog Settings are important but pretty self-explanatory I think.

Finally, there's some useful tools I like:

XKit Rewritten - A bunch of scripts (like RES for Reddit). The one I really like is "mutual checker", which shows at a glance which blogs you are in mutuals with. Which is such a good feature it's included in the mobile apps by default i think.

siikr.tumblr.com - Tumblr search is bad, and google's indexing of tumblr blogs is worse. Siikr will find any post you've made on your blog. Because disk space is limited, only use it to search your blog, and if you're tech savvy consider running a local copy from source.

[physalian]

The Fantasy Language Translation Matrix

Whether you intend to write your own full-blown lexicon with different verb tenses and formal vs informal language, need unique words for spellwork, or just need new names for all your foreign places, behold… the Physalian patented Fantasy Language Translation Matrix.

(I kid. I have no idea if I’m the first to come up with this)

**Disclaimer!** After rolling out your fresh new vocab off the word assembly line, make sure you google it and that it doesn’t already exist and mean something you don’t intend.

Step 1: Pick your Derivative

You can make it sound completely foreign and like total gibberish, but I find it easier for you and other people to read if they have some real-world reference to compare it to, and so they have a clue for which pronunciation rules to rely on. For example: I did not know who René Descartes was my freshman year of high school. His last name was in my algebra book, and I, thinking he was Greek like so many other ancient mathematicians, pronounced his name as if he were Greek “Des-kart-ees.” I got made fun of.

Spare your readers the humiliation.

So say I want a vaguely… Russian/Latin/Italian influence. As opposed to French. Cool. That’s my starting point.

Step 2: Reorder the most common letters from English to your new language

In English, the average use of the standard alphabet by letter in order is this:

Ignore your vowels for a second. I don’t use charts like this on the regular, I use the Wheel of Fortune method and focus on RSTLNE, then go from there. I also want to make sure this isn’t a complete 1:1 ratio so it���s not super obvious I’m just juggling letters around, so I’ll knock out some “duplicate” letters and swap out singular letters for specific sounds.

The goal of this isn’t to stare at two existing language matrices and perfectly match them up, it’s to take the most common sounds and letters in English and make them new, common sounds in your new language, to sound more uniform and like you have a real etymology.

And I end up with this:

This might look a little confusing on how I got from A to Z so the basics:

All my vowels remain in the same place, they just get juggled around so I don’t end up with 8 consonants next to each other and word garbage

My “duplicate” letters are combined so I have more room for the new sounds, like c/k, f/ph/gh, h/wh, s/z. The new sounds then get the spare letters I had left over

Common english suffixes get reduced down so the pattern isn’t as obvious

If you want to include accent marks, this is your chance

I wanted to really emphasize the long “e” and long “i” sounds, so those got extra attention

Step 3: Translating

Oftentimes this is not perfect, or you end up with a word that just doesn’t fit the rest of your new vocabulary, because English is the bastard lovechild of German, Latin, Danish, and French.

I start with English, usually, but if the English word is too short or too long, I translate it first into another language, like Spanish, and go from there. Like “bus” vs “autobus”.

Using your matrix, go one by one. Let’s use a word like “letter”.

English: L-E-T-T-E-R

New: T-A-C-C-A-Z

Step 4: Polishing

So now I have my new word: “Taccaz”

Which is serviceable. I can throw an accent on either A or fiddle with the Z. I can start with “carta” instead and end up with “kizci”. The matrix is just a starting point. It’s designed to streamline the process when I’m otherwise feeling uncreative and in a rush, and it moves very quickly when I need to come up with full phrases and sentences that someone would actually say.

Step 5: Full sentences

This is only if you’re really digging deep and not coming up with the occasional fantasy curse word or new name for your fantasy land/realm/noun etc.

For this you’re going to need lots of tables. I based mine off romance languages because I know Spanish and romance languages make sense. This is where you decide how many pronouns, if any, you’re going to use, how the infinitive changes based on past, present, or future tense, how many nouns the word references, etc.

This is… a lot. Way more than you’d ever need for your manuscript. Ever. But I did it just for my own sake. Does it get long? Yes. Does it get tedious? Yes. The point here is to have little pre-manufactured word bytes you can plug and play with, with as little mental effort as possible so you can save it for the rest of your work.

I also came up with very common words already conjugated, like “to be” so I can just glance and type without having to remember to take “is” and go through the process over and over again.

Which means that I can take an entire sentence and translate it to my new language in about two minutes.

English: The payoff is worth it, this is so satisfying. New, roughly: Nu kioyb ela fyzip ne, iski ela valo nicenbalaev.

Of course, you can keep tinkering until you get something that’s easier on the eyes (I’ve been working with this language for years so I can read it pretty well), but not all languages are smooth and pretty and simple.

To be frank: Most readers will just gloss over this stuff anyway, but it shows that you put in the effort and it enhances the lore and the immersion when you do this. At least in the written medium. You can’t ignore it if this is meant to be in a screenplay.

Is this what a language professor would do or recommend? Probably not, I have no idea. Does it work? Yes. I have a fully functioning grammatical system where any input can give me a legible output.

To make this yourself, just change the order of the letters around, adjust your shortcuts, and come up with your own common sounds for those last two rows. The conjugation matrix is where you can really make it distinct, assuming you are basing yours off a romance language, which you don't have to.

—

And there you have it!

Don’t forget to vote in the dialogue poll before it closes!

[donna-rinascimentale]

hiya! hope you doing well.

would you elaborate on the interpretation you were talking about in your Labyrinth post tags? what you said was really interesting and I never thought about it that way! 👀

also, hope you had fun watching! ✨✨✨

certainly.

i’d always been subscribed to the interpretation that the labyrinth is a metaphor for navigating coming of age, that the end of sarah’s hero’s journey is a means of balancing adult maturity with never losing a child’s sense of wonder and imagination. the fandom has thought up tons of explanations for where jareth falls in this scenario. is he a tangible antagonist, actively trying to get sarah to slip back into her old childish ways? a metaphor for adulthood, all that sarah is and isn’t ready for?

i think he’s all sarah’s creation. so does jim henson.

“He represents a lot of things that are a part of Sarah's world, what she's trying to figure out and what she's going through. … [Jareth] has no reality except what Sarah gives him, which she can constantly change.”

sarah seems to be very genre-savvy. she reads lines from a play titled the labyrinth, and she recognizes the puzzle of the two guards and implies she’s practiced it before in case she’d happen to encounter it. here, the labyrinth is a product of sarah’s fantasy, by which she navigates her adolescence and her parents’ divorce and her perceived lack of autonomy in a manner typical of a seasoned fantasy reader.

sarah is well aware that every fantasy hero needs a villain. the likeness she gives hers is that of her mother’s costar—as the former mrs. williams is a stage actress, shown in the photo on sarah’s vanity of her posing with a fellow actor who looks just like this jareth. sarah made jareth, made him as beautiful and dangerous as she believed he should be.

sarah made jareth.

to jareth, god is a sixteen-year-old girl.

imagine god, calling you by name, crowning you a king and giving you beauty and power. you were quite literally born for this. all you know is this role, building yourself and your kingdom just the way god wishes it.

then, god turns herself away from you.

you may feel betrayed. hollow, like you’ve been stripped of everything that makes you you. “you made me this way,” you might say.

Everything! Everything that you wanted, I have done. You ask the child to be taken, I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time, I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for you.

“i was playing the role you put me in. what was i made for, if not you?

i can’t live within you.”

Just fear me, love me, do as I say

“let me play the role of villain, the role you made me to fill.”

and I would be your slave.

“your will be done.”

god is a sixteen-year-old girl who hasn’t yet figured out the way she wants to be worshipped. it’s a heavy burden, trying to satisfy someone who doesn’t know what she wants.

but there is hope for jareth.

fandom rarely debates on how to interpret the barn owl at the beginning of the film. we’re pretty much in consensus that it’s a manifestation of jareth, but that’s never given much thought.

when sarah asserts her power and escapes the labyrinth, jareth has once again taken the form of the owl. in the final scene, when sarah celebrates with her friends from the labyrinth, reconciling her love of fantasy with her maturity and self-growth, jareth flies away, smaller and smaller until he’s gone. here we turn to the age-old metaphor of flight as freedom.

in moving away from escapism and becoming an active participant in her own life, sarah has freed jareth from the role of villain. none of the friends in her room are human. be reminded again that jareth bears the likeness of a man present (at least tangentially) in sarah’s real life, who would likely feel disheartened knowing he’s blamed for something beyond his control.

because sarah has no more need for a jareth, there is no more jareth. and that’s arguably best for both of them.

(p.s.: i go to the theater tomorrow! i have a sarah-esque outfit put together and everything. thanks for wishing me well & know tomorrow can’t come soon enough for me… this film has been among my favorites for many many many years and each watch makes me find more to love. best cult i’ve ever joined)

[gentlemean]

I know the fandom loves throwing ideas around for a hypothetical adaptation, so why not chime in.

I think most of us agree that an animated series would be better than the dreaded life-action adaptation. Regardless of format, any adaptation would have to somehow preserve the peculiarities, the absolute whiplash, and way the narration shapes the narrative. In my opinion, an animated series could do this quite well.

We start off with Gideon the Ninth. It's shown in heavily stylized 3d animation (think, at least Arcane-style), with strong contrasts in the colors. The Ninth house is dark and desaturated, the lights in the eyes of animated skeletons and Gideon's hair positively burn among the dreary surroundings. Then, getting to the First, the world is vibrant and bright, lots of elaborate light refractions in the broken windows of Canaan house.

Characters are accompanied not only by small, individual musical themes, but also by visual clues. Each house might have distinct little particles and effects that appear in scenes in which the respective characters act. They might synergize in scenes where characters cooperate or contrast in scenes in which they fight. (example: the Niners are always accompanied by shadows, ink-blots staining the scenery around them. The Third are too graceful to be real, all of their animations use exaggerated smear-frames in overly grandiose flourishes. When Naberius fights Gideon, his strikes stir the shadows around Gideon, cleaving bright rifts into the inkstained dark.)

The story is told as we know it, without reordering or large ommissions. One thing we see not nearly often enough in modern television is actual narration in the background. We don't need it for all of the visuals and happenings, but so much of gtn profits from Gideon's thoughts and feelings.

A few scenes look differently though. When Gideon allows Harrow to take over her vision, the animation style changes. It gets a bit more abstract, the surroundings are textured like oil paintings, and Gideon herself has trails of smoke and ink following her movements. This is how they see the world together, and it is reflected again at the very end of the first book, when Harrow ascends. Except this time there's no borrowing, it's something deeper. The world is painted, more abstractly this time, and the characters appear almost like paper cuts.

And then the fun begins. We leave gtn and start htn. There is no more Gideon in our narrative, and yet there is her narration. As in the first series we retain parts of the narration, and it is her voice - mostly. Now, this is a source of great confusion in the book, right? The series would have to make it explicit that it is her voice, but it can have fun with it nevertheless. Some words are garbled, overlapping, distorted. Sometimes, Harrow's voice seamlessly takes over the narration, drifting in and continuing, while still using Gideon's pronunciation and vocal flow.

The visuals, on the other hand - now, that's an entirely different thing. At this point we know what the world looks like when Gideon sees it and what it looks like when they see it together. htn gives us two exciting new variations: 'Harrow with very little Gideon' for the Mithraeum story, and 'Harrow entirely without Gideon' for the river bubble. In the main, physical-world story we retain broad strokes of thick oil paint for the world around Harrow. The characters are too clean on a messy background, with some of the paint steadily bleeding into their shapes. The paint seems almost like it is an active participant in the narrative, crawling across inconvenient truths to blot them out, staining everyone but keeping it's distant from John, who therefore remains clearer than clear, shiny and bright, squeaky clean and lemon scented. But then there's the river bubble, and we get full Harrow, with a teeny bit of Wake. The scenery around the characters is vague and misty, swathes of color arrange into a distorted background like ink being poured into water. The entire scenery bleeds color and light into the surroundings of dark, barely saturated characters. It breaks at the seams when the uncomfortably realistic fleshy pipes wind through the walls, something too concrete for a tearstained world.

Towards the final act, we see a few changes: Abigail summons Nonius, and the shape language changes. Everything's still illustrated the way it was before, but the stark, desaturated characters in his proximity stop being mere dark blots in this scenery, and instead become almost comic-like. Their strikes and attacks are supported by respective action lines, their poses and moves adapt to the newly imposed genre conventions. Meanwhile, on the Mithraeum, Gideon is keeping the fires burning. We're almost back to the way we used to see the world in the beginning, Gideon's stark contrast and smooth environments. But there's the ink bleeding into the scenery from dark corners and bright red puddles, there's enough of Harrow here to stain the world.

And, well. We get to Nona. And Nona's world fundamentally isn't like the one the other's see. Nona's world is mismatched and chaotic and charmingly odd. Most of it is claymation, interspersed with some other materials. Cam's swords are real metal, the dust of New Rho fills the air, and most of the food is probably actual food that looks as dreadfully out of place in this world as it feels in Nona's mouth. There remains a touch of Harrow, expressive movements are exaggerated with her flowing ink, action lines like calligraphy. Of course, there are also the John chapters. Here, we get to have proper fun with the visuals. Let's recap: it's Harrow getting to experience a memory of Alecto, narrated by John. We already know Harrow's flowing colors that stain the backgrounds, and we get mixed medium animation with it: articulated plastic dolls, of course, with some natural materials (moss, wood, some metal scraps) as set dressing.

I'm still not entirely settled on the Nona Epilogue. As long as Alecto isn't out I'm not sure whether I want to keep in line with something from the next book, or whether it's its own thing. Until we know more: illuminated manuscript.

---

Well, that was more than I originally intended to write, but I've had those thoughts in my head basically since I've started the books, and they needed an outlet. There's plenty more ideas where those came from, please please talk to me. 'The Unwanted Guest' as an actual play, anyone? (When Cam makes contact with Babs, and the fight initiates, the camera zooms out from the now frozen claymation, revealing it's situated on a table in the front row of a theatre hall BTW)

[sineala]

Fall of X (Steve/Tony Edition)

For anyone else who is a comics Steve/Tony fan who doesn't usually read X-Men comics and is now finding themselves needing to wade through the Fall of X, this is everything I have found that's out now (or coming out very soon) in the order you should read it, that pertains to Steve and/or Tony. This is accurate as of today (September 16); we are obviously not done with the event so this list will not stay accurate, but if you want to hop on now, this is how you'd do it.

Iron Man #7

Avengers/X-Men FCBD 2023

Hellfire Gala 2023

Iron Man #8

Iron Man #9

X-Men #25

Uncanny Avengers #1

X-Men #26

(Uncanny Avengers #2 when it comes out, Sept. 20)

(Iron Man #10 when it comes out, Sept. 27)

(Iron Man #7 is not technically part of this but it does have some lead-up with a subplot involving Rhodey and Feilong. I am assuming you are all reading Iron Man anyway.)

I am also not a regular X-Men reader so it's possible that I've missed some stuff, but this is everything that has Steve and/or Tony or is directly relevant to them that I have found. So this isn't the entire event, but if you're just trying to get through Iron Man comics there are definitely some comics that you want to read.

I mention this because it might not be entirely obvious to anyone just trying to read through Iron Man that there are crucial events in the Free Comic Book Day issue that was released months ago. But there are. And I would like to save everyone else the trouble of getting halfway through Hellfire Gala and wondering why all of a sudden someone has been trying to assassinate Captain America off-panel and thinking that, wow, I really must have missed something somewhere. Which was the experience I had. So, yeah. That was actually depicted in the FCBD 2023 issue. Surprise!

(The most necessary part of the ordering, for our purposes, is Avengers/X-Men FCBD, Hellfire, and then Iron Man #8. There are several important events that we see from various points of view throughout these issues, which all take place on the same night, in that order. Iron Man #8 also assumes you have read Iron Man #182 but I feel like probably everyone has done this.)

Tony is on the main team (although the main Avengers book is not part of the Fall of X event); Steve is currently leading the Uncanny Avengers, which is part of the event. Both Steve and Tony actually appear together briefly in both X-Men #25 and Uncanny Avengers #1 as part of the meetings the remaining resistance is holding against Orchis. I don't know if Tony will be in this week's Uncanny Avengers #2. He wasn't in the preview and he isn't in the character list on the recap page, but that was also the case for both X-Men #25 and Uncanny Avengers #1. I think the character lists only cover the team members in this particular series.

I have reordered a couple of issues from the order they were released in. Uncanny Avengers #1 was released the week before Iron Man #9 but it has to happen in the opposite order. IM #9 takes place the night of the Gala and on into the next day; it picks up immediately after #8 and resolves the cliffhanger there. UA #1, even though it came out before this, takes place weeks after the Gala, as established in the issue. Judging by the preview, UA #2 will (at least partially) take place immediately after UA #1 but as it hasn't come out yet, I can't say for sure.

Similarly, since Iron Man #9 is right after #8, I've put X-Men #25 after that, since it also takes place weeks after the Gala, even though it came out before IM #9. I might end up moving Uncanny Avengers around some more later as well, but this works for now.

X-Men #26 is the X-Men half of the wedding issue along with Iron Man #10. The IM half isn't out yet, so we'll see what happens there.

[thedawningofthehour]

I just just wanted to let you know, I think about the scene when Hypno puts that spell on Donnie and whispers that he made sure Donnie could find a way to break it every single time doth updates. It was such a jaw dropping scene that has been permanently seared into my brain and I desperately want to know how Hypno is doing and what he thinks about everything that has happened

The final two scenes of doth were written well in advance and I spent a lot of time tweaking them to get them just right. The final chapter in particular took a long time-the dialogue didn't really 'flow' very easily so they were written like two or three lines at a time, vs other conversation scenes where I basically write out all dialogue as fast as my fingers can type. And a lot, I mean a lot was reordered to get the emotions just right.

It's not really so much that Hypno made a back door to the spell than that there's a giant hole there that can't be closed. The spell that Draxum demanded he use (there were others that carried less risk, but they would suppress Donnie's personality and genius and/or need constant reapplication, which carried its own risks) is very intense and had never been done on that scale for good reasons. Hypno knew that no matter how well he performed the spell or how thoroughly Draxum rewrote his memory, there would be things that didn't line up. He knew that Donnie was detail-oriented and smart enough to take notice. All he was really doing was passing along the hope that Donnie might break out of it one day.

And I hate to break it to you, but...if Hypno and Warren weren't killed, then Draxum would have had Hypno perform another spell on himself and Warren to make them forget about the previous day or two. So if Hypno is alive at all, he's somewhere in Vermont feeling weirdly guilty but can never figure out why.

But thank you. This made me very happy. :)

[the-meme-monarch]

If they remade Balan wonderworld but good what changes do you think would be most important

ohh ive had this stewing for a while so it's not just gonna be "what changes would be most important" it will also be some nitpicking

-i think. you could make it a game with no dialogue. i think that'd be novel and cool. but the weird thing is the actual game doesn't really commit to that? balan talks in-game. anyway they need to like. Actually tell the story bc as it stands w all the context being in the book isn't really great. more comprehensive cutscenes. and also I'm no game dev but like. it doesn't play well. i feel like it could stand to be more puzzley and maybe they can use that to help portray each residents stories more/better?

-i think the wonderworld should just abide by real time bc w it originally existing outside time and space kinda. Doesn't make complete sense to me. It being 'these twelve guys are having issues at the moment" makes more sense to me. therefore. dropping the cass attilio romance. It was weird anyway. princess merry is cass' older sister

-instead of the illusions of themselves that lead you to their negati boss form, it's a shadow that you see on the walls/ground(bc they're a shadow of their former selves haha). maybe your shadow is replaced w theirs?

-im thinking their backstory cutscenes are each told through different creative mediums:

-Fiona through sand animation, Eis through oil pastel on glass animation(like mob psycho 100 has) , Lucy through like a series of paintings? Cass maybe something similar to the mechanical puppets that hers is already, have Sana’s commit with wooden carved sets in stop motion (wouldn’t have to actually be Real stop motion, just make it look like it)

-either Balan just doesn’t have a ‘true form’ or his true form still reads as black bc i will continue to be 😐 over that for-absolutely-ever

-Cass’ cat has to die. I’m sorry. or at least get hit and nearly die. also I’m thinking the accident also caused Iben’s parents deaths bc i heard somebody suggest that in frankenbugs’ playthrough of it and that sounded cool to make it connected. and Cass shutting out her grief like it never happened while Iben let her grief consume her bc of the same accident also sounds cool

-also abt frankenbugs i agree w them that I don’t think Lucy’s stage needs any changing i think hers is the best structured. i think everyone else’s stages need to be changed to match

-also maybe reorder the levels so they're in like. have the more intense problems at the end. like Bruce's being the last level seems kinda Whatever after cass and iben's levels literally involve death

-i think have their ‘why they’re in wonderworld’ cutscene play at the beginning of their stage when you first get there, and the ‘what happens after they leave’ play after their boss fight like normal bc idk where to put it otherwise

-I think it'd be neat if the hub world was the theatre instead of the isle of tims. what little we actually see of the theatre in the opening cutscene looks GREAT and i think that'd make for a cooler hub to get to all the stages w the character posters. i honestly don't really care for the tims (i like them in theory not really in practice) and much less the tower

and that's all i got rn but i might come back to this I'm watching the 1993 mario movie rn

[edwad]

thoughts on marx’s “theories of surplus value”

genuinely might be the most important manuscript for my "project", which means i'll have to read the whole thing back to front at some point. which sucks but it is what it is. it's a really fascinating text though and i think shows a more interesting sense of marx in his laboratory than the grundrisse etc. if i had infinite free time i would probably try to get a reading group together for it alongside the primary materials he's reflecting on (this is basically what rubin's HET is supposed to help do, although he was using the heavily edited edition of the text), but that would be an insane amount of work. so for now im just trying to go through the "canon" of smith, ricardo, etc with a fine tooth comb to better prepare me for when i finally get around to TSV. obviously it's got its limits as well. it's a text written with a certain directionality in mind: the development of categories out of a teleological reordering of the historical materials into a coherent object/theoretical field, which is the exact thing i would be trying to pin down.

another thing to say about it is that it belongs to an earlier phase of his work before he really sets his mind on the 4 book plan of capital. it was written for the next part of the plan laid out in the 59 contribution (where he would have to move on from commodities and money to the category of capital, at which point he needs a theory of surplus value and was intending to add the historical reflections into the body of the main text as he'd done with the 59 contribution), which still belonged to the "critique of political economy" 6 book plan of the grundrisse (loosely, since that plan underwent various changes and wasn't a singular outline).

the result of the TSV manuscript is basically the realization of the limits of the 6 book COPE plan, so that in december of 62 he announces he's abandoning the COPE plan and in january 63 he outlines the 4 book plan of capital, where COPE is moved from the title to the subtitle, suggesting that capital is no longer merely one aspect of the COPE project but in fact stands alone on its own in outlining the COPE itself. some of these differences in frameworks, especially as they exist in transition between projects, mean that it's not a self-contained manuscript which can be read as the result of prior findings, but is instead a research notebook in constant motion. this can be frustrating, but it also i think does a lot in demonstrating some of the self-serving elements of his ad hominem critique, where he suggests conclusions before he's arrived at them and then has to spend time walking them back slightly or amending them as he starts actually deconstructing the texts of political economists he'd already passed judgements on. easy example of this would be in his comments on people like bailey, where he expresses outright disinterest in his work as a ricardian critic, only to very quickly dedicate a lot of thought to his intervention as a meaningful and damning engagement with the ricardian school.

so if the point of your question could be reworded into something like "should i read TSV?" i guess my answer depends on what you're looking to get out of it. i think prior knowledge of marxs intellectual development and the thinkers he's engaging with is pretty crucial (you can't just take marxs word for it when he's criticizing ricardo's account of "surplus value", as if ricardo ever had a notion of "surplus value" to begin with), so if you try to bite off more than you can chew by jumping into this without any of this background i think you'll probably be lost in the weeds pretty quickly or come away with all the wrong conclusions.

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

He's Shorn, We're Torn

First posted: October 22, 2018

Focuses on: BatFam (Bruce POV, focused on Dick Grayson)

Favorite bookmark: "Didn't know you could make me tear up over Dick's hair, but here we are."

Tier: Within my top 30 fics in terms of metrics, shockingly

This is my "behind the scenes" series where I indulge myself horribly by annotating my fics. Link to the fic itself above. Thoughts below the cut.

I really hecking hate that title.

As I said in the opening note, this was around the time the "Ric" storyline was playing out, and while I don't read canon, I did hear all about it and thought it was egregiously stupid. But it did get me thinking about (and maybe talking about? I don't remember) how Bruce as a parent might feel emotionally about his beloved son losing his trademark hair. Because that's his kid.

Bruce Wayne didn’t like to putter. He found it an inefficient movement, undignified, and an unnecessary tell. As a billionaire, Bruce could afford any number of eccentricities, including puttering, if he so chose, but a billionaire businessman should never display the uncertainties that puttering revealed. When Bruce walked, he strode, propelling himself decisively from Point A to Point B. If he must move as Brucie, the silly playboy, he could saunter. As Batman, Bruce wouldn’t dream of puttering. He had trained himself in the way of total stillness, of letting his anxiety and restlessness sink into himself and then dissipate, leaving him as immovable and obdurate as stone. It was a hard mentality to shake, even inside the walls of the Manor, away from unfriendly eyes, and Bruce wasn’t one to give in for the sake of mere comfort. So although his calf muscles strained and his hands remained wrapped around his coffee mug, he counted his breaths and held still. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t rise from his chair. He didn’t follow the tug of his heartstrings up the stairs. He waited, and he breathed.

So many of my slow openings (and I have many) are just me talking myself through a character's psychology. Sometimes I'll have a flash of a first line that tells me... something. And then I have to figure out if that something is right or not and I have to figure out why it's right or wrong. I don't remember here if my first mental image was of Bruce moving and fidgeting and that felt wrong, or of him being still and waiting just like that and that felt right. Whichever path it was, here we are.

Damian, for all his preternatural maturity, had no such compulsion. Bruce’s youngest blew in with all the focused energy of an avalanche. “Where is Grayson?” Damian demanded. “Is he not up? Why are you allowing such slothfulness?”

I had to figure out what order the other family members would appear in. I had my line to build toward (we'll get there), but everything before that needed to make sense. Really, Alfred should have been there first, but because this fic was about focusing on the kids' reactions (I didn't really have a grip on Alfred as a person yet instead of A Figure), I sort of left him out. Damian being the first kid down made the most sense.

His hair was askew, so Bruce reached out and smoothed out the errant strands. Damian ducked away and set about reordering his hair. He’d let it grow longer recently, not raggedly so, but enough that he could let it swoop and wave over his right eyebrow. The longer hair made for some interesting bedhead, and, at least in this moment, a good distraction for them both.

Oh, there were conversations about hair. I don't remember who all was involved, but we definitely joked about Damian growing his hair to match Dick's. Tada.

It had been a long month for him, for all of them, without Dick.

I had a whole sketched-out backstory for where Dick was, why he'd been gone, why it had been so dangerous, why it required the buzzcut. I just never got to it in the fic because it wasn't important to the story itself, just the logistics underpinning the story. This is @audreycritter Disease.

Knowing how badly Dick would need to rest, Bruce hadn’t intercepted his path up the staircase. He did, however, step out of the shadows just enough to let Dick know he was there, that someone had marked his return home, that someone had waited for him.

this is lowkey so sweet oh my goodness Past Me

Damian whirled, nearly rising on tiptoe as he restrained himself from bolting to the door. The corner of Bruce’s lips quirked upward despite his best efforts. There were times he forgot how very young Damian was, and it was a soft delight to be reminded.

he's just a baaaaaabyyyyyyyy

“‘llo to you, too,” Tim muttered. His voice was thick and crackling with sleep—or perhaps exhaustion, Bruce conceded, taking in Tim’s jeans and wrinkled t-shirt. “All-nighter?” Bruce asked as his middle child nudged over a chair and slumped into the seat. He thought he’d kept his voice perfectly neutral, but Tim held up a warning finger. “No lectures.” Tim rested his elbow heavily against the tabletop and dragged his long fingers through his hair. “I’m too tired and it won’t change my behavior anyways.”

I am still leaning heavily on fanon Tim here. We all have to start somewhere. (But also I am partial to "piano fingers" Tim for some reason.)

“No doi.” Tim yawned so widely that his jaw popped, then blinked twice and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. 

Wow. I really dated myself with that one. Does anyone actually say no doi anymore? (Also, I now know it's written doy because I tried to google it.)

He rested his hand on the back of Tim’s neck and squeezed gently. “You should head to bed.” Tim yawned again, leaning into Bruce’s touch like a cat. It still surprised Bruce how affectionate his sons could be when given the opportunity.

This was a gift from me to me.

Bruce leaned back in his chair, keeping his hand on the back of Tim’s neck, his thumb methodically digging into the knots in the muscle, and pulled back his other arm. When Damian hesitated, Bruce wrapped his arm around the boy and carefully pulled him in.

This was also a gift from me to me, both the affection between them and also the overall sensation of Tim resting on his arms while Bruce massaged his neck with one hand. My dad's done that more times than I can count, and writing about it was a little like feeling it. Phantom sense. Brains are weird.

Dick stood in the doorway, his easy smile underscored by the dark shadows under his eyes and the lines on his face that ran deeper than they had a month ago. Bruce quickly catalogued the other, subtler signs of trouble. The loose way his pajamas hung on his frame, the slight shifting of his weight off his right leg, the fading marks on his wrists, the new sharpness to his cheekbones.

Like I said. A whole backstory.

When Damian still hesitated, he pushed himself upright and shrugged. “That’s alright. I bet Tim’ll hug me.” Tim had been staring along with Bruce, but he shook himself from his daze and stepped forward tentatively. “No, back off.” Damian hurled himself forward and wrapped his arms around Dick’s waist.

Damian's "no, back off" is a line I can hear in my head like it's from a movie. I suspect the delivery paired with what I see in my head makes it way funnier to me than it does anyone else.

“Hey Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, pipe down.” Jason shouldered his way into the kitchen, laundry basket perched on one hip. They both ignored him, so he crossed over and smartly smacked each on the back of the head with his free hand.

I stole that line from some form of media, I'm pretty sure, but beats me if I can remember where. Also can't you just see Jason with a laundry basket on his hip? He doesn't live at the Manor, so he needed an excuse to be there.

“You let them act like this in front of guests?” Jason asked. He snorted, then flipped a loose curl out of his eye. “Dang, B. You’ve gone soft.” Guests? “Are you for real right now?” Dick asked, exhaustion momentarily wiped away by amusement. “Listen, pal, I—“ Jason froze, mid-sentence and mid-step, his face going slack.

This is one of the two emotional beats I was aiming this fic toward. The dialogue is wholesale fiction, but this really did happen to me at work once. I got my hair cut into a fauxhawk, showed up at work, and my coworker straight up did not recognize me from behind. Ma'am we have worked together for over a year.

A myriad of expression passed across Jason’s face, fluttering like the dappled shadows of leaves in a breeze. Even Bruce, as well as he knew that face, might not have been able to track them if the emotions hadn’t been echoing in his own chest for the last ten minutes. Surprise deepening into shock. Simple, stunning confusion. The sickening, swooping drop of realization. And more than a touch of sorrow. All recognizable, but not what Bruce had expected to see.

I love Jason feeling things.

Bruce remembered, suddenly, standing just outside a bedroom door, listening with held breath as his ward and his newly adopted son talked. He remembered defensive banter, quiet laughter, and the fruity fragrance of hair gel as Dick fixed his own hair, then carefully helped his new little brother with his. It had been one of the very few brotherly moments they’d shared before Jason’s… before Jason had gone away.

I revisited this years later in Steel Blues.

“It sucks asphalt, Dickie,” he said, even as he stepped forward and hooked a meaty arm around Dick’s neck. “You look like a trauma patient. You look like a Furiosa look-alike contest reject. You look—"

Finding alternative swears for Jason was always a bunch of fun. I should go back to that more often.

“Alfred’s tea? The oolong?” Jason asked, dropping the basket to the floor as he stepped away from Dick and toward the other two boys. “Don’t you dare. You idiots don’t have the skills. I’ll make it.” “Fine. I’m going to—“ “You aren’t going anywhere. You’re going to take this tray to the table, and Demon Brat here’s going to pop the plate of eggs back in the oven to warm them up. No, the oven, not the microwave, you beast.”

Writing overlapping dialogue is a difficulty but also sometimes fun. It's just dictation, in the end.

“Hey B,” Dick murmured. “G.I. Jane,” Bruce replied.

Jason's final insult, delivered by another.

Bruce felt a bit like the sitcom moms he had always mocked, the tightly wound, pearl-clutching women who bemoaned their rebellious teenage daughters hacking off their beautiful hair. Dick’s soft, shining waves of hair, gone. The strands Bruce had kissed goodnight, pressed his nose into during the rare hug, pushed off sweaty skin in illness, tousled in play… gone. Knowing that it hadn’t been Dick’s choice only made the loss ache more. Dick looked older without his hair. Harder. More serious. There was no ridiculous pompadour or boy band bangs to distract from the fine wrinkles around his eyes or the creases in his forehead. Not for the first time, Bruce wondered where his goofy little acrobat had gone.

I think it made my dad sad when I went to the fauxhawk. He was always really good about hiding it, though. It definitely made his mom sad, because she liked to play with our hair and now there was nothing for her to play with. She was also good about hiding it. Also, I'm 83% sure the inciting hair conversation was with @starknjarvis27 again. Probably. It might have been @audreycritter but I'm not sure we were friends yet.

“And what about you? Are you jealous, too?” Are you upset? Are you feeling just as weird as everyone else but hiding it better? Did you miss me? “Hardly,” Bruce replied. He kept his hand on Dick’s shoulder, palm flat against warm muscle as he guided Dick to the kitchen table. “My hair is a national treasure. So says People magazine.” I’m fine. Of course I missed you. Every second of every day. And Alfred said they had trouble communicating.

I am also a big fan of this trope and do it kind of a lot. I am not sorry.

Instead of recoiling from Dick’s lack of hair, Cass’s smile widened into a grin as she reached up and almost reverently ran her palm along the side of Dick’s head. “Fuzzy,” she announced, then did it again twice more before kissing Dick’s cheek and bounding away.

Cass's reaction is the most correct one.

It's a super sappy ending, but I like it.

[sweetcloverheartdraws]

Since DeliPa is ending soon-ish, thought I might as well post my fan oc Cure + her energy fairy (Since I’m never getting my vegetable cure T_T)

Info under cut

On the right is my Delipa OC Natsuki Uehara AKA Cure Fresh. 17 year old who’s working in both retail and her neighbor’s salad bar shop because her parents are deadbeats and she needs to earn money to care for her two younger siblings. Looks dead inside, is a deadpan hyper-competent mom friend once she’s given enough sleep and coffee. Little brother likes to help with dinner. Often helps her little sister with her videogames because she’s always getting stuck on levels. Wants to strangle Godatz because screw you man, do you know how many reorders/refunds she has to take care of because of your food stealing nonsense!

Her symbol is a diamond and cure powers are healing/energy. She summons these glowing green diamond leaves that the other cures literally eat to regain energy/heal wounds while the Ubaizous lose energy/get made sleepy when hit with them.

And on the left is her energy fairy Sara-sara. Head empty but heart full of mischief. She watched one cartoon about delinquents while on earth and immediately decided that was cool so now she's gonna start her “bad girl” era to be cool too. Luckily for everyone involved though, she has no clue what either of those means, so she just goes around not eating her veggies and switching the ice tea in the fridge with juice, thinking it’s “rebellious”.

[facet-project]

hey it's the first devlog on this blog yaaay

unFortunately it's probably also going to be the scarcest devlog. migrating things to the new godot file is taking a while, since i had to get a few specific things set up before i could really start playing in the space again.

was a little bit lethargic getting back into the project after taking a break. making the prototype and getting it reviewed by friends and family took a LOT out of me. it turns out when you put your entire heart into something, you Care about how other people think about it. shocker!!!

also the fact that it FEELS like i'm working from scratch again! it's difficult. even though i'm not, i now have almost a year of experience and knowledge of this game's inner workings. i'm just reordering and re-coding some things that were slapped together. not only does this version have to run, it also has to be robust

so a Lot of the programming side of the project this month was like... dry research about screen resolution, pixel compression, and config save/load (different from game progress save/load, as your config settings SHOULD carry over between different saves. would be really annoying if they didn't ljadsflkasjd). and there's not a lot to Show for that. "ooh cool a screenshot with dummy buttons on it" "oh look i hammered out what the native resolution of the game is" c'mon

there's Not a lot of visual assets to show this time so i apologize for that. next month will be a lot meatier i think!

i actually still have some stuff to do with the config save/load but i at least got it to the point where i can... you know! save and load. i need to figure out how i'm going to store game saves, but. i can worry about that later. all i need to make the game run right now is the initial save/load process. and then as i work through the game i can decide what needs to be saved between play sessions instead of having to decide after months of development what should be in the data file

i started making the UI for this but i need to actually finish it - in the options menu, for colorblind and cultural accessibility, you'll be able to change the colors of the five "temperament" colors in the game - it's very important that someone can look at these colors at a glance and know what it means. there are a few pre-built pallets but in the full game you'll be able to map them all to whatever colors you want. red to me is a very angry color, so it's set to the hotheaded temperament - but if you can't see red very well or you don't associate it with anger, you'll be able to change it to whatever color you want instead! i might make a post about what this system means because it doesn't really come off as interesting in text but it's fun to play around with

i also wrote MUSIC this month! i picked up the violin for the first time in over a decade and was really surprised how easy it came back to me. i might go be brave and ask my dad to help lend some guitar parts for the soundtrack which i think would be very sweet and sentimental for me to have immortalized in a game

i have violin demos for a lot of songs but i'm not posting them. i'm soooo shy. i'm only posting finished music i think and nothing's Finished (i have some time in october to do Finished Polished work, so....)

i think next month i'm going to work on........... character movement. get the pc's character sprite all polished up and get the movement states and walking/running animations up and......running. heh. in the prototype you could only run up/down/left/right there wasn't like. a running speed and a walking speed or transitions between directions.

also i hadn't put in color shift support for the sprites in the last version.... probably need to do that this time around. the player scene is going to be a lot more complicated than it was in the previous version!!

[some-thrilling-heroics]

5, 15, and 25 for the asks

ohhh thank you! 😳😁

5. What's a tag you never want to use for your works even when it applies?

I am a big tagger, I love going through ao3 post searching for tags that might apply before i even finish the fic to post. i discovered some wild tags out there XD and i love having all important beats and emotional things reflected in the tags.

one thing i was a bit conflicted abt my latest work was if to tag it with 'child murder' or sth when it wasn't actually real and permanent? i left a warning in the notes tho and tbh kinda... forgot abt the whole thing myself lol (now i kinda feel i maybe should have tagged it but those who need warning can still see the note so 🤷‍♀️)

TL;DR: the tag i would never want to use would be something i would not want to write about in the first place. give me all the tags!

15. What's your favourite plotless fic you have written?

ohhh 🤔i think all my fics have some kind of plot. the one i can think of that's just character coming in thru the door and sobbing his heart out with zero explanation anywhere in the text is Make it Better (Magnus & Raphael, sh). that's an oldie.

25. Is writing the whole thing beforehand better or worse than writing it as you go?

i tried writing and posting as i go but that's not working for me. at least not for anything bigger than 10k maybe (Expectations was sort of spur of the moment bc i wanted to post something for a Wyll event, wrote chapter 1 in one evening and the entire thing in a week, but it's a short simple thing)

i often have a lot of regrets with fics like that bc after posting or midway thru the story i think of something that could have been added as a foreshadowing or to slowly gradually build a theme over a longer span, or anything like that, that if i have entire thing to work on is just so much easier to build it up and up and.... aaaand that's how I end up with longer and longer fics that run away from me *eyeroll* but ya, i LOVE writing scenes out of order, and rearranging them to fit better and make a coherent narrative, bc apparently when i write i even have to reorder sentences in a paragraph to make it flow logically from A to B.

[alecsalamander]

Wendy does the dishes.

It takes multiple attempts for him to put them away after, cabinets opened and closed until he finds the correct one. The kitchen has always been Cat’s room more than it’s ever been anyone else’s, ordered and reordered to suit his whims. The first try gets him cereal and spices. The second, plates. He dries the stack at his elbow and places them gently, slowly, so there’s barely even a click of ceramic to break the silence in the house. One, he counts along with his breaths, two, thr—

There are only two plates, and it’s a brief misstep in his routine that leaves him confused, frustrated even; someone, he knows it isn’t him, has left a dirty dish in the living room. Another moment, a blink, and then he remembers.

There are only two plates because there are only two of them left now.

The tile of the counter is cool against his forearms, and then his forehead, as he leans against it. It doesn’t help. He’s unstable and untethered. He’s never been in an earthquake but he thinks they must feel like this – like the ground is moving but he is not. Like the ceiling might come falling down on him. Like he might fall through the earth itself.

Like he would be okay with it.

There are two clean plates in the cupboard and two dirty glasses in the sink, and he knows if he doesn’t do them now there will be no one to do them in the morning.

He goes to bed instead.

— — —

Wendy wakes up to too many missed calls, but only one that stands out: Frederic Bishop, the screen reads. He wasn’t even sure he knew his cell number; he’s certainly never called it before. There’s a seventeen second voicemail.

“Wednesday,” his father begins, and then, “Wendy.” He’s never used any form of nickname when speaking to him before now. “It’s Paí. I just wanted to say…… well…… you should call if you need something, yala?” It’s ten words more than Wendy can recall his father speaking to him directly in just about ten years. “Take care, son.” It ends awkwardly, like he’s realized what he’s said and hung up suddenly, but the important thing is that he’s called.

Wendy deletes the message. Today is not a day to be thinking of fathers.

— — —

The kitchen is still clean when he wakes up. The dirty glasses are still in the sink. The curtains over the counter are closed. The lights are off. There’s no music playing, no chatter, no chaos of breakfast mess. It’s a Saturday, and Saturdays mean family breakfasts.

Saturdays have been pancake morning for over fourteen years now.

Neither of them eat pancakes.

— — —

He finds Cat in the laundry room, folding the clothes from the dryer; his cell phone is pressed between his shoulder and ear, body curling around the conversation like he’s trying to protect himself. Wendy knows he’s talking to his mother just from the way he holds his breath, suffocating the anger that always stalks his every thought of her.

He also knows, just from the simple fact that they’re speaking, which of them initiated the call.

“Do you ever—“ There’s a brittle, fragile sharpness to his voice, like he might cry if only he could convince himself he still remembers how to, and his fingers worry and twist into the loose knit of the sweater he’s holding. It doesn’t matter anymore, being delicate with her clothes. The phone almost tumbles from its perch, and he inhales, brittle and fragile. “When does it stop?” He doesn’t elaborate what it is, but Wendy knows.

There’s only one thing Cat could need his mother’s advice on.

Whatever Stefania answers, it’s obvious she doesn’t understand; Cat is a language all his own, and she’s twenty-five years out of practice. Cat drops the phone, and wipes his eyes.

“It doesn’t,” Wendy takes the shirt from his shaking grasp and replaces it with the cup of coffee he’d made for himself – it doesn’t matter anymore. “It doesn’t stop.”

— — —

There are two dirty glasses in the sink.

Wendy leaves them there.

It doesn’t matter anymore.