#Jack in the first verse is absolutely feral | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

diorjadore · 3 years

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nsfw alphabet!

Sorry this took so long!

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

- so attentive and affectionate :( Vinnie would ask you how you’re feeling and he’ll carry you bridal style to the bathroom. “I’m gonna carry you like this when we get married and have our own place.” he says excitedly which cracks you up because he’s all naked and his dick is waving around when he walks.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

- his of yours is your stomach area, particularly your waist. He likes to snake his arm around it to bring you closer to him during any position! Doggy, missionary, cowgirl, any! But who are we kidding? He loves every single part of you, absolutely everything. You’re perfect in his eyes.

- yours of his has got to be his face. He has this natural beauty and you could look at his face the whole day and not get bored. Sometimes when he’s fucking you, you would blank out and just look at him and focus on the feeling. It quickens the process HAHAHAHA but in particular it would be his nose :( it’s so cute and pointy and perfect. Also his arms and torso. You fantasize about riding them and he let you one time.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

- well he loves to cum in you! He goes feral and crazy and he wants to roll his eyes everytime he cums inside and when it oozes out and even the absence of it (like when you keep it in). Cums a lot too, a shooter definitely, and he tastes great because he does what he can to make it sweet for you lol. It’s always up to you where it ends up and you’ll ask him sometimes to put it on your face, or tongue, boobs/stomach area, ass, on your vagina, or inside. Usually inside. He loves it when you toy with it when it’s on your body and how you put it on your mouth using your fingers.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

- y’all love to watch each other masturbate. Like you would be sprawled on the bed fingering yourself and Vinnie would be starting at you and at your fingers as they circle your clit. You also love to see him jacking off and sometimes he’ll forbid you to take care of it yourself because you alone just there when he fucks himself can already make him cum. You guys love doing it in front of a mirror, too! Narcissist vibes, just kidding. Y’all have a lot of sex tapes lol and Vinnie loves to use your vibe on you like he’ll do it for you himself. And you both have certain someones that you’d love to be part of your threesome… 👀

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

- somewhat experienced but not entirely well versed since he is just 19 and if what he and his friends are saying is true that he doesn’t know how to talk to girls, then his body count wouldn’t be a lot. He is good at it though and he focuses on you rather than him just getting off on/in a girl. He can and will dick you down.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

- lets just rank the most simplest ones! First would definitely be missionary then doggy then cowgirl lol or tie between doggy and cowgirl? But he loves missionary because he gets to see all of you blissed out in pleasure. That’s what motivates him to fuck you harder and better. Does you sitting on his face count?

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

- yes at the start! Like he’ll tease you and be clingy to you to get you in the mood because he gets needy when he’s horny (understandable). During, hmm not so much because it’s a heated moment but definitely after! He’ll be so cute and happy and satisfied after and he’ll thank you for it. He definitely turns on a switch when he fucks because one second he’ll be goofy then the next he’s serious as hell and he shows it when he fucks you and then goofy again after.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

- very groomed. You requested for him to get his shit waxed because it hurts you and he happily obliged, and sometimes you’ll wax him yourself. 💀 IDK but I imagine his armpit hair as his pubes which is like brown and yeah HAHAHAAH so weird 😭 (bc I lowkey hate hair).

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

- so fucking romantic. Sometimes, he’ll go slow and sensual, it’s so erotic. He wants to feel your whole body on his and he always wants to feel your insides. The sex is so good between you guys because there’s equal obsession and emotion and of course love. The fire will definitely not go out in your relationship because y’all are crazy for each other (giving Nate and Maddy but yeah like them but not toxic, fuck no!). Idk if I said enough or if it’s right but lmk what you guys think about this part!

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

- thinks of you while masturbating

- only does it when you cant do it for him

- no porn

- watches your sex tapes instead or the videos you send him

- sometimes looks at your nudes/sexy photos

- moans your name

- is very vocal but in a sexy sexy way 👀

- sends you videos of him cumming with the sound on, he knows you love that

- can do it twice in a row like a champ. Okay stamina!

- got caught by friends a few times because he doesn’t lock the door

- very aggressive. Like he pumps very hard, it’s something to see!

- rubs the underside of the head (like a girl’s clit) because you always do it with your tongue and he loves that

- sees stars from how good it is but not as good as how you do it

- when you’re doing it, he loves your hand on it.

- thanks you for your service (and your cervix)

- teases his own tip and edges himself…

- your simple existence makes him horny

- a grower maybe? I think all men are growers lol. Girthy and veiny and big and somewhat long lmaoo

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

- link + size kink!

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

- it can be anywhere you want. No shot he said that to you. “I’ll fuck you anywhere you want, baby, just say the word.” Loves when it’s on the bed and his car. ON HIS GAMING CHAIR. his balcony maybe

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

- you, you get him going, your moans, your body, the sounds you make, the sounds your body makes,

the wetness between your legs, YOUR SMELL, when you bite your lip, when you’re bossy and/or mad, especially when you’re busy. It turns him on

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

- when you don’t wanna do it then he doesn’t force you, put you in danger/uncomfortable situations (sex and in life lol), bad breath but he tolerates yours, I mean he still kisses you. won’t intentionally make you jealous. Anything that’ll make you hate him but he does it sometimes to irritate you in a loving way.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

- giving: really great, eats pussy like a king, can eat you all day. Loves to eat you out ong. Kitten licks your clit til you burst. God didn’t give him his tongue, the devil did. Kisses your pussy with those thick lips of his sheesh. Smiles while doing it.

- receiving: very gentle with your head and mouth but sometimes he gets caught in the moment and pushes you down roughly. Fucks your mouth. Goes absolutely primal. Talks you through it. Holds your hand! Loves when you suck him clean. Also when you suck his balls!

- skill: radiant. Just kidding.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

- all of the above, bestie! And he knows when for each too. He’ll be fast when you’re near orgasming and rough only when you want him to be and when you’re being a brat. Slow and sensual when you guys make love which is frequent.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

- when you’re both busy and horny, usually during the day! It can be anywhere too lmao like in dressing rooms when you fit the lingeries he forces you to get. Cinema! Multiple rounds too. This man is always horny so…

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

- yeah but only if you want to! His favorite has got to be role playing…you acting lost, as a maid, him fixing your electricity stuff, you being a milf, teacher student, etc.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

- have you seen the energy this man has? Of course he has stamina. 💀 And when you think his energy will decrease after how many rounds then you’re wrong. He has so much energy that you have to tell him no more sometimes…which makes him sad. And he can put you right to sleep.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

- cock ring and a vibe for you. Hates dildos because he wants to be the only thing inside you. Yes to all of the above.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

- such a fucking tease and if you’re like me then you’ll grow frustrated and cry. He laughs because he finds it cute but you don’t so you leave him blue balled sometimes. He’ll apologize and make it up to you though.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

- his moans and groans and every sound he makes is so damn sexy. It gets you going. He’s a major talk through it guy too 😭 “Yes, baby, right there…you’re doing so great for me.” “My good girl…” “Try not to shake when I put the vibrator on you, okay?” “I know my baby girl can do it.” He coos…he coos bae! 😩

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

- loves to slap your ass randomly during the day and definitely during sex

- expert at nipple play

- always teases you that he can take you on the kitchen aisle while his hype friends are around and you didn’t believe it at first til he slid your panties to the side and fingered you and rubbed your clit while they’re all sitting across the room on the breakfast table while you’re at the kitchen sink side…and he’s done it multiple times. Pretended to drop something so he could lap his tongue on your pussy. I’m gonna make a short piece on this, don’t worry!

- you have him a handy one time at dinner with friends

- he let you ride his arms one time because his tattoos got you sooooo horny 😭

- his abs and thighs too…and he flexes it!!! A monster.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

- big as in thick but it’s appropriate for his build, veiny!, big balls and we all know that. Body of a god, you love his arms and abs. We’ve all seen him, right? Exactly.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

- sex drive so high, bae! You can’t keep up with it but y’all have been working towards you taking a few more rounds though HAHAHAHAHAAH call that training.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

- quickly but unlike you who can’t even open your eyes after nutting…joke. He stays up to clean you and stroke your hair after. He says words of affirmation when you knock out and sometimes he watches you sleep which makes him sleepy…

—

This was like one of the first few asks about Vin and it took so long for me to make lol I have a few others I’ll answer soon! Feel free to add stuff, please!

#vinnieasks #vinnieminis #vinnie #vinnie hacker #vhackerr

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we-are-inevitable · 3 years

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re: your werewolf au!! is david the only one of his kind?

are there more like him, maybe the whole jacobs family, deeper into the woods that he’s been sneaking away from bc of his fascination with humans? or was he turned this way somehow? maybe a very long time ago, he was human, but it’s been so long that’s he’s unfamiliar with it now?

idk if you plan on actually writing it or not, but the concept is fascinating!!

oh fuck oh FUCK okay so i kind of have the basic... Plot?... mapped out but 1: the concept of davey being so isolated and alone that he's barely clinging onto his humanity is so TEMPTING i fucking love it

okay so before we get into the fun jacobs content, i want to explain my views on what being a "werewolf" means (in my au specifically). buckle up, folks, this is gonna be a long one!

PLEASE feel free to ask anymore questions!! @ any of you!! here's the original concept!

right off the bat, i hate modern werewolf aus and how they handle being a non-human creature. personally, i'd much rather have:

"this is a wild feral creature in the woods that looks human but you can tell this isn't human and are they howling at night? are they the one creating this unsettling atmosphere? there's a deer skull three meters from my back porch. are they trying to be kind to me?"

instead of

"Yeah this is fuckin Chad he's a city boy that turns into a wolf dude during full moons and accidentally kills people but he doesn't remember doing it"

now that we have that out of the way, here are my personal favorite worldbuilding thoughts that i've had since middle school:

unnaturally bright eyes; not to a comedic point but there's just something *off.*

sharper teeth than normal humans

taller, faster, stronger than normal humans

they don't speak much english; unless they absolutely have to, they don't interact with humans much (but some get curious, like the way im picturing davey in this au)

on that note, they have their own ways of communicating. obviously as wolves they have their Instincts but even in human form they have a completely different language because they've been so isolated.

LANGUAGE NOTE: they have names but they're not in english.

i imagine their human names are just more of a "we needed this just in case" thing and not a "this is a conscious decision" thing? so their names don't mean anything, they're simply there because "this sounds human enough"

they're much more reserved and aren't violent, just protective and often defensive because they've been taught that humans = bad bad hurt bad not good bad

there’s not really a ranking system? no A/B/O dynamics; most families are run by the matriarch and the cycle continues with every generation.

also they can shift whenever they want bc the full moon thing is boring

BUTTTTT shifting is an incredibly painful process if you don't do it often

theyre just. wild and feral and don't have much socialization with humans and i love it so much

now, getting into david specifically:

his name, in his mother language, is diaad. (dee-ahd)

he's like. 23? and so is Jack in this au!

mans is easily 6'8. mans is also jacked. mhm.

his eyes seem to glow; they're much brighter in color than a normal human's. i'm torn between david's eyes being blue or a golden/hazel mix, so this is up to your interpretation for the time being!

he's so intelligent, even though he doesn't really know human stuff (which causes jack to kind of infantilize him at first; to be fair, david does the same thing to jack bc jack doesn't understand his culture)

but david is so versed in his culture. there are certain traditions they keep, like celebrations on the nights of the solstices or the family-oriented nature of all packs. he's so fucking smart! just in his own way.

he has an accent when he speaks; wolves know english out of precaution. they don't come into contact with humans often, but they have their own stories to cycle through whenever they do. (david doesn't like this. he'd rather learn about human culture; he doesn't want to be human, he just wants to coexist.)

in wolf form, david is fucking huge. he's already pretty large in human form, by wolf standards at least, so in his wolf form, he's fucking Big. his coat matches his hair color, dark enough to be mistaken for black, and his eyes are bright in this form too. he's speedy and strong. not all too coordinated, though; in either form, he's a bit too lanky for his own good, and can be a bit clumsy.

his whole thing is that he's grown to fear humans (im imagining a big "hunt down the wolves" moment in the lore for this), but then he meets Jack, who helps him when he's vulnerable and in pain (probably in human form). that's kind of the shift when he realizes he Wants to know humans (at least Jack) and know what's up with them!! like a science experiment at first but then as a friend thing)

and finally, some jacobs family content!!

i'm still coming up with names, but so far: David is Diaad, Sarah is Sahjah and Les is Leomah, Mayer is Manjah and Esther is Eshana (this is not completely set in stone obvi; also, they're ~inspired~ by Arabic names but theres not really a connection there! just to cover my basics)

Esther pretty much runs the family!

they have a "house," but it's mainly just for appearances sake; if anyone stumbles upon their little area (not likely) they'll see the houses and see humans and just think. huh. maybe this is a weird fucking religious thing. so they have clothes, they have houses (with no furnishings, really), they have some Normal Human Things but nothing that makes them actually human

they live with their extended family, all of them, in this huge pack/compound thing. Sarah and David have like 20 cousins; the Jacobs family is one of the smaller ones, with only 3 children, but everyone else has over 5 per each parental pair.

Esther is really good with wounds and fixing people up!

Mayer takes care of the children while Esther hunts, especially when they're younger; there's not really a gendered tier, everyone hunts, but Esther is better than Mayer so,, yeah!!

ok this is so fucking long but !! yeah !! i love this so much !! ty ty !!

#ask a jac !#david jacobs #davey jacobs #newsies #livesies #newsies musical #jac txt.#jac writes #sarah jacobs #les jacobs #mayer jacobs #esther jacobs #newsies live #deep in the forest au #for lack of a better name ..#anyway!!#kath tag

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darthmaulification · 3 years

Text

din djarin nsfw alphabet

A/N: i STILL have writer’s block when it comes to all the other stuff i have to get done that it’s INFURIATING. 🙄😤😡 i literally write two (2) sentences, and then my head says “no thoughts, all done :)”.

so anons still waiting on your stuff, have faith, i will get them done eventually!! 🙏🙏😭😭

but i want to get more stuff out more regularly, so take another nsfw alphabet, my brain is melting. 💗

(again, i imply fem!afab!reader and also, there is sensitive content (abortion) under X)

nsfw below the cut! 😘

A = aftercare (what are they like after sex?)

Din may be a bit unsure at first, but he is so sweet when it comes to aftercare. He’s got a caring nature already, and when it comes to making sure you’re clean, comfortable, and content after sex, Din is very soft and gentle. He’ll be asking you the whole time about what you need, how you’re feeling, complimenting and praising you for being perfect. Once he’s done making sure you’re okay, Din will conclude every time with kisses and cuddles, holding you close to him all the while whispering to you in Basic and Mando’a about how much he loves you.

B = body part (what’s their favorite body part of their partner? what about themselves?)

Honestly, Din has spent so long without showing someone else any part of him, that he is fairly insecure about how he looks. He’s a tad... embarrassed by his body, because he wants it to be perfect for you, but he doesn’t feel like it is (of course, you think he’s perfect). Din has a lot of self-criticisms, he worries that he’s too old for you, that his nose is too big for your liking, that he’s got a soft tummy and not like men your age. So Din doesn’t have a favorite body part, he’ll just like anything that you like.

Now on you... Din is a big fan of your face. He comes from a culture where one’s face is kept hidden unless you’re family or spouse, so to have you in all your glory and beauty is almost overwhelming to him. He loves your eyes especially (windows to the soul, and all), how they’re so expressive, what they look like when he’s fucked you cockdumb... all glossy and hazed... Din also loves your lips in particular too, the smile that tugs them up, what they look like when you say his name... and for another obvious reason that tends to happen when you’re below his belt on your knees...

(Also Din is a boobie man, full stop).

C = cum (basically anything to do with cum)

Din cums a lot, and he wants it all over you. If you let him, he’ll splatter his nut on your face, belly, breasts, ass, and other places that he loves and wants marked. He likes seeing you all messy and sticky, covered in the stuff that he creates just for you. Din goes kinda feral though if you beg him to cum inside you, allow him to bottom out and let loose past your tight cervix straight into your womb... makes his brain fizzle out. Also, Din’s cum tastes abnormally sweet, almost too sugary, much like the sweet man himself.

D = dirty secret (what’s their dirty secret?)

Din wants to be cucked. Like he really wants to watch someone else fuck you (consensually, of course), and him not being able to do anything about it. It’d be such a fucking tease and edge for him that the thought makes him feel some sort of way in his pants.

Also, not so much of a secret but still dirty, Din can play the role of a dom to a T, but in his heart, he’s a sub. Just take the reins on day, there’s not much he’d be compelled to do to stop you.

E = experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Most, if not all, of Din’s sexual experiences before you were clumsy, quick fucks with sex workers at brothels or cantinas. He had most of them when the desire became to high to ignore, so really the closest around satisfied him enough. And although most of the conquests had no specialness or emotion to them, they did shape the way Din moved around bodies, aided in his ability to please and such. So Din is rather experienced, he knows what he’s doing and how to make things steamy, but he’s really never been able to truly connect with someone before. Even though he’s well versed in the art of sex, there’s a few learning curves for him to accomplish, particularly making sure he meets your needs the way you want them met, not how he thinks you may want to do things.

F = favorite position (what’s their favorite position?)

By far, Din loves nothing more but to bend you over a table, or the console board of the Razor Crest, and pound into you from behind like there’s no tomorrow. He loves to have the warmth of your ass, heavy and plush, against his pelvis all while he’s up to the hilt inside your core. Din also likes the control it gives him, having you squirming and moaning under him, one of his hands heavy on your back keeping you down while the other squeezes your thighs and hips, or plays with your clit. Din might also get a bit grabby with your hair, pulling back your head enough so that he can nibble at your neck and hiss all the dirty things he wants into your ear.

The close second for his favorite position though is having you tied up to the bed, wrists and ankles bound. It’s one of Din’s favorite sights in the entire galaxy.

G = goofy (are they the more serious type, or more humorous?)

Din is serious about making sure he’s doing all he can to make you a moaning, cockdumb mess, that’s for damn sure. He’s very driven in that regard, serious about the task at hand and all the things he has to do to make sure you know just how much he loves you. Din isn’t a stoic robot though, he’s too vibrant and compassionate of a man for that, so he’ll being saying sweet things to get you to blush and smile, grinning against the shell of your ear before kissing your neck, maybe nipping playfully at your ass or stomach too... Din knows how to give a good time.

H = hair (how well-groomed are they?)

Din is a functionalist, so he likes to keep his bush below the belt to a minimum, or at least manageable, so he trims it and sometimes shaves it fully. Though he does have a tendency to let it grow a bit if he’s having a dry spell or if he just doesn’t have the motivation... but once the tuft starts catching on the zip to his pants (he goes commando, the dork), that’s when Din knows he’s got to shave. All his body hair elsewhere; head, face, legs, back, arms, etc, Din doesn’t care much about except his moustache and tasteful stubble which he does really like to keep. Of course, Din keeps everything as clean as a whistle.

On his partners, Din doesn’t have much of a preference, but he does lean towards someone who at least keeps their stuff trimmed (and clean, of course). However, he won’t force you to do anything, it’s your body, your decisions.

I = intimacy ( how intimate are they during sex?)

Just... so intimate. Of course, Din fucks like a beast in rut, but he’s so consuming and raw with it, it’s nothing short of perfect. Din wears his heart on his sleeve, so sex is constant “I love yous” in every word and action, even when it’s all vulgarity and dirty and horny, but it’s love nonetheless. You’re able to feel it from how he presses against you, molds against you like liquid heat, how his hands make your body his own, how he kisses you with stars in his eyes, how he tells you over and over again both vocally and silently, “Thank you”.

J = jack off (do they masturbate?)

Mm... it depends on his mood. He masturbated more when he was younger, when he had more time and drive to do so. Though once he got older, and life happened, and he’s almost non-stop running around chasing quarries... Din’s just too darn tired. It got even less so when Grogu came into his life, because oh my Maker the horror Din would feel if somehow his son caught him in the act. But Din is only human, and has that accursed Mandalorian sex drive, so sometimes the urge does rear it’s head, and he’s gotta make his hand and penis best friends again.

Doesn’t help when you’re occupying his thoughts either.

K = kinks (any kinks?)

Y’know that cliché where it’s like “normal looking person whose an absolute freak in the sheets”? Yeah, that’s Din. This man is the epitome of that. Here’s his kinks:

Bondage. Din really likes the sight of you tied up on the bed, at his mercy like a bunny in a hunter’s trap. He wants to have you bound by your wrists and ankles, maybe even tying you to the bedposts, and fucking you senseless while you beg to be able to touch him too. Din favors using handcuffs (technically binders, but Star Wars lingo is silly sometimes), but he’ll use whatever you’re okay with too. And, of course, if bondage isn’t your thing, he won’t ever force you to do it. (psst, Din doesn’t mind being tied up either)

Spanking. Kind of the only aspect of the “S” part of BDSM that Din will every really partake in. He likes landing a good few firm swats on your flanks, likes seeing your ass and thighs jiggle from the force of it, the bright flush that may appear afterwards if you let him go at it a while. Din also likes just being able to touch your ass too, so a nice spank to your bottom becomes the physical message of “You’re in for it tonight, mesh’la”. Oh, and he’ll make you count.

Daddy kink. Oh Maker, if you call him Daddy, he’ll lose his mind. Din has such a big Daddy kink that even if you call him it in a nonsexual situation, he’ll be feeling that warmth until he’s able to steal you away and rail you good. He loves being the Daddy and you being his “Sweet girl” or “Cyar’ika”... the dynamic runs him wild.

Breeding/pregnancy kink. Din wants to fuck a baby into you so badly he dreams about it. It’s been impounded into him that family and parenthood are really big deals, so you bet your ass he wants to fulfill that part of his Creed by making sure your pussy’s stuffed, womb is filled to the brim, and your breasts are swollen and milky. Din wants so so deeply to see you pregnant with the kid that you and him make, he desperately wants a family with you.

Breast/nipple kink. Yeah, Din really really likes your tits. There’s something about the shape, the texture, size, weight, etc that activates some primal monkey part of his brain that has him drooling. Din loves to knead and fondle your breasts, roll them under his large hands, press them together, watch the soft flesh squish and mold around his fingers. He especially loves the cute nipples of yours, pinching them between his fingers, tweaking them. Din also really likes sucking on your tits, leaving marks all over them, playing with your nipples with his tongue...

L = location (favorite place to “do the do”?)

When you both have the opportunity, Din really really likes taking you in a good, proper bedroom, something that the uncomfortable, tiny bunk on the Razor Crest really doesn’t account for. If it were up to him, he’d want to spend his entire life with you in bedroom fit for a king, taking you over and over again on a mattress that feels like a cloud. It’s no shock then whenever Din actually shills out the credits (being the frugal man he is) to buy a hotel room is the sex borderline godlike.

M = motivation (what gets them turned on?)

A sure-fire way to get Din fully and completely riled up would be to wear something real scandalous. Be that a shirt that shows a tad bit more, or pants that are tight enough to reveal you aren’t wearing panties, or (Din’s favorite) a set of cute lingerie... Din will get hard in his pants. It’d be even more so if you tease him in public, but be warned he’ll fuck you mean for that.

N = NO (what’s their turn offs?)

Very early on, it was, obviously, taking off his helmet. If you asked, or Maker forbid tried, the mood would drop pretty extensively if not entirely from Din. He’d get uncomfortable, go silent, and the first time it happened, he left the room. Removal of the helmet was a very big one before he eventually showed you his face.

After you’ve been able to kiss his face over and over again and cry because you think he’s so beautiful? Nothing comes to Din’s mind really besides the kinks that are... nastier. Like literally, y’know... some other bodily... stuffs. Anyways, Din is pretty adaptable when it comes to kinks/positions and stuff. The pros of already being a kinky man...

O = oral (do they have a preference in giving/receiving?)

Okay, Din really loves his dick sucked. The way that you wrap your lips around his shaft, kiss the tip of his penis, fondle his balls, lick and slobber on him... makes his eyes roll to the back of his head. He especially loves being able to watch you try and take all of him in your throat, seeing the tears of pleasure squeeze out your eyes, the way you hollow your cheeks around him and suck. Din loves it when you go down on him.

... Now that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like going down on you. There is no place Din would want to be more than with his face between your legs, lapping at you like a starving animal. He’ll spend hours with his mouth on your cunt, swirling his tongue around your clit, driving orgasm after orgasm from you until you’re shaking from overstimulation and begging him to stop. Din loves your pussy, the way you taste and smell... drives him wild.

P = pace & PDA (are they soft, sensual, rough, or feral? are they open to displaying the relationship?)

Din will most often rail you into the mattress with a fervor. He tends to fuck hard, and he likes to play rough. The pace he keeps is something that makes you see stars every time he thrusts, when he ruts into you so hard that your entire body moves. However, Din does this all with a type of passionate sensuality that leaves you in tears, he fucks you sure, but it’s also fully fueled by unwavering love. When he’s feeling especially sentimental, Din will indulge on this love, and he’ll go slower, deeper, make you feel nothing but the weight of him.

And PDA... Well, Din doesn’t take the helmet or beskar off in public, so PDA is every time Din steps in front of you to shield you protectively, it’s when he offers to carry whatever you’re holding, it’s when he fights for you, it’s when he stands close to your side, when he sends you long side-eyed glances that make you feel the love, it’s when he nudges your shoulder with his, when he lets you wrap your fingers around his, when he drapes you with his cloak, surrounding you with him... It’s the little, subtle things, the personal things that mean you’re closer to him than anyone else.

Q = quickies (what’s their opinion on quickies?)

Maker, yes. Din becomes kinda addicted to having sex with you, so any and all chance to pull down his and yours pants and rut you both into a quick release is perfect for him. They don’t happen all that often, you’re both too busy most of the time, but if there’s a window of opportunity, Din will take it.

R = risks (are they okay with experimenting? do they take risks?)

Din’s kinda a big baby, so anything you may want to try with him in the bedroom that’s out of the norm will have him a stuttering, blushing mess. Most of the time though, once you’ve explained whatever you’re wanting enough, he’ll be down to do it because he knows you’re fine with it, and so is he. Though Din has his limits, a few things in particular that he’d never risk: safety and his Creed. He won’t ever try something that would potentially put the both of you in mortal danger, and wouldn’t do something that breaks his Code. Other than that, Din does enjoy pushing the boundaries a little once you’ve started, and he might even become more advantageous.

S = stamina (how many rounds can they last?)

Din can last long enough, that’s for sure. He’s not borderline superhuman like some other men, but Din doesn’t tap out early either. With the skill he has with his hands, he’s easily able to make you cum a couple times before he dicks you down, and sometimes he’s even able to draw out an orgasm or two when he’s balls deep inside you. It all usually depends on his energy level, if he’s pumped up and well rested, expect a long, long night, but if he’s so tired he can barely keep his eyes open, honestly he might just cum if you jerk him off a little bit.

Though sleepy sex with Din, although it’s very short, is also a bit of an exercise in absolute trust with him. He’s able to fall asleep in your arms, all worn out and buzzing from his orgasm, it makes him feel fully at peace.

T = toys (do they own/use any toys?)

Haha, no. Din is such a minimalist, he didn’t own any type of luxury like that, unless you count the handcuffs, but he technically uses those for his job. It really is he just doesn’t have the space nor the credits he’s willing to spare, and he didn’t have a partner before you so really it would’ve been pointless for him. But now that he’s got you in his life (and bed)? Yeah, Din might splurge a little bit and buy some things to make your romps a bit more... interesting. Be that a vibrator, some silky rope, a plug... just some fun things.

U = unfair (how much do they like to tease?)

He likes to tease, because edging you edges him and that satiates the deep-rooted sub inside of him. Din likes to have you begging for release just as much as he likes the feeling of his cock practically screaming to sink into your velvety core. The teasing really goes both ways, even if Din is the one who’s technically doing all of it. He also gets really into dirty talk (for as long as he can actually speak) and will be saying all sorts of nasty things in your ear like “C’mon, cyar’ika, tell me you want my fingers” or “Pretty girl, use your words. You want my cock or no?”.

V = volume (how loud or quiet are they during sex?)

Din is loud, but in a quiet type of way? He like... whisper yells, like his voice is already naturally low, so when he’s got you all in his grasps it’s like the volume of his voice doesn’t increase, but the intensity does? Din fills the room, essentially, being the only thing you hear, even over your own moans, squeals, screams, etc. It’s mostly a lot of strained dirty talk, like each word Din says to you is determined, but he’s got to push them through clenched teeth because his dick’s twitching so hard and your pussy is just too good... and shit, once you’ve drawn the first moan out of him, it’s over for him. Din will be moaning. Once he’s lost in the sauce, which happens sorta quickly, Din becomes just as incoherent as you, maybe being able to babble out something about seeing you fat with child or maybe about how well you’re swallowing up his cock, but it really devolves into lengthy, horny moans and hefty grunts. So yes, our man’s is loud.

W = wildcard (what’s a random headcanon?)

Din loves when you tell him how much you think he’s attractive. He’s spent basically his whole life with his face in a bucket and his body in armor, so he’s never gotten compliments about his authentic self before. This kind of hampered his self-confidence and racked up his insecurity? Din doesn’t necessarily have any specific qualms with how he looks, but he also is very unsure of how you think of him. So when you tell him that you love his face; his crooked, hooked nose, his soft, honey brown eyes, his patchy stubble, and even his ridiculous moustache... it makes his heart soar.

This same sentiment goes for his body too, which Din does have a couple of more prominent issues with. For one, he’s a tad soft around the middle (age + indulging himself + taking excessive off days = weight gain) which makes him feel semi-insecure about what you may think when you don’t see chiseled, perfect abs, and he’s just generally self-conscious about his age. But when you’re fine with it? When you say you find his chub endearing?? That he’s really not that old and that he shouldn’t worry about it??? Din is beyond happy.

And in a complete 180, Din has a very high sperm count. Like astronomically high. A medical marvel type of high. So... if you indulge on his desire for a big family... expect a lot of little Djarin brats really fast.

X = x-ray & x-tra (what’s underneath those clothes? any more random headcanons?”)

Din is built like a himbo. He’s built like he’d ask you what pussy size do you wear when he buys pads for you. He’s built like the dude that comes into the store you work at every so often who’s just so captivating and out of this world handsome that you stare at him as he looks at the same thing he always does, until he leaves after not buying it for the third week in a row. He has a very good figure, muscular in all the right places from a lifetime of brutal physical activity. Din’s arms and shoulders are probably his best feature, the entirety of the appendages being toned with taut, powerful muscle and perfect for holding you. His chest is quite toned as well, though his pecs are softer and have a smattering of chest hair brushed on the muscles. Although he has a relatively trim waist and a defined Adonis belt, Din’s belly is actually pretty soft. He’s like a muscular boy, but with a bit more chub (if anyone gets that reference, you’re extra sexy), so Din doesn’t have a defined set of abs. He does have a dark happy trail that leads to the special someone between his thick-muscled thighs.

He also, from time and age, has a bit of a weathered look to him that makes him look experienced and jaded. His body also has a smattering of scars, most of them old and silvered, from scuffles and fights he’s had in his past.

Big Dick Cum Daddy Din is hung. His penis is a mouth-watering 9 inches (22.86 cm) of throbbing glory, not overly girthy (2 inches, 5.08 cm, in width) but perfect nonetheless. He has a very prominent vein on the bell end of his cock, as well as fairly defined ridges on the sides, like he’s fucking ribbed for your pleasure. His penis is actually circumcised, so the head of his cock gets especially red once you’ve got all the blood and horniness in his loins. Din’s balls are perfect too, weighty things that hang a bit lower that only shows their virility.

Din is pro-choice. He’s a firm believer in people having autonomy over their bodies and having the ability to choose. So when it comes to abortion, even though the thought admittedly makes Din a little uncomfortable, he would fully support his partner choosing to have one, if that was their decision.

Also, Din is a bisexual icon, I don’t make the rules.

Y = yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Yes. Ever since you come into his life, Din is horny like a teen boy all over again, it’s almost ridiculous. At the very beginning, it’s just a lot of him fantasizing about what he wants to do to you, because A) you’ve both just met, B) his Creed, and C) it’d be so embarrassing for him for you to find out how much you affect him. But once you two start getting closer, and spend weeks and months dancing around each other, Din starts to get a bit more flirty, more frisky. You definitely start noticing how much he’s wanting you, so really it comes to the point that at any time you reciprocate your feelings and consent, Din will be on you in a second. After that first time, it’s over for y’all. Din will want to fuck all the time, everywhere, whenever possible. Your pussy becomes his dick’s permanent home.

Z = zzzz (how fast do they fall asleep after?)

Din isn’t an easy sleeper in general, so after sex it’s really not much different. It always takes a while for him to fall asleep, so you’ll definitely be passed out before he even starts to feel tired. He’ll spend most of his time after making sure you’re taken care of with his exquisite aftercare, and then mumble sweet nothings to you as you fall asleep. Even after you’re out, Din will still lie awake and talk to you quietly about anything and everything that comes to mind before he eventually falls asleep too.

#star wars #star wars din djarin #the mandalorian #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you

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idiotwhotalkstoomuch · 4 years

Note

How did everyone react to Yuus real age and connection to the great 7?

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA THANK YOU FOR ASKING CAUSE I ALREADY HAVE AN IDEA ON HOW THEY FOUND OUT

Note: Some characters already knew her age and connection to the Great Seven so they will react to her appearance in NRC

Btw for looks she looks very generic hence why some boys who know her history overlooked her. (by generic like long brown hair, blue eyes and eyebags. I’ll show a picrew of how I intend her to look soon when I finally pick a favorite)

Also Yuu is royalty of the Valley of the Thorns. When I get back to writing everything will come together.

Also also I need more research to do all these characters properly but since everyone needs a reaction I asked my friend for help so if there seems to be a difference then yeah you know why.

How they found out

(Post overblot Riddle)

*in the infirmary*

Yuu: Relax I was only cut-

Sebek: *enters infirmary* Your Highness! Malleus-sama ordered me to check on you after the news of the overblot came out!

Ace: Wha-

Deuce: Y-your Highness!?!

Yuu: *chuckles*

Yes the scene is somewhat comedic but its just how it is. Me and my friend liked the scene better as a comedic one than a serious one as things get more serious later on so may as well keep up some humor.

HEARTSLABYUL

Riddle Rosehearts - Very shocked and ashamed. He knew of Yuu’s existence and actually read about her and her history as a child but couldn’t tell it was her on first glance because they’re meetings had him in a bad mood from troublemakers so he didn’t notice.

Treats her with the utmost respect even if she tells him to relax. He’s very embarrassed that someone who’s been in the presence of all the Great Seven and befriended or in some cases raised them had to see him and the dorm in such a state.

Trey Clover - It came off as quite a surprise to him especially since he had been treating her like one of his kouhai. He’s one of the more relaxed about the reveal and will only ask if there needs to be changes in the way she’s addressed but overall their interactions are hardly affected. Though he will stop treating her like one of his kouhai as she is older than her by quite (*cough centuries*) a lot.

Cater Diamond - See this man had the advantage of putting a picture of him with Yuu in Magicam which definitely brought out someone who knew of Yuu.

He was pretty surprised to see a bunch of comments asking if that’s legit and was going to ask her about it but Unbirthday party preparations got in the way. Needless to say wanted another selfie with her on his Magicam to tell all his followers it’s legit and how he JUST found out.

Ace Trappola - Isn’t all too worried about it. He’s not one to care all too much about titles and all that stuff but he does take her age as something to tease her on.

When Grim and Deuce are annoying him or causing trouble, he’ll joke about how their troubling the “grandmother” and overall takes it without much effect on their relationship.

Deuce Spade - Is shook beyond belief and has to go and mentally process the reveal.

Should he tell his mom that he’s met such an important historical figure? Wait no should he ask Yuu about it? Would it be rude? AH! SHE SAW HIS DELINQUENT SIDE WHILE ARGUING WITH ACE!

Poor boy is so confused on what to do especially since Yuu came from a magicless student that supposedly has a curse according to the mirror to royalty that raised or befriended all members of the Great Seven.

SAVANACLAW

Leona Kingscholar - Well this lion will continue to chug his respect women juice.

He already respects women back at his home and while for them its due to their strength, in Yuu’s case its cause of her age and wisdom that she shares from time to time.

Ruggie Bucchi - Ruggie would joke around Yuu and treat her like he does his grandmother. He'd probably poke on her getting old and how she probably shouldn't do so much strenuous activities both teasingly and seriously (much to Yuu's dismay. Her body doesn’t actually age.)

Doesn’t rob from or prank her mainly because he doesn’t feel like getting chewed out by the others who treat her like a goddess for befriending and even raising some of the Great Seven.

Jack Howl - Jack is cautious of his behavior around Yuu as he is a respectful young man.

Tends to worry a bit over her being very casual and relaxed in Twisted Wonderland especially since she’s such an important person in history and tends to be a bit overprotective of her.

Is still tsundere.

OCTAVINELLE

Azul Ashengrotto - He. Freaks. Out.

He did extensive research and studying as a child so he knows all about her and her history with the Great Seven.

He wonders how such a historic and ancient woman can casually walk around NRC with little recognition and hopes he can stay calm and suave if she were to ever approach him.

Jade Leech - Jade is intrigued and amused with Azul’s reaction to her. As long as both Azul and Floyd were happy, he couldn’t care less. Though he does want to know if she can cook, he wants help in Mostro Lounge.

Is pleased to have someone to help wrangle Floyd in his more problematic moods. (”In the years I’ve lived in I’ve seen many moody people this isn’t much)

Floyd Leech - Floyd really couldn’t care less.

He sees the little shrimpy (she’s 170 cm tall) and wants to squeeze her, so what if she’s like 900? Floyd wants to play with the shrimpy!

SCARABIA

Kalim Al Asim - Kalim is, well, excited. He’s awe struck at the fact she’s been alive for that long and would probably want to know more about her life. Kalim is a curious kid.

Despite his energetic nature, he likes hearing her share stories of the past.

When he wants to be more independent, he goes to her for help since she’s lived for so long.

Jamil Viper - Jamil would be curt and formal, though he’s currently having a epileptic brain seizure. Jamil was well versed in history, and well...having someone his influential just struck something.

Is cautious of her during the Scarabia arc since she might be old and wise enough to see through his plan.

POMEFIORE

Vil Schoenheit - Vil was already interested in Yuu at the beginning due to being a woman and had a lot of potential but was unimpressed at her eyebags but likes her mature appearance despite being a first year-

Wait the potato is HOW old?

Vil is impressed. Yuu is hundreds of years old yet looks to be in her early twenties at most.

When he learns that Yuu had even met the Evil Queen, he immediately went to ask about what the beautiful Evil Queen did to look as gorgeous as she did and Yuu happily indulges him.

Rook Hunt - Rook is undeniably curious, especially after Yuu manages to evade him. He makes it a habit to monitor her movement, randomly ambush her, and try and chase her around the campus. His success varies on the amount of potato's that surround her. He stays away when she's near Diasmonia.

He enjoys chasing her whenever Yuu is around Ruggie or at rare times, Leona as he'd say, "It's hitting two birds with one stone"

Rook scopes out and probably doesn't intervene as much, opting to observe her movements.

Epel Felmier - Epel is essentially confused, and is currently feeling pity for her as she’s being crowded by so many students. He grimaces when Rook takes interest in her. Epel sends Apple Juice for life fuel. He knows she’ll need it

IGNIHYDE

Idia Shroud - Idia has heard of Yuu, especially with their rather complicated family history. He’s pretty formal towards Yuu.

Generally avoids her even with their family in better terms and Yuu even friends with Hades now. Is upset at her and Ortho’s alliance to get him out of his room.

Ortho Shroud - When Ortho hears her age and experience, Ortho is overjoyed.

He’s so happy to have Yuu join him in his mission to get his brother out of his room. Is oblivious to past family drama.

DIASOMNIA

Malleus Draconia - Yuu had raised him and his family up to his grandmother, the Witch of Thorns, of course he recognized her as soon as he saw her. He’s surprised to see her in NRC but its a welcome one. He uses a spell on Ramshackle to make it habitable for the woman that raised him alongside Lilia.

Finds it amusing that the students had no clue. She’s in history books though Yuu does have a rather mediocre and youthful appearance so it must be why they mistook her as a student.

Yuu had asked him to keep quiet on it but unfortunately it seems that Sebek had exposed her while doing orders on his behalf. He apologizes over it and of course Yuu isn’t mad over it, more exasperated.

Lilia Vanrouge - Lilia is amused that Yuu was mistaken by the teachers as a teenager that could be a student especially since Yuu is older than himself by a few hundred years.

When the cat’s out of the bag, he’ll openly tease the students to be nicer to Yuu who could’ve been friends or related to their great great great great great etc or less grandparents and is their elder.

Is amused as the students attempt to get Yuu into more modern culture, having been accustomed to letters and more traditional ways for so long.

Silver - While Silver was primarily raised by Lilia, he’s surprised to see obaasa- Lady Yuu in NRC.

He isn’t affected all too much since he isn’t addicted to guarding Malleus and Yuu like Sebek but he is quite happy to see her and can always tell when she visits since he tends to wake up with a pillow at the random place he slept in.

Sebek Zigvolt - He is ABSOLUTELY A P P A L L E D. Yuu to Sebek, is the most honourable woman to have ever walked the face of this planet. She has managed to raise most of the great seven and bring kingdoms to prosperity. She helped Malleus-sama train, she helped Lillia-sama rise through the ranks and even brought Maleficent to power in her early days.

The moment he gets to catch up to her in Ramshackle, Yuu has to calm him down because he goes feral when he sees where she has to live in but is appeased when Malleus uses magic to make it habitable and helps her personalize it.

Very clearly struggles to address her casually, shown with him being the one to expose her post overblot Riddle.

Keep sending asks bois I love receiving them. Sorry this took a while there was a lot to go over.

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yetremains · 3 years

Note

♡ + Yang and Ryou, both canon and MK verses :^)

SEND ME ♡ + A SHIP AND I’LL TELL YOU…

ANOTHER LONG ONE Oh boy this will be interesting *Entirely on the maybes of when they stop being dummy himbos* I tried

CANON

Who is the most affectionate? At first they would probably be very slow and gentle with the affection, considering there are already plenty of soft moments between them. Ryou is naturally affectionate towards his friends and loved ones, while Yang enjoys letting those she cares for know she does. But once the option is here, they would probably be very touch starved indulgence. Lots of tight holds, leaning into each other, soft whispers late into the night. Calling each other by their real names when alone.

Who initiates the handholding? Given the chance, Yang would absolutely go for hand holding first, as a grounding reminder. That it's real, Ryou is real, this is still reality. However I can see it being him that would in the quiet moments reach out to thread their fingers together, take solace in the warmth and grip.

Who worries more for the other? Ryou, without a doubt. While she worries over him and always has over the time they have known each other, Yang is the more feral. 'She protecc, she attacc, but also YANG YOU HAVE TO HOLD BACK'. After all these years, there has been the constant that Yang will willingly enter a fight if there is no other option. A combination of being a product of the world she's lived in, and the traumatic fear of loss.

Who is more likely to ask for help? Neither of them want to burden the other, or anyone really, with any of their troubles or endanger them, stubborn idiots. However they are extremely close, and if there was a deep need for help with something, or presence, and ear, then Ryou and Yang truly can depend on each other in times of need. And after a bit, probably more than willing to reach out. Breaking old habits is hard and never done in one night.

Who is the one always losing the keys? I feel like not one or the other would loose their keys all that often. Having been around in this world a god damn long time, they have learned to keep important objects close and on hand. But in Jack's case, maybe forgetting anything higher tech related would be more common.

Who leaves little love notes for the other? Being so tied with music, Yang would probably be leaving poems or small lyrics for Ryou now and then, while he'd leave behind heart felt notes of few lines.

Who can’t sleep unless the other is there? Sleep? These two? Less likely than you think! A combination of stubborn, trauma, PTSD, and the refusal to fall prey too the internal minds. But all the same, Yang wants to help him sleep more. But I feel that knowing they both have someone dependable there, they can't sleep well at all without each other.

Who is more likely to propose to the other? Two dummy thicc stubborn idiots managing this far? Your guess is as good as mine! This is much like a wild card, and it depends entirely on the thought processes. But if a lot of time goes by, it would be Yang, with a simple gold ring with writing around the inside of it. If she doesn't internalize it and let the thoughts spiral forever. Otherwise Ryou just might get the chance first.

Who introduced the other to their family first? Jack/Ryou, since he has adopted Ashi as a dottir. Yang doesn't really have any family left, considering her age and the wars of the past. And Scottsman is absolutely the wild uncle.

Who is more likely to play with the other’s hair? I've said this before, but Yang does love playing with her partners hair, and Jack is going to be spoiled like this. Running her fingers through his long hair, enjoying how soft it is. And amazed he can tie all of it up so easily and quick. Talent.

Who makes sure the other has meals/stays hydrated? It would possibly switch depending on the day and the others moods, the highs and lows. Yang will absolutely spoil him with salmon items, green teas, and peach anything, especially peach mochi.

Who is more likely to stand up to anyone for the other? A long time ago it would have absolutely been Yang immediately ready to throw down. But now, they are far more on par, and Ryou would absolutely be protective if he knows something would be too much or too dangerous for Yang to handle. He's the holder of most braincells and also arguably the more dangerous out of the two of them.

Who is the most likely to prepare a surprise for the other? Yang loves spoiling and surprising those she cares about. Be it small hand made items, food, silly gifts, it's just nice. So most often she might surprise him with something. But Jack is also the type to take great consideration and time to return such acts of affection.

Who makes the other pinky promise not to do certain things? Jack/Ryou. While the two of them no longer age, he is well aware Yang is much older and has crossed a lot of lines in the past. Long ago when he was more bright eyed, it was him that had Yang not be so merciless in a fight with someone, more willing to give second chances in a world that was so twisted already. He would most likely make her promise not to take unneeded risks. But on the flip side of that coin, Yang would make Ryou pinky swear to not let himself spiral so far down in himself and his thoughts.

Who puts a blanket over the other when they fall asleep on the couch? Sleeping on the couch? It's a miracle! In all seriousness though, the most likely scenario would be Ryou coming across Yang slumped on the couch at some point and putting a blanket on her. Since she will go quite a long time without sleep naturally, but further than should be done. But this doesn't mean that Yang wouldn't find him once in a rare blue moon instead, and put her vest over him with a blanket. Potentially going to slip closer to let his head lay in her lap.

MK VERSES

Who is the most affectionate? It would take a while for them to get here, but as close and trusting as the two are, if one wants affection then it will be given. Touch starved old souls want their cuddles, and they want them now. In this particular case I feel it might be Ryou sunshine boy that is just a little more. Yang will eventually melt into it, if she's not being the big spoon, or letting him lay on her chest to hear the heartbeat.

Who initiates the handholding? Depending on the where and when, it could be one or the other. But feel Yang might be the one to reach out and hold, but Ryou's grip might be just a little tighter when the thread their fingers together.

Who worries more for the other? When is there not worry for the other? Both of them are dangerous warriors in their own right and have been through hell and high water, improved their fighting skills and talents over the years, thus seen each other messed up in more ways than one. It's natural. But does not mean the fear or worry goes away. But I feel like in certain scenarios, it might be Yang that worries more about him, and gets herself ready for the worst- which in turn makes him worry harder. It's an infinity loop!

Who is more likely to ask for help? For something smaller, it's left unsure. Potentially willing to bring one or another in for help. It's not often that the need for it might arise if it's something more difficult, but if it does, it might just be Yang to ask first. Stubbornly.

Who is the one always losing the keys? Potentially these two, who carefully keep track of such things, would rarely loose anything. For ease of sue as well, Yang might just label what keys of hers go where for Ryou, because Yang does travel.

Who leaves little love notes for the other? I can see Ryou leaving more simple notes, but Yang will leave origami folded flowers for him in return, to unfold and read himself. They may even use different languages to convey things better, seeing as some are lacking in words.

Who can’t sleep unless the other is there? Both of them no doubt, considering they've been through way too much. But having a warm body there to hold can help. However... The meaning of proper sleep is lost on Yang, as her schedule is often stay up 48 hours, sleep for 9 or so after, rinse and repeat. It means more likely to watch over and protect. Waking from nightmares and memories is a common event. But with Ryou there she can manage to sleep more regularly and not be so tense. The nightmares don't stop of course, but it does help.

Who is more likely to propose to the other? Oddly enough, while Yang had been the one who proposed too her old fiance many years ago, in this particular instance she might not. Would just be content and happy with what they have here, not daring push it. So it probably in the end would be the half edenian if it went that far. Unless Yang uses music to do so.

Who introduced the other to their family first? If very close friends and ally's count as family, or adopted ones, then I feel like it doesn't matter who does it first. This would just come into happening with lost of smiles and gleeful joy. Have you seen the adopted kids? Here they are on both sides, aren't they fantastic!

Who is more likely to play with the other’s hair? Yang would adore playing with Ryou's hair, brushing it and braiding or such things, massaging his scalp. Her hands are surprisingly soft, thanks to wearing gloves all the time. But if he were to do the same for her, she would be weak for it.

Who makes sure the other has meals/stays hydrated? Eating hearty and staying hydrated is something Yang always needs to do, and knows how horrible it is to not do so. So while she may sometimes neglect herself, this woman will make sure to feed Ryou as well as keep his favorite tea on hand as often as possible. She wants to make sure he is healthy as well as happy.

Who is more likely to stand up to anyone for the other? Considering how powerful these two can get I don't think there is an either one here. Ryou's own grandmother gave Yang the blessing to fist fight an Elder God, and Ryou himself is ready to throw down if he has too, as well as having fought a god himself too. In the end though, it is the calm and collected ones you need to watch out for more. If the culprit in question is truly beyond redemption and a blight on life, Ryou will take someone out and no one will find the body.

Who is the most likely to prepare a surprise for the other? Remember how Yang enjoys showing her affection in various ways? This is another one of those, and yes, she will get small surprised for Ryou. Be it wood carvings of certain places, people, or items, or personalized object of some sort, even a keychain perhaps, Yang will surprise him with such things. But I feel he would do the same with Yang, and possibly be something that would entirely catch her off guard.

Who makes the other pinky promise not to do certain things? They both do, making the other promise not to run headlong into things, or get them selves hurt. After having been through so damn much on either side, they know what each other is capable of, as well as the dangers that don't scare them no matter what. So a pinky promise is something I can see happening easily between them, and trying to uphold it.

Who puts a blanket over the other when they fall asleep on the couch? Here it might be a toss up. But more than likely it would be Ryou coming across Yang having succumb to sleep or exhaustion on the couch or in a chair, maybe even a desk. Woman tries too much at once and tries to keep notes and information, and will end up dropping things. So it would most likely be him to pull a blanket up and over her. But he's no exempt from experiencing the same thing, because if Yang were too find him asleep somewhere as well, then he'd be softly tucked in, and her staying close to reassure with her presence and warmth.

#sonxflight #-Stubborn Samurai || sonxflight #-Sunlights In Edenian || sonxflight #-Long Repairing World || Post Aku Future #Warriors Spirit Never Fades || MK Verse #-Another Era Of War || MK2021 Verse #(( we don't even have a ship name for these two yet BUT ))#(( I tried my best because these two kill me ))#(( soft and absolute idjits they are ))#(( just fucking make a move Yang good god ))

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lovelylogans · 5 years

Note

I just came up with just like the worst prompt for a sideshire file: adult, sensible, reasonable Virgil finding out MCR is back and flipping out

the black parade

we’ll carry on, we’ll carry onand though you’re dead and gone, believe meyour memory will carry onwe’ll carry on

-welcome to the black parade, my chemical romance

part of the wyliwf verse.

ao3 | read my other fics | coffee?

warnings: food mentions, remus mentions, grief mentions, cryptid mentions, emotionally dealing with a deceased parent, let me know if i missed anything!

pairings: logince, moxiety

words: 4,824

notes: how dare you call this absolute gem of a prompt “the worst” also did i schedule this to come out on the day of the concert YES!!! the timeline is kinda hand-wavey on this one, so let’s just say it happens shortly after the main storyline and it makes sense for mcr to announce that news on that date and for it to fit in with the narrative i’m telling here, okay? okay! (the song roman is listening to is “bombastic” by bonnie mckee, and honestly sub in any mcr instrumentals for any song virgil is mentioned to be listening to this oneshot.)

patton first hears about it, surprisingly, from his son.

though logan isn’t quite as in tune (well, patton thinks it’s funny!) with the music scene as the sanders’ significant others—roman with pop and musicals, and virgil with his more eclectic taste—he is, of course, the most in tune with the news.

the mcr reunion certainly qualifies as news.

when patton opens the link his son has texted him, he stares at it for a few seconds, and says aloud, “ah.”

so, virgil is probably going absolutely feral.

back when patton had first gotten to know virgil, his interest in music had been surprising—the diner usually played soft music, jazz or old-timey songs or instrumentals, non-offensive songs that usually everyone could tolerate and talk over without noticing it very much, playlists swapping up so that employees on the same shift wouldn’t want to plug their ears if they ever heard buddy holly again.

now he knows that virgil doesn’t that over into his personal life, and that he mostly plays that music because it’s the kind of music his parents played when they ran the diner. when patton first sees virgil’s music collection, he was surprised, and then he thought about it more and it made sense. why else would he always be listening to music on his headphones, even when it was just the two of them?

now, it’s weird to even think that he’d thought virgil’s taste was ever, well. tame, he supposes. mainstream.

patton checks the time. it’s probably early enough that he can pass this off as a coffee break, and not to check that virgil has passed out in the midst of the diner.

patton’s trying to formulate the best way to ask “so, have you heard the news?” question in case patton is somehow the one to break it to him, but when he walks into the diner and listens to the music for a couple seconds, he doesn’t even need to bother asking. it speaks for itself.

to virgil’s credit, he isn’t blaring the entire mcr discography.

he is, however, blaring instrumental covers of what seems like the entire mcr discography.

or at least, the diner is—virgil’s nowhere in sight. patton just kind of assumes that he’s back in the kitchen, so he goes to sit at the counter, waiting for him to emerge with a tray or a rag, maybe not grinning, except for maybe that soft secretive smile he does sometimes, but probably humming along.

he doesn’t come out for a while—that’s pretty normal, this time of day, it is the early dinner rush—but then patton puts in an order for hot cocoa/coffee.

and he actually gets it. and he can smell that it’s not decaf. which means—

patton leans over the counter, and smiles at jean. “where’s v?”

“kitchen,” jean says.

“and he actually gave me something caffeinated at this time of day? are we sure this is virgil?”

jean laughs. “i guess he’s in a good mood, then.”

patton smiles down at his mug, tracing his pinky around its rim. “guess so.”

patton sips his way through about two-thirds of his mug before virgil emerges from the kitchen, towel swept over his shoulder, a carafe of coffee in each hand. which is mostly normal.

except he’s humming, and grinning, and instead of his usual purple flannel or hoodie, he’s wearing all black. there’s the flash of a band tee underneath the black hoodie he’s got on. patton hides his grin behind his mug.

“oh, hey,” virgil says, snapping out of his haze.

“so i guess i’m not about to break the news to you, huh?” patton teases.

“nah, you’re not,” virgil says, smiling still as he replaces the coffee carafes before he leans on the counter. the other servers, used to this, scoot around him in their quest to deliver food back and forth.

“we could time a visit to chris to go, if you want,” patton says. “since he lives in california.”

virgil looks incredibly tempted, before he says, “let’s think on it?”

patton nods and leans over the counter to kiss virgil on the cheek—a new thing he’s been doing lately, now that they’re dating—virgil ducks his head, flushing, like he does every time. patton can’t help the smile that springs onto his face, every time.

“i’m happy you’re happy about it, darling,” patton says.

“you’re ruining my street cred,” virgil mutters, blushing still.

patton fights his own grin. yeah, virgil’s street cred, his reputation rife with hoisting kids into his arms so they could better see the pastry display, and well-known for opening his door to anyone who had a last-minute stitching or alteration emergency, including a number of teary-eyed brides who’d invite him to their wedding on the spot, regularly slipping extra tips to his workers who were struggling, would definitely be harmed by his boyfriend—partner?—kissing him on the cheek.

what he says instead of any of that is, “you’re marathoning punk rock in the diner right now, honey, i don’t think your rep’s gonna get harmed from anything i do.”

virgil tilts his head, acknowledging this point. “you sticking around for dinner?”

“should be,” patton says. “i’ll text logan that i’m here.”

“mkay,” virgil says, and digs around in his pocket, fishing out his notepad and pen with a flourish. “wanna order now or later?”

patton probably shouldn’t use virgil’s good mood for his own benefit. he really, really shouldn’t. but he’s got a real craving, so…

“refill of hot cocoa/coffee, cheeseburger, fries?” patton tries, keeping his voice extra blasé.

a soft hum of acknowledgement as virgil scrawls it all down, and says, “cheddar cheese, right, or do you want colby jack?”

patton smiles. “cheddar cheese, please. oh, and some french silk pie?”

virgil tilts his head at patton with a look, fond and irked, and patton gives him a sheepish grin.

virgil sighs. “and french silk pie,” he grumbles, adding it on, and patton nearly crows with victory. he loses that battle when he can’t contain a soft “ha!” as virgil tops off his mug.

virgil rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile clinging around the edges of his mouth as he disappears back into the kitchen.

patton digs out his phone. get to virgil’s he’s just given me junk food AND caffeine AND a dessert!!!!!!!!!

He added vegetables, surely?

NONE!!!!!!!!!!!

a pause. I’ll be there shortly.

patton grins and tucks his phone back into his pocket. even if logan was better with nutrition than he was, logan was still weak for a good, artery-clogging meal once in a while. virgil handing them out on a silver platter? a rarity that practically demanded to be taken advantage of.

when his phone buzzes, and the bell jangles, patton turns to see logan and roman filing into the diner. patton picks up his mug of hot cocoa/coffee, and heads back to join roman and logan in a booth, sitting across from them.

“hi, roman,” patton says.

“i heard virgil is handing out junk food like it’s candy,” roman says excitedly. “i want to see if i can talk him into giving me endless soda refills, for once.”

“he’s refilled my hot cocoa/coffee,” patton says, gleeful. “my caffeinated hot cocoa/coffee.”

“chances are good!” roman practically cheers. “i wanna get, ooh, um—um, breakfast for dinner! like a platter of breakfast for dinner!”

“it’s worth a shot,” patton says. “logan?”

“me too,” logan decides. “i want pancakes.”

“trade you bites of french toast for bites of pancake?”

“deal.”

roman and logan fall into discussing the latest happenings around the town—stories about the little kids in dance classes, the latest courant goofs, the hottest pieces of old-lady gossip—and by the time virgil re-emerges from the kitchen, patton gets to watch him blink, bemused and a little startled, at the absence of patton at the counter.

biting back a giggle, patton leans out of the booth so virgil can see him more clearly, and virgil nods, maybe saying “ahhh” under his breath, and emerges from behind the counter.

“hey, what can i get—“

a moment, a brief moment, one that patton isn’t sure that roman or logan even notice—when they both turn, roman grinning and logan… looking polite, at least—virgil falters, eyes widening, and he swallows, eyes flashing with… something. and then—

“—you two?”

“hot cocoa/coffee and a stack of pancakes,” logan says, looking at virgil sidelong, and virgil nods, eyes wide and… strangely attentive? not that virgil isn’t usually attentive, it’s just that virgil looks like… well, virgil looks like something’s struck him and he’s realized Something and he’s paying even closer attention. or something.

“how many?”

“um,” logan says, and glances at patton, who mouths go for it so logan says, “five?”

“five pancakes, hot cocoa/coffee, got it,” virgil says, absent, and then he swallows again. “roman?” he says gruffly.

“i want the breakfast combo with bacon, and french toast, and waffles, and hashbrowns, and instead of the regular toast side thing can i do biscuits and gravy?”

“bacon, french toast, waffles, hash browns, biscuits and gravy instead of toast, got it,” virgil says, staring at him still. “drink?”

“cherry coke?”

“yeah, of course,” virgil says, strangely choked, and then he just kind of—does something weird? even by virgil standards. wait, especially by virgil standards.

virgil awkwardly puts a hand on roman’s shoulder, removes it, and then puts it back on his shoulder again, and when roman looks up at him with a bemused kind of smile, virgil leans in, halting and jerking, and then just kind of—hugs him?

it might actually be generous to call it a hug. he sort of wraps roman up in his arms, and his arms just kind of end up circling roman’s head, because he’s standing and roman’s sitting, and roman, bewildered, manages to reach up and pat virgil’s shoulder, and virgil pats roman’s hair in a reciprocal moment of oddness before he lets go of him and says “um, right, okay, i’ll put those orders in and get someone to bring out your drinks” and speedwalks away from any semblance of a lingering awkward moment.

“um,” roman says, and flicks his hand to correct his hair from where virgil mussed it up. “that was… kind of weird? that was weird, right?”

“that was strange,” logan agrees, at the same time patton says, “yep, definitely weird.”

the conversation moves forward slowly, and jean ends up dropping off their drinks (and! giving! patton! a! third!!! refill!) and then jean ends up… bringing out their food, too? with no healthy alterations, which is good. virgil even gives him some ice cream with his pie, so that patton can combine it in a slightly disgusting but very delicious mess.

and by the time the check comes, virgil hasn’t re-emerged from the kitchen. which. okay. it’s dinner rush. sure.

but usually, he at least comes out to say goodbye.

so patton digs out his phone, and sends him a you’re free to drop by the house once you close up! text.

and then he ends up walking home with logan and roman. or, well.

“um,” logan says, when they’re about fifteen feet from the prince’s studio and apartment, “dad?”

“huh?” patton says, distracted, before the look that roman and logan exchange clicks, and the whole “walking someone home” thing clicks, and his own teenage experiences, and he says, “oh! oh, right! right, right, right.”

“dad,” logan groans.

“you wanna get me out of the way so you two can do cute couple-y teenager things, right, i get you,” patton says, grinning still, backing away slowly. “your old man’s still hip, you know.”

“dad.”

“don’t mind me, i’m just gonna,” patton says, grinning still, and waves a hand vaguely. “i’m just gonna stare real closely at the, um, the town decorations over there, and, uh, you can come and tap me on the shoulder when you’re ready to keep walking home, yeah?”

patton turns his back at the same time logan makes a strangled, embarrassed noise, and roman giggles, and he hears logan say “i’m sorry about—that” and roman giggle and say “don’t be. you’re cute when you get all huffy, you know” and then patton’s out of earshot and stares very intently at the wreaths and garlands dotting the town.

his baby has a boyfriend. it’s cute. it’s puppy love. it’s the kind of tooth-achingly sweet first relationship and the subsequent milestones that patton could have ever hoped for his son, even if the concept of “logan” and “dating” were still two very strange concepts to combine. it also provides patton his lifetime quota of “good-natured teasing of my child” that was bestowed upon him the moment he became a dad.

there’s a tap on his shoulder, and he turns to see logan, who’s blushing, just a little bit.

“we really need to coordinate our walks home so this never happens again,” logan grumbles, already walking past him, and patton picks up the pace.

“aw, hon, don’t be embarrassed,” patton says. “it’s perfectly natural to—”

“no,” logan complains, and patton laughs even as he starts to croon, “logan and roman, sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s—”

“dad!”

⁂

patton’s humming quietly to himself by the time he hears his front door open, and he smiles.

“hey,” he calls, setting aside the book he’d been reading. well. attempting to read.

stomp, stomp, stomp, virgil clearing his boots of any lingering wetness that might track onto patton’s carpet. the susurrus of virgil taking off his bulky winter coat and tucking it in with the others in the coat closet. a kiss dropped on the top of patton’s head.

“hey,” virgil murmurs, and patton shuffles aside, tugging up his blanket, so that virgil has space to settle in beside patton, as most of the other spaces in the living room are taken up by laundry or books. this way, patton can cuddle him. patton may have plotted a little bit to ensure this development happened.

patton sighs happily as he tosses the blanket over virgil and snuggles into virgil’s side.

“rest of the shift go okay?” he asks, voice soft.

“yeah, it’s fine,” virgil murmurs, adjusting a little so that his arm settles soundly over patton’s shoulders.

“good,” patton murmurs, rests his head on virgil’s shoulder and fights off a yawn. the yawn is afforded a narrow victory. “that’s good.”

“you haven’t been staying up for me, have you?”

“nuh-uh,” patton fibs, and then, “okay, yes, but i got your text and i didn’t wanna be rude by just being asleep when you got here.”

“i wouldn’t have been offended by you being well-rested,” virgil murmurs.

“you’re gonna say that i should—”

“—get ready for bed, yeah,” virgil finishes, sounding amused. “you know, i bet you’re so tired because—”

“don’t say it,” patton complains, even as virgil’s standing and tugging patton to his feet.

“—because of caffeine crash,” virgil finishes triumphantly. “you got way more caffeine than you’re used to this time of day, and—”

patton groans as he stamps up the stairs, even though he’s holding virgil’s hand the whole way, pulling him all the way into his bed.

“stay here,” patton commands. “i’m gonna do what you want.”

“you say that like i’m not just asking you put on your pajamas and brush your teeth,” virgil says, amused, and patton rolls his eyes even as he bends to kiss virgil.

“the next one will be minty-fresh,” patton informs him, before he flounces off to the bathroom. the last thing he sees is virgil sitting on his bed and bending to remove his boots, a smile playing about his lips.

when he comes back, virgil’s tugging on a t-shirt, one he’d left the last time he spent the night, and patton flops happily onto his bed, watching as virgil smooths down the hem. virgil turns, and patton pats the other side of the bed.

“minty-fresh, huh?” virgil asks, as he lifts the covers and slides into place.

patton grins at him. “shameless,” he teases, before he leans in to kiss virgil, and patton can taste that virgil had brushed his teeth, too, probably before he’d even come over, the kiss soft and sleepy, and patton smiles as they pull back.

“love you,” patton says, and presses a kiss to virgil’s shoulder for emphasis.

“i love you too,” virgil says. “lamp off?”

“yeah, sure,” patton says, and virgil leans up. the room’s doused in darkness. patton reaches for virgil and settles his head onto virgil’s chest.

“your shift was really okay, though?” patton asks, shifting in place to get comfy.

“yeah, ‘course,” virgil says, and adjusts slightly himself, settling his hand on patton’s shoulder blade.

“you sure?”

“why wouldn’t i be sure?”

“because,” patton says, “and, no pressure whatever you decide, but you got kinda weird with roman, and i’m wondering if it was just a momentary fluke of weirdness or something that you maybe wanted to talk about.”

virgil freezes. patton feels him tense.

“oh,” virgil says quietly. “that.”

“yeah,” patton says softly, and leans a little so that he can try to see virgil’s face with the slivers of light slanting through his blinds from the half-moon tonight.

virgil chews his lip for a few seconds, before he blurts out, “remus liked mcr.”

oh. roman’s dad.

patton had met him once, one time, if you could even call it meeting—he’d accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation between virgil and remus, and that’s how he’d known that remus was going to become a father. patton had asked virgil about him, after, and virgil had said he was an old friend, promised to introduce patton to him, maybe introduce remus’ kid to logan, once he was out of the womb.

and then he’d died. and virgil hadn’t talked about him very much since.

“yeah?” patton prompts, voice gentle and soft.

“yeah,” virgil says, a little rough, and he clears his throat, squirming a little. “uh—he mostly liked stuff that most people… didn’t really like, i guess. stuff outside of the norm. he had the biggest cd collection of anyone i knew. metal, punk rock, screamo, witch house.” a flicker of a smile. “medieval folk rock.”

“medieval folk rock?” patton says, voice edged in a laugh.

“if it was weird, he liked it,” virgil says. “god, the things he’d play on the radio, sometimes… we’d be going to egg someone’s house or something, and he’d be blaring slavic polka or ectofolk or just—” virgil snorts, “—one time, he just kept playing it’s a small world. for a week. i could’ve strangled him.”

“he sounds like he was funny,” patton offers.

“you’d have to have a very specific sense of humor to find him funny,” virgil says.

“did you?” patton says. “find him funny, i mean.”

“mm. sometimes. some things he said, i thought he was funny. others… others kind of scared me,” virgil says. he clears his throat. “remus didn’t particularly have a filter when it came to gross, taboo ideas, and he wasn’t shy about sharing them. doing them, sometimes. he was voted most likely to go to prison when he graduated from sideshire high.”

patton doesn’t really know what to say to that. so he just says, “ah.”

“i’m not sure if you would have liked each other,” virgil says.

“hey,” patton says, frowning.

“oh, you would have tried,” virgil says. “remus would have seen you were trying. he’d say something as a test, something you’d get uncomfortable with. you’d be polite about it and try to change the subject. but remus probably would have seen that you were uncomfortable with the stuff he said, and he would have delighted in grossing you out even more.”

patton considers this, before he says, “like boys on the playground who chase people with a worm on a stick to get everyone to squeal, or something?”

virgil huffs out a laugh. “sure,” he says. “that’s a good enough way to put it. tame, when it’s applied to remus, but… yeah. that’s the gist of it.”

“so,” patton says. “mcr.”

“and seeing roman, sitting there…” virgil says, and exhales a huge, gusting sigh. “face-wise, he looks so much like his dad.”

“face-wise?”

“remus was taller,” virgil says. “i know roman’s not done growing yet, so they might even out, but—but remus had a longer torso, shorter legs. different ears. remus always had dark under-eye circles. there’s something about the hands, too, i think. he was clumsier. had a less muscular build. remus wasn’t much of a dancer—well, he could lift isadora, but that’s about it, and i think that’s mostly because she’s tiny.”

“got it.”

“plus, i mean, remus was white, and since isadora's mexican, roman clearly isn't white, but—but roman’s face… i mean, slap a mustache on there and a white streak in his hair, and put that plotting look on his face that he gets sometimes, and i don’t think i’d be able to tell them apart.”

“like the plotting look like he had at dinner tonight,” patton realizes quietly.

“yeah,” virgil says, then, again, a little choked up. “yeah.”

patton wiggles closer and hugs virgil tighter.

“you could tell him about him,” patton suggests quietly. “roman about remus, i mean. i bet he’d love to know.”

“maybe,” virgil says. “i spent most of shift thinking about it. i just—you know.”

“miss him?”

“yeah.”

patton isn’t very familiar with grief; his grandparents, barring his granny lorelai, all died either before he was born or when he was a baby. the handful of funerals he went to were for people that he didn’t know very well—relatives he’d seen three times before, old “family friends” that his parents had fallen out of touch with, a couple business partners of his father’s—and so the only part he’s familiar with is this part. the comforting part.

“i’m sorry,” patton says quietly. “is there anything i can do?”

virgil let out a shaky exhale, and his grip tightens. “this is good.”

“okay,” patton says, and holds him tighter. “okay.”

⁂

i came to win, win, win, better show me what you goti came to bring the fire ‘cause you know i like it hotgonna win, win, win, ‘cause i’m full of tiger bloodi’m vicious like a viper and i’m ready to turn it on!

roman bops his head absentmindedly, headphones soundly on his ears, focus… maybe not quite so sound, but he’s at least holding a pencil and looking at his homework, so he thinks that counts as an attempt at focus on this stupid homework. like, who even needs proofs in real life?

so when a cup that looks like it’s full of soda is set in front of him, roman’s eager to hit pause and set down his pencil, looking up at his deliverer.

“uh, hey,” virgil says. “you busy?”

“not really,” roman lies brightly, pushing aside his homework. virgil’s eyes narrow when he sees it.

“you’re doing homework.”

“it can wait,” roman says, putting down his pencil. “seriously, it can wait. i want it to wait.”

“yeah, kid, that’s half the problem,” virgil retorts, tilting the textbook a little so that he can read, and his brow furrows. “geometry proofs?”

“like i said,” roman says, shoving his papers into the textbook before he closes it, “it can wait.”

“yeah, i guess,” virgil says, and he slides into the seat across from roman, holding onto his own beverage—a mug, probably with decaf coffee, or something—which he’s tap-tap-tapping his fingernails against. “uh. still not a math person?”

“yeah, archi-melancholy, because most people going into dance and theater and the fine arts are so well-known to be math people,” roman quips, and virgil smiles, just a little.

“archimedes joke?”

“i tried,” roman says. “again. not a math person.”

he takes a sip. cherry coke. the actual good kind with caffeine and full sugar and everything. which means that either virgil’s good mood has lasted two days—doubtful, considering he’s fidgeting with his mug—or he’s about to attempt a vague Emotional Talk, or something. he’s pretty sure he picked up the habit of giving people food they like as a special treat whenever there’s the possibility of upset from patton. or maybe it started with patton. who knows.

“so, uh,” virgil says. “what’re you listening to?”

“pop song,” roman says. “after your time. i think it’s too young for you. and it’s also, like, slightly cheerful and confidence-boosting.”

“what’s that supposed to mean?”

“you’ve been sneak-playing mcr for the past two days,” roman says accusingly.

“they’re a good band,” virgil protests, and then, with an affected, forceful casualness, “your dad liked them too.”

roman pauses. hearing about his dad is kind of like… well, honestly, it’s kind of like hearing about bigfoot, or mothman, or yetis, or some other kind of cryptid. sure, people might have seen him. roman never had. sure, people had interacted with him. roman hadn’t. sure, people had stories about him. roman didn’t. sure, people might have blurry, strange pictures that roman had touched, stared at, seen his whole life. roman didn’t have one with him, not even his dad holding him as a baby. remus duke is almost a larger-than-life, obscure piece of sideshire mythology. remus duke, the famous horror author, with the tragic death, who’d once been the mysterious partner in crime with local loner virgil, who’d bravely volunteered to co-parent with the fearsome isadora prince. people might have seen him. believed in him.

roman feels like a cryptid hunter, sometimes. like he’s doomed to always be questing out into the mysterious unknown, searching for some evidence, some form of personal connection, some story that’s his. he’s almost always come up empty.

doesn’t stop him from turning back for another quest.

he takes another sip. and, in an affected, forcefully casual tone, he says, “did he?”

virgil clears his throat. “yeah. uh—yeah.”

“that’s… cool,” roman says.

“i kind of—“ virgil coughs. “i mean, i, uh. sorry for the whole awkward… hugging thing. i just—you know. i think he would have been happy. to hear they were back together.”

roman swallows and looks down into his cup. “oh.”

he would have been happy. roman hears that sometimes. apparently, his dad would have been happy that he turned out dancing like his mom. apparently, his dad would have been happy that he had once tackled a mean kid at sideshire for calling logan annoying. apparently, his dad would have been happy that my chemical romance reunited.

it’s not like roman would know.

roman taps his fingernails against the cup and looks back up at virgil, before he says, “were they his favorite?”

“huh?”

“my chemical romance,” roman elaborates. “were they my dad’s favorite band?”

“ah, no,” virgil says. “no. he, uh—he liked a lot of bands. his favorites changed a lot. but he liked, um—he liked the residents, and captain beefheart and the magic band. oh, and rockbitch.”

roman’s lip twitches. “captain beefheart?”

“it was a band from the sixties,” virgil says. “lots of experimental stuff. he liked everything as long as it was weird.”

“yeah, i’ve heard,” roman says.

virgil hesitates, before he says, “once, he just played it’s a small world on loop for a week.”

roman cringes at the very idea. virgil laughs.

“yeah, i think that reaction was half the reason,” he says. “i think i, um. i think i’ve still got his cd collection in some boxes, stored away. he had the biggest music collection of anyone i’d ever met. i think the idea of spotify or music streaming the way we’ve got now would’ve given him heart palpitations.”

“of stress?”

“of excitement,” virgil corrects, and his lips twitch up in a bittersweet kind of smile. “he would have hacked the diner playlist and stuffed it full of rickrolling and a ten-hour gregorian chant remix and cotton eye joe and peanut butter jelly time and some pirate shanties, with, like, jesus take the wheel and that one song about christmas shoes thrown in for color.”

roman laughs, and virgil looks relieved.

“but, i figured,” virgil says, and shrugs. “i think you like music even more than him, maybe. so if you’ve got a stereo somewhere, you could—you could take any cd you want from it. i’m sure your mom would be thrilled to hear the dulcet tones of tuvan throat singing blaring in the apartment again.”

“okay,” roman says, and his voice comes out more eager than he means it to. “i—yeah, okay. i’d like that.”

“yeah?” virgil says.

“yeah,” roman says.

“uh, virgil?” jean calls. “the oven’s doing the smoking thing again!”

virgil curses under his breath, getting to his feet, before he taps his fingers against the table. “just—let me know when, yeah? i can show you the mcr album he doodled all over. practically gave it new cover art.”

“okay,” roman says.

“and do your homework!” virgil shouts over the din of concerned customers, even as he’s heading for the kitchen.

roman sighs, but tugs his textbook closer and opens it again.

the smile reappears on his face when, a couple songs later, a g-note rings throughout the diner.

#the sideshire files #ask #my fic #anonymous #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides

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bipercabeth · 5 years

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So, can we hear your thoughts on TS7? I remember your breakdown for the Ben Platt album and wanted to hear what you have to say about Lover

oh man, i already know this has to go under the cut. i have,,, so many feelings

i forgot that you existed - this song is such a good opener for the album. both the lyrics and production are so light and carefree, which makes it the perfect transition from the intensity of reputation to the softness of lover. she’s not reinventing herself, she’s growing. i love the way she plays with harmonies in the chorus! and i adore how the last line of the verses swells ominously before releasing into the playful staccato of the chorus, i think it’s really indicative of the anxiety surrounding the situation vs the simple and relative ease with which it was all forgotten

cruel summer - tbh i’m glad this wasn’t a single in the place of ME! or yntcd because listening to this was literally a full body experience. it would’ve killed as a lead single, but it definitely hit harder for me hearing for the first time in the context of the album. i read the lyrics of the first five songs when they leaked and genuinely thought i wasn’t going to like this song, but i went absolutely feral at the bridge. (also upon listening i adored the lyrics, so i will no longer be trusting my opinions based on lyrics alone.) if i wasn’t sold on the rest of it, the bridge is what solidified this as one of my favorites on the album. the way the synths build and then cut out for HE LOOKS UP GRINNIN LIKE A DEVIL,,, i lost my shit. astral projected. if this song is playing, i will not turn it off before i get to scream that line. also “i love you, ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?” is incredible.

lover - words cannot describe my love for this song. my friend veronica described it as the love song of our generation and honestly? she’s not wrong. lover’s lyrics are simple, but hit like a ton of bricks regardless. the key to simple lyricism is finding the words that everyone has always wanted to say (lean on me is a really good example of this but i’m not going to get into songwriting theory on this post) and lover does exactly that. simple descriptions of simple acts are her window to how all-encompassing this love is. the 6/8 timing (a fucking WALTZ y’all) gives it the 2 in the morning kitchen dance feel. it’s a love song in every aspect. i’m never gonna be over it.

the man - a bop. the low notes in this song? incredible, especially in the bridge. those low harmonies took me OUT! the first line of the chorus is so killer as well. and she says bitch twice! taylor said i am 29 i curse and have sex, get over it. there’s less to analyze in this song, but that doesn’t mean i’m not in love with it.

the archer - i am telling you i heard the first goddamn synth note and KNEW jack antonoff was all over this song. i really needed this song to come out when it did, because after those two singles,, i needed some hope for this album. it did not disappoint. the slow build of the synths into one massive crescendo at the bridge instead of the usual rise and fall of most pop music. every single note builds to the bridge, to the anxiety of that repeated they see right through me, to the cause all of my enemies started out friends / help me hold on to you. it swells like the slow draw of a knocked arrow, like an archer taking aim. and then all at once, it fades like the string was released. i adore every single aspect of this song.

i think he knows - my percabeth loving ass needs to take a second to talk about the line i am an architect, i’m drawing up the plans and how it sent me to the fucking moon. but anyway. different post. it is physically impossible for me to stay still when this song plays. the harmonies on that AH in the chorus made me lose it. i want you, bless my soul is so southern and absolutely beautiful. she’s straight up pining in this song, and she knows it. that way she closes the song with that line on loop? sets the tone so well.

miss americana and the heartbreak prince - i have no idea why i didn’t like this song upon first listen, but now i like it! still not my favorite on the album, but the bar is high.

paper rings - god i cannot believe that she said his friends were high at the met gala i’m fucking dead. this whole song is peak old taylor, just grown up. it’s got the same catchiness as stay stay stay, but with a more grown (but still fun) outlook. this one is real experience talking, and it shows. she’s got the love she always wanted to write about! i’m not okay!

cornelia street - her delivery really makes the song for me. you can physically feel how much she loves joe and how real that fear of losing him. that stripped down chorus after the bridge where her voice breaks? she’s so in love. i’m so in love.

death by a thousand cuts - GOD i love this song with everything in me, even more since watching Someone Great. it’s the perfect narrative song for that movie. it also contains the single most Taylor Swift^tm lyric of all time: but if the story’s over, why am i still writing pages? ALSO? WE WANNA TALK ABOUT BRIDGE CITY?? this bridge goes so hard. i can’t convey my love for it unless we’re in the car together so i can scream it properly. ultimate car song.

london boy - so fun! people who are upset over this song gotta calm down, it’s a fun, catchy song. i don’t have much to say about it, but i enjoy it! i won’t go out of my way to queue it, but it’s cute and cheeky and i like it.

soon you’ll get better - i knew from the first goddamn guitar lick that this was going to wreck me, but once i realized what it was about,,, i didn’t stand a chance. i literally went back after my first listen through the whole album and listened to this song on loop for at least half an hour and just. sobbed. it hits home way too hard for me. again with that devastatingly simple songwriting. you’ll get better soon / cause you have to absolutely destroyed me. also, this is a really small detail, but that breath at 2:41 really does me in. it’s so defeated, i can’t. her delivery in this one is an absolute gut punch.

false god - jack antonoff is all over this one and i love it for that. taylor swift said i fuck and i respect that. the sax? get out of here. it’s so perfect. it’s horny, but like,,, emotionally horny. perfect fit for this album. i adore it.

you need to calm down - okay ngl i don’t like this song or ME!, but i’m really glad they were singles because if i heard them on this album for the first time i would’ve been :/ about it. instead we got that right out of the way and now i can appreciate the good parts of them. the oh’s in the chorus are really pretty! i don’t actively dislike this song, but i don’t actively like it either.

afterglow - i love that taylor put a song about fighting on this album. i think this made the album feel so much more real. it’s about love, and fighting is a part of that! we break a little from the picture perfect aspect of songs like paper rings and get a little grittier. people make mistakes, but the love guides the choice to stay, to ask for forgiveness and promise to do better. this makes the entire narrative of lover so much stronger.

ME! - same sentiment as yntcd in terms of it being the lead single, except i’m really not a fan of this song. i can handle it up until the spelling is fun part. i cannot believe “can’t spell awesome without me” is so close to daylight. i appreciate the point of the song and what she sets out to do with it, but i just. can’t get over that damn bridge.

it’s nice to have a friend - i really didn’t like this song at first and i’m still warming up to it, but i definitely am! it’s such a percabeth song. i’m not sure why i didn’t like it, probably because it doesn’t escalate or go anywhere, but i think that steadiness contributes to the meaning of it

daylight - i could literally write an entire essay on this song alone. it’s the perfect closing song for this album. i don’t want to see anything else now that i saw you / i don’t want to think of anything else now that i’ve thought of you are literally the most tender lines i have heard in my whole life. the comparison between this and her notes from red make me openly weep. the bridge of this song literally feels light daylight, it shines and feels warm and god i love love! i once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden made me cry when i heard it. i can’t stop thinking about that quote that says “lover is the sound of a songwriter getting to write the album she’s always wanted to write”. i could literally cry just thinking about that. she got to write the album about golden love! her whole career is based around singing and writing about love, and now she has exactly what she’s been grasping at all this time. it’s downright poetic. the monologue/outro only did me in more. she’s spent so long being defined by other people, and here she makes that definition for herself on an album that she owns every part of. it’s perfect.

#please do not ask me how long i spent on this #ts #music #anon #iris messages #bless u anon i would die for u #it makes me so happy to know that people want to hear my thoughts on music okay this is my love language #i mean i'm gonna give em either way but its nice to know they're wanted

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amortm · 5 years

Text

* 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓'𝐒 𝐔𝐏 , pretty kitties ! i'm terribly sorry abt my absence on the dash alongside you angels , & trust that i’m fully embarrassed of my slow ass , but i finally typed this baby out , & i can’t wait for y’all to meet my love , 𝒋𝒖𝒍𝒆𝒔 !

* ╰ it’s an absolute dishonour to meet you , julianna / jules . at twenty - one , you’ve disgraced the peralta family name & failed to carry on their legacy as an elite . as a result , they’ve requested that we at the academy do our best to rid you of your venality , & seeing as though they’re worth 86m , we dutifully obliged . while your pleonastic & inexorable attributes have always promised failure , it’s your spar with pride & ghosting your breakout acting role after you found out your daddy secured it for you that got you committed . before we take possession of you , it’s imperative that we know that you are a cisfem who prefers she & her pronouns , & you resemble diana silvers . your birthday is on april 26th , making you a recalcitrant taurus , & you were transported to us all the way from vail , co . at the present time , you work off campus at seaside florist . go ahead & purchase that extra large suitcase , disgrace . you’re going to need it .

your name / age / pronouns / timezone / etc .

hiya loves ! i go by blue & she / her pronouns , i’m 9teen , & i’m a pst baby ! i’m one of the six lovely admins @ #unholy , & they’re all superstars , so imagine my daily awe ! anyway , i’m beyond excited to finally get the ball rolling , & share the dash with you babes !

muse inspo .

noora sætre , the goldfinch , ella of frell , neil perry , charlie dalton , claire saffitz , monica geller , carla lalli music , mia thermopolis , adam parrish , blue sargent , anna ou !

character details :

💐 : sweetly judgmental , adoringly vindictive / vindictively adoring , witty ‘n gritty , bitingly tender , expressively stubborn , softly feral !

😈 : hershey’s chocolate , brooklyn pizza , baguettes , collector edition copies of wuthering heights , selfies , her mom , richard siken anthologies , twilight ( #teamedward ) , crowded movie theaters , english gardens , the air in new york , the air in vail , snowboarding , her hair , hot chocolate ( no whipped cream , half a bag of mini marshmallows dumped atop ) , andrew garfield , her discover weekly playlist , german shepherds , harry potter , lord of the rings , comedies , horror movies , nude lipstick , chocolate chip toffee cookies with sea salt drizzled on top , mamma mia franchise , dissertations , driving , any typa jacket / coat , being the big spoon , her father , coca cola , lilies , disney t - shirts , her father’s films , take out , farms , italy ( every single crevice of it ) , the plaza hotel , mint chip ice cream , hats , trains , monthly horoscopes , ancient history , greenwich village , maggie rogers , mating ritual , vampire weekend , mitski , the wombats , magic bronson , jade bird , hockey , pretending to be a fairy / witch / mermaid as a child , naruto , avatar the last airbender , stepping over state / country lines , hot water with honey , amazon prime !

👿 : the marvel franchise except for the captain america & thor trilogies , coffee & tea , shorts , sweet potatoes , layovers of any length , socks , soy milk , her arms , chihuahuas , a song of fire & ice novels , super fudgy / rich cake & brownies , cooking for herself , being told what to do , being wrong & having everyone know it , people who are rude to employees , bad tipping , margaret atwood , her first grade teacher , plastic coke bottles , too much pepper in a dish !

upbringing & family life , life before the academy , etc .

julianna rachel peralta was born to a beauty - charmed family of three , with a new yorker mother & italian father birthing the healthiest & happiest girl parents can dream for . her mother , susanna ‘ susie ’ peters , was coined the model that pioneered 90′s fashion , a la kate moss , & met julianna’s father , elio peralta ( think the francis ford coppola of this verse ) , whilst she was briefly on set for jack to see friend fran drescher . their love stemmed from there , after she made a mocking comment & he overhead & mocked her in return for it , & the whirlwind romance that captivated their world for the next few years led to miss jules being born . neither of her parents desired marriage from each other , rather believing that their love knew no bounds , even those of matrimony , but never did it dim the bond held between the small family of three . once jules was in their arms , they relocated from new york to colorado , into the quaint town of vail , surrounded by pristine mountains & crystalline air , where susie & elio found a pocket of indisputable peace after a small winter trip in their first year of romance .

it was there that jules grew up , & there that the love of her parents faltered . her mother missed the world of fashion , the rhythms & rhymes of the space she knew as well as in maintaining the fame that spotlighted her so , while elio’s passions for turning out film after film dwindled . & when the offer from vogue came in , waxing poetic about a fresh position as a fashion editor , both she & elio knew that their paths would veer . their love was no less , but integral factors of their relationship were now fractured , & they each desired after different things . this was all said to julianna , in soft tones & with assuring words . yet , never was it promised that everything would be the same as it was , for the truth was in something unsaid . susie moved to new york , while elio & jules stayed in that mansion in the mountains , & all was as fair & well as it could be , with julianna staying with her mom during the fall season & discovering every little piece of italy in the summers . christmases & hanukkahs were always shared in vail , & susie tagged along european dives when her schedule allowed for it . it was as if their relationship & subsequent uncoupling were trivial details no one could bother to account for , until , in the worst spot she’s ever seen her mother , it came out that elio peralta found a new woman to share a life with , & that their new life together would be housed in the same home that susie & elio specially chose & , in emotional terms , truly built themselves & carved their family in its foundations . it was a betrayal of the deepest caliber , & from there the small peace that still was at the core of their little family was forever severed , & it became obvious to jules that those few years were lucky .

she was thirteen when famed actress lily taylor ( aka jennifer connely lmao ) moved into her family home , bringing her adopted eleven - year - old twins with her . in a sense of loyalty to her mother & her own hurt over the despair that her father caused their original trio , jules was heartily & positively prepared to hate the new additions to her family with a vindictive fidelity . her plan was promptly overturned , however , when she spent day upon day with her new fam & steadily allowed them into her heart . this , of course , was paired with doubtless guilt , spurred on by her own mind whenever she flew to nyc to see her mother , but soon enough this was caught by each of her parents , & susie was insistent in her assurance that whatever frigidness she still held for elio & his new beau ( which julianna didn’t bother to correct with wife ) , it in no way extends nor should be mimicked by her . elio , in turn , was quick to promise to jules that his love for her mother flamed in his heart to this day , but each of them are happier living their lives in the lifestyles they’ve chosen , with the people they’ve chosen .

there really wasn’t anything to do but swallow their words , & live by the sentiments they expressed . jules was both a mama’s & daddy’s girl in one , so to take their words as fact was an ignorance she allowed herself , even when the hurt look on her mother’s faced inevitably shone through in hidden moments .

but when jules turned seventeen , susie fell in love with a musician / designer named tommy lever she met while interviewing his collection for vogue , & the two fell deep , far enough to sway susie into moving to brazil during the spring season , away from her beloved manhattan loft , to be with him in his home ( the link is crucial to his characterization lmao , as lenny kravitz is essentially tommy lever ) . when she can , jules visits as often as she’s allowed ( always ) & has gained a room herself .

after that , however , the cycle between her various homes continued , well into her slipping teendom , & when the prospect of college crunched down on her , the choice seemed inevitable . nyu gained a classics & theater major for its class of 2019 ( she skipped the third grade , a fact she didn’t stop bragging about at that age ) , but in her senior year of university , the walls came crashing down .

what sin are they categorized under ? why ?

jules belongs to the sin of #pride through & through . after all , if there was one damning trait to send her straight into the pits of burning infernos , her prideful sense of self would be it . that’s not to say she’s arrogant ( nor am i saying she isn’t ) , but it’s more that she can’t take being undermined or allow the supposed undermining to go unpunished . she has a great deal of #pride in her own self worth & capabilities , though she’s usually loathe to make it known in plain terms , & if she feels attacked in that manner , she’ll completely close up . this often , as you’ll surely be able to tell , beckons problematic shit .

what got them sent to the academy ?

during jules’ senior year at nyu , she was contacted by her agent ( shared with her father ) & offered an audition for a leading role in a major hollywood studio film . throughout the years , she dabbled in theater & attracted a starring role or two along the way , especially in school productions , but the plan for success was always envisioned after college . when she got the call , however , she handled it with a happy - go - lucky fuck it sort of approach , & a week later , when she received the good - bearing call , there was no backing out , or so she thought . tentatively dropping out of the semester in which she would graduate , jules modeled the next few months of her life around the film , happily doing so .

yet , the first week into rehearsals brought down a cloud so dark she thought she’d choke under it . she overheard a few producers on their lunch break , talking about this - & - that - esque bullshit , but just as she was passing , one of them made a comment about the peralta girl , & how hollywood legacies are the roaches of the industry . how directors from the middle ages should just stick to ruining things behind the camera , not forcing a disaster in front of it .

that day , jules walked out of set & never took a step back in . effectively ruining her future career in the process , she ghosted all contact from the production & even went as far to jet off to brazil to regenerate with her mom as an escape . she couldn’t even pick up where she left off during the semester , & simply had to sit back & witness her classmates of four years graduate without her . her parents were furious , but the only thing she gave in return was a steely silence , refusing even turn a glare to her father . now , she’s been shoved into the hands of the academy , biding the days until she could return to nyu in the fall .

what do you think they’ll struggle with the most at the academy ?

tbh , the biggest issue for jules is the resentment curling at her core . at her father , the film , the academy , herself . right now she’s just in a foul mood & sick at being forced into glitterati rehab , but her #pride won’t allow her to fail , even if she wishes to do it just to spite everyone . she is a people person , however , & will almost definitely warm up , even if it’s just for appearances sake .

extra details : links you’d like to incorporate , wanted connections , literally anything else you want to include , etc .

wanted connections will be coming soon ! for now , please enjoy this authentic video of jules chillin in her fav corner of the world , aka italia , taken by her bff eli 😔✌️

#unholyintro #icb how LATE my ass is w this gd intro #cue y'all throwing the torches and pitchforks @ me JDJKSDJSKDJDSKJDSDS #⋆ ╰ ` 𝒹𝒾𝒶𝓂ℴ𝓃𝒹 ╱ 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑦 ╱ 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 . : dev .

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destieltropecollection · 6 years

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DESTIEL TROPE COLLECTION 2018 Day 2 | Another Universe AU

- (Endverse, Djinnverse, Purgatory etc)

Revenge of the Subtext | @mittensmorgul Rating: Explicit Word Count: 80,064 Main Tags/Warnings: Case Fic, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Canon Divergence after 10.20, French Mistake style AU, Mutual Pining, Fluff, Humor, Smut, Crack, Light Angst, description of canon-typical violence, Supernatural Convention, Dean Winchester and Feelings, Human!Castiel Summary: Things are finally settling back down to normal since Cas gave up his grace to cure Dean of the Mark. Well, as normal as their lives are allowed to get. Sam relentlessly finds new cases to work, one right after the other; but Dean thinks they need a break to let Cas have some purely human fun, for once. It’s true they had a difficult time readjusting to humanity at first, but Dean thinks Cas deserves to do more than ride around in the back seat and follow them on monster hunts. Then again, Dean’s a little bit scared to ask exactly what Cas would want, just in case it doesn’t include spending quite so much time with him. And with Sam (of course). Sam’s been tracking a series of odd occurrences in Laramie, Wyoming for the last few weeks that looks just enough like a case to finally convince Dean they should go check it out. Whether they like it or not, the goddess responsible for the weirdness in Laramie takes an immediate interest in the three less-than-perfectly-happy hunters who’ve stumbled into her town.

He Who Made the Lamb | @alxdiamond Rating: Explicit Word Count: 5,193 Main Tags/Warnings: Endverse, Reconciliation, Angst, Future/Implied Canon Character Deaths Summary: When Dean gets thrust forward into a vision of ruin, he disrupts the careful equilibrium of apathy and resentment that has become the norm between his future self and Castiel. In a moment of respite at the end of the world, a broken shell that used to hold an angel and a desperate leader who lost everything but his cause find absolution in a bond that, though tangled and frayed, has never severed.

Our Bruises, Each Pristine | @cenedrariva Rating: Explicit Word Count: 35,326 Main Tags/Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Implied/Referenced Non-con, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Croatoan!Dean, Emmanuel, Enemies to Lovers, Amnesia, Healer!Castiel, Endverse Summary: Dean couldn’t remember the time Before. The people. The outbreak. Being bitten. There was nothing but the feral pleasure of the hunt, the symphony of years of screams echoing across his mind. So what if he couldn’t remember? It wasn’t like it mattered anymore. So why did Emmanuel—compassionate, sharp-tongued, incandescent Emmanuel—make him want to remember?

trying to keep you | @candybarrnerd Rating: Explicit Word Count: 4,995 Main Tags/Warnings: Mentions of interrogation/torture, Praise, Cleaning, cleaning body and soul, Top!Castiel/Bottom!Dean, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, endverse Summary: He reaches out for Dean’s wrists, using the grip to pull Dean’s hands from his pockets, and up to inspect. As he expected there’s still traces of blood on his hands. They’ve been washed, but it’s still there, under his nails and in his cuticles. “Cas—” “Don’t,” Cas interrupts him. He doesn’t know what Dean is planning on saying, but knows nothing good can come of it. Cas drags his eyes back up to Dean’s face, and this time Dean looks at him, eyes locking on each other. “Just let me take care of you.” Dean is a man possessed with a goal, the goal to get the colt back, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get it. Cas’s only goal is to make sure the man he knows is still there when the dust settles.

Dream On | @50shadesofsubtext Rating: Mature Word Count: 9,103 Main Tags/Warnings: Djinn, Alternate Season 10, Mark of Cain Summary: Dean jolted upright in bed drenched in sweat. Fucking Djinn. He looked around the room and saw the picture of his mom under his lamp, guns and knives adorning the wall, and took a breath- he was home. He cautiously slipped out of the covers, grabbed a knife, and creaked the door open. Peering down the hall, he took one silent step out, then another. He didn’t know if this djinn granted wishes or fed on fear, so he needed to get a feel for this world, and he would be ready for whatever happened. When Dean is trapped in a djinn dream, he tries to find a way out, but soon questions if that is something he really wants.

This is life that’s so thankless | @the-grace-of-fallen-angels Rating: Explicit Word Count: 2081 Main Tags/Warnings: angst, end!verse, Dubious Consent, Somnophilia, Masturbation, Anal Fingering, Rough Sex, Anal Sex, Substance Abuse Summary: Just some Dean/Cas end!verse angst and sex

Don’t live in the past | @the-grace-of-fallen-angels Rating: Explicit Word Count: 9,928 Main Tags/Warnings: porn, angst, violence, S&M, end!verse Summary: In the year 2014, Dean and Cas have an ‘arrangement’. They sleep with any women they want as long as they are the only guy for each other. Till Past!Dean shows up, whom Cas likes, a lot. When Dean discovers Cas broke their arrangement, he becomes consumed by jealousy and possessiveness, hitting and claiming Cas as his own. Cas gladly takes all the pain if it means he can finally have Dean all to himself.

Almost | @sternchencas Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 4,963 Main Tags/Warnings: spn usual violence, vampires, blood, hurt!cas, djinn dream Summary: Dean finds himself in more and more different situations that always end the same way. He almost kisses Cas. Will he manage to do it in the end?

The Roman Mistake | @firefly124 Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 3,957 Main Tags/Warnings: post-13x10, french mistake-esque Summary: Jack and Kaia rescued Dean and Sam from the “bad place,” but home isn’t safe yet, so he sends them and Cas somewhere else while he deals with Asmodeus. Why he picked Rome in a universe like the one Balthazar sent them to is more than Dean can figure out, especially since he and Cas are busy answering questions from … fans.

Sounds Like The End Of The World | @envydean Rating: Explicit Word Count: 1,783 Main Tags/Warnings: Endverse, Omega!Castiel, Alpha!Dean, switching, PWP, Sounding Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bittersweet Ending, Drug Use, Established Relationship Summary: Dean may be an Alpha but he takes at being submissive to Castiel like a duck to water.

#destiel trope collection #destielfanficnet #profoundnet #destiel #supernatural #fanfic #masterlist #trope list #endverse #purgatory #djinn verse #french mistake

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antiquexbeast · 6 years

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Hey so I love your ship with antiquexbeast. Christblood deserves more love and vampire/witch + demon christblood deserves even more! Can you give us a few headcannons or little fun facts for the ship?

i think you mean @sacrosanctdeceit lol, but that’s chill afefaiwenfiidk im glad ya’ll like our? flailing mess of 30 half verses and wine fueled crack bullshit???idek what headcanons i can give really for the whole ship, mostly since damien acts very differently to the other depend on the verses. i can try to do a minor breakdown of each though?

damien, actual good boi as a friendship, yeah they’d be a little weird, but pretty much everyone on the block is weird, so they’d find ways of enjoying each other’s company of course ~ as a romantic ship or anything else like that on it’s own, in canon, with like… no au spices or anything, idk i honestly have a hard time shipping it and writing for it lol. this has everything to do with damien as a person and the sheer fact that he wouldn’t ever fuck a married dude, let alone a dude whose married to his best friend like what lol??

demon!joe just terrifies the shit out of him so that’s… yeah… not much to say about that there tbh it’s self explanatory lol

vampire!damien you know what’s jacked up about this ship? technically he just waits for everyone in the neighborhood to die and then he can be fine hanging out with this demon who, for some inexplicable reason, really has the hots for him. but damien hangs out in his coffin chewin his nails every morning like “jfc i’m terrible, i’m literally out here messin’ around with the thing possessing the body whose body is married to my best friend oh my god what is wrong with me this is awful and terrible this needs to stop how do i stop this??” but invariable does… nothing… to fix… the problem… until it becomes a debilitating issue lol

also spoiler: i don’t think he’s… actually told this thing that he loves them lol. he’s feelin’ Some Kinda Way about the whole thing but STILL goes and MESSES AROUND with this DEMON, like BOI what I s YoU DoiN??

HCs?? - thoroughly enjoys being domestic and old and will literally come over to curl up on the couch and knit next to demon!boi while he’s doing something calm. - out of sheer archaic habit, he’s very controlled with his displays of affection and personal space, something he generally forgets that lends a hand in keeping their strange relationship in check. usually the demon is the first to provide affections and compliments first, but every now and then when he’s sure they’re alone he’ll place a hand on the demon’s just so, or press a brief kiss to the corner of his mouth. - he refuses to tell the demon how old he is, and has made a point to say that it’s rude to ask or poke around his brain for the information. the only hint of his general age one might get would be that he periodically succumbs to fits of feral behavior. normally he’d shut himself in the underground workings of his home until he slept it off, but since the demon’s come into his life and ruined his routine, that’s been completely thrown off. - he does go through bouts of something he can only describe as narcolepsy. it usually occurs when he’s expended a great deal of energy towards craft in a very limited amount of time, or when he’s put under too much stress ( physiological, emotional, ect ). when he sleeps, he’s never sure if he’ll wake up in a week, a month, or a decade. it’s very difficult to wake him in fact, but since the other immortal has been in his life, he’s had an easier time waking up mid coma for a few moments at a time ~

exorcist!damien oh my god THIS man in particular is just? he’s absolutely polite, don’t get me wrong, he’s still a sweetheart, but he will not hesitate to back hand you into next week if you happen to be something he has to hunt and/or yeet back into wherever dimension you came from. he’s not terribly thrilled about the job he has now, but he’s a bit stuck in it since his family made a lot of weird mistakes 50 skrillion years ago, so that’s just part of the ol’ family business now i guess. he does agree that it could be worse, and he’s very happy that the people he works for ensures that his son is always kept safe ( probably so if he dies for some weird reason they can just recruit him and be like GO AVENGE YOUR DAD or some weirdness idk that tends to happen right? ) he’s a tad bit bitter right now, but i think that’s mostly because he’s just annoyed that the target he’s trying to hunt and exterminate is trying to be friends? after previously trying to take his body? like boi… figure yourself out.

HCs?? - if this went anywhere but constant fighting it’d be a hateship i’m alive for that bc im filthy like hands down. i literally can’t think of any scenario where exorcist!dame doesn’t want to just peel the demon out and get the town Jesus Boi back. but here’s this demon. makin things hard. gettin all chummy. - during daylight and normal hours, he doesn’t look any different, but his skin covered in a great series of tattoos ( scarification?? ) of charms, talismans, demon traps, and assorted other inscriptions. most of them are for banishing entities, ensuring he isn’t possessed, and one spot on his chest that acts as a sort of “spiritual pocket” for a single bonded weapon of choice ( The Order keeps calling them blessed script and the like, but he’s just like yeah, that’s not, you know i’m a witch right this isn’t… okay you know what? that’s fine, not gonna argue, i’m tired– ) - the main issue with the above is demon boi keeps TOUCHING HIM and activating the runes that repel him by reflex. most demons immediately pull away and complain about the pain and being burned, but demon!joe just keeps getting in his space and picking him up and carrying him around he’s just SO DISTURBED BY THIS like do you have a pain kink what is WRONG?? - istg most of this verse is Damien trying to catch demon boi in the act of some bullshit out in public. usually he’s more covert than this, but being as this target is just so SMOOTH and DECENT SEEMING and TOO GOOD at it, it’s now just driving him nuts, so he’s pulling some Willie Coyote stunts he honestly shouldn’t be - idk i don’t have a lot for this yet other than it just makes me laugh cause i just needed something not so tense as our other verses lol

jfc this was so long I’M SO SORRY i think that’s it though i’m done afoienfawe

#Anonymous #{ headcanons }#{ v; like humans do }#{ v; sanctified }#{ v; sleeping beauty }#//omg that was so long IM SORRY

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runawaymarbles · 7 years

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Black Sails Fic Rec

Silver/Flint

shaking at the sight by vowelinthug | 1k | T |

two pirate kings, united vs. an entire island's naval forces.

the island didn't stand a chance.

look for something left in this world by vowelinthug | 2k | M |

it’s a nice day for a white wedding

too bad they aren’t having one

yer mother darns socks in hell by youatemytailor | 4k | M |

Christ, Flint thinks. He fucking hates Freetown.

el cuentacuento by straddling_the_atmosphere | 4k | NR | +Silver/Madi

At the end of the day, John Silver is an unreliable narrator.

Or: a storyteller’s story.

show me the way to go home by vowelinthug | 8k | NC-17 |

set during 2x4, in which Silver and Flint take a much-deserved time out and enjoy a drink or seven

and they both learn a valuable lesson about each other

namely that neither one has ever had any chill whatsoever in their entire goddamn life

let us possess one world by vowelinthug | 8k | NC-17 |

They return to Nassau after their defeat of the British Navy, only to be met by Agitator Billy and his propaganda machine. This is why Captain Flint tries not to let other people decide things.

In which: Flint wears a disguise, Silver tells a terrible story, one bathes the other, and only one man died the whole night which is, like, definitely a record for them.

What's in a Name? by Craftnarook | 9k | NC-17 |

Some conversations in the dark between Flint and Silver, set during episode 3x09. They have a moment alone in the Maroon camp, after Mr Scott's death, and what begins as curiosity and sharing develops into rather a lot more.

you are the queen and i am the wolf by vowelinthug | 10k | NC-17 |

They call him John the Giant.

Flint calls himself James the Early Risk for Heart Failure.

Don’t Fear the Ships (Fear the Black) by farasha | 11k | NC-17 |

“You can’t read sea charts.”

“Can’t is a strong word.”

Flint teaches Silver how to sail. As with everything they do, there’s a lot more going on unspoken.

Or, Silver tries to convince Flint that it would be a bad thing if he died.

ya filthy animals by vowelinthug | 12k | NC-17 |

Flint and Silver could be rulers of an illegal organization, major mob bosses, kingpins, criminal masterminds, etc.

But then they could also be petty shoplifters who like to drink during the day and fool around on their houseboat.

With Nothing On My Tongue by RosieTwiggs | 14k | NC-17 | +Silver/Madi

“Silver thinks: Maybe God likes it when I fight with him.

He wonders now, whether he’s been playing into God’s plan all along. Because no matter how angry he gets, how defensive, how many “fuck you”s he flings to the heaven, isn’t it all just proof that he still believes God is there, despite it all?

Silver doesn’t know how to counter that.

Maybe he doesn’t want to anymore.

Blue all in a rush by twofrontteethstillcrooked | 16k | NC-17 |

There were dozens of questions Flint wanted to ask. He chose, "Did it not occur to you I would find out you were here almost immediately?"

st. augustine is that way by vowelinthug | 18k | NC-17 |

James Flint had yet to meet a conversation he couldn’t avoid.

John Silver had yet to meet a routine he couldn’t disrupt.

(post-show domesticity, with oranges)

we must unlearn the constellations to see the stars by lacecat | 19k | M | + Flint/Thomas, Silver/Madi

Silver wakes up each time to a different day in his past.

He thinks that if this is his purgatory, he can’t say he doesn’t deserve it.

Sail These Roads and Back Again by neverfaraway | 20k | M

James has fled the New World for the Old, shed his name and found quietude in his solitary existence. That is, until his favourite worst memory appears on the farm track, collapses upon his sopha, and refuses to be shaken loose. While Corsica smoulders and war becomes ever more likely, Flint and Silver enter a war of their own: to reclaim their past and forge an uncertain future.

gonna need a bigger boat by lacecat | 20k | Not Rated

“You really want to say that, when you’re sitting across from a man who lost his leg to a shark?” Flint scoffs. "There is no way a shark took your leg!" "Of course not," Silver says, smirking. After he draws the silence out, for what feels appropriately dramatic enough period of time, he adds, "It was two sharks."

Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more by Craftnarook | 22k | M |

In the year 1725, or thereabouts, John Silver finds himself driven by a storm into an inconsequential little port town, barely a speck on any civilised map. Returned to the life of a drifter, tired and rough around the edges, he is resigned to waiting for the weather to pass before he can sail on again to the next town, and the next, and the next. That is until he overhears a conversation in the inn about a local fisherman, one Captain Barlow, and his tall tales of tempests and becalmings, devils and sharks, and Silver finds a new future opening up to him, haunted by the spectres of his past.

John Silver Can’t Get There From Here by Apetslife | 33k | Series, G-E | + Silver/Madi, Anne/Jack

Or: Fuck Treasure Island, And Also Actual History, And Probably Season Four Canon, Too

“He is so terribly in love with you,” Madi murmurs to him from out of nowhere, sitting easy in the curve of his arm in the shade of their small porch.

Fifteen Men in September by ballantine | NR | 34k |

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

A Black Sails origin story for the song.

turning saints into the sea by lacecat | 86k | NC-17 | + Flint/Thomas, Silver/Madi, Miranda/Flint

They say she arrived in Nassau during a hurricane. They say that she brought with her a priest she had kidnapped to father her children, whom she then turned into storms to guide the direction of her ship. They say she has sworn to kill as many men on this Earth as she could, that she bathes in the blood of young children ripped from their mother’s breasts to attain immortality, doomed to serve the seas forever in return.

In reality, Silver has seen Flint conjure exactly zero storm-like offspring, but she does know how she speaks with the sort of conviction that if she were a man, they would write books about her. There’s a stiffness to her posture that speaks of someone who might better be found in a London parlor rather than a dusty brothel in the Bahamas, and yet she has a fierce temper that rivals any man’s on the island, a dangerous look about her like the air rippling over fire.

Silver/Flint/Hamilton(+)

The Isle of Hope by ElDiablito_SF | 16k | M |

When a heartbroken John Silver arrives in Georgia ten years after the events on Skeleton Island, he doesn't quite have it in him to face Flint. Instead, he concocts a scheme to befriend Thomas, and gets more than he bargained for in exchange

The Tether Series by stele3 | 58k | M |

“So you did find him,” the man says faintly. When Thomas looks up he finds himself caught in perhaps the strangest regard one person has ever given another, a gaze that absolutely does not dissuade Thomas from the notion that a feral, scavenging animal has broken into their home.

Smallpox Verse by vowelinthug | 70k | T-NC17 | + Madi

post-finale, where everyone learns a valuable lesson about communication and smallpox. (no one actually gets smallpox.)

The Canterbury Tales by Wind_Ryder | 133k | NC-17 | +Madi

Pirates. Attacking Georgia. A part of Thomas wants to believe that there’s nothing at all relating the events outside to the events in his personal life.

But when he turns around and sees John Silver slipping in through the backdoor, he very much doubts that’s the case. “Tea?” Thomas asks blandly, throwing the latch and shutting his blinds like a good Puritan man.

Flint/Hamilton(s)

the stars and she who runs with them by alovelylight | 1k | G |

When she declared Peter Ashe a traitor, her heart beating fury into the expanse of her body, she knew this was what James felt like. The constructed castles of civilization falling to the ground, dragons from the dark breathing out and destroying all the lies they hold dear. This was what she wanted; this would be her peace.

Time Covers All Things by lilithi|ien | 12k | T | +Silver/Flint

She imagines it will be liberating to take a new name, to adopt a new life. The next day, as she steps off the gangway onto the island sand, she tries to leave who she was behind like a snake shedding its skin. She can almost get away with it. How Lady Hamilton becomes Mrs Barlow.

The Witch Queen of Nassau by shirogiku | 12k | NC-17 |

After James is captured by the Navy, it falls to Miranda to organise the rescue. Nothing goes according to the plan.

Revenant by BethWinter | 18k | T |

After Charlestown burns, Abigail Ashe meets a man who says he was a friend of her father’s. He gives her a choice.

The Far Waste of the Waters by more_night | M | 22.5k | + Silver/Flint, Silver/Madi

James McGraw removes Skeleton Island from his mind.

Somewhere in Boston by redwhale | T | 29k | + Laura Moon/Shadow Moon

Mr. Wednesday tries to recruit the dread pirate Captain Flint for his war against the New Gods, and runs afoul of Thomas Hamilton in the attempt. Meanwhile, Shadow just wants a new goddamn book to read, is that so much to ask?

Soon after, on the trail of Wednesday and Shadow, Laura and Mad Sweeney find themselves in a charming bookstore in Boston...

Unaccommodated Man by kvikindi | T | 27k |

It is at this point that, for the first time, Thomas Hamilton begins to consider that he has gone mad.

The Sundering Sea by x_art | 137k | NR | Flint/Thomas

Stepping into the foamy surf, gasping at the force of it, the surprise of it—it had been breathtaking. Thomas had been that for him, his boundless sea, and he wasn’t ashamed.

Max/Anne (+)

you'll always paint my sky by mapped | 2k | T |

She still loves Max, and it gets harder and harder to deny it to herself.

(Anne through the second half of S4.)

histoire à tiroirs by straddling_the_atmosphere | 3k | T | +Max/Eleanor, Max/Idelle

histoire (n): a story, a fictional tale, a narrative account, a lie

Or: Max and shifting sands

Bounteous by willowbilly | 4k | M | Anne/Max/Mary/Jack

It’s a queer hurt, almost like the relief of peeling off an old scab, to feel her heart pulling in three separate directions and to feel it expanding to encompass the whole damn rest of the compass rose rather than be so fragile as to rip itself asunder. Anne never would have thought, before, that she’d be this fucking caring. That she’d had such a deep well of love waiting untapped within her, way down.

kintsugi by princejake | 6k | T |

Anne nestles into his shoulder, her hair brushing against his cheek, and suddenly Jack can breathe properly for the first time in weeks. Here they are, together, in balance as they’ve been from the beginning. Complete again.

When he opens his eyes Max is watching them from across the street. Her posture is carefully neutral, but her eyes are… solemn. Stoic. Filled with a kind of barren peace. She always could convey so much with just a look.

Something twinges uncomfortably behind Jack’s breastbone. /Oh./ Perhaps not so in balance after all.

Other/Misc/Gen

no man’s land by rhllors | 2.5k | T | Jack/Anne/Mary

The man on the deck looks back at them, considering. He’s handsome but he oozes violence; armed, scarred, tall, hair slung round a bandana, the same colour of a recently opened wound. “I’ve heard of you,” he says, with an infliction she’s not familiar with: somewhere from the continent, not French. Perhaps Holland. “The name’s Read.” he continues, eyes tracing the rim of her hat. “Mark Read.”

armed with the past and the will by whimsicalimages | 3k | T | Silver/Madi

The language of winning and losing, this language that men favor – Madi can speak this language, though she disagrees with its precepts. Success takes different forms, and failing once does not mean failing forever. It does not even mean failing the next time.

Gone to Port Royal by Apetslife | 3k | G | All the pairings

Definition of Valhalla 1: the great hall in Norse mythology where heroes slain in battle are received 2 : a place of honor, glory, or happiness : heaven

same bottle, same gun: two shots by AstronautSquid | 5k | T | minor Flint/Thomas, Max/Eleanor

„I will walk,“ Flint interrupted her objections. „You have just maneuvered yourself into a position of considerable power on this island, and now you have gone and cast aside a man the island admires and fears. It won’t do for you to be seen sharing a horse with me like a wounded young girl.“ Eleanor stared up at him; a wounded young girl full of curses, with a rifle resting like a sleeping babe in her arm.

[Nassau, 1708. Eleanor Guthrie remembers a moment in the life of Lieutenant McGraw. Captain Flint doesn’t.]

what’s a king but a heavy name by thatsarockfact55 | 51k | T | Mr. Scott/Maroon Queen, Madi/Silver, background Flint/Silver

In the quiet night, one stranger tells another what he has always known: “I have been so many names, Long John Silver, and if not for love I would be no one at all.”

One story of a spirit, a slave, a father, and a pirate king, told in seven parts.

Winds of Change and Chance by PanBoleyn | 60k | T | (eventual Silver/Flint, Miranda/Thomas, Flint/Hamiltons, Flint/Silver/Miranda)

In which a thief and his daemon make their way onto a pirate ship, and vastly underestimate how hard it will be to get off again.

Well, the thief does. His daemon had a feeling this might happen.

#black sails #black sails fic rec #silverflint #flinthamilton #silverflinthamilton #flinthamiltons #maxanne #maxanor #op #rec list #fic rec

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benevolent-incubus · 7 years

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Bulletproof Desire

The Evil Within One Shot(?) After the tragic events, Sebastian find comfort in the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels. Warnings : OD, Pain, Blood, Bile ect.

Sebastian Castellanos. Male. Age 39. Long ago he cared for his work, being a highly flourishing detective until recent affairs left him spiraling into despair and derailing his path. Feeling powerless and dejected, he took to drinking his sorrows away, returning to work only with a flask in hand.

Each and every night after those unfortunate events, he still felt responsible for the tragedies that befell him, shrugging off any help offered to him by his comrades. He was alone. A solitary and defeated being who gave up and lost hope for all. He had simply seen too much to give a damn. Lost too much to cling to what little he had left.

Long before the Mobius incident, it was Joseph Oda who had reported him to Internal Affairs, giving him a second fighting chance, redeeming himself. But now, all that had gone to waste. Being as prestigious as he had once been put him into a dangerous line of work, driving him into the very path that destroyed him.

Every night was the same. Drowning in a bottle of Jack Daniels over ice until he took to drinking it straight from the bottle. Cursing at the wall and the occasional lecture he gave himself as he looked into the mirror at the sick bastard he had become. His skin crawled at the memories. Bile caught in his throat as his stomach twisted and knotted. Feral thoughts clawing a his mind, convincing him of the piece of shit that he was.

This night had been like the rest except one small difference; no matter the broken mirror and shattered glass that littered his bathroom floor. He had slumped into the bathtub, no water run since he was still clothed; although his mind could not even comprehend that much. His breathing was growing uneven, sweat mixing with the blood that pooled in the palm of his hand, summoning an ungodly stinging from where the glass protruded his wrist.

Maybe...

Maybe he could end it all. Perhaps put an end to his suffering. He was a fuck up, after all. People died because of him. For him. Maybe he owed it to them to die. To join them. No one living gave a shit, did they? Why the fuck would they?

Sebastian found himself heaving up what little he had had for lunch alongside the acid that had been burning within him all day. Good old Jack. Helping him get rid of that unwanted bile and acid. Finding it hard to raise his hand, he groaned and let his head fall to the side, defeated. Too lazy and weak to even off himself. What a good job. Another night to purge his stomach and not the world of himself. Maybe another night. Maybe, tomorrow night. The last thought he could remember before blacking out was the simply conundrum of when the fuck he had pissed himself, thankful he had collapsed in the bathtub and not the floor. Not like he would get out of cleaning it eventually. Unless death met him. Then he was not cleaning shit.

Sebastian sat at his deck in his office, assuming his door had been locked. If he did. Did he? Who fucking knew. He wanted no one to disturb him. The smallest sounds acted like a deep laceration to his brain. His hand had as usual been horrible wrapped with gauze, surprised it had not fallen off on his way to work. Why did he even bother to come in, anyway?

Something had lured him from his home at last one last time. Probably the fact that he heard Joseph was returning to work that day after waking from a long coma after returning from STEM. Perhaps seeing him one last time would put him at ease. At least that would be one less death on his hands. But the blood of Joseph’s torment and pain still lingered. The last time he had seen the male, he could already see the doubt and pain in his gaze. Last he had seen him, he thought he had left him for dead.

On this particular day, he said fuck the flask. A full bottle of Jack’s on his desk with an array of papers sprawled about. Maybe he’s finish them and at least not off himself and give himself a title of being lazy fuck, too. Or maybe he’d already acquired that one. His eyes still glossed over, he still felt the urge to vomit, but swallowed it down each and every time. He already smelled of despair and grief; did not add to it while he was locked away in his own room. ‘Did I lock it? Fuck. I forget.’

Swaying out of confusion and drowsiness, he questioned if his reasoning for coming in was justified. Did anything warrant his presence if he had plans on going all the way tonight? No, not really. Just a single moment of relief. One person; still alive. Groaning, he took in a deep breath, finding it hard to fill his lungs with that so called precious oxygen as he doubled over his desk in pain. Pain and shame. How much had he drunk last night?

His vision blurred more as he clenched his eyes closed to rid himself of the migraine from seeing any blurred text. Fucking shit... He coughed, leading to a stronger pain in his chest as he felt his arms convulse and his legs were giving out underneath him. He was dizzy as fuck and could no longer raise his head to look around. Not as if there was anything else to look at but unfinished work and failed cases pinned to the cork board.

He tried to inhale to cough again but a stabbing pain in his abdominal region stopped him. Clenching his fists into the documents, he gritted his teeth, feeling the wetness on his face. Sweat? Blood? Tears? Who knew. Maybe a mixture of sorrow and anguish.

He bit his lips, forcing an intake of air, a second, fighting just as hard for it. Why was he fighting? He paused and only felt the pain shred his chest apart. No. Maybe he was not ready. Or maybe he was a coward? Then it passed. All in an instant. He could breathe, each breath was like accepting the very ice from the poles into his lungs. It hurt, still. But it kept him going. Going where?

“I’m sorry...” He murmured in a sound that could not be called English nor any other civilized language. Only a drunken pained slur of distress. A shadow lurking above him, he could sense it. Nothing and everything. He felt the weight of years pushing him down into the splintered wood of his desk. Saliva pooling beneath him. Part of him wanted to cry out to the phantoms of of the past for forgiveness, for help. But whispers of the olden years would do him no good.

Closing his eyes, he felt a sweat embrace him. A thick coating of anguish that chilled him to the bone, lulling him into a comfortable darkness he could call home. Maybe he would never wake. Maybe this was it.

“Sebastian.” A voice with no figure, but a name. He could not see anything past the dancing lights behind his eyelids as he heard a voice attempt to bring him back But it did not reach. He could not return the notion. He was... content. That voice, so soft and often forgiving. That was the last thing he needed; all he wanted in life. And having all he needed, perhaps his final job was done. He was fulfilled.

He felt the rough grip of hands on him, pulling him his slumber? How long had he been out? Hours? Minutes? Perhaps even seconds. He could make out the sounds of feet clattering on the ground around him; always the same tone when they entered his office, lacking carpet and the laminating always slick with dry mud. He could always make it out. Angry voices. Or was there just one doubled over? Just how fucking out of it had he been? His throat convulsed at the same time of his arms as he felt bile building up and something leather in his mouth. He gagged on it as he tried to open his eyes but failed them simply... too heavy.

For once in such a long time... he wanted to continue. A voice ripping him from the shadows and depths of despair. He was in limbo between a hell and another more agonizing hell. He had a second chance, but he had to take a stern grip hold on it. This was not death, this was a worse fate. Sleep. And he wanted to wake.

He took in a pained gasp, hands ripping into the fabric of the being most close to him, nails piercing the fabric with ease. He fought against the leather in his mouth, but he found himself left with absolutely no strength; only now his attention was brought to his own convulsing, the lack of control he had over his body that had betrayed him. No... he had betrayed his own being. Leather and bile was all he could taste over the next five minutes as he felt the hands on him push him into the very floor he hated, a small thought of regret for not cleaning it sooner itching at the back of his mind.

Hot? Cold? He could not tell. His body went through sessions of feeling like it were on fire to the stinging freezing pain h had felt the night before. Nothing was pleasant. He felt like he was dying, and perhaps he was. But he had found a small string in the darkness to tug on and damn did he cling to what little he had. For once in his life, he knew he had no been left with nothing.

He could hear voices, but else had changed. He still could not make out if there was one being beside him or plenty. His eyes glued shut and watching the dancing lights of his eyelids as he fought in and out of consciousness. It was another good five minutes that felt like an eternity and he felt his body settling, finding what little relief he could when his cramped fingers let loose of the fabric they had somehow not failed to release over the given time.

His mouth; dry and cracked as he felt the leather being finally removed, his first instinct to lick his chapped lips. Air. Finally and at last that voice was reaching him, but still not clear. Then he had the most simple of thoughts; he had not locked the door and someone made it inside. Maybe it was a good thing. Depending on whom it was who had him on the floor.

His lungs ached as his body fell limp. Although he seemed he had regained control of his verse system, it left him without any strength to move. Not even enough to open his eyes or left his head. He simply gave into the still apparent pain and laid there, barely conscious.

That was when the worst seem to hit him. He could hear the make of sirens off in the distance; on average he knew they took at minimum seven minutes to get to their department on a good day. Would he make it? Did he want to make it? He had to find the answer soon or else all this suffering would be for nothing. After all, he was just a heap of nothing looking for some cheap excuse to go on; a reason to simply taste that burning Jack Daniels one last time.

#the evil within #sebastian castellanos #Joseph Oda

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victorineb · 8 years

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Fic Recs Mega Post

Whenever I write one of these posts I’m struck by the sheer amount of incredible writing talent in this little fandom of ours. It is quite astonishing, and it’s a privilege to get to read all of this wonderful work. Below there’s a small selection of the fantastic stuff I’ve been reading recently, featuring gods, monsters and feral jungle men - and that’s just for starters!

Storms (series) by @lovecrimevariations (KareliaSweet): This frankly astonishing series starts out in barnstorming but fairly innocuous style in Where Are The Storms I Was Promised, in which Will Graham, famous monster hunter, is called to deal with the Wendigo that’s been terrorising an entire town. And then it proceeds, over the course of a further six instalments, to document the beautiful, bloody, often painful course of the relationship between Will and Hannibal, constantly deepening and recontextualising the ‘verse as it goes. Reading this series is almost like watching a really good magic trick – every time you think you’ve got its measure, it pulls something new and surprising out of its hat. And it’s not just flash and sparkle either, the writing is utterly beautiful, the characters are perfectly captured and it is both deeply funny and enormously moving (I was genuinely weepy a number of times throughout). Plus, it also features a majestic, powerful, do-not-under-any-circumstances-fuck-with incarnation of Bedelia, who is worth the price of admission all by herself. Seriously, she was my favourite part of this whole series and I love it beyond any sense or reason. If you have any love of writing whatsoever, read this series, it is a masterclass.

You’ll be in my heart by @starkaryen: Based on the totally beautiful art (here and here) by @camilleflyingrotten, here Will is a scientist on an expedition to find and study gorillas. Instead, he ends up finding Hannibal, a mostly-feral man who lives in the jungle, has an adopted gorilla family, and takes an immediate shine to Will. Who, because this is Will and Hannibal, finds himself taking a shine right back. And all is rosy in Camp Hannigram, until Jack damn Crawford sticks his nose in (like always) and threatens Hannibal’s way of life. As befits the utterly gorgeous artwork, this fic is just lovely from start to finish. It features a particularly adorable version of Hannibal – the scenes in which he indulges his obsession with Will’s safari hat are nothing short of precious – and a charmingly earnest Will. It’s a simple, innocent bit of loveliness, which is rather refreshing in this dark and sophisticated fandom of ours XD.

(Also, if you’d like a little more Tarzan AU, this time with an A/B/O flavour, check out Hannizan by @hotsauce418, which is just pure filth and utterly wonderful with it XD.)

We, the common by @thelongcon23 (thelongcon): A retelling of the show (and beyond) in omegaverse style, this fic alternates masterfully between Hannibal and Will’s POVs as the omega becomes fascinated, obsessed, and ultimately falls in love with the alpha. The result is that while the course of events remains largely the same (Will still gets framed and gutted, and they still go over the cliff in each other’s arms), others change drastically (the way Will locates Hannibal in Florence, for instance, gets a very clever omegaverse twist). And their relationship after the fall? Well, I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never seen it go down quite like this before. If you’re looking for fluff, I suggest you go elsewhere, but if you’re after passion, intensity, and that terribly Hannigram sense that love and cruelty are not mutually exclusive, this is the fic for you. The writer has a firm grip on the characters’ voices and motivations and is uncompromising and incisive in their betrayal of both. This is not necessarily an easy read (particularly towards the end, when Hannibal gives Will a reckoning of his own) but it is a compelling and fascinating one.

Cookies by @desperatelyseekingcannibals (TigerPrawn): Now, those of you who are after some fluff, here’s some of the best around. Tiger’s non-cannibal AU is an absolute treat, full of emotional idiots, kick-ass women and a totally adorable kid (and I don’t say that lightly cos kid!fic ain’t my thing!). It all starts when Will accompanies his daughter Abigail as she goes door-to-door selling cookies for charity and finds himself face to face with the ever-so-handsome Doctor Lecter. And then somehow, before he knows it, Will is agreeing to a date in exchange for Hannibal buying all of Abby’s stock, and soon finding that he might have stumbled into a real relationship. Not that it’s smooth sailing, of course, this is still Hannigram we’re talking about! It is my deep and ardent belief that Hannibal dreams of being a romcom when it grows up and with this utterly charming, romantic, as-sweet-as-its-name-suggests fic, that dream is made a reality. Anyone who’s ever wanted to see Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter fall in love the old-fashioned way (you know, without all those annoying stints in prison and near-fatal injuries), treat yourself and read this fic. I guarantee it will melt even the most dark and twisted of hearts.

Picture Imperfect by @shiphitsthefan: Will Graham is a very special alpha – unlike many of his sex, he can be trusted not to turn into a hormonal animal around omegas. It’s how he’s made his career as a photographer. That is, right up until he’s in a room with concert harpsichordist Hannibal Lecter and everything goes to hell when they scent each other and can barely keep themselves from ripping their clothes off and bonding right there and then. Seems like they’re true mates and it’s only a matter of time before they give into their urges – so Will, being a decent and respectful alpha, has to get this courtship show on the road before that happens. Well, mostly before that happens. Given the UST inherent to the plot, this is every bit as intensely, stupidly hot as you’d hope, but it’s also a really clever, thoughtful exploration of the omegaverse concept, set in a ‘verse in which omegas are the ruling gender, a nice reversal of the usual a/b/o setup. Plus it has an almost indecently adorable version of Hannigram, in which progressive Will and traditionalist Hannibal attempt to conjoin their lives so that they can get on and shag already! Smart and sexy a/b/o is one of our fandom’s greatest strengths and this is truly just an exemplary version of it.

Space Invader II: A Very Darko Sequel by @devereauxsdisease: A sequel to the utterly wonderful Space Invader (and if you haven’t read it, I’m begging you, go remedy that this instant), this return to Dev’s Spacedogs ‘verse sees Adam and Nigel still ensconced in blissful coupledom. So blissful, in fact, that it’s making Darko wonder if he might want some of that relationship stuff for himself. Cue the appearance of a certain sassy lab tech last seen working for the FBI. That’s right, Beverly Katz is alive, in town and about to rock Darko’s world XD. This is just an utter joy to read, stuffed with Dev’s trademark mix of fantastic dialogue, heartfelt emotion and wickedly dirty jokes. And best of all is her way with the characters, all of whom are wonderfully loveable and who work beautifully together. I spent the whole fic marvelling at the way in which these disparate characters come together and feel like they were always meant to be that way – they make a lovely, entertainingly weird family and are never less than an utter delight to spend time with.

Forgemaster by @llewcie: Valhalla Enchanted by way of the Greek gods now, in this peerless piece of sweetness by the lovely Llew. Char and Ella are the new Dionysus and Aphrodite (in this ‘verse, the gods can retire and be replaced) and live like brother and sister, i.e. bickering, winding each other up, pushing each other’s buttons... They particularly like making bets, which winds up with Ella making Char agree to three dates with Hephaestus, being played in this fic by One Eye. Given that One Eye is unsociable, ragged, and constantly dirty from his forge, Char is less than impressed with his companion and says so… somewhat unfortunately within One Eye’s earshot. So when, despite himself, Char finds himself falling for the blacksmith god’s charms, he’s got a lot of work to do to convince One Eye that he’s worth the trouble! Llew has the charm turned up all the way to eleven in this gorgeously frothy, funny little comedy of errors, with a sweetly vain version of Char melting under the steadily growing appeal of One Eye’s gentle strength. If you need cheering up for any reason, this fic should be your first port of call.

Pure Imagination by @constructfairytales (beforethedawn and Destinyawakened): Stranger Things was one of my favourite shows last year (admittedly it’s no Hannibal, but what is?). It was smart and weird, and as an 80s baby it pressed every last one of my nostalgia buttons, from soundtrack to costume design. So, of course, it was with nothing but delight that I started this crossover AU, in which Will is police chief of the town where young Will Byers goes missing and Hannibal is the psychiatrist he brings in to counsel the traumatised community. And I wasn’t disappointed – this is a fantastic blend of Hannibal’s surreal romanticism with the full-on monstery weirdness of the ST ‘verse, with plenty of unexpectedly but pleasingly fluffy Hannigram at the centre of it. Though it follows the basic plot of ST, having Will and Hannibal involved inevitably shakes things up (Will’s empathy is given a brilliant twist) and predictable this certainly ain’t. Instead it’s fun, thrilling and playful, with at least one story development that genuinely had me on the edge of my seat. And did I mention the Hannigram? Cos, yeah, there’s no slow burn here. Our boys are goners from the second they meet and the intensity of their connection is all kinds of wonderful.

The Estate by @bokuno-jinsei: Amusingly, the tags on this fantastic fic eventually turn into a short plea for Will Graham to stop thinking so much (a plea which anyone who’s written the over-analytical little shit will know is hopeless). Fortunately, Will clearly paid no attention, and so we readers are treated to this charmingly introspective piece of canon divergence. So, Hannibal gets as far as sitting Will at the dinner table in Florence. But, before he can get out his bonesaw, he seemingly has second thoughts and so Will wakes some time later to find himself ensconced in the last place he expected to revisit – Lecter Castle. Where, he finds, Hannibal has decided to change the game between them: if Will agrees to see if they can live together, Hannibal will cease any attempts to change or influence Will. So the pair find themselves as the unlikeliest of roommates as Will wrestles with his demons, his desires and, inevitably, his feelings for Hannibal. Anybody who enjoys intense conversations, brewing sexual tension and Hannibal in waders (yes, really), step this way, you’re in for a treat.

Inevitable by Vulcanmi: I do adore canon divergence. And I have a weakness for prison fics (love Hannigram falling in love while incarcerated). So this fic is entirely my jam. It picks up in the second half of s3: Hannibal is in jail, Will is “happily” married to Molly, and Jack is still desperate to have his pet empath back on board to deal with the Tooth Fairy. Except in this ‘verse, Will decides not to give into Jack and remains with his family, far away from Baltimore. In order to make it up to his former boss, though, Will writes a letter to a certain inmate, suggesting that he offer his services where Will cannot. Of course, it’s not the last letter Will ends up sending to Hannibal. Not by a long shot. And we all know what happens once Will gives Hannibal an inch… (hey, I didn’t mean that kind of inch, you filthy perverts!). Though it starts out as an angsty exploration of Will’s determination to separate himself from Hannibal, somewhere along the way this fantastic fic transforms into a twisted yet adorable romcom, as our murder muffins confront their feelings and try to figure out whether there’s any version of the world in which they might be together. And, frankly, it’s an utter delight to read. One for those (*raises hand*) who like their hurt/comfort 20% hurt and 80% comfort.

Inside the Imitation by @belladonnaq (Belladonna_Q) with artwork by @reapersun: A confession. I’ve never seen The Thing (because I’m a scaredy-cat who doesn’t watch anything that could remotely be described as scary. “But Vic, isn’t Hannibal scary?” Yeah, yeah, I contain multitudes, now hush mango, I’m working). However, I’ve never let ignorance get between me and my Hannigram and so I jumped headfirst into the The Thing/Hannibal crossover which, fortunately, works utterly brilliantly with absolutely zero knowledge of the film. So, once again Jack Crawford finds reason to call upon the services of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. Except this time, it’s not in order to investigate the Minnesota Shrike, but a strange case with its roots in a decades-old tragedy in Alaska. Soon things turn weird and monstery and Will and Hannibal find themselves reluctantly (well, as ever, Will’s reluctant, Hannibal’s thrilled) investigating a burned-out government building with something truly frightening at its core. This is thrilling, clever and wonderfully creepy, a fantastic reframing of canon (especially the Hannigram) and tons of fun throughout. I have to admit, I did not see the twist coming in this fic (though that’s possibly because I’m a dim bulb when it comes to plot) and it was delivered brilliantly, turning everything on its head and upping the stakes for our beloved murder muffins. Oh, and make sure to check out @reapersun’s fabulous artwork that accompanies the fic, it’s staggeringly gorgeous.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Volume 2 by @fragile-teacup: A continuation of the marvellous The Spaces Between series, this picks up a little after volume one, with our boys enjoying Argentinian high society. Unfortunately, while the end of the previous instalment hinted at full-blown murder husbandry, it quickly turns out that Will and Hannibal haven’t quite sorted out their feelings to anyone’s satisfaction (you’re shocked, I can tell). Fortunately, we’re pretty much out of slow burn territory here and the idiots manage to get their act (mostly) together just in time for some ghosts to rear their perfectly-coiffed, millionairess heads and throw a spanner in the works. This sequel continues the achingly lovely tone of its predecessor, with romance a-plenty amongst bouts of emotional idiocy and bloodlust. It’s sweet and tender without compromising on the intensity and darkness of our beloved boys and builds their relationship with care and patience, allowing for a believable building of trust and love between them. It is, in other words, a treat to read in every way, so get yourself to ao3 and have at it!

As ever and always, if I’ve miscredited anyone or if there are bad links, please let me know and I’ll correct it ASAP. Happy reading, lovely fannibals!

#fic rec mega post #hannibal fic rec #hannigram fic rec #spacedogs fic rec #rare pairs fic rec #hannibal #hannigram #spacedogs #rare pairs

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tinymixtapes · 6 years

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Feature: Favorite 25 Films of 2018

Once upon a time, Derek Smith wrote: “2017 was a year endured rather than lived.” But all due respect to the past, because here we are creeping into this new 2019 and things are so much better than we thought they’d be! True, the year probably felt like 37 years or whatever removed from Rick Deckard’s squared-off tie and malfunctioning memory. And truth be told, the political crisis unfolding in the gray hallways might seem more honest if it resembled the light-starved, gnarled noir of Blade Runner. At least Schwarzenegger and The Running Man promised that 2019’s only choice would be “hard time or prime time,” even if its presentation of a neon capital, corporate-owned world seemed, you know, subtle. And for all the (dead) kids in cages and bodies bleeding out on street corners here and abroad, Michael Bay and The Island had a perfectly-drooped Buscemi diagnosing our humanist crisis: “I mean, you’re not human. I mean, you’re human, but you’re not real. You’re not a real person, like me.” A lot of people were told they weren’t humans in 2018. This isn’t a writerly evasion or poetic epithet designed to elicit righteous ire/compel you to read another year-end list. Because what else could you call the concentrated attempt by some humans to discourage the freedoms of other humans? Our narrative didn’t turn science-fiction to let us off the hook: these non-humans weren’t clones or replicants or estranged Atlantean denizens returning to claim their kingly right. They just weren’t human enough (or the right kind of human) to matter in the eyes of louder, more powerful humans. All of our past’s proposed images of our worst futures pale in comparison to this denial of basic humanity that we see out our windows. It is unsurprising, then, that cinema, our most volatile cultural mirror, began to show the stretch and strain in its images of our species. But what is surprising is that cinema in 2018 retained nuance and compassion as it mediated the cruelties and depravities of its age. Unlike this slab of prose, movies in 2018 moved beyond mediating good and evil in simple, monolithic terms. They attempted to sketch the boundaries of real freedom in an unjust world (BlaKkKlansman). They investigated, more acutely than ever before, the responsibilities of what it meant to keep (Shirkers) and tell (Madeline’s Madeline) another human’s story (If Beale Street Could Talk), especially in remembrance (Roma). They presented distorted genealogies (Hereditary) and fisheye-lens histories (The Favourite) to track the human body’s motion (Suspiria) in and out of comradeship (Support the Girls) and trauma (Burning). In 2018, we hurled our betrayed humanities up against foreign corpses (Zama), scorched country (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), alien twins (Annihilation), and incongruent voices (Sorry to Bother You). We began to see, in everything, something like a way through the darkness. Why else keep watching the past (The Other Side of the Wind) if not to plot something we’d never imagined before (The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl)? Our moving images in 2018 proposed that real love (Eighth Grade) and genuine care (Lazzaro Felice) could stretch impossibly across time to add up to a life steeped in both nuance and compassion (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?). Our love would not look the same (Leave No Trace) nor could it resound in strictly-feasible tones (Mandy), but we would recognize its absence; we could see that sometimes humanness looks like something we’ve never seen before (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). More than anything, as one derelict theory proposed, “Through the negative you could see the real, inner, demonic quality of the light.” In laying the responsibilities of the filmmaker and artist at the feet of a murderer, The House That Jack Built came perilously close to endorsing our worst demons. Those demons shook and raged and hissed at us, urging us to give in to despair and make a world in their image. How did we let it stand? Thomas Merton was a central figure in a figurative, feral lens for our year, and he wrote that “despair is the absolute extreme of self-love.” To levy our humanity so close to inhumanness, suggesting that our better angels are distortions, is dangerous. To know, as these 25 films know, that there can be nothing without despair until there is love is to actually be human. To look, as we did, through our ruinous year and resist the despairs of all our oppressors and lowest urges, to shout, in image and montage and light and shadow, that this is how I deny you is to attain, beyond our humanity and into the future, a new kind of prayer. –Frank Falisi --- 25 Roma Dir. Alfonso Cuarón [Netflix] Roma was Alfonso Cuarón’s excursion into simplicity, a self-imposed challenge that drew back from his earlier, more extravagant films. Cuarón told his simple allegory in a monochrome treatment, but while wearing multiple hats — he also produced, shot, and edited the film. The choice to go black and white not only focused the elements of filmmaking to its barest essentials, but it also emphasized its nostalgic underpinnings. Though it made use of elaborate staging for its more chaotic events, Roma paradoxically found fascination in the quotidian and the mundane. The film was dedicated to the maid that the Cuarón’s family employed when he was a child — realized as the previously unknown Yalitza Aparicio, who brought an indelible humanity to her role — but the story itself was secondary. It was presented more as a series of tableaus, culminating in a climactic sequence at the beach. Here, Cuarón’s camera lingered, unedited, in a harrowing scene that illustrated Aparicio’s undying devotion to the family and revealed the film’s true heart. –Tristan Kneschke --- 24 Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Dir. Morgan Neville [Focus Features] With no dirt to dig up on his subject, director Morgan Neville tended to accent the blue-tinged notes heard throughout the Neighborhood in his Fred Rogers documentary. The director’s seamless cardigan scene-weaving stitched together instances of cluster chords and doubting puppets into a portrait of vulnerability that reinforced one of Rogers’s core motifs: It takes a person, not a hero, to protect children. Not a pie-in-the-face kind of guy, we watched Fred McFeely Rogers ponder in the tall grass in between changing shoes and tackling hard topics like grief, death, and terrorism. Demonstrations of his honesty, inclusivity, kindness, patience, listening skills, and unconditional love revealed the subject as the archetype for a timeless paternal figure. Although his ministry athwart sensationalism took place in the era of broadcast television, we imagined that any younger generation in the history of the world could connect with and feel empowered by his carefully worded and well-tempered mission. –Rick Weaver --- 23 Leave No Trace Dir. Debra Granik [Bleecker Street] Few directors are as curious about or sensitive to alternative modes of existence as Debra Granik, who followed Winter’s Bone and the documentary Stray Dog with this tale of a father and daughter willfully attempting to live off the grid in the present-day Pacific Northwest. Leave No Trace was quiet and deliberate, but not remotely uneventful: Granik showed Will (Ben Foster) and Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) moving through a handful of makeshift, scrappy, and industrialized communities. With minimal embellishments, Granik made each change of scenery feel at once seismic and utterly authentic. Moreover, she guided her two lead actors through agonizing psychological arcs without a whiff of cliché, as a daughter gradually discovered that her life and well-being will be enriched by community, while her PTSD-afflicted father confronted the fact that he can’t abide by the obligations and niceties of modern civilization. Granik’s film had a Bressonian bleakness, but it was entirely heartfelt and so convincing in its particulars that it couldn’t help but realign our sense of the world. –Christopher Gray --- 22 Support the Girls Dir. Andrew Bujalski [Magnolia Pictures] Your workdays don’t end with you back home ready to decompress; they are your back-home and your decompress. Maybe you slept or something like that (scrolled? drank? had a crisis?), but you aren’t really awake till the first table is seated, and you better leave everything else at the door (lol). Your customers are guests, your wage is nil, and your smile is forced by uninvisible hands. Your coworkers are either No Face or your own flesh and blood, the only ones keeping your head from falling off and bursting into flame at the foot of the heat lamp. They get it! They get you. Or they get the gist, which is about as much of you as you get anyway. Because if you actually stopped to think about… No need to pretend: You hate this place, and you find yourself doing anything for it, for each other, because you all know the conditions are absolutely fucked and fuck that. Your favorite regular is here; you’re in a good mood for some reason. You act certifiable, you scream, you screw your head back on. The POS is down. You’re short. You make it. Your coworker says, “[That manager] can suck my dick.” Or, “I am going to murder this couple.” Or, “Y’all come back now!” You loved her for that. This movie loved her for that, through all of it, and it loved you too. A double whammy: Regina Hall et al. returned the workday to life itself and transformed working class unity into grace (laughter), something we could use. You have nothing to lose. –Pat Beane --- 21 Eighth Grade Dir. Bo Burnham [A24] In an interview with NPR, former YouTube star Bo Burnham said he wanted to make a story about the internet and how it feels to be alive right now. OK, sure, he succeeded in doing that by having 13-year-old Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) create and upload vlog entries on how to best navigate the social anxieties of being a young teen. However, by the end of the film, what this angle really emphasized with great nuance (perhaps unintentionally?) is that children of every generation — regardless of the gap — suffer from the same anxieties, sexual insecurities, and self-blame. Identity has always been a fluid performance; the internet has simply made it more permanent. To star a young girl currently living the same age IRL that she portrays brilliantly in the film is in large part what made Eighth Grade not only one of our favorite films of 2018, but also one of the most genuine coming-of-age films, period. This casting decision made it impossible for Burnham to project his experiences and memories onto the story, which fortunately meant it was not biographical or about nostalgia. Rather, Eighth Grade was simply a present-day story about a complex experience that has always transcended the outlets through which they’ve been mediated. –NB [pagebreak] 20 Suspiria Dir. Luca Guadagnino [Produzioni Atlas Consorziate] In 1980, during Italy’s “years of lead,” Bologna Station, built in neoclassical style during the Fascist era, was bombed by neofascist terrorists — 85 died. Today, despite the coffee-drinking herds pouring through it, the station retains a bleak and melancholy atmosphere. Luca Guadagnino captured something of this in his remake of Suspiria. Set in the German Autumn of 1977 (the release date of the original), the poisonous and paranoid atmosphere of Cold War Berlin, when Leftists turned to violence in the face of failed denazification and a conservative establishment, bubbled in the background. To its cold occult decadence, the film added stylized and unforgettable body horror. The whole built to an over-the-top conclusion, which was perfect both as a nod to the campiness of the original (and the giallo genre) and because Guadagnino’s deft melding of physical and emotional horror was a slow-burn that demanded combustion. It was a wyrd companion piece to surreal works grappling and playing with similar legacies, from Bruce LaBruce’s The Raspberry Reich (a.k.a. The Revolution Is My Boyfriend) to Syberberg’s Hitler: A Film From Germany. The personal was also political: the original was a masterpiece of style and ambiance marred by subtle misogyny, but in Guadagnino’s vision, this became an exploration of the fraught heat and darkness of dynamics between women in their exercise of power and community. Dakota Johnson lacked fire in the belly, as did Thom Yorke’s anaemic soundtrack, but a subplot some thought needless served up the film’s most appalling moment: a sickening portrayal of the pain of lost love regained, then once more ripped away with casual malice. This was more than a memorial suspiria; it was a wholly worthy rebirth of the Mater Suspiriorum. –Rowan Savage --- 19 Lazzaro Felice Dir. Alice Rohrwacher [Netflix] Alice Rohrwacher’s third feature, the Cannes-celebrated Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro), was built on the many tensions it engendered &mdash namely, between a humanistic premise and the layers of dejection it was buried underneath, the timeless aspirations of a fable and a cynically bitter view of modernity, and the rustic realism of its form and the story’s fantastic detours. The film followed the threadline that, like the wolf, men will exploit men in all spaces, times, levels, and situations: A Marquise keeps a group of peasants working for her in near slavery; they in turn abuse and overwork the titular Lazzaro, a young peasant whose innocence and goodness paint him into the archetype of the “holy fool.” He roams through the story in a perplexity recalling the Christ-like dispossessed of classic Italian cinema. His mission on this earth, it would seem, is to prove that even the lowest of the low, the wicked and the perverse, are capable of gestures of kindness. How enduring, truthful, and integral these were to their characters, to the essence of their humanity, was something Lazzaro must discover at his own expense, paying ever higher costs in this beguiling yet disturbingly recognizable modern parable. –jrodriguez6 --- 18 Night Is Short, Walk On Girl Dir. Masaaki Yuasa [Toho] You wake up after a long night out. You aren’t hungover at all — it’s a miracle, truly a miracle. What do you remember from last night? Not names, certainly. Maybe not even places. It’s all like a strange fairytale, one of glowing neon and drinks that tasted better because you didn’t pay for them, of hilarious characters and absurd triumphs. Did that bouncer really let you in, even though you were $9 short of cover? You feel fantastic. This feeling was alive in Night Is Short, Walk On Girl: an insensible, overwhelmingly jubilant, and optimistic perspective on “a night on the town.” Pulling trade tactics from films like Amélie, El Futuro, and A Town Called Panic, the movie was full of humor, bliss, and no pulled punches (friendship punches or not) when it came to devilish winks. With not a single frame lacking in humor or joy, the film left us feeling like hangovers are something we’ve never experienced, like each night is full of mystery and romance, like our next big moment is waiting just around the corner. Perhaps we’ll make this a big weekend — go out on Friday and Saturday? — who knows… –Lijah Fosl --- 17 If Beale Street Could Talk Dir. Barry Jenkins [Annapurna] Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel was perhaps the most aesthetically accomplished and jaw-droppingly beautiful American film in years. It’s difficult to avoid hyperbole or rampant name-checking when confronted with an opening crane shot and a sumptuous autumnal wardrobe straight out of Douglas Sirk, or with a bracingly musical, time-shifting sense of montage that conjured numerous titans of contemporary Asian cinema, or with a swelling score by Nicholas Britell that exquisitely captured the film’s oscillating currents of unabashed romanticism and great melancholy. Despite the film’s sweeping, sexy, earnest depiction of the bond between pregnant teenage shopgirl Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James), a sculptor in jail accused of rape, Jenkins’s adaptation was clear-eyed and anguished about how they have to navigate lives of subjugation, a theme brought to the fore in alternately haunted and agonized performances by Brian Tyree Henry and Regina King. As such, Jenkins remade Baldwin in his image, trying with all his might to conquer fury with love. –Christopher Gray --- 16 Burning Dir. Lee Chang-dong [CGV] Deep under the delicate melodrama of a love triangle, the noir-ish mystery of a disappearing woman, and the moody male rivalry that plays out in its final act, Burning was charged with the same currents that power our defining social divisions: rural against urban, men against women, working class against dubious wealth, connected against isolated. Director Lee Chang-dong’s comeback thriller was a Trojan horse stocked heavy with political anguish, a dense, angular ballet of themes erupting just out of sight under a sensitive character drama that forced three young people of clashing identity and privilege into a pressured environment of overlapping interests and dark secrets. What stood out about Burning was how it probed not these ideological struggles themselves, but the existential uncertainty they inspire, as well as the insidious psychological toll they take on the individual. In all its discomfort and beauty — aided by subtle performances and distinctive cinematography — Burning served as both a careful portrait of a quietly revolutionizing South Korea and an uneasy study of the antagonisms and paranoia gradually tyrannizing the youth of today’s globally tainted age. –Colin Fitzgerald --- 15 Madeline’s Madeline Dir. Josephine Decker [Oscilloscope] From the very start, Madeline, and by extension the audience, was told that performance is not identity, that the emotions an actor renders are borrowed from someone else. This warning was not heeded. We met the eponymous 16-year-old (Helena Howard) as she shuffled through roles: a cat, an actress, a daughter, a sea turtle, an assailant, a pig on the run, a prisoner, a confused young woman of mixed race. Some of these identities played out on the stage of her experimental performance troupe, managed by maternal — and directorial — surrogate Evangeline (Molly Parker), though they inevitably bled through to her “real” life and back onto the stage, forming a tight, indiscernible tangle as this feedback loop began to dominate the production. Driven by the tension between the neurotic, controlling impulses of her mother Regina (Miranda July) and the haphazard psychic excavation spearheaded by Evangeline, the film, cut to the rhythms of a psychological thriller and as improvised as the troupe’s performances, unreeled with disorienting, balletic, colorful, and oftentimes invasive cinematography. Madeline’s Madeline was a complex film of blurred and appropriated identities, one concerned, reflexively (as it is in some sense a retelling of how Decker and Howard came to collaborate and make this very film), with self-authorship, self-ownership, and the power dynamics inherent in representation. “I’m really interested in people who are out of control of their circumstances,” stated Evangeline at a dinner party. But what do we owe these lenders of emotion and what does it mean to tell a story that is not ours? As we move through psychic strata leaving our own fingerprints everywhere, inhabit or direct bodies that look and experience differently than our own, what are our responsibilities? Where is the ethic of storytelling? Of course, no film could satisfactorily answer such questions, but Madeline’s Madeline grappled with them in a dense, dizzying, hyper-expressive, sometimes frustrating, and self-castigating manner that spoke to the immense trust between actor and director. –Cynocephalus --- 14 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman [Sony Pictures Releasing] In an arena that seems to be getting more overstuffed with each passing year, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse surprised us just by being the most fun superhero movie we’ve seen in ages. From the second it revved its engines, Into the Spider-Verse hit a breakneck speed as exhilarating as a web-slinging joyride through the city, its mesmerizing 2D/3D graphics illustrating each thought, sound effect, and surreal set piece with an eye-popping neon panache. Each character was sketched with just the right mix of sympathy and self-awareness, whether it was our immediately relatable hero Miles Morales, the cynical, sweatpant-clad Peter B. Parker, or the wounded, monstrously gargantuan Kingpin. Even down to the music, Into the Spider-Verse kept its pace relentlessly fresh, washing us in waves of Swae Lee and Juice WRLD as we journeyed across alternate Spider-Man histories and dimensions in search of a way to once again save the world from destruction. It all somehow added up to a movie as unexpected and experimental as it was unabashedly pop — a classic, trope-skidding superhero tale that you’ve got to see to believe. –Sam Goldner --- 13 BlacKkKlansman Dir. Spike Lee [Focus Features] In BlacKkKlansman, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) was a man caught between two worlds. Too black to be taken seriously as a police officer, too loyal to his duties as a police officer to be taken seriously as a proponent of Black Power. Naturally, Stallworth did what anyone would do in this situation: become the first black detective in Colorado Springs, infiltrate his local Ku Klux Klan chapter by posing as a disgruntled white supremacist on the phone, enlist his Jewish colleague (Adam Driver) to pose as him at Klan meetings, catfish David Duke himself, and foil a deadly bomb plot. The KKK, as portrayed in this Spike Lee Joint, could be best described as a gang of bumbling idiots. Just literal morons who blow themselves up. If the events of the film weren’t based on a true story, they would seem almost too absurd to be true. As racism today threatens to tear the country apart from the inside, BlacKkKlansman did all it could to call out white supremacists and serve them a modicum of justice. But the film also recognized just how dangerous the ideas of these people can be and how imperative it is to keep fighting to bring them down. –Jeremy Klein --- 12 Annihilation Dir. Alex Garland [Paramount/Netflix] There is a common fundamental misconception that Nirvana is either a place, like Heaven, or a state or period, like Peace. In reality, Nirvana means something like “blowing out” or “extinguishing.” Attaining Nirvana, then, isn’t an attainment at all, because it isn’t a summit or a destination or really even a “thing.” It is not, however, synonymous with Annihilation, but just as Gravity housed symbols that could be appreciated as “Buddhist,” Annihilation beckoned us into life’s terrifying glimmer of impartial consequence so that we could assess our way out of it. In The Shimmer, karma accrued, leaving behind not moral threads, but matter in forms as disparate as flowering corpses and a bear made of screams. Locating Buddhist imagery in film is often a sign of clumsy analysis, but witnessing these women worn by this violence of culmination grapple with their own threads of being was like witnessing a hierophany, a horrifying refraction of sacred DNA in a profane plane. It’s enough of a reminder of why we even started making existential art. Awfulness irrupted through Annihilation in that old-school religious studies sense, because it refracted what many of us associate with being human: self-destruction. And whether or not we could explain what we saw when we faced ourselves in that lighthouse, we left changed in a way that only prayer or film could catalyze. –Jazz Scott --- 11 You Were Never Really Here Dir. Lynne Ramsay [Amazon] Adapting a book by Jonathan Ames, writer/director Lynne Ramsay upends the thriller/character study by making a brilliant film about violence without showing the actual violence onscreen. It was a choice born of necessity — the filmmaker didn’t feel comfortable shooting action sequences — but it was completely within the spirit of this bold and haunting look at a man (Joaquin Phoenix) whose sole gift of violence and pain followed him like a heavy shadow. By focusing more on the consequences of violence that weighed deeply on him as he navigated a path of righteousness, Ramsay depicted a compromised world, shattered long ago by a trauma that reverberated louder with every new transgression. The film was angry, mournful, and frightening, but it also pierced through the oppressive darkness without sugarcoating the ordeal. Propelled by Jonny Greenwood’s incredible score, You Were Never Really Here was a gorgeous movie that waded into bleak territory without feeling like tragedy porn, a beautiful tale — even amongst the grotesque — about the inherent need for salvation that drives us forward. –Neurotic Monkey [pagebreak] 10 Hereditary Dir. Ari Aster [A24] Hereditary, the first feature from writer-director Ari Aster was more than just the spiritual descendant of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and Psycho. It was not just the latest addition to the A24 family of slow-building, well-crafted horror films. Hereditary was about the unavoidable legacies that our families leave us, and for this it bore an uncanny resemblance to the bleak family dramas of Bergman or Haneke. Annie (played by Toni Collette in a career performance) said and did unforgivable things to her son and husband (Alex Wolff and Gabriel Byrne), and we squirmed. First out of angst, then disgust, and finally fear. And after being emotionally worn down with 90 minutes of this, the film fully committed to its supernatural heritage and delivered some of the best frights of the year. We loved it because it was an assured first step from a new director and a further commitment to excellence from an exciting young distribution company. We loved it because if the first two-thirds were painful to watch, then the last third offered us the voyeuristic release of a horror film. But most of all, we loved it because it married the visceral and the cerebral, giving birth to an unholy experience that stuck with us, like a tick. –Jeff Miller --- 09 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Dir. Ethan Coen & Joel Coen [Annapurna] The last two decades have had their share, but 2018 was a proper trifecta of spirited, inventive Westerns. Audiard’s Sister’s Brothers was the bitter pill rendered unexpectedly sweeter; Damsel was a triumphant anti-romance (a nice thematic companion piece to 2015’s Slow West); and this anthology gave us a perfectly-blended fun, dark, and heartbreaking (namely the beautiful, merciless “Meal Ticket” segment) genre classic. The tone shifted wildly, well heralded by the eponymous opening tale (cartoonishly musical and silly, but cleverly undermined with graphic violence and grim meta-commentary). We had our requisite rich characterization native to a Coen Bros. film, with strong turns from Zoe Kazan, Stephen Root (natch), Harry Melling, Grainger (“DOG HOLES!”) Hines, and Chelcie Ross, for a start (Brendan Gleeson almost does “The Unfortunate Rake” as well as Ian McShane, but not quite). But there was also a curious, world-weary current fusing the episodes, one of exhausted sadness and a dread-dodging sort of hindsight. Life and its lore as a turgid tangle we’re a little too anxious to leave behind. A long goodbye to the “the meanness in the used to be.” –Willcoma --- 08 The Other Side of the Wind Dir. Orson Welles [Netflix] For all the excitement that it stirred, there was a fear among cinephiles that Orson Welles’s final film, completed 33 years after his death, wouldn’t live up to the story of its own production. These fears were unfounded. Suffused with moments of staggering brilliance, The Other Side of the Wind was a dense, multivalent, sometimes maddening film, one that we are lucky to have in any form. Much like Henri-George’s Clouzot’s Le Prisonniere (and its ill-fated precursor Inferno), The Other Side of the Wind evidenced a master filmmaker pushing himself in his late period to fully explore the visual representation of aberrant psychology through abstraction, deconstruction, and exaggeration. Both Clouzot and Welles amplified color to impressionistic, oversaturated heights, but whereas Clouzot’s experimentation was primarily formal, Welles upended narrative, creating a mise en abyme that was at once hagiography and self-assassination. Even what was clearly intended as pastiche (Hannaford’s film, also titled The Other Side of the Wind, was essentially the De Düva of Antonioni’s then-recent work) was utterly riveting, with balletic mise-en-scène that presaged and rivaled the best of Brian De Palma and Dario Argento. Most impressive, however, was the juxtaposition of the aggressively stylized film-within-the-film and the faux-vérité surrounding it — Hannaford’s film was all propulsive jump-cuts on action in a self-consciously auteurist mode, while the frame story comprised a messy collage of film stocks, focal lengths, and framing styles meant to suggest a polyphony of perspectives, or perhaps a fracturing of one’s psyche; editor Bob Murawski, working from Welles’s extensive notes and workprint, sutured it all into a kinetic rhythm both jarring and cohesive. This was absolutely essential viewing, an invigorating testament to the medium itself and a reminder of how much further it can still go. –Christopher Bruno --- 07 Shirkers Dir. Sandi Tan [Netflix] Shirkers was, among other things, a portrait of young creativity, folklore, fragile egos, self-discovery, DIY practices, and the cultural impact that a film can have on a country. The documentary told the story of Sandi Tan, a Singaporean teenager who set out to make the country’s first notable road movie in 1992. With the help of the “established” Western director Georges Cardona, a gang of dreamy-eyed college kids put their lives on hold for the film (also named Shrikers) in an attempt to write their country’s film history. However, in the final stages of the process, the footage disappeared with Cardona. What followed was a decades-long search for a rebellious movie that was supposed to blow Singapore wide open, its creator, and the man plagued with an imperialistic obsession for fame. It was a real-life story that could only happen in a movie. –Sam Tornow --- 06 Zama Dir. Lucrecia Martel [Strand Releasing] Look: Don Diego de Zama has come unstitched in time. He stands at the edge of earth and sea. Waves are undertow, proof that the future is unfolding somewhere. But time has ripped itself up and away from him. He turns from the waves and walks up the shore, still in frame. He pauses, walks back, trapped. He is not entitled to languish; his days are spent running ruined bureaucracies. He appeals to a succession of fat governors to be sent away or home or anywhere else. But he is here. He is casually cruel and pathetically hopeful that he will be rendered reverence. He will not be. Lucrecia Martel, the master, adapted the fevered anti-history of Antonio Di Benedetto’s prose into transformative euphoria. Her cinematography was for freeing bodies. Zama didn’t represent colonialism so much as it canceled the notion that belonging has a place anymore. By pinning her hero to the same useless hope as he decayed through the years, Martel created a world of unwavering indigenous bodies and mocking llamas. She papered over Zama like an unmoved fungus, reducing him back to ephemera to be fertilized. She said no to his hopes. The corregidor, the man who can’t be king, remained in frame. –Frank Falisi --- 05 The House That Jack Built Dir. Lars von Trier [IFC] Lars von Trier’s movies are not easy to watch, but past the gruesome violence, the fucked-up interpersonal relationships, and the heady themes, there’s always something there. Case in point: The House That Jack Built, a pitch-black film in which a serial killer explains five “incidents” from his life to a mysterious companion. And unsurprisingly, with its aggressive depictions of the macabre, the film enjoyed about as divisive a public response as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring did at its riotous 1913 premiere. At Cannes, von Trier’s film reportedly moved over 100 people to walk out; yet, when it ended, it was met with thunderous applause and, indeed, a standing ovation from those who remained. Yes, it was shockingly violent, but it was also incredibly funny, and as its protagonists traveled through their Dantean hellscape, they offered profound and unique meditations on art, time, and history. In other words, the film’s brutality was in service of something, not just an end in itself. Today, people are obsessed with talking about how everyone should and should not behave, what people should and should not think and say. But they’re far less interested in examining the pathological reasons why we have those urges to say or do the “wrong” thing in the first place. Some would argue that this is the exact reason art exists, to examine ourselves at a deeper level. And this film asked big questions: Can destruction be art? Can murder? Is depicting something the same as validating it? If you don’t want to subject yourself to this movie, my opinion is that that’s exactly why you should watch it. If you get through it, you may learn something about yourself. I did. Lars von Trier isn’t afraid to channel and complicate humankind’s darkest, most sadistic desires, and that’s a good thing. In fact, isn’t that one of the essential roles of the artist? –Adam Rothbarth --- 04 Mandy Dir. Panos Cosmatos [RLJE] Words like psychedelic, hallucinogenic, revenge, rage, and insane got tossed around liberally by those attempting to summarize Mandy, the sophomore directorial effort by Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow) starring Nicolas Cage in all his nouveau-shamanic glory and then some. But those were understatements. Mandy was a maximalist assault, a new death yarn whose title screen didn’t even arrive until an hour and 15 minutes in, when protagonist Red went hunting for Lysergicenobites and Jesus freaks. Like antagonist Jeremiah Sand, Cosmatos, Cage, cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, and late scorer Jóhann Jóhannsson all weaponized complete sensory overload to mesmerize and capture their audience. But unlike the Mandy character, we could hardly muster a laugh past “Erik Estrada from CHiPs” — we merely watched in wide-eyed, slack-jawed awe at the un(adulte)rated, undefinable phantasmagoria — the bathroom scene, the chainsaw scene. OK, so maybe that wasn’t what Roger Ebert had in mind when he rightly called Nicolas Cage one of the greatest actors of his generation, but then Ebert probably also wouldn’t have imagined the actor spending two nights in his underwear, tied to a fence in a Belgian forest to prep for a scene (apparently, yes, that happened). That’s the point, though. The hype was realer than real. Mandy was a masterpiece beyond what any of us could ever have imagined. –Samuel Diamond --- 03 Sorry to Bother You Dir. Boots Riley [Annapurna] Every day, they take a little bit more. For months, we’ve heard about how Amazon runs its warehouses like sweatshops. A couple weeks ago, it was Facebook selling your private messages. If WorryFree were to step forward tomorrow with a unique, 21st-century approach to living debt-free, would any of us be surprised? For all its detours into the surreal and the absurd, Sorry to Bother You never felt that far removed from the world we inhabit. The questions it asked and dilemmas it presented touched on everything from the changing face of corporate power in the age of tech startups, the challenges of navigating predominantly white spaces for non-whites, and the complicity of individuals in larger systems of oppression. Moving through the world today is an act of gliding from one outrage to the next, and Riley shares our outrage, but he coupled it here with a sense of playfulness and hope that rendered Sorry to Bother You one of the most important films of 2018. –Joe Hemmerling --- 02 The Favourite Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos [Fox Searchlight] Early on, Duchess Sarah admonished her lover, Queen Anne, that love has its limits — to which the queen replied, “Well it shouldn’t.” The story proceeded through a delicious series of political and bedroom maneuvers to prove the queen utterly and tragically wrong. Yorgos Lanthimos has always taken a perverse glee in sticking his movie knife into the banal, received wisdom of Western right-thinking. His trajectory from Dogtooth forward had increasingly tightened the thumbscrews on his audience; The Killing of a Sacred Deer was as muscle-bound and torturous to watch as it was incisive. But The Favourite turned that sensibility inside out, exploding with bright and colorful production design, brilliantly mining 18th-century courtly fashions for visual comedy. Rouged, powdered, and highly wiggy men ponced about like overbred poodles through all the absurd ornamentation, as a raging battle of wills played out among the film’s three towering female protagonists. The script was nastier than Dynasty and invented a patois of 18th-century Queen’s English and contemporary colloquialisms that somehow felt organic, but it had a Shakespearean heft at its core that played out in a perfectly odd and dissonant finale. –Water --- 01 First Reformed Dir. Paul Schrader [A24] 2018 was filled with days when hopping from one social media platform or news network to the next resembled a modern-day Stations of the Cross, with each subsequent click offering something that was somehow more terrifying, depressing, and enraging than the last. With the massive sprawl of readily available information, staying informed was more effortless than ever, yet it could easily, almost imperceptibly, transform from a desire to remain dutifully cognizant of our ever-shifting global landscape into a form of unabated and isolating self-flagellation. In Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, it was this hyper-awareness of earthly perils that plagued Michael (Philip Ettinger), a young environmental activist who believed it immoral for his pregnant wife Mary (Amanda Seyfried) to bring a child into this crumbling world, when he desperately met with Ethan Hawke’s already jaded, world-weary Reverend Toller for counsel. Despite telltale signs of suicidal thinking, Toller found their discussion not troubling, but “invigorating.” And when Michael blew off his head with a shotgun, the good reverend reacted not with sorrow or regret, but by taking on Michael’s all-too-real concerns of potential global disaster, bearing them like a cross upon his shoulders as he confronted the duplicitous evils that have infiltrated both his tiny, sparsely attended church and the superchurch that funds the relic he was keeping alive after 250 years. In this year’s cinema, there was perhaps no greater metaphor for the failure of American institutions to serve the public in any meaningful way (as many have slowly been reduced to thinly veiled money-laundering schemes for the wealthy) than the fact that Toller was stuck in a historically famous church with a broken organ, forced to hawk cheap souvenirs merely to keep the doors open. First Reformed deftly tackled this notion of the individual vs. implacable global forces, with an acute focus on the unsettling merging of ecclesiastical forces with those of an unbridled and amoral capitalist system. Schrader’s ascetic vision, informed most explicitly by Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, and Yasujiro Ozu, offered the perfect aesthetic framework through which traditional systems of belief could collide haphazardly with the ruthlessly unfeeling, profit-hungry, hyper-modern business models that dominate both corporate and institutional cultures. Schrader’s camera was almost exclusively immobile, yet this stillness presented a deeply perceptive gaze and compositions as stark as the cold New England winter. It was a vision of the world as unwavering as that of Toller, who lived a life virtually sealed off from the real world, indulging himself with the sort of small rituals we all tend to hold onto to provide a semblance of order and meaning in an increasingly chaotic world. But for all of Toller’s pain (often self-inflicted), First Reformed offered a vision of grace and tenderness in the heavily symbolic Mary, who prevented the film from tipping into the complete and utter despair that Toller found himself in. In one of the year’s most remarkable sequences, Mary arrived at Toller’s office and together performed a ritual that she often did with her now-deceased husband. As she laid on top of the priest, making as much body-to-body contact as possible and matching his breathing patterns, the two achieved a temporary sense of communal transcendence, slowly rising from the floor as they began to travel over vast mountains and beautiful oceanside vistas. But Toller’s thoughts couldn’t remain fixed on utopic ideals for long before visions of city life and landfills of untold sizes took over. Such incessant and uneasy wavering between hope and despair, sensuality and violence, love and rage, faith in the future and the fatalistic acceptance of our environment’s demise filled First Reformed, which stands as the most eloquent yet soul-shattering microcosm of the world that we saw all year. –Derek Smith http://j.mp/2H7Z1Nd

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