#but i’ve been using the prologues as a way to challenge myself and get myself acquainted with different ways of writing

[daeyumi]

Cycle of the Stars: Prologue II

https://archiveofourown.org/works/60104758/chapters/158660371

Prologue II

Ipseity

***

23rd day of Rising Sun

It happened again today. That uneasiness, a looming duress; like thunderheads come at last to devour the hungry sky. A catalyst. It seems a portent of things to come. I feel it when I walk the streets of the town, a grim wind between the crowds. Not in their faces or in the busy markets, vibrant as always. But I feel it all the same.

Reports are the same as ever. Monsters to the west, far across the sands; dispatched by the party who brought the news. An unconcerning pattern. Our people are strong, we carry the wind and the sky in our swords.

All is well.

And yet….

Current emotions: apprehension, stability, resilience

24th day of Rising Sun

I passed by her effigy. I didn’t intend to, lost in thought and wandering the back streets of my city, away from my pretensions and the relentless eyes of its denizens. I’ve walked these streets so many times, day by day over the years, the markets, the inn, the homes of my people. Our lives.

I know them like the tracks on the back of my hand, each line a story, an introspection, a defiance. I do not walk the path that leads to her. Always taking alternate routes- a lifetime of avoidance, of cowardice; a king hiding like a rat from the burning glare of a sun that was never meant for me.

And yet I saw her. That abhorrent goddess. Weathered stone worn smooth by the ardent consecration of many hands; an immutable effigy to match its subject. She leers down at me from her hallowed alcove; her cold eyes watching me, freezing me, judging me. Using me. She would use me if she could, as she has so many of my predecessors. I reject their fate, as I should have rejected their path and tread another.

Sometimes I think I should have chosen a different name, far removed from this accursed title and its implications. But the associations persist, groundless; and so I remain.

Current emotions: defiance, wistfulness, steadfast rejection

25th day of Rising Sun

I keep running it over again in my mind. Did I feel this way before? Yesterday? This morning? There’s no evidence. My records show the same; the persistence of my resolve unequivocal in these pages.

I feel they’re plotting against me. The goddesses.

Every movement I make, I suspect interference of a higher power. A puppet on divine strings, a doll tossed to the callous earth and left to rot amongst the refuse, swallowed by avarice and the fetters of eons spent in limbo.

I wonder if she smiles down at us as we fight and kill and die in her name like playthings.

I will wander no further down this path tonight; I have other matters to occupy my mind.

Current emotions: introspection, suspicion, anticipation

26th day of Rising Sun

The merchants whisper of strange disappearances across the sand, some travelers claiming to have lost contact with inhabitants of the far dunes.

Swallowed to the earth without a trace.

These allegations are unsubstantiated at best; yet still I am forced to consider the implications of an unknown actor upon my lands.

Current emotions: scrutiny, quietude, steadiness

27th day of Rising Sun

Another skirmish broke out on the northeastern border with Hyrule. None of our own were lost, yet I cannot but suspect that larger pieces are in motion. For today, I remain grateful that all my warriors have returned to me.

Current emotions: peace, requital, suspicion

28th day of Rising Sun

I couldn’t sleep last night. My dreams were filled with faces; features scratched out and incomprehensible, looking down on me from a formless haze of revelation. So many in their number that a thousand lifetimes could not count them, and yet so few that they seemed only One. Flaying the skin from my bones with their judgment until nothing remained of me but the crest upon my right hand, tattered skin peeling back from the bone and shredding, fragmenting, returning to the sand in all corners of the world; scars releasing their hold on their captive and fleeing to the edges of my vision, absolved by the light in the piercing eyes above. And still those etched triangles remained. I felt my eyes recede into sand in the wind as I woke, my consciousness ebbing to the void at the same time it returned to me in wakefulness.

And yet nothing disturbs us in my waking hours.

Current emotions: foreboding, apprehension, resistance

29th day of Rising Sun

They say a Hero has appeared. They say he heralds a great darkness, the misfortune only endowed upon those forced to the wrong side of fate. The Hero’s rise has only ever spelled desolation for us. It’s the same damned prophecy I’ve been running from my whole life. The Princess, the Hero, and the sinistrous man held fast by the thrall of the dominance forced upon him by birthright.

I see my deepest fears laid to light before me. Strung out along my path like corpses wrung by the neck, withered husks prefacing a descent to erasure. They beckon me forth with voices of autonomy and empty promises.

Is there any other recourse to be taken than to wait? For if I make a move now, I throw myself willingly down the same declivity of actions as all those who came before, abandoning my will to providence and to the whims of the curse upon my flesh.

Current emotions: unease, disgust, rejection

30th day of Rising Sun

Hyrule wants war with us. They won’t state as much, but I see it in their eyes; the way they look at us, at me. Blame.

The envoy arrived this morning with an air of finality. Only a handful of Hylians; ambassadors and their guards. That woman striding brazenly at their helm. That Gerudo-turned-traitor, come to accuse us; burying the intent of Hyrule’s words beneath pleasantries and clarifications. Hiding behind the swords and shields of a so-called honor guard.

Their precaution is telling enough. And their adjurations when we spoke has only strengthened my conviction.

I spell it plainly here, so my future self can recall these terms without influence or bias- above all else, I must know my own thoughts. They suspect us for the monster attacks that threaten their kingdom; they claim the border skirmishes are waged in self-defense, citing raids on the settlements at the fringes of Hyrule. For disappearances and deaths. Brutality.

I demanded proof. They had nothing to show. Only discarded shards of bone, warped beyond recognition. A splintered, massive claw, serrated at its edge; holes driven through the carapace as if awaiting new growth from within. The tip of a weathered blade, blood rusted upon its surface. Nothing but refuse and remnants and blame. Blame for the past. Blame for the future. Blame for the unknown and the secret and the goddess-scorned and the false. They left in a stone-faced resolve, disappearing in the haze of heat across the sun-smeared dunes.

They’ve said nothing about the whispers of the hero. Is it ignorance, or subterfuge? And what does it say about my own state that I am unable to discern between the two?

I ill wish for bloodshed, but I will do what is necessary. Always.

Current emotions: tension, regret, unease

31st day of Rising Sun

I’ve begun to wonder if I’m overthinking this.

Perhaps what I sense is merely a facet of the larger scope. If the enmity I perceived was instead representative of a more tangible threat. I’ve had time to reflect upon the events of the past few days; and now having a clear sense of Hyrule’s intent, I fear the threat of men over formless cosmic interference. War. Or perhaps she has once again played me for a fool.

And when my senses fail me, I can trust nothing more than my own writings.

Current emotions: doubt, intrigue, contemplation

1st day of Zenith

I feel once more a fell wind upon our city. The masses pray in earnest to their delusory goddess; beseeching salvation from a burden which should never have been theirs to bear. I do not begrudge them their faith, though I wished they had chosen a better target for their prayers.

Current emotions: contempt, rejection, stability

2nd day of Zenith

Nāori brought the report today. One of our scouting parties did not return from their sortie; a routine patrol to the southwestern border. They were expected back at dusk two days past; a search party already dispatched to their aid. This development... it weighs heavily on my mind. I wait until the morrow, but no further.

Current emotions: impatience, unease, worry

3rd day of Zenith

Trouble. A giant pit in the sands. My soldiers are missing. Glass sphere. Vast abyss. I will write more as time allows.

Current emotions: anxiety, resolve, anger

4th day of Zenith

I found them.

I set out yesterday at dusk, after one of my soldiers returned bearing news that their scouting party had been swallowed by the desert. She cited a massive pit in the wasteland like a giant abyss; it opened up suddenly in a in a flash of searing cold, rending a hole in the dunes. Isa is her name. She claimed herself the sole survivor, witness to the desecration. I have no reason to distrust her, though I am forced to consider the possibility that she is an agent of a higher power, sent to lure me away. I go forward regardless. I will not risk the safety of my people to send another.

I tread the long path to the southwest, to the cruel corners of the desert, following Isa’s footprints until the sand reclaimed them; tracking my soldiers by the moon and stars alone. Out to the far reaches of the kingdom, away from the border with Hyrule.

I saw it there.

A gaping fissure in the earth; a compressed sphere of sand above, its surface glassy and dark as if burnt by the sun, forging a black eclipse in the arid sky. It cast an ominous presence above me. I descended along the cliffs in the midday sun, finding rest along the shallow crevasses in the sun-baked earth; seeing no one, hearing nothing. Only the wind howling rough across the entrance to the abyss. The further I plunged, the more the cracks in the walls opened up, pushing deeper into the earth like the seamstress’s needle on coarse cloth. I found the entrance to the cavern far below; a tunnel rough-hewn but steady, unnatural.

I beheld the first signs of despair upon that threshold.

Empty eyes. Twisted, broken limbs. Once familiar faces contorted into mockeries of amity. Blood on their bodies and the floor and the walls and the ceiling; glittering rubies dyed crimson with the sunset draining from the sky, leeching the color from ashen skin. The final nightfall before the end.

Rhine. Luka. Ryza. Fyrani. Palu. Osa.

Their bodies haven’t even started to decay yet. Maybe it would be easier if they had. Perhaps then, they would not be so easily recognizable. That I would wish for the desecration of those I should have mourned…. The cycle begins anew like violence welling up beneath my skin.

I never want to forget this feeling. Numbness; ineptitude; guttural, sickening, twisted fury. I dared not move for fear that I would act upon my impulses. I refuse to allow her a way in.

I will not become her tool.

…

The silence has afforded me the time to write, but little else. I wish it were not so. I sit with them still, one final vigil in the gloam.

It is all I can offer them now, ill solace that it is; this and the promise of vengeance with every breath I take.

It is not enough.

It will never be enough.

Current emotions: wrath stability, perseverance, vengeance

—NO—

preservation

***

I cannot sleep.

I remember the carnage on the sands. Standing amid the corpses of a dozen grown men. A child. The feeling of the spear haft in my grip, battle hardened and slick with blood and sweat, sticking between the crevasses of the treated wood and freezing my hands in place. And I remember Sumiira’s eyes. Holding me, pleading. Not for her life, but for mine. She was wrong. Unseeing; the vitality in them extinguished by the ring of persecution laid lifeless at my feet. And all I could think about was what I could tell our mother. Feeling even then that I had already fallen victim to the curse of my forebears.

Enough.

If I have time to write, I have time to search.

Tonight I will return my soldiers’ remains to the desert, and press forward into the hungry earth. There are still more bodies unaccounted for.

5th day of Zenith

I am running out of time. I swept the catacombs from the early hours of the morning til the sun disappeared once more from the tenuous horizon, dripping light from the edges of the hollow eclipse hanging over me. Unable to sleep, unable to rest.

These tunnels reek of her influence. “Divine intervention”. It seeps into the floors and the walls and the air, clawing it’s way into my throat, infecting me from within. I hear voices calling in the darkness but I dare not open my mouth to respond, for fear that she will use that ingress against me.

I make haste to the depths of the labyrinth now, wondering if I lead myself to the precipice of my demise.

Current emotions: unease, impetus, melancholy

6th day of Zenith

There are other corpses still, in the tunnels. I passed ever more in my descent: those unfamiliar to me in their garments and features. And some of our own. Rotted flesh flayed beyond recognition. The stench settled heavy around me as my footfalls broke the requiem to sully the tainted ground beneath me. Alone, I walked the winding crevasses beneath the sands; alone I searched in vain for the last of the unaccounted for.

I heard them, first, but suspected another trick of the fetid air. Their silhouettes came into focus as I rounded a corner in the catacombs, stone-still and broken. But the bodies that crouched amid the blood and rubble still drew breath— their eyes desperate and wary, reflecting back the firelight of my torch. Five living in total. Makure cradled her sister’s limp body in her arms. All of them bore wounds. Even so, knowing that they yet lived strengthened my resolve and justified my quest; I was more relieved to find them than anyone may ever know.

I forged on.

I left the survivors but long enough to confirm the passing of the final two missing women; laid cold and solitary at the back of a dead-end passage. Time spared no kindness for us this day. I honor the dead by reconciling the living.

We returned through the winding paths of the chasm, ascending; emerging once more to the surface under the watchful reign of hardened glass, sun piercing the sky around its edge. I brought my warriors home. Delivered them hence to their families and their lives, carrying the wounded on my back and the dead in my heart. Yet still I feel the weight of an imminent future upon us. Tonight, I ordered the southwestern dunes closed off. I haven’t the numbers to investigate this anomaly further; and my own attention needs be turned to preparations for the inevitable conflict ahead of us.

I feel her eyes on me still; scorching my back in the candor of the sun, binding my hands and committing my mind to preclusion.

This is not the end.

Current emotions: foreboding, resolve, resistance

[Exerpts from the diary of Ganondorf, 71st King of the Gerudo.]

[hopefulromances]

Long Time Coming I Chapter 14 I Left My Heart in Amsterdam

Summary: Being hired as the first female assistant coach in the league was a challenge of it itself. Being a football prodigy and University Football Legend was easy enough. Coaching Jamie Tartt was a challenge all on its own.

Chapter Summary: The team goes to Amsterdam

Word Count: 3.4k

Warning: Angst! But not a lot. But def some!

A/N: Thought about gatekeeping this one but I didn't want to. Lmk what you think!

Prologue One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve 13

I’d been thinking about Jamie’s request non-stop since he’d asked me. He hadn’t brought it up again, but I could tell he was thinking about it. It wasn’t a bad idea entirely and I knew it had to happen at some point, but I truly didn’t want to let the world know that side of Jamie. The side he only showed me. Like the side that distracted me while I was packing to go to Amsterdam.

            “Jamieee,” I whined as he held onto my waist and kissed my neck. “I have to finish this.”

            “Finish it later,” he murmured against my neck. He his hands had long since made their way under my shirt, knowing how sensitive the skin on my lower stomach was. “I’ve missed you.”

Since his training with Roy, we hadn’t been able to spend as much time together and Jamie was needy. Not necessarily for sexual attention but just attention from me. Not that I was one to deny attention to Jamie. I set another shirt in my bag and zipped it closed. I let myself lean my neck to the side, freeing up more room for Jamie to kiss.

            “There we go, baby,” He growled, pulling me down onto the bed. “Let me just kiss you.” I felt goosebumps rise all over my skin at his words. He really had a way of making me into puddy in his hands. He kissed up my neck to my jaw. “Just think, after we win in Amsterdam, I could come over to the sidelines and kiss you just like this.” I stilled in his grasp, and he noticed. “Babe, you alright?”

I wiggled out of his arms and stood back up, wiping my hands on my pants. “Yeah, fine.”

            “Is this about what I said the other day?” Jamie moaned, propping himself up on his elbows.

            “No, no it’s not.”

            “Well, it kinda seems like it is.”

            “Jamie, don’t be stupid.” I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. I saw the teasing his eyes fade, and he let himself fall back into the bed. “I just… I’m sorry.” I sat down on the bed. “I want to tell people, I really do… I just… I’m scared.”

Jamie sat up and moved to sit next to me. “I get it… well, no I don’t but I don’t want you to be scared about anything in our relationship.”

I looked over at him, the ghost of a smile coming over my face. “Since when did you get so wise.”

            “I’ve always been wise, you just haven’t been paying attention,” he said, wrapping his arms around me again. “Tell me why you’re afraid.”

I played with his hoodie strings, leaning my head back onto his shoulder. “I just don’t want people to look at me differently. Look at us differently.”

            “Why would they do that?” Jamie asked.

            “Well, because I’m me and… you’re you and… we just don’t normally click, I suppose. And maybe people will judge me or you because of me,” I told him, tugging at the hoodie.

Jamie grumbled something under his breath before sliding his hoodie off and tugging it over my head.

            “Does it matter?” He checked as he helped me poke my head through the top of the hoodie.

            “Yeah… I mean… a bit a guess,” I wrapped my arms around myself. “Can’t we just stay hidden forever.”

Jamie didn’t answer. He just chewed his cheek as I stared at him. “But we can’t actually, right? Like you’ll want to eventually?”

            “I mean... yeah, I suppose so,” I answered.

            “And I know… that I really made a bad reputation for meself but I’m workin’ on bein’ better, you know that right?” Jamie looked at his hands as he talked to me.

I realized suddenly that he thought I was ashamed of him. Of being with him. It made my heart sink to think of him being insecure about his place in our relationship. As if he wasn’t the fittest person in the league. As if he wasn’t the most desired person in the whole of the UK.

            “Jamie, no, no, that’s not at all what I mean.” I turned so I could take his face in my hands. “You have nothing you need to do. It’s not you, I promise.”

He gave me a half-hearted smile, sucking his lip into his mouth. “I should probably go.”

            “Oh… okay,” I responded.

            “But I’ll see you tomorrow? On the bus, yeah?” He slid off the bed and headed towards the door. I nodded my head, feeling the situation falling out of my grasp.

            “Yeah… I’ll see you,” I called after him. He turned in the doorway, looking back at me on the bed, still in his hoodie. I tried to read his expression but found myself failing. He nodded at me, hitting the doorframe and then leaving.

I squeezed my eyes shut, hitting myself on the head. “Fuck, you idiot.”

I fell back onto the bed, shoving the butt of my hands into my eyes. Why couldn’t I let good things happen to me. Jamie was perfect. Perfect for me. But I seemed determined to drive him away. Why couldn’t I just get over myself and shout to the world that I loved Jamie Tartt and that Jamie Tartt loved me. Maybe there was some part of me, however small, that didn’t believe that he loved me. I mean how could he?

The game in Amsterdam was a mess. We lost 5-0 in a friendly. A fucking friendly. It didn’t help that Jamie wasn’t even acknowledging me. When I arrived on the bus the day before, he didn’t even look at me when I walked past him. It felt cold and I hated it. I was really in my feels as we loaded the bus after the game, everyone feeling low. I sat in the back of the bus, staring at out the window.

            “Hey, fellas,” Ted got everyone’s attention at the front of the bus. “I’m about to say three words no coach ever says unless he dang well means it.”

            “You’re all shit,” Colin offered.

            “No.”

            “Knowledge is power?” Sam tried.

            “True! But no.”

            “Live, laugh, love?” Bumbercatch guessed.

            “Eh! No,” Ted shut down. “The correct answer is ‘no curfew tonight’.” I sat up straighter at that. It seemed to get everyone else’s attention as well as the whole bus seemed to buzz. “That’s right. I don’t wanna see your pretty faces until we get back on this bus at what time, Coach?”

            “10:00am, baby!” Beard called out.

            “You heard the man. 10:00am.”

My mind was racing. No curfew. Maybe Jamie and I could talk, go on a proper date, figure out the hump we were going through right now. Maybe we could come out strong than be-

            “NOT FOR YOU, TARTT!” Roy shouted from behind me making me jump.

I looked back at Roy, silently killing him with my mind. Jamie seemed just as disappointed as me.

            “Eh?” Jamie cried from his seat in front of me.

Roy got up and approached Jamie. “Let’s go.”

            “You serious?” Jamie frowned, his lips pouting.

            “You’re not on fucking holiday from training,” Roy barked, unmoving.

            “What about my stuff?” Jamie protested, holding up his bag.

Roy ripped it from his hand and threw it at Will. “Throw this away, please. Let’s go!”

And all I could do was watch helplessly as Jamie got up and made his way off the bus. Just before he got off the bus, he met my eyes. I plead with him in my mind, begging him not to go. To wait. But he just sends me an emotionless smirk before disappearing off the bus.

I was on my own. Rebecca had gone off on a solo adventure, Keely was off with her boss turned girlfriend, and Jamie was… running around Amsterdam with an angry coach. I could join the boys and go on whatever adventure they were planning but when I walked downstairs, they seemed wrapped up in some stupid argument about what to do. Knowing them, they’d never end up leaving the hotel the whole night.

On my way out I asked the concierge for his recommendations on what to do in Amsterdam. He of course laughed at me and handed me brochure. It was packed full of music and museums, boat tours, all of which sounded lovely and I found a small art museum to make my way to.

Navigating Amsterdam, however, proved much harder than expected. Even harder when the only thing on my mind was Jamie fucking Tartt. Thinking about what he was doing in this exact moment. Where was Roy taking him? What were they doing? What was he thinking? Were we. Really heading towards the end? I missed him.

I came to the stop on a bridge and loked over the river. The sun was creating a river of sparkles as people greeted their loved ones after a long day. Women kissing on the sidewalk, a boy wrapping his arm around his girlfriend for the first time. The love the light shared as the sun created a purple haze throughout the town.

This is what Jamie wanted. He wasn’t thinking about the pulic or the press. He was thinking about just being able to be with me all of the time. Not that I didn’t crave being with him all the time. I thought back to our first interactions when he was suck a dick to me. I would never have guessed him becoming the object of my attraction and the sole proprietor of my thoughts.

There was a lot going on as of recently. The league had really put us through the ringer this season. From Zava coming and going to playing against West Ham in that crazy match, being put up against Matt again. It was bringing up a lot of bad memories and feelings which of course didn’t help my situation with Jamie. Jamie was nothing like Matt, nothing. But there was something else lingering in the back of my mind during all of this.

If I closed my eyes, I could feel it, hear it, see it. The crowd calling my name, the turf under my cleats, the opposing team running towards me. Playing football. Why had that popped back up in my mind. That was a dream I’d given up a long time ago. But had I really given it up? Or was it just put aside. If I had the opportunity to do it again, would I? I wasn’t sure.

What I was sure of was the fact that, no matter what, Jamie would support me. He’d encourage me, even, to go back to playing football. But where would I go? No professional team would sign me now, years after my prime. There was nowhere I could go. If only Jamie was here.

I didn’t know when I’d started walking again but when I came out of my thoughts, it was dark and I was in some back ally of Amsterdam. I looked around now, looking for any familiarity in where I was.

            “Oh, fuck me,” I cursed, under my breath.

            “You look lost, dear.” An elderly woman sat across from an older man called over to me.

The couple smiled at me, welcoming me into their presence. I sent her a grateful look and pulled out my pamphlet.

            “Yeah, I think I’ve lost my way, actually,” I say coming over to show her where I was trying to go.

            “Oh, that’s not what I meant,” she held up her hand to stop me showing her the pamphlet. I furrowed my eyebrows. “I mean you look lost in here.” She pointed towards my chest. My mouth opened slightly as I realized what she meant. Was she a witch? “You’re hiding from someone.”

…

Jamie didn’t expect to be riding bikes with Roy Kent at 2 o’clock in the morning in search of a windmill but here he was. Riding along in silence with Roy Kent on the way to find a fucking windmill. Nor did he expect to open up to Roy about his father and his past with Amsterdam. But he had. He’d told him all of it. Stuff he hadn’t thought about in years.

He was enjoying the silence but at the same time, there was still that nagging feeling he was having in the back of my mind. (Y/N) was somewhere in the city doing who knows what with who knows who. He hated the way that he’d left things between the two of you but he was just so confused. What had he done wrong?

She’d assured him that as the season got started that they’d go public. But here we were, middle of the season, and things hadn’t changed.

            “Roy… can I ask you something about (Y/N)?” he mustered the question out. Roy let out a long, deep, guttural groan. “What are you doin’? Are you finally dyin’”

            “You can ask me but who knows if I’ll answer,” He responded once he was done. “The less I know about your secret relationship the better.”

Jamie scoffed, squeezing his hands on the handles of his bike. “She wants to keep us a secret still but I… I don’t know why.”

Roy was silent for a second. “If there’s one thing, we both know about (Y/N) (L/), is that she’s not as brave as she looks.” It was a simple statement, but Jamie seemed to understand.

            “I just… I think I really love her, and I want to be able to tell people,” Jamie said, sincerely.

            “Did you tell her that?” Roy questioned.

            “That I want to tell people?” Jamie asked.

            “No, that you fucking love her!” Roy grunted, rolling his eyes. “Like really told her. Cause if you don’t, you might lose her.”

Roy seemed sentimental in that aspect. Jamie wasn’t sure of everything that lead to his breakup with Keeley, but he knew that this night was in part due to that relationship. Jamie thought back to the bedroom the other night. He hadn’t even side ‘I love you’ as he left. After everything they’d been through together, he needed her to know just how much she meant to him.

…

I didn’t expect to be sitting outside a café with two strange elderly Dutch people recounting my entire relationship with Jamie like it was some fanfiction someone wrote but here I was.

            “And the last time we spent time together… he brought it up again and I just… I can’t do it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I finished.

            “Heavens! What a story the two of you have,” The woman, Maud, exclaimed. “Why Lukas and I met at a bar and had sex that very night.”

            “Wow, you’re very open.”

            “Yes, Maud had a great pair of breasts, she still does,” Lukas commented, nodding along.

            “But we’re not here to talk about us,” Maud waved him off, turning back to me. “When you think of this boy… what a was it? Jamie?”

            “Yeah?”

            “When you think of Jamie… what do you think of?” She asked me.

I took a moment and closed my eyes. There he was, shining on the field playing the game we both loved so much.

            “I think of… football,” I stated, keeping my eyes closed.

I thought of the first time we met, when he barely looked at me. I thought of the night with the ghosts, where he was so happy with us.

            “I think of boots, and the smell of smoke. Not like cigarette smoke, like oaky smoke.”

I thought of the feeling I felt when I found out Jamie had been sent away. The mixture of disappointment and something else… loss. I thought of then learning he would be returning. The mixture of anger and resentment I held towards him mixed with the hopefulness of returning to that night. I thought of us becoming friends. The ticket he’d shown me.

            “I think of history and anger but also… an understanding.”

I thought of the realization that I liked him. His cocky smile and arrogant behavior on the pitch that turned me on waaay too much. But somehow, he managed to back up his cocky attitude every single time. I thought of the funeral and hearing his confession to Keeley. The pit of despair it sent me down when I thought he didn’t like me.

            “I think of friendship and heat, something he makes me feel like no one else can.”

But what I think of the most is the kiss on the field after being promoted. The electricity, the lightening, the passion that had somehow sustained itself through the months of the off season. The idea that I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did.

            “I think of… electricity, and love and I think of… home.” I finally opened my eyes, realizing how watery they were. “I think of home.”

The couple exchanged a glance. “If this is your home, the person who makes you think all these things, then why are you afraid to show people?”

I wiped a tear that rolled down my face before I answered. “Because what if things change? Or what if I lose him? I’m just so afraid of what people will say.”

Maud took my head, squeezing it comfortingly. “That’s the thing about love. It’s really scary. But the good thing about it is that you face the scary part with the person you love.”

            “People are going to say what they say, no matter what,” Lukas chimed in. “But who cares what they say, as long as you are happy and in love!”

I bit my lip, my mind racing. I thought through all of the things that had been scaring me recently. Matt, the team, losing, Zava, Jamie. All of it terrified me beyond reason. But I suppose that was a good thing. I had so much to lose. A family, a home, people who counted on me like I counted on them. Is there anywhere better you could be in life. And Jamie. Sweet Jamie. I couldn’t lose him.

I looked at the couple again. “Thank you. Thank you both so much.” I scooted back from the table needing to get back to the hotel at once so I could wait for Jamie. “You’ve been a great help!”

I stared to run off but quickly back pedaled. “I’m sorry but can you actually tell me where I am?”

…

Jamie never returned to the hotel that night. I ended up boarding the bus with Ted before everyone else arrived. He seemed deep in thought in whatever he was scribbling in his notebook. I kept trying to look but he assured me whatever it was would come to fruition soon enough.

Eventually the boys started trickling back onto the bus as well. They all looked happy and well rested. Something to do with a pillow fight I’d apparently missed. That I would get them back on. But soon everyone was on the bus except for Roy and Jamie. I couldn’t help but feel worried. What if something had happened? What if they were lying in a ditch somewhere? What if…

Just as I was spiraling, Jamie and Roy came rolling around the corner on a shared bike. Not a tandem bike. Roy was clutching on to Jamie’s waist as they shared a single bike. Everyone cheered when they saw them, and I could help the laugh that escaped my lips. It was just so comical to see.

            “You lovely people!” Jamie shouted, ringing the bell loudly.

Roy huffed and jumped off the bike, trekking onto the bus. “Don’t fucking ask.”

            “We saw a windmill!” Jamie exclaimed excitedly as he ran up the steps.

When I saw him, my body moved without me really telling it to. I got up out of my seat and started down the narrow aisle towards him. He was celebrating with the lads, giving out high fives, when I met him in the middle. We stared at each other for a second before both of us spoke at the same time.

            “I love you.”

No one else seemed to hear the hushed words but us. I let out a breath and smiled at him.

            “Jamie?”

            “Yeah?”

            “Kiss me.”

He looked taken aback, looking around at the crowded bus. “Right now?”

            “Yes.”

He smiled, reaching up to take my face in his hands. “Are you sure?”

I nodded, looking between his beautiful, stormy gray eyes. “Absolutely.”

And that was all he needed to pull me into him and slam his lips against mine. That was something the team definitely noticed. Another round of cheering, whistles, and wolf calls came from the team around us as hands slapped me and Jamie on the shoulder.

He laughed loudly, pulling me into his chest as he smiled at his team. I smiled too, looking around at the bus. At my family. At my home. There was still a lot of football left to play but right now, leaving Amsterdam, I was sure we could face it together.

Taglist: @heletsmelovehim @higherthanheroes @ajax-petropolus-wife @oxxolovemelikeyoudooxxo @optimisticsandwichgladiator @kno-way-home @sleepy-time @wigglegiggle @skewedcherries @respondingtoshowerthoughts-blog @snubug @rana030 @ems-alexandra @jaymum @sokkigarden

[mocha-tapioca]

spoilers for drdt beyond the prologue utc

funniest plot twist guys actually wouldn’t it be funny if teruko was actually the rival this whole time. like if david (the guy we all collectively love and hate atp) was actually the protagonist because he still clings onto the hope that there is still some good in this world while teruko has all but given up on it because nothing good has ever come out of hoping for her. like what if this is david’s world and we’re all just living in it

okay i typed this all out for fun n i was gonna say goodnight but now that im like. writing this out. wait lowkey why is this clicking a little. something something teruko “i keep losing everything i love so i have no choice but to slowly rot in my own despair while shielding myself from letting things get worse for me. but i’m still alive anyway so i’ll survive quietly” tawaki vs. david “there is something (maybe even someone) beyond this sadistic game show that allows me to cling onto hope despite it all, and if that means everyone else including me will die then so be it” chiem

the ways they cope with loss—lashing out only to bottle it up in the end vs bottling it up only to lash out at the end—oh i love them. i love them so dearly thank u for these compelling dynamics drdt dev

is teruko actually the protagonist? she should be—we’ve been following her perspective this whole time after all. but at the same time she is constantly having her cynical worldview challenged by other people, like charles and eden and whit and david, who all cling to hope and happiness despite it all. for all the cast’s eccentricities, they have the luxuries of being able to wish for something teruko doesn’t have: a life worth living outside of this killing game. something that, as she slowly loosens up during this trial, makes her realize that oh, maybe i could have a future like this too. it’s something that i’ve noticed rivals in the canon games have too (maybe minus nagito but he was not someone whose personality i’d analyzed back in middle school where my danganronpa roots lie. also he lowkey freaks me out). maybe with these guys by my side, i can finally learn to hope again. idk power of friendship guys wahoo

david is surrounded by people who love him, who he encourages like a knight in shining armor—like a main character, perhaps. we don’t fully know how much of act it is, especially considering how this is chapter two and we got our current emo eyebag loser literally one episode ago. but what we do know is that he treasures xander a lot, though the nature of that relationship right now is unknown—romantic? platonic? parasitic, even? im not rlly into the drdt ship culture so i couldn’t tell u. the fact that david’s memories are also starting to return can help us assume that in both the current killing game and during hope’s peak, they’d idolized each other. could david be connected to the sterlings, that business family we keep seeing within the drdt universe? could the sterlings be the true mastermind and the reasons behind this place’s existence?

idk how to continue this but something something “i am the protagonist and i cannot die” seems like some sort of vague setup for a 5th/6th chapter death involving teruko that will involve david needing to take over. ties it back together for her essentially being the reason behind the first murder

[where-dreamers-go]

"Unexpected And Appointed" Eragon x Modern! Reader

(A/N: A prologue to “Here And There” and an extended version of an Eragon Reaction with “Are you armed?” So back to clumsy Modern! Reader and their first signs of clumsiness, which wasn’t all physical.

Warnings: Mild curse word and use of (Y/F/N) for Your/First/Name.

Word Count: 1,048 words)

A light breeze granted you a delicate mercy as you walked. Easing some of your discomfort.

Your destination in your sights.

How could you stop to rest? You could give yourself the thought later.

Almost there. You could do it. No horse. No boat. Definitely no vehicle to aid you on the last trek of your journey.

Squinting your eyes against the midmorning sun, you could make out figures in fields. Trees adorning the area around.

You can do this. Remember, you thought, be as formal or friendly as possible. Use titles—please.

“Wah—.” You stumbled over a patch of grass.

Easy. Breathe. Just introduce yourself calmly. I’m the ambassador. Don’t blank out and freeze up on Ancient Language. Do your best. You smiled, attempting to encourage yourself as your pack weighed down on your shoulders.

Passing another cluster of trees, you felt odd. As if you were being watched.

Just breathe. Think of another song for goodness sake because if the dragons get in—

“Who are you?”

You quickly turned to the voice.

A tall young man stood three paces away from you with a long gardening tool at his side. The hair on his head was windswept and brown. A light shine to one of his palms.

You blinked as your fear tumbled into a fluttering mess.

The man was almost human.

Eragon.

“I asked: Who are you?” He voiced louder in the Ancient Language.

Clearing your throat, you answered with a round of dry coughs.

Sounding real confident, you thought sarcastically and swallowing. Don’t panic.

He did not move.

Standing in the shadow of a mountain, you held gazes with the Dragon Rider.

Eragon Shadeslayer did not know you, however you knew of him. Not that it helped much as he narrowed his brown eyes your way.

“Are you armed?”

Tilting your head, you did your best to translate the Ancient Language. Learning the language tied to the world took work. Practice in the face of it held a challenge.

Yet, you understood, you hoped and looked down to your arms in confusion. Then you glanced back to Eragon.

“. . . Yes. You can see them?” Your words were unsure. Doing your best in pronunciation.

His features skewed into his own doubt.

There was an obvious miscommunication no matter how small and it was up for debate who slipped up. Awkward when both were strangers.

For a split second, easily to be missed, the corner of the Dragon Rider’s lip curved up.

“Yes. I can.”

Perhaps you would be all right.

Why would he ask that? It—crap. No. I misheard a verb or something. Think. You sighed. Great. I’m all ready making myself look less capable.

Once more, you cleared your throat.

“Queen Nasuada…sent me…to look at the mountain.”

Realization sparked in his brown eyes. Shoulders relaxed and he took a couple of steps forward.

“My name is (Y/F/N).” You nodded. “The ambassador.”

Honestly, you had no idea what the greeting protocol was anymore nor were you inclined to bow after walking all morning.

So what if he was much closer and smiling slightly?

“Greetings. Welcome to Mount Arngor,” he gestured toward the snowy-capped mountain. “I am Eragon, Dragon Rider.”

I KNEW IT! You thought with a smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet y— Oh.” You stopped yourself and continued in the Ancient Language to your best ability. “Good…to meet you, Dragon Rider.”

Eragon nodded in kind and responded, “And you. I was not expecting you for another week or more.”

“I…” You frowned.

How do you say walk? Crap it.

“I walk fast,” you finally answered in the common tongue. “Especially when I hear noises I don’t recognize.”

Leaning on the tool, Eragon mused with a smile, “It was for the best you arrived early. Safer still, a storm looks to be approaching for later in the day..”

“I’ve been doing my best to avoid thunderstorms and parties.” You added. “Being sick while traveling doesn’t help anything.”

“Parties?”

The confusion on his face nearly sent you into a laughing fit, you held strong to avoid doing so.

“Not a party per se. I may have met King Orik on my way to Hedarth.” You pulled on your bag’s strap and said, “I’m not sure if I rambled too much or if I somehow made a good impression. I almost didn’t catch a ship without giving a portion of my life story to him.”

Shaking his head with a smile, Eragon rested the gardening tool over his shoulder. He did not add commentary as he turned towards the mountain.

“You must be wary from your travels. I will show you inside.”

“Thank you.” You followed after the Dragon Rider

* *

Wind blew against Mount Arngor as the thunderstorm rolled in. Walls of stone held you and every one residing with the utmost protection.

You laid across a bed. Your new bed and room in the fortress. Safe quarters for the new ambassador. The second ambassador.

Stretching your legs only made you want to groan at more than one event.

One, being the awkwardness of introducing yourself to Queen Nasuada’s first ambassador outside of Alagaësia.

Two, having to recover from both traveling and ascending all the steps into the mountain.

If my legs weren’t fit enough before, you thought, they sure will be.

No one else seemed to be fazed by the stairs.

Tiredly, you took a breath and counted what you were grateful for. Among them and high on the list remained your survival.

Even knowing what a map of Alagaësia looked like, it took a great amount of will power to travel through it and come out in one piece.

Anything to get away from suspicious side glances and Alagaësia’s politics. You thought, and here I’ve been introduced to most people and have only gotten questionable looks from one person. Too bad it’s Eragon. But I expected nothing less when I’m the unplanned and newly appointed ambassador to the Queen. That and I seem to speak better Ancient Language to everyone else.

~~~

(If you love my writings and want to support me, I have a Ko-Fi where you can buy me a coffee. I would be eternally grateful.

Best wishes and happy reading.)

~~~~~

DreamerDragon Tags: 

Inheritance Cycle Tags: @shewhobreathesfire @

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[levidowell]

Re: Grateful

Last weekend, I released my first film, “PROLOGUES.” Wow. What an experience. I’m very proud of this body of work. I've been sitting on this idea for ages: to push past the usual outfit pictures and truly create art. To me, it's about ditching the standard poses and backdrops to create something that hits you on a deeper level, something that sticks with you long after you've scrolled past. I wanted each outfit (PROLOGUE) to tell a story, to evoke a mood, and most importantly, to challenge the viewer's perspective—blending fashion with fine art, using clothes as a medium to explore themes and ideas that go beyond just an “outfit.”

I shot a demo video and started piecing together the outfits (PROLOGUES) on April 16, and after seeing everything come to life, it’s been profound. All of my creative energy was put into this project, and it’s one of my favorite projects to date.

I’ve always wanted to make a film, but to be specific, a film focusing solely on fashion. Solely my fashion. Fashion is my favorite art form, as it’s personal and very meaningful to me. Fashion moves with me, changing with my moods and the moment. It's my canvas. I get to curate my look and show off my style. My creativity in fashion is limitless, as I express myself in any way, shape, or form. Fashion is more than just clothes; fashion is making a statement.

I’m also very appreciative of the amount of love I’ve received. I'm so thankful for everyone who's taken the time to watch and share. That small decision for you to simply press one button means so much to me. That’s the reason I create. Lots of love.

“PROLOGUES” is just the beginning. I've got so many ideas waiting for their moment to come to life. I want to explore different themes, learn different stories, and view different perspectives, with a goal to make flaws a beautiful experience.

[runwithwolvcs]

Right Where You Left Me

PROLOGUE

Saskia Summerhill is seventeen going on thirty seven, with more responsibility than she knows how to handle, the mistakes she makes feel like life or death consequences. A sister depends on her, a mother who wishes she had more time, a father who doesn't know how to cope and a neighbour with his own secrets, Saskia can't help but feel like an outsider in her life. As she navigates life in La Push, the threats from beyond the treaty line begin to slowly creep in.

WARNINGS: Mentions of Death, Alcohol, Canon Violence, eventual smut

starts at new moon and loosely follows canon

3:55 pm, my phone read.

Thirty five more minutes, I think to myself as I tap my pen on the desktop.

It’s been nearly an hour of going over Paul Lahotes assignment details, correcting his grammar and punctuation and trying to figure where the hell he got the information for his essay from. But from the constant breaks of him eyeing Beth Cradell from across the library and him checking his phone, the bare minimum was done on his end.

“Look, Paul, we’re both wasting our time here.” I try to gently say that this arrangement wasn’t going to work. I knew working with him would be a challenge, whether that be from his incessant flirting or the fact that he was the teammate of my ex boyfriend, Calian. God knows what they talk about in the locker room or on the soccer pitch.

“Woah, no, no. I need you, I need this.” he said, gesturing between the two of them. I’ve been assigned to tutor Paul for extra credit. My advisor said it would look good on college applications next year, but to me, it looks like a giant headache. He’s like a goddamn golden retriever, unable to focus on anything but everything surrounding him.

“Then focus. This essay is terrible, it doesn’t make sense and I couldn’t even tell you what class it was for.” I say, tossing the paper back onto the desk.

“Tell me how you really feel.” he said, blowing out a sigh, but his focus isn’t on me, or his assignment. 

I watch as he eyes Beth as she walks by again, “I’m leaving.”

“No, Saskia, I’m sorry. Please help me.” he pleads as I start packing up my things, “I need at least a C on this to stay on the team.”

“I’m not a miracle worker.” I tell him, though I wish I was. It would make this a lot easier.

“You can come over to mine, I’ll be less distracted. Promise.”

“That may have worked on Kelsie, but it’s not going to work with me.” 

Kelsie had been his last tutor before I had been assigned to him. Long story short, they hooked up and like the dog Paul was, he dropped her for the next girl who batted her eyelashes at him. Kelsie dropped him whether, from embarrassment or self preservation, nobody knows. Now I have the pleasure of dealing with him every Tuesday for an hour and a half. As if living next door to him wasn’t bad enough.

“I’m not trying to hookup with you.” Paul reassured, before back tracking, “I mean, unless you want to, I’ve heard great things.”

I scoff, “Forty bucks and I’ll get you a B.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I’ll write the stupid essay, but not for free.” I press, we both know he doesn’t want to put in the work and this would be so much easier for the both of us.

“Deal.”

--

Rereading the papers in my hands one more time to make sure there were not major mistakes, before opening the curtains to my window. The house across from mine, with direct view into his bedroom, belonged to Paul Lahote and his father. He had moved in when we were eight, just him and his dad. Our families never typically interacted, especially not in the last year with my parents being so caught up in their own worlds.

I open my window all the way before leaning over and knocking on his. He was quick to draw the blinds, standing at the window shirtless, with his grey sweatpants low on his hips with a raised eyebrow. 

“Can I help you?”  he asks after opening his window. He was leaning forward on his own window sill, mirroring myself. He’s not the first boy I’ve seen shirtless, but it still didn’t stop me from letting my eyes roam secretly.

I extend my arm out, holding both his original essay and the one I wrote in my hands, “Here's your essay.”

“You're done already?” he asked, looking at the stapled bundle of papers in his hand

“It’s certificate level English, it wasn’t hard.”

“You’ll get your money once I get the grade.” Paul tells me and I gape at him, wanting to reach back over and snatch the essay from his hands.

“Are you kidding me?”

“You said B, I’m expecting a B.”

“Fuck you.” I rasp, this was so not the deal.

“Ask nicely.” Paul says, shooting me a smirk and I flip him off before taking a step back from the window sill and pull the screen down, quickly shutting the curtains and subsequently the view of the boy next door disappears.

--

It isn’t until a week later that Paul gets his grade back, a B+. He had knocked on my window to pay me like promised. That was the last time we spoke, between him having soccer practice and me having my own responsibilities, neither of us could make it to our Tuesday tutoring session. Thursdays I tutor Kalista Forde, and now as I walk home in the rain, I regret not cancelling on her too.

Cars pass me as I walk the familiar streets, my feet soaked and my hands frozen. A blue, old pickup truck slows beside me, and I know who it belongs to.

“Get in.” I hear him say, I look in Paul's direction, his shoulder length hair wet, but his clothes were dry. At this moment I am extremely jealous of him.

“No.” I say with a shake of my head, getting into his car would not look good on my end. I can picture the anger on my fathers face as the ‘Lahote boy you need to stay away from’ drops me off. I don’t know where the opinion came from, but I was not one to blatantly go against my fathers word.

“There's a storm warning you know.”

“I don’t care.” I remark, it’s not like I’m not already soaked.

“You’re not walking home in this.” he tries again.

“Why do you care?”I ask, though I don’t know if I want to hear his reasoning.

“I got a B, I can stay on the team,”

“What does that have to do with me walking home in the rain?”

“You did me a solid, now I’m just trying to return the favour.”

I think about his words. He owes me a favour. I think about the ride, the stress that I’m under at the ripe age of seventeen, the weight of my family's issues on my back. I also think about Kelsie, she’s smart, maybe even smarter than me, and she was destroyed after her love affair with Paul Lahote. Shouldn’t every seventeen year old girl get to experience that? 

Calian, he doesn’t count. I don’t think I ever really cared about him, he was just nice to have around. Someone to talk to whenever I needed it, but in terms of sexual needs, he didn’t quite make the cut, which is ironic considering he cheated on me and not the other way around. Maybe Paul will.

I sigh and round the front of the truck, climbing into the passengers side, forwardly asking, 

“Does your offer still stand?”

He eyes my wet frame, my t shirt clinging to my body, leaving little to the imagination.

“What about Calian?’ he pauses and shakes his head, “He’s my teammate.”

Ouch.

“Forget it,” I say, making a move to exit the car, only to be stopped by his hand on my wrist. 

“My dad's home.” He tells me and I nod in understanding.

“So is mine.”

“Truck it is then.” he smirks and puts the gear in drive, as I try not to think about which girls he’s had in the back of his truck.

Finding an empty parking lot wasn’t hard giving the storm that was rolling through, being on my knees in the back of Pauls truck, that was hard. I could practically feel the bruises forming already.

“You know, Cal talked a big game about you.” his fingers raking through my short hair as I knelt in the cab of the truck, unbuttoning his jeans. 

“You sure he wasn’t talking about Vanessa.” I said bitterly. She’s just a friend, Cal had told me.

“No, it was definitely you.” Paul forces me to look up at him, “Said he didn’t like your hair ‘cuz it was too short to pull.”

I wanted to laugh, not the genuine kind. The kind of laugh when you are let down by someone you used to trust. The long locs of hair I had once had, had been chopped to just below my chin. Though I had wanted to do it, there was more reasonign behind it. Reasons I had only told Calian about.

“Fuck off.”

“His words, not mine.” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I like your hair. How it falls in your face and you struggle to keep it behind your ear.” Paul says as he tucks my hair behind my ear as he speaks.

“I’m already on my knees, you don’t need to sweet talk me.”

“It's part of the process.” he says with a smirk. I hate that smirk.

“The process?”

“Yeah,” licks his lips as I palm him through his jeans, “Make your girl feel special, sweet talk her, eat her out, whatever it is, and then she’ll never say no when you call her for a fun night.”

“You eat pussy?” I ask, with wide eyes, he had to be lying. Maybe that's why all the girls at school fawn over him. It’s definitely not his attitude.

“You sound shocked.” he says, though I can tell he finds it amusing.

“Well yeah, you're kind of a selfish prick.” I tell him honestly.

He leaned forward, cupping my jaw as he pressed his lips to mine.

Paul pulled me off my knees and onto his lap, my legs straddling him as he moved his hands to grip my ass. I rock my hips forward against his, causing him to groan against my lips and me to smile in satisfaction. He makes quick work of removing the shirt that's practically stuck to my skin. Pauls hands begin to roam the new territory, his lips reaching where they could in our position.

A phone starts ringing and I know it's mine, reaching for it while Paul sucks on my neck. I quickly check the caller ID quickly as Paul mutters, “Let it ring,” against my neck.

“I can’t, it's my little sister.” I say as I hit the answer, pressing the phone to my ear, “What is it, Delta.”

“Dad needs to take mom to the doctor, she keeps throwing up.” I listened to my sister's quiet voice, “He doesn’t want me to go with him so he’s waiting until you get here.”

“Okay, um,” I stutter, looking at Paul who was patiently waiting for the phone call to end, the hand he had on her back playing with the clasp of her bra, “I’ll be there in ten minutes, ‘kay?”

“Promise?” Delta asked,

“I promise.” I said before bidding her goodbye and hanging up the phone. “I have to go,” I say quietly, collecting my top off the floor of the truck.

“Is everything alright?” he asks, his voice laced with concern.

“You don’t need to do this, the process or whatever you call it, okay?” I tell him, throwing my still wet tshirt back on my body.

“I’m not, you just look worried.” 

“Please stop talking.” I say as I open the door and hop out, reaching into the passenger for my backpack.

He scoffs but reminds her, “I’m driving you, Saskia.”

“My dad would kill me.”

“We’re neighbours.”He reminds me, also adding, “And you tutor me.”

“Fine, but you need to keep your mouth shut to your little teammates about today, got it?” I ask while getting into the passenger seat and buckling up.

“Nothing happened.” he nodded, “My offer still stands, just ask.”

“I doubt I will.” I say as he starts the truck.

The drive is short and silent, the only sound between the two of us is the rain hitting the roof. It’s peaceful. I didn’t know he could be focused on one thing for longer than five minutes, but here we are, pulling into his driveway and he has yet to take his eyes off the road to gaze at me. 

“Thanks for the ride.” I speak quietly before quickly exiting and heading for my house.

“Saskia,” he called out to me, and I turned to look at him, “I could use your help with an assignment tomorrow, if you’re available.”

“I’ll let you know.” I call back, and he nods in response before I turn around and take the steps two at a time. My dads waiting for me as I enter the house and from the look on his face, I know it’s not good.

“You were supposed to be home an hour ago.” he chastised.

“I was tutoring.” I remind him, Tuesdays and Thursday, every week for the past year and he still manages to forget. Though today had a bit of a detour, he didn’t need to know that.

“Your mom and I are counting on you to help out with your sister, Saskia.” he reminds me and all I feel is guilt.

“I know, dad. We ran late, it won’t happen again.”

[bibbykins]

Insufferable

A/N: The long-awaited flashback is here! It's short, but it is here! I hope this can really show the turning point in Jungkook's and MC's relationship and I would love to hear everyone's thoughts. As usual, tips are not required but greatly appreciate. Hope you all enjoy and have a wonderful day/night!

Note: This is a part (specifically a flashback) of The Household's Bunny series, so I recommend reading at least the Prologue before this one

Word count: 3.6k

Pairing: Soft Yandere! Jungkook x Chubby! Reader

Summary: Roommates are bound to have arguments, especially when one of them is as temperamental as Jungkook, but you didn't expect the first argument to get so unbelievably personal.

Warnings: abandonment issues, mommy issues, allusions to past abuse, family issues, crying, yelling, vomiting, panic attack, exhaustion, some soft yandere thoughts, some possessiveness, jungkook is mean and the MC gets a little mean too

There was something so constricting about memories of a shitty childhood. There were times when looking in the mirror felt like searching for the child in you so you could give her the hug she desperately needed. There were times when waking up felt like a check to make sure you were no longer in the home you had to grow up in far too quickly. However, the comfort of being in a different home only came so far when you didn't have anyone beside you or even emotionally available enough to talk to.

You stayed in bed for hours before it felt like a good idea to move, almost waiting for the mirage of change to fade before it brought you back to the gym with your mom or your uncle's apartment littered with whiskey bottles and leaky tear ducts.

Sometimes putting your best foot forward each day felt so hard with all-consuming loneliness clinging to your heels.

You had started your day going through your memory box. Hindsight said that was a poor idea. The box was a sure way to get you into a bad mood. You liked to think you breezed past all the stages of grief, but just because you accepted reality didn't make it hurt any less. The box was a strong reminder of that much as it sat with a melancholic aura. The creme color faded and the thorned vines connected to roses only added to the malicious undertones of its existence to your mental health. It was full of childhood photos, your birth certificate, school achievements, and the last known address your mom had.

Ah, your mom. What a way to bring clouds to your sunny day. You don’t know why you put yourself through the turmoil of the memory box. Maybe you were hoping it would be easier by now. You were always wrong. Looking through childhood photos and finding no love in the eyes of your mother when she looked at you and watching the love in your uncle’s eyes fade with your mother’s presence. You got to the fated birthday card, thumb rubbing over the defunct address longingly. You held the envelope in your hand, inspecting the birthday card she sent you. Three words in the repetitive note written on the inside caught your eye, and not the ones you so desperately wanted from her.

Feeling a familiar pressure behind your eyes, you tossed the card aside and stood. It was time to eat, go on a walk, do anything other than this. You found your way to the kitchen and came across a silent and solemn Jungkook. His jaw was clenched, but it felt like it always was around you.

Your relationship with Jungkook so far was not very complicated, in the way it was nonexistent. He either didn’t care about talking to you or he actively didn’t want to, you really couldn’t tell. This didn’t stop you from trying, though. Like an idiot.

“I’m making food, did you want any?” You asked from your place seated on the couch, and the silence that was his response for deafening, “Okaaaay.” You sang awkwardly, “I just know that you usually don’t eat throughout the day and-”

“And what do you know?!” He snapped, blinded by his pure and unbridled, but most important unprovoked, rage of you. Your eyes widened and your body jumped. Holy shit, you had never heard him yell like this, “You don’t know anything about me, or in general, so just stop trying so fucking hard!” He was harsh in his tone and it lit your whole nervous system on fire. What the hell did you do to him?

You shook your head, not sure why he was yelling about, but it made your throat feel like it was going to close, “Look, I was just trying to be polite, but you don’t need to talk about me like you understand-”

“Understand?! What’s there to understand?” He challenged, eyes wide like he was expecting you to say something but he continued, “You’re some spoiled girl living here rent-free because your precious dad doesn’t want to take care of you.”

Your heart caught in your throat as it shattered. He was right, your dad didn't want to take care of you, but not in the way he thought. Why was he doing this? Has he genuinely felt this way all along? Was he just holding in his anger until you poked the bear a little too hard? “You don’t need to yell at me.” You stated firmly and it seemed to only make things worse.

“And you don’t need to fucking be here in the first place!” He spoke, temper long lost and you could hear his voice mix in with Jungyoon’s, all he needed was a bottle of whisky and a set of calloused hands, “You didn’t need to fucking live here-”

“You don’t know anything about me.” You spat out. Now, you were losing your temper. You could take a beating, but for only so long, especially as an adult, "And it's not like you're paying rent either, so what do you know about me or my living arrangements?" You hissed and you watched his eyes flare, making you nearly regret your provocation.

“No, but I know how you look naked-”

“Fuck you.” You spit the word out at him, something you haven’t done to another person for a while “Don’t weaponize my work or play a game that you absolutely will lose.” You warned, “I know all about you, and I can use that, because you’ve been a star since you were 15, and that sucks, that makes you mad, doesn’t it?” Your temper effectively lost as you ripped into the rage-filled man before you, “Yet you don’t know anything about me, and that must piss you the fuck off, huh?” You stood from the couch, tears building in your eyes before you could stop it.

“I know enough, spoiled rich girl.” He seethed and you laughed humorlessly at this worldwide pop star calling you spoiled and rich.

“Not only are you wrong, but you’re also a poor listener.” You shot back, “I’ve told you all before Jungyoon isn’t my fucking dad, he’s my uncle.” His mouth opened but you cut him off before he could start, “He can’t stand the sight of me so he travels for work.” Your tears are undoubtedly falling, but you can’t stop, “And you’re talking to me like this because what? You had a scandal or something?” You gave him his chance to talk and boy, he took it.

“Mona told me you know your mom.” His voice was like venom, “So, why the fuck are you here? You have your blood relatives.” He exaggerated the word like it meant anything to you, “Why are you here, disrupting our lives, acting like an innocent orphan girl around actual fucking orphans-”

“I never said I was or acted like an orphan!” You exclaimed incredulously before scoffing, “That’s why you’re mad? Because you never knew your mom and I did? Because I know who my blood family is?” You could laugh at how ridiculous that was, “I know them, so what? Where does that get me?” You looked at him expectantly but he didn’t talk, “I knew my mom, and guess what? She just didn’t fucking want me.” He was silent, but you still couldn’t stop, “I’m sure if your mom could’ve got to know you, she would’ve kept you, because you’re not insufferable to be around, you’re just a fucking asshole.” You wiped at your cheeks furiously, “But me? I had 15 years to prove myself and it still wasn’t enough. I still wasn’t enough. Jungyoon never wanted me either, he got stuck with me and had to cope.” Your voice began to break and you had to take a breath, “I was the insufferable one, so-” You stopped, finally as you regained your sense of reality and watched Jungkook who had an unreadable expression and the realization of the word vomit you spilled out to him hit you like a train as you exhaled quickly, rage in your voice quickly replaced with soft melancholy “I am the insufferable one here, so there.” You shrugged, face a wet mess, “Hope that brings you peace.” Your stomach was churning as you turned on your heel, unable to hold in your sobs. You couldn’t bear the awkwardness of waiting for the elevator so you opted to take the stairs.

You sobbed louder as the door slammed shut behind you, but you didn’t want to linger so you bolted down the stairs, the bile in your stomach signaling that you needed to find the nearest trashcan and quickly. You made it to the ground floor and spilled your guts into the small trashcan. Yelling always made you unbelievably ill, whether it was getting yelled at or yelling, the sickness it made you feel overflowed. The yelling only reminded you of-

You vomited again at the mere thought. You cried harder when you finally finished, breathing becoming staggered as you began to panic.

Fuck, they’re gonna kick you out, and then you’ll be alone again. You lost your temper, people don’t like other people who lose their temper. Why couldn’t you just mind your own fucking business and leave him be? You’re stupid. Why do you think you’ve been alone all your life? It’s because people don’t want to be near you. You’re-

“Insufferable.” You mumbled, numb, even if for only a moment.

Sure, Jungkook provoked you, but you knew better. You didn't go to therapist after therapist throughout your adolescence for nothing. You felt as if you set yourself back eons after that outburst. He didn't need to know all that about you, ever. He probably didn't even care to know, and you said it anyway, like you were gunning for gold in the trauma Olympics. You didn't want to minimize his struggles, you just wanted him to shut up and stop yelling at you. You let your eyes flutter closed as you cried. How can you complain about being alone when you're like this?

You don’t know how long you stayed there, sitting next to a trash can full of your vomit as you wallowed in your self-hatred. The all-consuming loneliness the boisterous house subdued returning with full force. Jungkook was right. You didn’t need to be here. You were only disrupting their routine.

You blew out a sigh as you staggered to the elevator, fully set on going up to your room and crying yourself to sleep after you clean up. You brought the trashcan with you, not having the heart to just leave your puke down there. You thanked your lucky stars when Jungkook was no longer on the second floor as you went to the kitchen and rinsed your mouth before going to take out the trash and take out your burnt oven pizza. Finally, you were headed back up to your floor. You watched the numbers tick by with tired eyes. You glared at the empty trashcan, electing to take it with you instead of making the trip back down to put it back. Surely, they wouldn’t need it for a few hours.

The elevator dinged as you grabbed the black plastic bin and then you were met with Jungkook. Relief flashed across his face before irritation settled on it, “Where the fuck were you?!” He asked hurriedly as you trudged past him, too exhausted to fight. You were running on autopilot the whole way up here, and you couldn’t bear another spat.

“I was on the first floor.” Your voice was low, trying to communicate you were done arguing as you lifted the bin as proof. You then set it down and went to your bathroom and began brushing your teeth.

He scoffed, “You were on the first floor for 30 minutes?” He asked as if he caught you in a lie but you nodded as you rinsed your mouth.

You were down there for thirty minutes? No wonder you felt so tired.

“Yep.” You popped the last letter before correcting yourself, “Well, I spent like 10 minutes cleaning up that bin, so not exactly.”

“Why?” He asked as if you were being ridiculous, as if he wasn’t the one on your floor demanding answers.

“I vomited.” You spoke simply and before he could ask, “Yelling makes me puke.” You were so blase about it he sighed in frustration.

You walked to your room and froze when you saw your memory box strewn about, and it was like a dam broke all over again. You looked at the photos, at the eager little girl looking for love in places she would never find it.

Old habits die hard.

Before you could even stop yourself, you sunk to your knees in garbled sobs and broken cries, “Hey, hey, wait.” Jungkook’s shaky voice did nothing to bring you back to reality as you cried. His hands placed themselves on your shoulder, making you flinch violently, much to his horror.

Fuck, he didn’t know how to do this. He didn’t know why you were crying, but he knew it was his fault, at least in part. Even if at this moment it wasn’t, his outburst surely didn’t help. Fuck, he’s so dumb. Fuck, he shouldn’t have talked to Mona just moments before seeing you.

The envy of even seeing your own mother’s face ate up at him and he took it out on you. Not to mention that he made you vomit from the yelling. He suddenly felt more like an arrogant asshole than he did before as his hands now hovered over your form and he took a moment to look at your room.

Scattered on the floor were childhood photos and ribbons from competitions. Things Mona kept in her own house, having a whole wall filled with every one of their achievements. Even Jin had a photo album of their things. And you, you kept all these for yourself. You were the only one who cared enough to save these things and he wondered how much you threw away to maintain space in the small empty box. Fuck, he didn’t know how to do this.

You sighed shakily, “You can just go.” You cried, “You don’t have to be here.” You don’t know what he could possibly gain from watching you cry.

“I know.” His voice was calm, even, “Can I help you up?” He asked and you wanted to look up at him in confusion but you didn't want him to see your tears.

You both had just ripped into each other, and here he was, wanting to help you. Why would he do that? Why would he stay when he doesn't have to? Why would he want to help you up after a fight?

Too tired to even think about questioning him and no longer angry at him, you simply scoffed, “Can you?” You sighed, not having the energy to stroke his ego and stand up without his help.

You never let people bear your dead weight, not wanting the awkwardness if they couldn’t carry you, but right now, you just wanted to lay down.

He snorted lightly, happy to hear anything other than a sob for you, “Don’t worry about me, you just cry and mind your business.” He spoke lightly, and the comment made you fight a smile. Then, he lifted you with so much ease, you figured he was trying to show off as he placed you on the bed. He looked at you after he sat on the floor before his eyes caught onto the gold foil of a 16th birthday card. You were wiping at your face as he read the card against his better judgment.

I know you must be confused, and I can’t help that. I wish I could pretend to be a mom, but I can’t. I can’t be your mom, and I never should have tried. It would be best if we forgot each other. I just can’t keep pretending, and I know you can see it, even if you don’t want to.

I’m so tired.

-Mom

Now, he felt even more like an asshole. He also felt a little bit angry that your mother could just leave you behind without so much as saying sorry. She wrote like she was a teenager and you were her mother. She obviously didn't put much thought into the seemingly last message to her daughter and it made his heartbreak for you, “That was the last I heard of her.” You snapped him from his thoughts and he looked at your puffy face, “She had left months earlier, and then I got that, but she moved before I could try to see her one more time.” There was a distant ache in your words as you looked at Jungkook sitting amongst your memories.

“Is she… still alive?” He asked, not sure why he felt the need to know.

“Not sure, but it doesn’t make much of a difference, I guess.” You blew out a sigh, before looking at your papers and folded posterboards, “I was cleaning out my memory box, and I’m not sure why I do it when I know it just upsets me.” You could still feel tears leaking from your eyes as Jungkook picked up a photo of you on your 14th birthday, posed between Jungyoon and your mom. You had a bright smile on your face and they looked at the camera with a tight expression, “You can really see how much they didn’t want to be there, but that's the happiest they look in all of the photos.”

He wanted to say you were wrong, but he could see it. He could see the happy little girl trying to make up for the unhappy adults around her. He knew he should’ve asked Mona why Jungyoon didn’t try to call or visit or why she was so eager to take you in if you knew your family. He should’ve just known better. Yeah, he understood how it felt to be alone growing up, they all did, but by the time they were all 17 they had a home that wanted them. You were going to graduate from college soon and you still felt unwanted.

No thanks to him.

“I’m sorry.” He blurted and you looked at him with wide eyes, “For being an asshole, I’m sorry- and for making you cry. I just…” He shrugged, “You’re right. I was jealous you knew your mom and I already was suspicious of you and I- I’m dumb, and I’m sorry.” He looked at you, eyes a bit glossy and you wondered when was the last time someone apologized for making you cry.

“It’s okay.” You smiled weakly, “You are dumb, but that’s okay.” You chuckled when he frowned, but eventually, he also broke into a short laugh, “I think… we’ve felt a lot of the same things in different ways, so I can’t blame you.” He wondered how you could be so forgiving, and he was scared of how many times that has gotten you hurt, “I like living here and I like all of you, so I hope I can get you all to like me too, even if just a little.”

“Don’t accept less than you deserve.” He spoke firmly before he started picking up your memory box, putting things neatly back in.

“Wh-”

He waved his hands nonchalantly, “You, sleep, I’ll clean this up and order some food.” He didn’t look at you as he said this, mostly to hide his blush, "If...If you want, I can give this to Jin. He has a whole place he keeps our stuff like this… he's really sentimental." He stumbled, still refusing to look at you.

However, he jumped when he heard you hiccup a cry. Ready to apologize, Jungkook was just about to turn to look at you until he heard you speak, "That… That sounds very sweet of you to do." You wiped a sentimental tear away as the blushing boy remained frozen.

"It's Jin's hobby, not mine." He deflected before waving his hand at you, "Sleep, I said." He frantically demanded.

You could see his ears getting red and you smiled, “Yes, sir.” You mocked in your work voice and made him freeze for a moment as you erupted into giggles while he whined, “Okay, okay, I’ll sleep.”

Eventually, you surrendered to your exhaustion as he delicately put away your papers and photos. He hummed lightly, smiling as he came across your debate team awards. No wonder he lost the fight before it even started. He turned around after lifting the box and sighed almost dreamily as he watched your sleeping face. You were beautiful, delicate, and puffy from the tears. He had the urge to keep apologizing for being such an asshole, but after looking through your achievements and your photos, he resolved to just keep proving it.

He wouldn’t let you get hurt again. Not by him or anyone, especially your mother, even Jungyoon was on thin ice.

His blood boiled at the thought of your mother for a reason he couldn’t understand. His hand extended shakily as he pulled the covers up to your shoulder and you hummed contently, making his heart melt a bit at the little smile you had. He wouldn’t fuck up with you again, not like this. He would be nice, at least a little, and first and foremost, he would order food you liked.

He froze.

Fuck, what food do you like?

He relaxed. Well, he could just ask the guys.

Fuck, they’re gonna ask questions.

Fuck, they’re gonna kill him when they found out he made you cry.

He looked back at your sleeping form, not having the heart to wake you up. He sighed, looks like he’ll just have to bite the bullet. He dreaded each moment as he quickly made an untitled group chat with the guys since you were added to their original one. He could only hope Taehyung wouldn’t change the group chat name to something stupid.

Tip Jar

[sanctuary-kingdomhearts]

Sanctuary Prologue I - To you, who broke our promise

“Let’s make a promise then,” I smile, brushing his blond locks out of the way of his face. His smile was shaky, like him, who I could feel trembling in my hand.

I grasp his tighter, I wanted to show him I wouldn’t let go.

“A promise? What kinda promise?” Ventus asks me, his dull blue eyes trained on our hands. He’s still focused on his nightmare. I would be too; if I woke up screaming so badly like that.

I think for a moment before I have my answer, determined to quell the fears his nightmare gave him. Though, that was a little challenging, as I didn’t know what his nightmare was about. He didn’t talk about them, and I didn’t ask. I knew what it was like, wanting to keep nightmares to yourself.

“Whenever you feel lost in the dark, I’ll be the light to guide you home, okay? I promise I’ll always be right here for you to come home to, I promise I’ll fight the darkness away,” I tell him honestly, the best and only thing I could promise him is that I’d never leave him.

He looks up at me, tears streaming down his face. Worry washes over mine as I take my free hand and wipe away his tears, bringing him into a hug after.

We break away after a moment. I think he’s feeling better but notice he has something to say.

He takes in a breath before speaking, “Then I promise that one day, I’ll become so strong I’ll be able to protect both of us, that I’ll fight the darkness away for both of us. I promise I’ll become so strong you won’t have to worry about protecting me, I promise to be so strong that neither of us will ever lose our way to the darkness,” he smiles after he’s done. Fully ready to honor his part of our promise.

I hold out my pinky finger, he does the same and we interlock our fingers. To make the promise official we pull our fingers down and up again.

“Feel better now?” I look into his eyes, happy to see the shine back in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Ventus’ voice holds its light and airy joy once again, “Thanks, (N/n), that really helped!” His voice picks up, his depressed mood having been completely swallowed by excitement.

“I’m glad,” a giggle escapes my lips and the hand that I used to make our promise came to my lips. He gripped our other interlocked hands harder.

“Work hard, okay? But always remember I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere, so you don’t have to rush.” I ruffle his hair for no particular reason.

He laughs, pulling my hand away, “If you tried, I think I’d just die on the spot until you came back,”

“You can’t just come back from the dead, Ven Ven,” I point out and he pouts, pulling his hand away from mine.

“The power of love is so strong I’m not sure I can believe that statement,” he retorts, crossing his arms. Our smiles are so wide I’m sure our faces are going to get stuck like this. I wouldn’t mind.

“Ah yes, the truest power of love in one’s heart can awaken the deepest light, how silly of me to forget,” I deadpan and he nods, following along with the joke.

“Of course,” he stares straight into my eyes again, “I love you,” he says, seriously. I can feel the emotions in his heart, I hope he feels mine.

“I love you too, Ven.” I get up off his bed. “Now get some sleep, you have quests in the morning and so do I,” he nods and I turn to leave, hearing his blankets shift around.

His hand grasps mine faintly, I turn back to him who’s already curled up in his blankets, “Just, please don’t leave me, please,” his voice breaks again, and I fear I’ve actually done nothing to help him.

My hand covers his, “I already told you, that’s never going to happen. I love you, remember?”

“Yeah…” he lets go and closes his eyes, I kiss his forehead and exit through the door that connects our apartments, going to bed myself.

“Night night, Ven. I hope your dreams are filled with light from now on,”

꧁꧂❦꧁꧂

It’s dizzying, coming out of the corridor of light. I don’t know how long it's been since I left, but I know I need a break. I’m absolutely exhausted. When I step out of the corridor, into the Foretellers clock tower, I feel relieved.

The large room is as dark as always, despite the many tall, wide windows circling the room. The large table in the center seats two of my fellow wielders, now superiors, Skuld and Ephemer, my friends.

The white-haired boy waves to me, I smile, walking over. He gets out of his seat and hugs me, my face is pushed into his red scarf.

“Hey, Ephemer.” I pat him on the back as he squeezes tighter. “I missed you,” He says and I chuckle.

“I haven’t been gone that long.”

“Long enough,” Skuld comments, getting up to hug me after Ephemer lets go. My smile quirks. “Actually, how long has it been?” I left for the game station not too long ago, well, within that word's time. But it had at least been three days.

“A week,” The dark haired girl replies and I sigh, that’s twice as long as I thought. Six more days than I planned. I didn’t even tell Ven I was leaving.

“Ah, don’t worry (Y/n)! We told Ven where you were for you! He wasn’t so happy, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about!” Ephemer put his hands on his hips, smiling.

“Though, he’s been worried all week. I told him to go home because he was looking a bit pale today.If you’re going home, check up on him, please?” Skuld asks.

“That's a given,” I tell her. She nods, “Alright.”

“Oh! Speaking of going home, I start, “I’m gonna need to take a few days off… I’m exhausted.” I exhale lightly, like a laugh.

The two look at each other for a moment, both their smiles got just a bit bigger, and maybe even fond? I’m not certain if I can place it.

“Finally,” they breathe out. I lift my brow, “What?”

Skuld looks me in the eye, “I haven’t seen you take a day off since I met you,”

“I’ve known you for a long time, (Y/n), you're always doing something, it’s time to take a break,” Ephemer chuckles.

I think back, in the beginning I had no friends, so there was no one to stop working for. Then when I did get friends, I was always fighting for them. So I guess I really never had taken a day off.

“Yeah, I suppose so..” I trail off, “Then, I guess I’ll go do that?” This felt weird, not having anything to do today or worry about for tomorrow. But it also felt so freeing, I kind of like this feeling.

“Bye!”

“Bye, (Y/n).”

“Bye you two, see ya in a couple days!” I wave to them and exit through the door.

I make my way out of the Clock tower at a nice pace, I don’t feel like running anymore today. It’s late by the time I reach my apartment. Opening the door I look around, it’s dark, as it should be. Almost untouched, Ventus has definitely come in here.

But he’s not here now. I should check up on him, Skuld asked me to, and I feel like cuddles and a movie anyway so I should probably find him.

I went to our ‘secret’ door, we had it installed a couple months after he moved into the apartment next to mine. It’s always unlocked so we can come and go as we pleased.

“Ven?” I call out as I open the door, his apartment was dark too. Cold. He hadn’t been here lately.

“Huh,” I say aloud. Skuld did say he was sent home right? Why doesn’t his apartment look like anyones been here all day?

I should go look for him. I close the door and walk out of my apartment complex. The plaza is filled with wielders, but not the one I’m looking for.

A flash of blond hair goes by, a familiar tone of blond, not the darker one I’m looking for but brighter.

“Elrena!” I call out to her. She turns her head and drops a book she’s carrying as someone bumps into her. I rush over to her as the person helps pick up her book.

“Elrena, have you seen Ventus around here?” I ask her as she thanks the guy.

“Ah, no, I haven't, at least, not lately,” she stammers, “but I would check the old warehouse, I saw him visiting there lately the last couple of days,” she recalls.

I nod, “Thanks, Elrena!” I run off in that direction, right from where we are all the way towards the abandoned warehouse.

I was huffing by the time I got there, even if it wasn’t that much of a jog I was still tired from earlier.

I push open the door, bad memories flooding my mind that I have to push down, “Ven?” I call, no answer. It’s just as desolate as it’s always been.

I sigh, guess he just wasn’t here today, though I wonder why he’d be here any day.

I stop to think, where would Ven go? Who would know where Ven would go? Well, I would know where he’d go, but other than me and the foretellers, who thought he was at home, he didn’t really interact with others. So who..?

Chirithy! Chirithy would know where Ven’s Chirithy was who would know where Ven was!

“Chirithy!” As soon as I say it’s name the plush cat with the pink cape and money purse comes proofing into my arms.

I smile at my oldest friend, “Hey Chirithy,”

“Hello, (Y/n), do you need something?” It asks, it states at me with blue eyes that look sewed in.

“Ah, yeah actually, sorry Chiri,” Suddenly I feel awkward. It’s not like I don’t only call it when I need something, but that seemed to be the case these last few days…

“Is it about Ventus?” The dream eater asks. I nod, “Yeah, do you know where he might be?”

“Let me check,” it poofs out of my arms before coming back, “They’re not responding to me, but we last had a conversation by the lighthouse. He went to the beach because he missed you, had a nice conversation about how hopeless you two are,” I chuckle.

“Okay, thanks Chirithy.” It poofs away quickly and I make my way to the beach.

Weaving my way through town, walking though paths and up stairs, I get to the lighthouse pretty quickly, but by the time I do, the suns going down, and I still haven’t found Ven despite looking all over town while I was walking here.

“Ven Ven?!” I shout, trying to see if he’s around, even almost tipping over the edge of the fence as I attempt to check the beach.

Nothing.

I groan, I guess I should go home. Either he’s already there and I wasted some time searching for him, or he’ll come home soon enough.

Or, a voice in the back of my mind rings, you’ll have to report he’s gone missing, another friend dead. Maybe the darkness got him, maybe…

I block the thoughts out, no, no dandelion would ever do that to anyone. We’re all friends here. No one remembers those awful events except me and the foretellers. And they know no one would do anything bad to anyone here, only I’m so messed up as to think that someone hurt him.

I make the long track back home, making sure to check around one last time.

By the time I get to my apartment complex, it’s dark, and heartless are sure to appear soon. The more nocturnal wielders will be coming out soon, so I don’t worry.

I’m still so tired, I just wanna lay down. My worry and excitement to see Ven seems to have finally worn out completely.

I walk up the multiple flights of stairs and get to my apartment, unlocking it. It’s obviously darker, as there’s no natural light pouring in.

But, something feels off… Dark and cold, unsettling. Somethings in here.

Is Ven having another spell? I don’t remember checking his heart before leaving, did I wait too long to check up on that nasty darkness he let into his heart?

“Ven?” I call out hesitantly. Please just let this be nothing…

There’s a noise behind the door, a shifting of clothes. Instinct takes over first, and I note that whatever is here there’s only a thin piece of wood between us. But, also, It has to be Ventus, right? Who, what else would it be? Darkness doesn’t wear clothes, well, they kinda do, but that’s clearly the shifting noise of cloth and not the flowy dark substance that mimics cloth.

Is he trying to surprise me? No, I don’t think that’s the case, plus, if he was he would have revealed himself as soon as I opened the door.

“Ven?” I call out one last time, once again hesitant.

—<3–

This chapter was written by: Rewrite-Central

Thanks for taking so long, this was supposed to be posted last Sunday, at 3. Love you Fam, but you lazy.

Hope ya’ll enjoy, see ya next update cause I got no announcements today, except I can’t wait for more chapters to be released. I’ve been building up shitposts and I can’t use them until the characters have been introduced.

;-;

Sorry if this chapter was a bit repetitive or boring, we’re trying to find out grounds with this fic before we dive straight in head first. That, and we just wanted Rewrite to freaking finish before it turned to 2022. My god, she takes forever to write.

I literally said we had no announcements and this A/n is taking forever. Sorry, see ya next time peeps!

-WhatIsShameStaff

WhatisShame

Rewrite-Central

Mysterious_Writer_S

[slugtranslation-hypmic]

Who would you say your favorite character to translate for is? You mentioned having a lot of fun with Kuukou.

Ooh, this is hard. One of the things I really like about Hypmic is that the writing always produces very distinct character voices, so I’ve put a lot of time and thought into trying to make each of the 21 main characters sound distinct as well. I don’t have everyone fully set in stone, and I do struggle with a couple of the characters, but for the ones I do have down, they’re very fun to write.

Saburou is fun because he’s often a little bit sassy. I try to make him sound like he’s speaking excessively pompously, especially if he’s talking to Ichirou. It helps highlight how insecure he actually is, I feel.

Ramuda is very fun to write because he’s so obnoxious. If I feel annoyed by whatever I’ve just written, then I feel like I’m doing a good job. I like trying to come up with little kid phrases to stick into his dialogue like “butterflies in my tummy” or “you’re a big meanie” to match the affectations he does in Japanese. Also, Japanese uses a lot of onomatopoeia to describe emotions or states of being like wakuwaku or norinori for happiness, sarasara for silky, or pekopeko for hungry. As you can see, these onomatopoeia are made up of repeating sounds. Ramuda uses quite a lot of these to sound more childish, so as a challenge for myself, I make him use a lot of silly words in English that have repeating sounds like “okie-dokie”, “dum-dum”, “grump-grump”, or “oopsy-daisy”.

Gentarou is fun because he has the widest vocabulary out of any of the cast members. I like to challenge myself to write more complex English sentences for him than for most of the cast because I think the end results are very fun to read. A good example of this is from the FP/M+ prologue: “Unlike a certain destitute young man in our immediate vicinity, I happen to be sensitive to the subtle niceties of people’s feelings.”

Out of all of the informal speaking characters, Dice is one of my favorites to write. I model him after the way young people in my area talk to their friends so that he can give off a friendly, laid-back attitude. I also like making Fling Posse be a bit more self aware, so Dice says things like “No luck” or “No dice” from time to time. I want to start incorporating “I bet” more into his regular phrasing too. (This is also why Gentarou’s favorite way to express exasperation is “my word”.)

Hifumi was a huge challenge for me at first, but now I feel like I have him down pretty well. My go-to for Hifumi is the idea that he needs to be over the top, 100%. In host mode, this means that he can be kind of smarmy. In his normal mode in Japanese, he uses a lot of slang terms or made up words which give him a young and silly image. I probably could have used a lot more slang to incorporate that, but instead I’ve been making Hifumi use more idioms than any other character in the cast. (This is probably a nuisance for non-native English speakers... I apologize.) Not only is this fun for me, but it’s also a great exercise in stepping away from the source material and considering the translation from the target language side, which is necessary in a lot of professional translation.

Sasara is challenging, because he requires a lot of creativity, but it’s very worth it. I try to make his narration and dialogue be somewhat humorous even when he’s not making jokes by keeping a playful tone in mind, but when he is making jokes... to be honest, I find all of his jokes very corny. He uses a lot of cliched jokes (like “Why did the chicken cross the road?” level) so I don’t think he’s actually supposed to be that funny to the Japanese audience either. Therefore I don’t worry too much about making the jokes actually clever and instead aim for the cheese factor, haha.

Kuukou is so, so, so fun. He swears more than any character in the series, definitely to an excessive degree, so I use a lot of swearing for him in English and even make compound swear words (like “bitch-ass”). He also says some things that are so completely out of left field I never really know how to handle them, like the whole “Wiping your ass is a man’s thing”. In those situations, I like to leave them as fairly direct translations so the ridiculousness can be seen in its original form. Yet at the same time as he does all of this, he also sprinkles in a lot of Buddhist references and made-up proverbs. Finding a way to balance this is a challenge but a very enjoyable one.

You haven’t seen performance Juushi yet, but writing him has been a BLAST for me. He says straight-up nonsense in Japanese that uses a lot of loan words from other languages, so I write him with a lot of bizarre vocabulary and whatever silliness I can think up for him. Since Juushi is still a young person who is more or less making shit up as he goes, I also have him use words sort of incorrectly from time to time to give that same sense of “This doesn’t actually mean anything”.

Hitoya and Riou both have super strong voices in Japanese... I get the impression from them that their words carry a lot of weight. Therefore I try to make everything they say in English be strong and emphatic. I need to get better about this, but I try to have Riou speak more simply than other cast members. He doesn’t need to use a lot of words to get his point across. Hitoya, on the other hand, can be more verbose, but everything he says should be stated with confidence.

Someday I’d like to write up in full the considerations I take for each character.

[cheri-translates]

[CN] 3rd Anniversary Love Carnival - Gavin

🍒 Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for an event which has not been released in English servers! 🍒

Gavin’s Prologue: here

3rd Anniversary Masterlist: here

[ PART ONE ]

After entering the amusement park, Gavin and I head directly to the attraction I’ve been longing for - the trampoline.

This is an attraction which has been extremely popular on the internet -- as long as one wears the special velcro outfit and uses the trampoline’s elasticity to jump upwards, one can stick onto the wall like a spider.

Gavin is wearing a yellow coloured “sticky suit”. He holds my hand as I eagerly stand on the trampoline, his brows slightly furrowed.

Gavin: Do you really want to do this?

MC: Mm! Since we’re already here, we should play to our heart’s content~ Also don’t you find that the trampoline relieves stress?

I blink at Gavin, watching as the corners of his lips curl upwards.

Gavin: It does relieve stress. But it’s also a little dangerous. There are quite a number of trampoline-related incidents.

MC: That’s true...

Gavin: Scared?

Seeing the smile fade from my lips slightly, Gavin chuckles softly.

Gavin: With me by your side, there’s nothing to be worried about.

He says this naturally, leading me towards the wall.

Gavin: Here, give it a try.

Hearing him say this, I suddenly feel confident. Shooting him a smile, I lift up the slightly large “sticky suit”, facing the wall while taking a deep breath.

After jumping three times in place, I lunge forward forcefully--

Gavin: ...MC!

Along with Gavin’s voice, I fall back onto the trampoline with a thud.

Gavin: Are you okay? Does it hurt?

Rubbing my nose, I answer him.

MC: I’m fine.

Gavin half-kneels at my side, looking both angry and amused.

Gavin: Why did you think of jumping while facing the wall? Aren't you being silly?

MC: ...it’s my first time jumping, so I lack experience. It’d be fine the next time.

Raising my fists, I cheer myself on. Upon seeing this, Gavin smiles.

Gavin: Mm. It’d definitely be successful this time.

He looks at me, his gaze tender, but his tone filled with certainty.

Twenty minutes later, I’m gasping for breath while standing on the trampoline.

MC: Gavin, should we just head to the next attraction...

Even though I’ve already succeeded a few times, I find that I’m not jumping high enough. I can’t help but wonder if gravity is exerting too much force on me today.

Gavin looks at me, as though he’s thinking about something. After a while, the corners of his lips are lifted slightly.

Gavin: There’s no hurry.

MC: Gavin...? Ah!

Gavin suddenly hoists me up onto his shoulder. Caught off guard, I instantly hold him tightly.

He strides towards the wall. My arms are around his broad back, and I hear him saying at my ear--

Gavin: Get ready. One, two, three--

He tiptoes on the trampoline, and the hands holding my waist suddenly exert pressure, and the sudden weightlessness leaves me crying out in alarm.

Along with a “thud”, Gavin sticks me firmly onto the wall. The only thing I can do is to grip his arm tightly.

Gavin: Lift your head.

Following what Gavin says, I realise that the view before me has expanded. I’ve reached a height that I haven’t reached before.

Gavin: High enough now?

Gavin takes my hand in his, his calm voice seemingly mixed with a twinge of satisfaction.

Warmth surfaces from our palms. I lower my head, looking at Gavin, and see the sporadically mottled smile in his eyes.

It imprints itself into the bottom of my heart.

[ PART TWO ]

MC: It’s been such a long time since I’ve taken a roller coaster!

Hugging the safety bar, I anticipate the impending plummet.

After the trampoline, we continue taking on our next challenge - the 4D roller coaster!

Gavin: You aren’t afraid?

While Gavin says this, he rests his elbow against the seat, palm facing up.

MC: I’m not afraid. Having flown with you so many times, I’ve been trained to handle this since a very long time ago! A mere roller coaster can’t scare me.

Upon hearing this, he’s slightly taken aback. His expression seems to be a little odd.

Gavin: …is that so.

Girl: Ah! This is so scary! I really want to get off…

Boy: Baby, don’t be afraid! I’m here, and I’ll protect you!

The conversation between the couple in front of us drifts to my ears. Gavin and I turn to the voices.

We see the girl gripping the guy’s arm tightly. The guy has his arm around her, giving her gentle and continuous reassurance.

Out of the corner of my eye, I glance at Gavin. He keeps his eyes front, though he blinks lightly.

When my line of sight travels downwards, I see that Gavin’s elbow is still against the seat. He reaches out to me again, his hand unfurling.

Looking at his hand, I laugh soundlessly.

MC: What should I do, I think I am a little scared.

After this, I take his hand without hesitation.

With a laugh, Gavin curls his slender fingers, encasing my hand tightly.

Gavin: In that case, hold tight.

Clip-clop, clip-clop–

The roller coaster starts making its upward climb, and I start to get increasingly excited.

MC: Gavin, this “4D Roller Coaster” shouldn’t be that scary, right?

Gavin shakes his head, briefly puzzled.

Gavin: It’s the first time I’m riding it too.

The roller coaster gradually reaches the peak. When it pauses slightly, a few passengers have already started exclaiming.

And my heart subconsciously starts throbbing too.

“Swoosh–” Without any warning, the roller coaster suddenly plummets at a 90 degree angle. In a split second, the head of the roller coaster lifts up, and my vision goes upside-down.

Everyone: Waaaaaaa–

Wind whizzes past, and a tingling sensation from the centrifugal force spreads from my legs to the rest of my body.

At this moment, I finally understand the real meaning of “4D Roller Coaster”.

Turns out that the seats of the roller coaster can move 360 degrees too!

I’m screaming aloud in my heart, but when it bubbles to my lips, it becomes an indistinct cry. I grip Gavin’s hand even more tightly.

Shrill cries resound across the skies. All of a sudden, I feel a gust of gentle wind caging me, blocking out the strong wind.

And I can finally hear my own voice clearly.

MC: Gav-Gavin…!

Gavin: What’s wrong? Are you scared?

Turning my head, I realise that Gavin’s looking at me, looking utterly composed. However, worry creases his forehead.

MC: Nope, I just feel…

MC: That this is way too fun!

Seeing how excited I look, Gavin can’t help but smile too. Underneath the sunlight, his amber eyes are so beautiful that they leave one dazzled.

Even though I enjoyed it to the fullest, I still feel like my limbs are weak after stepping off the roller coaster.

Gavin: Want to go again?

I shake my slightly dizzy head.

MC: …no need.

I take out of my phone to check my makeup and hair, and discover that my hair isn’t as messy as I expected.

When I look at Gavin again, I realise that there isn’t much difference between how he looks right now and before we took the roller coaster.

Suddenly, I recall feeling that gust of very gentle wind when we were up above…

Noticing that I haven’t spoken for a while, Gavin arches his brows.

Gavin: Are you still scared?

I burst into a soft chuckle, reaching out to hug Gavin’s arm. A trace of surprise flits across his face.

Gavin: What’s wrong?

I shake my head, then stand on my tiptoes, giving him a peck, and watching as his eyes widen slightly.

MC: Nothing much. I just wanted to thank Mr Wind.

[ PART THREE ]

In the cafeteria, Gavin and I are seated at the table, the fragrance of delicacies wafting in the air, causing one to water at the mouth.

Staff: …I’ll repeat the rules of the game again for the two of you. As long as you pass our “Couple Chemistry Test”, you can enjoy the sumptuous meal we’ve prepared! I’ll pose a series of questions, and if your answers are not in unison, we’ll remove the dishes one by one. Are you ready?

Gavin and I nod.

Staff: In that case, the game shall begin–

Staff: Having breakfast or sleeping in?

MC: Sleeping in.

Gavin: Having breakfast.

Gavin and I exchange a glance, then I watch helplessly as the warm chicken chowder on the table is taken away mercilessly.

Gavin: It’s all right, it’s just the first question. If you want to eat this, I can make it for you when we get back.

The image of us cooking together flashes across my mind, and I smile while nodding.

MC: Mm, we can make it together.

The game continues. Other than the first question, we provide the same answer for the rest of the questions over the next two minutes.

Even the staff shoots us a look of admiration, and I can’t help but feel a little proud.

Staff: …the next question - Ginkgo or Chinese crabapple?

MC: Ginkgo!

Gavin: Chinese crabapple.

MC: …

Gavin: …

Gavin: Cough… I didn’t want to eat bitter gourd.

Gavin brings his hand over to his mouth, his tone slightly apologetic. However, his gaze carries with it joy as he watches the staff remove the plate of bitter gourd fried omelette.

Seeing him like this, I almost burst into laughter.

Gavin: …it’s all right. We’ll get the next question right.

Gavin grips my hand, tilting his chin towards the table.

Gavin: When we were looking at the menu earlier, didn’t you say you wanted that dish?

I follow Gavin’s line of sight, realising that the next dish is indeed this cafeteria’s popular dish–

An east-west fusion of breaded chicken! Just thinking of how savoury it tastes, I can’t help but swallow my saliva.

Looking at Gavin’s certain and confident gaze, I nod.

MC: Mm!

Staff: in that case, the final question of this test–

Staff: Piano or guitar?

MC: Guitar!

Gavin: Piano.

MC: …

Staff: What a pity. Your answers are different. I’ll be taking this dish away.

While the staff speaks, he prepares to return the dish to the cart. However, Gavin suddenly reaches out to stop it.

Gavin: Could we exchange it with a different dish?

The agile and swift action leaves the staff stunned. He pauses for half a second, then nods.

Staff: Y-yes. But there’s a condition. You have to hold each others’ hands, look into each others’ eyes, and express your apologies to each other.

After hearing this, we’re dumbfounded for a moment. Although this is a little embarrassing, Gavin and I hold hands.

Under such an atmosphere, we look at each other, feeling a little shy.

MC: Then… I’ll start first. I think… I was in the wrong for getting the first question incorrect. In the future, I’ll have my breakfast on time, and not sleep in. Officer Gavin is welcome to supervise me. Mm, your turn.

Gavin: Cough. I… I shouldn’t have deliberately made a mistake and answered the question wrongly… At most, I just wouldn’t eat it.

MC: …hm?

Gavin: …I’ll eat it.

Staff: Cough cough– that’s fine, that’s fine.

The staff interrupts us from the side, clicking his tongue.

Staff: If I were to continue watching, I’ll be full from being a third wheel!

Gavin and I exchange a glance, then laugh aloud in unison.

It’s like a breeze blowing into the gentlest part of my heart. The only thing I feel is that this moment is incomparably beautiful.

[ PART FOUR ]

MC: What should we go for next?

Gavin and I are walking along the street, searching for our next target. A row of vending machines attract my attention.

The line of vending machines contain all sorts of toy capsules. From keychains to ornaments, there’s everything one could wish for.

Especially that one containing couple keychains. The furry keychains look exceptionally adorable.

I notice that Gavin has paused in front of one vending machine.

It’s a vending machine containing robots.

I vaguely recall watching a cartoon related to it when I was young. However, I wasn’t very interested in it, and never really understood it.

However, this looks like something Gavin would like.

MC: Gavin, there’s one vending machine I’d like to try. Could you wait here for me?

Gavin: Coincidentally, I do too.

I grin, nodding at him.

MC: Let’s split up and get the toy capsules we want, and we’ll meet back here later?

-

When we meet up again, I place the toy capsule in Gavin’s hand with satisfaction.

MC: Open it and take a look? Do you like it?

Gavin twists the toy capsule open, and surprise flashes across his eyes.

Gavin: I like it.

While he speaks, he pieces it together simply, letting the small, monochrome robot stand in his palm.

The little robot is holding a gun in one hand, and a shield in the other. Behind it is a structure resembling a one-sided wing.

On top of its circular head is a yellow antenna. Along with its four short limbs, it looks extremely cute.

Gavin: This is my favourite model.

MC: I got it randomly, and didn’t expect to get the right one.

Gavin: I was lucky too.

Gavin smiles, takes out a toy capsule, and opens it.

It happens to be the furry couple keychains I saw earlier.

One of them has soft and long ears, while the other has straight, sharp ears.

Gavin keeps the one with sharp ears, then carefully attaches the doll with the long ears on my bag. Pleased, he nods.

Gavin: Mm, it suits you.

Gavin keeps the little robot in his pocket, and the keychain swings next to me.

Seeing the gifts we’ve exchanged, sweetness brims from the depths of my heart.

MC: Having been with you for such a long time, I feel that my knowledge has been expanded.

Gavin: I’ve learnt quite a lot too.

Gavin pauses, then continues confidently.

Gavin: For instance, that the lipstick you’re wearing today is the colour of red bean paste. And that you’ve curled your fringe slightly.

Pleasantly surprised, I blink and want to give him a round of applause for his perfect answer.

MC: What else?

Gavin: Also, that I have to separate the white from the yolk when making fried rice. And that succulents don’t need that much watering.

MC: Then… what are the steps to preparing sliced fish boiled in chili oil?

Probably not expecting that I’d suddenly pose a question, he ponders it carefully before responding in an exceptionally solemn manner.

Gavin: I can’t explain it right now, but I took it down in my notes.

After he finishes speaking, we look at each other, then laugh in unison.

MC: Gavin, tell me more about this robot. And about basketball, motorcycles, planes and all the things you like.

Gavin: Okay. I’m hoping that you’d give me more cooking classes too.

The corners of his lips curl upwards slightly, and fragments of sunlight flash in his eyes.

Gavin: I want to have an even better understanding of everything to do with you.

[ PART FIVE ]

Note: References are made to Flower Season date, which has not been released in CN!

Dusk dyes the sky, and some attractions have already ceased operation. At this moment, Gavin suddenly pauses.

I follow his line of sight, and realise that he’s looking at one of the classic rides of the amusement park – the small Airplane Ride.

MC: Do you want to ride it?

Gavin freezes for a moment, then chuckles softly.

Gavin: [laughs] Nope.

Gavin: I just remembered how I really liked this ride when I was young. But after I grew up, I didn’t want to as much.

He mentions this casually, but it channels an inexplicable emotion in my heart.

In the short silence, the small airplanes, which are currently in operation, start to slow down.

A group of kids run towards the attraction, accompanied by their parents. Looking at their side profiles, my heart stirs, and I grab his sleeve and run.

Gavin: What’s wrong?

MC: Gavin, let’s go for it too!

-

Sitting on a gradually ascending airplane, the cool breeze brushes past my ears. However, my eyes are drawn to Gavin, who is beside me.

He’s trying his best to stretch his legs in the relatively small space. Seeing the curious gaze I’m tossing him, he coughs softly.

Gavin: …this place is too small.

MC: Your legs are too long!

While grumbling at how the gods aren’t fair, I whip out my phone and face it towards Gavin.

MC: With such an unforgettable memory, we must have some photographs!

Gavin pauses, then suddenly reaches out to take my phone.

Gavin: I’ll do the taking.

Seeing that I'm slightly stunned, the corners of Gavin’s lips curl upwards, bringing with it a confident smile.

Gavin: Since it’s an unforgettable memory, you must be in the frame too.

With my guidance, Gavin changes the angles and takes numerous photographs of us. In the shots, Gavin’s expression, which was originally unnatural, eventually relaxes.

As the rays of evening sunlight disappear along the horizon, the small airplanes also conclude their short journey, and begin their slow descent.

Turning to Gavin, I subconsciously speak.

MC: Gavin, let’s ride it one more time.

Seeing Gavin’s questioning gaze, I laugh while explaining.

MC: Just now, I was helping a young Gavin fulfil his wish. This time, I’m riding it with the Gavin of the present.

Ushering the arrival of evening, the lights of the amusement park start to  illuminate. He seems to pause for a moment, then smiles slightly.

Gavin: Okay.

The small airplane starts moving again, making its slow ascent.

MC: I’d like to ask Mr Gavin–

MC: You got to take the Airplane Ride again. Are you happy?

[Note] She’s making reference to the Amusement Park date!

The EN version of what Gavin said in that date was “You got to take another lap. Had fun?”

But to be more precise, what Gavin said in CN was “You got to take the Ferris wheel again. Are you happy?”

Seeing that I’m all smiles, Gavin can’t help but smile too.

Gavin: I am.

MC: Do you still remember? I mentioned before that amusement parks have a kind of magic power, and can fulfil any wish. So if you have an unfulfilled wish, you can have it fulfilled here.

[Note] She’s making reference to Flower Season date!

He seems to think of a particular memory, and nods.

Gavin: I remember.

He pauses, a smile blooming on his lips.

Gavin: But I think what’s more magical than the amusement park is you. You enabled me to have many new wishes.

MC: Hm? For example?

I blink in curiosity.

Gavin: For example. the next time we participate in the “Couple Chemistry Test”, we’ll definitely make a new record.

Gavin: For example, the steps to cooking sliced fish boiled in chill oil. When I return home, I’ll definitely check my notes, and be able to answer you the next time you ask…

Gavin: For example, right now…

Gavin: I wish to see what your expression will look like in the next second.

He stares directly into my eyes, the light in them twinkling.

MC: Gavin…

Even before I finish speaking, his warm lips cover mine.

The gentle and soft sensation brings with it a unique scent belonging only to Gavin, overtaking all of my senses.

There seems to be a few cries and whistles from behind us, but the sound of the wind dispels them all. And I can hardly pay attention to them.

His breaths remain at the side of my lips. The revolving and blurry lights are behind him. The only thing I can see clearly is his face.

Gavin: It’s an expression belonging only to me.

Fireworks event: here

[littlewalken]

TZN Exclusive Interview: Andy Robinson

On Garak, "Star Trek", "Dirty Harry" & Sci-Fi Idealism

TrekZone Network sat down with Andrew Robinson, who played the Cardassian Garak in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", in Hamburg prior to the "Evening with Andrew Robinson", organized by FKM Events. We talked about Garak's past and future, Robinson's current projects and the idealism of science fiction fans.

TrekZone Network: Is this the first time you are in Hamburg?

Andrew Robinson: No, I was here 12 years ago for a convention with another organizer. So this is my first time back in 12 years, I believe.

Andy Robinson at the FKM Evening in Hamburg

TZN: Long time.

Robinson: It has been a long time. And as they say, a lot of water under the bridge...

TZN: You have been to Germany in the meantime?

Robinson: Yeah, I've been here several times. For one reason or another and in several different places. I have come here for a whole bunch of reasons. Even just as a tourist. But I have never made a film here or anything.

TZN: Your first stint as Garak was in the third episode of "Deep Space Nine". When you first got that role, did you anticipate or did you know that it was going to be a recurring role?

Robinson: No, not at all. Originally, the role of Odo, that Rene Auberjonois played, came down to three of us. Myself, another actor and obviously Rene. Then Rene got the role. Then they asked me to come in a few weeks later to read for this other role, which I thought was just going to be one episode. But it turned out that they were looking for a way to get the character of Doctor Bashir more involved with the show and so they, they were testing a storyline for Doctor Bashir and obviously the storyline was: he meets this older Cardassian, presumably tailor. Is he a spy? Who is he? This very mysterious person, the last Cardassian left on the station.

They wanted to see if there was any chemistry between Siddig and myself as actors. And of course we hit it off immediately. We had a great time with each other. And so it was based on that when they saw that episode, I think it was "Past Prologue", and they saw that we were working well together then they decided to add more episodes of Garak. Which I am eternally grateful for.

TZN: Do you regret that you were not cast as Odo?

Robinson: No, no, no, no. Not at all. As an actor, and an actor of a certain age, after a while you become very philosophical about these things. And genuinely so. Whoever gets the role, that was their role, you cannot feel remorse or try to second-guess or be bitter. And it always is the right actor as far as I am concerned and certainly with Rene it was the right actor. He was wonderful as Odo.

TZN: The part as Garak turned out to be rather substantial as well, of course.

Robinson: O, Garak was one of the best characters, I mean this, he was one of the most enjoyable, fully satisfying characters I have ever played in my life. And the fact that it is the only time in my life, too, as an actor, that I was able to develop a character over a seven-year period, and not be overused. By that I mean often if you are a regular on a series, they run out of things for a character to say and to do, and so the character just ends up repeating himself/herself, and the actions and the plotlines and after a while it becomes what they call the law of diminishing returns. The character becomes reduced. With Garak, because I was not a regular character, I appeared occasionally, I think I was in 39 episodes, and when I appeared, it was for a reason. Almost always it was for a reason, There are a few episodes when I wondered what I was doing there... But that always happens and at least they paid me, so that was fine.

TZN: Is there anything you would have liked to do as Garak on screen? Or any aspect of his character, his personality, that you would have liked to develop?

Robinson as Cardassian Elim Garak

Robinson: They did start this love story. But then they could not find the right actress. And so they had this one actress playing Ziyal and they did not like her, so they had another actress playing Ziyal who looked like my granddaughter, so that made me feel a little perverse. Then they just decided to forget about it. But it would have been wonderful to have had a bittersweet love story, someone who breaks Garak's heart, who tries to unlock the mystery romantically and cannot do it.

It is one of the reasons I wrote the book, to explore that part of Garak, Garak's heart. Because as an actor, you fall in love, well you do not always fall in love with your characters but the ones that you do fall in love with, it is a very deep relationship that you have with the character, and the character does take on a life on its own. Because as an actor, that is what you try to do. You try to transform yourself into this character's life. Obviously, I am not Garak, I am not Hamlet, but you find those places within yourself that can make that transformation.

I was not a "Star Trek" fan when they hired me. I had no idea what the "Star Trek" universe was, who Cardassians were, who Klingons, Romulans, I had no idea about any of that.

TZN: You had never seen anything, never heard about it?

Robinson: I had heard about it but never saw a thing. And a Cardassian? I had no idea what that was.

TZN: Then the makeup was applied...

Robinson: Yeah, right. But they did show me the episode, in "Next Generation", I think David Warner was the first Cardassian or was Marc Alaimo the first?

TZN: Marc Alaimo.

Robinson: Yeah, but it was that two-parter where David Warner's Cardassian character is torturing Picard and I thought, well, that is a really interesting-looking guy. That was the first episodes that peaked my interest. I thought, they deal with substantial things. And the acting was wonderful. Of course, David Warner has always been one of my favorite actors.

So I started writing a diary. As if Garak had a diary and I would write things, and I would make up things about him. And it is what you do, it is what an actor does sometimes for any character. You try to create a story, a life for this character. And when the series was over, I realized there were still things I would have loved to say about Garak and that is why I wrote the book "A Stitch in Time".

TZN: Did you start with the diary when you recognized that Garak would not be a one- or two-episode thing but a recurring role?

Robinson: Yeah, exactly, I think I started in the second year. I also started it when I started being invited to conventions and I realized, after two or three conventions, there were four or five questions people who would always ask me. How long does it take, your makeup... But I thought, would it not be interesting if I if at the conventions did something different. And so what I would do is that I would get up and I would read excerpts from these diaries. It became enormously popular, and that in a sense spawned a lot of things, then as actors we all started saying, well, maybe there is something that we can do rather than just get up and talk about our makeup and so forth. And that unleashed a whole bunch of stuff. Even Siddig and I wrote a play together that we did at several conventions and it was really a rather challenging play, dealing with string theory...

TZN: What was it about? I read just before this interview that you had this play...

Andy Robinson in Hamburg in June 2008 (Photo credit: Klaus Wittmack)

Robinson: Well, basically Garak and Bashir meet up in this place and it is like, nobody knows, but it looks like a convention with "Star Trek" fans there. And so they had to conduct this very tricky business in front of these people sitting at tables and sitting in chairs watching them. It was very, very, very postmodern. (laughs)

And there was a time when we were working on the play in front of an audience, too. Towards the end, when we finally got it written and got it right, that was when it was at its best but while we were experimenting with it, I think a lot of people fell asleep. (laughs)

Getting back to those diaries, [Michael Scott] co-wrote a book with Armin Shimerman ["The Merchant Prince"] and he said to me, "You should turn this into a book!" and that was when I did. And it was actually the first "Star Trek" book that was written without what they call a ghostwriter.

TZN: Are you thinking of writing another novel about Garak?

Robinson: No. I actually have said everything I could possibly say about Garak. I really have. Plus, if I did, I would then because of the corporate nature of Pocket Books, the Simon and Schuster division that does the "Star Trek" books, I would then have to follow all these other books that have been written about Garak and that does not interest me at all. Because the story I came up with was actually, oddly enough close my story, especially when Garak was a young man.

TZN: You did write another short story though, right? Set after the book.

Robinson: Right.

TZN: That was the last thing we have heard from Garak. In that story, he is not in a very positive state of mind and not in a good place.

Robinson: No.

TZN: So if we could jump forward in time, to a time and place after that, where would we find Garak?

Robinson: Dead. Honestly, because when I wrote that novella, first I was interested in putting - because I live part of the year in Paris -

I was interested in having Garak in Paris and see what that was like. Paris is like a museum now, and I thought that they would have really preserved it in 400 years and it would have become the museum of the world. But when I got Garak to Paris, it became very depressing. That is why I think he was not in a great state. I realized that if I had have written much more about Garak, he probably would have had to die. I do not want to go into why because it is all political and you are not here about politics. (laughs)

TZN: When did the producers tell you about who Garak's parents were?

Robinson: The big reveal was of course with Enabran Tain, who was the head of the Obsidian Order. I know that the mother appeared at one point when they were on Cardassia in that last series of episodes that I was in and that they ended up at Garak's mother's house, hiding. But the story of Garak and his parents really is what I myself put together, in terms of the relationships.

TZN: Did you have a hunch though that the storyline could develop into the direction of Enabran Tain being revealed as Garak's father?

Robinson: O, no! It was a big surprise to me. It was great!

TZN: Just like for the viewers.

Robinson: O, yeah, absolutely! But that is how I felt every time I would get a new script from the writers because the writers loved writing for Garak, that was the pleasure. It was evident that they liked writing for Garak because of the language, the dialogue that they would give him which was so delicious and so much fun and very ironic. One of the things you certainly know is that in America irony is not at the top of our list. As a people we do not really appreciate ironic humor. I think that one of the things that made Garak popular is the fact that he did have a sense of irony. That to everything he said there was a twist and there was always a subtext. And indeed probably he was lying but enjoying it and enjoying the fact that he was lying and seeing how far he could get away with it and who was gullible and who was smart.

Andy Robinson in Hamburg in June 2008 (Photo credit: Klaus Wittmack)

TZN: There was this one episode with the implant, "The Wire". That embodies everything you just said.

Robinson: Yeah, and that is by far my favorite episode.

TZN: We asked our readers to hand in some questions for you beforehand. One of them is: how long did it take to apply the makeup?

Robinson: At the beginning, it took about four hours, I would say. And then they got it down to about two hours. Towards the end they got more dexterous, thank God, because sitting in the chair for four hours meant that I would have to come in long before dawn and it was just excruciating, it was horrible. Even two hours was bad enough. It is the only thing about Garak that I do not miss at all.

TZN: Did the makeup inhibit you in the way you could express yourself?

Robinson: Well, that is the great, mysterious thing about working with a mask like that. For one thing the technology is very good, there were I think seven prosthetic pieces and they were all very flexible, very pliable and so you put it on and you think, my God, it is like this corpus, you're encased in it. But then you were fine, you could move. You were not, you were not limited the way Rene was limited with Odo because he could not eat, he lost a lot of weight. That is something I should have done!

But he had to take his lunch through a straw and so he could not move much at all because it was a mess. If he marled just a little bit, then he would have to sit in a chair and have to go through a whole process to get it back to that smoothness. That obviously was not my problem. My problem was the claustrophobia that I have, which I experienced actually last night. I went to a bar in Paris with some friends to watch the French lose to the Dutch. (laughter) Really lose. And deservedly so, I mean it. The French should get rid of that coach of theirs because he is awful.

I was at the bar and everybody was crowding in around me, I had to leave at the interval, go home and watch it on my own television. That was the thing about the Garak makeup. That was one thing but then this heavy wig that they put on top of me and then, because they wanted Cardassians to look big, they made the costumes out of the material that you make furniture pads, furniture textiles, and so all the costumes were very heavy and once you zipped them up it was like you were in a sauna, literally.

Actually that is where I lost a little weight, a lot of water weight anyway. When you get under the lights, underneath the makeup and the wig and the costume, there were rivers of sweat, I was soaked underneath. Not very glamorous (laughter) and I certainly did not smell like a flower.

TZN: I have got another reader question here, that touches a different subject. Did you know that there is speculation about Garak's sexuality?

Robinson: Oh, yeah. I started it.

TZN: Really? Then this might be interesting to this reader. He calls himself your gay fan Dominion and he asks a lot of questions like: Why haven't we seen a gay character in "Star Trek"? Have gays become extinct in the 24th century? Do you think there will ever be a gay character in "Star Trek"? Do gays not belong in "Star Trek's" future?

Robinson: O, yeah. There will be gay characters. Certainly now there will be, for one thing, America is still very puritan, we are very squeamish when it comes to sexuality. I remember when I very first played Garak, I played him gay! I thought this would be great! He sees this young man, this young, very attractive doctor on the station, he is lonely, he is the only Cardassian there, this doctor is curious about him, and if you remember, this was a great moment because Sid totally went with it! When he comes up and he puts his hand on his shoulder, Sid did this great thing, it was this sort of an electrical charge that went through him and so I played him totally gay in that episode.

Garak's First Scene

Of course the producers did not actually tell me not to play him gay but then they started writing him a little more macho and more like a Cardassian. But I said, "Listen, one of the great things about Garak is that he is not Gul Dukat, he is not one of those macho, militaristic guys, he is your finesse Cardassian." So we struck a compromise but I was always very clear. I did not get into it in the book. Quite frankly, I was going to go in that direction. I had written a whole thing about Garak's sexuality because I felt that Garak was sort of - talk about bisexual, I think that he was multisexual, essentially that anything that moves is fair game for Garak. He has a voracious sexual appetite.

But as I say, especially on American television you have the odd gay character now but it is all going to be just cosmetic. In terms of commercial television ever getting into real sexuality, that is not going to happen. "Star Trek" is very conservative, there is a conservatism about "Star Trek" that I think "Deep Space Nine" in a sense went against. It defied that conservatism. "Deep Space Nine" was not as black and white as the other "Star Trek" shows. It was different. It was not people in a rocket ship doing one-night stands on a planet to planet to planet, coming in and battling the evil aliens or some kind of monster or whatever. It was a community unto itself on the edge and this is what I loved about the show, every one of the characters on "Deep Space Nine" had a moral dimension about them. Each one of them was in touch with their dark side.

That episode "In the Pale Moonlight", when Garak introduces Captain Sisko to the concept of realpolitik, that okay, if you want to get rid of the Romulan threat, what you do is, you kill them. And you kill them in a not very nice way. So you just eliminate your enemy. Of course that is not fair play, that is not the American way. I was surprised, I loved that episode because it was very mature in that sense. It said you have to grow up, this is the world you live in now. And of course the world we live in now is very morally ambiguous to say the least.

I rambled, I am sorry. We went away from sexuality but I think there has to be more gay characters. I do not know what this movie is going to be like but this movie I believe is about Starfleet academy?

A gay Sulu? According to Robinson an interesting idea

TZN:It is a prequel. It is not entirely set on Starfleet academy but shows the young crew in their early years getting together.

Robinson: Right. For instance, I wonder, George Takei, who has come out, who is an openly gay man, and actually now I think he and his partner are going to get married since the California Supreme Court has now finally legalized gay marriage. But I wonder where they are going to go with his character in this prequel. It would be very interesting.

TZN: You did some work behind the camera as well. You directed I believe an episode of DS9. How was that for you, the experience to suddenly tell your colleagues what to do?

Robinson: Yes, right. It is funny, it was very different getting on the other side of the camera and not just working with the other actors, I mean they were fine. But it was the first episode I really had a lot of trouble with because it was my first episode ever directing something. And of course when you are directing "Star Trek" you have the added dimension, the added complication of the special effects. Although they have great special-effects people and you just get out of the way and let them do their work but still you are always trying to visualize what the picture looks like as a director.

But I must say that directing the "Star Trek" episodes really in a sense changed my life because it was the first time I started directing. From there I went on to a lot more directing, mainly theater because I have always been more of a theater person than a film person. And that really gave me the courage to continue in that direction as a director which I have and which has actually led to my current position. I am a fulltime teacher now. I run an acting program at the University of Southern California. And that all came out of directing.

TZN: You have been an actor, you have been a director, you have written a book, actually is there anything artistic you would still like to do? Singing maybe?

Robinson: No, I do not think so. Actually, it is true, it is interesting you should say that. I would actually love to do a musical. I really would love to do a musical, you are absolutely right. I would love to do one of these great musicals. But I still go back and forth. I am going to do a play this summer in San Francisco as an actor. I will continue to direct. I do not know how much longer I will run this program because I created this actor-training program and that was exciting.

I am going to be actually talking about that today. I work with young actors in terms of how does one train to be an actor, what is it that one does? I am being able to put some of my own ideas and thoughts about what actor training is into a coherent program that goes over three years, that trains professional actors. That has been very exciting. That is part of who I am but I think the territory of being an actor is that you do reinvent yourself from time to time. You have to reinvent yourself from time to time. Not to change, you really have to transform because that is the business.

TZN: In your career, you played many roles, and you guest starred in "Bonanza".

Robinson: No, you could not possibly remember! That is incredible. No, o my God, how could you... That is amazing. Yeah, that was the very last season of "Bonanza", too. And I think it was my first work in television.

TZN: How was it to play with such very famous actors like Lorne Greene?

Robinson: Well, see, it was very nice. They are household names but I had just come off from doing my first film with Clint Eastwood. So playing with Clint Eastwood was like playing with God. And then everyone else, they are wonderful actors, but still, my first film experience was the "Dirty Harry" film and that was extraordinary. I must say I enjoyed doing "Bonanza" because it was a show that had gone on forever. I helped kill it because that was the last season... Having the experience of doing "Dirty Harry" which was a feature film, that interested me a lot more than doing television.

Andy Robinson in "Dirty Harry"

TZN: You did very many TV series. The list of your guest appearances just goes on and on and on.

Robinson: Yeah, I did and most of the time I was the villain. That was courtesy of "Dirty Harry". After I did "Dirty Harry" nobody could see me as playing anything but the villain.

TZN: Is there any of these series that you would have liked to be on as one of the lead actors or main cast?

Robinson: In America, there is a series that just ended. I do not know if it is here, I do not know if it has come here. They did five years of it. HBO has these. I do not know if you know Home Box Office? It is a cable network in America. They had these series, "The Sopranos" was their flagship, their famous series. But they had another series called "The Wire". Have you ever heard of "The Wire"?

TZN: The title sounds familiar but that is all.

Robinson: It is interesting because you had me talking about that episode of "Deep Space Nine" that is called "The Wire", that was my favorite episode. Well, this series, "The Wire", is probably the best television series I have ever seen in my life. It was a brilliant series that took the city of Baltimore and it investigated the city of Baltimore in a dramatic series format on every level from drug dealers to police to schools to unions and it was an amazing series. I do not know how it got done because in America we are not big on socially-relevant thematic. We want our entertainment to be pure and uncluttered with things we have to think about. But this was a brilliant series and I, every time I watched the series, thought, o my God, I would love to be on that series! That was one of the few things I ever watched where I felt that way. I hope it comes here, I am sure it will come here. It has to. If it does, you must watch it because it is extraordinary.

TZN: I am afraid we have to wrap up already. One last question: Is there any question that you would really particularly badly like to answer but have never been asked?

Robinson: Wow. I have to say I think I have been asked every question that I can possibly imagine. Short of questions that I would prefer not to get into. No, I do not think that there is. I do not think that there is at all. I find that "Star Trek" fans for the most part, especially in Europe, are relatively sophisticated. I think that there is an idealism about following a series like "Star Trek", especially in this world.

Can we imagine ourselves projected into 24th or 25th century or wherever and still functioning. Obviously, it is weird. As you said earlier, here we are, four- five hundred years later and where have all the gay people gone? Where have all the people of color gone in a sense. That has always been something. What has indeed happened to poverty and what has happened to racism and fundamentalism and terrorism and all the things that bedevil us. I really do hope that science fiction continues to evolve and the way certain writers have challenged themselves to think about what happens to all of these social issues in the future and how we project solutions for them or perhaps not solutions but perhaps just accommodations, how do we learn to live with each other because in the end I think that that is what the "Star Trek" series perhaps offers its best insights about. Then I think that it is also great dramatic material which is the great question how do we learn how to live with each other without violence and without predatory behavior.

TZN: That ends this interview on a very thoughtful note, I think. Thank you very much.

Robinson: It was a pleasure, thank you, it has been great.

[romanceboys]

(interview) w korea september issue 2020 — reptile

1. i was surprised to learn that this is your 13th year since debut. within a company, the years almost reflect the experience of a vice department head. that’s right. though there are things i’m seeing for the first time at this point, i think there’s a lot that has remained the same. shall i tell you something funny? early in the year, i transformed into my debut appearance from when i was 16 with a bowl haircut and had my picture taken. i put it up on instagram and as i watched my fans briefly mistake it for an old picture, i thought to myself ‘well at least my face hasn’t aged much yet.’ haha. 2. today, i get to meet one of the personalities i’ve been very curious about personally. how should i put it, you seem like a person who possesses a perfect narrative. oh my, thank you. 3. maturing steadily after debuting with shinee in middle school, you broke away from your image as the group’s youngest and instead donned the clothes of a solo musician. all 5 of your solo albums have been recorded as hits. now you are a member of superm that has gone global. even a narrative within a coming-of-age novel could not be as sturdy as this.  when i look back on my life, i find it quite fascinating. i entered the company at the age of 13, and this year i turned 28. i’ve lived half of my life as a singer, i realise this when i think ‘i’ve run along the same path for a long time’. i think... i’ve been very greedy. it was through this greed that i was able to debut in a team called shinee, and consequently receive solo plans. once, producer lee sooman told me to bring him a recording of any pop song. wondering ‘what’s going on?’ i prepared for it and submitted, and soon after my solo album was released. thinking back, it must’ve been a test. i felt a sense of accomplishment in these things. that too very deeply, of course luck was on my side too. 4. a methodical company like sm couldn’t have proposed a solo career so lightly. there were a couple of tell-tale signs as far as i could tell. my singing parts were little during debut. after all taemin had the image of the one in charge of dancing. then my parts started to increase gradually, this could’ve been one of the signs. back in the day i used to stay back in the practice room till dawn. the employees working late would see me and the word probably went around. they must have felt sorry for me. a skinny boy practising by himself till dawn (laughs). 5. were you the type to stay back later than the rest in the practice room? i would go to the practice room as soon as we wrapped up our schedule. i’d practice till sunrise then return to the dorm and prepare for the next schedule immediately, i spent a long time doing this. 6. it was at the time of ‘sherlock’ in 2012 that your stage presence started to shine in shinee’s stages. thereafter, it seemed that you enjoyed your time on stage thoroughly. when did you begin to realise that only you were in command of your own stage? there were a couple of times... sherlock was one of them. sherlock was an album that came out when i was 20, right after becoming an adult, it was then my attitude towards performance changed. in those days i challenged myself to ‘not to do what was expected/fixed.’ usually our gestures at certain sections of the song are fixed beforehand, from sherlock onwards however i tried my hand at different things without reserve. it was my way of approaching the audience with sincerity, and my way of improving in the future. back then i would notice variations (in my performance) everyday when i monitored myself. 7. frankly, isn’t it difficult for someone to have made such a prominent leap? i think it might have been because of the long hiatus before sherlock. i was able to prepare well so my growth was likely more obvious when i stood on stage after a long time. how should i put it, my members were very stimulating for me. since the hyungs aren’t ordinary people (laughs). this is something i’m confident about, even if you say that most of the shinee members are main vocalists, none of us is inferior to the other, everyone is so talented. with these thoughts verbatim ‘i must survive in here,’ ‘i need to finish what i started,’ i practiced. i couldn’t not have made the leap with such stimulation and not to mention my greedy nature (laughs). spending time together with the members made me realise that we started to resemble each other in some aspects, thanks to them i was able to broaden my perspective and become aware of my undiscovered talents. 8. the prologue single ‘2 kids’ of your third album ‘never gonna dance again’ released in august. as i was listening to the song, i suddenly became curious about the lyricist and looked them up. my impression was that the language of the lyrics was raw and honest. the lyricist turned out to be you. my intention was to include everyday, colloquial speech. i’ve written poetic and abstract lyrics before, but while working on ‘2 kids’ i wanted the listeners to easily grasp the emotions at once. since i’ve released many songs like ‘danger’ with vivid concepts and sensual performances, i expected there to be some distance between me and the public. i found that i shouldn’t stray too far. in any case, i’m a pop singer. i thought to myself let’s meet the public halfway, and the result was the lyrics for ‘2 kids.’ it’s the brightest of all my title tracks (laughs). 9. i find two interesting points here. first, you are completely aware of your identity as a pop singer, second, to do that you work hard to keep close to the public. of course there are times when it doesn’t work out (laughs). for instance, when we’re deciding on the title track for a shinee album, my opinions always diverge from the members’. after listening to our fourth album title track ‘view,’ i said ‘no way, it can never be this!’ (laughs). what i’m after is, how shall i put it... there is a side to me that wants to experience things profoundly. for example, if i were to express love, instead of depicting it one-dimensionally, i’d prefer to do it maniacally. i like taking it one step further to appear twisted.  10. that’s amusing. it’s probably because i’ve seen your easy-going appearance on tv a lot, i would have never guessed for you to approach things ‘deeply’. profound people tend to be like that. ‘multi’ people are able to do several things at once, i can’t do that. i have to dig into things deeply at a time. that’s why when my members and i receive the same schedule notice, i’m the only one who always forgets it (laughs). 11. oho, this makes me curious about your taste in pop culture.  i really like the british drama <black mirror>. i get hooked on the unusual. like mind-boggling things? i used to watch movies that weren’t popular because such movies are less likely to repeat contents that have already been consumed. but then i slowly began to enjoy light films as well. these days i leave a movie running in the background while i do other things. back when i would look for an independent film or thriller of my liking, i’d get extremely exhausted after watching it. they require so much focus that they sap my energy. 12. we were talking about lyrics but somehow ended up here (laughs). if you were given the opportunity to write lyrics again, what kind of story do you want the lyrics to convey? i like philosophical lyrics. for instance, a song called ‘soldier’ from my solo album deals with religious content, it varies from time to time of course but well if i were to write again... i think about this a lot these days. i want to change myself, i want to shake off my image uptil now and be reborn again. 13. why is that? i want a colour that is more concentrated and unique. as if i'm debuting again, i want to show something completely new that i had not before. 14. but aren’t your comebacks always novel? a musician like you who does diverse and experimental concepts is rare. is that so? sure the concepts are always new but... these days i think about how i want to change myself as a person from the very inside. instead of putting a facade on display, i have a thirst for wanting to show a more humane, genuine appearance. all humans experience moments of weakness and dysfunction. i think these moments definitely hold some beauty in them. the moment a person breaks down. it’s the only way one can get up and overcome difficulties again, i believe showing these sides of me, all of me, unabashedly is a path i need to walk as an artist now. 15. honestly, i’m excited for your third album because i heard this album reflects your ideas the most. what aspects of the production were different this time? firstly, i personally cast and liaised with the music video director. i thought it was important to work with the director one-on-one by keeping mediators to a minimum. through several meetings we mulled over every single thing like concept, outfit, hair and makeup. i offered my opinions too: ‘because i’m thinking of leaving a connecting link in the prologue, since there are two albums that would release following ‘2 kids,’ i want to drop certain keywords in the music video.’ fans usually call this a ‘bait’ (laughs). 16. the choreography stood out the most in the ‘2 kids’ music video. you weren’t simply moving to the rhythm, rather weren’t you moving your body guided by emotions? actually there were barely any plans to include dancing scenes. but i thought you never know so i quickly prepared a choreography the day before i left for paris. initially, i had a ‘dramatised’ (borrowing elements from drama) choreography in mind, but the director was expecting something modern. in the end, we expressed it well with a choreography that the director and i came up with after finding the perfect common ground. 17. personally i think a dramatised choreography would have been quite alright because ‘2 kids’ is a universal love song. i told the director i wanted to look miserable and pathetic through and through, like falling into a bottomless pit, wrecked, to be found waking up in the middle of the street, that would do too. why did i want to be that wrecked? i don’t know. there’s just a lot that exists within me. and i might have wanted to express that.... 18. with your first solo mini album <ace> you proved your grit as a solo musician to the public, and i believe your second album <move> reified your colour. i think taemin is a musician who doesn’t need to prove himself anymore. having reached this status, you’re releasing your next album <never gonna dance again>. did you ever think that this album could be it? rather, i hope that this album can be my ‘turning point.’ just as how it was during sherlock, i hope this time it changes my identity completely, as an individual and as a performer. people might like this album or find it mediocre, but i try not to care about these things now. 19. were you the type to stress over feedback? yes. because there are many people who are uncomfortable with change. but then i realised we’d never be able to free ourselves from within if we continued to be tied down. so now i’m trying to notice these things less. 20. have you ever had this thought? that looking back, the experimental has always revolved around you. as i said before, i think there is a lot of something within me (laughs). people have recognized that, there’s a lot i want to do. there is a greed for wanting to be different from others. it’s not that i want to ‘appear’ different but truly be different. 21. do you think there is an aspect of you that others can’t follow? i can’t seem to figure it out. i’m looking for it. however, my satisfaction level with myself tends to be low. and it’s something that has been guiding me till now. 22. what helps you recharge the most? i like lower-body bathing so much (laughs). as soon as i get into the bath, i automatically end up going ‘euu’ ‘aah.’ i soak my body completely, light up a scented candle, then let my body warm up like this. 23. while watching your vlog-like youtube content taem-log, i wondered ‘does he have an affinity for household goods?’ since the camera often captured your surroundings, i noticed pretty glasses and a colourful coffee machine adorning your cupboard. not at all. my mother did all of that (laughs). she’d say ‘this would suit taemin~’ then set it up prettily for display on the shelves. sometimes i do think i’d like to furnish my house with antiques if i were to move in the future. this is a bit funny but i find the houses in old horror movies so pretty. 24. i saw a bottle of moët & chandon in your refrigerator, is champagne your regular choice of alcohol? i rarely drink. i usually receive gifted alcohol quite a lot, it all goes to my father (laughs). my mother brought the moët & chandon and left it in there. i asked her to leave a pretty bottle in there at least for decoration purposes, so she probably brought it just for that? (laughs). 25. what kind of a person is 28-year-old taemin? i sort of want to set things ablaze. i want to put up a spectacular finale of the opening act. 26. how do you want to be remembered as a musician? as a great person. i say this knowing it sounds a bit grandiose but it’s my mission.  27. i can see it. the bigger you become the larger the impact you can have on society. i will become that person. so that many people can hear the message i want to convey.

translated by romanceboys — take out with full credit (source)

[bonjour-rainycity]

Double Heart | Chapter One ~ Cosima

|previous part|

Pairing: Haldir x OFC

Rating: G

Word count: 2100

Warnings: None

**Read on Ao3 under the user “bonjour-rainycity” if you like!**

A/n Thanks for the love on the prologue <3 also, this is the first time I’ve scheduled a post, so please let me know if something looks weird!

Translations: Av-‘osto = Don’t be afraid // Odúlen le natho = I’m here to help you // Pedil edhellen = do you speak Elvish

I was right — the peace deserts me instantly.

A sharp pain pierces my chest, my lungs ache, and my brain throbs inside my skull. A man leans over me. His long, dark hair tickles my neck. He is beautiful and smiling, but I do not know him. Fear quickens my breath. I try to jerk away from him, but he keeps a firm pressure on my shoulders, holding me in place. He meets my wide, panicked eyes with calm, reassuring ones of forest brown.

“Av-‘osto. Odúlen le natho.”

What? I shake my head at him, fear temporarily making room for confusion. The words he speaks, which had proven so irresistible when I was under the weight of the water, now sound only strange and indecipherable.

I stare at him, uncomprehending and very much on my guard.

His brow furrows, and, when he speaks again, it is with a note of hesitation. “Pedil edhellen?”

“I don’t think she does.” Another voice—confident, commanding—comes from my right. I turn my head just in time to see a tall man in peculiar armor slide off his horse. He takes quick strides towards me, then crouches near my side. “What is your name?”

I find myself momentarily silenced by his proximity, as well as his eyes. They are a clear ice blue—beautiful, depthless—but cold and calculating. They hold none of the warmth the other man’s eyes do, only suspicion. As much as I don’t like behind held to the ground by him, I turn my head, searching for the deep, honest brown I met upon awaking.

He meets my gaze with a soft smile. “Do not feel fear, we are not here to harm you. We found you unconscious and alone near the river, and stopped to help.” His voice is light, unsure, and strangely accented, placing emphasis on the wrong part of the words, but I am pleased that I can understand him now. As if to illustrate his point, that I am not in danger from them, he releases his hold on my shoulders and allows me space to sit up.

“Slowly,” he cautions. “I worry you have hit your head.”

That would explain the pounding. I grimace, supporting myself on my forearms, and turn my head to observe my surroundings. It’s all very green and brown, I suppose, though vibrant, not at all like the waters I found myself trapped under. Tall grass, puddles of mud, a river behind me. I see no roads or signs to indicate where I am.

The man to my right answers my unspoken question. “You are near the Gladden Fields on the bank of the River Anduin.” I recoil. None of those words mean anything to me. I search my mind, trying to conjure up an image, a memory, anything that would give me context as to where I am.

But I come up blank.

“I will ask you again,” the man continues. His voice is hard, completely devoid of patience, and though I don’t exactly want to, I find myself turning my head to look him in the eye. “What is your name?”

Well, that answer, I know. “Cosima. What’s yours?” I raise an eyebrow, unable to stop myself from challenging him a little. I don’t like his attitude, how he acts like he doesn’t have the time to deal with me. He is the one who stopped, after all.

“So she does speak,” an amused voice remarks from over the shoulder of the brown-eyed man. I jump, not previously noticing the two others—blond like the man to my right—who sit high atop large horses.

Okay, that doesn’t seem right.

Fragments of memory come to me, brief flashes of tall buildings, busy sidewalks, and honking yellow cars.

America.

The name comes to me just as my own did—suddenly and detached from other clues. I piece together what I can, and am left with only the feeling that this is wrong. There should not be deserted, untouched land, nor men in armor who travel on horseback.

I should not be here, I realize. Wherever ‘here’ is….

The blond to my right stands, and I shrink back, intimidated by his height. The sword at his hip and the bow on his back make me even more wary.

“I am Haldir, Marchwarden of Lothlórien. The ellon to your left is Baranor, a healer respected by the Lady herself. The ellyn on horseback are Rumil and Orophin—my brothers, and wardens of our realm. Where do you come from? Were you traveling somewhere?”

I don’t recognize half the words he says. Their language and phrasing is unfamiliar to me, which gives me reason to believe that I am not in America. My limited worldview expands slightly, and I become aware of the existence of other countries, vast seas and expansive continents. A theory begins to take form. I must be in another country. Perhaps I was traveling, and hit my head, and now I’ve gotten separated from my group. Though, I don’t have any memory of a group��perhaps I will remember them in time. I did hit my head.

Haldir clears his throat impatiently.

“I…think I’m from America. Do you know if I’m close? Or at least which country I’m in?

For the first time, I see the irritation in his eyes break, giving way to something akin to concern. “You are in Arda.”  

I wrack my brain, searching for anything that even remotely sounds like Arda. Africa? Armenia? Nothing helpful comes to mind.

Baranor, still crouched at my side, brings a gentle hand to my temple, brushing his fingers lightly over the tender skin. He notices my wince, and turns back to Haldir. “She definitely hit her head. Her mind is not fully with us…I think that, as she heals, she will speak with more sense.”

“Excuse me,” I huff, annoyed at his assessment of me and them talking as if I weren’t here. “You’re not exactly making much sense, either.”

Haldir purses his lips but gives no other indication that he’s heard me. He turns to his brothers and the three of them engage in quick conversation in that language I do not know.

I keep the three of them in the corner of my eye—just because they haven’t hurt me yet doesn’t mean I should let my guard down—and catch Baranor’s attention. “I can’t remember much—anything, really.”

He nods, looking at me with clinical concern. “I guessed as much. You remember your name and seem to have some idea where you are from, even if I do not recognize the realm. It’s better than nothing—encouraging, even. I believe your memories will return to you with time.”

That’s something, at least.

The one called Rumil hops off his horse and swaggers up to me, crouching low like his brother did. “Are you human?”

I recoil. What kind of question is that? “Of course I’m human.”

He shakes his head, a coy smile on his face. “Do not say, ‘of course’. There are many races in this realm, some much more interesting than the race of men.”

I swallow, pieces of information that I’ve gathered since waking clicking into place.

I don’t want to ask.

Asking might mean confronting, and I’ve only just woken up. I’m not ready for that.

But I have to. Because I’ve woken up in an unfamiliar place with people who don’t speak my language, don’t seem to know anything about the existence of my country, travel on horses, wear armor and, Rumil has just tilted his head to the side, revealing an ear that comes to a point. I bring my hand up to my own ear, checking. Yep. Not pointed.

A sinking feeling settles in my gut. I gather what courage I can. Just ask. There’s probably a perfectly normal explanation. Maybe they’re playing a trick on me. “Are you…not human, then?”

His teasing smile never falters and he gives a sort of mocking bow. “No, my dear lady. You have the pleasure of encountering four of the eldar. We are elves from the realm of the Lady Galadriel. We have been here long before the time of man, and we will be here long after.”

This is ridiculous.

I push myself to stand, Baranor rushing to help. The world sways before me, and I wilt against the cool surface of his chest place. He holds me awkwardly—trying to keep as much distance between us as possible while still supporting my weight.

“I’ve hit my head,” I mutter, trying to fight through the fierce onset of dizziness and nausea. “I-I’ve been in some sort of accident, or had a strange reaction to medicine. Or maybe this is a bizarre dream, and I will wake up and laugh at myself and all this will have been in my imagination, or…or…” My breathing quickens, and I bring a hand to my forehead. My hand is so cold. Is it meant to be that cold?

I pitch forward, and Rumil darts a hand to grip my shoulder and keep me in place. His teasing smile disappears, and he turns to Haldir, looking alarmed. He calls out in that unknown language, and I can’t help but roll my eyes, though the motion makes me feel worse.

“Come on, you’re in my dream, so you can at least speak a language I understand!”

Baranor twists to study my face, his frown deepening. He joins the indecipherable conversation.

“Not you, too,” I whine, glaring accusingly at him. Stupidly, I had already come to see him as a sort of ally. All four of them ignore me which is quite rude, considering they’re obviously talking about me. Their discussion grows heated—they’re arguing.

Dark spots dance in my line of vision and I groan, wanting to lie down. Baranor tightens his grip around me, and his voice rises in volume. Does he have to be so loud?

Haldir barks out something that sounds very much like an order, and I focus long enough to see him mount his horse. Rumil releases my shoulder, sparing me the quickest of looks before returning to his own steed. Before I can process what’s happening, Baranor uses his grip on me to guide me towards the tall chestnut stallion.

I guess his intent.

“No!” I begin to fight against his hold. “I don’t want—”

“Hush now, it will be alright,” he soothes, his hands tightening on me as I try to get away. “We do not know of the realm you speak, but we are on a journey to a trusted friend—a wise friend—who may be able to help you. We will take you with us.”

I go stiff in his arms, weighing my options.

I have no reason to trust his word. But they haven’t hurt me yet, and the fact remains that I have no idea where I am. I probably wouldn’t fare any better on the riverbank. I don’t have food, or supplies, or a map. And traveling with them would allow me to see more of the landscape. Maybe we’ll pass a city, and I can sneak away. And from there…

Well, that’s a problem for later.

So, resigned to my situation for the time being, I nod. Baranor gives me a look of relief—I imagine he has no desire to lift a kicking woman onto a horse—and releases my shoulders to kneel and lock his hands together. I don’t particularly like heights, and this animal is much too tall for my liking, but everything about this day has been absolutely insane. I may as well get on the unpredictable beast. Baranor pushes on my foot as I pull on the horses’s mane. A second later, I’m sat firmly on the animal, Baranor in front of me. I look down to see how high up I am—a clear mistake, especially given the dizziness that hasn’t quite receded—and immediately wrap my arms around Baranor’s stomach. It’s difficult, given the armor he wears, but I manage, seeing as it gives me extra insurance that I won’t go tumbling to the ground.

“Get my attention if you feel faint,” he murmurs, taking the reins in his hands. “There is a canteen of water near your right foot if you get thirsty.”

And, before I can contemplate if I have the core strength to reach for the water and stay on the horse, we’re off, racing along the riverbank and leaving behind any chance I have of turning back.

A/n Thanks for reading! As always, comments, likes, and reblogs are so appreciated. Let me know if you would like a tag! See you on Thursday with Chapter Two :)

|next part - to be posted|

|masterlist|

Tolkien tag list: @anangelwhodidntfall @eru-vande

Double Heart tag list: @lainphotography @fangirl-nonsense @themerriweathermage @thophil2941btw

**Strikethrough means Tumblr wouldn’t let me tag you -- check your settings! 

[sfblah]

SF Game Demo Release 1/18/2021

Aaand it’s about that time, folks.

Don’t care about any of this stuff and just want to play? Click here right now!

After going absolutely nuts for a week, I’ve finished what I loosely consider to be the game’s prologue. I wanted to make sure I got to a point in the story where Clover actually has her sneeze powers, and so here we are. I don’t want to give away anything from the story, but I’ll leave you with this little teaser:

This has really been a labor of love, so I hope everyone enjoys playing it as much as I’ve enjoyed working on it! Sadly I think my real job is about to get pretty busy for a couple weeks, so it might be a little while before I can make more significant progress, but honestly I’m happy to have come this far already.

I’d love to hear any feedback anyone might have, particularly in the following areas:

- If you have a Mac, does the game even work? The fact that no one’s said anything so far leads me to believe it does, but I unfortunately have no way of testing the Mac version myself.

- Any bugs? I haven’t encoutered anything game breaking, but there’s gotta be something out there.

- How’s the combat? If I had to choose I’d prefer to have the game be more on the casual side, but I also don’t want it to be pointlessly easy. I feel like the combat might be a little difficult, but I’ve been able to run through it a few times without using any of the new equipment you can find and without stopping just to grind for levels. I’d definitely be interested in getting some other perspectives.

- Is the stuffy talk too much? Given the results of the poll I decided to include it, but I’ve also been trying not to go overboard.

- Is there anything in the game you don’t understand? I’ve added a couple tutorials, but it’s always a challenge to find a balance between making sure the player is informed and avoiding bringing the game to a halt by overexplaining things.

I suppose the last big thing is the game really needs a title. I’ve been thinking about “A Nose For Adventure,” but I also wrote a story with a very similar title not long ago, so I’ve been trying to think of something more distinct. Either way I’d like to stop just calling it “SF Game” at some point.

[hexalt]

CW for discussion of suicide

- She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - What? No, I'm not. - She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - That's a sexist term! - She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - Can you guys stop singing for just a second? - She's so broken insiiiiiide! - The situation's a lot more nuanced than that!

There’s the essay! You get it now. JK.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the culmination of Rachel Bloom’s YouTube channel (and the song “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” in particular where she combined her lifelong obsession with musical theatre and sketch comedy and Aline Brosh McKenna stumbling onto Bloom’s channel one night while having an idea for a television show that subverted the tropes in scripts she’d been writing like The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses.

The show begins with a flashback to teenage Rebecca Bunch (played by Bloom) at summer camp performing in South Pacific. She leaves summer camp gushing about the performance, holding hands with the guy she spent all summer with, Josh Chan. He says it was fun for the time, but it’s time to get back to real life. We flash forward to the present in New York, Rebecca’s world muted in greys and blues with clothing as conservative as her hair.

She’s become a top tier lawyer, a career that she doesn’t enjoy but was pushed into by her overprotective, controlling mother. She’s just found out she’s being promoted to junior partner, and that’s just objectively, on paper fantastic, right?! ...So why isn’t she happy? She goes out onto the streets in the midst of a panic attack, spilling her pills all over the ground, and suddenly sees an ad for butter asking, “When was the last time you were truly happy?” A literal arrow and beam of sunlight then point to none other than Josh Chan. She strikes up a conversation with him where he tells her he’s been trying to make it in New York but doesn’t like it, so he’s moving back to his hometown, West Covina, California, where everyone is just...happy.

The word echoes in her mind, and she absorbs it like a pill. She decides to break free of the hold others have had over her life and turns down the promotion of her mother’s dreams. I didn’t realize the show was a musical when I started it, and it’s at this point that Rebecca is breaking out into its first song, “West Covina”. It’s a parody of the extravagant, classic Broadway numbers filled with a children’s marching band whose funding gets cut, locals joining Rebecca in synchronized song and dance, and finishing with her being lifted into the sky while sitting on a giant pretzel. This was the moment I realized there was something special here.

With this introduction, the stage has been set for the premise of the show. Each season was planned with an overall theme. Season one is all about denial, season two is about being obsessed with love and losing yourself in it, season three is about the spiral and hitting rock bottom, and season four is about renewal and starting from scratch. You can see this from how the theme songs change every year, each being the musical thesis for that season.

We start the show with a bunch of cliché characters: the crazy ex-girlfriend; her quirky sidekick; the hot love interest; his bitchy girlfriend; and his sarcastic best friend who’s clearly a much better match for the heroine. The magic of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is that no one in West Covina is the sum of their tropes. As Rachel says herself, “People aren’t badly written, people are made of specificities.”

The show is revolutionary for the authenticity with which it explores various topics but for the sake of this piece, we’ll discuss mental health, gender, Jewish identity, and sexuality. All topics that Bloom has dug into in her previous works but none better than here.

Simply from the title, many may be put off, but this is a story that has always been about deconstructing stereotypes. Rather than being called The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where the story would be from an outsider’s perspective, this story is from that woman’s point of view because the point isn’t to demonize Rebecca, it’s to understand her. Even if you hate her for all the awful things she’s doing.

The musical numbers are shown to be in Rebecca’s imagination, and she tells us they’re how she processes the world, but as she starts healing in the final season, she isn’t the lead singer so often anymore and other characters get to have their own problems and starring roles. When she does have a song, it’s because she’s backsliding into her former patterns.

While a lot of media will have characters that seem to have some sort of vague disorder, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend goes a step further and actually diagnoses Rebecca with Borderline Personality Disorder, while giving her an earnest, soaring anthem. She’s excited and relieved to finally have words for what’s plagued her whole life.

When diagnosing Rebecca, the show’s team consulted with doctors and psychiatrists to give her a proper diagnosis that ended up resonating with many who share it. BPD is a demonized and misunderstood disorder, and I’ve heard that for many, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the first honest and kind depiction they’ve seen of it in media. Where the taboo of mental illness often leads people to not get any help, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend says there is freedom and healing in identifying and sharing these parts of yourself with others.

Media often uses suicide for comedy or romanticizes it, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend explored what’s going through someone’s mind to reach that bottomless pit. Its climactic episode is written by Jack Dolgen (Bloom’s long-time musical collaborator, co-songwriter and writer for the show) who’s dealt with suicidal ideation. Many misunderstood suicide as the person simply wanting to die for no reason, but Rebecca tells her best friend, “I didn’t even want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. It’s like I was out of stories to tell myself that things would be okay.”

Bloom has never shied away from heavy topics. The show discusses in song the horrors of what women do to their bodies and self-esteem to conform to beauty standards, the contradiction of girl power songs that tell you to “Put Yourself First” but make sure you look good for men while doing it, and the importance of women bonding over how terrible straight men are are near and dear to her heart. This is a show that centers marginalized women, pokes fun at the misogyny they go through, and ultimately tells us the love story we thought was going to happen wasn’t between a woman and some guy but between her and her best friend.

I probably haven’t watched enough Jewish TV or film, but to me, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the most unapologetic and relatable Jewish portrayal I’ve seen overall. From Rebecca’s relationship with her toxic, controlling mother (if anyone ever wants to know what my mother’s like, I send them “Where’s the Bathroom”) to Patti Lupone’s Rabbi Shari answering a Rebecca that doesn’t believe in God, “Always questioning! That is the true spirit of the Jewish people,” the Jewish voices behind the show are clear.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continues to challenge our perceptions when a middle-aged man with an ex-wife and daughter realizes he’s bisexual and comes out in a Huey Lewis saxophone reverie. The hyper-feminine mean girl breaks up with her boyfriend and realizes the reason she was so obsessed with getting him to commit to her is the same reason she’s so scared to have female friends. She was suffering under the weight of compulsory heterosexuality, but thanks to Rebecca, she eventually finds love and friendship with women.

This thread is woven throughout the show. Many of the characters tell Rebecca when she’s at her lowest of how their lives would’ve never changed for the better if it wasn’t for her. She was a tornado that blew through West Covina, but instead of leaving destruction in her wake, she blew apart their façades, forcing true introspection into what made them happy too.

Rebecca’s story is that of a woman who felt hopeless, who felt no love or happiness in her life, when that’s all she’s ever wanted. She tried desperately to fill that void through validation from her parents and random men, things romantic comedies had taught her matter most but came up empty. She tried on a multitude of identities through the musical numbers in her mind, seeing herself as the hero and villain of the story, and eventually realized she’s neither because life doesn’t make narrative sense.

It takes her a long time but eventually she sees that all the things she thought would solve her problems can’t actually bring her happiness. What does is the real family she finds in West Covina, the town she moved to on a whim, and finally having agency over herself to use her own voice and tell her story through music.

The first words spoken by Rebecca are, “When I sang my solo, I felt, like, a really palpable connection with the audience.” Her last words are, “This is a song I wrote.” This connection with the audience that brought her such joy is something she finally gets when she gets to perform her story not to us, the TV audience, but to her loved ones in West Covina. Rebecca (and Rachel) always felt like an outcast, West Covina (and creating the show) showed her how cathartic it is to find others who understand you.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the prologue to Rebecca’s life and the radical story of someone getting better. She didn’t need to change her entire being to find acceptance and happiness, she needed to embrace herself and accept love and help from others who truly cared for her. Community is what she always needed and community is what ultimately saved her.

*

P.S. If you have Spotify... I also process life through music, so I made some playlists related to the show because what better way to express my deep affection for it than through song?

CXG parodies, references, and is inspired by a lot of music from all kinds of genres, musicals, and musicians. Same goes for the videos themselves. I gathered all of them into one giant playlist along with the show’s songs.

A Rebecca Bunch mix that goes through her character arc from season 1 to 4.

I’m shamelessly a fan of Greg x Rebecca, so this is a mega mix of themselves and their relationship throughout the show.

*

I’m in a TV group where we wrote essays on our favorite shows of the 2010s, so here is mine on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I realized I forgot to ever post it. Also wrote one for Schitt’s Creek.

[theydontknowaboutusimagines]

This Christmas - A Harry Styles Christmas Series (Part 8)

Two life long friends. Secretly in love. Home for the holidays. Will they risk everything by telling the other how they feel? Or will they spend another year loving from afar? 

Read these first    

Prologue   Part 1    Part 2   Part 3    Part 4   Part 5  Part 6  Part 7

The next morning you woke up with the sun blaring through the window and your head feeling like a heavy paperweight. You looked over, seeing and hearing a sleeping Harry. He was the only person you knew who snored like that while sleeping on their stomach. You giggled softly before rolling over onto his back.

He let out a humpfh sound before going back to sleep.

“Haarrryyy,” you whispered into his ear.

Nothing.

“Harry, wake up,” you whispered again.

Again nothing.

You smirked getting an idea before bouncing up and down, “Harry, wake up.”

“Seriously?” He groaned, reaching back for you.

You giggled, “Yay, you’re up.”

“And you need a mint,” he joked, pushing your head away.

“I don’t doubt that,” you said. “I got pretty bad last night.”

“I’ve seen worse,” he said.

You sighed laying back down beside him.

“Hey,” he said, placing his hand on top of yours. “Are we… okay?”

You nodded,”Yeah, we are,” you smiled.

“Good,” he smiled, kissing the top of your head. “So, how do you feel about going out for breakfast?”

“I’d love to, but I need to get some writing done,” you sighed.

“But you have to eat,” he said. “And you’re hungover, so how much writing will you actually be getting done.”

“You’re a bad influence, Styles,” you pointed at him.

“So, I take that is a yes on getting breakfast?” He smirked.

“Yes,” you laughed.

**

After a hot shower, a change of clothes, and popping some aspirin, you two were walking your way to the cafe down the street. Harry smirked, grabbing your hand as you were walking. You smiled, picking your hands up and wrapping his arm around your shoulder. He laughed, leaning down to kiss you.

“Thank god you brushed your teeth,” he smirked.

“Fuck you,” you laughed, pushing him away, while you walked forward.

“Aw come on, babe,” he laughed, running after you.

You smirked as you picked up your pace.

“Oh, so it’s going to be like that, huh?” Harry laughed.

Next thing you knew you felt arms around you and a huge weight jumping onto your back.

“Bloody hell are you trying to kill me?” You groaned.

“Nope,” Harry smirked, popping the p.

You rolled your eyes as you walked forward trying to carry Harry to the cafe. When you got there, you pushed him off of you.

“I expect a massage later,” you told him.

“Gladly,” he smirked.

The two of you walked into the cafe and you smiled at the decorations.

“I love that they still decorate like this,” you said. “I remember when I was little I thought this was the North Pole.”

“Well, you were a weird one,” Harry said.

“Remind me why I agreed to this breakfast?” You raised an eyebrow.

“Because you love me and want to spend time with me,” he said, wrapping his arm around your shoulders.

“Or it’s because you promised me free food,” you smirked.

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” he laughed.

You giggled kissing his cheek before sitting down at the table. You looked over the menu, ordering the same thing you’ve been ordering since you were little.

“We need to do something Christmassy,” you said. “It’s almost Christmas and I feel like we haven’t done much.”

“Well, what do you want to do?” He asked.

“Hm, I don’t know,” you said. “Why don’t you surprise me.”

“Challenge accepted,” he smiled.

**

Once you two were finished eating, you grabbed some hot chocolate to go. Instead of going back home, you two went to the local park for a walk. You smiled wrapping your arm around his waist as the two of you walked through the trail.

“So, I have a confession to make,” you said.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “Do I need to sit down for this?”

“No,” you laughed. “Do you remember when you mentioned how the main love interests reminded you… of well… you?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at you.

“Weeellll,” you said. “You’re not exactly wrong with that.”

“I knew it!” He pointed at you. “I fucking knew it!”

“Yes, yes, you were right,” you rolled your eyes. “Are you mad?”

“What? No,” he said. “But I am a little worried about having to live up to those expectations,” he laughed.”

“There are no expectations,” you smiled. “Because nothing else could live up to having the real thing.”

“Sooooo, what you’re saying is, is you prefer me,” he smirked.

“I do,” you smiled.

Harry moved a strand of hair out of your face before leaning down to give you a kiss.

**

You stared at the page in front of you. Watching the cursor blink while you contemplated what to write next. You could picture it perfectly in your head but the words just weren’t coming out. Groaning you pushed yourself away from your desk, pacing around the tiny little space while you gathered your thoughts.

After about ten minutes, you finally felt some inspiration and the words were flowing out in buckets. You ended up finishing the chapter and quickly realized you had less than five chapters left in the book. You looked at the calendar and made a note to yourself to be finished by Christmas Eve. You could do it, you just might have some late nights ahead.

Speaking of late nights, you realized how dark it was outside and that your stomach was alerting you, you needed food. You shut your laptop, grabbed your coat, and walked towards the house. There weren’t many lights on when you walked inside, except for the kitchen.

“Hello?” You asked, looking around. “Is anyone here?”

“In here!” Harry called out from the pantry.

You giggled making your way over to him, standing in the doorway, “Um… hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m cooking dinner for us,” he smiled. “Mum went out with your Mum for dinner, so we have the house to ourselves.”

“Really?” You raised an eyebrow.

“Yep,” he smiled.

“Not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing,” you laughed.

“What do you mean?” He asked, pulling ingredients off the shelf.

“Because with your Mum and my Mum together, you do realize they’re going to be talking about us the entire, right?” You asked. “I’m pretty sure they’ve been planning our wedding for years.”

“Oh god, you’re right,” he groaned.

“Well, on the bright side, at least we can suffer together,” you giggled.

He laughed, “That is true.”

“So, do you need any help?” You asked.

“If you’re offering,” he smiled.

“Of course,” you said.

He smiled and handed you the vegetables to chop as he got everything else ready.

“Getting any writing done?” He asked.

“Took a little bit, but I did,” you smile. “I have only five chapters left to write!”

“That’s amazing,” he smiled. “When you finish, we’re going to celebrate.”

“And let me guess, by celebrate you mean let you read it?” You raised an eyebrow.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to it,” he joked.

You rolled your eyes, “Again we’ll see.”

**

Once dinner was in your bellies and the dishes were in the dishwasher, the next activity was baking cookies.

“Is this part of your Christmas surprise?” You asked.

“Not necessarily,” he smirked. “I’ve got a bigger surprise for that.”

“Now, I’m intrigued,” you said. “Can I get a little more of a hint?”

“No, not going to happen,” he said.

“But why?” You whined.

“Because it wouldn’t be a surprise,” he said in a duhh tone.

“Oh… you mean like this,” you smirked, flicking flour in his face.

He gasped, looking over at you. “Excuse you.”

“Oops,” you said, innocently.

“Oh, oops my ass,” he said, taking a handful of flour and throwing it in your face.

You gasped looking over at him as you wiped flour off your face, “Oh, it’s so fucking on, now,” you said, grabbing whatever you could to throw at him.

“Shit,” he laughed, grabbing what was left and throwing it at you.

The next ten minutes is filled with shouts, squeals, and running around throwing various cookie ingredients at the other. Finally, you two declare a truce, when you notice the mess in the kitchen.

“Anne’s going to kill you,” you joked.

“Me? I didn’t throw the flour at myself!” He laughed.

“Yeah, but she likes me more than you,” you shrugged.

“I wish I could deny that, but unfortunately it’s true,” he sighed.

You giggled, “Why don’t we clean ourselves up first and then we’ll worry about the kitchen.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s sprinkles in my ear,” he laughed.

The two of you headed up to the bathroom, where Harry got each of you a towel out of the linen closet.

“You can take a shower in this one and I’ll head to the other,” he said. “I can let you borrow some clothes, so you don’t have to go out just to change.”

“Or…” you said.

“Or what?” He asked.

“We could… um… share uh… bath or whatever,” you said.

Harry’s eyes widen at your proposal, “Uh…”

“Wow, um… yeah… let’s just forget I said anything. Totally stupid,” you said quickly.

“No, it’s not,” he said, taking your hand in his. “Are you sure… I don't want you to think…”

“We’re both grown adults,” you said. “As long as you’re okay with it, I’m okay with it.”

“Um… okay, I’ll start the water,” he said.

“Okay,” you nodded.

The next several minutes were filled with silence. It was a bit awkward at first, but it really came down to nervousness. Normally, you weren’t so bold and forth coming this early in a relationship, or whatever it was you and Harry were at the moment, but there was something about being with him that made you feel comfortable. And yes, you both agreed on taking things slow, but this felt… right. It felt natural.

You slipped off your clothes leaving them in a pile on the floor before getting into the tub. Neither one of you glanced at the other, not wanting to make the other feel uncomfortable. Whenever he was in the tub with you, you finally turned around to face him at the opposite end.

“This is nice,” He smiled. “It’s been ages since I’ve soaked in the tub.”

“Alone or with company?” You raised an eyebrow.

“Both,” he said.

“Hmm,” you said. “You should really do this more often. Soaking in hot water really relaxes me.”

“Alone or with company?” He mocked.

“Depends on who the company is,” you smirked.

He leaned over, sloshing water with his movements, reaching for your hand, “Well, I would hope from now on, I’d be the only one keeping you company,” he smirked.

“Hmm… I could definitely arrange that,” you giggled.

“Good,” he said, pulling you closer to him, a tug on his lips.

Lacing your finger with his, you looked up in his eyes, “Whenever I’m with you… it feels… I don’t know… it just feels like no time has passed, but then it also feels like so much time has passed.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” he whispered, looking down at you.

Your lips formed a smile as you placed your hands on his cheeks before pressing your lips against his. The kiss was gentle and sweet as his hands ran over your naked back. In that moment, you felt the most intimacy you’ve ever felt with anyone. Your heart was almost ready to burst out of your chest and you knew that there would no longer be anymore going slow because your heart was finally ready to open up to him.

Before anything got too hot and heavy, a step you two were more than wanting to take, but thought better of waiting, you both got out of the tub, drying off before getting dressed. After you two laid in his bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, fingers laced together. Neither of you really said anything, being there was enough. Christmas music played from Harry’s phone as he softly sang the lyrics to you.

You smiled, snuggling yourself closer to him. You were on the verge of falling asleep, but you ignored it, wanting to savor every second of this.

And when you two finally were ready to give into your heavy eyelids, you heard an angry voice call out, “HARRY EDWARD STYLES! YOU BETTER GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!”

Both of you shot up in the bed looking at each other, “Shit! The Kitchen!”

Well, it was good while it lasted.

**

What are some Christmassy Activities/ things should they do? Let me know! :)