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where-theres-smoak-2 · 1 year

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Shadow and Bone 2x04 Review

Here it is ep 4 of season 2 there are spoilers book spoilers will be between 2 * yeah you know the drill by now if you’ve read my other reviews. Jumping straight on in then.

Nikolai, Alina and the Spinning Wheel

As usual I am starting with Alina’s storyline and the events that happen at the spinning wheel. At the end of the previous episode Alina accepts Nikolai’s proposal and so the plot for Alina is kind of centred around that this episode along with her being named the leader of the second army. What I did like was that when Nikolai announced that she was going to be the new leader the other grisha didn’t just immediately jump for joy and say that she’s going to be an amazing leader which I would have found really unrealistic. But you do get Adrik and Zoya voicing a bit of concern and Zoya pointing out that just because she can summon light doesn’t mean she’s going to know about military strategy. This is something fans have pointed out themselves so I am glad its being addressed in the show.

Another thing I am happy about is that they did have Mal question and kind of disagree with Alina about her being the leader of the second army. It was starting to feel like Mal was nothing more than a yes man, there was no nuance to him or personality, it was just yes alina, of course alina, go marry that other man Alina. At least here he is voicing his own opinion. I do think at points that opinion was somewhat naive though especially the part about once the fold is gone so to will the reason for hating grisha, like sorry no Mal honey, people never needed a reason to hate grisha they just do and they were doing long before the fold was created.

We also see Alina training and trying to develop her powers which are a bit unstable after the second amplifier. She debates whether to learn to use the cut or not as well. We also have David arrive and again I think its understandable that Alina doesn’t trust him right away but still listens to what they say. She learns about the Nichevo’ya and how there still may be a link between her and Aleks so she is definitely catching up on a lot of the information the audience already knew in this episode.

Mal discovers something in this episode to that wasn’t in the books something about a mystical lightening sword called Neshyenyer, that can cut through shadow. The theory is that the sword will work against the Nichevo’ya. It also looks like this is how they are going to tie in the crows with the grisha plotline as the plan is to hire them to get the sword form Shu han. Honestly I am excited to see shu han and this does sound like it could be an interesting plotline.

We finally learn the context of the first army general uniform/kefta that Alina was wearing in the trailer and yup I hate it. Turns out she chose it herself and had it made with the help of grisha. Look again I get what they were going with its supposed to show that she is becoming part of the royal family and that she is a leader and that they are trying to unite the two armies etc but it just looks so much like Zlatan’s uniform that I can’t disconnect the two. She is dressed in the uniform of the Kings army who have oppressed the grisha for hundreds of years who thought this was a good idea? Honestly it might have been over the top but I much preferred the gold dress the Queen had made for her not going to lie.

I did like the scene though where Nikolai gives her the Lantsov Emerald, not only does the emerald itself look really beautiful but again they both have good chemistry with each other and I really like the friendship they’ve developed.

Obviously one of the big things that happened this episode was Aleks’ attack on the Spinning Wheel during Alina and Nikolai’s engagement dinner. *It does seem like they have combined the attack on the palace and the attack on the spinning wheel from the books here as it has elements from both.* I did think it was clever how Aleks used their connection to draw Alina away from the fighting and to keep her safe. The scene where his image appears before her in the hall and he tells her he is trying to help her is interesting because of the way her powers react. Even though he is not really there her powers react when he gets closer to her and cradles her face.

The Nichevo’ya are as terrifying as always and one of them does get a hold of Adrik when he is trying to save his sister and even though Alina saves him I feel like he might still lose that arm looking at how badly injured it was and that we know wounds caused by the Nichevo’ya don’t heal very well.

Aleks is spitting out facts again, his speech about how her obsession with the fold is naive and how the grisha were hated long before its creation is spot on. Destroying the fold won’t change that. He also says one of my favourite lines from the book, ‘I have seen what you truly are and I have never turned away, I never will, can they say the same?’ But he is also makes a good point when Alina says that he is obsessed with power and control and he retorts that power must be controlled and that she is playing a dangerous game with it. He’s pointing out that she too has sought more power and is still seeking more power and that this comes along with its own dangerous, yet he also isn’t judging her for seeking that power, as he said earlier the power suits her.

I will confess that I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get the chapel scene but then I remembered a shot from the trailer that showed the gang including the crows and nikolai facing off against the nichevo’ya in front of a stained glass window which wasn’t in this episode so it seems like we may get another attack scene that does take place in the chapel so we still might yet see a version of my favourite scene on screen.

Genya and Baghra

Meanwhile over in Aleksander's camp his alchemist is grinding up Baghra’s finger bones for some mysterious reason and Genya is having a real tough time and honestly it is making me sad. She does have some scenes with Baghra though which is a dynamic I didn’t think we would see. If Aleks says one of my favourite lines in this episode Baghra says on of my least favourite. ‘Suffering is as cheap and clay and twice as common. What matters is what you make of it.’ She says it in very different circumstances in the books but I still hate the implication behind the words. That somehow you can control your own suffering or choose how suffering effects you when the truth is traumatic experiences effect every person differently. Whilst some might be able to push on through and carry on others can be crippled by it and have a harder fight, that doesn’t make them weak. I just think the line is a very callous way of looking at things. However I did have a bit more respect for Baghra when she called out Aleks for the way he was treating Genya. For reminding him that she suffered under the king because she was spying for Aleks and that she served him loyally since she was a child only for him to reduce her to an example now. Whilst I can understand that Aleks feels betrayed and abandoned by Genya because she tried to run that doesn’t make his actions towards her ok.

Genya and Baghra do manage to escape and the scene where Genya sees her reflection in the tray was so sad. The way she just screamed and smashed all of the experiments the Alechemist was working on just showed how much pain she is in. I am really hoping she will make it back to David next episode and that he can help her heal some.

The Crows.

Boy did Kaz Brekker get brutal in this episode. So the time had arrived to take down Rollins and honestly not only was the plan genius but there was something kind of poetic about, sure I did feel a bit bad for all those people who came into contact with Wylan’s compound and for a few hours believed they had actually caught firepox and could potentially die but well at least no one actually did die so silver lining right. I’ll also admit that using Rollins son as bait and telling Rollins that he had buried with whilst kind of brutal to watch was a clever ploy on Kaz’s part. But lets talk about everything in a bit more detail.

Once again Kaz and Inej had a moment of connection. The scene where he tells her to run and never look back if the plan goes wrong and her replying the only promise she can make is that Rollins will beg for his death. It is just so obvious that these two really do care and love each other but the both, Kaz in particular, struggle to communicate that. You can see it when Kaz says that he’ll find comfort in knowing she is there, Despite the dark topic of making a man beg for his death the scene is actually really sweet.

I knew they were going to do a cop out with Nina and make it seem like she had turned against Kaz when she was actually still working with him. But the whole scene of Kaz confronting Rollins was intense. You know how sometimes you are right but you really didn’t want to be right? Well I was right and I really didn’t want to be. Turns out Kaz’s older brother, Jordie, did die from firepox because they ended up on the streets after Rollins conned them out of everything they owned. The fact that Rollins can’t even remember the name of his brother just makes the whole thing worse. The idea that Kaz puts out that he has buried a child, Rollins son, is also really dark though I did suspect that it was a con but damn was Kaz convincing. Seriously the acting in this scene was really amazing.

Another moment of note is when Kaz makes the speech about love and how its a mistake to let anyone in because it makes you weak. I think this really does show how Kaz views his relationship for Inej. I also think it links back to that conversation they had about tells and weaknesses and he says no one looked for his true one. Inej is the one that he loves, the one that he let in and he believes that makes him weak as if someone discovered it they could use it against him.

Even though he never gets Rollins to remember his brother’s name Kaz does manage to clear the crows names and get Inej’s freedom. Which should be something to celebrate about but then Kaz driven by his fear of having a weakness decides to kick Inej out of the crow club. You can see how afraid he was when he talks about how he didn’t know where she was, whether rollins had tried to have her killed again. He is very much being driven by that fear in this scene and even her reassurances that she is fine don’t help. So he cuts her loose calling her a weak link. It is a hard scene to watch but it does make sense for Kaz’s character.

On to happier things though. Jesper and Wylan. I am really loving their relationship I loved when they are trying on the masks and Jesper says he happens to like Wylan’s face its so adorable. And obviously I loved the scene in Wylan’s workshop where Wylan admits that he left the first night they met because he didn’t think Jesper would want anything more and Jesper says that he would like to find out if there could be. I also liked that kind of awkwardness that they have where they don’t really know where they stand with the other but there is still that undeniable attraction between them and then Wylan just goes for it. The whole scene was perfect.

A small scene I would like to mention and I didn’t really know where else to put it was Jesper's speech to Kaz before the mission about how Kaz is going to say that he can’t do this without him, that he hates when they are angry but brothers fight and that he can have a tab at the club of his choosing. And Kaz just confirming that was exactly what he was going to say, it just reminds you that this is a found family and that when it comes to it they’ve got each other’s backs.

So that was episode 4 and we are at the midseason point. I do think this had quite a bit more action in it than the other episodes what with Aleks’ attack on the spinning wheel and the Crows taking down Rollins. I am going to assume that we’ll be moving into the hunt for the firebird and this sword in the second half of the season. I am still a little worried about the pacing as it does seem a bit rushed but none the less I am also still enjoying the show so far.

Favourite Lines

‘I have seen what you truly are and I have never turned away, I never will, can they say the same?’

‘The trick is not to love anything. Your mistake was that you let someone get in. Someone you would sacrifice everything for and it makes you weak.’

‘After all, that gelatin deer gave its life for your entertainment.’

#shadow and bone #s&b season 2 spoilers #darklina

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staringdownabarrel · 4 months

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Okay, so I've just finished Honored Enemy by Raymond E. Feist and William R. Forstchen. This one's an interquel set at the same time as Magician--during the ninth year of the rift war.

In a lot of ways, this is a really good representation of what I wish the previous trilogy had been like. The stakes of Honored Enemy are low (it's just two military units on opposite sides of a war being forced to work together for a time), it's far away from anything involving the main plot (though it does loosely tie into the Great Uprising of Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon), the pacing feels like an actual novel, and I think it does expand the lore somewhat.

Really, the big thing Honored Enemy did well that I feel like previous books in the Riftwar saga haven't done as well is show the actual effects of first contact between cultures. In previous books, the perspective has always been from those with real power who have a lot of the knowledge and context to be able to set aside their feelings for the other culture and know this is just a thing they're going to have to live with now and what the likely flow-on effects are going to be. Honored Enemy presents a set of characters who don't always have that broader context and whose knowledge is based firmly on what's right in front of them in the context of the ongoing war.

This is the kind of perspective that I think was largely lacking from Magician. It would have made sense for elements of what we see in this book to have been incorporated into Tomas' storyline somehow, but that was one of the big missed opportunities there.

The other thing this book did really well was show just how deep the rivalry between the elves in Elvandar and the moredhel (this series' term for the dark elves) goes. This is an element that has been talked about in previous books, but this is the first one that really goes deep into how all-consuming the rivalry between the two can go; especially between those who switched from one faction to the other and those who were left behind.

Of course, much like with the Empire trilogy that Feist cowrote with Janny Wurts, I think Honored Enemy smooths over some of the rough edges of Feist's writing. Unlike with the Empire trilogy, this book doesn't smooth over the rough edges of the gender politics of the Riftwar saga at all. That remains pretty consistent with what the standard for Feist is.

What this book does really well is focus on the battle and operational tactics involved. This has often been an element of Feist's work, but outside of A Darkness at Sethanon and the last couple of books of the Serpentwar quadrilogy, there was never as much focus on that element as there was on everything else going on with the characters. Traditionally, this is something that Feist has only ever been so-so at.

Honored Enemy smooths over that and has a lot of focus on tactics and strategy. There are things I think should have gone differently in the book, but everything I wish had been done differently are things I think would have required the principle characters to be fundamentally different people.

I think the other thing is that it smooths over some of Feist's ticks when it comes to actually writing prose. When it comes to actually writing prose, there really isn't anything that annoys me about Feist's writing. There aren't any weird grammatical ticks that he has that get under my skin beyond the occasional obvious typo or misprint that got missed. He also doesn't have any commonly used phrases that annoy me that aren't obviously just the product of writing a long-running series where it can't be assumed that any given reader has read every previous book.

However, after reading sixteen of his books back-to-back, his prose does start to get a bit stale. Any writer's prose would. So to have a cowriter to reinvigorate the writing style a bit is a net positive in this sense. I'm not sure if this is an aspect I'd be as appreciative of if I hadn't just spent the last two months reading nothing but Raymond E. Feist, though.

But yeah, that's all I have for now.

#honored enemy #raymond e. feist #william r. forstchen #riftwar #legends of the riftwar #books #rant

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audreydoeskaren · 3 years

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Thank you for posting a review on the book Evolution & Revolution Chinese Dress 1700s - 1990s. It’s so disappointing how the book potentially could’ve been good. What are your favorite books on Chinese fashion history?

Hi, great that you found the review useful! To be completely honest, I haven't really read any books on Chinese fashion before I started this blog, because I mostly used online resources like museums' websites, archaeology reports and other blogs. I actually started this blog in the hopes that people might recommend me some books😅 And I only ever read about the Ming, Qing and republican era so my knowledge is very limited.

Anyway, here are some books people recommended to me that I found great, some that I'm currently reading and some I know to be objectively good:

Ming Dynasty

Q版大明衣冠图志 (2011) 董进著

A classic made by the popular fashion history blogger 撷芳主人 (real name Dong Jin), this book is the ultimate compilation of Ming Dynasty looks illustrated by the most adorable drawings. It has basically everything you need to know about Ming Dynasty garments from informal civilian fashion and theater costumes to the most formal court dress and military uniforms. My only quibble with this book is that it doesn’t specify the decade/year each look is from, giving the false impression that everything could be worn throughout the Ming Dynasty (I heard that he did specify some eras in the new version? I don’t have it so I’m not sure). You can follow the author on Weibo where he regularly posts stuff about the Ming Dynasty, or check out other books and articles written by him. Even if you don’t have the book, you could probably find images of individual entries on the internet. Unfortunately all of it is in Chinese and no English version is available :(

华夏衣冠中国古代服饰文化 (2016) 孙机著

More of a collection of essays Sun Ji wrote on historical Chinese clothing from a variety of eras, I got it for the chapters on Ming Dynasty xiapei 霞帔 and headwear. Professional, academic language that is still easy to read, plenty of references and neatly traced line drawings of artifacts. Useful diagrams on the structure of 狄髻 diji. However if I remember correctly, Sun had some beef with Dong Jin on the terminology of parts of diji, not sure if that was ever resolved; here’s an article about that. Also only in Chinese (that I know of).

Qing Dynasty

Chinese Reverse Glass Painting 1720-1820 (2020) by Thierry Audric

This is the book form transcript of a dissertation given by the author in 2016. It's more Chinese painting than Chinese fashion but has a lot of wonderful images of 18th century export paintings (with dates even), which depicted fashion realistically. I love 18th century export art in general, they're really beautiful and unusual so I would recommend everybody to check them out. I love this because Chinese oil painting outside of a court context (and all other forms of art that were not literati painting e.g. woodblock print, lithograph, pen and ink illustration) gets very little attention from Chinese art historians. This book could be downloaded for free in pdf form the publisher Peter Lang.

A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing (2020) by Rachel Silberstein

This book focuses on the 19th century and has some interesting insights on the impact of commercial workshops on Qing fashion, which is a welcome break from the “dragon robes” and women’s domestic work stereotyped in most literature on the Qing. It has rich descriptions of the decoration patterns and fabrics used in the 19th century, accompanied by paintings and photographs. It did kind of fall into the trap of “the late Ming continued into the early Qing” and just dismissed the 18th century altogether, which is a shame. Silberstein’s dating of several prints also appears somewhat incorrect, but it’s still a very useful analysis of the 19th century nonetheless. I read this for free on JSTOR through my university login.

Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (2005) by Dorothy Ko

This book is absolutely epic and an undeniable classic on the subject. Ko masterfully avoids all the surface level problematic takes on footbinding and offers an extremely nuanced, extremely well researched overview on the history of footbinding in the Ming, Qing and republican eras, the reasons for its popularity and demise, with a most interesting analysis of the problems with the way people in the republican era went about the abolition of it. The book is more heavy on the social analysis side but also contains a lot of factual description of the process of footbinding, styles popular in different eras etc. I just love how she approaches the topic in the most factual and non-emotionally charged way possible, which is refreshing considering the sheer volume of literature on footbinding that is just brainless condemnation without any nuance, a lot of which also unconsciously perpetuate misogynistic ideas rather than combat them. I don’t know of a way to read this for free, I bought it from Amazon.

Every Step a Lotus (2001) by Dorothy Ko

I haven’t read this yet but apparently it works well as a supplement to Cinderella’s Sisters. Also on footbinding.

China Trade Painting 1750s to 1880s (2014) by Jack S C Lee / 中国外销画 1750s - 1880s 李世庄著

Another book on export art, focusing more on the established painters. Lee digs a bit more into the painters’ experiences and biographies, with big portions on George Chinnery and Lam Qua, but also includes plenty of portraits and scenery paintings depicting men’s clothing and the architecture of the studios at the Guangzhou factories (十三行). It’s great because the paintings included were super realistic and well made with accurate proportions and anatomy----the quality on a par with those produced by the European academies----so they contemplate conventional Chinese portraits made in the same era in showing how the clothing fits on the body. Again I bought this book second hand from Amazon.

----

I don’t know of any reliable books for republican era fashion because for some reasons most discourse on it is centered around the glorification and mystification of the cheongsam... Fortunately, due to the abundance of extant originals and photographs, books are largely not necessary for the research of republican era fashion :3

There are some other books and articles that were recommended to me but I haven’t yet read: x, x

@fouryearsofshades also made a post recently recommending books and it covers other time periods as well.

If anyone knows any other books on the Ming, Qing or republican era please tell me regardless of good or bad. I need to read more😅

#book review #historic fashion #chinese fashion #fashion history #vintage fashion #chinese history #ming dynasty #qing dynasty #hanfu #清汉女装 #book rec #chinese painting #foot binding

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quietmyfearswith · 3 years

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the mission ; syverson x stucky x fem!reader

status — completed oneshot

word count — 4,350 words

warnings — SMUT, double penetration, triple penetration??? oral sex (giving and receiving), foursome, unprotected sex(dont do this), swear words, competition(ish)

pairing — syverson x stucky x fem!reader

a/n — DNI IF YOU ARE UNDER 18,, pretty self-indulgent so what about it,, wanted to post this as my first fic for 2021 so we can start the year with a bang but hey the year is still new so hope this counts,, feedback is appreciated

masterlist

“Tell me again, why are we meeting up with this person?” If you told people that there were times that Steve — Captain America as most of them are most familiar with — was egotistical enough to the point that he believed that intel from outsiders weren’t needed, they wouldn’t believe you unless they saw how he was currently. When the military told them that some of their men have discovered remnants of HYDRA, Steve was fine with that vague lead since he thought that they could take it from there. However, his pride took a hit when the military insisted that one of their men be sent over to the compound to assist them.

Y/N then scheduled for Captain Syverson to meet with Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes so they could discuss what the special operations captain saw. Sighing irritatedly, the assistant of the Avengers paused in the middle of the hallway so she could look the super soldier in the eye, “Look Captain, I know you think you can do this alone — you’ve proven to me and your fellow Avengers that you can — but the military and government believes that you need more hands on deck, okay?”

Crossing his arms, Steve opened his mouth to argue but opted not to, “Good, now behave okay? Bucky’s almost done training the recruits; so he’ll be joining us shortly.” As she walked away from where they stood, the captain bit his lip as he watched her ass and legs strut away in the green and white plaid dress that she was donning. Hearing her fingers snap together brought him back to reality and made him follow her steps.

“Captain Rogers, meet Captain Syverson from the military’s special operations,” Y/N introduced the two men to each other, who were visibly appalled at the thought of having to shake hands, but a stern look from the girl standing between them prompted the Texan captain to hold out his hand to which the Brooklyn captain shook briefly but with a tight grip before letting go. “We appreciate you coming here, Captain Syverson.”

His response surprised Y/N, but in a good way, and she smiled brightly at the simple interaction the two had. “You can call me Sy; only prefer being called Captain by those who are under me.” The wink he sent the only girl present in the room gave her the implication that there was a double entendre in his statement; whereas the enhanced super soldier caught on and was displeased with how he was hitting on Y/N.

Puffing out his chest and rested his hands on his belt buckle, “Well Sy, why don’t you share with us what it is you saw.” Nodding, Sy grabbed the folder he brought with him and handed it over to the Captain; Y/N was setting up the laptop and projector that was in the conference room. Steve skimmed through the files as Y/N displayed some of the satellite images that were taken. “Have you or any of your team members been inside the facility?”

Shaking his head no Sy explained, “We didn’t dare to. Though I had some soldiers stake out and in their week of monitoring they didn’t notice anyone come in or out.” Placing the folder on the desk, Steve instructed Y/N to show more of the pictures and she complied, “How come you didn’t get in and check it out? Isn’t that what a captain does?”

“Steve,” Y/N scolded him as she looked at him with a warning look but despite her piercing gaze he remained unfazed as he gave a challenging stare to the other captain — one which Sy wasn’t afraid of. “A captain’s duty is to lead his soldiers and make the right calls; it wasn’t our mission to look for the abandoned facility but we found it anyway. We just ensured that there wouldn’t be any criminals that we could possibly encounter that would interfere with our mission.”

The tension was thick in the air when Steve gulped down — not wanting to admit that Sy made a valid point. Striving to cut the tension in the room, Y/N stood up as she spoke, “Okay, great points. Should you plan to check the place out,” She was talking to Steve who was intently looking at her with a look he’s never given her before; she struggled to continue with her point with how intense his stare was, “Secretary Ross decided that it might be better for you to tag along,” Sy nodded as he was being talked to.

“Just me? Or would my men be included?” Sitting back down on her chair she browsed through some of the files she had prepared for their meeting as the two men watched her like a hawk, “They want you out on the field along with Steve and Bucky; but your other men can help behind the scenes.”

Displeased with the new information, Steve crossed his arms from where he was seated, “No, he is not joining us on the field,” He was now standing up, as if he was trying to assert his dominance and authority over the other captain who seemed undaunted as he stood tall. “Why the hell not?”

“Jesus Christ, stop it, the two of you!” Y/N held out her hands to create space between the two charging bodies, her hands landed on their pecs and she had to stop herself from enjoying the feel of their skin against her fingertips, “You both need to calm your asses down! I don't know what it is about each other that ticked you off but you guys are gonna have to work together. Now, why don’t we calm down and try to get along?”

Running a hand through his buzz cut hair, Sy was the first one to speak since he wanted to charm Y/N, “I’m really sorry about my behavior, love,” His larger hand reached for hers and placed a kiss on the back of her palm; Steve sharply looked at how affectionately the other captain gazed at the assistant who had been responsible for his orgams without her even knowing it, “I’m gonna be on my best from now on; especially when I work with the former soldiers.”

Having enough of what he said Steve made his way to the two of them, breaking off their clasped hands so he could hold Y/N’s, planting himself between the two he gruffly said, “You know what bothers me? Is the way you’re hitting on Y/N.” Sy could not hold back the smirk as he somewhat felt a sick pride rush over him seeing the infamous hero getting riled up because of him, “Don’t recall you being her boyfriend; so really I can flirt with her as much as I want.”

She doesn’t know why, but Y/N was extremely aroused with the way they discussed her as if she weren’t there. Ultimately it was the way they both battled for her really made her panties dampen. “Who would you rather fuck?” The blunt question had her jaw dropping in shock and disbelief; she always knew how Steve was direct to the point, but never expected him to be straightforward in a sexual context.

“I don’t know,” Her eyes darted back and forth from the two captains, “You’re both very attractive; but I never imagined both of you being attracted to me.” It was difficult for her to hide the faint traces of her insecurities which the two men were quick to pick up. Steve caressed her hand that he held as he sincerely cooed at her, “How can I not want you? And I’m not just talking about your divine body. Your patience in handling us is unlike any other. You’re extremely compassionate and kind. When I look at you I see a woman whose beauty on the outside matches the beauty within.”

The other hand that Sy held was being placed with a kiss that despite being gentle was contradicted with the rough sensations of his beard, “I’ve only known you for a while but I have to second the motion; you are a force to be reckoned with. While there are parts of you that clearly cannot be tamed and that your fire was meant to remained ablaze,” He hoped that she got his reference of her dangerous line of work and with the small nod she gave him affirmed so, “But you also have the tranquility that a mother possesses.”

A small smile broke out of Y/N’s face after their speeches; but the serene moment quickly faded when the super soldier brought her hand to his crotch, letting the wide-eyed girl feel the hard on that he frequently spotted around her. “This is just one of the other pieces of evidence I have about how great you are.” Walking up to stand beside Steve, Sy grabbed her other hand and pressed against his own staring erection as he smugly boasted, “But this is a bigger evidence of how much I appreciate you, sunshine.”

“I’m flattered,” Y/N nervously began as her eyes darted back and forth from the two large men, pulling away her hands from their hardened cock as she felt incredibly shy about the whole ordeal, but it wasn’t an answer that pleased either of them or answered Steve’s earlier question. “But the question is still left unanswered Y/N,” The blonde man to her right reminded her, “Who would you rather fuck?”

Gulping down her nervousness before answering, “Honestly? I want you both.” Even though she shyly confessed that, it was all the fuel both captains needed for their ego as they silently just had established a competition between themselves — get her to feel confident about herself as they both intend on making her so cum hard the only thing she’ll remember is their name. Steve brought a finger underneath her chin, lifting her gaze up to match his hooded eyes, “You’re beautiful, Y/N,” He affirmed to her before bringing their lips to touch gently. Eyes closing as the super soldier savored the feeling of her lips that he's been dreaming for so long; and his dreams couldn’t even compare to the feel and taste of her lips.

As their lips pulled away from the steamy kiss, Sy tore away her lips and planted his own lips against hers, “Absolutely stunning, one of a kind,” Were the words he spoke as their lips locked and tongues danced. Feeling his beard tickle her neck as his lips trailed down her jaw and neck, she giggled lightly and opened her eyes to view Steve whose eyes darkened — though she didn’t know that it was due to his lust and longing for her, as well as the jealousy due to the scene unfolding in front of him. Pulling away from the kiss, Sy then lifted her up to the table and sat her down. Without even speaking, he made his move to undress her — grabbing the cloth by her cleavage, ripping the dress in two to expose how she chose to forego a bra and was only wearing a poor excuse of panties; the Texas raised captain could only smirk as he went down on his knees while he slid her lace undergarment down her legs.

“What a devious little thing you are,” Her attention was shifted to the Brooklyn-raised captain as he spoke; she instinctively spread her legs which didn’t go unnoticed by Sy who smirked in appreciation before lunging forward to lick her through her panties — causing her to gasp out loud, rolling her eyes at the pleasure. Annoyed with how he was being undermined, Steve grabbed for Y/N’s cheeks and kissed her fervently, making him moan in bliss as the kiss exceeded his dreams and expectations. “This what you want? Want two men proving to you how goddamn beautiful you are?”

The question was rhetorical, but somehow she found herself whining as she nodded against his lips where their lips met for a heated kiss. Grinning at her state, Steve ended their kiss as his lips trailed down her chin and to her neck, searching for her sweet spot. Just as he sucked on the skin below her jaw, she tried to squeeze her legs together to alleviate the arousal she was feeling — but it only made Sy smirk and encourage him to push aside her panty and directly get a taste of her.

“I’m gonna taste this pretty pussy okay? Why don’t you show Steve over here what that pretty mouth can do besides ending tension okay?” With a shaky sigh, she nodded as her eyes watched as Steve got on the table, kneeling beside her, all while he undid his belt and pulled the zipper down to free his cock. “I’ve been fantasizing about what that mouth would feel like ever since you joined,” His filthy confession made her bring her thighs together again to relieve her of the ache she felt; but all it did was make her feel again the trimmed hair of Sy who was placing gentle kitten licks on her pussy, “And now I’ll find out if you’re as any good like I thought you would be,” Served as his final warning before kneeling on the table by her head and feeding his cock to her waiting mouth.

Groans were heard from the two captains but for similarly different reasons; Steve loved how his cock slid down her throat easily without gagging, and her hollowed cheeks and expert tongue providing him pleasure but it was also the way her one hand was sliding from his balls to the base of his cock that almost made him cum. Whereas Sy couldn’t get enough of how sweet her juices were; he was sliding two fingers in and out of her, and everytime he pushed them right back it became harder for him to do so with how her walls were resisting them — it made him think about how her walls would resist his cock. “You like this don’t you? Like being used for our pleasure?”

A pathetic whine was all that she could let out seeing as her mouth was preoccupied with Steve’s cock was prohibiting her from speaking clearly. “You’re too invested that you can’t even remove my cock from your mouth to answer properly,” Feeling her nod against his cock just added to the bliss he felt. Shaking his head as he licked her cunt and fingered her pussy, Sy loved it when her thighs were rubbing hard against his beard and some of her juices were sticking to his facial hair.

Y/N was surprised when Steve pulled his cock of her mouth, “Not yet baby, I’m not cumming in your mouth just yet.” With his lips still pressed tightly against her pussy lips, Sy smirked at him, “Or maybe you just can’t cum at all.” That statement reminded both men that even though they intended to make her feel how beautiful she was, they were still competing for her. Sitting up with the support of her elbows, Y/N watched closely as Steve grabbed Sy by the shirt, dragging him away from her pussy, resulting in him sitting up on the floor on his bum. He planted himself on one of the conference chairs and once settled, grabbed Y/N’s hips so she was straddling hovering his cock, “It’s because I’d rather cum inside her pussy.”

With one hand on her hip, the other one guided his cock in her tight canal easily. “Oh fuck, you’re so big,” She moaned as she rested her hands on his shoulders as she rode him slowly, getting used to his size. Calloused hands were on her ass as Steve guided the pace in which they were fucking. His lips were pressing firmly against her breasts, leaving his traes of desire on them. As her eyes were closed in pleasure, she didn’t see how Sy was freeing himself from the restrains of his pants; after doing so he stood up from the floor and sat down on the conference table.

“You’re gonna suck my cock while you ride his dick; so turn around,” It took a while before she did so, but Y/N had to push Steve’s face gently from where his mouth had been enveloping her nipple. She turned around to face Sy who was stroking his cock with hunger on his eyes; moving her hair from her face, she rested her hands on the knees of the man in front of her before lowering her lips to wrap it around the tip of his cock. “That’s a good girl,” He sighed out in pleasure, one hand finding purchase on her hair.

Jealous at the thought of having to share her or her attention, Steve kicked off the chair he was sitting on and stood on his feet and helped Y/N to do the same. With her bent over, the super soldier grabbed for her hips and rammed in and out of her pussy with short and rapid thrusts. Sy allowed her to take control of how she wanted to suck him, but he couldn’t help himself as he thrusted his cock in her mouth a few times, relishing in the moans she let out when he did so. “See what you do to us?” Steve asked as he felt his tip graze her sensitive spot, feeling her thighs shiver leaving him to hold both thighs in his hands.

“You make us feral,” Sy continued his train of thought as his hand added pressure on the nape of your neck, making you take him deeper, “You’re so goddamn beautiful that you make us lose all logic.” It was amazing to him how her tiny throat could accommodate all of him, and the way her nails dug into his thighs only added to his pleasure.

Bucky had just finished his training session with the recruits and was dying to get to his room to shower off the filth and sweat. Before getting to do that he first had to meet with a captain that was said to have intel about HYDRA; so imagine his surprise when he enters the conference room and sees three people fucking and not discussing mission details.

A man with a buzz cut — he inferred that was Sy — was sitting on the desk with his head thrown back in bliss as he was being given a blowjob by Y/N — the Avengers’ secretary whom he had been fantasizing about — while she in turn was being fucked in the pussy by Steve. “Well if I knew the meeting would look like this I would’ve ended the training session.”

Steve just smirked at his best friend who was leaning against the wall, “This is Sy,” He nodded to the man sitting at the desk who waved with his free hand from Y/N’s hair. Approaching the three of them Bucky inquired, “She any good at sucking cock?”

“The best; gag reflex is practically non-existent,” Steve recalled as he was now rubbing her clit, loving the way she was squirming against his body. Her hands were settled on Sy’s thighs, anchoring herself and leaving nail marks on his skin. “Her throat is tight but I doubt it’s tighter than her pussy.”

Bucky grabbed her hair to stop her from sucking on Sy’s cock, “Never pegged you to be a willing cumdump; you just needed a lot of cocks to fulfill you huh?” Despite her face having a mixture of saliva and the precum of both captains, she bashfully smiled at the sergeant. Stroking her cheek gently, the Texan captain demanded a verbal answer, “If he asks you a question you are expected to answer, beautiful.” Feeling the force of Steve’s harsh thrust, she managed to let out a choked out response, “Yes! I need a lot of cocks to satisfy me.”

Halting his assault on her pussy, Steve slid his cock out of her, “I’m gonna fuck her ass, Sy you get her pussy, Buck you start with her mouth first.” When Sy pulled her off his cock, Y/N was able to gulp nervously at the thought of taking all them at once; however she wasn’t given enough time to react to it as Sy was dragging her to ride him as he sat at a chair. Carefully, he helped her descent on his cock as the man groaned against her neck when he felt how her warm and wet she was, “Did the captain really fuck you, beautiful? You’re still so fucking tight.”

“I did, and I fucked her good,” Steve asserted as he lined his cock up behind her other hole, “That’s just another reason why you’re beautiful, doll. You’re just so fucking tight no matter how fucked you are,” And to emphasize his point, he slide his tip inside her ass and stilled upon feeling her walls constricting around him. “Goddamn, doll,” Steve breathed out as he shoved more of his cock inside her, his whole cock now shoved deep in her ass.

Her mouth hung agape as she felt two cocks having a go in her — loving the way she was never fully empty since when one thrust out, another slammed right back in. Taking advantage of her opened mouth, Bucky stood by the side of the chair and presented his cock to her, “Take it all in princess.” Like an obedient girl, she did wrap her lips around the ridge of his cock and began sucking on it as best she could.

“See what you do, doll? You make us go ravenous for you,” Steve emphasized his point as he mercilessly thrusts in and out of her ass despite her walls clinging to him, begging him to ease down. Agreeing with the captain, Sy sucked on her nipple harder as he thrusted sharply on her pussy, “Make us want to shower you with cum to prove how divine you are.”

Stroking her face gently contradicted how ruthless Bucky treated her mouth as his balls were slapping her chin repeatedly — allowing some of her drool and his precum to fall graceless from her mouth — before adding, “Only a pretty girl like you can make three soldiers fall apart.”

And fall apart was exactly what was bound to happen as Steve planted his hands on her hips so he could gain enough leverage to fuck her ass relentlessly, until his balls slammed against the rim of her opening, until he felt himself come undone with one final thrust all the way inside her. “Fucking hell,” He panted out against her back as he felt himself unload almost a year of desire inside her.

With much reluctance, Steve pulled out of her ass and rested against the conference table to catch his breath and recover. This then allowed Sy to knead his hands into the skin of her ass so he could move her up and down his cock, chasing his own impending orgasm. “Cum with me, beautiful,” He harshly demanded against her skin as moved her in time with his thrusts, “Let me feel you fall apart and come on my cock.” And to prove how badly he wanted — no, needed — to feel her hug his cock even tighter as she spasmed in pleasure — her to cum, he slid in and out of her at a rapid pace until she was clawing at his chest and he felt her body tense up then relax as she coated his cock with cum.

Moaning out at the relief of her release, Bucky enjoyed the added vibrations on his cock — adding to the pleasure as her tongue licked and swirled around the underside of his cock — while watching her ride out her orgasm. It wasn’t long before Sy too stilled his movements so he could release his seed in her. “Fuck so good!” He yelled out as he stayed inside her, relishing the feel of their combined juices. Seeing how her mouth went slack and her lips weren’t sucking on his cock anymore, the sergeant pulled out and stroked his cock as he rubbed the tip of his cock against her nipple. Shivering at the sensation, she stared at him with doe eyes as her dainty hands wrapped around the base of his cock and his balls, “Cum for me, Bucky.” It was the way she sultrily whispered it that made him throw his head back and moan as he covered her gorgeous tits with his cum.

Loving the way her breasts were marked with his cum, she tried to milk more out of the super soldier by rubbing the tip of his cock with her thumb as the other hand fondled his balls gently. “You’re one special girl,” Steve spoke as he watched intently the scene in front of him. Smiling at the praise, Y/N stopped stroking Bucky’s cock when she milked him already. After leaning down to press a chaste, sweet kiss on Sy’s lips, she removed his cock from where it was deeply planted on her — with a moan falling from her lips — before standing up and heading to where Steve was in order to do the same.

“Thank you for proving how beautiful I am,” She sweetly thanked them once she pulled away from the kiss. “Now hold on,” Bucky spoke as he made his way to stand beside Y/N, “I think you’re gonna need more proof of how beautiful you are.”

Catching his drift, Sy sat up straighter in the chair before agreeing, “Exactly, and we might need to give you individually are our own reasons.” She held her breath once more as she felt Steve pepper kisses on her shoulder, “Think you can handle us individually, doll?”

Desperately, she nodded as she enjoyed the feel of his lips kissing her skin. With two fingers grabbing onto her chin, Bucky made her face him, “Good, ‘cause I haven’t been inside that lovely pussy and ass of yours. Oh, and I got a long list of what makes you fucking beautiful.”

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tl-notes · 3 years

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Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon S2 Episode 9 Notes

...設立から大分地盤が固まってきており、少しずつだが、業態は改善されている。

One thing to note here is that Kobayashi(‘s narration) isn’t saying the company has already made solid improvements, it’s that the company has finally established itself somewhat (as it was only founded relatively recently, and typically new companies are especially busy while trying to get off the ground) and now is starting to make improvements.

Similarly in the second sentence, it’s not “was” slow going, it’s “is still” slow going, and the working conditions “are” improving, not “have improved.”

This is がんば ganba, short of course for がんばって ganbatte, which I’m sure most of you are familiar with: the (in)famous “do your best.”

I only mention it because I like this shortened version of it. Ganba!

This is a fun little idiom(?)/saying: 鼻で笑う hana de warau (conjugated as hana de warawareta), lit. to laugh using the nose. It’s used to describe laughing at someone you’re looking down on for whatever reason (not necessarily in a super serious way, could just be a friend being dumb etc.; in this case it’s Elma’s being naive).

Typically it refers to like a “heh-but-through-the-nose” kind of “laugh,” but as you can see in this scene (where clearly Kobayashi is laughing with the mouth, even starting with “pff” lips) it works idiomatically even if the laughing isn’t only through the nose.

You may have heard that Japan is/was a “lifetime employment” country, where typically people would get hired right out of school and stay at that company until retirement. While that’s much less true today than it was even a couple of decades ago (and has become kind of controversial in ways), it’s still much more common of a practice than in say the US.

One result of this is that there’s a much bigger distinction placed between hiring people in spring as part of the annual graduation rush (the Japanese school year ends in March), and mid-career hiring. Typically you can’t participate in the fresh grad hiring if you aren’t one, even if you’re new to the field in question.

For larger employers (i.e. 5k+ employees), roughly two-thirds of all hirings come from fresh grads, and only small employers (<300 employees) hire more mid-careerists than people directly out of school.

Of course, this split tends to apply mostly to “standard” full time jobs, not so much part time, and is not necessarily a thing in every industry/at every company.

Just as a minor point of clarity, this “organized text” in Elma’s document refers to the phrase まとめられた文章 matomerareta bunshou. In a literal sense, matomerareta can mean organized/consolidated etc., and bunshou text/passages, but meaning-wise it’s more like “writing that gets its point across clearly/cleanly.”

This is a pretty big compliment and a very useful skill to have in organizations like this, as writing such that people can quickly and easily understand exactly what you’re trying to say often saves a ton of time and frustration.

我々はエルマの気迫に押されるがままにその書類を読み始めた。

Another minor point, but where the English could imply that they were overwhelmed by Elma’s intensity through the act of reading her report, the Japanese implies more that they started reading it because of how intense Elma was being.

It doesn’t really make much of a difference either way, but it stuck out a little for me.

To justify mentioning it, I guess I’ll explain the grammar point Kobayashi uses: されるがままに sareru ga mama ni. Sareru is a generic verb/verb conjugation for having something done to you (technically here it’s 押される, to be “pushed/pressed/pressured”), and mama refers to a state, condition, or “way” (like “do it this way”).

Put together, the whole phrase is used to indicate “you” do/did something that someone else wants you to, without (meaningful) opposition. (Something similar in raw meaning but with a very different connotation would be “going with the flow.”)

If a friend says “hey let’s go do something,” and next thing you know you’re out bowling despite preferring to stay at home, this is you.

You can stick the mama ni to various other things as well to come up with a similar idea, but without the sareru the nuance may end up different.

The word for clairvoyance here is 千里眼 senrigan, lit. “eye(s) [that can see] a thousand li”, li being a Chinese unit of measurement for length (shorter than a mile, but for general purposes “eyes that see a thousand miles” is basically the gist).

Despite the perhaps physical-sounding nature of the term, it does actually describe the same power as “clairvoyance” in English: being able to perceive things outside your actual range of vision, including potentially into people’s hearts and minds etc.

Hence why it’s a thousand screen display, when she updates it with tech knowledge:

“Tainted by work” here is 職業病 shokugyou-byou, lit. an occupational disease. The “proper” definition is a disease one gets from working in a particular job, such as black lung for coal miners or even posture-related health issues for desk workers.

Additionally, it’s used colloquially to refer to noticeable habits or quirks that people in a certain profession pick up, like a baker always waking up super early or a programmer using programming lingo out of context in normal conversation. The latter being especially noticeable in Japanese, as a lot of such terms are English in origin.

“Shocking” here is a fun word: ドン引き don-biki. “Don” here is added just for emphasis; the main meaning revolves around 引き hiki/biki, from the verb 引く hiku, meaning to pull.

The idea is that someone does/says something that you recoil from. Maybe it’s gross (“I only shower once a week”), maybe it’s mean (“They didn’t smile enough so I didn’t leave a tip.”), maybe it’s creepy (“I sent like 30 texts yesterday but still no reply.”), just anything that has you feeling like you might want to create some distance because... phew.

It’s kind of similar to the current use of “cringe” as an adjective/noun, though with less of an internet-slang feel* to it, and generally used more as something the speaker is doing rather than describing whatever/whoever is being cringe.

(*I think it started being used popularly in this way in the early-to-mid 90s, with the “don”biki variant specifically popping up around 2005.)

A “Premium Friday” is the last Friday of the month, where you get to leave work at 3 pm. It is largely theoretical.

The idea was created by the Japanese government as a way to reduce working hours and encourage domestic spending (boost demand), but it has not been implemented by all that many employers, and especially not many smaller employers. There isn’t, after all, any mandate or government-provided incentive for doing so.

Evidence from the places that did implement it suggests it is actually good for the economy, but good luck convincing bosses to give extra paid time off.

“Last Friday of the month” was chosen because most people get paid on the 25th each month (Japan tends to pay monthly instead of every two weeks), so it would usually be right after payday, when people are more willing to get spendy.

Kobayashi saying eight hours here reminded me of a “fun” fact: the typical Japanese work day is eight hours plus a one hour break. Plus a one hour break, not with. So a typical work day is actually nine hours. Most commonly 8 to 5 or 9 to 6. Not many “nine-to-fives” here.

The characters for Joui are 上井, which usually read as Kamii or Uwai. It’s “Joui” because that means, when written as 上位, “superior.” As in “a superior life-form.” Like a dragon, say.

でも、ゆっくりやる事業改善案を見せてもらえたじゃない？

This one is actually kind of a critical mistake. In the English it sounds like she’s talking about the improvement proposal that Elma made and that the boss looked at. In the Japanese though, she’s talking about a different plan, one the boss showed them*, that is similar in idea but is going to take longer to be fully implemented**. So we’re being told that while Elma didn’t get what she wanted as fast as she wanted it, it is still basically going through at a slower pace.

*In ”見せてもらえた misete moraeta,” the misete vs mite means they were the ones who got shown something, rather than the ones who got someone to look at their stuff.

**Which you can tell from the ゆっくりやる yukkuri yaru, where yaru is basically “do” and yukkuri means (in this case) at an unhurried pace.

(Re previous note: Hence why she says “immediately” here.)

“Black (ブラック)” and “white (ホワイト)” in the context of Japanese employers refers to how well employees are treated: a company with good benefits/pay, reasonable levels of overtime, and feels safe to work at is “white,” while a company that has excessive overtime, often pays poorly, breaks labor laws, and allows harassment to fester is “black.”

While “white company” was created simply in contrast to the term “black company,” the latter finds its origins in front businesses for organized crime, which were called “black” in the sense of “illegal” (similar to “black market” or something being in a “grey area”). Given the international reputation of Japanese work life, you can imagine that “black company” as a term sees much more use.

There’s been some discussion about maybe replacing it due to the racial implications (especially since it uses the English word “black”), but while typically English translations drop the color for that reason (e.g. ブラック企業大賞, an “award” given to Japan’s worst employer each year, is officially “Most Evil Corporation of the Year Award” in English), it hasn’t really penetrated to the mainstream at this point.

The rice there is in a 飯盒 hangou, a metal container that looks… like that, and is the stereotypical item of choice for cooking rice while camping. It has its origins in the mess kits used by the military, but these days they’re primarily marketed as portable rice cookers for camping use.

You can get round ones too, but the bean shape is very popular.

“Settings” here is 設定 settei, lit. exactly that, “setting(s).” E.g. if you open a computer program and look at the settings menu, it’ll be settei in the Japanese language settings (settei).

I bring it up here because there’s a bit of a difference in how it gets used colloquially like this. In English, the “setting” for a story typically refers to where and when it’s set. In Japanese, “setting” in that sense is usually 舞台 butai. But settei is still used when talking about fiction, just in a different, more expansive way.

Often in these cases settei is used to refer to the various conceits that provide the context in which the story takes place. In this show, for example, one such “setting” is that dragons are real: another is that magic exists. It comes up especially often in fantasy/sci-fi type stuff where there are major distinctions between that universe and the real world—not that stories in a real-world setting don’t have settei of their own, but they often are lumped into descriptions of the plot in that case (”a dragon comes to live with an office worker in her apartment”).

It also refers to the “settings” of characters, like name or age, and things like “they run a bakery that’s going out of business and are trying to save it.” Basically all the details you’d have in a character profile.

It also gets used in conversation to refer to pretend things or (basically) lies: like here, where Saikawa thinks Shouta is playing pretend with his ley-lines talk, or e.g. if someone is trying to tell you some outlandish story (“my uncle works at Nintendo…” or someone asking for love life advice for “their friend”) and you’re just like “Okay so that’s the settei here, I see.”

Not really a big deal, but Elma’s line here in Japanese implies she won’t let Tohru call her that anymore (see her もう mou). Tohru’s response is also more of a “I haven’t been?”, since of course she wasn’t aware of Elma’s-mental-image-Tohru tormenting Elma in the previous scene:

The word for “full of” in the title here is ざんまい zanmai (a suffix form of 三昧 sanmai), usually meaning that there’s a whole lot of [whatever] to immerse oneself in. I mostly bring it up because there’s a famous restaurant chain called Sushi Zanmai that specializes in, obviously, sushi.

And you know, Elma is a water dragon that looks kinda like an eel… I’m just sayin’…

Not really a translation note, but wild that Elma didn’t even touch her parfait. (Not so wild that Fafnir finished his so quickly.) Serious business ahead...

“Genuinely” here is 素直に sunao ni, where the “ni” is used like “-ly” to make sunao work as an adverb. Sunao itself is an interesting word that falls into that category of “simple concept that is often hellish to translate.”

For some context, the first character, 素, is also used in the word 素顔 sugao, which is a face without makeup and 素材 sozai, basically raw ingredients/materials. The second, 直, is used in words like 直線 chokusen, a straight line, or 正直 shoujiki, honest.

Put them together, and you’ve got a word with connotations of directness and being unadorned. The original definition of the word tends toward “simple, natural” in the sense of e.g. life growing up on a rural farm.

The more common use for it these days is to describe people and their actions. Positively, it can mean something similar to a person being happy to help, or kind of like the opposite of conniving; open, frank, genuine. Less positively, it can mean someone is too trusting and easy to trick into doing things OR someone who is “too honest” and says hurtful things.

(If it helps: tsundere characters are often described as explicitly not sunao.)

In this case, the idea is that Tohru accepted the invitation easily as-is, without putting any conditions on it, or doing any “ugh, what a pain, do I have to, jeez” rigamarole—she just accepted. Another way you could put it in this case might be “It’s even more unusual for Tohru to accept an invitation like this without a fuss.”

Just to point out the hand on head thing again.

Also just to point out that this is another example of otsukare, as a reminder of how ubiquitous that word is.

And it makes a good place to end on: thanks for reading!

#maidragon #Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid #kobayashi-san chi no maid dragon #translation notes #anime

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“...While on his travels Augustus would have continued to be preoccupied with the old issue of what would happen after his death. He had clearly demonstrated at the time of his departure that he could not manage without Marcus Agrippa, married at the time to Marcella, Octavia’s daughter. Agrippa now divorced her (her compensation was to be married to Iullus Antonius, the son of Antony and Fulvia), so as to be free in 21 to marry the widowed Julia. Plutarch says that this marriage came about through Octavia’s machinations and that she prevailed upon Augustus to accept the idea. It is not clear what her motives would have been.

If we are to believe Seneca we might see pure spite. He claimed that Octavia hated Livia after the death of Marcellus because the hopes of the imperial house passed now to Livia’s sons. This could well be no more than speculation, and Seneca does not even hint at any specific action by Octavia against her supposed rival. The whole story sounds typically Senecan in its denigration of dead individuals who are easy targets. Once again, we are told nothing about Livia’s reaction to the marriage. She might not have been able to object to the earlier marriage between Julia and Augustus’ nephew Marcellus, but in 21 the situation was different. Her older son, Tiberius, who was not yet married, had been passed over in favour of an outsider to the family.

But whatever his sense of obligation to his wife, Augustus probably felt that he had little choice in the matter. Agrippa’s earlier reaction to having to take second place to Marcellus, a blood relative of Augustus, would have provided a good hint to Augustus of how his friend would have taken to playing second string to Tiberius. Agrippa was now a key figure in the governing of Rome. He was not a man to be provoked. If Livia had been entertaining hopes that this early stage of a preeminent role for either of her sons (and such a suggestion, while reasonable, is totally speculative), such hopes would have faded with the birth of two sons to Julia and Agrippa.

Gaius Caesar was born in 20 bc, and, as if to confirm the line, a second son, Lucius Caesar, arrived in 17. Augustus was delighted, and soon after Lucius’ birth signalled his ultimate intentions by adopting both boys. He thus might envisage himself as being ‘‘succeeded’’ by Agrippa, who would in turn be succeeded by either Gaius and Lucius, who were, in a sense, sons of both men. In late 16 bc Augustus set out on an extended trip to Gaul and Spain, where he established a number of veteran settlements. Livia may have accompanied him. Dio does report speculation that the emperor went away so as to be able to conduct his affair with Terentia, the wife of his close confidant Maecenas, in a place where it would not attract gossip.

Even if the rumours were well founded, the implication need not necessarily follow that he had left Livia behind. Livia had a reputation as a femme complaisante, and Augustus may simply have wanted to get away from the prying eyes of the capital. Certainly at one stage Livia intervened with Augustus to argue for the grant of citizenship to a Gaul, and this trip provides the best context. Moreover, Seneca dates a famous incident to this trip, Livia’s plea on behalf of the accused Gaius Cornelius Cinna. It could well be that Seneca misdated the Cinna episode, but he at any rate clearly believed that Livia had been in Gaul with her husband at the relevant time.

…Agrippa lived to see the birth of two other children, his daughters Julia and Agrippina. The first (born about 19 bc) is the namesake of her mother, and, in the historical tradition, cut from the same cloth; the second was to be somewhat eclipsed in the same tradition by her own daughter and namesake, the mother of the last Julio-Claudian emperor, Nero. Agrippa thus became the natural father of four of Augustus’ grandchildren during his lifetime (a fifth would be born posthumously), and his stock rose higher with each event. He had served his princeps well, and could now take his final exit. In 13 he campaigned in the Balkans. At the end of the season he returned to Italy, where he fell ill, and in mid-March, 12 bc, he died.

His body was brought to Rome, where it was given a magnificent burial, and the remains were deposited in the Mausoleum of Augustus, even though Agrippa had earlier booked himself another site in the Campus Martius. In the following year Octavia died. She is celebrated by the sources as a paragon of every human virtue, whose only possible failings had been the forgivable ones of excessive loyalty to an undeserving husband and excessive grief over the death of a possibly only marginally more deserving son. As noted earlier, we should be cautious about Seneca’s claim that Octavia nursed a hatred for Livia after the death of Marcellus. But there can be no doubt that her death was in a sense advantageous to Livia, for it removed one of the main contenders for the role of the premier woman in the state. Only Augustus’ daughter Julia might now lay claim to a precedence of sorts, but she in fact became an agent in furthering Livia’s ambitions, rather than an obstacle. Once her formal period of mourning was over, Julia would need another husband. Suetonius says that her father carefully considered several options, even from among the equestrians.

Tiberius later claimed that Augustus pondered the idea of marrying her off to a political nonentity, someone noted for leading a retiring life and not involved in a political career. Among others he supposedly considered Gaius Proculeius, a close friend of the emperor and best known for the manner of his death rather than of his life: he committed suicide by what must have been a painful technique—swallowing gypsum. This drastic action was apparently not in response to the prospect of marriage to Julia but in despair over the unbearable pains in his stomach.

In 11 bc, the year of Octavia’s death, Augustus made his decision. He could hardly pass over one of Livia’s sons again. They were the only real choices, given the practical options open to him. Both were married, and Drusus’ wife was the daughter of Octavia, someone able already to produce offspring linked, at least indirectly, by blood to the princeps. Divorce in this case would not have been desirable. Augustus had already demonstrated his faith in Livia’s other son, Tiberius, by appointing him to replace Agrippa in the Balkans. He was the inevitable candidate for Julia’s next husband. In perhaps 20 or 19 Tiberius had married Agrippa’s daughter Vipsania, to whom he had long been betrothed. Their son Drusus was born in perhaps 14. In 11 Vipsania was pregnant for a second time, but Tiberius was obliged to divorce her, although he seems to have been genuinely attached to her. Reputedly when they met after the divorce he followed her with such a forlorn and tearful gaze that precautions were taken that their paths would never cross again.

He was now free to marry Julia. This marriage marks a milestone in Tiberius’ career and in the ambitions that Livia would naturally have nursed for her son. Augustus was clearly prepared to place him in an advantageous position, and the process could be revoked only with difficulty. It is inevitable that there should be speculation among modern scholars that Livia might have played a role in arranging the marriage. Gardthausen claimed that she brought it off in the teeth of vigorous opposition. Perhaps, but the suggestion belongs totally to the realm of speculation. If Livia did play some part in winning over Augustus, she did it so skilfully and unobtrusively that she has left no traces, and the sources are silent about any specific interference on this occasion.

Nor can it be assumed that Augustus would have needed a great deal of persuading. No serious store should be placed in the claims in the sources that he held Tiberius in general contempt and was reduced to turning to him faut de mieux. Suetonius quotes passages from Augustus’ correspondence that provide concrete evidence that the emperor in fact held his adopted son in high regard. Suetonius chose the extracts to show his appreciation of Tiberius’ military and administrative skills, but his words clearly suggest a high degree of affection that seems to go beyond the merely formulaic.

He addresses Tiberius as iucundissime, probably the equivalent in modern correspondence of ‘‘my very dear Tiberius.’’ He reveals that when he has a challenging problem or is feeling particularly annoyed at something, he yearns for his Tiberius (Tiberium meum desidero), and he notes that both he and Livia are tortured by the thought that her son might be overtaxing himself. Livia’s other son, Drusus, although arguably his brother’s match in military reputation and ability, seems to have been quite different from him in temperament. Where Tiberius was private, inhibited, uninterested in courting popularity, Drusus was affable, engaging, and well-liked, and there was a popular belief, probably naive, that he was committed to an eventual restoration of the republic. He had found a perfectly compatible wife in Antonia the Younger, a woman who commanded universal esteem and respect to the very end.

They produced two sons, both of whom would loom large on the stage of human events: Germanicus, who became the most loved man in the Roman empire and whose early death threatened to erode Livia’s popularity, and Claudius, whose physical limitations were an embarrassment to Livia and to other members of the imperial family, but who confounded them all by becoming an emperor of considerable acumen and ability. They also had a daughter, Livilla, who attained disrepute through her affair with the most loathed man in the early Roman empire, the notorious praetorian prefect Sejanus.

Drusus dominated the landscape in 9 bc. The year seemed to start auspiciously for Livia. In 13 bc the Senate had voted to consecrate the Ara Pacis, one of the great monuments of Augustus’ regime, as a memorial to his safe return from Spain and the pacification of Gaul. The dedication waited four years and finally took place in 9, on January 30, Livia’s birthday, perhaps her fiftieth. The honour was a profound one, but indirect and thus low-key, in keeping with Livia’s public persona. Her sons continued to achieve distinction on the battlefield. A decorated sword sheath of provincial workmanship has survived from this period.

It represents a frontal Livia with the nodus hairstyle, and shoulder locks carefully designed so as to flow along her shoulders above the drapery. She appears between two heads, almost certainly her sons, and the piece pictorially symbolises Livia at what must have been one of the most satisfying periods of her life. To cap her sense of well-being, Tiberius, after signal victories over the Dalmatians and Pannonians, returned to Rome to celebrate an ovation. Following the usual practice after a triumph or ovation, a dinner was given for the Senate in the Capitoline temple, and tables were set out for the people in front of private houses.

A separate banquet was arranged for the women. Its sponsors were Livia and Julia. Private tensions may already have arisen between Tiberius and Julia, but at least at the public level they were sedulously maintaining an outward image of marital harmony, and Livia was making her own contribution towards promoting that image. Similar festivities were planned to celebrate Drusus’ victories. Presumably in his case Livia would have joined Antonia, Drusus’ wife, in preparing the banquet, as she had joined Tiberius’ wife on the earlier occasion.

While Tiberius had been engaged in operations in Pannonia, Drusus had conducted a highly acclaimed campaign in Germany. By 9 bc he had succeeded in taking Roman arms as far as the river Elbe. So awesome were his achievements that greater powers felt the need to intervene. He was visited by the apparition of a giant barbarian woman, who told him—she conveniently spoke Latin—not to push his successes further. Something was clearly amiss in the divine timing. Suetonius implies that Drusus heeded the warning, but calamity befell him anyhow. In a riding accident Drusus’ horse toppled over onto him and broke his thigh. He fell gravely ill.

His deteriorating condition caused consternation throughout the Roman world, and it is even claimed that the enemy respected him so much that they declared a truce pending his recovery. (Similar claims were later made about his son Germanicus.) Tiberius had been campaigning in the Balkans at the time but had returned to Italy and was passing through Ticinum after the campaign when he heard that Drusus was sinking fast. Travelling the 290 km in a day and a night, a rate that Pliny thought impressive enough to record, he rushed to be with his brother. He reached him just before he died in September, 9 bc. Drusus was universally liked, and his death at the age of twenty-nine could not seriously be seen as benefitting anyone.

Nevertheless, it still managed to attract gossip and rumours. The death of a young prince of the imperial house would usually drag in the name of Livia as the prime suspect. In this instance such a scenario would have been totally implausible, and Augustus became the target of the innuendo instead. Tacitus reports that the tragedy evoked the same jaundiced reactions as would that of Germanicus, three decades later in the reign of Tiberius, that sons with ‘‘democratic’’ temperaments—civilia ingenia—did not please ruling fathers (Germanicus had been adopted by Tiberius).

Suetonius has preserved a tradition that Augustus, suspecting Drusus of republicanism, recalled him from his province and, when he declined to obey, had him poisoned. Suetonius thought the suggestion nonsensical, and he is surely correct. Augustus had shown great affection for the young man and in the Senate had named him joint heir with Gaius and Lucius. He also delivered a warm eulogy after his death. Even Tiberius’ grief was portrayed as twofaced. To illustrate Tiberius’ hatred for the members of his own family, Suetonius claims that he had earlier produced a letter in which his younger brother discussed with him the possibility of compelling Augustus to restore the republic.

But events seem to belie completely the notion of any serious fraternal strife. Tiberius’ anguish was clearly genuine. His general deportment is of special interest, because of the light that it might throw on his and Livia’s conduct later, at the funeral of Germanicus. According to Seneca, the troops were deeply distressed over the death and demanded Drusus’ body. Tiberius maintained that discipline had to be observed in grieving as well as fighting, and that the funeral was to be conducted with the dignity demanded by the Roman tradition. He repressed his own tears and was able to dampen the enthusiasm for a vulgar show of public grief.

Tiberius now set out with the body for Rome. Augustus went to Ticinum (Pavia) to meet the cortege, and because Seneca says that Livia accompanied the procession to Rome, it is probably safe to assume that she went with her husband. As she travelled, she was struck by the pyres that burned throughout the country and the crowds that came out to escort the funeral train. The event provides one of the few glimpses of Livia’s private emotions. She was crushed by the death and sought comfort from the philosopher Areus. On his advice, she uncharacteristically opened herself up to others. She put pictures of Drusus in public and private places and encouraged her acquaintances to talk about him.

But she maintained a respectable level of grief, which elicited the admiration of Seneca. Tiberius may well have learned from his mother the appropriateness of self-restraint in the face of private anguish. It was an attitude that was later to arouse considerable resentment against both of them. During the funeral in Rome, Tiberius delivered a eulogy in the Forum and Augustus another in the Circus Maximus, where the emperor expressed the hope that Gaius and Lucius would emulate Drusus.

The body was taken to the Campus Martius for cremation by the equestrians, and the funeral bier was surrounded by images of the Julian and the Claudian families. The ashes were deposited in Augustus’ mausoleum. The title of Germanicus was posthumously bestowed on Drusus and his descendants, and he was given the further honour of statues, an arch, and a cenotaph on the banks of the Rhine. Augustus composed the verses that appeared on his tomb and also wrote a prose account of his life. No doubt less distinguished Romans, of varied literary talent, would have written their own contributions.

The anonymous Consolatio ad Liviam represents itself as just such a composition, intended to offer comfort to Livia on this very occasion, although it was probably composed somewhat later. Livia was indeed devastated, but as some form of compensation for her terrible private loss, she now, after some thirty years in the shadows, came into greater public prominence. The final chapter of Drusus’ life seems to have opened up a new one in his mother’s.”

- Anthony A. Barrett, “In the Shadows.” in Livia: First Lady of Imperial Rome

#livia drusilla #octavian #livia first lady of imperial rome #anthony a. barrett #roman #ancient #history

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mypoisonedvine · 4 years

Text

Double-Edged Sword: Capt. Syverson x Reader (Chapter 1)

[I decided to ignore my WIPs and my URL and write something for Syverson because he is just…. a beautiful, meaty man and he deserves some more love.

To those of you who follow me for Witcher stuff only, I promise we will return shortly to the regularly scheduled programming. As for the rest of us who are thirsty for Cavill in any context… enjoy!]

Summary: As a Major in the Marine Corps, you work with other units and branches relatively often. That said, you had never really had to ask another unit for help before, so you felt pretty awkward when a mission required you to travel to a nearby Army camp and take shelter with them for the next two months. Of course, their smack-talking, free-wheeling Captain isn’t going to make it any easier on you, either.

Word Count: 5k (oh jesus christ)

Rating: E

(warning for dub con and people being sexist assholes, cause yknow, it’s the military. contains lots of angst and bickering and arguing, and of course, smut.)

“Listen, I’m not going to stand here and pretend I’m Ms. Popular,” you sighed, “but hopefully you all can appreciate that I look out for all of you.”

No one said anything, because they were standing at attention at their cots.

“At ease,” you added, and they all relaxed a bit, “but keep quiet so I can finish.”

A few sat on their beds but most still seemed to be paying attention.

“When it’s just us Marines, I don’t mind much whatever you call me when I’m not around. Or when I’m around. But once we get where we’re going tomorrow, we’re shacking up with the Army. And as much as I want everyone to get along, I’m not sure how likely that is. Anyways, what I’m trying to say is… right now it may be me versus you, but soon it’s going to be us versus them, Marines versus Army. And us Marines need to stick together. Does that make sense?”

There were a few nods, but you weren’t sure they were getting it.

“Alright, allow me to be a bit more literal. Don’t tell the other soldiers that I’m a bitch,” you requested. There were some scattered chuckles. “I know it probably seems fine since you say it to each other but I need you guys to help me get their respect. I’m not saying to go in there and tell every Army nimrod that I’m everybody’s favorite officer. Just… don’t let them see any cracks they could exploit. Because I have to start ordering these guys around and I’m already batting a thousand.”

“Seems reasonable,” Private Cole replied, and most of the others agreed. You smiled and left them alone to have a somewhat relaxing night before they had to ship out.

“I don’t want this to be Marines versus Army,” you told Captain Syverson the next day when you met with him for the first time. Of course, that was what you had told your own unit would happen, but he didn’t know that. “I’m sure you know that this is an officer versus enlisted issue. And us officers should stick together.”

He was smiling back at you from across the table, but it didn’t seem that friendly.

“I don’t see why there’s any ‘versus’ at all. You and your unit are guests here. We get this project over with and you’re out,” he shrugged.

“Maybe you haven’t had much issue getting control of your soldiers. But it took me a while to get mine to trust me, and now I have to go in blind and command your unit. So I hope you’re on my side,” you explained.

He went from smiling in an unhappy way, to laughing in an unfunny way. You regretted the way you had approached this conversation.

“Sounds like you’re not a good leader, if it was so much trouble for you,” he scoffed. “Maybe you should work on that.”

You didn’t get angry very often, but this was the closest you’d been in a while. You understood his distrust, even a little duplicity was merited. To just outright insult you to your face was, of course, hurtful, but mainly just stupid. You’d always known Army guys were total morons, but this was just ridiculous. What could he gain from going against you?

“How many years until you get promoted?” you asked him suddenly, standing up from your chair.

“About two and a half,” he responded.

“Well, if in two and a half years we’re both still alive, and I’m not already a lieutenant colonel, call me and we’ll talk about who’s in charge. Until then, back off,” you huffed, and turned to walk away. You yelped when he grabbed you by the arm and pulled you back.

“You’re on my base,” he reminded you sternly.

“And we’ll try to be respectful while we’re here, regardless of how we’re being treated,” you grimaced, wrenching your arm out of his grasp.

“You’ll try to be respectful? On my base?! How generous,“ he scoffed. "You can’t just show up and start running things.”

“I have no desire to micromanage your little sandhut, Captain. I don’t give half a fuck what goes on in here. What I do have is the final call on any decision made in this mission,” you explained.

“On whose authority?” he pressed. You laughed.

“Cap, somewhere in your desk there’s a little piece of paper– it’s got a lot of pretty gold and silver stars on it– and it explains how commanding authority is ranked in every branch of the United States military. Feel free to go and check me on this, but I’m pretty sure that ‘Captain’ is here,” you motioned in the air, “and ‘Major’ is here,” you moved your hand up an inch.

“Well, sweetheart, there’s a sign outside the front of this base that says ‘Army’ on it, and a little sticker on your chest,” he poked it, and you couldn’t decide if you hated the physical contact or the deriding pet name more, “that says USMC.”

“Rank is rank,” you argued.

“So if you’ve got a doctorate in physics and I’ve got a master’s in English, you have the right to lecture me about fuckin’ Grapes of Wrath or whatever?”

“My doctorate is in American History,” you frowned. He laughed in frustration.

“Only a Jarhead could miss the point that hard,” he groaned, “and find a way to brag in the process.”

“Call your superior,” you growled, “who is notably a Major, and ask him who has authority on this base while we’re here.”

You stormed out before you could hear his reply.

When the time came, the two of you discussed how you would approach the mission behind closed doors. Not like it was fun or anything, but you managed to stay off each other’s throats for a while and agree on a few things. It was nice enough that you actually let your guard down, so much so that you were totally blindsided when he waited until you were in front of the entire company to disagree with you.

“That’ll never work,” he suddenly interrupted as you explained the plan, “we’ll divide and conquer.”

You looked at him with confusion.

“That’s not what we discussed before,” you reminded him.

“I changed my mind,” he shrugged.

“Well, I didn’t. So we’ll do it my way.”

“My men, my rules,” he growled, stepping closer to you.

“Half these people,” you corrected, since a few of your unit were women, “are mine, and you’re below me.”

“Fuck you,” he said casually, smiling while he did it.

“You couldn’t handle it,” you spat back.

A few of the enlisted ‘ooooh’ed but for the most part it was very, very quiet.

Finally, Captain Syverson silently turned on his heel and walked away, looking exasperated.

“Looks like the Captain is going to take a little break,” you smiled with fake enthusiasm, turning back to the company, “and I’ll keep explaining this mission to you all.”

“If Captain Syverson doesn’t approve it, we’re not doing it,” one of the Army kids announced. Your Marines were notably silent, but the rest of the Captain’s unit nodded in agreement.

“I’ve got a word for you, boys. It starts with ‘N’ and ends with ‘subordination,’” you frowned. They all groaned.

“It’s not insubordination because you’re not in charge of us!”

“Manage your own people, Jarhead!”

You uncrossed your arms and let your voice get a little louder. “Hey, hey, settle down!”

It mostly worked, but everyone seemed pretty displeased.

“Captain Syverson and I had a discussion with our superiors and it was concluded that I am highest ranking and I get the final call on every tactical decision,” you explained.

“That’s not what he told us,” one of the Army boys chuckled.

You tried not to seethe in front of them, you tried to keep it professional, but how were you supposed to work in these conditions?

“As you were,” you resigned through your teeth, storming off to where the Captain had gone. You found him in his quarters, relaxing on a sofa; you nearly kicked the door in to talk to him.

“What the fuck was that?!” you exclaimed.

“I changed my mind,” he repeated calmly.

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” you growled, shoving him where he sat. He stood up, clearly agitated.

“Get your hands off me, lady.”

“Major,” you corrected through your teeth.

“Only Major you are to me is a major waste of my fucking time,” he replied.

“Take it up with the Department of Defense, they’re the ones who gave me the title,” you defended.

“You know, lately I’ve been having issues with a lot of their decisions. I’m still trying to figure out why the fuck we’re doing this anyways.”

“The mission?” you asked.

“The war,” he corrected.

“Ah,” you nodded, looking around nervously. You were more comfortable with the arguing than the awkward silence.

“Whatever,” he scoffed, crossing his arms and slumping his shoulders.

“Go tell your unit the plan- our plan. Better yet, tell them they answer to me,” you demanded.

“I couldn’t have made it any more obvious that I’m not gonna do what you tell me,” he frowned, crossing his arms.

“Will you at least cooperate with me enough to get this mission over with?”

He thought about that for a minute, and you tried not to lose your patience.

“Hmm… no,” he decided finally.

“Then will you shut the fuck up and stay out of my way?” you suggested instead.

He stepped up to you until he was uncomfortably close, and you had to crane your neck to meet his gaze. He had these really bright blue eyes and they didn’t fit with the rest of his face, which was significantly angrier and grittier.

“Not a chance,” he answered. But his voice had lost the intimidating tone, and his expression had changed at some point without you noticing… he looked sort of calm, considering the situation, and you realized that he was examining your face.

“You know,” he said suddenly, “you’d be pretty if you weren’t so…” he trailed off.

“Mean?” you finished, having heard this sort of comment more than a few times.

“No, it’s not that. The mean thing is sorta hot,” he corrected casually as if it were nothing to say. You bit your lip and broke the eye contact, trying not to blush. It was a good thing you didn’t find him attractive- because of course you didn’t, him being this dirty brute and all- but still, it was uncomfortable.

“You’d be pretty,” he decided, “if you weren’t a Marine.”

You laughed and shook your head incredulously.

“Yeah, well, maybe you’d be pretty if you shaved that raccoon off your face,” you suggested, “and took a shower.”

You smiled as you left the room.

You delayed the mission briefing a day, to give you and the Captain more time to hopefully come to some decision, and you hoped it wouldn’t mean you and your unit had to stay at this camp even just one day longer. You met with your Marines privately, and they were sympathetic but seemed to be getting along with the other soldiers enough to sympathize with their unwillingness to cooperate. One soldier said he would only listen to you and not ‘Sy’ as they called him, but you told them to always listen to their commanding officer even if he’s a complete tool.

You were walking back to your quarters for the night when you passed by an open tent, a half-dozen Army boys inside playing cards.

“Hey Major, what size bra do you wear?” a soldier hollered at you, and the others snickered.

“I think they’re bigger than they look in that uniform,” another added. “Double ‘D’s, at least.”

You stopped and decided to address them, unable to let a comment like that go.

“Oh I’ve got double ‘D’s alright,” you smirked. “Dishonorable Discharge.”

“Aw, we’re just messing around,” the first dismissed with a frown. “Can’t you take a joke?”

“I can take a joke, but I can take your job, too. Maybe stay on my good side.” You winked, just to keep it playful, but you were really screwed either way. You’d tried playing along with jokes before and all it did was make you seem like some creep and/or slut who liked getting hit on (was this even what that was?) by subordinates. But getting stern didn’t seem to make you any friends, either. That’s why you were so comfortable with not having any friends.

“Your good side? You mean from the back?” one of them murmured, and you wondered if he was trying to be just loud enough for you to hear, or just quiet enough for you not to.

“Dude, she’s probably a dyke anyway,” Private Lipowitz responded.

“Am I supposed to find that insulting?” you asked him. He smirked, as did the others, as if it was obvious that you should, but nobody said anything. “Maybe I am a dyke. And maybe I could give your girl back home more pleasure in five minutes than you’ve given any woman in your whole life combined, eh Lipowitz?”

“You better not talk about my girl, Major,” he challenged, standing up and puffing up his chest. “I know you’re not supposed to hit chicks or anything, but seriously, I’ll take out anybody who talks about my girl.” You decided not to point out that you’re not supposed to hit your commanding officer, ‘chick’ or otherwise.

“Then you better start with your boys first,” you responded, motioning to a few of the other soldiers, “because word on the street is they found those saucy little pictures she sent you.”

Lipowitz turned to the other men with wide eyes, and suddenly you were the only one smiling. Enlisted seem to talk so much more and so much louder than they realize.

“What the fuck?” he exclaimed, dashing to his pack, presumably searching for those photos. When he didn’t find them, he stood up and pushed Private Mason back by the shoulders.

“Where are those fucking pictures, dude?”

“I don’t have ‘em, I swear,” Mason defended, but all the other guys were laughing.

“Seriously, guys, whoever has them, just give them back!”

“You’re not going to want them back in the state they’re in,” another finally admitted, “trust me.”

They all burst into laughter as Lipowitz went on a rampage, yelling and kicking and threatening to beat up the other guys. You took the commotion as a good opportunity to sneak away mostly unnoticed and get back to your quarters for the night.

You weren’t there very long before you decided to spend some time in your temporary office instead. You had taken your hair out of the tight regulation bun, intending to change into pajamas and go to sleep, but you remembered some paperwork that needed to be done by tomorrow night and decided to make some progress on it, since the Captain got in the way of your productivity during the day.

Of course, you weren’t an hour into it when he knocked on your door, though you didn’t know it was him until you told him to come in without looking up from your files.

He entered but stopped and didn’t say anything.

“Can I help you?” you asked eventually.

“You look different with your hair down,” he observed, and you looked back at him with a confused expression.

“Yes, I’d figure so,” you replied.

“You sleep in your uniform?” he asked, noticing that you were still in your fatigues, though you’d shed the camo long sleeve and just had on the green undershirt.

“Do I look like I’m sleeping?” you asked incredulously, looking back to your papers. He snorted but didn’t say anything. "Besides, I don’t think you’re ever in uniform.“

"Not when I don’t have to be,” he shrugged. “I’m not sure why you wear it when you don’t have to.”

“I barely get taken seriously with it on, so it’s the least I can do,” you explained.

“About that…” he began, and you looked up in surprise. “I’m sorry they give you such a hard time.”

“Oh, I see,” you nodded, getting up from your chair to put some papers in your filing cabinet, “you talked to them and heard some of the awful shit they call me.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Well, you only have yourself to blame for that. You had plenty of chances to instill respect for authority but you decided it would be more fun, I suppose, to go rogue and turn everyone against me,” you bit back with sarcastic cheeriness.

“Shit, I’m actually trying to be nice to you, and you’re still impossible. You’re such a fuckin’ brat,” he nearly yelled. You felt like the word ‘brat’ specifically targeted the fact that you were younger than him, which you didn’t appreciate at all- you would rather be judged on your merits, even if the judgment was poor, than be treated differently just because you were young.

“I’m in charge of you,” you corrected, “and you’re refusing to listen to me. So, if anything, you’re the brat.”

“What I would give to put you in your place right now,” he growled to himself.

“Oh, my place? And what place is that?”

“Bent over my desk and getting your brains fucked out,” he answered with a deep voice.

A lot of guys probably fantasized about rough sex (or worse) as a means of revenge against you for all those extra push-ups and boot camp humiliations– a few had even made comments about it, though most hadn’t realized you could hear them at the time. You’d learned quickly how to not let that stuff get to you. But this got to you… and not in the way you prepared for. Your face burned and your gut sank and your insides throbbed, as if out of nowhere.

“I figured you liked your women without brains,” you quipped in reply, trying not to show any signs of weakness.

He dashed to close the space between you, pressing you back against the wall. He was so big, and he smelled like sweat and beer and pine. You were surprised, and confused, but you didn’t worry that he would hurt you, for some reason.

“Seems I like my women with a mouth on ‘em, because every time you make some little comment like that, I swear I get harder than steel.”

He pushed his hips into you and yep, there it was. Your breaths began to stutter but you didn’t want him to see how much this affected you.

“Just wish you put that mouth to better use,” he added with a devilish grin.

“You’d better get back,” you threatened, without actually mentioning any potential consequences.

“Don’t pretend you don’t want me,” he purred, and leaned down to speak against your ear. “You’ve thought about it, haven’t you? I can tell you’re getting turned on when we argue, too.”

“You’re confusing arousal with irritation, Captain.”

“Mmm, I like when you call me that. I assume the intention is condescending, cause you just have to remind me that you outrank me, but I like it anyway,” he presumed.

“It’s the proper way to address another soldier, nothing condescending about it. You know, I actually don’t have any problem with your rank. Or your branch. My problem is with your personality,” you corrected.

“That’s fair. I have a big personality,” he smirked, and pressed his erection harder against you… it felt pretty big but you couldn’t get a good impression through your fatigues.

“Well, that might explain your ego,” you murmured.

“Just tell me you don’t want it and I’ll leave you be, we’ll go back to bickering an’ shit,” he offered. “Just look at me,” he prompted, putting a finger under your chin and guiding you to look up at him, “and tell me you don’t want it.”

As you met his gaze, you let yourself really get a closer look than you had before. It had always been obvious that he was good-looking, but right now he looked oddly gentle considering the circumstances. The look in his eyes lacked the confidence you were expecting… as if he really didn’t know if you wanted him or not. As if he really wanted you to want him. As if he really wanted you. And it had been a long time since someone had looked at you like that.

“Fuck it,” you growled and wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him down into a kiss. His beard rubbed against your face but it wasn’t as scratchy as you’d imagined- not that you had imagined this or anything.

He inhaled through his nose and stepped back, pulling you with him and putting a hand on your hair and the other on your hip.

“Looks like you’ll have to settle for bending me over my desk,” you mumbled against his lips.

“Not gonna bend you over anything yet,” he replied, putting his hands on your butt and lifting you up until you were straddling him in the air.

He walked with you wrapped around him until he could set you down on the desk, and his hands felt so damn big on the small of your waist.

He pulled back so he could pull your shirt over your head, and he took off his own while you slipped off your sports bra. You both took a moment to stare at each other’s toplessness, a silent acknowledgement that you’d both been wondering about the other’s body. You ran your hands up and down his chest, and he just looked at you while you did it with a difficult-to-read expression. Of course you were familiar with muscle, you saw shirtless soldiers all the time and they were all in great shape, but this guy was just enormous. His shoulders dwarfed you and with him so close you felt uncharacteristically small.

He didn’t say anything as he pulled you into another kiss, and this one was a bit gentler than the last. You felt giddy and nervous and so desperate for him; you couldn’t remember the last time you felt like this, honestly.

His hands trailed down your back and you slid off the desk until you were standing. He spun you around and pushed you down between your shoulder blades until you were face down on the desk, the cold wood making your skin break out in goosebumps.

He reached around your hips to open your button and fly, pushing your pants and underwear down to your knees. You gasped a bit when you felt the air hit your skin.

“Oh shit, you’re wet already,” he noticed. “Really wet.”

His fingers slipped through your folds and you tried to spread your legs but the pants got in the way.

“Just fuck me,” you demanded.

“All you know how to do is give orders, huh?” he laughed.

“This might be my first order you actually follow,” you considered, hearing him unzip the fly of his jeans.

“I don’t have any condoms,” he explained, “it’s an all-male unit, after all.”

Internally, you wanted to point out that being in an all-male unit doesn’t stop plenty of soldiers from getting it on, and that he shouldn’t be hooking up with anyone in his unit regardless of gender, but you realized this was not the time for explaining rules.

“Don’t need them,” you replied, “as long as you promise you don’t have anything I can catch.”

“You’re being so reckless,” he teased as his hands ran along your back and grabbed your ass, “it’s so unlike you. What happened to that stubborn little rule-follower, hm?”

“She got really fucking horny,” you growled, “now get inside me, damn it.”

And without much warning, without any preparation, he slammed himself into you all at once.

“Oh fuck!” you cried out, much louder than you meant to. He was big, really fucking big, and your walls struggled to fit him. He didn’t slow down though, instantly setting a fast and brutal pace.

“Not so loud, sweetheart. Not that I don’t love you screamin’ for me. But if the other guys found out we were doing this…” he trailed off. “Actually, I bet I’d be the most popular officer at camp if they knew we were doin’ this.”

“You already are,” you pointed out, struggling to focus on forming sentences. “And we’d both get in a lot of trouble– ah, god– if anybody reported it.”

“You’re right. Better keep you quiet, then,” he sighed, leaning forward and stuffing two fingers into your mouth. Your moans became sputters and chokes yet you eagerly sucked on his fingers and took them all the way down your throat.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” he growled. “If you’d deepthroated my fingers like that when we first met, I bet we’d have gotten along a lot better.”

That’s not really the way I do business, you wanted to respond, but you couldn’t say much when you were busy with the task at hand.

His fingers pulled out and you felt his hands wrap around your elbows. He grabbed your arms and held them back as he slammed into you so hard that the desk scraped across the floor with every movement.

“So tight,” he observed. “Bet no one’s done this to you in a long time. Bet what you always needed was a good fuck to loosen you up– literally.”

He landed a hard slap against your ass and you moaned.

“Oh, you like that? You like it when I hit you?”

“Yes,” you answered through bared teeth.

“Dirty little slut,” he said, but the way he said it sounded more like a compliment than an insult.

He spanked you again, just a bit harder, and you yelped but found yourself pushing your hips into him and arching your back as an invitation for more. He grabbed your hips and pulled you closer, pressing as deep inside you as was physically possible and grinding against you. You sobbed and he grabbed you by the hair, pulling you up until his chest was against your back.

“Anybody ever been this deep inside you before?” he asked, his lips right against your ear.

“No,” you whimpered.

“Fuck, baby,” he moaned, leaving open-mouthed kisses along your neck down to your shoulder. You weren’t sure how to feel about him calling you ‘baby.’

He let go of your hair but kept you close to him by wrapping his arms around you as he started to thrust again. It was oddly intimate, and your head fell back onto his shoulder as you moaned and sighed and whimpered.

Calloused hands began to grab at your breasts, teasing and pinching your nipples; you hadn’t realized how sensitive you were there, because it sent sensation shooting straight down to your inner walls.

“I’m close,” you gritted out.

“That was quick. You’re easy to please,” he replied, and you could hear the grin in his voice.

“Just don’t stop,” you pleaded. He pushed you back down onto the desk and began to pick up the pace.

“Oh, I won’t stop, I promise you that.” His voice sounded different than normal- deeper and scratchier and oddly weak in a way. You liked the idea that this had such an effect on him.

His thrusts slammed into you so hard and fast that you were sure you’d have bruises from it, and probably on your thighs where they were hitting the edge of the desk. For some reason, that thought was what sent you over the edge.

“Ca-captain!” you cried out as you came, and he growled a bit against your ear. You figured he thought you were calling him that as some sort of sexy nickname, a flash of authority, but it’s just the only thing you could think to call him, the only thing you’d ever really called him.

He, on the other hand, responded with your first name, even though you’d never gone by it and never even told it to him, mixed in with his grunts and moans as he pulled out and came all over your back.

It was strange to go from so much noise– skin hitting skin, moans and yelps, the desk screeching on the concrete floor– to just heavy breathing and the sound of the ceiling fan spinning above you. Or maybe it was you that was spinning; you felt sort of dizzy and numb.

He leaned away from you until you couldn’t feel his touch anywhere, and you heard him zip up his jeans. You awkwardly lifted yourself off the desk, pulling up your own underwear and pants as well, and looking around for something to wipe yourself off with.

“Did you come?” he asked, and you felt shame and fear and anger bubble up inside you. This had been a really, really bad idea, and both of you could lose your jobs over it, or worse. And he was such an asshole and you were supposed to be setting a good example for the women in your unit and here you were with some Army dumbass’ cum all over you and he didn’t even have the courtesy to make sure you’d finished before he did… what a joke.

“Oh, I came alright– came to my fucking senses. Get out of my office,” you barked.

He laughed like he saw all this coming.

“Your office? It’s my base. Everything here is mine. Even that jizz you’ve got on ya,” he grimaced. “Kickin’ me out before it’s even gone cold. You’re a real ray of sunshine as always, Major.”

“That’s the first time you’ve called me Major,” you realized. “Let’s make that the only thing done tonight that we turn into a habit, alright?”

He shrugged and turned to leave, but of course, he had to have the last word. “You can fuck the ice queen but you can’t melt her, I guess.”

“Is that what this was? Some sort of sexual scavenger hunt, to prove you were macho enough to get the prude to spread her legs?”

“Well, it worked didn’t it?” he grinned.

“I said get out,” you reminded him, hoping he’d leave before you started crying. He did.

You didn’t cry very often, not something you had the luxury of doing after a decade at war. And you still didn’t let yourself do it for very long, because you were morally opposed to crying over boys.

#syverson x reader #captain syverson x reader #henry cavill x reader

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one-boring-person · 4 years

Text

You're Back!

The Lost Boys x reader

Warnings: vague mentions of death

Context: This is supposed to be a kind of crossover between Top Gun and The Lost Boys (because they are my favourite films) but it is only minorly so. The reader is a naval fighter pilot who is good friends with the boys and spends most of her free time in Santa Carla with them.

A/N: This hasn't turned out too well, because I'm ridiculously sleep deprived tired, so I will revisit it at some point, whether to rewrite it completely or to add to it, I'm not sure, but I will improve it. For now, I hope this is acceptable.💛😊

**contains some spoilers for Top Gun, but only vague ones**

Masterlist

I roll my eyes as yet another person stares at me as they pass, keeping eye contact with them until they stop looking, turning their gaze away awkwardly, carrying on with their night without watching me for the entirety of it. By now, I've had to sit through about a score of curious people in the last two hours, my tolerance for them quickly wearing thin as they continue to eye the uniformed stranger leaning against a motorcycle. Chewing on my lip, a habit I've never managed to kick, I carefully roll up the sleeves of my military uniform shirt, careful not to crease it too much, even though I will likely iron it before I wear it again, the hard-learnt instincts reminding me to stay smart and neat, even if I'm currently not in the presence of any commanders I need to report to.

In the stifling heat, my shirt sticks to my skin a bit, sweat coating my brow as I watch the crowd, my hair starting to become less styled and more dishevelled with each passing minute, the journey from the aircraft carrier I was deployed at to the airport in Miramar, followed by the gruelling motorcycle ride down to Santa Carla having that effect in me. I didn't have time to stop off anywhere on the way to get changed into my own clothes, seeing as I wanted to get to the little seaside town before sundown, choosing instead to stay in my uncomfortable uniform, knowing it may well curry me some favours here and there along the way - bartenders are only too happy to serve a member of the naval air force, especially a Top Gun graduate. Absentmindedly I feel my lips quirk up into a smile, recalling the time my friend, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, used this fact to his advantage when in Miramar, charming a poor waitress into giving us all free food and drinks, though I'm pretty sure he promised her something in return, something which kept him out of the bunk rooms that night. Ironically, he never used that trick again.

Shaking my head, I cast my gaze over the crowd again, searching for a particular group of people, a sense of excitement rising in me when I hear the tell tale sound of their motorcycles cutting through the horde of people, my eyes swiftly finding the approaching people as they park their vehicles a little way away from me. Making a split second decision, I choose to stay by my own bike, waiting for them to either notice me, or walk past, a small smirk plastered across my lips, my eyes fixed on them: David, Dwayne, Paul and Marko.

Eventually, they push off their bikes and start making their way through the crowd, having missed my presence completely, the four of them easily moving amongst the people lining the Boardwalk, most sane locals knowing the group's notorious reputation. David and Dwayne walk ahead of Paul and Marko, who are pushing and shoving each other around, giggling and laughing to themselves as a band of girls squeals when the smaller of the two is thrown straight into their midst, drawing some attention from the people around them, though they have yet to notice me. Crossing my arms over my chest, I just watch as they move together, eyeing them as they come into range before looking around for something, quickly finding a discarded newspaper on the wall behind my motorbike. Smirking wider, I take it and tear off three pages, screwing them into a tight ball, my gaze returning to the approaching bikers, guaging the distance between me and them, knowing I have a very good aim, having practiced it a lot before and during training. Winding back my arm, I take aim and throw the ball, giving it some force so that the intended target will manage to feel it under his mess of hair, trying mg hardest to contain my laughter when the projectile connects with the back of his head.

Paul instantly looks around, irritation and confusion rife in his face as he searches the crowd for his assailant, still missing me, even as I throw another ball of paper, though this one is aimed for Marko, who also receives it as a blow to the back of the head. Disgruntled, the two vampires stop, looking around for the source, drawing David and Dwayne's attention as they realise their friends are no longer following them. Biting my lip, I throw another two, hitting both of the quieter boys square in the back, trying my hardest to hold back my laughter, though I am unsuccessful as they continue to search around, heads whipping to and fro as they try to work out where I am, the crowd of people around them starting to leave a berth around them, leaving their view of me unblocked and clear. Finally, I decide to put them put of their misery.

"Damn, I thought you guys were observant." I call out to them, tossing another ball of newspaper from hand to hand to show who the culprit was. Surprised, and somewhat shocked, the four of them spin around, their faces lighting up when they catch sight of me, Paul and Marko instantly racing over and engulfing me in a tight hug.

"(Y/n)! You're back!" The latter exclaims happily, pulling away briefly to look me in the eye before he buries his face into my clothes again.

"I am. It's good to see you all!" I respond, laughing as I wrap my arms around them, glad to finally get to see them again after so long. Over their heads, Dwayne and David shoot me equally glad smiles, the former ready to step in once the other two have released me.

"Not nearly as good as it is to see you again! I hate it when you leave!" Paul mumbles into my shirt, Marko agreeing with him as they continue to crush me.

"I hate leaving, too, but I always come back." I remind them, patting them on the back so that they'll release me, smiling at both of them as they grudgingly step away, allowing Dwayne to step in and pull me into a softer embrace, his long arms pressing me into his bare chest, his face burying itself into my hairline. Happily, I wrap my own arms around his waist, enjoying the sensation of his cool skin against my heated body, jealous of his pleasant temperature.

After a few minutes, I pull away again, looking to David, who just smiles (genuinely for once) at me, his intimidating reputation preventing him from showing any affection in public, though he isn't really one for hugs in private, either. Or, at least not with me. Instead, he gives my body a once over with his icy blue eyes, the gesture drawing a blush to my cheeks, especially when I feel the others do the same, some more discreetly than others - unfortunately, I'd managed to develop a crush on all four of them, so the idea of them blatantly checking me out is not one I dismiss too easily.

"It's good to see you again, (Y/n)." He greets, chuckling as he watches Marko and Paul fight over who gets to put their arm around my waist, only for the both of them to whine when Dwayne beats them to it, the taller brunette pulling me into his side with an intimacy he's never had before.

"Yeah, it's good to be back." I agree, smiling at them all, "What're we gonna do tonight? I have three weeks this time round."

"Three weeks? That's much longer than last time!" Paul comments, slipping in on my other side, slinging his arm around my shoulders so that I'm now sandwiched between two tall vampires.

"I don't have to stay that long." I point out, jokingly, sending Marko an apologetic look when he notices that Paul has managed to get his arm around me.

"That's not what I meant, it means that we can do so much more together!" The tall, blonde vampire explains, most likely already thinking up ways to spend the next three weeks, "We should go swimming in the sea, and go on all the rides on the Boardwalk, and go to concerts-"

"Take it easy, I only just got here!" I cut him off, grinning as David and Dwayne chuckle at their friend's antics.

"Speaking of which, have you eaten yet?" The platinum blonde interjects, lifting an eyebrow at me in curiosity.

"No, I don't have any money on me, actually. I think I left it back on the carrier, which is annoying." I frown, thinking for a minute before remembering something, "No, that's not true. I brought some of it with me. It's in the seat compartment of the bike, hang on."

Swiftly, I retrieve the money, returning to the two vampires who had their arms around me, both of them only to eager to repeat the gestures.

"You should know by now that you don't have to pay for food when you're with us." David reminds me, lifting an eyebrow at me as he watches me put the notes into a secure pocket under my belt.

"I know, but I like having it with me anyway." I supply, only too happy to start walking towards the food stalls of the Boardwalk, my stomach growling audibly as the scents of the different types reach me.

"Fair enough." Dwayne says, squeezing my waist gently.

In no time, we've bought some food and eaten it, continuing to roam the Boardwalk as the night goes on, the five of us having a good time together as we always do, falling straight back into our usual habits and patterns, the friendship as strong as ever, though I've noticed that their touches are often more lingering than before, and that they're stares are less innocent than they used to be. I try to ignore it, but it becomes increasingly harder as Paul and Marko continue to fight over who gets to wrap their arm around me, eventually just agreeing to swap every half and hour or so, Dwayne never leaving my side as David leads us around, the vampire smirking at me every now and then.

After a few hours or so, I feel myself starting to get tired, having had very little rest in the time between travelling and meeting the boys, so I ask them if I can join them at the cave, seeing as I have no other accommodation, to which they all wholeheartedly agree. Leading me back to the motorcycles, the four vampires quickly decide whether to take the road or the beach back to the sunken hotel, swiftly deciding on the road seeing as it is the most direct, and therefore the quickest, though David does promise that we'll ride along the beach at some point.

As we leave the Boardwalk, I ride towards the back, between Marko and Dwayne, easily keeping up as we thunder along one of the motorways, shrieks and whoops of exhilaration leaving us from the thrill, our speed dangerously high until we hit the dirt paths leading up to the Bluff, at which point I slow my bike down so that it can grip the dusty surface better. Ahead of me, Paul tries to goad me on, encouraging me to live a little, though my heightened survival instincts are telling me to be careful along the steep cliff edge. Coming to a halt at the top, we dismount and hide the motorbikes, the four of them swiftly taking me down into their abode, though I do collect a bag from the compartment under my seat before following, sitting it down on the sofa beside me as I collapse onto one, routing around in it briefly.

I pull out a slightly scuffed book, throwing it to David as he comes to sit opposite me on his wheelchair, the others crowding around him to look at it in curiosity.

"Got you guys a little something." I tell them, gesturing to him to open it.

Upon doing so, their eyes widen, Marko's breath hitching as he sees what it is, the young vampire obviously fascinated by it.

"When did you get these?" Dwayne finally manages, unable to tear his eyes from the photo album in David's hands, admiring the Polaroids I stuck into it, thinking they'd be happy to look at them.

"Well, I had my RIO* bring a camera up with him one time when we were on patrol, but I took the pictures. I thought you'd like to have some pictures of the sky in the daytime and at sunset and sunrise to look at, seeing as you can't see them in person anymore." I explain nervously, hoping they like it, suddenly feeling a bit unsure of whether they'd like to be reminded of this fact.

For near enough ten minutes, the four vampires are silent, flicking through the book with wide eyes, David tracing a finger over one in particular.

"How the hell are we supposed to thank you for this, kitten?" He finally says, the nickname making me blush a little, though I'm not entirely sure how to respond.

"You don't have to thank me for that, it's not that great of a gift, on the scale of things-" I start, only to be cut off by Marko.

""Not that great of a gift"? Are you serious? This is the best thing we've ever gotten!" He exclaims, tearing his eyes away from the photos so that he can come over and drown me in a hug again, crushing me into his chest. Laughing, I wrap my arms around him, holding him tightly, inhaling the comforting scent of his jacket as I do so.

Across from us, Paul also manages to look away from the Polaroids, coming over and joining us on the sofa, a grin on his face as he plonks himself on top of Marko, a grunt escaping me from the sudden weight.

"You're the best, (Y/n), you really are!" He praises me, leaning down to press a swift kiss on my cheek, smirking when I blush in response.

"I'm not sure about that, but thank you anyway." I wheeze out, their weight starting to become a bit too much for be to bear. Tapping on Marko's back, I wait for him to throw Paul off before pushing him off of my lap, taking a deep breath as I look over at Dwayne and David, who are still enraptured by the photo album.

"Who's that?" The latter suddenly asks, pointing to a certain picture.

Frowning, I get up and come over, looking down at the picture in question, smiling as I recognise it immediately, the image holding a lot of sad and happy memories for me.

"Those are my friends Maverick and Goose before..." My voice trails off, an old surge of grief gnawing at my heart as I recall the exact moment that photo was taken, remembering the aviators as they joked around with me and my RIO, Hawk, all four of us only staying still for that one photo.

"Before?" Dwayne pushes gently, dark eyes boring into mine with curiosity.

Clenching my jaw, I let out a sigh before I reply.

"Before the accident. The accident where Goose...died..." I manage to get out, my eyes now fixed on the miniature version of my friend's face, still wishing he were still alive and kicking.

"I'm sorry, (Y/n), I didn't mean to bring it up. If I had known, I wouldn't have said anything." David apologises, placing a gloved hand on mine in comfort, blue eyes sympathetic.

"No, don't worry about it. It's what happens in the military, and it just so happens to be that my friend got it in the neck. There's nothing that can be done." I tell him, grateful that they haven't pursued the subject, though the reminder has made me feel a lot more tired than before, for whatever reason, "I think I'm gonna go get some sleep now, if you don't mind. It's been a long day."

The four of them agree, Paul, Marko and Dwayne all pressing quick kisses on my cheek as I pass them, David following me to the little nest that they provided for me the last time I was here, the vampire watching as I settle in. I only take off my boots, socks and belt, unpinning my Wings from my chest as I go, briefly debating with myself about whether or not to unbutton my shirt and just sleep in my underwear, until I remember that David is still there, his blue eyes tracing my form as I move around.

Finally slipping into the makeshift bed, I notice that the vampire still hasn't moved away, watching me as if asking for permission to do something, my mind struggling to comprehend what he means until I see him look at the blankets questioningly.

"Do you want to join me?" I ask, surprise lacing my voice.

"If you don't mind."

I can't refuse him, so I simply move over and let him slide in beside me, feeling even more surprised when he pulls me into his chest, wrapping his arms around me and rubbing circles into my skin with one thumb. A small gasp escapes me when I feel his hand slip under my shirt, his skin icy cold against mine, the sensation pleasant as starts to trace patterns into my sides, his eyes boring into mine as I watch him, still confused.

"What's gotten into you?" I question him, laying my head on his chest, my hands coming up to rest just on his collarbone, my fingers running over the line of the bone.

"Nothing, I just need to tell you something which might not be the greatest news you've ever heard." He tries to reassure me, his deep voice resonating though his chest and into me as he watches my facial expressions change.

"What is it?" I ask him hesitantly, dread biting at the back of my throat.

"Well, I don't suppose you remember us telling you about the whole idea of vampires having a mate?"

"...Yeah?" I frown slightly, briefly remembering the conversation.

"It turns out that the four of us have a mate, and it's taken us far too long to feel the connection." David confirms, swallowing at the confession.

"Oh really? Who is it?' I can't help but feel a bit disappointed, knowing that the mating bond makes the four of them off-limits to anyone else.

"You. You're our mate."

*RIO = Radar Intercept Officer

Part Two

#the lost boys #joel schumacher #vampire #david(thelostboys)#paul(the lost boys)#dwayne(the lost boys)#kiefer sutherland #marko(the lost boys)#santa carla #star(the lost boys)#top gun #crossover #slight crossover #bit sad #maverick

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scripttorture · 4 years

Note

My setting is a fantasy historical setting set roughly around the late 1800s to early 1900s that focuses on a fantasy species currently subjugated by humanity. They're generally forced to serve on the front lines of an ongoing war, in part because they're seen as "not people" and "repairable". A major antagonist is a human member of the military who is officially supposed to be treating their injuries but who has the blanket approval of the government to do what he feels is best. (medical 1/2)

As a result, he often purposefully lets soldiers die or lie there in agony if he feels they've been disrespectful or disobedient to him- death is not permanent for this species, so he isn't really wasting soldiers. His motivations are both to have a more "obedient" army and some degree of bigotry from being raised with the idea that these beings' lives don't matter. (medical 2/3) Would the withholding of medical treatment by a government official be torture if it were motivated by similar motives to most torturers (ie political difference, belonging to a specific group, wanting obedience/information)? Do you have any advice on this setting or story? Thanks in advance! (medical 3/3)

I think that this fits with a lot of the general pattern of how torture occurs but- My instinct is that the legal definition probably matters less in this case.

In terms of the time period I think this is before our world had international laws against torture. It’s before this sort of thing was codified in a standardised fashion. This doesn’t change the effects but it does change things like- what a culture views as torture.

In our terms? Yes I think this meets the legal definition of torture. It’s conducted by a government official who has power over/responsibility for, these victims. He knows his actions are causing pain. And he’s doing it to punish them, individually and collectively, which is one of the possible motivations listed in anti-torture law.

That means that it’s likely the research I talk about is relevant to what you’re writing.

But we shouldn’t ignore cultural views of particular practices. By which I mean that commonly held unethical views impact your world building and characters.

This pattern of individual and collective punishment was common in most armies historically and is still used today. Forced exercise as punishment has led to deaths in UK army training facilities and (prosecuted as such or not) this is torture. Whippings, beatings, stress positions and starvation have all been used historically to ‘punish’ members of the military. In fact much of today’s clean torture might come from European military punishments.

(Side note, the origin of any one particular torture is incredibly hard to trace and since they are simplistic it’s likely they don’t have one standard point of origin.)

As general advice- I think it’s worth considering what these subjugated people get from being part of the army.

There have been a lot of historical cases where subjugated people and second class citizens were an integral part of a country’s armed forces. But if violence and threats are the only ‘reasons’ for participation then the results are unlikely to be positive.

If you’re aiming for a system with a reasonable ‘success’ rate (we are taking success to be a non-human who is an obedient part of this army and makes a reasonable effort to fulfil most of their duties) then I think there should be some kind of benefit to the soldiers themselves.

It doesn’t have to be a big positive and you can use it to highlight just how shit their general situation is.

I’ve got a broadly similar scenario in one of my stories: with a fantasy sub-class that’s strongly associated with the armed forces.

The reasoning that I came up with was that life was genuinely better for them as part of the military. They were systematically barred from ordinary jobs and housing, the other main employment option open to them was a particularly dangerous form of mining and without some sort of patron they were routinely attacked and harassed. The military consistently provided shelter, food and a higher degree of comfort/security then the other options open to them.

In contrast to the mines, where their kind routinely went unfed and were typically dumped on the street when too injured to work, the military looked like a ‘good’ option. Not so much ‘positive’ as ‘better then the typical alternatives’.

I’d encourage you to think of similar back-handed ‘benefits’ in your story. Better food, better pay, perks that benefit their family, something that gives an understandable reason for these people to stick around.

I’d caution against trying to make it completely impossible for them to escape or refuse orders because that’s never the case in reality and doing that makes these people… well less human, less relatable.

For analogous situations in real military organisations you might want to look up the British Empire’s sepoys and the role of black soldiers such as Thomas-Alexandre Dumas* and the men who served under him in European armies.

In the sort of environment you’re building up I think that a lot of these supernatural people would know about what this doctor is like. They might not know the specifics of what he does, but the rumour mill is likely to make it clear he does something bad.

This doesn’t mean that characters will always be able to avoid him and it doesn’t mean every character would hear the rumours. But people in these situations, where an abusive figure is in an entrenched position of power, do try to warn each other.

It’s common for people in these situations to try and help each other and try to resist. The methods available to them are often small and sometimes ineffective but I think it’s important to try and capture the attempt.

One of the things I’ve noticed in fiction that uses abusive situations with this kind of hierarchy is that there’s a tendency to ignore any action that isn’t obvious and violent. You occasionally write about the victims attacking abusers or enablers and we write about escape attempts. But we generally ignore other smaller acts. Sabotaging equipment or plans, victims educating each other, helping each other, prayer, ‘magic’, keeping illegal traditions alive.

I think cutting out these smaller acts can flatten the portrayal of victims. It presents a false binary of responses: passive acceptance or violent resistance. And that makes resistance appear much rarer then it is in reality.

In situations like the one you describe survival and self expression can be forms of resistance.

If you’re not writing about a real world group of people then I think concerted historical research in that area is less important. By which I mean: if you’re showing a fictional group then you want to capture the kind of responses that happen in this situation rather then say specific aspects of Cuban culture and history.

I’ve found reading about the history of black resistance to slavery in the new world a really good starting point for understanding… well how people respond in systematically awful abusive situations. That’s partly because it is really well studied and recorded. (And also available in a variety of languages). I’m not sure what to recommend as a good starting point though. James’ The Black Jacobins is traditional, I also liked Barcias’ West African Warfare in Brazil and Cuba but it’s been a while since I read it and the focus was violent resistance.

People keep their humanity even in terrible environments and I think it’s important to try and capture that.

For the doctor himself there are two sources I’d suggest looking at. The first (somewhat inevitably) is the appendices of Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth where he describes two torturers he treated for mental health problems. The second is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

I’m suggesting that as well because of the examples it gives of doctors who were definitely not acting in the best interests of their patients. The focus of the book is the origin of the HeLa cell line, the standard cell line in all medical testing. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that Henrietta Lacks’ cells changed medicine and the production of pharmaceuticals forever. Research on these cancer cells has done immeasurable good.

They were also taken from a dying black woman in America without her consent. People have made billions off of these cells while the Lacks family never received a penny.

And doctors have done indefensibly dangerous things with them.

I think having a look at both will help you find a way to frame this doctor’s personality and the way he justifies his actions. Because while he is a torturer there are more discussions of that in a policing or military context then there are in a medical one.

I’ve found that discussions of doctors as torturers tend towards a different set of tropes. They’re more likely to assume that the abuse is an experiment, without questioning whether the record keeping, accounting for variables etc is strict enough to yield meaningful results. They also tend to portray the torturer as ‘charming’. And there can be significant ableist ideas (anti-disability and anti mental illness prejudice) built into the story.

The kind of situation you’ve outlined is already pretty realistic in a lot of respects: this is the kind of situation where you see doctors acting as torturers.

But it’s also not how authors tend to approach writing doctors as torturers. Which means I’m not sure what to add. I think you’ve already avoided most of the usual traps by virtue of how you’ve constructed the setting.

Overall I think this a pretty solid idea. It has enough similarities to real world historical situations that it feels ‘real’. And there are plenty of sources to draw from. It brings in fantasy elements in a way that I think is really interesting, almost playing out generational trauma within the same generation. And it feels like an original situation. I don’t often see doctors used in this way or the combination of period and fantasy elements you’re proposing.

I think it’s going to be a very interesting story and I wish you the best of luck. :)

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Disclaimer

*No not that Dumas, his dad. The other one.

#writing advice #tw torture #tw medical abuse #tw slavery #fantasy ask #historical fiction #writing victims #writing torturers #writing survivors #doctors and torture #collective punishment #military torture #military punishments #coercion #resistance #medical abuse

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Why Jack Bauer Is America’s James Bond

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Despite what Marvel might have you believe, not all film franchises are perfectly serialized.

Take, for example, another kind of cinematic superhero: James Bond a.k.a. 007. The MI6 spy created by Ian Fleming and brought to screen by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli is timeless in the most literal sense of the world. Since Sean Connery passed the role of James Bond to Roger Moore for good in 1973’s Live and Let Die (Connery previously gave way to George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service before returning in Diamonds Are Forever), James Bond has become unstuck in time.

As played in subsequent films over several decades by actors like Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig, Bond remains the same while the world around him changes. Some fans like to theorize that “Agent 007” and “James Bond” are aliases used by different MI6 spies throughout the years. But within the context of the series, there is only one Bond…James Bond. Bond is always middle-aged, looks good in a tux, enjoys stiff drinks and beautiful women.

Movies

James Bond Movies Streaming Guide: Where to Watch 007 Online

By Don Kaye

The Cold War ended in the ‘90s and yet Bond, perhap the ultimate cinematic representative of its aesthetic, just kept calm and carried on as usual. Save for a handful of Craig’s latter year depictions, James Bond rarely learns any new tricks. He doesn’t develop. He is what he is – a hero of espionage and action. In that regard, the James Bond series is a surprisingly honest exploration of the occasional propagandistic aims of major blockbuster filmmaking. Bond isn’t a character in a story. He’s the United Kingdom’s idealized version of itself writ large on a canvas widescreen: a suave spy who is welcomed into every country to get laid and save the world.

But what about the United States’ idealized version of itself? How has the Cold War’s lone surviving superpower let itself go without a similarly iconic (and occasionally nakedly jingoistic) cinematic creation? The answer is that America already does have an outsized action icon…he was just on television.

Jack Bauer of early 2000s Fox thriller series 24 is American James Bond whether we want him to be or not. Just as Bond is the idealized Englishman, with his martini lunches and quick wit, Bauer is the America’s warped ideal of itself: angry, merciless, focused, and unfailingly effective.

As portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland (who won an Emmy for the role), Jack Bauer started off as a fairly three-dimensional character in 24’s first season. That season picked up with Jack as a family man and a glorified pencil pusher at the fictional Counter Terrorist Unit’s Los Angeles office. Over the span of the first season’s 24 hours (24’s hook, of course, is that each season takes place over the span of a 24-hour day in real time), Jack slowly lost grip of his humanity, culminating with his friend Nina Myers turning out to be a mole and murdering his wife Teri.

The death of Teri fundamentally changed Jack. For eight subsequent seasons and a movie, Jack became an Uncle Sam-style cartoon character obsessed with protecting his country from terrorists all over the globe, because his family was already taken away from him. Elisha Cuthbert as Jack’s daughter Kim was a prominent character for a few seasons, but as she was phased out so too was Jack’s grip on reality.

Unlike the James Bond series, 24 was particularly devoted to its chronology, with the very premise of the show meaning it had to have a close relationship with time. Jack Bauer would in theory grow as a character from season to season. But rather than developing, he mostly devolved into the most base version of himself.

It’s in this way that Bauer actually became more like James Bond than one might initially expect. Regardless of who is playing him or what time period a particular film is set in, Bond’s characteristics remain static. By the end of 24’s run in 2014, Jack was similarly a Bond-ian relic of the past. Though the country was still feeling the effects of it, “The War on Terror” seemed as dramatically quaint for 24 as the Cold War did for James Bond. And yet here was this rugged American in the miniseries 24: Live Another Day, gripping the life out of a pistol and barking at perceived London terrorists in a gravely timber like a psycho.

24: Live Another Day was the last appearance for Jack Bauer and rightfully so at the time. The character had become a bit too anachronistic and his show, quite frankly, was frequently xenophobic. Still, as the continued success of Craig’s Bond films indicate (with No Time to Die finally set to arrive this October) perhaps there is still room for walking anachronisms in the entertainment world, as long as they’re approached correctly.

Fox has repeatedly attempted to rejuvenate the 24 brand. In 2017, the network greenlit a spinoff starring Corey Hawkins called 24: Legacy. Like its forefather, 24: Legacy, utilized a real-time format, only condensing 24 hours into 12 episodes like Live Another Day did. The spinoff was not successful and was quickly canceled following the conclusion of its first season.

Ultimately, Fox (now owned by Disney) hasn’t made any subsequent reboot attempts work yet because it has misidentified the appeal of 24 as a franchise. While the ticking clock aspect of telling a story in real time is novel and interesting, it wasn’t the reason the original series lasted for nine seasons. The real reason for 24’s success was Jack Bauer. Viewers are typically attracted to characters, not concepts. In Jack Bauer, many an American viewer likely found the embodiment of a paranoid nation they recognized.

There’s an undercurrent of anger and indignance in the American psyche. Exactly why is a question best left for sociologists. Perhaps it’s misplaced guilt over displacing a society to create a new one, or maybe it’s just the disappointment of being promised a Manifest Destiny and getting Wyoming. But whatever the reason, Jack Bauer is as apt a cartoonish American avatar as James Bond is a British one.

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So why then doesn’t 20th Television (again, now owned by Disney) just formalize the comparison and make Jack Bauer literally American James Bond? Just as Connery once handed off the baton to Lazenby and Moore, have Sutherland hand the role off to someone else. That actor would preferably represent the American physicality that Sutherland brought to the role (despite Sutherland being a Canadian, which is somewhat fitting given that the Scottish Connery was the first to play Her Majesty’s favorite spy). The new Jack Bauer would be played by someone who is short, stubbly, and angry rather than Bond’s tall, dark, and handsome. Throw the new Jack back into the field in a modern day ticking time bomb plot without bothering to explain why he is still middle-aged after 20 years.

The answer to why Disney wouldn’t want to do such a thing is almost certainly all that aforementioned racism and torture. That is admittedly a, uh…roadblock. It really can’t be overstated just how xenophoci 24 was at times and how cruel it could be to characters and actors of Middle Eastern descent. Jack Bauer’s reliance on torture wasn’t just a dramatic crutch, 24 co-creator Joel Surnow genuinely believed in the value of torture as a foreign policy tactic.

Suffice it to say, the series has not aged well. Then again, however, neither have many of the earlier Bond films. To a certain extent that’s the point of the Bond franchise. It understands that making movies is making myths. James Bond is every bit the mythical figure that Captain America or Iron Man are. The fact that Bond is so obviously an exaggerated character now has helped soften some of his more problematic edges.

Bauer, on the other hand, comes from an era where Americans were both terrified of the looming threat of terrorism and were starting to invest in television as a more “serious” art form. As such, not everyone of the time was prepared to accept Jack Bauer as American James Bond, that is to say a cheesy cultural figure, not a vital supersoldier of freedom.

In The Atlantic’s 2007 article “Whatever It Takes” about the politics of 24, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, recounts Jack Bauer’s effect on enlistees.

“The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about 24?’ The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

The world has changed since then, obviously. But even now, it feels like it hasn’t fully set in that Jack Bauer is the American James Bond and should be treated with the same amount of reverence, which is none at all. Perhaps the only responsible move left is, in fact, to continue the increasingly ridiculous stories of the character with new actors.

In the right hands, Jack Bauer could be put to use as a blockbuster magnet and an appropriate critique of American foreign policy. In the end, icons don’t matter so much as what you do with them.

The post Why Jack Bauer Is America’s James Bond appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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lambourngb · 4 years

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Ooooooh an update on the This Hard Love series ☺️☺️🧡🧡 ?

I have literally 3 more scenes to write to wrap this up- it’s so close but I’m also trying to finish my rough draft of my big bang by Wed night... so hopefully I can get this finished off next weekend. 🤞

Here’s the last scene I wrote:

****

“It’s been too long, what if she’s hurting him? Do we even know what the long term effects are on humans with alien mind control-”

Michael winced at Max’s annoyed glance, reminded again how little his brother thought of Kyle Valenti, past and present, before placing his hand on Kyle’s arm to attempt to calm him. Seated stiffly in one of the formal dining room chairs, knee to knee with Isobel, was Jim Valenti, currently caught in her mindspace as she examined his intentions. Candles were lit all around lending an otherworldly glow to the scene.

Meanwhile, Alex was in the kitchen on the phone to an electrician, while Max’s partner Jenna Cameron swept up the broken glass from the ceiling pod lights. The revelation that his boss was aware of who and what he was triggered what Michael called a ‘Max Special’.

“Hey remember Coach Collins?” Michael prodded Kyle.

Not taking his eyes off the scene in front of him, Kyle replied distractedly, “What?”

“You wanted to know about the long term effects on humans, I’m tryin’ to tell you. Isobel never attended gym class for a reason and Coach Collins is just fine.”

“Are you telling me your alien sister- wait, of course she would. She was also homecoming queen as a freshman.”

Michael squeezed Kyle’s arm in acknowledgment before letting go. “See? You’ve got nothin’ to worry about.”

“Unless your dad is planning to round us up,” Max put in quietly with crossed arms. The secret expanding to include three more people was still not sitting well, even though Max had been somewhat resigned in knowing that Alex was one of three. Their past relationship, the way Alex had helped temper Michael’s feelings toward Max after graduation, had bought a lot of goodwill with Max.

“He’s not,” Isobel replied, suddenly coming out of her still trance. She immediately reached for her handbag to dig out a bottle of nail polish remover to drink from, causing Kyle to make an aborted move to stop her. “We’re not considered threats in his opinion, we’ve been too humanized by our adopted parents. Michael was on the radar for a little while after high school, but-” Isobel gestured toward the kitchen where Alex’s voice was barely audible. “True love mellowed him out, neutered him so to speak.”

“Isobel, that’s- you’re taking that out of context,” Jim protested, as he rubbed his eyes tiredly, ducking the concern from Kyle. “When you kids were found, of course I knew what you were, but I never said anything to the Project. You were all so frightened, but trusting. I thought, violence is learned in a lot of ways. Sp Michelle and I did our best to find you good homes-”

“Seriously? Fucking nature versus nuture shit?” Michael took a deep breath trying to push down the sudden rage. “Your principles suck man, you let me, the fucked up and agitated one, the one was scrawling on the walls, rot in the foster care system. I was considered too much work to be adoptable, you’re lucky I’m not a serial killer after what humans put me through.” Abruptly he realized that Alex was at his side again, a comforting strength to lean on.

It was Jim’s turn to frown, “Michael, you weren’t the one considered unadoptable at the group home.” His dark eyes flickered toward his protege and back to Michael. Max pushed himself away from the wall, his arms uncrossing slowly as the meaning sank in.

“It’s true, I saw it in his mind,” Isobel smiled sadly. “Max was the wild one, but you took the crayon from him, Michael. You took the blame.”

“Ann and Dave are good people, I knew that they could handle Max, raise him with love and understanding, and they did.” Jim straightened, his shoulders firming in resolve and meeting Max’s wounded expression, “You’re a good man, Max. I’ve watched you grow up and be a fine police officer, honorable to the core. You may not like what I did, but I stand by it.”

“Right,” Max spat out with a thick voice, “I’ve been blaming myself my whole life for leaving Michael behind, feeling guilty that I got the family, and you’re telling me that I was right to feel that way, that it was my fault.”

Michael cleared his throat, feeling Alex nudge his shoulder gently as his mind raced over the possibilities. The familiar irritation of past fights flared up, sparked as always by Max wanted to martyr himself over Michael’s life. Old feelings stirred with the new information, wounds that still bled slowly inside, raked rawly anew. The time to deal with that was after.

“We can debate our fucked up family dynamics later, the important issue is there’s a prison full of our people being held by the military and we need to figure out how to save them.” The focus of the group returned to Jim Valenti, as Michael stepped closer to the sheriff.

“Um, before we move off of fucked up family dynamics, why did you decide to kill my dad now after all these years? He’s been a monster from day one, which you knew, so I’m just curious about the timing.”

The Sheriff shifted in the chair, as Kyle leaned forward with interest. Once again, Isobel spoked up, “He got tired of being blackmailed by your dad, Alex.”

“Blackmail?” Kyle echoed.

This time, Jim beat Isobel to the disclosure, getting up to approach his son directly. “You know I’m not a perfect man, that I made mistakes in the past, and Jesse knew-”

“I know you cheated on Mom, okay?”

“There was a child-”

“Wait, I have a sibling?”

“Had a sibling. Yes. She was murdered in 2008 by an alien.”

Michael bit his cheek deeply, not daring to look at Max as the penny dropped for him during the tense exchange between Jim and Kyle Valenti. The source of Jesse Manes’s hold on Jim Valenti was Rosa Ortecho. He wondered if Liz had known that her high school boyfriend and her sister shared a father. That was drama on the level of a morning talk show that sported thrown chairs and DNA test revelations.

#this hard heart #Anonymous #michael week day 7 #malex fic #six sentence sunday #way more than that #wip whine #malex fic in progress

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groundbreaking-science · 4 years

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3: Amplification and Physicality - "The Potential of Earthlings"

"All of us here used to be enemies - I hated Goku in the beginning, too. But when there was a common enemy, we started to team up because we had to… And before we knew it, we became friends…"

This chapter is dedicated to my Uncle Krillin; the strongest - and bravest - full Earthling I know.

For many years Earth has been regarded as a useless planet. Aliens have known of and visited us over the millennia, only treating our home as an outpost, a hiding place, or a place of exile; their scanners reporting the planet as unworthy of investment. Earth does not have a remarkable concentration of tritium or oil, and barely any katchin ore to speak of. There’s no homogeneity in flora or fauna to make a large-scale farming project profitable, and our seasons swing to the point unprotected humans need to migrate to stay alive. Many civilisations thought it best to leave the chunk of slimy rock to the barely sentient creatures that called it home and move on to easier wins.

But they didn’t truly hear what their scanners screamed, that clear message hidden in the woeful statistics on geology and organic chemistry. Earth does not have a worthwhile abundance of one particular resource because we have a modest abundance of everything. Earth’s richness is in its diversity. Life on Earth is short-lived but hardier than elsewhere in the Universe because of the adaptability we require to cope.

The hostility of Earth’s ever-shifting environments created evolutionary pressures on mind as well as body. The ability to innovate in fields like construction and medicine enhanced our survivability far faster than any generation-to-generation chain of genetic mutations could, and so our society has learnt to greatly prize the traits of inventiveness, lateral thinking and the ability to dream. Combined with our isolation from the Universe at large, Earth has developed a series of unique technologies; from Capsule Corporation’s dyno capsules and time machine to the seemingly simple home comforts of boba and pizza. (In fact, Earthling cuisine is highly sought after. I hear ramen-runs are now made to Earth, with cups of dried noodles and flavour packets going for a fortune in the central galaxy’s curiosity stores.) Where once our planet was dismissed as a bubble of primordial scum, our potential Universal standing is rising, and Earth is on the cusp of being welcomed to the Galactic Commonwealth.

More nefarious entrepreneurial minds have other ideas, however. Why trade when you can own outright? Earth would be unprofitable when scoured of human life, true, but what if that Earthling creativity could instead be subjugated and utilised? Further, an Earthling's power level is minuscule, making our planet perfectly conquerable by the type of ‘real estate’ teams previously led by Freeza. I and my Saiyan-blooded friends and family are noted as far stronger and willing to help, but we have no guarantee that our potency will pass to our descendants. I have thirty years left in me to aid in planetary defence, my daughter not much more than fifty. The sharks are circling.

But there is hope. Our first encounter with a Saiyan - on the same day my father and I found out our extraterrestrial heritage - also taught us a useful fact. Whilst able to both manipulate ki with intent and raise his genki somewhat, the Saiyan relied entirely on his scouter (his heads-up-display eyepiece) to find ki users. What’s more, he judged his chances in a fight purely on our reported ki output at rest. He thought he was sure to defeat us. A terrified and briefly overpowered child headbutting his solar plexus taught him otherwise.

Whilst Saiyans were never renowned for their general knowledge, they do have impeccable intuition for battle. My Uncle Raditz believing he had the upper hand wasn’t bravado but a fair assumption based on previous experience. As such, a competition of strength based purely on scouter readout was just as valid as a full-on brawl. When our own little band ventured out into the galaxy we found the same attitude - along with a reliance on technological augmentation or genki-boosting techniques like transformations. Most other species of human were unable to sense, amplify, or suppress their ki.

You see, the elemental diversity in the very rock we stand on and the climate we swim through is built into our peerless creativity. Earthlings may not have the most magic, the longest memories, the rawest strength or the greatest genki, but dear God have Earthlings learnt to overcome their natural shortcomings to literally punch above their weight. Never underestimate the value of being underestimated, I say, as time and time again a fall from hubris has been in our favour.

Knowledge of us is spreading now - whispers of the amplification technique have reached elite warriors and a multitude of planets are developing their own takes in dojo equivalents and (regretfully) military facilities around the galaxy. But it remains that Earthlings are currently the species with the greatest capacity to use field ki. Any chancing shark wishing to do you harm will still have to judge your strength on scant knowledge. They will be wary, fearing a sharp punt on the nose or even irreparable damage to their gills.

It is with this context firmly in mind we proceed to the third chapter where we cement the basics of genki amplification, field ki manipulation and appling ki to raw physicality - the techniques that form your unique planetary heritage.

3.1: Suppression

Warning - The following section contains exercises that could cause hypothermic-like symptoms, fainting, and with great incompetence, death. The reader proceeds at their own risk.

Prerequisite reading and exercises: 1.4 (on centring, posture and breath), 1.6 (on vibrations and oscillations), 2.1-2.3.

The technique of suppression is front and centre in this first section because I believe it to be of utmost importance. I hope many readers will want to take the skills I’m teaching into planetary defence, and with that hope comes a frustrating truth - most Earthlings will need a lifetime of dedication to reach the power levels needed to tackle the very strongest threats.

As of writing, the enemies we face rival the powers of Gods; in some cases they are Gods. Our strongest fighter cannot hold a candle to them, being fifty times weaker even at their maximum. I am over a thousand times out. Any tactical advantage we as a planet can bring to the fight needs to be seized upon, including knowing when to run and how to hide to live to fight another day. I hope to all that is sacred in the Universe that with dedication and technique development skilled indigenous Earthlings will reach those heights without off-planet assistance. But until you are ready, suppression, rather than amplification, should be your first thought.

Now that I’ve sufficiently terrified you with the truth of the situation we find ourselves in, let us begin.

Ki, if you recall, has two components: a ki particle acting as a vehicle and an (average) ki energy assigned to the particle. Suppressing your overall genki will require a reduction in both or one of those outputs. But the most fundamental processes in the body are not easily fooled. The centre knows the body needs a consistent level of ki to function and will therefore endeavour to assign a minimum level of genki to the particle, only dipping below that minimum as the centre depletes. Instead we must change the number of particles leaving the centre - the flow. The body resists change in this, too; those with the keenest memories will recall that the number of ki particles leaving the centre per unit area, the flux, is a constant (at least in my model). So whilst we can’t stem the flow of ki easily, we have one more variable available to us - the surface area of the centre.

In reality your centre has no physical surface, being a point in your body from which ki emanates. How then, can we change properties of something that doesn’t exist? The processes that govern ki are peculiar in that a ki-user’s intention is understood and interpreted in good faith. The very act of picturing the centre as having attributes like a changing surface seems to map well onto whatever unknown law of the Universe governs ki particle flow.

Picturing the centre as a ball as we did way back in 1.4 will now pay dividends. If you can imagine squashing down the ball-like centre, you can reduce the hypothetical surface area, in turn triggering a reduction in flow and therefore ki overall. This does not come for free - from 1.8 we know that changes in ki output take effort, a mental strength and concentration which is not limitless. Despite the inherent difficulties, there is a helpful trick of the imagination we can use to see out the technique.

3.1.1 Folding the Centre

Sit comfortably, steady the breath, calm your mind and attend to your ki flow - a process that should be second nature by now. If not, I implore you to return to section 1.4 to save yourself wasted effort here. Now, picture a hollow ball, like a perfectly spherical balloon. Let the ball settle over your centre until they’re aligned. Breathe and shift your body until your imagination is able to project that ball in a steady position, until your centre and the ball become one.

Then - and this is the neat trick - imagine twisting the ball in half, as you can a balloon. You’ll be picturing two smaller balls sitting side by side (or one on top of the other). Finally, imagine one ball passing into the other and edges overlapping until you're left with the one ball. The number of ki particles you produce will drop in an instant.

Drop by what? Well, curiously, that depends on your imagery. A naive view would see creating two balls as a halving and so output would drop by a factor of two. A more mathematical treatment would show that the surface area of a ball will drop to a quarter when the radius is halved. Someone more vividly-minded picturing how the air in the balloon increases in pressure and stretches the skin when twisted may believe the value somewhere in between. You may have yet another completely different intuitive take, some more realistically correct than others, but remember it is your expectation and imagination creating the intention.

My point is, there will be a way to visualise this change in centre such that the image is simple to hold in your mind and simple enough to repeat. A repetitive halving (or quartering) is a simple concept to picture. A nuanced sliding scale of centre size is not. These easy-to-visualise states act akin to harmonics, the stable states we discussed in 1.8 and 1.6. With practice your centre will understand your intention and play along - with the caveat that it is ever-ready to pop back to a more natural state of rest.

If you are fortunate enough to be learning with a partner, they should be able to detect your drop in ki as a drop in auratic pressure, the ki in your aura fading as what remains is summoned back to your body to help keep you ticking. At a quarter to a half ki you probably won't feel any ill effects for a long while. If you're sensitive to the moods of others, maybe you'll find your ability to detect those changes a little stunted - given your aura has less energy available for that social contact - but otherwise you'll be safe.

Should you succeed in this fractioning, the first danger you will encounter is “snapback”. In the case of ki, what goes down must come up, and the moment your concentration slips your centre will take the cue to relax and snap back to its original flow rate. The return is usually accompanied by an extra pulse to cleanse your body of foreign ki which can have unintended consequences. If you are performing a delicate technique with reduced ki, for example, the effort you're putting into finessing the fine intent will blow outward and overwork, sometimes obliterating your target. Startling someone is one way to induce these dangerous results; eliciting any strong emotion is another. At this early stage, where you don't quite have a handle on techniques, I recommend either working without your centre being manipulated or releasing every technique before relaxing your centre, lest you blind, burn, or otherwise maim yourself.

Even with this two-stage release there can be repercussions. Remember - genki keeps your body in step too, and would have compensated the best it could with the reduced flow. During release there will be a momentary overcompensation in your homeostatic functions because of this coping mechanism. Maybe your heart skips a beat, you flush in temperature, you experience a dizziness or a moment of nausea, all due to the overcorrection and subsequent swing to normality. Further, remember genki performs social functions, and thus your sensation of warmness or hostility towards others may spike when returning. Even those without trained ki-sense may detect this abrupt shift and become unsettled.

3.1.2 Folding to Infinity

When you can reliably hold the first reduction in flow, repeat the fractionation process. You’ll need an increase in effort to do so, to the point you may feel like you’re back at square one, but stick with the expectation and imagination processes. The second drop will soon lock into place. Once you’re comfortable, repeat ad nauseum. Remember to also practice the release from each stage.

Two to four folds in your aura will deplete and your body will require more genki than it’s being fed. Your body will register that you’re not making the wisest choice and so the effort required to fold will skyrocket, just as if you were twisting a balloon and feeling that tense resistance grow.

Pan has told me that this is the point she sees even the most attuned students making a rookie error by holding their breath. Now - ki will leave the centre with you breathing or not, but as we know ki is encouraged away from the centre by forms of flow. By holding the breath, genki builds and stagnates inside that imaginary ball you've created and sneakily runs its functions, hoping to give you the impression that genki is not leaving your imagined centre as you willed. But don't be fooled! If you find yourself suddenly dizzy with others saying how red in the face you are, then you best take a breath.

Folding will fractionate genki until the drop in ki pressure each time will be difficult to discern. To remove that last detectable spark of life you will have to imagine your centre vanishing to nothing, and genki fading out with it. This is far easier said than to perform. At small enough sizes the degree of folding makes the tension the centre is under excruciating. That final vanishing will take a further burst of effort.

At this final collapse any lingering wisps of ki will be quickly expended by your ki-hungry body. You will become a void in the world and the background ki will flood in. The usual ripples your ki-signature generates on the ki-field will dissipate and your unique rhythm will be undetectable in ki-sense.

To push this exercise further look to perform this suppression during exercise and particularly while anxious, as this will be the physical and emotional state in which the ability becomes of paramount importance. Speed, then, is another aspect to work on. As the effort required to reduce your ki flow decreases, so will your need to invoke powerful imagery to achieve the same results.

To the outside observer, the extinguishing of ki is an instantaneous or staggered collapse in the world, those elicited memories making up someone’s ki-signature popping away from thought. Even those who are not actively training their ki-sense will feel a lack of presence. For those who have read ki as a “sixth sense” for their entire lives, witnessing a living being without ki is anywhere from mind-boggling to outright disgusting. Pan describes the sight as a stomach-churning unease, like seeing a headless body somehow walking and talking, and is a feeling you never fully get over.

A note on absolute suppression

There is an added danger here: ki-starvation. Genki is required by the body to maintain allostasis. Going without will eventually force your body out of sync and allostatic processes will begin to break down. The body knows the seriousness of this predicament and so will reverse as many flows as possible, attempting to drag ki back to your vital organs. Blood will be lost from the extremities in this process which leads to a condition much like hypothermia. If you stubbornly continue to suppress despite the warning signs, blood will eventually be lost from the head too, leading to hypoxic symptoms such as reduced oxygenation of brain cells, confusion, and finally unconsciousness. At that point you will not have the awareness to control your genki and your flow will snap back, consciousness returning soon after. In almost all cases unconsciousness will occur long before the body begins to break down and so you may believe there is no keen danger here. But if the reason for your suppression was to hide, snapback could lead to your discovery and subsequent death.

In summary, those very first signs of ki starvation are similar to hypothermia and important to act upon.

The hierarchical symptoms of ki-starvation are - - Paled skin - Muscle weakness or stiffness - Spontaneous to sustained shivering - Slurred speech, mumbling or teeth chattering - Impaired coordination - Slowed breathing - Confusion - Drowsiness - Weakened pulse - Loss of consciousness

Unlike in true hypothermia, the symptoms of ki-starvation cannot be remedied by warming the body, although rubbing your hands together or applying layers so your body needs to cool itself by forcing blood to the extremities and skin again can alleviate symptoms for a time.

3.1.3 Tolerating Ki-Starvation

Building endurance to this uncomfortable state therefore is a worthwhile skill to develop. To practise, lower your ki to zero for minutes at a time and observe your body. Stop when the symptoms begin to manifest to a strength that keeps you from holding a conversation. Then leave practice of suppression for at least a day to enable your recovery. Eventually you will build your tolerance from minutes to hours. Two hours of suppression while running on a treadmill and upon release performing memorised kata forms part of the minimum requirements Pan insists upon for those looking towards Heroing and front-line planetary defence. This isn’t an arbitrary choice of test. Many of our battles last less than two hours and we’ll ask those with talent but lower power levels to lie in wait, ready to deal with threats tangential to the main adversaries.

Completing the technique of suppression needs one final puzzle piece. This element is such a guarded secret that we officially kept it from our own children, but in the interest of a full education I am now going to share the secret with you. If you are training your children - which despite me warning you to refrain from I am sure a significant fraction of adults are - you may want to keep this tip from them to preserve your own sanity.

During suppression the body is starved of the genki required to regulate normal function. In most situations however, there is a ready replacement available - the wandering auras of other life forms. We learnt in 2.5 how to pass and how this is a progression of a natural social ability. It is possible then to suppress your own genki and let your body absorb the genki of others. Your desperate body will enable pass and draw that much needed generic instruction from any scraps of friendly genki it can find.

Anyone searching for someone suppressing their genki should learn to look for those little eddies that indicate life and flow, but this time as a subtle depression in the background of ki as the ki is re-purposed. The ripples, though, are at least an order of magnitude fainter than a ki-signature would be and take time and patience to find. Using this searching technique is thankfully nigh-on impossible in the heat of battle, but worth-while when you need to find - and sneak up on - mischief makers.

And that’s why we deliberately neglected to instruct our children fully for a number of years. Teaching Goten, Trunks, Marron, Papayaman, Pan and Bra how to suppress their ki was imperative - anyone looking for us to cause trouble would hone in on them and, as rambunctious as those kids in aggregate were and remain, they would not be able to handle themselves against some of the more dangerous threats in the Universe. But a child that can fully camouflage themselves in ki can also camouflage themselves against their parents too, and whilst we did not care to know exactly what they were doing at all hours (children do need their privacy after all), detecting kids attempting to sneak out was as simple as waiting for their vanishing ki and honing in on the child-shaped hole. Pan and Bra eventually pooled their knowledge and worked out the trick to letting in ambient ki ("turning see through", they said) at age 11 and ten respectively. Trunks and Goten, well…

Pink House (my home) in Satan City, January Age 797 with Trunks and Goten.

Trunks: I can’t believe I’m admitting this on camera… Let’s get the record straight - for those that quote this story back at me, anyway. I’m a man of Science, but from an early age I was convinced beyond all reason that my father had psychic powers. I mean, I did believe in magic and still do, I know magic users personally. But my father? I was an idiot.

Gohan: He’s not the gifted type?

Trunks: You tell me, you’ve known him longer. As far as I know he wouldn’t spot a spiritual awakening if it was doused in hoi sin, dancing naked on a table and spoiling for a fight.

Goten: I believed your theory for a long time, too. Only thing that made sense as a kid.

Trunks: Exactly. So, why? Well, we learned to hide our ki early. Dad taught both of us.

Gohan: I was surprised he was so keen to teach you suppression over more powerful moves. I should have known he wouldn't have been forthcoming with the full knowledge.

Trunks: Right. As soon as we’d mastered suppression at what - Four? Five? I barely remember learning - we thought we'd have the upper-hand against our parents, that we could escape whatever mess we'd made and no one could pin it on us.

Gohan: And that wasn’t your experience.

Trunks: Ha, pretty much. Dad could still hunt me down, no matter where I ran off to. Didn’t matter how sneaky I’d try to be, how careful I was slowly lowering and raising back my ki, he'd always catch me and throw me in the Gravity Chamber. It drove me crazy. One particularly bug-eyed afternoon I scanned my entire body thinking Mom had jabbed me with a tracker chip in my sleep. Goten refused to help look for the scar.

Goten: Yeah, because by then I’d grown out of it - figured it was a coincidence. But full credit to you, bro, you stuck to your loopy guns on the magic thing.

Trunks: And you’re still not helping.

Gohan: How’d Vegeta let you down gently?

Trunks: So, not long after my 18th birthday, Dad noticed Bra had gone AWOL and dragged me along on the recovery mission, all to finally demonstrate what I'd been missing. That a small child - or anyone, really - who suppresses their ki carelessly leaves a person-shaped ki-hole in the world, unless they completely let background ki flow through them. It was so painfully obvious I can’t believe we hadn’t noticed. I was such an idiot. Dad laughed for a solid week. Thought it was the funniest joke he's ever told, and definitely the longest. I can't believe you all kept it from us, not knowing could have got us killed.

Gohan: Then armed with this potentially life-saving technique, what did you do?

Trunks: Used it against Bra at every opportunity, of course. It was great to be the magic one for a change, and we drove her and Pan just as crazy.

Goten: Sure, this is a sweet story of a man showing he has a sense of humour and all, but it doesn’t explain Mom. Now she’s a psychic. She says she can’t sense ki, but when she’s fuming she just knows, you know? She could track down your lifeless body from the other side of the world just to rail on you for having the nuts to die before you did the dishes.

3.1.4 Restricting Pass

To become part of the proverbial furniture you will need to switch off the reception of pass. Now, pass usually doesn’t suck up ki as you mosey around - from loved-ones yes, but your body will want to ignore foreign ki for the most part to prevent any intra-body miscommunication. Usually there’s work involved in learning how to receive ki. When you’re low on energy, though, the body is less concerned with the risks of incorrect ki-signatures and will do what it can to stay alive. In this extreme you have to work to stop the process. Think of yourself as a transparency, an emptiness, a statue that does not require life force. Restricting pass is not rejecting ki. Rejecting with thoughts of mistrust, threat and alienness will set up a guard (which we shall cover soon) and make you a literal black hole against ki, the opposite of your intention. Instead let go and feel that ki pass you by. The hypothermic-like ki-starvation response will subtly worsen, which is another counter-intuitive sign that you are on the right track. Ideally, a partner in the form of a practised ki reader will ensure you are performing this part of the suppression correctly.

3.1.5 Amping Pass

Logically then you can do the complete opposite. Consciously increasing the level at which you’re absorbing ambient ki will both continue to hide your ki-signature and extend the time you can remain suppressed. A scouter won’t look for negative ki spots, and a ki-senser scanning long distances for your ki-signature will not be able to discern that tiny eddy, so in particular circumstances this modification to the technique is perfectly sensible. To perform, relax as when detecting ki and let the surrounding ki wash over you. Now smile. You won’t need to do this every time, but a friendly face helps immensely when learning. You’re attempting to welcome the ki around you, to let it understand that you’re present and happy to be worked with. Should the ambient ki trust you as friendly enough it will take to your body’s instruction. Using this foreign ki, particularly when using none of your own, is a dissociative sensation - you’re connected to the world around you and yet feel like your body is not quite yours. You can grow accustomed to this with practice.

Suppression will always be the first nuanced technique I recommend students learn due to its life-saving potential. Although, as always, I hope you never find yourself in a situation where suppression is required.

In the next section we will be learning the second of the Earthling techniques, amplification - both in genki and field ki. These are techniques you will need to perform should your cover be blown, and are the techniques that form the backbone of the rest of the chapter.

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#gohan #goten #trunks #ki #dragon ball #groundbreakingscienceupdate #((It's heeeeere!))#(( A huge thank you to StarBoyGoku for fully betaing this piece and seriously lifting it #the piece sings in places now :D!))#starboygoku

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