#but oh my god this is a fascinating piece of comedy and i want to analyze it so much
Note
IM IN LOVE WITH ALL THE NEW BOYSS!!!! I was wondering what hobbies they would have? Would any of them skate? What about make art? Play piano, perhaps?
Quick sidebar, it would probably be easier to ask who can’t skate than who can—at least regarding ice skating—because the majority of the skeletons lived/grew up in Snowdin and had plenty of time to practice their ‘don’t pratfall on the ice’ skills, so they’d (almost) all be at least passingly competent at ice skating, and then whatever learning curve is involved with slightly transferable skills to not-ice skating.
That said!
…You know, I realized I never did an accounting of all this, even with the first two waves of boys, so…
This is by no means a complete list of everything the boys might enjoy doing—despite the fact that this is huge and completely got away from me, oh my god seriously do not open the readmore on your dash—but!
Sans (Undertale):
He’s a goofy guy, so it’s probably no surprise that he’s into comedy. He’s a lover of puns and pranks and jokes in general, just…maybe not as casually as he makes it look. He does a little stand-up now and then, open mic nights mostly nowadays, but he’s played to larger audiences before at the MTT resort. He’s also got a pretty sizeable collection of comedic paraphernalia—rubber chickens, whoopie cushion, snapping gum, you name it—just on the off chance he might get to use it in a prime moment. He spends a lot of his free time reading joke books, watching other pros perform, and even, on occasion, don’t tell anyone, but… studying the science of humor, what people seem to find funny, how, and why. He doesn’t like to let on, because he thinks it makes him seems a little less cool and funny if you know he goes out of his way to research this stuff sometimes instead of just vibing on improv, but he genuinely finds the subject fascinating and likes to read about it. Alas, he’s a nerd…
And as such, he’s also very into physics. Quantum physics as food for thought in his downtime when he just wants to chew on some conceptually heavy stuff, but classical and practical physics make for some great experiments and demos, especially as party tricks or ‘hey, you wanna see something cool?’s for interested onlookers and he’s so all about that. Want to try an egg drop from the roof with popsicle sticks and straws? He’s got tape and a fresh carton right here. Maybe make a magnet out of a battery? Sure, there’s wire and nails around here somewhere… Or maybe you want to bet him he can’t hold up a water bottle with nothing but a string and three matches? C’mon, 10G—no, 20G. But really, he’ll take any excuse to do a cool demo of stuff he knows.
As for stuff that doesn’t demo quite as well… It was a little less apparent Underground, but there was a reason he had that telescope of his and it wasn’t just because he liked pranking people with paint on the eye-piece. He did love doing that, of course, but he also genuinely loves stars and space, learning about it and looking at it now that he actually has the opportunity to—he’s got his telescope to use on clear nights, a yearly pass for the local planetarium, and you better believe he’s subscribed to NASA’s newsletters for regular updates on the goings on out there. He tries to play it cool, but stars and black holes and nebulae are cooler, it’s hard not to get invested in everything to do with them…
Papyrus (Undertale):
Of course, he’s the master of puzzles, and not just your basic jigsaw! …Well, maybe sometimes a jigsaw, he’s not morally opposed to them but really, he needs a challenge for his intellect! He doesn’t mind a word puzzle here and there—as long as it’s not a crossword—but physical puzzles are his favorites, anything to employ his spatial reasoning and impressively fine motor skills. Rubik’s cubes are fun, linked wires, interlocking blocks, really anything in three dimensions that he can fiddle with and manipulate until it surrenders to his incredible greatness. He’s very proud of his solving ability and definitely brags about it, but he’s not just blowing hot air. He really does have a great knack for observing disparate pieces and fitting them together conceptually to see what they can be before ever starting to physically assemble them and the joy of bragging aside, he loves getting to exercise that particular mind-muscle and show his smarts.
In a similar vein, he’s also a big fan of model-making. Planes, trains, automobiles and the like, and no small amount of action figures, he likes to build them up piece by piece with his own two hands. It’s fine to populate his theoretical battle scenarios with gifts from brothers and Santas, or stuff he found at the Dump, but it’s definitely his preference to start with a kit and put it all together himself, watching it gradually take shape with his diligent effort. Maybe he’ll go off-book from time to time, a little bit, but customizing things to his own unique specifications just seems the thing to do when he’s already doing the rest of the making. All the gluing and cutting and painting and lacquering by hand… it’s the art of creation—and what nobler pursuit is there than that?
Well, there may be one other thing. As a truly renaissance man, he’s naturally well-rounded in his interests, intelligent and creative and yes, physically fit too! For him, there’s no better way to stay in shape than by playing sports, most any kind! Basketball, soccer, hockey, tennis, he’ll play any sport, just explain the rules and give him the ball—or don’t, depending on the objective and rules of the specific game in question as you’ve described it. The desirability of the sportsball does seem to vary quite a bit, so he’ll need to determine whether he wants to obtain or get rid of the ball, puck, shuttlecock, whatev—no, that’s the accurate term, it is not! Whatever you’re thinking! Stars, be mature… But! He likes games and being active and having friends, all of which are part and parcel of engaging in sports, so he’s really always up for a game.
Sky (Underswap Sans):
He likes to bake! He’s not a professional and in fact, he finds it to be quite challenging at times—there’s way more restrictions than cooking on how much to add of this, making sure to do that before the other thing but after this step, the oven has to be at exactly the right temperature… There’s a lot of steps and rules, but that’s kind of what he likes about it. He likes trying to see if he can make a thing, and then if he can, what tweaks he can make to flavors and textures without compromising the end result. He’s not always successful—he’s definitely ended up with sopping wet cakes, burnt pie crusts, overly salty muffins—but frankly, the experimenting to get it right is all part of the fun! He tends to make more tasty treats than he does failures and he’s happy to share those around with friends and family anytime. Baking may be an exacting mistress, but he loves to tango with her all the same!
Speaking of which…well, he may not know the tango specifically but he does love to dance! He’s got a lot of energy and a solid sense of rhythm, and that combo tends to result in at least a little shimmy of a two-step when there’s a good beat going on—and all bets are off entirely if there happens to be a dance floor and a favorite song playing. He likes dancing with a partner, or in a group, but he’ll dance all by himself if he’s feeling the mood, like nobody’s watching…or rather, like everyone’s watching and he wants to impress and lure out a little company to join him. He even has a tendency to put on music and dance in place a bit when he’s doing otherwise boring chores around the house, like dishes or vacuuming, and while he doesn’t mind doing his dancing solo then too, he’s always delighted to find someone who’s willing to dance along.
He wouldn’t turn down some company for a bit of outdoor exploration, either. A hiking trail maybe? Or some rock climbing? A nature trail or just a walk in the park wouldn’t go awry either if something a little less strenuous is required! He does like the exercise but it’s mostly the nature and all things green that he wants to see and be out in—trees and flowers and even grass. His house would probably be packed with greenery if he…hadn’t…killed every single plant he ever tried to keep…but! Since he does indeed have a deadly black thumb, he likes to visit the plants, in their natural habitat where he has no control over whether they live or die (so they’ll probably continue to live).
Paps (Underswap Papyrus):
It’s no secret that he’s a bookworm. He loves literature and always has—his brother will tell you he was reading before he was even talking, and as embarrassing as it is every time he brings it up, it’s not untrue. He reads voraciously, with a preference for fantasy, romance, and poetry, but he’ll read pretty much any book he can get his hands on. It’s probably no surprise that he’s been inspired to do a little writing of his own, over the years. He’s pretty private about his own work (especially the poetry, oh god, he’d dust on the spot if someone saw his poetry) but he still loves to talk about the written word and techniques used in its conveyance and form, and the struggles writers face in trying to communicate the ideas they have stuck in their heads. He’s great for reading recommendations if he knows the kind of things someone likes, but his go-to recs will always be his personal favorites.
Pride and Prejudice is one such favorite. He’s seen all the film adaptations and miniseries, and branched out from there, first into stuff inspired by similar works, then originals, and then…okay, he’s maybe a little bit addicted to period pieces in general now. Whenever a new one comes out, anything about regency or royals or the nobility in a dramatic setting, he pretty much has to watch it, more only a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ he’ll be checking it out. Naturally, he’s happiest when it’s coming out on a scheduled basis, because if an entire season drops all at once he’s going to sit there and binge it and it’s much harder to deny he has an addiction when he just pulled an all-nighter about it. He can’t help himself, he has to see if the socially mismatched couple can make it work and be wed in the end, love winning out over silly class divides…
When he’s not actively obsessed with either of those things, though, he dabbles a bit in calligraphy. He’d probably hesitate to call it a hobby, he does have a couple of those fancy pens and some nice paper and ink to use them with, and he’s decent at it, but definitely needs to practice more to be able to do the really fancy flourishes without blotting the ink or scratching the page. He can certainly do some simple, clean lettering if needed! Like…if you want a poster or a sign to look neat and professional, or…maybe you want the ‘To Do’ list on the fridge to have a fancy header or something? (His end-goal is to be able to do his own drop-caps and an elaborate cursive title for the cover of his book, someday, maybe, who knows…)
Jasper (Underfell Sans):
He likes working with his hands, making things and having something to show for his time and effort. (Knitting? No, that’s, that’s not a hobby, that was a necessity, just for special occasions now, he’s not…naw, c’mon…) He’s something of a car guy. He likes engines and wheels and pistons and how they all work together to make something that goes fast, and he likes understanding how all the pieces fit together and how to fix them if something breaks. It’s something he practiced Underground with busted old engines and bikes that fell down, and a career he pursued on the Surface, but even in his free time he likes tuning up his car, his bro’s car, restoring glory to a classic bike he got at a steal of a price and she’s gonna purr like a kitten when he’s done—he’s just…happy, with his hands buried in an engine and grease all over his face.
And speaking of grease on his face, he’s pretty passionate about food, too. Not so much the cooking of it, though he’s not too shabby in the kitchen when he puts the effort in, but more the eating of it and appreciating the flavors and textures. He’s got a lot of strong opinions on how done a steak oughta be (medium-rare), what belongs on pizza (anything but candy), and how to eat chips with your sandwich (in it, for that extra crunch of texture). ‘Gourmet’ sounds a little too snobby for his tastes, food doesn’t have to be expensive to be good and in fact, it usually isn’t—some of his best meals have been from holes in the wall—but he does like going out to such places to eat and socialize, maybe have a chat and give his compliments to the chef (and definitely not try to wheedle any recipes), that sorta thing.
But after all that, when he really wants to wind down, there’s nothing he likes better than a bit of gaming. He’s not much for multiplayer, he prefers doing his own thing at his own pace, but he likes having some kind of objective and making it happen. It gives a nice sense of accomplishment that he can get while sitting down—which is great. He tends mostly towards puzzle/adventure type games more than pure battle scenarios and beat-‘em-ups, he feels like there should be some strategy and skill involved, or the satisfaction of the win just doesn’t come through as strong. (Protip: do not watch this man defeat a Dark Souls boss if you are easily stressed out. He taunts between strikes and dodges at the very last second because he’s got the timing down to a science. Maybe try Pokemon or Zelda instead…)
Pyre (Underfell Papyrus):
His first great love is and likely always shall be the theater. He didn’t have too many opportunities Underground to go see live stage plays, but he’s long since broken the spine of the collected works of Shakespeare that got him started and memorized its contents, water-stained cover to water-stained cover. He can recite any of the Bard’s work by act and scene number, of which he is incredibly proud, but he’s at least passing familiar with a handful of other manuscripts or popular stage-to-film adaptations mass produced enough to have a chance of ending up in the Dump in decent condition. On the Surface, he definitely wants to see some things live and gets only a reasonable amount of excited about specific productions’ quirks and narrative choices. Joining in on local theater himself? Well…he’s very busy these days… (Maybe after retirement?)
Another passion of his pulled from the depths of the Dump is his guitar—a bass so sturdy and lucky that it made it all the way down without breaking a string. He thought it was cool as soon as he saw it and really wanted to have it and learn how to play. It’s been an uphill struggle since he’s entirely self-taught with regards to his equipment settings, guitar maintenance, and even reading music notes, but the few sparse instruction manuals he’s managed to find were helpful. His own stubborn determination to figure it out and be the kind of cool guy who knows how to play bass has taken him a long way, and he’s starting to make some deep, pleasant sounds that he’s very happy about… But he’s still nowhere near ready to play for anyone, he couldn’t possibly, not until he’s good at it!
And when he’s having a bad time at that, or anything else is ticking him off and there’s no better outlet to blow off steam, he knows he can always fall back on a good work-out. Even in a Kill or Be Killed sort of place, it’s not always a good idea to go picking fights and yelling and cussing and beating the stuffing out of other people—so whenever he feels like doing that, he’s in the habit of beating the stuffing out of a punching bag instead, or lifting weights, or doing one-handed push-ups, something strenuous. He may not be a machine made of meat that releases good-feeling chemicals after a successful exertion, like humans are, but he still feels great after getting to work out and clear his mind of everything but what his body’s doing so he likes to keep up a regular routine. You don’t want to see him after he’s missed a few work-outs, he gets very testy.
Mal (Swapfell Sans):
Pretty much from the moment he came into existence, he’s loved math. Call him a nerd all you like, but numbers are his happy place, where everything is straightforward and exactly what it’s supposed to be and if he doesn’t understand something, he’s probably only missing a variable and when he finds it, everything will make sense again. He has apps and workbooks around with equations for him to solve in his downtime like some kind of freak, but lacking those he’ll sometimes just make up his own math problems and try to solve them in his head—how long will it take for the water cooler to be empty if the tap is dripping at a regular interval of one drop every forty-seven seconds, should no one notice and intervene to repair it? The drum holds up to five gallons, but has already been emptied by approximately—
Okay, that’s enough math. He’s also into whittling, though he’s miles less confident about his ability. He’s not terrible, really, just very self-critical so he tends not to show off the things he makes, but he likes having something to occupy his hands while most of his attention is elsewhere, with the added bonus of having a knife in one of said hands should someone surprise him—self-defense is important, you know! In any case, he’s not as good of an artist as his brother, or even as good as he’d like to be, but it’s something to do and he can only improve with practice. Someday, with the proper equipment, he might even get into full-on woodworking, with chairs and tables and cabinetry and such that are far more straightforward to make than fiddly little figurines, but for now he just has a whittling knife and wood and too much stubbornness to quit at anything once he’s started.
As for something a little (debatably) higher-brow, he also has an interest in wine. He’s no sommelier, of course, but he’s run in fancy (royal) circles for long enough to have tried his fair share of fermented fruit juices. There are some he likes (dry reds), some he doesn’t (sweet whites), and plenty in between—but the topic makes for excellent conversation at lots of dinner parties and formal occasions, so he felt it helpful to learn a few things here and there so he knows (or can pass as knowing) what he’s talking about. On the Surface, he actually gets to take a wine tasting class and put a formal polish on his book-learning and first-hand experience, and makes a point of trying new brands that catch his attention. (He’ll never admit it aloud, but he’s far more swayed by a cool label or an interesting bottle shape than a high price tag—even cheap wine tastes just fine if you aerate it!)
Rus (Swapfell Papyrus):
He’s an artist, first and foremost. His most frequent medium is pen and paper—it’s what he started with and what he’s practiced the most—but it’s never really occurred to him to limit himself to only one thing so he’s tried out a lot of different techniques and utensils and can use most of them effectively. He’s not formally taught, seen some pictures and read some textbook entries of famous pieces and art movements, but everything he’s learned he learned by screwing around with it until he figured out how to make it look like he wanted and in the process, he’s built up a pretty strong base of skills. Mostly, he likes to draw (or sketch or paint) things he’s seen, recreating memories like a photo without a camera, but sometimes he goes on more abstract style experiments, trying to express a vibe or a feeling more than a moment. He finds it meditative, grounding more than anything else he’s tried to relax and it makes him happy to have a creative outlet.
As far as other ways to relax and have fun, something that’s really blossomed on the Surface for him is his interest in fidget toys. Not too many made it Underground for him to enjoy then, just a lonely broken palm-tangle and about a hundred Rubik’s cubes in various states of disrepair—sadly he got so good at solving the cubes that he doesn’t even consider them puzzles, just color-block-pattern simulators—but the Surface! There’s so many stim and fidget toys for him to get his hands on, and so many Ultimate Super Satisfying Compilation vids online to show him new ones. Poppers, spinners, chewelry, clickers…some hit better than others but he likes trying things out, playing with toys that are brightly colored, or feel cool, or make a nice sound. He keeps his favorites and sells or donates the rest, gotta make sure to leave room somewhere if he wants to get a new one.
He also makes a point of walking to the stores and donation centers and post offices at which he exchanges these items because—at the risk of making him sound like a dog—he loves going on walks! He was a shut-in for awhile, afraid of strangers outside, and to an extent he still is (social anxiety), but the Surface has different rules and for a lot of reasons, it feels safer for him to be out and about now, and he likes taking advantage of that. Fresh air and sun and slow, easy movement without having to look over his shoulder, free attention to spare to his surroundings and the chance to stop somewhere and check out a new place… He really likes it and tries to make time to go on a walk at least once every couple of days, destination entirely optional.
Slate (Horrortale Sans):
He’s a rock guy, and he’s not talking about the music genre—just rocks, or crystals, the kind you find in and on the ground. He likes the pun potential (ask any geologist, there’s a million) but also it’s just something fun and low-stakes to do, to collect and find and examine stones and crystals whenever he happens to come across them. A lot of his facts and knowledge base predate the head injury, too, so it’s something he tends to know a good amount about and can have a high-level conversation about at length, of which he’s very proud. Plus, having a bunch of rocks around doubles as both home décor and paperweights, so you gotta admire the versatility of it. He's always on the lookout for new stones to add to his collection, or to talk about and pebble—I mean, gift to his friends and family.
He’s an animal lover as well, which is…not much of a transition from the previous paragraph. He had a pet rock once, does that bridge the gap? Not really. Ah well. The point is, he likes critters, usually ones smaller than him but that’s not hard since he’s a pretty big guy. His past and the things he’s done don’t matter to animals, all they care about is whether he’s an immediate threat (he isn’t) and if he has food to give them (likely), and not having to worry about that is a heavy weight off his mind. He can be totally relaxed around animals so he likes spending time around them whenever he gets the chance—fur and fluff is a plus but he’s got nothing against scales and feathers, creatures come as you are and he’ll get you some water and a treat and maybe a scritch.
But if he must be around humans, or other sentient beings (he must, he’s not built for social isolation), then magic is the ace he keeps up his sleeve. Not the real stuff, of course… Though he’ll naturally be happy to show an interested onlooker a bullet or two, real magic is something any monster can do, even if they were literally born yesterday. He likes fake magic, sleight of hand tricks and misdirection—disappearing and reappearing coins, spoon bending, levitating cards—y’know, the cheap gimmicky shit. It’s fun to learn and easy to practice, works very well with a lot of skills he already had. It also has the additional plus of being disarming for anyone who might be a little…intimidated by him, his size and spooky appearance, especially if he can’t get a joke out quick enough to show he’s harmless, so he likes picking up new tricks when he can and showing them off when he’s got ‘em right.
Papy (Horrortale Papyrus):
He loves to cook! He’s gotten a lot better at it since the old days, trying to learn from Undyne’s lessons and it’s become a genuine passion for him to hone his skills in the kitchen and then (hopefully) show off to guests and friends and family who come over to share a meal. He considers it something of a puzzle in its own right—how to use these ingredients to get the most nutritional value with as little wasted as possible. He’s figured out a lot of ways to repurpose bits that usually get thrown out and in some cases, even make more tasty meals with the castoff pieces (his veggie-peel soup stock is to die for…not literally, but it’s very good)! His favorite part is naturally when people eat what he makes and shower him in compliments, but a close second is knowing that he’s fed his loved ones and they won’t ever leave his home hungry.
Since he does so much in the kitchen and, for the first time in a long time, he has an unfrozen yard for two or three quarters of a year and easy access to seeds, he’s also taken up gardening. Mostly, he grows his own vegetables and herbs but he has the space and the inclination so there’s plenty of colorful flowers in the mix too. He’s very attentive to his crops and flowerbeds and does everything his plants need to flourish and bloom. He delights in praise for his good work and the gratitude when he has a big enough harvest to share with friends and neighbors, or maybe to donate to the local food bank if they’re willing to take it. His garden is his pride and joy and no dirt or weather or pests will stop him from maintaining it!
Now he does have one hobby that’s just for his own enjoyment, not even peripherally related to others, and it’s pure unadulterated guilty pleasure: he adores watching soap operas. The more theatrical and contrived, the better, he can’t help but get sucked into the cheesy drama of it all. He started with just one hospital show and kept watching to tut and shake his head over inaccuracies, and then there was another show on after it that had a wild opening hook, and then…and then… Alas, he found the telenovelas. His enjoyment of them is only somewhat hampered by his inability to understand Spanish, but you’d be surprised how much you can glean from context clues and some things transcend language—it’s too late for him now, he’s recording every episode that airs during the day to watch later, he must know if Gloria’s twin sister will run away with her amnesiac fiancé!
Ash (Undergloom Sans):
Music’s the big one for him. He’s very low-energy and when you’re both depressed and physically fragile, it’s not always possible to go out to where other people are, even when you want to—but music can come to you, no matter how bad you’re feeling, and for that it’s become a huge pillar in his life. His favorite genre is classical (can’t get more classic than The Classics), but he’ll listen to most things, though he’ll always want a physical copy of it to keep if he likes it. CDs, tapes, even vinyl records, digital file only just doesn’t cut it for him. He plays his own music too, rarely with sheet music and mostly just riffing whatever feels right at the time. His trusty trombone is more than just a vehicle for incidental music, it’s like a pal that’s always been there for him even if he didn’t have the energy for it sometimes, and he makes sure to keep it in prime condition.
On his better days—of which he’s been having a lot more since reaching the Surface—he very much loves to be around people and one of his favorite things to get to do with those people is play games, board games to be specific. Monopoly might get a little too violent for his tastes, but stuff like Scrabble, Sorry!, Jenga, all up his alley. It takes a mix of skill and luck to win, which keeps things interesting, and barring a snack break or a celebratory dance of some kind, can be enjoyed entirely sedentarily, which is excellent. He probably shouldn’t be allowed to play cards (he counts them), and his brother swears he weighs dice (he doesn’t), but everything else is fair game and he likes having something he can shine at while also getting to hang out with friends.
But when he’s at home, or he can’t find a group to hang with, he spends a good amount of time cloud-gazing. Not star-gazing, though the sky and the stars are beautiful of course, but his interest is in the atmosphere, on the weather. There weren’t too many weather conditions to be found Underground—snow and rain and hot, basically—and the descriptions he’d heard and read of the kind of stuff that happened on the Surface had always captured his imagination. Clouds, storm cells, fog? It was interesting, and he read about a lot of atmospheric conditions without ever really expecting to see any for himself… but he’s actually up here now. And here, he’s the type of guy who owns a barometer, watches live Doppler radar feeds with rapt interest, and can tell you if it’s going to rain without even checking the weather app, just by taking a look up. His interest in meteorology actually has some practical applications now, go figure.
Yrus (Undergloom Papyrus):
He’s a cook, and though that may not be his job title, he takes it almost as seriously as if it was. For him, it’s both a passion and a language, a way to reach out to people and connect when there aren’t words—or when there are, but they’re not enough. He thinks of every meal he makes as a gift for the person he’s making it for and as such, it’s not enough for it to just be good food—it should be personalized to suit the recipient’s tastes, bespoke to what they like! That said, he primarily cooks comfort foods, stuff loaded with butter and cheese and salt because that’s what his depressed and struggling loved ones seem to like the most. It’s not always to his tastes, but it’s a point of great pride for him to have dinners at his home feeling like the end of Thanksgiving, everyone full and content and at risk of dozing off on the sofa.
He takes such pride in his cooking that he makes most everything from scratch, and that’s how he got into canning. To get to be such a good cook and to have such a discerning palate, you start to get a bit dissatisfied with store-bought spreads, and you start thinking of how you could tweak it, just a bit, and come up with something a little better. And well, of course he has a sweet tooth and doesn’t he deserve to gift himself a treat from time to time? Which is not to say he doesn’t share his jams and jellies and preserves when he gets to making them—which is anytime there’s a good sale on fruit—but at the risk of making him sound arrogant, he’s absolutely spoiled himself for even the big brands at the store. Sure, he could buy it, as-is, or he could make it and enhance the flavor with a bit of mint or cinnamon or whatever it’s begging for, exactly to his liking. …He does go through quite a lot of jars, though.
So it’s a good thing that he knows all the best home goods stores in the area to buy mason jars, and loyalty perks at every one that offers them because he’s such a frequent customer. He’s very particular about the way his home is decorated and spends a lot of time and effort into cultivating just the right homey, comfortable, clean vibe for the space, so of course he’s always thinking of ways to use his décor to do just that. He doesn’t like a static environment so he frequently moves things around, takes away old things, and adds new ones—scented candles, decorative bowls, accent pieces, really anything that catches his eye-socket. He’s a natural-born homemaker, really, it's a shame he doesn’t have a spouse to appreciate all his talents (yet~).
Brick (Horrorfell Sans):
Okay well now knitting is a hobby of his, now that he’s too big and scary to give a shit what anyone thinks about his yarn-crafting. It’s a skill from before the head injury (and the Everything Else) so it’s not like having to pick up a new skill and something you can be competent at is always nice. He finds it pretty relaxing too, if he’s honest with himself, and grounding—between the repetitive motions and the tangible product of his effort and time having passed, it’s a good go-to for him when he’s stressed and needs to calm down, or when he’s disoriented and has to reorient onto something real. It’s a pretty nice side-hustle too, selling what he makes online, but even if it wasn’t for someone, he’d still knit for himself.
…But it’s maybe not so much of a side-hustle because he doesn’t really have a main-hustle to be doing his knitting on the side of. He mostly hangs around the house as an unemployed self-employed bum. And if you’re bored, in the house, it’s probably only a matter of time before you notice something that needs attention, something broken or askew or in need of a fresh coat of something, and that’s what happened to him, and how he started getting into a lot of DIY home repair. He’s got a background in a lot of technical and mechanical stuff, the confidence to poke around in unfamiliar things, and he certainly has the time, so he’s become something of an all-purpose handyman, regularly sweeping the place to see if there’s something he can fix or tune up. Leaky faucet in the kitchen? Engine maintenance on his bro’s car? Heating ducts making a weird noise? No problem, he’ll check it out, probably an easy enough fix.
He doesn’t stay cooped up in the house all the time though. …Most of it, maybe, but he likes to sit out on the porch or hang in the yard sometimes and get a front row seat to all the wildlife lurking around. He keeps a bird-feeder topped up so the birds always come by, and he’s maybe not so diligent about making sure the bird-feeder doesn’t also become a squirrel-feeder, so there’s a few of them around, too. He has a bad habit of leaving food out for neighborhood strays—cats—and every now and again he’ll catch one and get it fixed, but the food’s also lured in a few other critters it wasn’t meant for. He shoos away the raccoons and possums and (on a couple occasions) foxes that end up on his doorstep, but he likes seeing them so he probably won’t ever really stop. There’s a local murder of crows who bring him offerings of bottle caps and buttons and other junk, and he’s half-convinced they worship him as a god but that’s definitely not going to his head or anything, don’t worry.
King (Horrorfell Papyrus):
He likes to meditate. That’s perhaps an understatement, he needs to meditate—even after abdicating his throne and resuming a civilian life, on the Surface with food and safety and funds aplenty, he has a lot of stress and on any given day, he’s wound tight as a spring. Old habits die hard, and old guilt and pain and fear die harder, and he has a tough time relaxing naturally. Having a set time and routine to sit and breathe and clear his mind, deliberately, is crucial for him. He’s got a room set aside just for it with only related paraphernalia—meditation music, incense holder, a zen garden—inside, a space empty of distractions where he can just relax and let everything else go. It’s either that or be more open and vulnerable in therapy and the latter’s not happening any time soon, so his meditation room is the only thing standing between him and a mental breakdown.
That’s a humorous exaggeration, of course. He also has his bonsai trees, which serve a similar function. He got his first around the same time he took up meditation, thinking it might just be a nice plant to set the ambiance, but as he started caring for it and cultivating it, it grew (pun not intended, how dare you?) into its own thing. He’s got lots of bonsais now and takes great deliberate care in their soil, their water, and meticulous pruning to keep them all growing healthy and strong and in exactly the way they should. There might be something to be said there about power and control and healthy, positive outlets to explore those needs, but for him they’re just his trees—his responsibility, his to keep alive, his to keep in line… And it’s nice to have plants in the house, they really add something to a space, don’t you think?
Something else he’s into that’s slightly more social is chess. He learned a lot about tactics and strategy during and in the lead-up to his reign, both from books and hard experience, and chess is a strategist’s game—all about studying the field of play and your opponent and thinking ahead to achieve your desired outcome. He started by playing against his brother, learning the game and gaining confidence, and then later against Toriel while he conspired to overthrow Undyne, which taught him more about thinking like a warrior monarch and how to strategize against one. Ever since, chess has been his preferred way to get to know someone and he finds the insight into a person’s thoughts (through their choices and idle conversation during the game) to be an invaluable asset. …It’s also somewhat fun, enriching he supposes, or else he probably wouldn’t keep so many chess sets in the house, or regularly go to the park to seek opponents at the public boards. But what business is that of yours?
Merc (Horrorswap Sans):
His physical…situation…is complicated. Until he gets his DT under control, he starts literally melting down whenever his emotions are too high which means that most of the things he would’ve done before for fun and exercise are out. His solution to that is yoga, a low-stress, low-impact way to stretch and move and keep his body functional, without the risk of upsetting himself and others by turning into a puddle! Going through the forms helps him focus his mind and ground him in his body at the same time, which he loves, and it’s something he can do solo or in a group, which is also great depending on his mood and need. He attends a studio at least semi-regularly, whenever there’s a class going on, and he loves it as a way to meet new people and socialize in a low-key way. Even after his melting problem gets sorted, he keeps the yoga as a part of his life and routine—it works for him, even when a lot of other things didn’t!
Escapism has also always been there for him: the sci-fi flavored genre specifically. He’s been in pretty dire need for distractions to take his mind off his condition and his frustratingly slow-going research, and fiction was a great fit, depictions of far-future times when technology is advanced but people are still people and the problems of today are all solved and done with—just the problems of tomorrow left to solve and there’s always hope somewhere out there in the universe. Yeah…he can use a little bit of that. Back Underground, he’d seen a few popular sci-fi series that managed to fall down—Star Trek, Star Wars, and a few others—but he falls back into it hard on the Surface when he discovers that the full collections are available, usually remastered and listed out in chronological order, and so many other fans to talk to about it, wow! And oh, the merch, so much merch… He’s only a mortal man, how is he meant to resist a phone case designed to look like a communicator from The Original Series? Or a replica of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber? Or… Okay maybe he’s just enough of a nerd for it verge on a financial problem but he’s having fun, let him have this.
It's not like he’s not bringing in a paycheck, with his little home bakery business. He’s gotten serious about his baking and really ramped up his technical skill, and good flavor and texture is surely a way to keep a customer base, but he wanted to draw in the new customers and for that, he had to get good at decorating. As an amateur, he didn’t care so much if his frosting was a little messy, or really try to do anything at all beyond maybe some food coloring and sprinkles here and there, but in the interest of trying to elevate his business to the next level, he started experimenting more with design techniques—and he discovered he loves it! It takes a lot of skill and precision to execute on top-notch cake décor and he likes the challenge of learning something new and perfecting it until he’s ready to offer it as a technique to his customers. He’s the king of drip cakes, master of mirror glazes, and has the cleanest foil and luster work you will ever see. He’ll tackle geode cakes next, just you wait!
Ell (Horrorswap Papyrus):
He used to hate spooky shit. Horror movies, ghost stories, creepy stuff meant to send a shiver up your spine and make your heart (if you have one) skip a couple beats—he couldn’t handle it and any hubris otherwise would leave him looking at pictures of kittens trying to forget about it so he could sleep. But then… Wouldn’t you know it, then he lived through a horror: a terrible creature from another world came to his sleepy little town and killed seemingly everybody they could find, and he survived but the world changed, and everyone went hungry, his best friend disappeared, his brother started melting and he almost died and then came back wrong… And now the fake spooky stuff doesn’t seem so bad. Actually it’s…kinda fun? Scary stories and creepypastas still freak him out, a little, but his tolerance for it has gone up considerably and now he seeks out the genre on purpose, to create and consume, because it feels a little good to get scared by something fake instead of all too real.
His new interest in horror turned him on to movies in general. Not that he didn’t like watching movies before, but being especially invested in a specific genre got him reading about analyses of themes and filming techniques, lighting and staging and all the behind-the-scenes choices made in casting and shooting, and he loves being able to point those things out. Watching a movie with him, any movie, will probably trigger a film-buff monologue about something—‘oh see that’s a long shot, they do that when they’re trying to…’, ‘that’s not cg by the way, it’s actually a matte painting and…’, ‘y’know that scene when he kicked the helmet, it turns out he…’ et cetera, et cetera. He’s not trying to be a bore or a know-it-all, he’s actually just really interested in the way all these things, choices or accidents, come together to make a movie and he can talk about it for ages…or complain about it, if it happens to be a crappy movie. He does so love to complain…
Throughout all of this, if his attention isn’t split by his laptop, he’s usually keeping his hands busy another way—with origami. He’s almost always got a lot of scrap paper lying around in reach and for lack of anything better to do, he’ll grab a piece and start folding it. He started screwing around with those notebook edges left over after you tear out a page, but those are messy and ran out of folds real quick, so eventually he looked up some deliberate things to make out of paper and even bought some origami paper specifically for practice and nicer looking results. He’s pretty good at hopping frogs and flapping cranes, and who can’t make a boat, but his go-to is definitely the little stars you make out of the long strips. He’s got a big jar of the stars and keeps making more to add to it, not for any reason, really, but…it’s fun to make ‘em and they look pretty so why not?
Pitch (Horrorswapfell Sans):
He’s a thrill-seeker. Not necessarily the death-defying stunt kind—though he cheated death once already and might be a bit cockier about his odds the next time around than he ought to be—but any thrill, even the cheap ones. He spent a lot of time Before hedging his bets and prioritizing just about everything but himself, and now he’s decided to spend the rest of his time doing the opposite, chasing excitements and novelties and things he was too cautious or restrained or just too spartan to go after. He seeks out new restaurants, trendy bars, relationships, activities, anything that catches his fancy at the moment. A lot of the things he tries out don’t stick, falling by the wayside after the luster of ‘exciting and new’ wears off—you really only need to try a PB&J burger the once, and if you’ve ridden one mechanical bull, you’ve ridden them all—but some things make an impression.
Boxing is one of the things that stuck for him. He always worked out to stay in good condition and it was a habit he kept up on the Surface, joining a local gym as soon as possible for access to the weights and the punching bag. Fisticuffs was a last resort for him when dealing with actual problems, but hitting things was a great way to blow off steam—and as repressed as he was, he had a lot of steam to blow off, so his form and footwork was always top-notch. He got noticed for it, invited to spar in the ring, and to keep a short story short, he loved it. It’s a challenge being blind in a fistfight, but in a very positive way for him, giving him a chance to use his reflexes and his soul-sense to take on his opponents and most of the time, win. It’s a visceral, almost primal pleasure for him to get to fight in a reasonably safe arena, with people who are also fighting for love of the sport and no aim to seriously injure or kill, like a dance but with someone who wants to knock you out and vice versa.
And speaking of dancing, he’s very fond of that as well for similar, yet less violent reasons. He doesn’t really dance solo, simply for joy of the music—his enjoyment is almost exclusively in the partnered activity, when he has someone to match steps and mirror movement with and combine his awareness of his body and theirs into a cohesive picture. He likes the give and take of it, the way that he can have a physical experience with someone, a conversation without a single word being spoken, all from movement and synchronicity with whoever’s signed his dance card. He knows a few formal dances already and hasn’t forgotten the steps so he’s well-prepared for a polite ballroom experience… but he’s also learned how to let his metaphorical hair down lately, and a bit of dirty dancing is hardly off the table, should his partner for the evening (or afternoon, morning, midnight) be so inclined.
Nemo (Horrorswapfell Papyrus):
What happened Underground sent him into probably the worst art-block of his life. Even picking up a pen got hard to do with anything more than the intent to jot down a note for himself and he spent entirely too long with utterly dry wells of inspiration, not creating anything at all. In a desperate attempt to rekindle something creative, he ended up searching ‘art ideas’ online and discovered the vast world of craft projects. It was easier for him to actually make something when he had step-by-step guides and didn’t have to draw on his own (lacking) inspiration, and he quickly gained a liking for what he could make out of things he already had lying around the house and art supplies that were collecting dust—coffee-filter peonies, paper-straw wreaths, tin-can organizers, et cetera. He likes upcycling and getting to find use in things that might otherwise be discarded, and he really enjoys getting to put his own personal touch into crafts inspired from the internet.
He's proud enough of his works, in fact, that he wanted to show them off and—lacking real-life friends—he started posting photos of his crafts online. The response was positive but eventually, he started getting dissatisfied with the quality of the pictures he was taking, fuzzing details or altering colors, and he began looking into ways to improve the shots he was taking, lighting techniques, camera settings, angles and framing… By the time he invested in his own high-quality camera (and read the manual, front to back), he was seeing art everywhere, not just in the things he made but in the light through trees on a misty morning, in the waft of a curtain by an open window, in the people walking along the sidewalk out in front of the house. He has an eye-socket for it now and he’s always considering The Perfect Shot, how to capture the beautiful moments happening all the time with his photography. He’s good and getting better all the time, the more he practices his staging and editing.
He definitely wants to diversify his portfolio, though. Of course, he’s great at capturing domestic scenes, being a shut-in and all, but there’s more out there in the world, to see and photograph and be part of. It takes him awhile to get there but once he does, he’s very passionate about traveling. He spent such a long time stuck—first Underground, and then in his home on the Surface—and his scenery and his experiences were limited, but once he’s free there’s so much new and beautiful and exciting that he can access and he loves being able to pack up and go to it, right where it is. He wants to fill a passport and see unique vistas all over the globe, learn about cultures there, and make meaningful memories attached to every picture he takes.
Sunny (Gastertale Sans):
He likes stories, not the kind that come from a book, necessarily, but the stories people tell. The subject doesn’t matter to him much—folklore, local legends, big fish tales, ‘you’ll never believe what happened to me last week’s and more—it’s really the telling of it that he likes, how people describe what happened for an audience of their friends, family, or even strangers. He especially likes hearing the same story from different people to see how they tell it differently with their own perspectives or details that were unique to the version they heard. He’s always got a metaphorical ear open for a good yarn and a great memory for the stories people tell him, to the point that he can dispense them on cue whenever conversation’s slow, but he’s got plenty of his own experiences to make tales out of too, and the charisma and flair to make the telling entertaining.
This is a skill that comes majorly in handy for one of his other favorite hobbies, tabletop gaming. Whether he’s setting the scene for a D&D party he’s DMing for or keeping conversation going while he shuffles a deck for rummy, he loves having a table of people together to talk and play a game (or two, or three) with. It’s hard to get schedules to line up so he almost always has a few different game nights going on at any given time, in rotation depending on who can make what—and luckily, he’s a social butterfly so if someone cancels, getting substitutes to hang and make friends with over a game of something or other is never too difficult for him. He’ll go anywhere but his preference is hosting himself, he just loves having people over and showing them a good old fashioned time!
And speaking of old fashioned, his fashion is a little bit that as well. He’s a tad all over the place with it but nonetheless very interested in vintage and retro styles—the bold neon windbreakers of the 80s, the dated digital graphic tees of the 90s, the vinyl of the 00s, and even the holographics of the 10s. He tends to get a little confused about what was popular when and maybe that’s why he meshes it all together, but regardless, he loves his very eclectic wardrobe and adding to it. He makes a lot of trips to thrift stores and checks often on resale sites and gets very excited whenever he stumbles across a good find. Jackets are his favorite and he definitely has too many, but they spark joy and he’s probably not going to get rid of any or quit shopping around for more of the old school stuff anytime soon.
Aster (Gastertale Papyrus):
He likes scrapbooking! Maybe not too surprising, but as someone who mysteriously came into existence one day with no memory of his past, he doesn’t like the idea of losing memories—at least, not any more memories than he’s already apparently lost. He likes keeping records of things he does and that happen in his life as a tangible proof of his existence in and impact on the world. He stores things digitally as well but having the physical album feels weightier and more permanent, so he takes great care assembling and arranging everything in it. He keeps photos of outings with friends and coworkers, fliers from lectures he attends, even receipts from restaurants and movie ticket stubs. It’s all extremely well organized and annotated to the point that it almost reads like a scientific article, but he has fun with the cutting and pasting and aesthetic arrangement of it all—a neat and tidy accounting of (as much of) his life (as he can remember).
It's probably no coincidence that his scrapbook resembles a science journal, though, because he reads a lot of them. He also attends lectures and conferences when available and open to the public because, though he doesn’t have a career in any field of science, he’s still quite passionate about it! He loves learning about new advancements and discoveries, and when he comes across something he doesn’t know or only knows a bit about, he tends to do his own research into relevant readings on the topic until he’s better informed. He loathes misinformation and willful ignorance though, and as a result he’s ended up in a few small scale social media wars where he arrives on a post with thorough corrections, arguments, and sources cited and continues to present the accurate information until he’s respectfully acknowledged or blocked. It’s…usually the latter, but he doesn’t mind a good argument and ad hominem attacks slide right off him, so…as long as he’s having fun, what does it matter?
However…for all his love of truth and fact, he is also—regrettably—truly, madly, deeply compelled by the paranormal. If asked directly, he would say that of course he doesn’t believe in (non-monster) ghosts or aliens or the supernatural, there’s no evidence of such things! At least…nothing credible. He’s read the first and second-hand accounts, reviewed the blurry inconclusive photos, entertained hypotheticals of what could have really caused the sighting or scenario in question, accounting for variables and probing with his own questions to determine more information. He may occasionally be inclined to physically visit some ‘hot spots’ or sites of infamy, just to get a better understanding of the location and potential factors in what’s been claimed… But! Obviously, he’s a devil’s advocate in this only, as intriguing as some of these concepts are, that’s all they are—concepts. The fact that he spends so much time and thought on such things does not at all validate them and it simply means that he is a man of both integrity and science, the real kind!
Spectr (Transcendtale Sans):
He likes swimming! Er…well…maybe that’s not the right word for it. It’s not diving either, really, it’s… He likes going to bodies of water, walking in, and staying under for awhile, there, that’s a more accurate description of it. He’s waterproof and he doesn’t need to breathe, so ducking under the surface for a good few hours is not only possible, but a great way to get near-total peace and quiet for however long he wants it. He wasn’t much of a swimmer when he had an organic body, so it’s a bit of a novelty as well—seeing the way things look underwater, the way sounds change, the way animals swim around him in their natural habitat. He finds being in the water to be very relaxing and pleasant, almost meditative in nature, and whenever he’s feeling especially tense or in need of some space to think (or not think), he’ll head to the nearest body of water and go right in. It would be better if he actually took his clothes off before he did this, but he usually doesn’t and has weirded many clothes with lake or sea water.
He’s also into urban exploration. Not that he specifically calls it that, but he’s a wanderer and he likes to keep a low profile so sometimes, when he happens to be in the heart of a big city and there’s nowhere anonymous enough for him to blend in, he disappears into closed, abandoned, or condemned buildings. He likes the quiet of places like these and the reduced likelihood of running into anyone trying to interact with him because nobody else is supposed to be there. Obviously sometimes people are there anyway, but usually it’s people who mind their own business or actively avoid him, which he’s completely fine with. He does also enjoy having a look around when there’s time and he can, getting to see the remnants of the people who used the building before, what they left behind and imagining what it would be like if it were actively in use. A lot of the places he gets into have nice views of the city outside, too, and it’s pleasant to find a ledge or some rebar to sit on and enjoy it.
Jewelry making came out of his preferred hangout spots, as well. There’s a lot of junk lying around in abandoned or in-construction buildings—chain-link fences, washers, nuts and bolts—and when one is sitting around in an empty spot in the early morning, waiting for the city to wake up so he can slip through the masses undetected again, one gets to fiddling with nearby things in reach. He’s no master jeweler, his creations tend to be very simple, metal bent and twisted by hand in loops and curls, maybe a shape if he’s feeling ambitious, but he likes making them regardless. Sometimes he’ll keep an eye out for interesting stones and hold onto them to incorporate them into one of his pieces, or pick up a bit of nicer wire to work with if he’s going to be passing through a more rural area where it won’t be so easily available. He never keeps the rings and necklaces and bracelets he makes, though, just leaving them on tables and benches and railings for someone else to find later. It’s the making that’s the important part to him, he doesn’t need the thing.
PapAIrus (Transcendtale Papyrus):
He’s a proud and passionate DJ for partiers everywhere! He kind of fell into it, or at least into the idea of it when figuring out how to approach humanity and be a part of it, and he learned that it’s quite common for musical artists to have gimmicks that hide their real faces and identities. It seemed like it’d be easy to blend in, in a crowd like that, and when he found out about vocaloids and holographic performers he was all but sold on giving it a go. It didn’t take him long to learn how to mix songs and with a theoretically infinite track list to draw on, he’s a natural talent at playing the crowd and keeping the energy in a room high. He loves DJing for nightclubs and raves the most, but he’s starting to gain a bit of fame and notoriety for both his talent and his very advanced ‘avatar’ and might end up dropping some of his own music and playing to larger venues sooner than later.
In his spare time, of which he has a lot, he likes the challenge of hunting down lost media. He has full access to the internet as well as several archives he probably should not have access to, but it’s very hard to keep him out of anywhere he wants to be—luckily, he chooses to use his nigh unfathomable power for good, digging around here, there, and everywhere for things deleted, destroyed, or locked off from the public. It’s like a treasure hunt, following leads and connecting clues until he finds the impossible thing he’s looking for…or doesn’t. Sometimes things that are gone really are gone, but other times it’s just that no one else had the spare time and resources to try and excavate a mention of a grandmother’s VHS copy of an obscure, out of circulation film on a deleted forum post from ten years ago, track down the user, ask after the tape and offer to purchase it to convert to a digital format…and if that doesn’t pan out, the search begins anew! How exciting!
His do-gooding doesn’t end at tracking and restoring old tapes, though, and he likes to spare some time for bigger acts of justice now and again. He’s a part-time hacktivist—he takes note of ongoing crime and corruption in human society and when he can, he shines a light on it. Leaking emails, posting blacklisted videos, releasing incriminating financial records, he has little respect for the privacy of crooked CEOs and corrupt politicians and feels it’s only right that their customers and constituents know these things about the people they’re supporting. His intervention tends to lead to a lot of resignations and restructuring and legal action being pursued, so he tries not to overstep too much with the business of humans, especially not for any old small-fry in the pond…but the big fish, the guys in the news with allegations that don’t stick because of money lack of evidence… Well, he doesn’t mind digging up that evidence, if the proper authorities really lack the time for it—you’re welcome!
Xanth (Ascendswap Sans):
He’s very into spiritualism and all things mystical. His brush with the cosmically unknowable really expanded his perception and sense of things around him and he’s freshly fascinated by the things in this world beyond mortal comprehension, things he’s only glimpsed and felt more than he clearly understood. He loves reading or hearing about other peoples’ spiritual experiences—near-deaths, out-of-body’s, energies sensed and presences felt and many more—being let into the perspective of others who have been through things not easily explained and maybe getting a chance to share his own oddities in the process. He collects a lot of paraphernalia from the people and places he goes for these things, chakra bracelets, dreamcatchers, crystal pyramids and the like. He freely admits some of his items have stronger energies than others and theorizes that belief and intention in the creation of the object has an effect, you see the aura of this one feels—you get the idea, he could talk about it for hours.
He's also a very big fan of riddles! He knew a few before but has really gotten into them since, diving down the rabbit hole of riddles and tricky word puzzles. He finds the construction of them incredibly interesting, how specific words are chosen and phrases are structured to talk around the answer, carefully ringing around it to imply only and make the listener deduce the truth around its absence—just like how black holes are discovered by observing the warping of space around it! He has lots of riddle books and knows the answers to most of the basic ones out there, and he’s always open to hearing new ones, as well as coming up with some of his own from time to time. He takes his riddling quite seriously and will never look up the answer or allow anyone to tell him before he guesses—he wants to reason it out for himself, even if it takes him days to do it. If you manage to stump him, expect a call later on with the solution and exuberant praise for the gift you gave him!
A far more pedestrian and down-to-earth hobby of his, however, is pottery. Riddling and talking about the cosmos is all well and good, but it’s difficult actually meeting people to do those with—they don’t really have meet-ups for those sorts of things. But! They do have pottery classes, all over the place, welcoming beginners who are generally also open to making friends there, and he decided to go where the people were. It’s probably not something he would’ve been as happy doing before…Everything, reining in the urge to be great at it first try and do clean, neat work to impress people… but he doesn’t really think that way anymore, so he likes it! It's messy and mistakes are easy to make, both on the wheel and in the kiln, but that’s life and he’s learning same as everyone else. He gets to socialize, he gets to make stuff out of clay, and he gets so very many pots and mugs and bowls to give his friends and loved ones—a win-win-win!
Piper (Ascendswap Papyrus):
He never used to put much effort into his wardrobe. He was anxious and introverted and never wanted to stand out too much, so he always aimed for under, rather than over-dressed. …But things changed. He’s more confident, he wants to stand out, he wants to look his best and dress himself in all the nice clothes he always thought he wasn’t cool enough to wear—so now, he does. He keeps his eye-socket on modern fashion trends, subscribing to magazines and tuning in to designer runways so he always knows what’s in and can coordinate his wardrobe accordingly. He's not necessarily a brand snob, he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that clothes (and accessories) need a label to look good, but at the same time, he won’t compromise on quality and sometimes that means paying for it. Still, he has a lot of fun keeping in style and taking more care in how he presents himself, and it turns into something of a confidence feedback loop—feeling good because he looks good because he feels good because…
With his newfound confidence, he’s also gotten into the habit of singing out loud. He hums tunes every now and again, surely everyone does, but now he sings, sometimes softly and sometimes belting out lyrics at full volume to whatever song floats through his head. What can he say? He’s started to like the sound of his own voice and it makes him feel good to hear how he sounds, and to feel how freely and beautifully the notes come out. Maybe it’s a little prideful but he doesn’t see the harm in making music and feeling good about it, so he sings when he’s occupied, when he’s idle, when he’s asked to—no special occasion necessary save for the joy of sound.
Of course, this also gives him something in common with some of his favorite creatures on the planet: birds. He likes animals and tends to be great with them—especially if he happens to use his ‘trick’—but he’s particularly fond of the feathered ones and the pretty sounds they make. He started learning how to mimic bird-calls (now that he’s not too self-conscious to feel stupid about it) and found he has a talent for it, getting all kinds of flighted friends to stop by and sing back when he chirps. He knows a lot of calls and can identify most local bird species by sound and sight, and it’s a favored party trick of his to push a little intent into his whistles and get wild birds to land on his finger like they were trained. He’s actually looking to break into falconry too, so he can keep and train a raptor someday, but there’s a lot of training and regulation involved in that sport and he’s not in any special kind of hurry. Plenty of birds to watch and sing to and play with in the meantime!
Carmine (Underfell Fruition Sans):
He’s been on his own for quite awhile. Granted, most of that time was unconscious in a semi-lucid dream-state, but that still left him pretty bereft of any meaningful company for a long damn time. He’s a social guy, he’s gotta make some connections with people at some point or it’s just gonna feed into his main character syndrome, so he starts getting involved in competitive team activities pretty much as soon as possible. At first it’s gaming—multiplayers, with mic enabled of course—when he’s still building his physical health back up, but once he’s clear for it he’s joining up with just about every team sport he can find. The Surface has plenty of options for him to choose from. Paintball? Definitely, get ready to meet your maker. Go-karting? Can’t believe it took so long to ask, let’s go. Axe-throwing? Oh hell yes, you know it! He’s competitive but a mostly good loser and hardly sore winner, so whatever the game he’s all in, just happy to be able to play.
When he’s solo and not actively burning energy, he…probably should be. He overproduces magic like a sonuvabitch, and if he’s not using it, that’s a problem—for him and everyone and everything around him. If he’s lacking something to do with his energy, and no other ways to expend it, the easiest thing to do is make a bunch of bullets. This, naturally, solves one problem while creating another and out of the abundance of bones lying around the place came the elegant solution of building with them. He uses his bone bullets like some (frat house) people use beer cans, stacking them together to make thrones chairs, tables, and towers. Sometimes he’ll jenga these structures, knock ‘em down to reuse the bullets for something else, but sometimes, if he's managed to stack up something particularly impressive, he’ll put in the extra effort to make them structurally sound and keep them as-is.
For all that he’s good at building things up, he takes just as much pleasure in taking them apart. He likes working with his hands, always has, opening something up and poking around inside to figure out what goes on in there. Unfortunately, and he’ll never admit as much out loud, he is…not very strong, physically—the big stuff, heavy duty machinery that takes a decent amount of elbow grease to get into is…a little bit beyond his ability, at least comfortably. By default, that leaves him with the little stuff to tinker with, clocks and watches, TVs and blenders, anything he can get his hands on and pop open without too much work. Clockwork mechanisms are his favorites to work with, the very tangible cause and effect of motion inside, but he’s no slouch with a soldering iron and more fiddly electronics are hardly any trouble. He likes fixing stuff that’s broken but it doesn’t have to be for him to want to disassemble something in working order, just for a quick look. Don’t worry, he knows what he’s doing, he’ll put it right back—possibly in better condition than when he found it!
Tank (Underfell Fruition Papyrus):
He has difficulty finding hobbies for himself, at first. Doing things he enjoys—much less expressing that he enjoyed them—was both forbidden and dangerous, so he’s in unexplored territory without explicit orders to do or not do something. Undyne gets him started with puzzles after noticing that he seemed to like solving them for her on patrols. A jigsaw seems as good as anything to start with, right? Well… yes, very much so, because he loves the medium instantly. One obvious solution (to assemble the pieces into a picture), no time constraint, and no way to do it incorrectly? It’s perfect! He graduates quickly from small, simple jigsaws to large, complex ones and loves being able to sit down with a few thousand pieces and slowly, steadily arrange them the way they’re supposed to be. He was given a massive, single-color monolith of a jigsaw once, as a joke…which completely didn’t land because it only took him a bit longer than usual and he loved it just as much. Go figure.
His brother gave him another hobby, upon remembering that he used to (as a toddler) like scribbling on paper, and gifted him a color-by-number book. It was a little juvenile, involved considerably less problem-solving than puzzles, but that’s really not a bad thing for him, giving him a task to do by rote that appeals to his creative side rather than the militaristic orders he got until that point. Eventually, as he gains independence and starts to feel more comfortable making choices of his own, he ditches the ‘by-number’ part but sticks with coloring, using watercolors and colored pencils to fill in pages of designs with whatever he wants. He finds it very relaxing and satisfying to do, and with encouragement even frames some of the pieces he’s proudest of. Friends and family may expect to receive them as gifts, especially if they’ve complimented one in particular—it’ll be theirs in short order without a second thought.
His most consuming hobby, however, is one he came to on his own: the care and keeping of fish. His first was a betta, a bright red fighting fish, drooping and still in a tiny little cup on a shelf—an impulse purchase he’d be hard-pressed to explain, especially with no animal experience whatsoever, much less specifically fish. But, he did it, and after that it was his responsibility to care for it, so he put in the research to determine its needs, the size of the tank, the pH balance of the water, the food and feeding schedule, environmental enrichment… It was a lot of work getting everything together but the reward in seeing the sad lifeless betta turn bright and active, thriving in the home he’d built for it, that was an addictive feeling. It wasn’t long until he was setting up more tanks, and buying lots more aquatic critters—tetras, cichlids, snails, guppies—to fill them with. He’s an extremely diligent and dedicated fish-dad and likes to sit and watch them swim the way some people watch TV.
Vi (Swapfell Fruition Sans):
He knows his way around a needle and thread. He learned to sew out of pride necessity, learning to mend ripped and worn garments rather than having to beg for new on his or his brother’s behalf. It started as the lesser of two evils for him, but eventually he grew to enjoy it—work, of course, to have to close holes and hem and take in this and that, but work that he was generally left alone to do and not bothered for other things. It’s still that, but now that he doesn’t have a panopticon of a mocking prick judging his every action, he’s branching out into a bit more personal flair. He tried felting, with…poor results…but embroidery and needlepoint is working out considerably better. He’s still not especially creative so he prefers to work off patterns rather than freehand anything, and most of the things he stitches aren’t exactly to his own personal style, so a lot of his work gets donated but some things end up on the wall, others as patches for bags and jackets… It’s something to do.
…Making booze is also something to do. He didn’t exactly see it coming, something he kind of fell into. Per his brother’s preference, they’ve made their home in a wooded, mountainous area, and per his own preference, it’s secluded, a ways away from the town proper. Grocery runs every time there’s no more alcohol in the house (because somebody had company over and left a thimble in the bottle without telling anyone) is irritating, especially if he’s just getting home late and nowhere nearby is even open. A lot of locals get around the problem by simply brewing, fermenting, or distilling their own, and after looking into the process, he decided it was more than doable. He’s not much of a beer-drinker and never bothered with that, but he makes some damn good fruit wines if he says so himself, and a moonshine that’ll knock you on your ass if you’re not careful. His little operation is technically illegal—his favorite kind of illegal—but it's all for private use and he keeps to himself when he’s in town so he’s flying pretty low beneath the radar.
He is out of town a lot, mostly for work purposes, and passing through unfamiliar towns on the regular exposed him to quite a lot of postcard kiosks. He would look at them, think about his semi-estranged brother back home and how weird it would be, with their relationship being what it is, to call or text just to say ‘hey’ and… Well, eventually he bought one, scribbled a curt (coded) message on it, and sent it home before he could think better of it. Neither of them ever said anything about it, but he found it later on his desk when he got home with a scrawled reply back to what he’d written, and it kind of just spiraled into a thing from there. Anytime he goes somewhere, he finds a place to pick up a postcard to mail back, and when he gets home he tucks it (and the inevitable addition onto it) away in a binder for safekeeping. He takes a lot of care in the choosing and preservation of these cards and has a sizeable, growing collection.
Hunter (Swapfell Fruition Papyrus):
He’s a runner. There’s almost nothing he likes more than getting outside and taking off, jogging full speed to nowhere in particular until he’s out of breath and covered in sweat. He was cooped up for a long time in between specific missions and keeping pace on a treadmill just can’t compare to the free feeling he gets when he’s completely off-leash and can just go, as fast and as far as he wants to. Sometimes he’ll spice up his runs with a bit of parkour, clearing obstacles or scaling trees to take the branches for awhile, but he’s happy as long as he gets to let loose—sky above him, earth below, and nothing to call him back but his own limitations when he’s totally exhausted or he decides to be done.
For similar reasons, he’s interested in foraging. He likes nature and the outdoors, prefers it to anything indoors bar none, and the longer he can spend out in it without having to make his way back to civilization, the better. So, he started learning about the plants he sees—what’s edible, what’s not, what’s poisonous versus medicinal and so on. A lot of the info about it is geared towards humans rather than bioengineered skeletons so there’s still a learning curve, and a lot of things he's taken it upon himself to test out. He was built with a high metabolism and some natural poison resistance so he’s too cocky to be stopped from doing it, really, no matter how many times he’s called a reckless idiot for touching and ingesting possibly harmful substances. He's made a lot of interesting discoveries with regards to the local flora and only hardly gotten sick about it, so he counts it as a win.
He keeps track of said discoveries in his journal, which he takes out with him whenever he leaves the house for a nature walk (or run). He likes having it handy to note down things he does throughout the day, places he goes, things he sees… He never really got into art, not the way he could’ve, if things had been different, but he can scratch out some decent sketches to fill in the margins of his journal—the path down to the stream he found, the deer that only shed one antler, that berry that definitely did not agree with his metaphorical stomach, do not try again… His memory isn’t bad, exactly, but his mind and feet are both prone to wandering so it’s nice to have a log of his activities to look over later and put together things he missed at the time, or be reminded of stuff he wants to revisit. Most of his journaling is done halfway up a tree, sprawled along a branch with half an eye-socket on the view from up high.
Kohl (Descendtale Sans):
He wasn’t especially interested in plants or flowers, at least not until one started altering him—and the rest of monsterkind—in mind and body. That’s when he got interested and started studying. First the echo flower, its strange properties nearest and dearest to him, but gradually branching out to golden flowers, forevergreens, water sausages, any magical plant he can get his hands on to examine. Non-magical plants are equally fascinating, especially in their potential effects on humans—he knows probably an unsettling amount of flowers and greenery that are toxic to humans, the symptoms caused by contact or ingestion and how long it takes them to appear. Thankfully, he’s not much for the care and keeping of plants as keeping things alive seems like an awful lot of work. Still, he finds them interesting and has lots of botany and anthology books lying around, with leaves and petals dried and pressed between their pages. Did you know that the echo flower’s bioluminescence remains for up to three years after the bloom’s been clipped? Fascinating stuff.
Less of a passion but still at least an idle hobby, he can play a bit of piano. He’s self-taught—plunking out keys on the piano in Waterfall while passing through to entertain himself (and a little bit to annoy Undyne)—but though he can’t read sheet music or play any full length songs, he can tickle out a short tune by sound once he’s heard it at least once. He’s got a good ear for notes, despite not having any actual ears. It may actually be some kind of perfect pitch thing going on in his head but he should not be informed of this ever because he will hang on the word ‘perfect’ and be utterly insufferable about it. Mostly, he just uses this to play a few random notes whenever he comes across a keyed instrument, or to abruptly switch to an impromptu recreation of iconic horror scores to catch people by surprise. The theme from Halloween or the tubular bells from The Exorcist are favorites, but he’s unpredictable enough to learn more if you turn your back on him too long.
What he probably spends the most time on, however, is quilting. Perhaps a bit surprising, with his…everything else about him, but he’s a skeleton who values his creature comforts quite a bit, many of which have been made considerably more difficult for him to enjoy due to the ways his body has changed. In this particular case, it’s his reduced physical sensation making it nearly impossible to feel warm. He’s never cold anymore, not really, but he’s never warm either and he takes that quite personally, almost offended by the uselessness of thin clothing and scraps that dare to call themselves blankets. If there are no blankets thick enough and heavy enough get him warm, he’ll just have to make them himself…and so that’s what he does. Any passingly usable cloth in his possession tends to end up part of a quilt, with little care for patterning or overall design—his only priority is thick and heavy and warm, and if he doesn’t feel like he’s in a panini press by the time he’s finished, then it’s back to the drawing board.
Bram (Descendtale Papyrus):
He maybe went a little bit nuts for awhile there after the human first left. Some might argue that he’s still a little bit nuts but he would agree he was pretty embarrassingly desperate in the first few years after. They were gone and they weren’t answering their phone and for everything they’d done, they had been his friend so…he was worried! But of course, monsters were trapped, with hope of leaving anytime soon soundly dashed, so he couldn’t just go look for them. He wanted to reach them, or just someone on the Surface who could relay a message. That’s how he started experimenting with radio, out of a misguided and impossible attempt to communicate out of the Underground with someone up there. He never reached anyone from down there, of course, but he found some comfort in trying—and eventually, enjoyment too! He likes fiddling with the equipment to tune into different frequencies, and the sound of empty static is soothing to him. It’s a lot more fun now that he’s aboveground and can actually hear other people, and he hopes to get his license to transmit himself soon!
Before the Surface, though, things were a little lonelier for him. Colder, darker. Too dark entirely—of course a dark environment was necessary to promote the growth of their staple crop and the artificial day-cycles were only making monsters waste more time sleeping than they already were, he understood the need for the dark…but surely, it didn’t have to be so complete? How was anyone to know that he was at home and available to host company if there were no warm, inviting lights in the window? Candles seemed the perfect solution, natural light from flickering fires that wasn’t too harsh, still a bit dim but plenty to see by! He started just collecting them so he would always have them on hand if needed, but eventually started making them himself with wax on the stove. Scent or color don’t matter much to him, but he really likes being able to customize the size and shape to his needs. And his needs…aren’t so much anymore, now that there’s regular sunlight, but candles are still great for when there isn’t, and when electric lights are little too intense. It never hurts to have more candles around, for emergencies!
He's also exploring a new hobby up on the surface, inspired by his and his brother’s new careers—bone collecting! Now, it’s not what you’re thinking, he’s not after human bones. Those are still very much in use by the deceased, and he's sure surviving loved ones would be very cross if tried to just take them! But his job was how he learned that humans and other organic, non-magical creatures all contain skeletons of their own and when they die everything but the bone rots away. He thinks it’s very cool and obviously humans are off the table to inspect more closely, but animals don’t mind. He takes note of any dead creatures he happens to find—mostly birds and squirrels—and after allowing the other local wildlife to have first pick at it, he collects the remains to take home. He isn’t overly fond of the smells and textures of rot and asked for his brother to help with the de-fleshing and degreasing with the first few things he brought back, but he's got a handle on it now and loves to artfully display his cleaned finds all around the house. Skulls are his favorite, but he has some lovely wishbones and plenty of vertebrae that he’s equally proud of showing off!
#anonymous#headcanons#undertale#underswap#underfell#swapfell/fellswap#horrortale#undergloom#horrorfell#horrorswap#horrorswapfell#gastertale#transcendtale#ascendswap#underfell fruition#swapfell fruition#descendtale#long post#open on dash at your own risk#lol
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The Last of Us HBO - Episode 2 thoughts
Warning: Pure yapping ahead! More thoughts and things I've noticed watching the show, it's not serious and I don't invite arguments (fellow yappers are more than welcome though)
(continuing with my episode by episode analysis of the tlou show, it's a long one folks! all chronologically written as i was watching the episode. spoilers under the cut)
Fantastic opening - love that we get to see the initial discovery in Jakarta and that they speak Indonesian only! It removes the show from a purely American pov and makes it international, which is something I personally missed a little from the game so it's a welcome addition
The little detail that the military men walk so fast, she has to jog a little to keep up
I like the fact that they didn't even try to cover the dead body at all - why would they?
Same girl I'd have that exact same reaction too 💀💀 visceral as shit
The following visual of the cordyceps reaching out of the corpse's mouth.... Eugh
Ibu Ratna's reaction after hearing 14 workers are missing - her shaking so badly she has to put her cup of tea down, her face reads of pure undiluted horror 🙌👌 - worth mentioning that the casting of Christine Hakim is absolutely top tier (she's basically the Dame Judi Dench of Indonesia fr) and she really brings a gravitas to the role
I find it fascinating and refreshing that the first thing the military man does is to ask about a vaccine or medicine to fix this situation, but the scientist/professor, instead says with absolutely certainty that there is nothing, and then proceeds to say with an eerily calm and assertive tone and face that they must bomb the city. Terrifying yet wonderful that they've finally used a different format to this conversation
Ibu Ratna stifling her sobs and asking to go be with her family, because she knows there is no other solution - Brava
That soft, gentle opening shot of Ellie curled up in the sun on a lush bed of green, a single butterfly crossing over *chef's kiss*
Her turning to see Joel and Tess, sat in the shadows on chairs, Joel with his gun drawn lmaooooo that's comedy right there
Ellie's sass at the interrogation 🤌
"There's not gonna be anything bad in here?" "Just you." "Oh, funny." 💀😂
The fact that Joel broke his hand beating that guy to death - the way Tess looks at Joel, all knowing and vaguely soft
Tess defending Ellie indirectly by wanting to continue with bringing her to the state house - Joel wanting to return to the QZ and saying it would be better for FEDRA do shoot her than them 💀
"You need to stop talking about this kid like she's got some kind of life in front of her." Damn Joel, Tess' face says it all
Joel: struggling to break of a piece of EXTREMELY dry and chewy jerky, Ellie: sammich
Ellie in the warm light, Joel in the cold dark, and Tess in the middle of the two?? Gorg
It's so funny how terribly Joel and Ellie get on at this point, like, they basically hate each other my god
"If she so much as twitches.." *Ellie immediately starts twitching* and then Tess's "Don't." She is so done with these two already lmao
The iconic scenery 🙌 the two massive skyscrapers with one leaning on the other? Oooohhh yeah
The fact that Tess stops and answers Ellie's questions :')
I can't stop looking at Ellie's bag it's just so accurate I love it
"Well, I mean, you got some balls on you, sister." SLAY girls support girls ✨
The specific way Ellie says "no" at the boyfriend question 💅
It's interesting that Tess' reaction to hearing the description of what we know to be a bloater, is "shit, I hope not", insinuating perhaps that she and Joel haven't dealt with those before, but then the way that she looks at Joel after Ellie asks about clickers tells me they know exactly what she's talking about with that one
Immediately after we hear a loud ass creepy scream in the distance, okay!
The set designers got this shit so extremely right goddamn, the hotel gotta be one of my favourite locations fr - I love that they still included this location even if it's at a completely different place in the original story, it works so well here and with Tess added on, the humour is great and the way the characters interact is fun and interesting (Joel's little hop into the water especially gets me, he's such a shit lmao)
Ellie is genuinely so fucking funny I love this kid
Joel offering his hand, immediately snatching it back once she's mostly up cause it's his broken one (but you can see it's more than that)
"Fuck, holy shit." "Come on, it wasn't that bad." "You try climbing ten fuckin floors with our knees. See how you feel." 😭😭
Joel's face at being left alone with Ellie lmao
"Nice knife." great conversation starter Joel, but also, reference to his pocket knife Sarah held in the previous episode? He doesn't have it, when did he have time to grab it after all, but yeah. Maybe I'm overthinking this lmao
"Where'd you learn to do that?" "The circus." *Joel rolls his eyes with such exasperation taht I can feel it through my screen*
"How long do infected live?" "Oh, I thought you went to school." "It's a really shitty one."
Joel avoiding answering the question about the FEDRA dude he killed due to Tess returning is peak writing
I really enjoy how the infected are portrayed in the show - they're not just individuals, they're part of a hive mind in a way, the mycelium connects them all one way or another, and they act like it (the way they all react to sunlight and extra so because they all react to each others pain as well, wow)
Added onto that, this extra lore about the way the cordyceps works is fantastic, it makes it even scarier that, according to Tess, you can accidentally wake up and attract infected from somewhere totally different - this means you're never actually safe 💀
Really love how Tess is so damn nice to Ellie all things considered. Still answering her questions, telling her she has to be careful, that just because she's immune doesn't mean there's no danger
"I have a spare hand." "Congratulations." 😭
I do love how quick Joel is to run over to Ellie whenever something happens (her swearing, falling over, gasping loudly)
The look that Joel and Tess share - they think they know and they're probably right
Dad mode™ activated
That building is anxiety central for me
Joel is so jumpy and twitchy it's a little funny tbh, I like it
Ellie's "oh shit whoops" face
Joel helping Ellie up :')
The sound effects 😭💀😭 they got the same team that did the game clicker sounds to do the show ones and I can TELL
The anxiety is palpable!! My stomach is in knots!! The entrance of the first clicker is terrifying!!
Joel's silent, almost sign language like, explanation for Ellie 😌
The clicker actors are fucking amazing jesus christ. And the special effects and makeup? So GOOD wow absolutely grotesque <3
Not me gasping with Ellie
If I were there I'd probably just hide under a table and hold my breathe 😭
I find the clickers to be quite bird-like, in game and in show
The silence as Joel reloads his gun, the sudden much closer clicking, the flashlight shining directly in its face 🤌
Joel now being the one to step on something crunchy 😩 THE WAY THE CLICKER LAUNCHES ITSELF AT HIM AND ELLIE ACROSS THE DISPLAY
Ellie crying out with pure fear and Joel holding the clicker back more so it's on him not her - HIM PUSHING HER BEHIND HIM!
BIG TESS SLAY
Impressed by how calm their reactions all are to seeing Ellie get bit (?) again (I thought it was more of a scratch at first but I assume it to be a bite due to their reactions to it)
"That was scary, this is wood." HA
The way Tess looks at Joel when he's busy wrapping her foot with diligence and care
I think this is the first sign that Tess had been bit, Joel seems to be looking at her like "what the hell is your problem" but listens and goes to watch Ellie anyway
The view line 😭🤌 love how we basically get this exactly from the game, including Joel looking at his watch :'(
The music 🙌
Second time you can really notice that Tess is differently - she handles Ellie harshly for basically the first time ever and totally ignores Joel
Joel moving Ellie away from the dead body
The squelching of the blood EUgH
Go makeup team go!
Oeiii screaming match :( mom and dad are fighting
The step back speaks volumes
"Oops, right?" just stab me it would hurt less, Anna's delivery of that line is heartbreaking
In fact little quick note of love to Anna Torv, she's such a fucking amazing actor and I love her portrayal of Tess so so much, she brought warmth, strength and balls of steel to the character fr!!
The fact that Tess basically confesses her feelings here, proclaims the knowledge that she feels something for Joel that he was never entirely able to reciprocate back, my god - her BEGGING him to take her because she knows nothing about the future but she believes that Ellie can change it in some capacity
Pedro's eye acting here is so potent, he says nothing but his eyes and face say it all
The mycelium!!!!!! Terrifying that in show canon, infected can basically call for backup!!! Brilliant addition and makes them so much more intimidating (also I HATED seeing the mycelium creep under that infected person's nails that really got a shudder out of me)
God bless the extras
Tess my beloved you make me cry so much you're amazing and you deserved better 😭 she's brave as fuck for this
Joel shaking, his lips quivering because fuck, she's going to die, and now he has to be fully responsible of this kid and he can't do this without her but he's gotta - the anxiety and fear in his eyes, his firm resolution after she says "save who you can save", the way he SNATCHES Ellie and walks away, Ellie fighting him tooth and nail but he knew she would, thats why he grabbed her like that.... I'm honestly just in so much awe and pain from this scene
The fear is Tess' face is so 😭😭
FUCK NO THAT ALMOST MADE ME THROW UP I WASN'T EXPECTING THAT JESUS FUCK. That was disgusting what the fuck 😭😭 don't know how to feel about watching the fucked up kiss of death like, eugh
The feeling when after failing to light the damn thing, she finally gets it, feels almost like a relief after all of that
Joel "big sad brown eyes" and Ellie "big traumatised brown eyes" will be the death of me
This is such a fucking sad ending to Tess' character but also, satisfying since she didn't die in vain
That final shot of Ellie alone with the burning state house in the background, sun beating down and a soft breeze in her hair, damn
If you make it to the end, thanks for reading! It's literally just my running thought process whilst watching!! Do you agree with some of my notes, was there anything you noticed that i didn't? Comments and reblogs welcome <3
Episode 1 thoughts:
Episode 3 thoughts:
#tlou#tlou hbo#the last of us#joel miller#joel the last of us#ellie williams#ellie the last of us#tess servopoulos#tess the last of us#pedro pascal#bella ramsey#anna torv#episode 2#episode thoughts#ramblings
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Tagged by @badfriendsworsecompany to post my top ten movies!! Ta for the tag 🖤
I-fucking-conic movie. It’s Jurassic Park, what more needs to be said?
All three of these movies are incredible, masterpieces, lightning-in-a-bottle pieces of cinema - everything, the casting, the music, the special effects, if there’s one thing you need to know about me it’s that I Fuckin’ Love Lord Of The Rings!
Oh, and it’s gotta be the extended versions too, not the standard eds. Once you go ‘stended you never go standard.
I had such low expectations going into see this, I was expecting some 2-bit Alex Rider knock-off. 2 hours later I left the cinema and said ‘shit. I think I just saw one of my favourite movies of all time.’ And I was right, perfectly blend of style and substance (just a shame that the sequel dropped the substance part)
Another thing about me - I Fuckin’ Love Spider-Man!! These two movies in particular hold such a special place for me, they were my introduction not just to Spider-Man but to the superhero genre, Danny Elfman went off with the score, and I’ll always be stunned by how incredible Spider-Man 2 came out, especially after learning what was going on behind the scenes (fascinating stuff btw, worth a googs)
Just a balls-to-the-wall feel-good farcical comedy. I can see this movie over and over and always have a great time with it
Ohh, this one’s in the top ten but Hot Fuzz and Shaun aren’t? You’re goddamn right! This movie is criminally underrated and easily the best performance of Simon Pegg’s career, if you haven’t seen this one or if you only saw it once, I beg of you, I implore you, you must rewatch it!! Give it it’s due!
And finally number ten, another i-fucking-conic movie, that soundtrack my god, Michael J Fox is a delight, one of THE tightest screenplays to ever come out of Hollywood. This movie is an absolute treat
Okay, time to tag: @primatechnosynthpop @aethelfred @lilithsfloppydildo @xgothykittenx @b-listbadboy @oli-zombieweasel @pyramidofmice @gotta-get-back-to-hatchetfield AND anybody else who wants to!
As always no pressure etc. etc. 🤘
#tag game#movie tag#top ten movies#thanks for the tag!#Jurassic park#Lord of the rings#kingsman the secret service#spider man 2002#spider-man 2#the world’s end#rat race#back to the future
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Hello, this is just ask for fun...
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Favorite antagonist:
Thanks if you want to answer....
Oh this might be get long because I love blabbing on about things I like, but if you're ok with that I'm happy to answer! (also disclaimer idk if anything here will be like. DEFINITIVE all time favorite but all of my answers will at least be within the realm of being one of my favorites lol).
Favorite female character: I just did a Chihayafuru rewatch and forgot how much I really liked Chihaya!! I relate a lot to her of having this kind of hyperfocus/passion for things I love and losing myself to it a little bit, and also how she navigates that passion with the relationships she's formed. I kinda hc her as neurodivergent like me lol but I think she's such a good protagonist!
Favorite male character: Going through heavy Sanji brainrot right now so I gotta go with him lol. You guys know my feelings, but the fun thing about Sanji is how deeply layered he is and how you can just keep picking at him. He has such deep flaws, he can be kind of insufferable but at the same time so caring and good, he really fascinates me.
Favorite animanga: God it has to be One Piece, and I hesitate in saying that because I got into it so recently, but man. Don't get me wrong, it's flawed, I can bitch about the things I don't like, but at the end of the day, there are very few things I've loved to this extent. The themes and the characters and the world and just everything works so well and is filled with such love and care and attention. And it just keeps getting better, which is ridiculous, this thing has been going on for 25 years and Egghead is one of the best arcs in the series. I have full trust that it will stick it's landing and it will be unlike anything we've ever seen.
Animanga I'm currently enjoying: I've been making my way through Blue Lock, it's a lot of fun! I finished the one season that's available and now I'm reading the manga. More of an action series than a sports series lmao but the characters are really fun to watch, it's intense, and it's pretty funny in how intense it is lmao.
Animanga that exceeded all of your expectations: One Pi-No we're going with something else lmao. I'm gonna say JJK actually! I actually gave the first episode a try around the time it aired and it just...did not click lol. Didn't watch more, and then one day I had nothing to do and gave it another try, and I wanted to smack myself, because I think JJK has a great first episode/opening. REALLY liked the first season and then read HI and Shibuya and was just shocked by how good it was, it really surprised me in how amazing those arcs are.
Unpopular animanga you really love: Not sure if this means unpopular as in "guilty pleasure" or "underrated" so I'll answer both lol. I still think it's good but Kill la Kill is definitely a guilty pleasure as well for me, it has a lot more fan service than I'm usually comfortable with and I would undeniably embarrassed to be seen watching it lmao. In terms of underrated, for manga I would say I want Sweat and Soap to be a lot more popular than it is (begging god everyday for an anime adaptation). For an anime, Mushishi definitely is critically acclaimed but I don't think enough people have watched it, it just has such a unique and calming atmosphere, even with the melancholy. It's a good intro anime too for people who are just starting out as well.
Favorite Romance: Oooh maybe a three way tie between Yona of the Dawn, Fruit's Basket, and Kaguya Sama Love is War. All three are so different lol, but maybe something I like about all of them is that (apart from fanfiction) I don't usually like reading straight up romance, there's gotta be something else too. With Yona it's the fantasy elements/big plot, with Kaguya it's the comedy, and Fruba is mainly a romance but it focuses on all the interpersonal relationships, not just the romantic ones. But it kind of simmers in the background until later on it overtakes the story, that's honestly the good shit.
Favorite Fantasy: I might just have to give a list here lmao - Revolutionary Girl Utena, One Piece, FMAB, ATLA, Yona of the Dawn, HxH, Dungeon Meshi, Lord of the Rings, PJO, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Discworld, Mushishi, The Tales from Earthsea (NOT the ghibli movie lmao the book), and if I can include video games: All of the Legend of Zelda series, Hollow Knight, Hades, Super Mario Galaxy
Favorite sci-fi: Everything Everywhere All at Once, or maybe Stein's Gate as well! Oh Neon Genesis Evangelion too.
Favorite drama: Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū, I also watched Succession and enjoyed that a lot too (kinda a comedy too but more of a drama imo). Omg I can't forget Monster either (is it a drama? idk close enough)
Favorite comedy: Hmm one I haven't really talked about is Hinamatsuri. Omg I should rewatch that, it really is hilarious lmao I love it a lot.
Favorite anime movie: Princess Mononoke, Your Name, and One Piece Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island. OH I really like Promare as well!
Next in my watchlist: That's the question lmao. Considering a rewatch of either Haikyuu or ATLA, and I am currently watching Dungeon Meshi, but I want to maybe watch a longer series next? I would take recs though!
Next in my read list: After Blue Lock, I'll probs go back to my One Piece read and also do a Chainsaw Man reread, I am woefully behind and have forgotten pretty much everything rip. Also need to reread Yona at some point but I might wait til the summer for that.
Favorite antagonist: Kenjaku <3
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"send me a character" Armand?
YESSSS
first impression: my first impression of him was from the movie when i was a freshman in high school, and i honestly wasn’t super into him. i love antonio banderas but he just didn’t grab me as armand, especially since i hated brad pitt louis so much and all of his scenes are with pitt. when i first read the book after watching the movie, i at first didn’t trust him with louis, but i loved their scenes together and their discussions and i really wished the movie actually adapted them properly. then by the end, once i was finally on board with their relationship, louis didn’t care for him anymore and i was heartbroken for him. so i had an interesting start with armand!
impression now: i would literally die for him, i’ve felt such intense love for him ever since i read tvl and now after reading tva i think he’s one of the best written and absolutely the most complex character in the series. his arc is PHENOMENAL, the depth of sympathy i have for him is enormous despite all he’s done, his character voice and style of writing is so mesmerizing and the tragedy of all that’s befell him makes me want to cry. at the same time, the way he writes around certain incidents and explains his wrongdoings is so fascinating; he never mentions the interactions with lestat in paris, and he glosses over his reaction to marius being alive, and you just have to wonder WHY. he is an enigma and my best friend and all that i adore and my god i am so excited for assad’s portrayal of him
favorite moment: there’s like……so many to choose from but i will always love him pushing lestat off the tower it was the first moment that i was like. oh he’s a BITCH . thank god. from tva it’s the swordfight with the guy he slept with it’s just such a cool scene and i loved how brave he was 🥹
idea for a story: i want to see a comedy where he lestat and louis try to live together in book verse i think it would be v funny. like the odd throuple
unpopular opinion: in the show he is not mind controlling louis he’s just saying “your ex is a piece of shit” over and over again and failing to disclose his stint with human experimentation. in the book pretty much all of his acts of evil are so understandable from his mindset, it’s so clear why he does the things he does and i could never hate him for any of it, he’s just so interesting to me
favorite relationship: it’s a really solid tie in the books between devil’s minion and armandstat. for a while devil’s minion was my second favorite ship, but honestly i think armandstat has overtaken them for the time being. in the show idk yet!! i project a lot of my book feelings onto him cause that’s all we have to go off of, but i’m excited for all his relationships in the show
favorite headcanon: he likes to crawl around on the ceiling and just stay there until daniel comes in and turns on the light and then he screams
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8 shows to get to know me better
tagged by @bookshelfdreams (thank you!) uh...... nearly two weeks ago, which is actually less than i thought! >.> so, not just shows i like, but shows that encapsulate my personality... hmm... let's see.....
okay i mean obviously we've gotta start with Our Flag Means Death. period piece (and EARLY C18th, that's less common than i'd like!), mundane comedy, pirates, queer as hell, lots of body and accent diversity (accent diversity!!! in a period piece!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)... if it was just a bit more accurate about boats, it'd just be my brain on the screen XD
I'm putting Elementary on here, because it's definitely in the top three Sherlock Holmes adaptations, and you can't understand me without understanding my preoccupation with early detective fiction and queer history and adaptation analysis. but Elementary specifically has Lucy Liu and a Sebastian Moran plot, which are also dear to my heart :)
Stellar Firma. weird british improv. sci-fi comedy that if you think about it too long turns sharply into existential horror. anarchist anti-capitalism. an interesting and complicated sentient computer. also i love everything Tim Meredith does, so, jot that down
on the note of sci-fi comedy that's secretly existential horror: Red Dwarf, maybe? even when it's bad, it makes for a FASCINATING encapsulation of, like, the inevitable entropy of the classic sitcom format, or late 80s/early 90s homophobia, and god knows I love to over-analyse that shit
John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme. not JUST season 9, although season 9 is also Everything To Me (queer characters! ACE CHARACTER?? complicated but generally very sweet family dynamics!! interesting format and structure!! lawry lewin is there!), but the whole show is just whimsical and silly and full of puns and historical jokes and... it's just so fucking refreshing, and Finnemore's such a good writer it makes me angry
Good Omens s1 is actually an extremely good encapsulation of my existential outlook (through the lens of christianity rather than atheism, but like... well, yeah). also: those bitches gay, and indulging in earthly delights like oysters and sushi and old books is Very Important
I really liked bookshelf's idea of putting in something you hate (and Vikings was an excellent fucking choice there), so it's gotta be Sherlock. what a wild disappointment that show was, for so very many reasons, all encapsulated by the hbomb video essay <3
Hornblower. what can I say? I watched it way too young and imprinted on the boats and learned a lot about personal and political structures in closed societies. also, Ioan Gruffudd and Paul McGann are hot.
there's probably something huge I'm forgetting about, but oh well, it's a sunday, i'm allowed to slack off XD
not tagging anyone because I'm lazy, so consider this your excuse if you want one! <3
#tag meme#pointless post is pointless#i was so tempted to put the RQG/Stellar Firma crossover special#because i think about it so much more than i should XD#but shoutout to the genuine longlist: Avatar the Last Airbender; Horrible Histories; and Wiedzmin
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Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 194
Rock and a Hard Place/The Rings of Akhaten
“Rock and a Hard Place”
Plot Description: Sheriff Mills calls the brothers to help solve the murder of a church chastity group’s members. They infiltrate the group, then Dean disappears
Would I Survive the First Five Minutes??: asexuality 👏and👏chastity 👏aren’t👏the👏same👏thing👏 though $20 says she “broke her chastity vow and is being punished” which is already bullshit but anyway, I’m safe
I appreciate the reminder that Kevin exists
Well, I wasn’t gonna mention that whatever abducted that girl had………..some kind of blue fire power but I guess if the one witness mentions it, I should too
They said it can’t be an angel because it wasn’t a white light but the one who exploded those people a couple episodes ago didn’t use white light either
Oh wow. This church is messed up. And I don’t trust this last one bit. She’s TOO sweet. It’s almost sickly
I’m dying at Dean being…kind of a virgin for the third time in his life: original time, after coming back from hell, and now that he’s taken this vow of purity at the church. Talk about it being a construct
Fascinating (and somewhat unsurprising but in a very disappointing way) that everyone in this group besides Sam and Dean is a woman……..
Uh, Dean…….you cannot just write a spicy romance novel scene (poorly) in front of all these extremely repressed women
God this feels like a season two episode. Dean trying to hook up with some woman (this time the chastity counselor) while Sam actually does the work they’re there to do
I knew it was………….oh Jody, she’s still finding out all the things that exist. It’s gonna be a long couple days for her. She just found out angels and dragons are real
I really hope he gets hella shot down. I’m not saying that I like the idea of the chastity group but to INTENTIONALLY go after a woman who has dedicated so much of her time and energy into this. If this is her choice, I gotta respect that. AND SO SHOULD YOU, DEAN
I hope she’s absolutely playing him…goddammit. Talk about a lame fade to black would be sex scene that only serves to get Dean kidnapped by whatever this is
I just…like everything happening topside is buddy comedy shit, and everything happening in this not a virgin cellar is a REAL horror movie
Omg one…Sammy I love you but your blood is not going to count as virgin’s blood here. Don’t like Jody using her position as a sheriff to be able to punch this poor woman in the face to get her blood for the weapon
How many of these people are going to stay with their evangelical church when they find out their being held captive by a Roman goddess
I KNEW SHE WASN’T TO BE TRUSTED. That said…….she’s delightfully evil
Jody just did to Vesta what Horikoshi did to my boyyyyy
It’s GOOD that Sam is starting to piece together that there’s something wrong with him. BAD that Dean keeps lying to him. I DO NOT TRUST ZEKE
“The Rings of Akhaten”
Plot Description: the Doctor takes Clara to the Festival of Offerings, but the Old God demands a sacrifice!
Sarah Stop Watching Doctor Who at Eleven PM Challenge Difficulty: impossible
Noooooooooo is the Doctor watching all of Clara’s childhood?? No. Why? That’s so weird. Like…were you also somehow outside her parents’ house the night she was conceived?? YOU’RE BEING WEIRD AND GROSS, DOC
There she goessssss acting like a NORMAL companion, not knowing what’s going on and running around an alien planet without the Doctor’s knowledge but trying to help someone in need
Just a thought: maybe we shouldn’t be holding festivals where children get sacrificed. I dunno
It’s a VAMPIRE???
No. It’s not. The old god is this FUCKING SUN
It’s not the quantity, it’s the quality of the sacrifice. The Doctor can offer all the memories he wants to be rid of, but all of the hopes and dreams Clara’s mom had? That got passed on to her? There are so many. Too many
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ok halfway through the new kids in the hall season rn and i really like it (it definitely picked up in episodes 3 and 4). no spoilers but the whole time i'm watching it i'm sitting here thinking oh my god this is going to be so fun to analyze for my video essay
#the video essay on season 6 won't be for a while bc i'm gonna go through all the original seasons plus brain candy and death comes to town#plus a special video on mouth congress (bc it's KITH-adjacent and i love them)#maybe a book report on buddy babylon or some other stuff from the kids in the hall extended universe#and then a video on the new season#bc i am a nerd who has too many opinions#but oh my god this is a fascinating piece of comedy and i want to analyze it so much
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The Purest Things-Something There
Warnings: Mentions of murder. Canon-typical violence.
Word Count: 2.5k
a/n: i am so beyond sorry that it has taken this long to get another chapter out. this doesn’t follow my post schedule that i had previously given, but hopefully this can be a good place holder till later this week.
The Purest Things Masterlist
May 2008
Bookend: "It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent." -Madeleine Albright
"There's no way I'm doing that," you rebuttal, "Hotch? Tell them it's a ridiculous idea." He stays silent, but his mouth twitches slightly.
Oh, you son of a-
"Richards is a classic narcissist. The challenge of facing a tough, fearless, and intelligent woman will give him his high. Narcissists are drawn to goal-oriented women, women who are resilient, adaptable, yet decisive. Show him that you are a good listener, but don't praise him."
"Think of him like a wild animal," Spencer adds, "You don't feed zoo animals because they are unpredictable. Remember, narcissists have an extraordinary sense of self, and when you praise his ego, you enable his unstable and feeble mind. He doesn't hear praise; he hears how much better he is than you. If you don't feed the beast, he won't have the stamina to combat your confidence later."
"Once you disarm him, I'll come in and challenge his confidence," Hotch concludes.
Could you have said that less attractively? That would have been more helpful.
Aaron cheekily smirks as if reading your mind but quickly looks away. You wish you didn't blush so fast-that you had some sense to keep your emotions to yourself. In a second, your cheeks are rosy, and you are convinced that everyone in the room can perceive your feelings as if you wrote them on little notes and passed them around.
You grunt and roll your eyes, "I hate all of you."
Derek snaps his fingers at you, "Lose the jacket."
"All men are pigs," you spit while removing your blazer, leaving you in a fitted tank top and your tight-legged jeans that hug your curves in all of the right places.
Derek wolf whistles at you, and you hurl your jacket at him. Aaron lets his eyes slide up and down your body, his gaze lasting longer than it should. He swears that as you stride into the interrogation room, your hips swing a bit farther side to side than usual. It is the very action that radiates courage, a mind coupled perfectly with itself and the world around it, concentrated and solemn.
Typically, Hotch would divert the task of adulating a narcissist to Prentiss, but he knows if anyone can take command of someone's attention, it's you. How does he know? Because you captivate him far more often than he cares to admit, defying his very being with every interaction. You are a secret weapon that he wants to keep concealed until you can allow your talents to shine genuinely. Aaron knows that now is your moment.
++++
"What is it that I am being accused of? Fraud? Embezzling?" The sharp-dressed businessman questions; his gaze is straying further below your eyes than you care for.
Pig.
You throw a file down on the medal table, and it slides across, stopping right in front of the man, successfully redirecting his stare somewhere other than your chest.
"Try murder."
His eyes widen, "You're joking. Come on, where are the hidden cameras? I'm ready for you to yell candid camera now! I am Milton Richards, for god's sake!"
"I don't know!" You shrug your shoulders. "Why don't you explain this to me, Mr. Richards. I'm just as confused as you are. What reason could a successful, charming, handsome, wealthy business mogul like yourself possibly have to kill someone?"
"Oh please," Richards scoffs, "This isn't an interrogation. You've already pegged me as guilty."
"I don't agree, but you have the right to feel how you feel."
He purses his lips, leaning as far away from you as physically possible while handcuffed to the table.
"Milton, why did you try to escape a moving vehicle when my team apprehended you?"
"Just felt like it, I guess," he shrugs mockingly.
"So, something just randomly compelled you to flee the custody of a federal agent?"
Richards leers at you. You stand up and walk around the table, leaning down next to him, "I get it. I do. You're a suave, wealthy, and ruthless business tyrant. You have to cover your tracks-do what it takes to survive."
He raises his eyebrow, turning to face you, your faces mere inches from each other. I got you now.
"Trust me. I know probably better than anyone what it takes to maintain a position you fought your entire life for. I'm a woman; I had to claw my way into the F.B.I. Do you think it's easy being surrounded by a team filled with uncontrolled testosterone? Womanhood requires balls; I see you keep your balls in your pants, cool, cool. Mine are on my chest, up top. As you've so duly noticed."
His eyes flicker to the aforementioned area, and you restrain yourself from gagging.
"And you know what, Richards? I use them every day of my life. Because in my line of business, sometimes I have to take the backdoor to get things done. Why do I get the sense that you were the same way before you became Mr. Wolf of Wall Street? How else does a kid who grew up in the projects become a multi-millionaire mogul by 27?"
"We both know what the other is capable of. C'mon, let's show each other a bit of respect here. No games, let's be upfront with each other," you appeal.
++++
Aaron watches as you work the room like it is your stage. You play the part perfectly. He admires your ability to absorb things and then responded rather than immediately react to douse firey circumstances rather than add to the flames.
Derek finds himself next to Aaron, smugly observing Aaron's visible fascination with you.
"She's fantastic, Hotch," Derek beams with pride. Hotch holds his breath behind pursed lips in an attempt to barricade himself from the feelings of foolish jealousy he feels creeping up.
I know she is. I think I recognize it a little too well.
Aaron knows that Derek will be scrutinizing his reaction to the commendation and refrains from responding.
Of course, Derek reads this lack of a reaction as a response itself. And he finds it strangely amusing.
++++
"Here's what I think happened," you twirl your finger around the manilla file, "I think you were having some money troubles and your top investors caught onto your little games. When you sat down, you volunteered the crimes fraud and embezzlement as reasons you assumed we brought you into custody. You listed them like they are apparent reasons for us to charge you. Those are two areas you are clearly willing to take the fall for and have cause to oblige by."
Opening the file, a photograph is revealed within of a murder victim. Richards shifts uncomfortably in his seat, stifling a cough.
"Do you know this man?"
"N-no," he claims as his eyes flutter from the photo to his hands.
Surprised by his blatant tell, you glance back at the two-way mirror.
Turning back to the suspect with a newfound spark in your eyes, you press harder, "Strike one. Try again."
"Excuse me?"
"The man in the image is Walter Barone, the C.E.O. of Jameson Whitely Associates...your accounting firm. Your company was going bankrupt, Milton. There was nowhere left for you to turn. So, do you want to try that again? This time, answer my questions directly and honestly."
"Walt had a reserve saved for me worth $5 million. Last week when I approached him about dipping into the fund to keep the company afloat, he withheld it. I wouldn't kill him for it, though."
"Well, see, that's the problem here, Milton. When he was found, that little reserve of yours was nowhere to be found. Naturally, you can assume where my mind goes when I try and put two and two together, right?"
"I told you," he says, clearly provoked by your accusation, "I wouldn't...didn't kill him."
"Wasn't it you, in your book, right? Who said, 'It's surprising what a man will do when properly motivated?' I don't know about you, but losing everything you'd ever worked for and having your one saving grace held from you seems like pretty good motivation."
Silence. "Oh, come on, Milton, now is not the time to act so arrogant!"
He slams his fists on the table; you abstain from being startled in an attempt to show him no fear.
Wild animals can smell fear.
"Arrogant, huh? Why don't you step up and prove me wrong? Prove you're better than me. You despise me for being successful; I despise you for your assumption that you could waltz in here like a tramp and seduce me into giving myself up. What? Too harsh? I'm not sure you and I are even the same species."
Hotch bursts into the room, and you quickly signal for him to stand down. I've got this.
He gives you a prideful wink. I know you do.
Somehow Aaron being in the room gives you that last little push to conclude this grand performance of yours. Slowly, you begin clapping dramatically for his little one-person comedy act. He certainly knows how to play the fool.
"Is that a dare? Challenge accepted. Your entire life, you have suffered from a disease... a fragile ego. You have built these walls of detachment so that you can conveniently solicit status to hide your true, weak self. You lash out because you feel it compensates for your insecurities."
"The truth is, despite being at the top of the corporate chain, every day you lead the life of a loser. You are willing to destroy people psychically, emotionally, and mentally. And you view that as a cause for celebration. You are the embodiment of a loser and abject failure."
Hotch touches the small of your back; you shiver at the sudden warmth that fills your body in reaction to it. He hands you a piece of paper, one that seals Richards' conviction.
"Milton Richards, you are under arrest for the murder of Walter Barone, Hank Simmons, Frankie Lisbon, and Jillian Ryder."
Hotch motions for you to do the honors.
"By all means, lead the way."
Holding yourself proud and tall, you waltz over to Milton and hoist him out of his chair. Inclining your lips to his ear, you tell him contemptuously, "You lose."
++++
"Way to go, superstar! You had us all on the edge of our seats," Derek says, wrapping his muscular arms around you. You breathe in his cologne and savor the sensation of being in his arms.
Since the day you met Morgan, you've felt a draw to him. Not in a romantic way, though you proudly admit he is hands-down one of the most gorgeous men to set foot on earth. He gives you the feeling of safety, warmth, and brotherly love. His hugs rejuvenate you after a long day of work, and you see to it that neither of you leaves the office without receiving your signature embraces.
Aaron observes you and Derek's shared embrace from the shelter of his office. Before he can comprehend his movements, his legs carry him to the terrace overlooking the bullpen.
What do you think you're doing, Hotch? Pull yourself together. They’re friends. Just like you and her are.
Dismissing his inner voice of reason, he calls out to you, "Y/L/N. See me in my office."
You grimace at his tone of voice but abide by his request.
Derek chuckles, "Green is not that man's color."
"What?" You turn to him, confused.
"Goodnight, superstar."
"Night, handsome," you blow him a kiss, trying to brush his comment out of your mind.
++++
"You summoned?"
Aaron's whiskey-colored eyes meet yours. The tempo of your heart quickens like a metronome.
"You did a phenomenal job in there."
"I've learned from the best." You. I've learned from you.
He clears his throat, "Those things you said...a-about the men on this team. Is that how you truly feel?"
Shocked by his willingness to believe such a misleading statement, you gasp and close the distance between the two of you.
You must have some nerve to believe that I would ever view you as anything other than the most upstanding man I've ever met.
"Aaron, what I said in there is further than the truth than I would have liked to have strayed. In fact, it was with you that I finally felt equal as a human being-like someone recognized me for my intellect and self-worth. A woman can't acquire that regardless of how 'equal' this world claims to be."
Aaron finds himself lost in your eyes, absorbing every meaning behind your words.
"It was a freeing feeling having someone I respect so highly show me similar respect."
No. Don't stop talking. Please. Hotch blushes at his inner monologue, incapable of comprehending precisely what kind of influence you hold on him.
"Anyway," you laugh, brushing away a strand of hair that had fallen in your face, "Sorry for my little tangent."
"No," Hotch interjects firmly, "Never apologize for expressing your feelings. I assured you last year that I'll always be available as a sounding board for you. That offer still stands."
Your gaze softens as you study him, his intentions, his mannerisms. He notices your pupils dilate, and it commences a chain reaction within his veins. To him, it's not the fact that you radiate beauty on the outside. Sure, you are physically fit and put in the effort to maintain your appearance. Naturally, that would be why someone like Derek Morgan would have you on his radar.
But, Aaron has gradually grown accustomed to the kindness that you seem to reserve just for him. He sees the differences between how you act around the team versus when you step inside his office or are alone in the car with him, even the way your confidence elevates when he walks into the interrogation room.
These differences aren't unique to just you, though. Aaron notices the same changes in himself when he is around you. Never did he expect to go home from work and lie in bed thinking about the way your eyes strayed on his for a moment too long, or how as he completed paperwork at his desk, he'd replay in his mind a cheesy joke you told the team. He knows how you like your coffee from observing you in the break room one too many times.
One cream, two sugars.
Your laughter warms his body from the inside out. When you talk about your favorite comic book with Prentiss and Morgan, the twinkle in your eye never fails to bring a smile to his face. He knows that you hate getting out of the car when it rains because your perfectly straightened hair that you spent god knows how long on will undoubtedly curl.
His changes were less evident on the outside. But, he knew that deep down, there is something there that wasn't there before.
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liveblogging observations, all condensed into one post since it’s so late:
- oh shit. the suit. the suit. AND THE COAT?? eret has raised the fucking BAR
- stomping boots to stomp the fuck outta the egg lmaooo
- o h? an overthrow arc, you say? “we need to do something abt this for the greater good of the server” eret my beloved.
- eret please one of the pro-omelettes is going through her own identity crisis and everybody else is either dealing with the prison
- the most casual declaration of war: “i’ve decided that i don’t like all of this red shit around, want to help me destroy it?” iconic.
- “i’ve not had any detrimental effects” hmm. hmmmmm.
- “i’d break the egg but i’m afraid it’d unleash whatever’s inside the egg on the entire server... i’ve fucked up enough times, i’d rather not fuck up again” [tucks this into my eret observations]
- there’s so many egg outposts klkgjhsgjhds i, for one, think it would’ve been hilarious if they all built their rooms around the egg’s nest and just barely avoided running into each other down there
- LMFAOOOO two of the best builders on the server and they’re hunkered down in a little tiny room in an abandoned, flooded base. that’s... a badass, and lowkey sad aesthetic
- “badboyhalo seems to be the main mouthpiece. one thing that we should keep in mind is- i don’t think that’s really their fault. we can’t hold this against them. i don’t want to hurt them.” foolish my BELOVED thank you
- “i don’t know if we destroy the egg, do we destroy their minds?” if nobody’s got me, i know foolish’s got me!!
- eret’s 20.5 days played vs foolish’s 26.6 days played on the server, this is so fucking funny, foolish’s been here for barely a third of the time eret has
- “definitely not eret and foolish’ secret base” i love these fools, this is a comedy
- very interesting how c!eret’s definition of power has changed, i think? from claiming kingship was power to recognizing that fear is no more powerful than respect and knowledge?
- “there’s too much sad in this smp” “if everybody got mental health help, so many problems would be solved” you both are so right
- “one diamond or blow up a piece of history” when you put it like that,,, KDSKJLH
- chat: sees michael art
- chat: goes feral
- eret theory: vines are related to the mortal plane, somehow. c!eret believes that in fucking with the natural order of things, the egg accelerated, and that the vines started accelerating after wilbur’s failed revival. now these theories may not necessarily be correct but again: it’s fascinating how much more connected to this side of matters c!eret tends to be/ pass themself off as?
- “it wasn’t wilbur that came back, but something else?” mentions of ghostbur seeing two, then one figure.
- anyways egg-breaking time
- “it wasn’t always peaceful for me. since i’ve arrived, i’ve kept the peace, though.” foolish lore foolish lore, callbacks to being a former totem of death?
- “not many people live in this area anymore” foolish please you don’t have to call that out because i will Cry. partially the bloodvines forcing them to abandon it, partially everybody drifting.
- “after l’manberg, everybody split off” yeah. :tears:
- ah eret lore discussion with foolish,,,, “after my betrayal, i’d hoped that things would go back to how they were” correct me if i’m wrong, but the VODs from way back then also showed quite a bit of thirst for power, right? there’s a character analysis waiting here
- “seperated them infinitely more, and now i’m just holding on to what little i have left, i guess” gamers i WILL cry don’t test me!!
- “when i think of the egg, the first thing i think of is i don’t know” oh man, yeah, that’s probably not something that a fuckin ancient totem god is used to, huh
- i will say tho, my guy, “nobody’s fighting the egg anymore” bro they’re either underground, absent, or fighting a different concern,,, u should talk to tommy pspspsps talk to tommy or fundy or niki- ah. eret-syndicate conflict potential,,, hmhmhm
- punz is canonically a valorant pro player and i agree with this
- after the egg: ant’s power: can speak enchanting table, ponk’s power: can speak for the egg, punz’s power: gets a new fit, and bbh’s power: he can swear. he’s been unleashed, oh fuck oh shit-
- ah, so the end of the stream is where foolish drops the fuckin lore bomb, okay. [1:24:54 is where it starts!]
- “cleaning up the mess of the wither cult” “what?” “what do you mean?” “are you thinking of a different person, or-?”
- “nope, you, eret, one with the glasses, one with the netherite armor”
- “u h”
- “it was a while ago, i suppose.”
- foolish and eret both are confused as fuck and y’know what, fair enough.
- worldbuilding! cults outside of the smp, trolls, mountains! i love it here, foolish, eret thank you for feeding us
- “i’ve been here for months-” “well, i do agree, you’ve been here for months, but you’ve been elsewhere, eret!”
- “have i shown you my eyes before?” “trust me, i know what your eyes look like” followed by “the sunglasses are a new look for you”
- HELLO???
- “you’re not scared?” i’m gonna make a post on this in one fuckin second
- “we’ll catch up, old pal” WELL OKAY
- to the person saying “let’s go old man hd dementia” in chat: i’m already wheezing please
#eret#foolish gamers#dream smp#liveblogging tag#this got so long but yknow what i'm saving it for my own ref#liveblogging ref
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Chapters: one. ~ two. ~ three. ~ four. ~ five. ~ six. ~ seven.
Wordcount: 2.3k
Summary: Akaashi Keiji catches glimpses of another life in his dreams. He dreams of fields of endless gold, of constellation of stars that light up the night sky. He hears echoes of the birdsong in her laugher, the songs of the gods in the wind.
(Loosely inspired by ‘Your Name’, aka Kimi No Nawa, featuring Haikyuu’s own pretty Tokyo boy)
Wordcount: 3.5k
Masterlist here
AO3 Link here
Author’s note: This fic is a little different from my usual work, so I’m a little nervous about publishing it. If you do like it, would love if you leave a comment / reblog / anything!
If you’d like to be included in the taglist, do drop me a msg/ask!
‘It’s rare to see young men like you buying flowers for their mother’, the florist comments offhand as she wraps his order of yellow chrysanthemums in paper.
Akaashi smiles, accustomed to the friendly florist by now. ‘I guess I’ve always had a partiality for flowers’, waving to the florist as he leaves to head to Shibuya to meet Bokuto for Izakaya. He’s running late, but Bokuto doesn't mind, hooting good naturedly at the comedy show playing on the television in the rundown bar.
‘Agaaaashi, you made it!’ Bokuto rises from his seat to give him a jovial fist bump.
‘Of course I did’, he responds dryly. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me from my appointment with you’. He spends most of dinner listening to Bokuto’s recent exploits both with the national team and MSBY. Excitement still sparkles in the older man’s eyes as he recounts each and every match he’s played in, and Akaashi idly wonders how it is that Bokuto seems to have managed to pack on even more muscle in the short span of a month, the last time they met up was to see Bokuto off at the airport for the World Cup.
‘You should have continued playing volleyball in university’, Bokuto crows in between mouthfuls of yakiniku and beer and Akaashi shakes his head at the refrain he’s so used to hearing from his senpai.
‘I wouldn’t be able to maintain my grades if I wanted to take volleyball seriously in university, plus there’s no guarantee I’d even get off the bench’, he answers self-effacingly.
‘But you have the best tosses, Akaaaaaashi!!’ Bokuto declares, his words slightly slurred, and Akaashi wonders if he should start to inch Bokuto’s beer away from him. After consuming far too much barbecued meat (Bokuto took the liberty of ordering twice of what Akaashi would normally order, waving his protests off by stating grandly that he’ll take care of the bill, he’s the one working after all!), Bokuto slips into a food-drunk stupor, happy to listen to his anecdotes of university life, and he takes the chance to ramble on about his advanced Japanese classical literature course that he finds far more fascinating than his class on modern literature to his best friend.
They stumble out of the izakaya when the line outside grows far too long to be ignored, Bokuto draping a heavy arm over Akaashi’s shoulder, the red tint on the tips of his ears betraying his slightly tipsy state. As they stand at the traffic light patiently waiting for the light to change from red to green, Bokuto turns to him and grasps his shoulders in his large, warm hands.
‘I’m really proud to have you as a friend, Akaashi’, Bokuto tells him seriously. ‘And I’m going to prove to you that I can be the best ace so you can be proud of me too’. The molten gold glimmering in Bokuto’s gaze fills him with far more warmth than any alcohol could possibly achieve.
‘I’m already proud of you, Bokuto-san’, he answers, his earnestness resounding in every word of his short declaration. Bokuto beams at him in response and bounds across the pedestrian walkway in approximately three strides, ignoring Akaashi’s chiding to ‘look before you cross the road, even if you have the right of way!’
Many things may have changed since high school, but some things still stay the same.
His dreams take a strange turn that night.
He’s back in the Fukurodani gym with his teammates, but it’s not accurate to say he’s with them - rather, he’s watching his past self from afar, seated on the bench, a wrist guard on his right arm. He doesn’t remember ever injuring himself enough to warrant a wrist guard at any point during his high school volleyball career, but it’s probably just another oddity of being in a dream.
‘I wish your wrist was feeling better, Akaashi. I miss your tosses already’, the pout in Bokuto’s voice pronounced.
‘It’s just for a while - I’ll be right as rain tomorrow!’ he hears himself say cheerfully - but that doesn’t make sense either. No one in their right mind has ever described the way he speaks as cheerful, and the rest of his teammates glance over at him curiously. Then his past self awkwardly tucks his legs under the bench, ankles crossed almost as if he’d like nothing better than to fold himself away with all the cloth vests they use for practice – but that doesn’t make sense either, he doesn’t even know why he’s behaving like some fish out of water. While volleyball doesn’t come naturally to him as it does to someone like Bokuto-san, and there are times he feels like he’s struggling to swim upstream, his fingers still itch to toss a ball up into the sky in a perfect arc even now.
‘I told you, I don’t get what you insist on waxing lyrical on him being a star you can’t help but follow,’ he hears her voice chime in his consciousness, inexplicable though her presence in this scene may be, he hears himself answer - ‘just be patient and watch’.
Anahori, their substitute setter tosses the ball up in the air and it’s a good toss, he will give him that, but it’s still not quite as high a toss that Bokuto likes. Bokuto runs right up to the net to leap into the air, back arching to slam the ball to the ground with such force that it’s a commanding full stop punctuating any doubts about his place on the team as its captain and ace.
‘You see! When he plays well, he's like a supernova, shining with a light so bright it almost blinds my eyes.’
‘Waxing lyrical again, Keiji-kun?’ He can hear her tease him gently. ‘Go on, carry on with your celestial metaphors’.
‘How about a shooting star then’, he replies, amused. ‘If a shooting star shot up from the earth instead of falling from the sky.’
‘You sound like you like the guy. Are you sure you don’t?’ She asks. ‘You sure sound like you do.’
What?!
His legs are tangled in his sheets when he thrashes awake, mouth open in a gasp for air. That was a new twist in his collection of dreams, the first time he’s dreamt of something other than that phantom girl’s life in months, but even when the dreamscape doesn’t even feature her, she still manages to invade his dream.
Worse - his dreams are now edging into territory he hasn’t mapped out in years. His teenage infatuation with Bokuto-san died a natural death after he realised that he’d mistaken his admiration for the ace for romantic feelings. Besides, there was no way Bokuto-san would ever be in love with him, not when he’d chosen to devote the next decade of his life to his sport. So why are his dreams dragging him deeper into a labyrinth of memories that aren’t even his own?
‘Why are you squandering my pocket money in a maid café of all things’ he says, sounding uncharacteristically put out. But then again he would be annoyed if anyone managed to drag him into the pink and white monstrosity his dream has deposited him into.
Bokuto’s happily seated across from him (or rather, his past self), exclaiming ‘ooh - isn’t the ketchup art on this omurice amazing, Akaashi? They managed to capture my hair so well!’, and to his horror his past self nods encouragingly and only laughs when Bokuto whines about not wanting to destroy this ‘piece of art the maids took so much time to create’ by eating the damn omurice.
‘Don’t be such a killjoy, Keiji-kun’, she giggles. ‘Look at him, he’s having such fun, and besides, your day will reset so your money won’t be wasted anyway!’.
Bokuto, distracted by the catchy beat of the J-pop song blasting over the speakers, is cajoled by a trio of pretty maids to join them on stage to dance along with them. He pops his hips to the beat of the music, throwing up cheesy hand signals with such gusto that it makes him (yes, present day Keiji) want to smile.
But his past self evidently hasn’t lightened up yet, because he hears himself say crossly – ‘You do realise this is a waste of time when we could be doing something more useful like homework, especially since Bokuto-san and I already spend most of our time training?’
‘Oh Keiji-kun, life is too short to be spent worrying like that. Because before you know it, you’ll grow into an old man who doesn’t know how to have any fun’.
‘I have fun’, he says petulantly, a faint sulk in his voice.
‘Oh really? Then stop worrying and live a little. Maybe you should take a leaf out of your beloved Bokuto-san’s book – look how much fun he’s having!’
Bokuto clearly seems to be having the time of his life because now he’s prancing around the stage playing some silly game with the maids.
‘I told you, I don’t think of him that way.’
‘And I’ve told you I’ve borrowed your skin for far too long to know when you’re not telling me the whole truth, Keiji-kun’, she sing-songs. ‘You wished for more time with him, didn’t you, so aren’t I doing a good deed by helping you figure out what Bokuto might like to do with you?’
‘Bokuto-san doesn’t have spare time on these things – and you’re just making an excuse to explore cafes in Tokyo at my expense!’
‘Two birds, one stone. Don’t be pedantic, Keiji-kun!’
The next time he’s back in one of those dreams, he finds his past self dressed in a blue yukata along the Sumida river, tugging Bokuto away from the takoyaki store. He remembers Bokuto dragging him away from the rest of the team on a quest to buy some snacks at the food stalls set up around the park, insisting that his stomach’s growling too loudly to wait until the fireworks display is over ‘come on, even you can hear my stomach at this rate, Akaaashi!!!’ – but that’s where the dream starts to diverge.
‘If you queue for takoyaki, we’re going to miss the fireworks, and you don’t want to miss that, do you Bokuto-san?’ he says, hand firmly on Bokuto’s yukata sleeve.
‘That’s right! But shouldn’t we join the rest of the team? They’ve got a spot by the river just over there!’
‘We won’t get there in time with this crowd – come on! If we hurry, I know the perfect spot to watch the display’, weaving his way through the crowd to shimmy up the trunk of a tree and settle himself comfortably against a large branch.
‘Woah – Akaashi! I never knew you could climb trees!’ Bokuto calls, sounding impressed.
‘Well, don’t stand there, come join me!’
The tree creaks ominously as the larger boy scales its trunk, branches already heavy with red lanterns groaning in protest as he settles himself in the branch opposite Akaashi. And not a moment too soon, because a collective gasp ripples through the crowd along the river as the night sky explodes into rainbow hued fiery streaks.
‘It’s amazing, Akaashi!’ Bokuto hollers with his face tilted up to the sky.
‘You’re amazing, Bokuto-san’, he says fondly, reaching over to bump Bokuto’s shoulder with his fist and the older boy beams at him, the sheer delight in his smile brighter than the fireworks in the sky. There is a sea of stars in his eyes, and Akaashi wants to shrivel in shame at the way his younger self looks like he’s mentally planning to pirate a boat to cross the straits to Bokuto’s heart.
‘There is no way I’m going to do that’ he hears himself say, sounding mildly cross.
‘Eh – it’s cute. ‘sides, doesn’t he look so happy’ he hears her say, sounding overly chipper.
‘You could spend your time instead learning how to play so Bokuto-san won’t pout when you sit out of practice and you wouldn’t have to pretend you sprain your wrist every time we swap.’
‘Are you mad? Do you really think they won’t think something’s up when I can’t even do a simple serve?’
‘Fine. You have a point’, he answers begrudgingly.
‘Of course I do. Come on Keiji, live a little. Enjoy your time with the lodestar of your life’.
‘Can you not say things like that?’ he says dryly.
‘It’s your fault for reading so much Shakespeare to me!’ she replies with a grin in her voice.
He texts Bokuto the minute he wakes up. ‘Bokuto-san, apologies if this seems weird, but do you remember if we ever climbed a tree when we watched fireworks with our team?’
Bokuto takes a while to respond, but that’s to be expected, it’s his mornings are usually filled with practice and conditioning. But when he does respond, his text makes Akaashi’s brow curl. ‘Nope, but sounds fun! What’s up Akaashi!!’
Akaashi drops his head in his palms. Good to know he’s not losing his grip on reality at least.
But his sleep for the following weeks continues to be filled with dreams in the same vein.
He dreams of scenes that have never taken place in real life - him challenging Bokuto-san to ramen eating competition, the older boy winning handily of course, crowing like a child when he slurps the last mouthful of tonkatsu broth - ‘eh Akaashi, eat faster!’, him dragging Bokuto-san to the arcade near school, demolishing middle schoolers in endless games of dance dance revolution (there is no way he is actually able to move like that in real life) and losing far too much money in claw games - ‘Akaashi I really want that toy pleaseeee’ - and even he would admit it’s absolutely adorable if not for the fact that he can’t explain why these dreams keep invading his head like a wildfire that refuses to die.
‘I honestly don’t understand you’, she says and again, why on earth is she in this set of dreams - she doesn’t belong in them -
‘What exactly do you not understand?’
‘If you like him that much, why aren’t you jumping at the chance to hang out with him? All you do is nag me about how I’m wasting his time, I’m wasting your time, but I don’t understand - isn’t time meant to be spent on the people you love? Unless you’re confusing love with admiration, because yes, I get that you admire his talent, but you don’t seem to have all that much patience for spending time with him outside of school.’
‘I suppose I do like him, but…’
‘Finally you admit it, but I don’t like the sound of that word.’
‘It’s nothing’, he finally says, and she huffs in annoyance, clearly wanting him to explain but he stubbornly refuses to say another word.
His past self is skidding down the hallway with Bokuto hot on his heels yelling ‘Akaaashiii you owe me a Yakisoba bunnnnn’ when he hears an almighty crash behind him. As he spins around, Bokuto’s sprawled on the floor, papers and books scattered around him. The older boy grimaces as he sits up, grabbing at his ankle in pain.
‘Bokuto-san, are you ok?’ he cries, running back towards the older boy.
‘I might have twisted my ankle. Argh this is bad - prelims are just next week!’ Bokuto groans, clutching at his ankle desperately.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll be fine tomorrow, trust me’, his past self says with complete certainty, and flags down a passing student to call for a teacher.
‘Look what you’ve done now. Are you happy with yourself?’ he hears himself say accusingly. ‘Everything might reset tomorrow, but look - he’s hurt himself today. Is this what you’ve been trying to prove to me?’
‘I’m sorry, Keiji’ he hears her say, her voice watery. ‘I didn’t think -’
‘Of course you didn’t, you never think about the consequences of your actions, do you?’ he says, glass shards in his words.
His dream fades to black. He never hears her answer.
His sleep remains relatively undisturbed for the next fortnight, just in time for his mid-term exams which he aces, even his course on classical Japanese literature. He’s relieved of course, because his final year grades matter most when it comes to recruitment, yet there’s a part of him that’s buried deep between ventricles and pumping flesh that childishly wonders what his dreams are going to show him next.
His wish is answered when he opens his eyes to an ocean of stars, white pinpricks of light against the vast tapestry of the purple night sky. His head is pillowed on tufts of grass and the wind whispers against his feet.
The sight takes his breath away.
He’s a born and bred city boy, and he knows from experience it’s near impossible to see stars in the city sky amidst light pollution and masquerading satellites.
‘Is this your way of apologising?’ he asks, his voice wry.
‘Is it working yet?’ he hears her ask, an uncharacteristically timid note in her voice. He laughs, a fond sound, and he can hear her huff a breath through her mouth. ‘I am sorry though, Keiji. I never meant to hurt him’.
‘It’s fine, no damage done. Besides, I was thinking about what you said.’
‘Me? About what? I know I’ve said plenty to you so far’, she says curiously.
‘About Bokuto-san’, he supplies, and she stays silent, waiting for him to go on. The stars twinkle down at him, and if he closes his eyes, he can imagine the galaxy reaching down to lend him its infinite strength. ‘You were right about how…I felt about Bokuto-san. I thought what I felt for him was something more than it really was - now I’m starting to realise I just admire his strength, and I don’t see our paths ever converging, especially if he’s going to chase his dreams of going pro all the way’.
‘You don’t have to chase someone else’s light when you’re brilliant in your own right’, she says gently.
‘Thanks’, he answers thickly, as if the word feels a little awkward in his mouth.
‘So -’ she pipes up, and he can tell she’s trying her best to paper over the sudden lapse of silence. ‘Will you tell me stories about the stars, Keiji?’
He laughs fondly, raising a hand to catch the stardust from the sparkling constellations overhead. ‘I could tell you the story of Andromeda, chained to rocks as a sacrifice to satisfy the cruel demands of the sea monster?’
‘Ugh no gory stories, I want a happy ending!’
‘It has a happy ending, I promise. Just be patient and listen, okay?’
Akaashi wakes up before his past self can finish telling the tale of Persues’ rescue of Andromeda from the jaws of defeat. It’s barely three in the morning, but he knows it’s futile to try to go back to sleep. He wanders to the window, and wonders whether the lone star hanging in the cloudy sky is merely a satellite in disguise.
Against his better judgment, he dials Bokuto’s number.
‘What’s up, Akaashi!’ he hears the older man mumble sleepily, sheets rustling.
‘Was it obvious I had a crush on you in high school?’ he asks plainly. If seeking closure is what he needs to end this slew of dreams, then he’s going to do it, never mind the embarrassment thick in the blood in his veins.
‘Huh?’
Akaashi’s pretty sure he can hear Bokuto blink rapidly. ‘A crush on you’, he repeats, and for good measure he adds - ‘sometime in your third year of high school’.
‘Ehhhh…’ Bokuto’s voice trails off over the phone. ‘You did?’
The sigh that trips out of Akaashi’s mouth is worn, weary. ‘I did’, he confirms, embarrassment writhing in his belly.
‘But you stopped right? Just before I graduated? You started becoming distracted after Spring High and I thought you were just worrying about university entrance exams.’
‘I suppose.’ And Akaashi should really get a grip on himself but his dreams have been doing a number on him so to his horror, he starts to ramble. ’ It’s probably the lack of sleep, but look - this sounds really stupid but I was having a lot of really weird dreams and I don’t understand what’s happening but I’m hoping getting this off my chest helps me get some more sleep and I hope you don’t think I’m completely weird and don’t mind still being my friend -’
‘Woah, ‘kaashi, slow down! You’re overthinking again - what, you think I’m not going to be your friend anymore?’ Bokuto booms, laughing widely.
‘Uh. I don’t know?’
‘Relax! I’m flattered, but I think it’s a good thing we never went out! You were already so stressed dealing with me in high school Washio used to joke about your hair falling out, but I’ve changed! Now I’m just an ordinary ace!’
‘Bokuto-san, I don’t think anyone would call you ordinary’, Akaashi interjects, rubbing circles against his temple.
‘You know what I mean!’ Bokuto laughs, the sound so round and boisterous that it makes Akaashi quirk his lips up in affection.
‘Yes, Bokuto-san. Anyway, sorry for disturbing your sleep.’
‘Anytime, Akaashi!’ They bid each other goodnight, and the relief he feels after the call settles on his chest like a blanket, and he falls back to sleep.
Taglist:
@1tooru @kageyamakock @animeflower26 @underrated-fruit-tarts-official
#akaashi x reader#akaashi keiji x reader#akaashi keiji x y/n#akaashi keiji#haikyuu angst#haikyuu!!#hq#haikyuu imagines#haikyuucreations#haikyuu romance#haikyuu headcanons#hq imagines#hq fluff#haikyuu fic rec#fukurodani#kimi no nawa#your name
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Lover’s Fantasia Chapter 1 (Crystal Methyd x Gigi Goode RPDR12) Cruel Summer
no rules in breakable heaven
https://archiveofourown.org/works/32286397/chapters/80027176
June 28th, 2021
Amsterdam
It was a fresh start. And it was exactly what Gigi needed after finally starting to feel like herself, finally seeing the sun without her smile. It was a new city bustling with new people and new experiences. It was perfect timing too. Soon after Biden was sworn into office, vaccines were being rolled out. By spring Gigi was fully vaccinated, she could finally go out with her friends and feel the sun beating down on her skin. Her best friend had just won Drag Race, and in late May they celebrated with a trip to Mexico. Gigi was performing again, living again. She breathed in the fresh air that was once masked with a piece of cloth. Everything was finally going back to normal.
Well, almost everything.
Because some days Gigi still went to Venice Beach to sit alone for a moment, allowing herself to bask in the almost nostalgic feeling. Allowing herself to feel that ache in her chest she had fought so hard to push down the past year. But she knew that feeling wouldn’t last, so she’d leave, telling herself it was for the best. Then the sun blinded Gigi through her curtains early one morning when she got a call from Jaida Essence Hall and Michelle Visage offering her a gig for the summer in Amsterdam. And Gigi couldn’t help but hope. It was Hunter who ultimately convinced her to go.
“It’ll be good for you,” he said. “It’s new. It’s nothing she’s… touched.” And Hunter was right, so that night they booked a ticket to Amsterdam. Gigi was excited, she really was. What could be better than spending nearly three months with Jaida and Michelle while they prepared for the iconic Amsterdam Pride? It was the perfect opportunity.
So why did Gigi’s chest ache as she made her way through customs? She decided to ignore it, which was something she had gotten used to doing. The Schiphol airport was much different than LAX. It didn’t have the same white interior and harsh lights that always caught Gigi in her worst moments, no, this airport was different. It was modern, but not artificial. With plenty of art, places to sit, and excitement. It was enough to make her nerves settle.
Gigi’s eyes scanned the horizon through the large windows, and if she squinted she swore she could see Amsterdam, her home for the next few months. She saw The Man in the Clock and quickly took a picture, captioning it “surprise!” before sending it to her story. She decided to keep Amsterdam a secret from the fans, mostly because she couldn’t promise that when the day came, she would be able to get on the plane.
“Don’t be dumb,” Symone said to Gigi as they walked into the airport, Hunter trailing behind. “This is a good thing, Gigi, you’re gonna realize it as soon as that plane takes off.”
So Gigi boarded the plane, not wanting the last time she saw Symone for a while to end in a fight. And she made it to Amsterdam, but now she wasn’t exactly sure what to do from here. She decided going to baggage claim would probably be a good start.
As Gigi walked to the baggage claim, she decided that Symone was right, and this really was the best thing for her. It had to be. She stood waiting for her suitcase when a flash of color caught her eye. Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach, hoping her eyes were just playing tricks on her. It wouldn’t be the first time. Sometimes she’d see a head of curls on the street and her heart would skip a beat, and the sensible part of Gigi’s mind would remind her that they were worlds away.
Gigi assumed it was just her wishful thinking and continued to look for her suitcase and waited for the tightness in her chest to go away. But then the flash of color Gigi had seen came into full view. A hot pink suitcase covered in various stickers with a leopard print scarf tied around the handle. Suddenly her heart shot up from the bottom of her stomach into her throat. Gigi blinked a few times, trying to wake herself up from this nightmare. ‘It couldn’t be,’ Gigi thought. ‘There’s no fucking way.’
“Excuse me, pardon me,” a small nasally voice said. ‘No. Nope. This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening. Fuck this. It’s not her, it couldn’t be.’
“Excuse me, thank you- Gigi?”
Fuck. Gigi took a deep breath and grabbed the pink suitcase, as well as her own. She turned around.
“Hi,” Gigi said.
“Hello?”
Summer 2019
Drag Race
Gigi paced around her hotel room, deep in thought. It was her first day off after the first challenge. Gigi had been stuck in her room all day, just expected to sit around and do nothing. Just expected to ignore the longing in her chest for her friends back home. Hunter, Symone, Rosy, Marko, who were just a short car ride away, technically. But Gigi was locked in her hotel room, being told to enjoy some time off. In solitary confinement. What a way to celebrate the fact she had just nearly won her first challenge of Drag Race, placing in the top two of the very first challenge. Gigi was on cloud nine, relieved that she made a good first impression.
And that the judges liked all the helmets.
But Gigi was so lonely, all she could do was lay in bed and watch weird daytime television. She tried to watch the shitty soap operas but they were just so boring and corny, she couldn’t stomach them. She didn’t have anything to work on, anything to read, nothing. She even attempted to work out, jogging around the tiny hotel room. That lasted for thirty seconds.
Gigi knew the obvious solution. One of the first things she had noticed in her hotel room was the conjoined door, which led right into Crystal’s room. Crystal Methyd. Probably the weirdest person Gigi had ever met. Not just because of her crazy bright drag, clown makeup, and outrageous but perfect amount of jewelry. No, she was shocked by how drawn she was to Crystal. She really was unlike anyone Gigi had ever met.
When Jackie asked Crystal if she was a fashion queen or a comedy queen, and Crystal just responded with “Fashion queen, comedy queen, I’m a TALENTED queen,” Gigi was completely fascinated by her. And then she actually got to talk to Crystal and get to know her a little bit, and Gigi knew in a heartbeat that Crystal was special. She was bright, sociable, and funny. But also really quiet, drawn into herself. Gigi couldn’t quite decide what it was, but Crystal had something the other girls didn’t. She needed to be her friend. So Gigi came up with a game plan.
She obviously couldn’t just knock and say she was bored like a loser. What if Crystal didn’t want to be bothered? What if Crystal hated her already? No. Gigi had a feeling Crystal just wasn’t that kind of person. Maybe she could ask to borrow sewing supplies, saying that she wanted to polish up one of her runway looks. And then she would just... charm Crystal into having a conversation with her? That could work. It’s not like Gigi had many options.
So she walked to the door that went into Crystal’s room. “Go before you’re ready bitch,” Gigi said to herself. She took a deep breath, raised her fist to the door, and before her screaming mind and pounding heart could stop her, she knocked. She could hear rustling coming from Crystal’s room, probably her crawling out of bed.
‘Do you have a big sewing needle? Do you have a big sewing needle? Do you have a big sewing needle?’ Gigi said over and over in her head. And then, before she was ready, the door swung open, and there she was. Crystal Methyd. Gigi’s breath caught in her throat and she prayed Crystal didn’t notice.
Crystal’s mullet had been put into two messy space buns on top of her head, little tendrils of curls framing her face. Gigi could tell that Crystal had hastily shoved her glasses on; they were lopsided, slowly slipping off her nose. There was only one word to describe the person who was standing in front of Gigi, being engulfed in an oversized One Direction concert T-shirt. Adorable. Her game plan flew out the window, and she was left there, speechless, looking like an idiot. What did she want again?
“Hi,” Gigi blurted lamely. Crystal’s face split into a grin, and Gigi could tell she was trying not to laugh.
“Hello?” Crystal asked in her sweet voice. Maybe it was her soft appearance. Maybe it was the fact that Gigi was too bored to care. Or maybe it was Crystal’s kind smile and bright eyes that made Gigi immediately relax. This was just Crystal. The same dork who had a One Direction tattoo on their chest in Arabic. She’s just... Crystal.
“I’m so fucking bored,” Gigi sighed, letting herself smile.
“Oh my GOD, me too! I thought about knocking on your door but I didn’t wanna bother you. Do you wanna come in?” Crystal offered, stepping to the side. Oh. That’s it? That’s all it took?
“Yeah,” Gigi grinned and stepped into Crystal’s room. Gigi’s heart was still pounding, her stomach still felt like it was in her throat. And there was Crystal, already climbing back into the bed, beckoning Gigi to join her. It felt like… it felt like Gigi was truly seeing Crystal for the first time. And her heart was still pounding. It felt good.
Amsterdam
Gigi had imagined what it would be like to see Crystal again for the first time, she had thought of scenario after scenario. Maybe she would enter the Werkroom for All Stars and there Crystal would be standing, a bright grin on her face. Or maybe one day they would be randomly booked for the same gig and they’d bump into each other backstage. Gigi also had wondered what it would feel like to see her again. She expected it to feel like a punch in the gut, or maybe like she was drowning, gasping for air while trying to find the right words to say. But as Gigi stood in the middle of the Schipol Airport looking into Crystal’s brown eyes, the only thing she found crashing over herself was a wave of relief. Crystal was still... Crystal. For some reason, Gigi assumed Crystal would be different, or maybe Gigi assumed she would feel different. But she stood there and felt as the familiar fire began to burn in her chest.
“What are you doing here?” Crystal asked, a slur of emotions ridden on her face.
“I-”
“Oh good, you found each other!” Jaida’s voice called out. Gigi and Crystal’s heads both whipped to see Jaida and Michelle Visage.
“Welcome to Amsterdam bitches, it’s about to be the best summer ever!!!” Michelle ran to them, giving them each a hug, Jaida following suit. Gigi felt like she had just been slapped in the face, but she put on the best grin she could, and Crystal did the same.
“Look at us, top three reunited! I can’t believe it’s almost been a year since Drive n’ Drag,” Gigi’s breath hitched in the back of her throat and she hoped no one noticed.
“Totally,” Crystal said, voice falling flat.
“So excited.” Gigi managed a smile. Jaida cocked an eyebrow.
“You two okay?” Michelle asked. Gigi was anything but okay.
“Yeah. I just got to go to the bathroom before we leave,” Gigi said. She heard Jaida and Michelle questioning Crystal as she walked away.
“She’s probably just jet-lagged,” Crystal shrugged. Gigi walked faster. She rushed to the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
“Fuck,” Gigi exhaled, fumbling for her phone, not exactly sure why. Who would she even call? If Gigi told Hunter now, the rest of the day her phone would be blowing up with messages. Besides, it was around 6 AM in LA, Hunter wouldn’t even be awake for another few hours or so. Gigi decided to just splash some water on her face, hoping she didn’t worry Jaida and Michelle too much by running off.
And Crystal.
God, what could Crystal be thinking right now? Gigi took a deep breath and stared at herself in the mirror. “You got this.” And with that, she walked out of the bathroom, head held high.
“Y’all ready?” Jaida asked.
“Ready,” Gigi nodded. With a loud whoop, Michelle and Jaida started towards the exit of the airport, Crystal and Gigi trailing slightly behind. After a short walk through the parking lot, they arrived at Jaida’s rental car. Gigi put her suitcase in the trunk and tried to ignore Crystal, who was clearly watching her. Jaida was driving, Michelle had taken shotgun, which meant Gigi and Crystal would be sitting in the backseat together. Great.
Crystal and Gigi sat in their respective seats. They didn’t lean in and talk to each other, they didn’t slowly find themselves inching closer and closer until their shoulders were pressed together, they both just busied themselves by looking out the window at the flatland that seemed to go on forever. Luckily, the drive was only about twenty minutes into the city. They made some light conversation, but it was clear that Crystal and Gigi couldn’t match Jaida’s and Michelle’s energy.
“Oh! There’s this long-ass tunnel coming up. No, Michelle, I’m not talking about your throat,” Jaida said. Gigi tried to see Crystal out of the corner of her eye. She had a worried expression on her face. ‘It’s not my problem,’ Gigi thought to herself. ‘ It’s not my job to make sure she’s okay.’
Gigi knew that. But that didn’t stop the sick feeling rising in her stomach as the tunnel appeared in the distance. She bit the inside of her cheek, Crystal shifted uncomfortably in her seat as they entered the tunnel. “Weee fuckers!” Jaida cackled. Crystal forced an uncomfortable laugh.
“Can we put on some music?” Gigi folded. Crystal visibly relaxed.
“I thought you would never ask!” Michelle said, handing back the aux cord. “Who wants it?”
“Crystal, you want it?” Gigi said, trying to sound as neutral as possible. Crystal just nodded, plugging her phone in quickly. Before they knew it, the car came out the other side of the tunnel, being filled with sunlight once again.
“Oooh, ladies we are getting close! I’m so excited for you guys to see Amsterdam. You’re gonna love it here,” Michelle said after a few more minutes of driving.
“Wait, how close? Because I have something very important I need to do,” Crystal laughed. God, Gigi missed Crystal’s laugh. She had almost forgotten the way it could fill and brighten the room.
“Well this is our exit, so do what you need to do, girl,” Jaida said, taking the exit. Gigi waited, wondering what Crystal could possibly have planned. Suddenly, in the distance, the tops of roofs appeared as the busy highway turned into a bustling street full of cyclists cutting through the road, causing Jaida to scream. The buildings changed from modern, glass exteriors to faded brick masonry.
Citizens and tourists alike walked the cobblestone streets freely, other people driving didn’t blink an eye at the cyclists who truly ruled the streets. Everyone was going at their own speed, each person had their own tempo they went to. It was refreshing, seeing everyone just doing. Gigi was almost emotional, this was still her fresh start despite… everything. She could actually see herself calling this place home.
Just then, she heard it. “Boom, Clap” by Charli XCX started playing out of the car's speakers, and Crystal was wearing a shit-eating grin. Gigi tried desperately to force back her smile, but couldn’t. They turned down road after road, slowly finding their way into the heart of the city. It was fucking gorgeous, it almost felt like they had gone back in time as the vintage buildings captivated them completely. Gigi felt the excitement rise up in her chest, she couldn’t stop grinning. She stole a look at Crystal, who to her surprise, was looking back. A feeling rose within Gigi, hope, maybe. And then Jaida slammed on her breaks, causing everyone to lurch forward in their seats.
“DAMN IT’S LIKE THE VANS ALL OVER AGAIN!”
Drag Race
Once all the queens had gotten out of drag, they were escorted to the vans, which brought them back to the hotel. Gigi soon found that one of her favorite parts of being on Drag Race was oddly the van rides to and from the studio. It was about a fifteen minute drive in the mornings, but a 45 minute drive when they had to go through heavy L.A. traffic. But Gigi enjoyed it. She liked sitting with Crystal, just shooting the shit. Sometimes all the girls would make up stupid road games to pass the time, which annoyed the hell out of the driver.
But most of the time, Crystal and Gigi were off in their own little world, foreheads nearly pressed together, hushed whispers about whatever stupid random thing they were talking about, two giggling messes. But things were different tonight. The challenge was Snatch Game, and Gigi was going through a whirlwind of emotions. She had just WON Snatch Game, which was totally unexpected but meant everything.
But she had also gotten into her first “TV fight” and it wasn’t as glamorous as she had expected. If anything, she just felt like shit for coming after Heidi’s makeup out of nowhere. Yes, she looked cracked, but Gigi wished she had just kept her mouth shut.
BUT SHE HAD JUST WON SNATCH GAME.
‘I’m not just a fashion queen anymore, bitches,’ Gigi thought gleefully. And then her attention turned to the queen who was walking to the vans slower than usual, head cast down. The night had been so hectic, Gigi had only been able to talk to Crystal a couple of times since the runway. Poor Crystal. If Gigi had a bad night, it was nothing compared to hers. Crystal’s Snatch Game didn’t go so well. At all. It was shit.
No one but Gigi had really understood it. While Crystal’s Poppy was accurate, the judges didn’t find it funny. Gigi thought it was amusing. Entertaining? Well, at least her performance wasn’t as bad as Aiden’s or Britta’s.
The queens climbed into the vans, all going to their unassigned assigned seats. Gigi, Crystal, and Jackie sat in the way back, Crystal in the middle. Gigi couldn’t help but smile as Crystal slid in next to her, shoulders knocking together.
“Hey,” Gigi whispered, tilting her head to look at Crystal. She just gave Gigi a sad smile, resting her head on her shoulder. Gigi’s stomach immediately dipped, her whole body on fire. ‘Is my heart really beating that fast?’ she thought, feeling the pounding against her chest. She prayed Crystal didn’t notice. If she did, she gave nothing away. She just nuzzled her head closer to Gigi’s neck, letting out a sigh. Gigi could practically feel Jackie smirking at them, but couldn’t be bothered to care. She loved these van rides for a reason. But they couldn’t know that. So Gigi just gave a soft chuckle and leaned into Crystal. “You good?” She whispered. Crystal gave a small nod.
“‘M just tired,” Crystal murmured. The vans took off, and they were immediately stuck in L.A. traffic. Within five minutes Crystal was fast asleep. Gigi allowed herself to relax for a moment, just thinking about the person that was practically sleeping on top of her. Things with Crystal were... interesting. It was weird how fast they clicked. The minute Gigi had built up the nerve to knock on Crystal’s door, they had become nearly inseparable. Of course they were close with the other queens, but Crystal and Gigi had each other on lock, painting next to each other, working on their challenges together, riding in the vans together, always.
And nearly every night since had been spent in each other's hotel rooms; practicing the lip syncs, sewing costume pieces together in silence, or just talking about everything and nothing. They were just there for each other. Within the span of two weeks, Crystal had become one of Gigi’s favorite people in the world. Gigi couldn’t help but wonder if the feeling was mutual.
Suddenly the van hit a huge bump, causing everyone’s heads to smack the ceiling.
“Did you hit a fuckin dog?!” Gigi heard Jaida ask the van driver. With a soft laugh, Gigi turned her head to see Crystal was awake now, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“We hit a dog?” she whispered, still half asleep. Gigi chuckled and shook her head.
“No, it was just a bump,” she replied. Crystal let out a breath, laying her head on Gigi’s shoulder again.
“Your snatch game was so good,” Crystal muttered dreamily. Gigi could feel her face beginning to heat up, but tried to keep her cool.
She’s just Crystal. Just Crystal.
She’s just... Crystal.
“Thank you,” Gigi replied softly. She wasn't sure why, but something gave her the nerve to reach for Crystal’s hand, giving it a light squeeze. Crystal laced their fingers together and didn’t let go.
“I’m just so happy for you. You’re killing it, Geege. You’re gonna go all the way,”
“Yeah well, I’m not going anywhere without you. So you better do good next week. I need you,” the words came out of Gigi’s mouth before she could even think to stop herself. Crystal raised her head, turning to look straight into Gigi’s eyes.
“You will not see me in the bottom again,” Crystal said, a determined look on her face. And Gigi believed her.
“I know.”
The vans pulled up to the hotel, and everyone was escorted to their rooms. Crystal and Gigi said a quick “goodnight” in the hallway in front of the producers and went into their respective rooms. And then Gigi heard it. Her knock. Gigi opened her conjoined door and there Crystal was, looking like she was holding back a shit-eating grin.
“Was my Snatch Game really that bad?”
“Crystal...” Gigi trailed off. And they both burst into laughter. And it was nice.
Amsterdam
It was nice to laugh with Crystal again, nice to feel carefree and happy with her again, driving through the streets of Amsterdam as Jaida and Michelle pointed out a few of the clubs.
“You bitches aren’t ready to see your apartments! We’re all in the same building, Jaida and I are a floor below you,” Michelle said excitedly, turning back in her seat as Jaida turned down a narrow road.
“Y’all are on the top floor. Michelle and I didn’t wanna go up all those stairs. Sorry bitches!” Jaida cackled unapologetically. So not only did Gigi have to spend two months in Amsterdam with Crystal, she also had to live right next to her.
‘This is fine. Amsterdam is still my fresh start. This is fine. I will be alright,’ Gigi repeated over and over in her head until Jaida parked on the side of a busy street, her car parallel with one of the many canals in Amsterdam.“See that coffeeshop?'' Jaida pointed at a tall building across the street that was much wider than the other ones. There was a coffeeshop on the bottom floor, the storefront painted bright turquoise. All along the windows were tiny versions of all the different pride flags waving in the wind.
Looking through the windows Gigi could see walls covered in art as people sat in booths, passing joints around with dazy grins on their faces. And Gigi couldn’t help but grin too. “We’re living right above it! Pretty good gig, right?! Me and my girl Michelle tiptoe down the stairs every night, we smoke a little, laugh a little, and stumble up into our beds. You two are gonna love it, I know,” Jaida explained as everyone helped unload Crystal and Gigi’s suitcases. Gigi could tell Crystal wasn’t paying attention, looking around the city in wonder.
Jaida and Michelle started to cross the street towards the apartments, but Crystal was still standing in the same spot, watching the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam.
“Crystal,” Gigi called, not wanting to cross the street without her. Crystal’s head snapped in Gigi’s direction, and she immediately ran towards her, suitcase in trail.
“Sorry. Thanks. It’s just all so...” Crystal trailed off as they followed Michelle and Jaida into the apartment building.
“I know,” Gigi muttered, giving Crystal a tight smile.
“Right,” Crystal said, her voice barely above a whisper. They walked up a narrow stairway behind Jaida and Michelle. After climbing four long flights of stairs, they finally stopped. The four stood on a small landing, barely fitting. There were two doors across from each other, the one on the left labeled 28, the one on the right 27. “I want 28!” Crystal blurted, eyes wild. Gigi had to hold back a laugh.
“That was your apartment anyway, dipshit. Michelle, if you wanna give Crystal a tour of her apartment, I can show Gigi around hers,” Jaida said, and pulled Gigi into her apartment. She looked around at the narrow but long room. Immediately to the left, there was a door that led to the bathroom. Gigi stood in front of the door, looking at the small kitchenette before her, knowing she would never use it. But there was a small table with four chairs that Gigi immediately knew she would use to organize all of her drag stuff. To the right, there was a huge bed with fluffy white pillows and a matching comforter. And right next to the bed was a door that led outside.
“THAT’S RIGHT BITCH YOU GOT A BALCONY!!!” Jaida exclaimed as she dragged Gigi outside. She was immediately blown away by the sight. The balcony overlooked a small canal, jutting over the water. There was no road, just another set of apartments on the other side. But to her right, Gigi could still see the main street where Jaida’s car was parked, tourists and dutch folk alike going in and out of the small shops and restaurants. “And you get to share the balcony with Crystal! You two will have fun out here,” Jaida winked at her. Gigi saw another door right next to hers, which she guessed led to Crystal’s apartment. Conjoined balconies. Cute.
Jaida walked back inside, leaving Gigi no time to dwell on it as she went in after her. “Anyways, not much of a tour, there’s not much to see, but I just wanted to help you get all settled in! At like, 7, I thought we could get dinner? Go explore the city a little?” Jaida stood at the door, a glint in her eye. She knew.
“Yeah. That’s great,” Gigi replied easily. Jaida opened the door, and Gigi couldn’t help but stop her. “You left out some key details when you invited me here, Jaida. I didn’t know Crystal would be... joining us,” She tried to sound as casual and pleasant as possible, but she gave Jaida a pointed stare.
“Oops must’ve slipped my mind! SORRYBYE,” Jaida winked and practically ran out of the apartment. And Gigi was alone.
“Fuck,” she said out loud. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!” Gigi collapsed onto her bed and immediately took out her phone to FaceTime Hunter. “I don’t care if you’re sleeping, bitch, pick up,” She whispered, waiting to see Hunter’s face. He finally answered, still in bed. Gigi could see Marko’s sleeping body next to him.
“Geege it’s so fucking early whaaaaat,” Hunter groaned. ‘Oh just you wait bitch,’ Gigi thought. No matter how miserable she was, she couldn’t wait to see Hunter’s face when he found out.
“Guess who’s joining me, Michelle, and Jaida in Amsterdam?” Gigi said in a false cheery voice. Hunter just looked at her for a moment, and she could see the realization slowly dawn on his face.
“No.”
“Hunter...” She said, feeling the familiar tightening in her throat.
“No,” Hunter said again, and Gigi was surprised to see tears in his eyes. Fuck.
“Yeah,” Gigi said lamely, now trying to fight back her own tears. She had almost forgotten just how shitty her situation was. Almost.
“Gigi...” Hunter whispered, hand clasped over his mouth.
“Hunter...” Gigi’s voice cracked, and fuck she was crying again.
“A whole year of progress, of you finally... finally being your old self again. It’s all-all gone. And those assholes didn’t even tell you?!” Hunter was pissed now, getting out of bed and pacing around the darkroom.
“No, but it’s okay! I’m still me. This is still my fresh start, I can do this. She doesn’t matter,” Gigi said fiercely. And she wanted to believe herself so badly. But Hunter didn’t look convinced. And she wasn’t either.
“Gigi... what are you gonna do?” Hunter asked, still shell shocked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I guess just... keep my distance? I don’t know, Hunter,” Her voice cracked.
“Hasn’t the universe put you through enough?” Hunter implored, desperately trying not to break. Gigi had also forgotten how hard everything had been on him. How he was left to pick up her broken pieces.
“I guess not,” She answered lamely. She just looked at Hunter for a moment and watched as he took a deep breath, collecting himself. And then he went into momager mode.
“Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You are not going to be alone with Crystal. Ever. You have worked on yourself way too much to throw it all away for her. Okay? If you feel like you’re gonna do something stupid, call me. I don’t care if I’m sleeping, I don’t care if I’m at a rager. I don’t give a shit- Fucking call me. You can’t do this again Gigi. We can’t do this again,” Hunter ordered Gigi, giving her no room to object. And she easily agreed, even though a small, secret part of her didn’t want to. Not long after Hunter hung up, going back to bed. As Gigi stared at the ceiling, she knew she was utterly fucked. After all, when had Gigi ever actually listened to Hunter?
Drag Race
When Gigi heard a knock on her door, she wasn't exactly surprised. Crystal had been coming to visit every night since the Political challenge. And every night Gigi dreamed in screaming colors. At first, she tried to blame it on the excitement of being on Drag Race, but Gigi knew she was just lying to herself. She opened the door and of course, Crystal was there. Her mullet was pulled up into a top knot with a scrunchie, a mischievous grin had taken over her face, one hand behind her back. Needless to say, Gigi was ready to say yes to whatever Crystal had in store.
“What’s behind your back?” Gigi cocked an eyebrow.
“Well, I told you I was saving a joint for my first win...” Crystal sang, revealing a joint and lighter in hand.
“Oh my fucking god,” Gigi laughed, a rush of excitement crashing over her.
“I figured if we turn on the steam-fan-thingy in the bathroom and smoke in there everything would be fine, right?” Crystal asked. It was a bad plan. Definitely a bad plan that could get them both in trouble. But Gigi couldn’t be bothered to care.
“I’m in,” She grinned.
“Okay, we have to go to the vending machine first though,” Crystal said, and then “I already begged the producers to let us go together, be thankful it’s Annie and Noelle babysitting tonight.”
They walked down the long hallway, visibly excited. Gigi leaned against the side of the vending machine, peering at Crystal through the glass as she punched in item after item.
“Are you a peanut butter gal? I kinda am. It’s not my first choice but also not my last choice, you know? God, I wish they had Swedish fish...” Crystal kept on rambling about candy, but Gigi couldn’t hear over the pounding in her chest. The artificial light shone in Crystal’s face, and Gigi had to force back her smile. As she got lost in Crystal, Gigi couldn’t help but feel as if she was breaking out loud, the way she never did. “That should cover it,” Crystal said, arms full of snacks. The smile Gigi was forcing down shone through. “What?” Crystal asked, looking shy. Gigi smiled.
“Nothing. Come on, let me help,” she said, taking some of the snacks. They went back into their respective hotel rooms before Gigi entered Crystal’s room through the conjoined door. Crystal turned on the fan, it was a little annoying, a little loud, but didn’t matter at all to Gigi. Crystal threw all the snacks in the tub, and Gigi saw the lightbulb in Crystal’s head.
“I just had the best idea-”
“One step ahead of you,” Gigi laughed lightly, already going to sit in the bathtub. Somehow, their legs ended up in a tangled mess, but neither of them moved. Gigi grabbed the joint and cleared her throat. “This joint is being smoked tonight to honor the one and only Crystal Methyd’s first win!” Gigi said. Crystal cheered for herself. “I will now do the honorary lighting. Miss Methyd, if you would.” Crystal held the joint between her lips. Gigi had to hold her breath as the flame reached the joint. Crystal inhaled deeply then exhaled through a grin.
“Finally!” Crystal laughed, passing the joint to Gigi. She took a hit, sending all the smoke into her lungs then back out. They passed the joint back and forth a few more times until Gigi could feel the familiar buzzing in her chest and the tingling set underneath her eyes. She found herself giggling as she watched Crystal take another hit, coughing as she exhaled.
“Okay!” Crystal coughed. “First impressions of each other, go!” Gigi took a second to think. She had replayed the first time she met Crystal in her head over and over, but it was hard to put what she felt into words.
“Uhm... I remember you walked into the werkroom, and I thought ‘What is this thing-’” Gigi started. Crystal immediately started laughing, shifting to face Gigi. “And then you introduced yourself, and you talked about your One Direction tattoo, and I... I don’t know, I feel like I immediately could just be me around you. You were just... I don’t know. Yeah,” Gigi finished. Crystal passed her the joint.
“I thought you looked like Kelly Mantle at first. And I absolutely thought that you were going to hate me,” Crystal laughed. Gigi’s jaw dropped.
“Crystal-”
“I’m sorry.”
“You thought I looked like Kelly-“
“It was the hair-”
“-Mantle? Bacon dress girl?”
“Only for a second! And she’s a VERY talented Drag Queen!”
“Why would you think I’d hate you?”
“Because you were like... pretty. Not pretty, you were stunning. And stunning people sometimes don’t like me or don’t understand my drag. I don’t know, I just thought you’d hate me. People do,” she shrugged. Gigi didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know. You just made me... nervous? Then I heard you knock on my door on our first day off, and I got so excited because I just really wanted you to like me,” Crystal giggled, but there was weight behind the words.
“Crystal Elizabeth Methyd, there is no world where I could ever hate you,” Gigi said. Crystal looked at her differently for a second.
“Did you just call me Crystal Elizabeth Methyd?” Crystal chuckled. Gigi didn’t even realize she had called her that.
“Yeah...?” she said. Crystal just burst out laughing.
“I love that! That’s my name now. Crystal ELIZABETH Methyd. I sound fancy!” Crystal giggled.
When Gigi got the call saying she made it on Drag Race, this was the last thing she thought would happen. She didn’t think she’d find herself opening up one stitch at a time to Crystal. Yet as the smokescreen faded in and out of view, legs tangled, something screamed from within her. Crystal took a hit, then exhaled the smoke onto a piece of chocolate.
“Gigi, look! I made you an edible!” she laughed. Something screamed from within Gigi, and it screamed “This is exactly where you should be.” They finished the joint and ate all the snacks while swapping stories and laughs back and forth. Gigi learned a lot about Crystal, she learned about Get Dusted and all the work Crystal did for the drag community in Springfield with her friends. Gigi couldn’t wait to meet all of them. She also learned about Crystal’s fear of tunnels.
“Like, there’s cars above you, and you’re just stuck and I get all claustrophobic… it’s just not good,” Crystal explained. Gigi loved learning about Crystal, she loved watching her eyes light up as she praised her friends back home, about everything she accomplished with the Get Dusted girls. And Gigi loved as Crystal listened to her long-winded life story that she had definitely already told her before. But Crystal paid close attention, gasping in all the right places, listening intently. Hours had passed without either of them realizing it.
“Shit. It’s probably three by now,” Gigi groaned, rubbing her tired eyes. Crystal sighed.
“This is my least favorite part of the night,” she said. Gigi cocked an eyebrow. “Saying goodbye.” And again, Gigi saw a light bulb appear in Crystal’s brain. “You could stay the night!”
So Gigi crawled into bed with Crystal and tried to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. She dreamed of Crystal in the glow of neon signs, her hair, her glasses, her hands, her. When Gigi woke up, the silence of morning couldn’t be louder.
Amsterdam
At some point, Gigi found the motivation to get out of bed and stop moping, worrying about how she was going to avoid Crystal all summer. But Hunter was right. She could do this. Why would she ever be alone with Crystal anyways? All she had to do was lock herself in her apartment. Never go out on the balcony. Always make sure she was with Michelle or Jaida. Gigi could do it. And if she ever felt like she couldn’t, she would just FaceTime Hunter. She could do it easily.
But still. A small part of her didn’t want to.
Gigi shoved that intrusive thought down real fast and got changed for dinner. At 6:45 Jaida and Michelle came knocking on her door, and soon the group of four was off to dinner. Gigi had no idea where Jaida and Michelle had taken them. All she knew was that the booth was way too cramped, her arm nearly brushing Crystal’s. She thought this would be the worst part of dinner. But really it was Jaida and Michelle’s lame attempts at small talk.
“So. Crystal,” Jaida began, looking at her expectedly. “Why did I hear a little rumor that Widow is babysitting your cat?”
“Um... because she is,” Crystal giggled awkwardly. And then they were right back to that awkward silence. They soon finished up their meal, and Gigi didn’t look at Crystal the rest of the night, knowing she couldn’t. Knowing it would unlock something too strong. Something she couldn’t just push down and forget. But then Crystal was walking on the edge of a canal, arms spread, trying to balance. Fucking idiot.
Gigi found herself slowly inching closer to Crystal, knowing she was tipsy and stupid. She noticed. The minute Crystal could feel Gigi’s presence, her head whipped to look at her. And then she stumbled. In a flash, Gigi’s arms flew out, one hand clutching Crystal’s elbow, the other one pulling her by the shoulder. Crystal stumbled into Gigi, but at least she didn’t stumble into the canal. Crystal regained her footing, quickly pulling away from Gigi after muttering a lame “thanks.”
Gigi’s mind was going crazy, her heart was pounding, her body on fire. That was the first time she had touched Crystal since... that was the first time Gigi had touched Crystal in ten months, just short of a year. It was all too much. That was the first time she had seen Crystal in a year. The first time she had spoken to her. She had been cut off from Crystal for nearly a year with absolutely no contact, just trying to forget about her. Could Gigi really do this? She thought she could. She hoped this would get easier.
“Y’all wanna smoke before bed?! I think it’ll be magical,” Jaida turned. Crystal hummed in agreement, Gigi just gave a silent nod. They soon made it to the coffeeshop they lived above and walked in. The inside was decorated with all kinds of weird shit. There was no specific lighting source, just a bunch of random, probably thrifted lamps scattered across the shop, casting different shades of light across the floor. There was a bookshelf filled to the brim with books and magazines. Gigi swore she could see the Harry Potter series next to some old Playboy magazines. One wall was covered with vinyl records that had been painted over. Every record was different, painted by different Dutch artists. Gigi’s favorite was a sunset over the desert, a car driving past with a U-haul trailer attached. She knew this would become one of her favorite spots in Amsterdam.
Crystal, Gigi, and Michelle sat at a table while Jaida went up to buy two joints for them to split. She came back shortly, an excited grin on her face.
“Just a little nightcap ladies,” Jaida sang, and Gigi had to chuckle. At least she had Jaida. Jaida put the joint between her lips, lighting the end of it. Gigi watched the top burn away as Jaida deeply inhaled. As she blew out her smoke, Jaida gave Michelle a lazy grin and passed it to her next. Soon Crystal had the joint, taking a hit.
“Blow O’s!” Jaida cackled as Crystal obliged. Gigi fought back a smile. And then Crystal passed her the joint. It fit easily between Gigi’s fingers, but she was confused. All she saw was the back of Crystal’s head. It was turned, looking down at her phone. And then she realized. Crystal wouldn’t look at her. And all Gigi could think was, ‘What have we done to each other?’
Eventually, they finished passing the joints around and followed Jaida through a side door that led to their apartment building entrance. Gigi gave long hugs to Jaida and Michelle on the third-floor landing, not caring that they had blatantly lied to her about Crystal being there. It wasn’t worth it. And maybe this would end up being a good thing. She hoped to god it would.
Crystal didn’t say goodnight, just ran up the stairs and went into her apartment without a word. Gigi didn’t know how that made her feel. Relieved? At least she wouldn’t have to say an awkward goodnight to Crystal. Yes. This was good. No Crystal is a good thing. So why couldn’t Gigi stop thinking about her as she got ready for bed? Why couldn’t she stop replaying everything over and over in her head? Seeing Crystal for the first time since...
Gigi was supposed to be okay without Crystal. She thought she was. She had gotten better in L.A. It didn’t hurt every time she thought about Crystal, just more of a dull ache. Gigi had let herself let go, move on to a life without Crystal. And she was hoping that she could do the same thing in Amsterdam, despite seeing her every day. But it was only day one. And all she could think about was Crystal.
Crystal at the airport, Crystal in the car, Crystal walking along the canals, Crystal passing Gigi the joint, refusing to look at her. Her mind was all just... Crystal. And she just wanted to forget. But that was impossible. Crystal had found a way to burrow into the deepest depths of Gigi’s brain, refusing to leave. Did Gigi really want to let go?
How do you let go of someone when you’ve spent the last year desperately wanting them? When you’ve spent the last year replaying every moment together over and over in your head, wondering what you could’ve done differently, wondering where it all went wrong. How do you let go of someone when for so long, it was the last thing you wanted to do? How do you let go of someone when your heart is screaming at you, begging you not to, no matter how much you know you should?
As Gigi brushed her teeth, she heard Crystal opening her balcony door and stepping out onto it. She peaked out the window and saw her lighting a joint, sitting in one of the chairs. A year ago Gigi would’ve joined her on the balcony in a heartbeat, complaining that Crystal hadn’t invited her in the first place. Now Gigi was just utterly... confused. How do you let go of someone when she’s right there on your shared balcony, and all you want is to just be with her, no matter how much she might hate you?
‘Maybe I should call Hunter. He’ll stop me from doing anything stupid.’ But Hunter was worlds away, and couldn't really do anything to stop Gigi. A part of her knew this was coming. She knew she’d cave eventually and try to talk to Crystal. Why? Why did Crystal have so much power over her, still? And why was Gigi trying not to smile as she heard Crystal coughing outside? Even when things were so different, even though everything had changed, Gigi couldn’t help but admire Crystal, who was now just scrolling on her phone, lazily holding the joint between her fingers. Absolutely wasting bud, if Gigi may add.
Gigi’s feet started moving before her mind could scream at her to stop, going before she was ready. Her hand slowly went to the doorknob, just hovering there. Was it worth it? Was she going to throw it all away for Crystal? All the tears, all the talking, all the driving, the countless days where she forced herself to get out of bed, knowing she would forget about her someday? All the days where Gigi really had forgotten about her? When she felt like she could finally breathe again? Gigi felt that familiar burning in her chest. And she knew. There’s no way to let go of Crystal Methyd. Not when Gigi swore two summers ago she never would.
LAX
Gigi felt the knot forming in her stomach when she passed the sign that read “LAX 5 MILES AWAY.” Crystal had the same sad smile on her face as Gigi. It was really about to be all over. The summer of competing, crying, laughing, smoking, sneaking into each other's hotel rooms, lingering glances, and shy smiles. Why did it have to end like this? In Hunter’s Jeep, Rosy blasting “ Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift, all the windows down, letting the music rumble through the speakers and through their chests. Crystal and Gigi’s shoulders pressed together even though there was plenty of room in the backseat.
Why did it have to end at all?
Hunter took the exit, and Gigi started to feel sick. Crystal was supposed to have one of the vans bring her to the airport, but couldn’t refuse a ride with Gigi, Hunter, and Rosy. And Gigi hoped that Crystal accepted the ride because she too, couldn’t stand saying goodbye just yet. Just yet.
It was bittersweet. Of course, Gigi was happy to go home and be with her friends and family, but she couldn’t shake the sense of dread ringing throughout her body.
“You want us to drop you off at the front, Crystal?” Hunter asked.
“I’m gonna go in with her,” Gigi blurted, knowing she couldn’t say goodbye... just yet. Crystal looked at Gigi, beaming. “I don’t think Crystal could drag five suitcases around an airport by herself.”
“Oh sure,” Crystal murmured, nudging Gigi slightly. Crystal didn’t notice Gigi blushing, but Hunter did, sending her a knowing look in the rear-view mirror. Hunter found a parking spot after about ten minutes of looking around.
“It was so nice meeting you, Crystal! I absolutely adore you my fellow Aries,” Rosy said, grabbing Crystal’s hand and giving it a parting squeeze. Gigi caught Hunter’s eye again.
“I’m sure we’ll talk soon, but it was really nice meeting you,” Hunter said.
“Thank you guys so much for giving me a ride, you’re literally the best,” Crystal said. And so she and Gigi dragged the suitcases out of the Jeep before walking into the airport together. It was packed with a lot of people going home after spending their summers in LA. Gigi didn’t dare look at Crystal, scared she would see right through the brave face Gigi was trying to maintain despite the tears threatening to fall. Gigi watched from a distance as Crystal checked in and got her ticket, breathing slightly shallow. She knew what was coming next, she wasn’t stupid, this was always inevitable.
“All checked in!” Crystal tried to sound her usual cheery self, but Gigi could hear the sadness in the back of her voice.
“So this is it...” Gigi said, looking anywhere but Crystal. Crystal grabbed Gigi’s hand.
“I’ll see you soon. I promise,” Crystal said, voice cracking slightly. Gigi chuckled, tears stinging her eyes.
“Don’t cry cause I’ll start crying,” Gigi said, blinking back her tears.
“Geege...” Crystal put her hand on Gigi’s face, her thumb gliding across Gigi’s face. Chills ran down her body.
‘don't go, don't go, don't go’
“You have to go, you have a flight to catch,” Gigi said, composing herself quickly.
“I know, I just-”
“I know.” Gigi looked Crystal in the eye, who had tears streaming down her face. “Believe me, I know.” Crystal threw her arms around Gigi, and Gigi held on. She held on so tight her chest felt hollow. It was inevitable. There was nothing Gigi could say to make Crystal stay, she knew that. But that didn’t stop her from trying.
“You could just stay for the weekend, you know?” Gigi said into the hug. Crystal hugged Gigi tighter.
“I can’t, I gotta get back home to Paul and Tictak,” Crystal whispered.
“Paul?” Gigi asked, though the pessimist in her already knew the answer.
“My boyfriend,” Crystal said. The knot in Gigi’s stomach burst, now feeling empty and gutted, utterly hollow. Of course. Gigi pulled out of the hug.
“Oh. Well, um-”
“He’s just very um- private. He asked me not to talk about him on the show... And then it... just never came up I guess,” Crystal said, sounding slightly guilty. Crystal shouldn’t feel guilty, she owed Gigi nothing. Gigi knew that. She kept repeating it.
“No, I get it. I just uhm-”
“Shit, I’m sorry I got to go through security or I’m gonna miss my flight. I hate goodbyes. I hate that this is happening-”
“It’s okay, Crystal,” Gigi gave Crystal’s hand a final squeeze. “We’re gonna see each other soon, remember?” Gigi said. Crystal’s lip was trembling, she nodded quickly.
“Yeah. I’ll see you soon,” Crystal said. And that was it. Crystal walked away. Gigi couldn’t bear to watch as the person who completely captivated her left to go be with someone else. And Gigi just hoped she could smile long enough, just until Crystal turned back over her shoulder, finally ripping her gaze from Gigi. She waited, a painful smile on her face that made her cheeks ache, waving Crystal goodbye. Goodbye, for now.
Alas, Gigi didn’t bother wiping the tears streaming down her cheeks as she walked back to Hunter’s Jeep.
“Hey!- oh god she’s crying,” Rosy said, getting out of the car to wrap Gigi in a hug. She immediately started crying in Rosy’s arms. Hunter stood, a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“You really like Crystal, don’t you?” he asked gently, which made Gigi hurt even more. She tried to answer, tried to form a sentence, tried to say it’s just a crush or we’re just really good friends but she couldn’t admit that, not yet, so instead she said.
“She has a fucking boyfriend.”
And as Gigi stood in the middle of the LAX parking garage crying in Rosy’s arms, she only thought one thing. ‘I will not let go of you, Crystal Methyd. I will not let go.’
Amsterdam
Gigi’s hand landed on the doorknob, and she knew Crystal heard it. ‘Go before you’re ready bitch,’ She turned the doorknob, and felt the warm summer air on her face. And there Crystal was, looking up at Gigi with a dumbfounded expression. “Hi,” Gigi said softly, smiling at Crystal. She watched her visibly relax, returning the smile.
“Hello,” Crystal grinned, putting down her phone.
“We should probably talk about... everything.”
#gigi goode#Crystal Methyd#crystal methyd x gigi goode#crygi#crygimethydgoode#fanfic#fanfic rec#drag queen fanfic#crygi fanfic#Lover’s Fantasia#please read this we promise you’ll love it
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My 2020 in K dramas (+1 J drama)
I began watching k-dramas in 2018 but I’ve never watched as many shows, Korean or otherwise, as I have in this one. 2020 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I think what helps me really enjoy this over Bollywood+Malayalam+ American pop culture I grew up with is that a smirk on the wrong character’s face doesn’t make me seethe with rage and want to burn everything down. It’s not like growing up with SRK on screen and then having SRK wannabes leave you with lifelong trauma in reality. I can just move on. It’s removed enough from my everyday life but still familiar in a generic Asian family way. Does that make sense? It’s not perfect and it’s not free of its own harmful stereotypes and narratives, but there’s enough of the good stuff to make you stick around.
This year I fell in love with Nana, Kim Hye Soo, Han Yeri, Park Eun bin, Ahn Eun jin, Kim Bum, Kim Yong ji, Flower Boy’s Go Dok Mi and Search:WWW’s Bae Tami. Cancelled Ji Chang wook (bye). Desperately missed Kim Jae Wook. Had thoughts on Hwang In Yeop, which were mostly heart eyes. Discovered J dramas and fell in love with Cherry Magic’s Adachi.
My year-in-review below:
LOVED
Into The Ring - I am so glad I saved this for a rainy day because it’s exactly the kind of upright citizen shenanigans my unemployed ass needed at the end of the year.
Goo Se Ra thinks the govt should work for the people but that doesn’t mean her own moral compass always points north. Her purpose is to make steady money, and I love seeing her go hard to survive and cobble together what she needs. The thing that really works for me is that she wants to be good, but she isn’t always. And you get to see her be disappointed, upset, embarrassed and hurt from being publicly kicked in the gut as she navigates a job where she appears, on the surface, to be a supremely confident, self-serving, accidental politician. What you see as her naiveté is mostly just her being a regular person in an environment dictated by backhand deals and rich people politics. She gets hit again and again, and you see what it does to her sense of worth to get back up again, how she grapples with her self. And through all this the show is funny?! Se Ra is what writers of manic pixie characters think they are doing and not doing at all. Love her friends, and Jang Hye-jin is *chef’s kiss*!
Hyena - Kim Hye Soo’s Jung Geum Ja is perhaps Se Ra’s older and darker contemporary. Geum Ja is a survivor and will get what she wants and where she wants to, however many hells she has to cross. She’s single-minded about her success, ruthless and has no qualms about bending morals to get the outcome she needs. She’ll never compromise on who she is or justify how she lives, can build people up and also tear them down, but she also knows care and kindness.
I turned to Signal for more Kim Hye Soo but was disappointed in how the first few episodes seemed to shortchange her. May try again in 2021.
(Highly recommend @saltr0se’s fic series which just GETS Geum Ja so well. Fic writers are the best)
Search: WWW (Finished in 2020) - It took me half a year to finish this. I started watching Search in Oct 2019 and raced through the first 6 episodes because I couldn’t take my eyes off the rollercoaster of Bae Tami’s life. And then I had to take a break because it was a little too close to the frenetic pace of my own industry.
As @drivingsideways wrote, a lot of Search is premised around ‘patriarchy? who dat?’, which is why watching its politics play out is so fascinating. It’s also deliciously turmoil-y to watch a very clear-sighted, weathered Tami put on rose-tinted glasses for her romance and then frequently peer over them to evaluate whether it could actually meld into her life.
Catch The Ghost - Kim Seonho oozes charm and perhaps Startup was a showcase of how effectively he can be a typical male lead. But Catch is exactly not that. Go Jiseok and Yoo Ryeong have moulded their lives around to meet their most desperate wishes in life and in the process also left parts of themselves untended. There is guilt, pain and need. Now guess who will tend to whose wounds? Their dynamic is electric even when the central mystery flags towards the last few episodes of the show. I really hope Moon Geun Young is doing well and gets more amazing roles soon. She is so good here.
(Highly recommend @melonatures‘s fic for putting that sizzling on-screen chemistry into words. HOW?!)
Cherry Magic - Stories about painfully awkward people are my jam and Eiji Akaso gets Adachi’s shy, nervy energy so right. Cherry Magic is straight up just 12 hours of 🥺🥺🥺.
Stranger/Secret Forest - I’ve been devouring the entirety of Agatha Christie’s work this year after Stranger reminded me how comforting murder mysteries can be. I love Bae Doona. I also love characters who don’t get social norms, not always because they are out to flout them but because that’s just not how their mind/brain works. (have to watch S2)
Flower Boy Next Door - Honestly, the opening scene introducing Park Shin Hye’s character Go Deok Mi sold me on this immediately. An introverted, penny pinching copy editor living alone and working from home thanks to extreme social anxiety? Love. All the side characters are a lot of fun and I’ve never loved Kim Seulgi and Go Kyung Pyo more. It’s a warm show, slowly rounding off the sharp edges of every character.
JUST FUN
The Spies Who Loved Me - It’s been a year of disappointing rom-coms and Spies kind of quietly turned it around for me. I want to be the fly on Yoo In Na’s wall as she figures how to play her characters. I’ve only seen her in 3 roles but somehow she always manages to be in character arcs that don’t short change her. Spies could’ve been and sometimes is the regular heterosexual fare, but In Na ups the ante over and over again, coming out on top as the smartest person in the room.
ENJOYED WITH *RESERVATIONS*
I have to watch A Piece Of Your Mind again because I don’t understand how Jung Hae In and Chae Soo bin built SO MUCH warmth and crackling chemistry with barely a kiss. I was iffy about how the whole AI thing started off and the tortured musician plotline (angsty male artists will forever be an eyeroll for me).
Park Min Young is a queen who never disappoints and When The Weather Is Nice is everything you want in a winter romance. My reservation was in how they explore so much of domestic abuse and the complex ways its traumatised the women in this family. I’m ok with the characters having imperfect ways of processing and understanding the violence, I welcome it. I’m not ok with the show dancing around whether the pivotal crime was justified/ self defence (it was).
A lot of dramas did this. I loved Han Yeri and Choo Ja Hyun in My Unfamiliar Family, I didn’t like the free pass the show gave their dad’s abusive character.
Hwang Jung Eum’s comedy style is generally not my thing but she was pretty great in Mystic Pop-UP Bar. But I’m side-eyeing the sanctity surrounding motherhood. Maybe I should read more about babies and Korean folklore.
Hospital Playlist was my comfort watch through June and July. I think its wholesomeness and non-plot writing came at a good time for me. But I noticed then that the throughline for all main characters was moral superiority and hence what I then saw as *wholesomeness*. It’s kind of what makes it a grating rewatch in parts. Plus the real life of misogyny of Yoo Yeon Seok makes me want to push his angelic catholic character off a cliff. (For context, i was raised catholic). I want to continue loving Chae Song Hwa, and for that the showrunners need to stop cornering her with overbearing romantic interests (let that woman breathe! she literally ran away to another city!)
Hospital is good at creating moments of comfort, so much so that I went to watch Reply 1988 after it, but had to drop it coz I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll come back to it next year.
Once Again is what I call joint family propaganda. What it does well is lay bare the mechanics of living in a society that prizes the heterosexual family structure, the loops you have to jump through to hide when you break its rules and what happens when you are found out. I love the characters, their fights, their frustrations. I just don’t love the validation of joint families. (context: i grew up in an oppressive joint family lol). In my au, Nahee and Gyujin don’t get married again or immediately have children, but take the long route to figuring out how to love the person the other is. Gahee is openly dating Hyo shin and her parents have to figure out how to process her success and her romance. Young dal and Ok boon have to learn to stop dictating their children’s lives. Joon sun runs his company from home, so his wife Hyun kyung can work on what she wants. Choyeon, Joori and Ga-yeon go back to being flamboyant AF and the market learns to not judge. Gyujin and Jaesok have to actually work on the relationship with their mother and what sent her into depression. Just a lot of learning involved.
Just Between Lovers was a nice watch, i just don’t get how Kang doo and Ha Moon So’s relationship will survive his constantly simmering anger.
Crash Landing on You was so much fun until the main romance turned angsty, but it gave us North Korean soldier shenanigans and the epic romance of Seo Dan and Alberto Gu that we needed more of.
Tale of The Nine Tailed is probably what Goblin wished it was. I, however, will never be over Lee Rang. (Also, when can gods stop meeting their love interests as babies? Asking for my sanity)
I literally ignored everything in Oh My Ghost except Park Bo Young and Kim Seulgi and it was amazing.
NOPE
Goblin, Dinner Mate, Oh My Baby and My Secret Romance were a whole lot of NO, NAHI, ILLAAA.
I loved hate-watching The King:Eternal Monarch with the rest of k drama tumblr but someone please take away Kim Eun-sook’s access to gigantic budgets and all-star casts.
It was painful to watch Do You Like Brahms squander away its potential but I’m glad to be introduced to Park Eun bin. Age of Youth is next on watchlist.
More than Friends to me is only Ahn Eun jin. Someone give her amazing lead roles asap.
Why did Record of Youth do that to Park So Dam and her clothes? Just why
WANTED TO WATCH, BUT COULDN’T BECAUSE *INTENSE*
World Of The Married, It’s Okay Not To Be Okay, Sweet Home, Extracurricular, Penthouse, Flower of Evil, Lie After Lie
WILL WATCH NEXT YEAR
SF8, Stove League, Birth Care Centre but I’ll start the new year with School Nurse Files coz it looks very good.
#long post#kdramas#review#2020#A DECADE#Goo Sera’s and Yoo Ryeong’s are the kinds of stories I wish I’d watched through my late teens/early 20s#Jung Geum Ja and Bae Tami are who I’m taking into my thirties.
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2019 END OF YEAR KDrama Post
Wow, I haven’t made one in years. This is going to involve only dramas that came out in 2019 because I watched a hell of a lot dramas made prior to that and trying to figure out which ones will give me a headache.
DRAMAS WATCHED (In order of liking from most to least as opposed to pure quality; I am including if I’ve seen at least two eps AND feel it was enough to make up my mind; yes I realize that’s inaccurate, but that’s my list)
Extraordinary You - A philosophy and religion course AND a love story, and perfect at both.
My Country - a brutal, passionate, intense masterpiece of a sageuk. This is how they should be.
Crash Landing On You - the two eps that have aired brought my joy in watching kdramas back to me so vividly. This is everything.
Encounter - the perfect noona romance of the year for me. It seems to have little plot (powerful older woman, idealistic younger man) but the characters made me love them with an unhealthy amount of attachment and the mood is just perfect.
Haechi - smart traditional sageuk with a heart. This one will make you love it but also respect it in the morning :)
Queen: Love and War - Period, romance, mystery, helpless king and feisty heroine. It’s everything I love in one package.
Chocolate - if, like me, you like slow old-school melo with genuine grown-ups, this one is for you. Ha Ji Won and Yoon Kye Sang are both incandescent in this.
One Spring Night - a rare slice of life that worked for me so so much. I rooted for the main OTP like crazy (I did skip all the sister stuff though because boring to me.) It’s just a breath of fresh air.
The Tale of Nokdu - a rare funny youth sageuk that worked for me (except, ironically, for when they tried to be politics-heavy and serious about it.) Wonderful OTP, funny situations and just generally a delight.
Memories of the Alhambra - I can hear people screaming that I put this so high, but this is a faves ranking, not objective one, and I loved the unusual premise (it ultimately fell apart but it tried), and Hyun Bin’s performance was out of this world and the aaaaagnst and I enjoyed waiting for it each week until almost the end. That ending though!!!!!
Psychopath Diary - this is black comedy at its best and hysterical and smart and somehow got me invested in the hapless protagonist.
Hotel del Luna - clever and funny and smart. Hong Sisters largely back to form. I found the sageuk parts more engaging than modern ones, but what else is new.
Search WWW - some parts of it worked for me more than others, but it had solid writing and cool characters and some interesting OTP(s).
Love is Beautiful Life is Wonderful - has the weekend drama slowness but it lovely and fun.
When the Camellia Blooms - it was well made and the OTP was great and the acting top notch, I just don’t tend to go gaga for slice of life dramas, especially ones involving market ladies, much.
Flower Crew Joseon Marriage Agency - competently done, pretty period piece about nothing. It was enjoyable and forgettable at once.
Catch the Ghost - I put it as high as I did because the OTP really did have lovely chemistry but the story was a complete mess, the police work made no sense and the heroine’s character was like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Joseon Survival - I got about four episodes in and liked it a lot but then Kang Ji Hwan turned out to be a convicted rapist, they replaced the lead and I didn’t go back. I kind of want to because I liked what I saw and I am madly curious as to whether they changed the main character or just said he had a different face now, no explanation.
The Last Empress - pure inconsistent trash but so entertaining!
Vagabond - I made it eight episodes in before I realized that I would have as much fun staring at traffic. It’s a competently done actioner but without more, actioners never work for me, so this was a viewer/drama mismatch.
Arthdal Chronicles - incoherent, visually odd and boring, this is arguably the worst drama this year but I am giving it higher place because the cast really tries (even if it tends to fail because it has nothing to work with) and because it attempted something different even if it failed spectacularly. SO BAD.
Melting Me Softly - yes, my brain was fully melted by this soulless, charmless waste of Ji Chang Wook and my limited free time.
VIP - Any drama that makes the main mystery and thrust of the story who the husband cheated on his wife with is BORING. Seriously, this is not exactly Hercule Poirot. They wasted their cast - I have NO idea why Lee Sang Yoon agreed to be in this as a one note character and Jang Nara is playing a second scorned wife in a row but without even the entertainment value of her previous outing.
Abyss - aptly named. The best thing I can say about it is it didn’t offend me but oh boy was it dull.
Absolute Boyfriend - I loved the manga but it’s time to accept this can never be adapted well. They wasted the cast and that ending was just an insult on top of a trash heap.
The Lies Within - you cast that cast and deliberately have no romance. You are dead to me.
Woman of 9.9 Billion - competently made, but it’s everything I dislike - dour unpleasant bored people behaving as if they are in a particularly dreary art-house French movie but without any nuance or interest the latter came provide.
Love with Flaws - shrill, dumb, neither acted nor written by anyone trying at all.
Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung - objectively, it’s not the worst drama on the list, but it’s everything I hate in one package - willfully ahistorical but not cleverly so, male lead incapable of acting, the characters so one-dimensional they disappear, this purports to be a period drama but about as period as a space ship. God, I loathed this.
FAVORITE DRAMA
Extraordinary You - smart (so mind-bendingly smart) and moving and totally unpredictable and with so many things to say about free will and religion and self and nature of memory and narrative, this had an insane impossible premise and yet somehow managed to do it full justice and stick the landing.
WORST DRAMA
People with Flaws - this is different from least favorite because even if I loathed e.g., Rookie Historian or Woman of 9.9 Billion, I recognized some positive features; it’s just certain things really rubbed me the wrong way due to personal preferences. But this shrill hot mess of a drama is really everything that’s wrong with dramaworld.
FAVORITE MALE CHARACTER
Prince Yeoning, Haechi - fiercely smart, strong, tormented by the duality of his birth (royal father, servant mother) but not letting this distract him from his purpose, loyal to the bone, and with integrity nothing can shake but where you can feel that it’s not easy and that it costs him.
FAVORITE FEMALE CHARACTER
Eun Dan Oh, Extraordinary You - a go-getter who remakes the world (literally); smart, cheerful, strong, beautifully human. She feels so real and yet is larger than anything around her.
NEEDS TO BE MURDERED
Yi Seung Gye, My Country - a sociopath destroying lives in his quest for power and control, even the destruction of his own family barely gives him anything but momentary pause. He is the reason for the tragedy of MC.
FAVORITE SHIP
Eun Dan Oh x Haru, Extraordinary You - their love is literally universe and god-defying. They have loved each other as different people in three separate worlds (and counting), and have defied loss of memory and even loss of self as well as death, the end of worlds, and their god and the narrative and literally anything and everything, to be together.
Runner Up: Soo Hyun x Jin Hyuk, Encounter: tender and decent and his bringing her back to vivid life and the way they love and support and compliment each other.
Probably gonna be on list if doesn’t go haywire: Crash Landing on You: she is a SK heiress, he’s a NK officer, they have mad chemistry and so much potential.
NOTP:
Tae Mi x Morgan, Search WWW - love the actors, love the chemistry, love the characters in terms of the way they are written, but they are absolutely wrong for each other and there is no future of any sort but misery ahead. None of their issues are resolved but are swept under the rug. It’s a cautionary tale, not a romance. I did a long rant before so not repeating.
BEST SECONDARY OTP
Scarlett x Ji Hwan, Search WWW - they stole the shippiness in the drama for me. Cooky and adorable and noona romance done right.
FAVORITE SCENE
Haru’s final disappearance, Extraordinary You - the lights start to go out, the world literally dissolving, Eun Oh and Haru clinging to each other, with his telling her she was his beginning and the end. His name, the one she gave him, is the last thing he hears. In a drama full of amazing scenes the very gist of which was defying the very creator and universe and meaning of existence, this was the one that stayed with me the most.
BIGGEST CRUSH
Seo Hwi, My Country - I have a thing for deeply honorable, deeply tortured period badasses with long hair and a death wish (see Choi Young in Faith etc.)
BEST SCENE STEALER CHARACTER
Yi Bang Won, My Country - he started out as an antihero and ended up as arguably a tragic villain (or maybe still an anti-hero) but oh boy, was he magnetic and fascinating and sucking out all the oxygen whenever he was in the scene.
NEEDS A SEQUEL
Memories of the Alhambra - WTF ending was that?! All that misery and no real resolution?! Dammit!
TROPE THAT NEEDS TO DIE
Youth Sageuk - I hate most of them! They are anachronistic and dumb and honestly, what is the point of having fully modern people in period clothes? Just make a modern show and call it a day.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT
Melting Me Softly - Ji Chang Wook’s first project back from the military was an unfunny, unmoving, pointless mess with not an ounce of genuine enjoyment despite the excellent pedigree of everyone involved in front and behind the camera.
Arthdal Chronicles - the makers made excellent Queen Seon Duk, Tree with Deep Roots and Six Flying Dragons. The cast was uniformly A grade. The result was an open-ended, boring, incoherent mess that looks like a bad sort of a drug trip and made about as much sense.
BIGGEST GOOD SURPRISE
Extraordinary You - I had zero interest in yet another high school drama with no actors I recognized. By the end, EY was an emotional brainy twister of a marvel that became my favorite drama of all time. I’ve been watching dramas for over 13 years so that’s saying something.
2019 DRAMAS I HAVEN’T SEEN THAT I MOST WANT TO WATCH
The Crowned Clown - I love sageuks and cast and it looks so smart and emotional
Angel’s Last Mission: Love - my next contemporary - I watched a little and loved what I saw
Fates and Furies - I saw a few eps and classic melo is so up my alley.
Clean with a Passion for Now - I like the cast and it’s a year of falling for hot weird bosses apparently.
Graceful Family - I love makjang and Im Soo Jung.
The Secret Life of My Secretary - downmarket Beauty Inside and I loved BI.
Love Affairs in the Afternoon - artsy adultery FTW
Item - I don’t like crime stuff but I am here for Joo Ji Hoon.
My Strange Hero - seems a little cooky but I am fond of Yoo Seung Ho.
MOST ANTICIPATED IN 2020
King: the Eternal Monarch - Lee Min Ho and Woo Do Hwan and parallel worlds and written by Kim Eun Suk. Yes Please.
I should probably make one for cdramas too though that one would be rather shorter.
#kdrama#2019 list#extraordinary you#my country#encounter#haechi#crash landing on you#queen: love and war#jtbc chocolate#one spring night#the tale of nokdu#memories of the alhambra#psychopath diary#hotel del luna#search: www#search www#love is beautiful life is wonderful#when the camellia blooms#flower crew: joseon marriage agency#catch the ghost#joseon survival#the last empress#vagabond#arthdal chronicles#melting me softly#kdrama v.i.p#abyss#absolute boyfriend#the lies within#woman of 9.9 billion
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Mina-san, bonne lecture~! (Tsuki recaps his feelings about Kamen Rider Saber, a personal essay.)
So, Saber... what a wild ride it's been, huh? Just a quick heads up, this is very long and rambling, and also contains spoilers for everything in Saber. It's fine if you don't wanna read all this, but I just wanted to get my thoughts out there.
TL:DR, Kamen Rider Saber's an undercooked hot mess I absolutely adore, warts and all.
Speaking as objectively as possible, it's a 6/10. Probably closer to a 5 than a 7... it's not great: All the different plot elements are cluttered and weirdly paced; character focus is disjointed and clearly biased toward certain characters, leaving great ones like Kento and Ogami, interesting ones like Kamijo and Hayato, and underdeveloped ones like Sophia and especially the Shindais in the dust; not to mention its balance of comedy and drama is off, and while both are very effective, there's a lot of mood whiplash that can take you out of the story. I also feel like a lot of the easily avoidable character conflict could've been easily resolved, even in universe, by simple conversations. Be careful Fukuda, I think Inoue might sue you if he finds out you've been biting his style and doing it worse.
Rider shows have a very frustrating tendency to drop cool form ideas and not do anything with them, and I don't think it's ever been more the case than with Saber. There's a similar argument to be made with the majority of Heisei Phase 2 after Gaim, but wow. The suits are expensive to make without just straight up recycling everything, I get that, but man, I really wanted to see more Wonder Rider forms. How come Touma got all the fun, eh? Of note are the Blades King of Arthur forms (which look amazing by the way), Espada's Jaaku Dragon forms (one of which I even drew last night), even the non-elemental random Wonder Ride Books all have awesome design elements that go tragically unused. Even if the other Swordsmen just kinda have the ones they do get to use slapped onto them, that's at least something. Touma also just straight up only uses Diago Speedy twice and never again. You have cool props guys, don't waste them like that!
Speaking of waste, Espada, goddamn. Since most of the Wonder Ride Books are Story Type and he needs one very specific Story Book to transform, he doesn't get much of... anything, really! No Wonder Rider forms like Blades, Lamp Do Cerberus being exclusive to Ganbarizing, only getting to use the Ride Gatriker like once, he even spends the second and third arcs as a completely different Rider, then once he comes back he doesn't get a King of Arthur-granted upgrade or even a Necrom Espada form. ...at least, not yet anyway. I'm holding out hope for Espada x Necrom and the eventual Saber V-Cinemas. Extra Rider stans, we will be well respected someday.
The Unreal Engine CGI used for fights in early Chapters was pretty good but wow it feels disconnected and they really drop it quick. I feel like if the animators had more freedom to use as many forms as they want, we'd have gotten a lot more mileage out of the books beyond... decoration basically. I actually really liked the CGI sequences, they felt creative and were fun to follow along with.
The soundtrack is pretty great on its own and conveys what it needs to, but they seriously overplay the orchestral themes. It honestly feels kind of... stock at times. I think my favorite parts of the score are when it winds down, since it feels a lot more natural and lets the cinematographers and actors speak for themselves.
As awesome as I think Falchion's design and the Mumeiken Kyomu are, The Phoenix Swordsman and the Book of Ruin comes up short as its own standalone thing. You'd think 30 or so minutes of non-stop action would be awesome, and it almost is? It's as good as a typical episode of the series with a higher action budget, but it kinda drags on a bit too long; and although I think Emotional Dragon looks cool, it feels a bit tacked on. Coming off of the incredible Zero-One REAL×TIME, it doesn't give you much room to breathe, which Rider films are typically great at handling. I also thought the resolution for the kid's subplot was kinda forced. He does an okay job at acting considering his age and doesn't overstay his welcome, but I really don't see how 20 minutes of violence and action is enough to convince him to be brave enough to go play with the other kids. 5/10, it's closer to a 4 than a 6 and I think that maybe Zero-One should've stood on its own if they really had to push back Kiramager Bee-Bop Dream because of the pandemic.
Alright, with all that said... As imperfect and undercooked Saber was, like Ghost I can consider it a personal favorite, 10/10. Call it a guilty pleasure if you want, but holy hell it's just the show I needed. Takuro Fukuda has a talent for creating fun, wonderful characters and utterly fascinating worldbuilding and concepts. It's a shame he doesn't utilize them fully, but hey!
The action and fight choreography are pretty top notch as usual. Lots of beautiful shot composition and set pieces, and plenty of great angles to help keep up with the extra busy action. I love watching the suit actors perform and they deserve all the respect in the world for their hard work in those hot, sweaty, and heavy costumes. Their visual design is also top notch, with lots of unique and fascinating forms and cool weapons I desperately want to play with despite being broke, all with spectacular finishers and hype jingles with the voice of Akio motherfucking Ohtsuka calling them out. A real feast for the eyes. Not a single bad suit among them, yeah I said it, fight me.
The crossover specials are soooo good too.
-I went over my feelings on the Zenkaiger crossover episodes in a separate post (good luck finding that btw), but to sum it up, they were great character moments for Zox and the Shindai siblings with lots of great screwball comedy and some good old fashioned meta humor.
-The Ghost crossovers are great little side stories all about how Daitenku Temple somehow had the Ghost Ijunroku Wonder Ride Book? I genuinely have no idea why it was there, or how Makoto had the Specter Gekikou Senki, and as far as I remember neither of their origins are explained. Did Luna or Tassel hand them off to them and told them to wait for a sword guy? And why do these generic French Revolution Gamma villains working for Danton get their asses handed to them so easily by Kanon, who literally just became a Rider? I thought that Makoto deciding to adopt all the Kanon clones into his family was both hilarious and adorable though; considering all the crap they went through, I think it was a good ending to this plot. Gimme Espada x Necrom already Toei/Bandai/Fukuda/whoever I need to yell at, give Kento things to do, I beg you.
-I haven't actually seen Super Hero Senki since it's not available for subbing yet, but apparently there's a Journey to the West plot starring the Taros and Ohma Zi-O and I want to see that so badly.
Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra? Yoohei Kawakami? A match made in heaven, that's what they are. All of their themes are absolute bangers. All of them. Almighty, Kamen Rider Saber, Sparks, Taju Rokou, all excellent and empowering pieces. Rewrite the Story, Will Save Us, and The Story Never Ends are all amazing inserts done by the cast, and it makes me wish we had even more of them to help break up the monotony of the score.
The characters are what easily make this show such a great watch though. For the most part, they have great personalities and chemistry, consistently fun and interesting scenes, well acted and... sometimes well-written development, and deeply investing personal stakes.
Narrating it all is the delightfully eccentric Tassel/Viktor, portrayed by Romanesque Ishitobi "TOBI" of the Paris-based Les Romanesques. I was utterly confused by his presence at first, wondering why there needed to be a narrator when the story would've been perfectly fine without it. He even got a special spot in the opening despite having no stake in the plot despite seeming to live in Wonderworld, who the hell is this guy? But then I thought "OH MY GOD, HE'S THE MAIN VILLAIN USING TOUMA AS THE HERO IN HIS OWN TWISTED STORY, THE BASTARD". I thought it'd be some subversion of expectations, true form, "That Was His Mistake!" shit. Trust me, it made a lot more sense in my head. I'm very happy that they didn't do that, as I grew to love having male Yuuka Kazami as my narrator, and when he was shown to be actually important by being friends with Yuri my mind was blown. And doubly so when I realized just how deeply necessary to the plot he really is.
Rintaro/Blades is up there as one of my all time favorite secondary Riders, since his curiosity is always consistently funny and adorable, his forms are all gorgeous and impressively designed, his relationships with Mei and Touma are absolutely sweet and compelling to see unfold, and his arcs about becoming willing to call out those he views as family and coming to terms with his feelings of inadequacy and both moving past and using them to strengthen himself are always great lessons to pass on to kids. ...even if they took like 10 goddamn episodes to be conveyed in what could've been 5, but hey, Takaya Yamaguchi does a stand-up job all throughout. Rider veteran Eitoku's refined, almost logical movements with the Suiseiken Nagare absolutely beautiful to see in action, and his final form having the same white and blue color scheme as Zooous's base form is an amazing touch I don't see appreciated enough.
Mei Sudo's also absolutely wonderful, serving as the perfect emotional core of the story, responsible for most of the funniest lines, sweetest character moments, and some of the most deceptively compelling drama. Asuka Kawazu brings the perfect energy for such a dynamic and well rounded character, and absolutely nails her scenes of quiet turmoil. As much as I would've loved her to become a Rider, I don't think she really needed to. She's already done so much to help, and as cool as it would've been to see her pick up a sword and fight alongside them as Espada, Calibur, or Falchion she's already endeared herself to me as one of my favorite supporting characters in the whole franchise.
I can't get enough of my homeboy Kento Fukamiya/Espada. Like Rintaro and everyone else for that matter, he also suffers from Saber's pacing issues; and like his predecessor Valkyrie from Zero-One, he doesn't get a proper upgrade aside from his Wonder Combo, instead becoming an anti-villain using a completely different powerset and shifting the Raimeiken Ikazuchi out of focus for the Ankokuken Kurayami, and I feel there's a serious missed opportunity to see him use Jaaku Dragon with Alangina. However, Ryo Aoki's performance is probably among the most easily praiseworthy in the whole cast, managing to convey both Kento's kind and knightly stoicism as Espada and his emotionally unstable despair as Calibur perfectly, in conjunction with Yuji Nakata's experienced and expressive stuntwork.
Ren Akamichi/Kenzan's a dark horse favorite for sure. I remember back when Saber was first picking up, people hated this breezy mad lad for being such a simple character at first. Overly concerned with strength? Black and white world view? Annoyingly energetic? Agh, real-feeling character flaws, I hate them, get him away from me! But then y'all came crawling back. Eiji Togashi's apparently a bit of a rookie actor, and it really shows with some stilted delivery and the way he sometimes bobs his head when giving his lines, but man he improves dramatically as the series goes on. His inexperience ironically ends up really selling his character development, and his unexpectedly beautiful relationship with Desast is special evidence of that. The Fuusouken Hayate's three modes and Satoshi Fujita putting them to excellent use through his stellar acrobatic movements are also really cool.
Why did Luna have to be a child for so long? Does Wonderworld not age whoever inherits its power? Well since Luna randomly becomes an adult in Super Hero Senki and some of the final episodes, I guess so? Miku Okamoto does a fine job for a kid actor, but she's basically done all the heavy lifting for the whole series and doesn't give Mayuu Yokota enough time to get a feel for her character as an adult. How did she choose Touma to inherit the power anyway? Does she just subconsciously decide to trust him with it upon seeing how kind and passionate about storytelling he is? Well if that's the case, why didn't Kento get at least some of that power too? He's just as important to the merchan- I mean Luna-chan, isn't he? Why did Tassel pick her over someone who isn't a literal child who'd be understandably terrified about basically becoming an embodiment of storytelling?
Sophia also kinda suffers from the same problems. Rina Chinen's voice is very pleasant to listen to, but she doesn't really do much beyond serving as a source of exposition and support. I think her dynamic with Mei's adorable, and given her kindness I can certainly understand the respect Northern Base has for her, but she doesn't really contribute a whole lot. If she could use the Kurayami and become Calibur all this time, then why didn't she take it from Kento and Yuri and do so earlier when Kento decided to go back to being Espada? I know she's not much of a fighter and as the closet thing the Sword of Logos has to a leader after Isaac's death I'd understand not wanting to put her at risk, but considering Storious is destroying the world, and she's very evidently kicking a lot of ass in the first part of the final battle even in the basic Jaaku Dragon form, I think it would've helped a lot, just sayin'. Tassel at least has the excuse of being unable to interact with the real world, but Sophia obviously didn't just be put in charge of Northern Base just because she's a pawn in Isaac's plans right?
Ryou Ogami/Buster is also a victim of the disjointed character focus. I have no problem believing he's an excellent father and fighter thanks to Yuki Ikushima and Jiro Okamoto, respectively, but he feels a bit flat and simple in comparison. His rivalry with Desast is randomly dropped, his wife doesn't even show up until the final episodes, he's kinda sidelined in terms of action a whole lot. I imagine that must've sucked for the Rider Dads out there. He does get to star in his own manga, and that was pretty good, so I guess I can't be too mad.
Tetsuo Daishinji/Slash fares better though. Hiroaki Oka, being a Kamen Rider fanboy himself, manages to make him among the most relatable characters in the series. Not only are his hyperfixation on swordsmithing and anxiety played surprisingly believably, Hirotsugu Mori letting him cut loose is extremely cathartic and hilarious, and you really feel for him when the Onjuuken Suzune becomes the first victim of Calibur!Kento's sword sealing.
Yuri/Saikou's another dark horse favorite, for me at least. "Oh great, Avalon guy's got even more merchandise to sell, I wonder what his Sword of Light is- it's himself. Well... that's different." I admit, I didn't like him at first. He felt like he was there to fill out character dynamics in the absence of both Rintaro and Kento, I thought his gimmick was too silly even if his design and jingles were bangers, I didn't particularly care for his power set. But then XSwordman came around I totally got it. He's an endearing, hard-working man trying his best to catch up on all the cool shit he missed, unafraid of experimentation, ready to throw down at a moment's notice, serving as a wonderful bit of consistent support for our heroes, a truly knightly individual, an absolute Chad. and goddamn does he make me worry. Tomohiro Ichikawa, I salute you good sir.
Even if they fall short compared to the rest of the cast, the Shindai siblings are at least cool enough to not wanna write out entirely. They kinda devolve into comic relief after they become allies, something that villainous Riders from Chase onwards are very prone to doing, and it's especially awkward in their case because I think that they kinda get off scot-free for obeying the obviously sinister and crazy Isaac for so long, as well as driving a wedge between a lot of people and threatening children in Reika's case. I think their sibling dynamic is nice though, even if Fukuda recycled it from Makoto and Kanon and has some... questionable possessive undertones as a result. It's cool how they're basically foils to Touma and Rintaro though. The dispassionate and methodical Reika/Sabela is beautifully played by Angela Mei and her moments of emotional depth are fascinating to watch. Her Rider form is a thing of beauty, and its use of literal the Eneiken Noroshi's smokescreens and Yuki Miyazawa's precise and deadly stinging strikes are a joy to watch. And while Ken Shonozaki's not given the best direction as the undercooked plate of 7-Eleven fried fish that is Ryoga/Durendal, he manages to sell him as an experienced and hardened warrior with an awkward side that's especially evident in the Zenkaiger specials. His goddamn RWBY weapon that is the Jikokuken Kaiji is absolutely sick, I'm a sucker for transforming weapons and its combination of time and water powers is really cool, especially with Yasuhiko Amai's deliberate and forceful acting in the suit.
Daichi Kamijo/the Second Calibur, for as brief as his story was, was a pretty cool starter villain. Hiroyuki Hirayama brings this poor bastard to life in a genuinely touching way. I love how as Calibur he goes full force on his creative use of Wonder Ride Books for attacks, and his debut as Jaou Dragon got my blood pumping. His end is also deeply tragic, and I really felt for him when he realized just how badly he fucked up. Hayato Fukamiya also does wonders for the backstory, and while he also doesn't get much to work with, Mitsuru Karahashi makes his regrets and love for Kento feel genuine.
Legeiel and Zooous are both very intimidating and entertaining villains. On top of being just the right balance of goofy and threatening, Kairu Takano and Koji Saikawa's stage presences are both very strong, and their mixture of camaraderie and in-fighting is extremely believable. Zooous's rivalry with Rintaro feels incredible to see through to the end, and although Legeiel doesn't get quite the same treatment, Elemental Dragon had such a cool debut that it more than makes up for it. Their final fights are also absolute spectacles. I don't think their sympathetic angle works even close to as well as it does with MetsubouJinrai or even the Gamma, but I get it, power corrupts, and you probably feel a lot of sadness and regret for things you've done when you die unless you're a right bastard.
Isaac/Master Logos/Solomon is kinda generic. As wonderful as Keisuke Soma is, he doesn't get much dimension to work with. The result of that is while he nails being as smug and punchable as possible, he feels almost... comically generic. Genta Umemori from Shinkenger was full of personality! He was also basically some guy, but he was fun, he felt connected to the rest of the cast! Meanwhile the only real time we get to see Isaac's depth is when we see him crying over his failures. I almost appreciate him being unapologetically evil though, since I've seen way too many shows where redeemed villains get off scot free for way worse things, and some where they outright demand you to sympathize with them despite them doing nothing to warrant it.
Bahato/Falchion surprises me by not just being a movie villain whose actions affect the main plot, but also being a movie villain who actually gets to appear in series as a recurring threat! ...and it's not a particularly great showing on his part, sadly. Masashi Taniguchi does a wonderful job with what he's given, but his character feels like a retread of Eternal without any of what made Katsumi Daido a compelling and frightening villain. I'd like to believe Yuri when he says that he used to be a good person and a hero to the people, but I can only hear so many anime villain monologues about the pointlessness of life and the beauty of destruction before I can never take them seriously again. ...I think that's his biggest problem, actually. I thought he was an overall uninteresting and generic villain in the movie, and the cartoon nihilist he's shown to be in series is only a small step up. He still feels like filler. If only there were a far better written and much cooler villain who takes on the Mumeiken Kyomu after his de--
Desast is probably one of the finest anti-villains I've ever seen in recent years. On top of an absolutely badass character design and the excellent combination of Kazuya Okada/Danki Sakae's suit work and Koki Uchiyama's stellar voice acting, his story being so thoroughly intertwined with Ren's makes their shared journey and bromance a borderline Shakespearean tragedy. His struggle for identity despite Storious treating him as nothing more than a failed experiment and the Sword of Logos treating him as a mere monster really gripped me, and the way he uses what little time he has left to encourage Ren into blossoming on his own is absolutely beautiful. I think his enmity with Ogami is criminally underexplored in series, considering he killed several of the previous Riders and how Ogami's in desperate need of screentime.
Then there's our main villain, Kamen Rider Storious. Robin Furuya brings an incredible amount of charisma to this character, expertly portrayed as both a sinister, manipulative bastard , and as a lonely, tragic figure that arguably makes him feel even more villainous. Speaking as a struggling writer myself, it's easy to feel stuck in the idea of "fuck it, who cares, maybe everything is predestined", but I can't imagine what it's like to know that as the truth and carry it with you for all that time. All of your grand ideas have roots from your experiences, and you're not the only one who even could have those experiences. It's easy to just fall into despair and give up trying, but would that make you happy? Sure, Storious is sadistic, he may be fulfilling his goals, he may be ungodly powerful... but it's not enough for him, is it? All of his friends are gone, one of them even at his own hand, he probably doesn't have any idea what to do after he destroys all the world's stories, Touma even reached his full power before he did, and his downfall is so predictable that even a blind person could see it. He even seems to welcome it, what's up with that? But then I realized... OH MY GOD, HE'S THE MAIN VILLAIN USING TOUMA AS THE HERO IN HIS OWN TWISTED STORY, THE BASTARD. He's so far gone, he's so desperate to stick it to the Almighty Book, he's willing to twist the archetype of the Hero's Journey so hard, it snaps in two. What I think is interesting is that he's ironically trying to chase the trend of "edgy superhero story" that became super popular in the 21st century. The Boys, Brightburn, Kamen Rider Amazons, The Sentry, No More Heroes, Magical Girl Site, even mainstream comics from DC and Marvel... Surely Storious must've seen the cruelty and tragedy these stories are filled with, but he chooses to go through with trying to force the world into this direction anyway. Did they, along with seeing the ever-popular tragedies of legendary playwrights and bleak satire of the twentieth century fuel his despair?
And yet... there's one who stands in determination against his ideals.
Our hero, Touma Kamiyama, the titular Kamen Rider portrayed by Syuichiro Naito and Kousuke Asai, he speaks to me on a personal level. There're plenty of jokes to be made about his procrastination in early chapters, his godless fashion sense, and him doing the funny run up the slope, that's all fine and dandy, but I rarely feel so connected to a character the way I did Touma. The struggle to create, find companionship, live your life, reach out to others... these're things a lot of people struggle with, and of course you see them depicted a lot in media about creators, but Saber gets to the root of what the greatest thing about storytelling really is. Giving people hope, while using the pain of the past as fuel for the future. Sure, Storious may be right about how every story has been done as far back as human civilization gets, he may even be right about how any spin or creativity humanity has is outright predestined. It should be pointless to even try, right? That's where Touma Kamiyama disagrees. He didn't spend all that time fighting and creating just to give up at the idea of predestination. His novel writing-fueled creativity in his early training, his devotion to his friends that let him surpass Kamijo as Dragonic Knight, his compassion for the Primitive Dragon that let him combine their powers to destroy Legeiel as Elemental Dragon, his resolve that let Xross Saber dethrone Solomon, and his passion for the craft of storytelling that let our heroes channel their wishes into Wonder Almighty... all stemming from the belief imparted onto him by his predecessor that "Hope lies beyond your resolution." And that you decide how your story ends. He may not be the greatest Rider to some, he may be as lame as others think he is, he may not even be my favorite, but I have no issue calling Touma Kamiyama... Kamen Rider Saber, one of the all time greatest carriers of the Kamen Rider name.
The final chapter's definitely not as great as some other Rider finales, but goddamn. Primitive Dragon consciously choosing to save Touma is so sweet and such a great emotional payoff, I loved jamming out to the opening theme while our boys lay the smackdown on Storious. Wonder Almighty's a fitting final bit to close the main series out with, if not exactly a great one. I think the cover is great, and the book's body is a lovely shade of candy apple red, but I really don't like how its pages are just the covers of the other books copy-pasted onto onto the pages, that feels lazy. Maybe if it were a panorama of all the books' characters, I'd like it a lot more as a symbol of how unified the Swordsmen are, but eh, what can you do? On a related note, does this mean all the "last episode extra final forms" of the Reiwa Era are gonna be named after their series's opening? That's a neat idea.
I felt a lot of feelings seeing all those video messages of Rider fans all across Japan talking about their favorite stories, and how their passion and fond memories help reshape the world. Mei's monologue at the ceremony about is also really touching and- IS THAT A HUMAGEAR!? :O
Y-yeah dude, it is! Wow, where have you guys been for the past 48 episodes?! Are you guys doing okay? How come you're like... the only one here? Is the technology of Hiden Intelligence only really that prevalent in that very specific metropolitan part of Japan and they're just not coming around much over here? Is it like Dragon Ball where anthropomorphic animals are just vibin' with humans while the heroes are off kicking ass? Apparently he's played by Hasegawa Keiichi, who wrote this episode and had the award ceremony named after him. ...is Hasegawa Keiichi a HumaGear in this universe then? Did he set up this award ceremony in Touma's honor? If so, why is it named after him? Did reading one of Touma's books lead to his Singularity? I know this is just a cameo, but... god, I have so many questions that probably will never be satisfactorily answered.
Overall, if I had to compare Saber to anything, it'd probably be Sam Reimi's Spider-Man trilogy. It's awkward, stupid, overwrought, undercooked, illogically written, scattershot, cheesy as fuck, and has a tendency to squander its otherwise fine execution; but the sheer passion for storytelling, sense of spectacle, deeply fascinating characters, and belief in the ideals set forth by the cast, crew, and fans are absolutely admirable. Improvements would certainly make it an overall better experience, to be sure, but there's something deeply captivating about how wonky this series is. Seeing everybody get their happy ending after all they've been through felt extremely gratifying though, and I may have to wait another for the epilogue to and then wait for Revice, but... man. I'm hella proud of our awkwardly-emoting, fashion disaster novelist and all of his heavily flawed friends for carrying the Kamen Rider name on to the future. Here's hoping Revice will keep it going.
Alright, that's everything I wanted to talk about. Sorry this was so long and ramble-y, I had a lot to say. I'll probably be liveblogging Revice as episodes of that come out, so... look forward to that, I guess. See ya.
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this is a (super late) update to this fic rec post! i was planning to just keep editing and updating that post, but it’s been so old it no longer appears on tumblr search system and all, so here we are. be ready for some old school zosans in the mix
all complete
absolute favorites will be noted with a ♡
list will be updated as i find more
story count: 30 fics
last update: jan 5th 2020
CANON-VERSE
Goings On by clarify ♡
Zoro and Sanji understand each other, and sometimes have a very similar sense of humor. Even though they're worlds ahead of most, sometimes they can't help but to act their age.
easily one of my favorites. zoro and sanji are completely in character, being themselves and comfortable in each other’s spaces. for anyone who thinks zoro and sanji can’t get along in canon, this fic can easily prove them wrong.
Part Timer by 8ball ♡♡
Sanji really, really doesn't want to give Zoro a job at his restaurant. Zoro doesn't really even want to work there in the first place, but, well, there’s this thing with Sanji, and this thing with feelings and the whole thing is pretty damn stupid all together.
Zeff just wants grandkids. He’s too old for this bullshit anyways.
a wonderful, heart-wrenching, roller coaster ride of a post-series fic. this fic is not just a mere fic — it’s a zosan magnum opus with guest appearances by so many other characters, lots of crew hijinks and a must-read for everyone who craves for a happy ending for these good boys.
Say It Again by 8ball
Zoro tells Sanji how he feels. And then again. And again.
since we’re talking about 8ball i just want you to know i’d rec everything they’ve ever written, but special mention to say it again — a classic miscommunication trope fic done well where the miscommunication stems from fundamental misunderstanding of each other’s principles and views instead of just some plot-convenient coincidences. and soft zoro. god, he is soft.
The Wedding Night by cuethe-pulse (lj)
Zoro had never expected any of this.
major character death warning. don’t let the first few scenes fool you. note the warning; the last few lines were like a punch in the gut for me, except, you know, the good kind of punch. also, a quick rec of a drabble by the same author to soothe the pain after this one.
Roronoa Zoro: World’s Greatest Bug Killer by insaneidiot ♡
Sometimes, Zoro's life really sucks. He should've known better than to make fun of Sanji's bug phobia, though...
zoro’s internal monologue is hilarious — until today, this author is still my go-to expert on zoro’s voice, especially his more sarcastic side.
Quitting’s Easy by insaneidiot
Sanji decides to quit smoking. This is not quite so easy as he thinks it will be. Also, his crewmates (excluding Robin and Nami, of course!) are assholes.
fun, fun strawhat hijinks and oblivious sanji. the crew dynamics and especially sanji’s voice are pitch perfect. there’s a hint of luffy/nami that you can easily scroll past if it’s not your thing.
I can’t stop thinking that i can’t stop thinking by hieiandshino ♡
In which Brook changes tactics and Zoro is not amused. Everyone else is, though.
holy shit is this fic hilarious. i love comedy fics that manage to slip in thoughtful observations and character study in between the hijinks, and this fic pulls that off with flying colors.
The Walls See All by threesipsmore
Reiju hides a snail cam in her brother's room.
fun short fic from reiju’s pov. there’s never enough zosan set in whole cake island arc and this fic delivers.
Stormbird by Judin ♡
The Straw Hats' first landing in the New World is on Arashi Island, where it looks like they'll be spending a fun week attending the local festival and making new friends. Until they spot a strange pirate ship in the harbour, and Sanji starts behaving oddly. The Straw Hats become entangled with the mysterious Gently Pirates, a crew that harbour many secrets, and whose captain is a man out of Sanji's past who has the power to tear the Straw Hat crew apart.
it cannot be overstated how wonderful this fic is, and how it could’ve fit into the canon just nicely, like a better-written one piece movie, except with zosan. not only are sanji and zoro in character, every strawhat gets a spotlight and has pitch-perfect voices. brook is especially lovely in this fic.
Unintended Consequence by itsmylifekay
A group of marines charge, Zoro slices through them, and in that instant Sanji feels his own eyes grow wide. Because there, on the arm now outstretched towards him, steel glinting in hand, is the stupid bracelet he’d given Zoro. The bastard is actually wearing it.
there’s a reason this is the most kudo-ed zosan fic on ao3 right now — it’s so soft without being ooc, and there’s a quiet undercurrent of affection laid throughout the fic that will warm you up from the insides.
Somewhere Between Sorrow and Bliss by srididdledeedee
Sanji has never cared for winter.
He can see himself, is the thing. There are bits and pieces that poke through, but it’s not all him. It’s like staring in a fractured mirror. He knows, intellectually, that the person staring back at him is himself, but his face is splintered and his shape is distorted and his body is wrong.
a fantastic character study on trans!sanji and how he comes to terms with his identity with the help of his crewmates. supportive strawhats are always a lovely addition to a zosan fic
Give In To Love by libbylune
Zoro knows better than to think about it too much, but between the rowdy festivals and ancient unexplained temples on this island, it's hard to forget about wanting Sanji.
i love how this fic puts as much focus on the boys after the confession as it does before the confession. a good case fic with its own unique island adventure and i’m always a sucker for soft!zoro
Laundry by libbylune
Dealing with Sanji makes Zoro develop a lot of opinions about clothes.
there’s absolutely nothing hotter than bi!sanji who’s completely comfortable with his gender identity and sexuality. also gay disaster zoro fumbling his words whenever sanji is around is 1) accurate 2) hilarious.
Language of Swords by HaveMyWeedCookies ♡
It took them for a while but finally, Zoro asked if Sanji wanted to hold his sword.
i love fics that explore zoro’s relationship with his craft and his swords, and adding zosan into the mix is something i didn’t know i needed. an interesting outsiders pov zosan in the pov of zoro’s swords.
Ghost of a Chance by sabershadowkat
“I know, for sure, that I didn’t expect to miss everyone so much, including you.” Sanji cut a glance at Zoro and rephrased correctly, “Especially you.”
this fic handles tropes that are usually associated with character death fics, but manages to end it with a happy ending. zoro’s devotion here is heart-wrenching.
Idiot Romance by sabershadowkat
"This has to be a joke," Sanji muttered, poking at the colored petals. Zoro couldn't have just given him flowers.
a classic — this is literally the first zosan fic i’ve ever read — and a lovely one at that. sanji is oblivious and zoro attempts romance, not that zoro ever needed to.
festival night by thisislegit
“ANOTHER FEAT BY THE WORLD’S STRONGEST MAN, JORIRI.” The woman turned to Mr. Mohawk and with faux sympathy said, “Oh! Sorry, sir. Maybe next time. We can’t always beat the best, but we can do our best and that’s what matters. Do we have any other takers? ANY OTHER TAKERS READY FOR THE STRONG MAN CHALLENGE? HOW ABOUT YOU SIR? MADAM? YOU OVER THERE? ARE YOU INTERESTED?”
“What kind of shit name is Joriri,” said Zoro and Sanji in unison.
i’m an absolute sucker for fics that have zoro and sanji simply hanging out and enjoying each other’s company, comfortable in a way they couldn’t with their other crewmates, and this fic exemplifies that. just them being little shits and having fun with one another.
No Victory in Hesitation & the Past Has Its Lessons by EudaimonErisornae & vageege
Zoro has a lot of things he wants to say to Sanji, but he just needs one more day. || Zoro tries to fix a mistake he made in the past.
major character death warning. i died a little bit inside after reading this tbh. there are some devil fruits-explained time travel hijinks, but mostly it’s this looming, grim inevitability of death that’s written so pervasively throughout the fic that really got me.
Imperatives by dollcewrites
Zoro is confident in saying that Sanji is a man who doesn’t do what he’s told. Which is why, when a command accidentally slips from Zoro’s lips during foreplay, he is expecting to hear the cook’s scoff as he continues to do what he pleases.
i don’t tend to do pwp, but this isn’t just one — it’s a completely in-character piece about their relationship and dynamics.
when you say by bluewalk ♡
It's a long time in coming. Usopp can promise, but.
this fic is as much sanuso as it is zosan, and usopp here is — still very much usopp, but also a very beautiful take on his character as someone who spent a lot of time behind sanji’s back, and realizes that when he watches sanji’s back, he gets to see zoro’s, too.
a complete guide to falling in love by ThousandSunny
Sanji was trained in the Bridal Arts; this does not go unnoticed by the rest of his crew.
while the main ship is still zosan, the fic also focuses a lot on zoro and sanji’s relationship with the rest of the crew, and it’s one of those fics that really makes you realize how much of a family the strawhats is. a lovely read all around.
destructivity is a poison that run through our veins by wasteofmind
Zoro thinks that, someday, they are going to kill each other.
a dysfunctional take of their relationship. it’s fascinating in the same way a car crash is fascinating — there’s an undercurrent of something violent, something visceral. this is one of the fics that inspired me to write migratory animals.
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE
Ocean’s Child by 8ball ♡
Here's the truth: Zoro couldn't swim. He fell in the water and sank like a stone because there had never been anyone to teach him how to move his arms. He forgot that if he screamed for help the water would get in his mouth, and he even opening his eyes hurt.
Here’s the other truth, the one that stays a secret: a mermaid saved him.
a fascinating retelling of the one piece canon with mermaid!sanji. it feels a lot like a love letter to the seas, and it’s mesmerizing how sanji’s mermaid backstory is seamlessly weaved into the one piece canon.
with you by Cirro
How to find your life partner in three easy steps:
1. Punch them in the face
2. Insult their cognitive abilities
3. Embarrass them so much they agree to marry you
a wholesome two-part modern au series. my personal favorite is the second part, where sanji brings zoro home to meet zeff — complete with the two of them teasing sanji in their own ways.
The Proper Reaction (or What To Do When Your Son Brings His Boyfriend Home by three_days_late
Holidays at the Baratie were always hectic, but it's nothing Zeff can't handle. Sanji's new boyfriend, on the other hand...
on the topic of meet-the-family: the only thing more fun than zoro meeting zeff is zoro meeting zeff and the entirety of baratie staff. also includes one of my favorite line about bi!sanji: “sanji loves nice girls and bad boys”.
Exclusive by cuethe-pulse
Zoro loves Sanji, Sanji loves Zoro. Zoro wants to be exclusive, so Sanji should, too. Right?
this is a circus/bakery au. yes, you read that right, and yes, it works. i went into this fic with a lot of doubts and came out very satisfied with how fleshed out everyone in this au is, and i’m forever in awe with how the author can set up an entirely separate, vivid universe with so few words.
Delivery by styx_in_the_mud
Sanji is stuck delivering pizzas when Patty is out of commission for a while. Zoro likes to order pizza after training. Both of them are sort of idiots, but Zoro can be smooth as fuck if he puts his mind to it.
a fun, in-character au with good ol’ banter and cute get-together.
The End of It All by xpiester333xx
Humans have been forced underground due to the effects of a chemical weapon that has made surface life impossible. Sanji lives in one of these underground colonies and though he dreams of bigger things his life has been mundane; spent following strict rules and obeying higher commands. Or it was, until a stranger shows up and changes everything.
the author labelled it as sci-fi au, but I personally think it’s more dystopian-like? either way, while this fic is on the long side, it manages to keep everyone in character until the very end, which is something that can’t be said for a lot of fics.
well, there we go! feel free to drop me an ask if you want to rec me fics or ask for a more specific/themed rec list; i’ll also update this post regularly !!
i also have an ao3 donutsandcoffee if you want to see my take on these dorks o/
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