#drawing the cast in their canon clothes feels so weird..

[wastingstarlight]

💀🧼 drabble for the lovely @empresscirque and their prompt: "ghost playing guitar and soap liking it" 

pairing: john "soap" mactavish/simon "ghost" riley rating: T length: ~1k CWs: brief canon-typical violence A/N: ft! price/gaz mention for funsies, light angst, & a dash of hand kink bc of who i am as a person. thanks for the prompt and hope you enjoy! 💜

Soap is right fucking knackered.

The op had gone to shite as soon as the last two men guarding the garage pressed a silent alarm before Soap could dispatch them, summoning a small army of backup that had not been in the intel brief. 

It takes all his years of training, Ghost on his six, and sheer bloody luck to make it out in one piece. To top it off, since the place is now crawling with hostiles, exfil has been pushed back; they have to bunk in a safe house until things settle.

Soap barely fights the urge to groan as Laswell relays that charming detail to them. All he wants is a hot shower, a cold glass of water, and eight blissfully uninterrupted hours of shut-eye in a bed he knows he won’t get shot in. 

Well, as long as Price doesn’t figure out that Soap’s been the one deliberately shrinking his shirts, that is. What can Soap say; the man needs to get laid. He’s seen the way Gaz has been gawking at the captain, the way Price sneaks his own looks when he thinks no one’s watching, and Soap is more than happy to be their fairy fuckmother or whatever. He just wants someone to be getting some, is all. 

“Chin up, Sergeant,” Ghost—speak of the fuckin' devil—deadpans as he sets the course towards the coordinates Laswell had provided. “Least I’m not pullin’ a bullet outta your arm this time.”

“There’s still time,” Soap grumbles. “Think we’d get exfilled faster if ye were?”

Ghost snorts. “Not with the way our luck’s been goin’ tonight, Johnny. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

///

The safe house is standard; utterly ordinary, out-of-the-way, lightly stocked with food and gear. Working electric too, so Soap helps himself to a glass of cold water. That’s one thing off his checklist, anyway, and he’s already eyeing the washroom where a shower beckons. Maybe the night won’t be all bad.

“Go ahead,” Ghost says, like he’s reading Soap’s mind. “I’ll check the supplies, figure out something to eat.”

“Have I told ye how much I love ye lately, Lt?” Soap breathes, hardly thinking before the words are out and he’s brushing past Ghost and into the washroom. 

Soap stands under the blissfully hot water with his eyes closed and pretends he’s in a swanky spa in Glasgow instead of The-Middle-of-Fucking-Nowhere, Russia. It works, almost, but his grumbling stomach reminds him he has other things to tend to.

He switches the shower off with a sigh and towels off before tugging his base-layers back on. He especially hates this part—having to return to dirty clothes—but at least they’re quick-dry

Soap opens the door to the washroom, halfway to feeling like a person again, and then he hears it.

He thinks it’s the radio at first, on some weird Russian instrumental channel, but as he draws closer, he picks out little pauses, little imperfect scratches of fingers on strings, and he realizes right before he sees it that it’s not the radio; it’s Ghost.

Soap is not ready for the sight or what it does to him.

A single lamp casts the scene in gold and banishes the shadows to the corners of the sitting room. Ghost is down to his balaclava, t-shirt, and tactical trousers, cross-legged on the ground, a worn acoustic guitar in his lap. He watches his fret hand as he plays, his movements a bit slow but smooth, careful, practiced. Soap doesn’t know the song but he doesn’t really care; his eyes are fixed on Ghost’s hands. 

Big, scarred, powerful hands that Soap has seen slit throats, crush windpipes, disassemble and reassemble sidearms in under thirty seconds. Hands that are just as much a part of Ghost’s kit as his throwing knives. And Soap can’t stop watching those hands as they dance nimbly across frets, strum a precise rhythm that leaves Soap breathless for a reason he’s not allowed to let himself think about.

It’s over too soon.

“Ah didnae ken ye played, sir,” Soap murmurs, scrambling to fill the sudden silence before his traitorous thoughts do.

Ghost shrugs and ducks his head. He plucks a few more notes in a half-melody. “Dad taught me. ‘S been…a while since I’ve practiced,” he replies, voice rough, and Soap knows better than to push. 

There’s something desperately close to vulnerability in the air as Soap kneels in front of Ghost. Ghost’s eyes, honey-gold in the low light, track him the entire time, and curse that fucking mask because Soap would kill a thousand men to see Ghost’s face right now, to touch—

Soap swallows the want with practiced ease and fixes a smile to his face. “Y’know any other songs, Lt.? Closest I’ve been to a proper concert in ages.”

Ghost rolls his eyes but plucks out a few more notes before starting a new song in earnest. 

And the moment passes, like all these moments pass, because Ghost is Ghost and Soap is an expert at dealing with wanting things he’ll never have.

Soap tugs his knees to his chest, leans back against the sofa, closes his eyes, and lets the raspy acoustics wash over him.

He doesn’t realize he’s dozed off until he’s being woken up by Ghost pressing a mug of steaming soup into his hands.

“Eat this and get to bed,” Ghost says. Any vulnerability is gone, replaced by the Lieutenant’s gruff commands. “Long day tomorrow and I need you sharp.”

Soap knows the drill.

“Yes, sir,” he replies, stifling a yawn, and accepting the soup gratefully.

Soap’s sleep is as fitful and light as it always is in the field. 

But he dreams of music.

[littleeyesofpallas]

Not to be a weirdo and go all anime tiddy detective(again...) but I've been seeing my awkwardly salvaged Gigi/Senjumaru post getting notes, and among other issues i have with how that post wound up I do feel like I didn't actually articulate my characterization of Senjumaru's design very clearly.

Kubo's got certain sensibilities about his character design. Usually i get fixated on his love of dramatic "crazy face" and the fandom at large fixates on that one big breasted body type he knows the fans love, but he also has a pretty robust cast of modestly proportioned girls. That being said, he walks a line on that, and is very deliberate in making sure to always remind everyone that his small breasted characters do still have a noticeable chest. It's a little weird but it's pretty specific because you'd think it would be easy enough to let their silhouette flatten out for the sake of simplicity, or speed, or just because sometimes a camera angle won't naturally emphasize the bust, yet time and again he stays consistent on it in a way that predicates intent.

Also worth noting in the context of things here, Isane sort of implicitly binds on account of otherwise conflicting omake details vs her strict canon appearances. Unohana implicitly binds due to her traditional style of dress that fundamentally includes flattening out the chest silhouette. AND YET in the face of those facts they're still drawn to show distinct curvature to the chest line. Rukia, Hinamori, and Shino are all generally infantilized as a part of their design aesthetic, Rukia passing as a 15yo, Hinamori being demure and doll-like(ala her name), and Shino being part of an expressly younger generation than the heroes when she's introduced. They're still drawn with noticeable breasts: moreover there is every opportunity to just entirely lose their silhouettes to the featureless blackness of the shinigami uniform, and Kubo goes back in with the white ink anyway. SuiFeng and Hiyori actually both nearly dodge this by wearing clothes that do actually obscure their body shape, but then Kubo seemingly compensates for that modesty by giving Sui Feng her sideboob outfit when she throws off her haori(and its apparent attached sleeves?), and giving Hiyori almost out of place cleavage(well, that and almost constant midriff shots)

Point again being that these are characters with distinctly small breasts, for whom one should imagine no one would be up in arms about being drawn without some subtle bumps in theri chest line, and yet Kubo still does not miss the detail...

So with that intentionality in mind, the fact that he then went out of his way to... I don't want to call it "cleverly"... but eh... """cleverly""" avoid drawing attention to Giselle's chest by putting her in an oversized top, and even changing its design around the sleeves, and subsequently part of her silhouette(she was slightly curvier, and her outfit was less fluffy in her early appearances?), as her "reveal" chapter got closer, becomes a noticeably meaningful choice. In particular in proximity to the "reveal."

And you know who else he seemed to have taken similar care in how he drew? Shutara Senjumaru. And granted, as i prefaced this whole post with facetiousness, not as insulation but as disclaimer, this is a ridiculous angle of approach. it's a ridiculous premise. the evidence and logic underpinning every step of it is dumb, but in spite of any of that, Shurata's silhouette jumped out and grabbed me from her very first appearance. The line from her neck/shoulder down to her waist is unlike how he's drawn any other flat chested/small breasted shinigami. And that comes in conjunction with the rest of her aesthetic:

She is dressed like something between a Geisha: high class personal entertainer, a Tayu or Oiran: a high class prostitute, or a Kabuki actor who could likely be playing a character styled after or explicitly in the role of either.

Obviously her most striking feature is the bizarre headdress, which appears to be made of kanzashi[簪]: a rather broad category of hair accessories typical of geisha and oiran.

She appears to be wearing two exaugurated pins to create the shape of a crescent moon with what look like they would be the sort of hanging elements of a bira-bira kanzashi; meaning that each of those vertical bars hanging from the underside of the moon would be free to swing back and forth from a connecting link or chain(s).

The radiating golden bars from the top I assume would be a kind of hanagushi hair comb, again with obvious exaguration given its size.

And the under hanging radiance being something like miokuri.

It also gives off super distinct vibes of an art movement that I hate that I cannot for the life of pinpoint right now... I want to say it was Spanish colonial(???) that used to specifically carve halos in this style, not as a round solid disc, but as a series of geometric rays... I hate to say that the thing I always think of is how Death Note borrowed it for its pseudo religious imagery. (although I guess the French did it too a bit during the reign of King Louis the XIV, but i always associate it with the mexican art of catholic saints, but I'm not even sure if I'm thinking of the right thing.)

In any case those are motifs or themes that we never get to see explored. boo...

Shutara is however kind of unexpectedly underdressed for a super powered clothier. Her one exterior cloak thing is as bas I can tell not anything real, even ignoring its defiance of gravity. If she were an oiran you would expect more layers, and the distinctive thing i don't know the name for that they hold in front of them and conceals their hands... She does however have the unmistakable oiran raised shoes.

And finally her makeup is a little vague but with relative consistency she's been depicted as extremely pale, which strongly suggests white makeup, typical of unfortunately all three aesthetic culprits, thus not actually narrowing the reference down at all.

Taken then with her theme of clothes and costuming in proximity of theater, the power of clothes/costume and thus presentation and roleplay, Kubo's super distasteful conflation of Giselle's transgender identity as some kind of "disguise" or "deception," kabuki using onnagata --male actors specifically trained in female role performance and upheld and even coveted at times throughout history as an apex of femininity, even above and beyond that of ciswomen-- the fact that Senjumaru is just straight up a masculine name, etc...

Like i said in the other post about all this, which i'm reluctant to even link back to, without any further elaboration it's impossible to say what this actually means for shutara as a character, and any inworld logic that applies. I don't think she is supposed to be a literal actress, like she has some personal history of professional theater training and performance.

That feels like it should be obvious. But understand that while all of this was a pain in the ass to try and lay out explicitly, it's something that, knowing all these disparate factoids already, I didn't actually have to think about at all when I first saw Shutara. I just clocked her as a queer woman immediately. It felt super obvious.

But now for my due diligence.(i actually totally thought there woudl be more of it at first...) Because as confident as I am in my theory, even I can recognize that it is not without holes. For one, entirely outside this pattern is Liltotto, who is actually very consistently drawn without the otherwise ubiquitous indication of AFAB breasts I point out otherwise. And she is certainly given no particular trans coding the way I associate with Gigi and Shutara.

i was going somewhere with this and i forgot... i think i though there dbe a bigger string of tangents to go off and when there werent my brain just kinda fizzled out without drawing a conclusion...

[sayyourprayers]

Why is the fandom so weird about Finn and Noah's appearences and body type? Finn is constantly get babygirlified in a false narrative bc people see him as 'soo gender' bc he is tall and slim, they even apply eating disorder to Mike? When there is nothing that points to that on the show (if you do not reach). Lets not act like it is not because of overfocusing on Finn's appearence. They are also so weird abt Noah, and it is just more uncomfortable due to him being gay. This overfocusing on someone's masculinity and not is so weird especially when people project it onto Will to erase his canonical gnc'ness when we know he has been shamed for being like that. And people getting weird because Noah has an ass? Like idk what to tell you but people are not in the wrong when theu draw Will as having a butt or as his canonical gnc portrayal. You (neutral you) are, in fact, making it weird by capitalizing on the butt aspect so much though or insisting on making him buff.

Overfamiliarity. Incredibly BORING definitions of what passes as OBVIOUSLY gay (☂️). Obsession with skinny white men who are tall and have visible lips and did 3 fashion shoots wearing high heels or long nails maybe. Wearing a cap backwards as being a sign of men men men men manly men men men. Idk. Conflating charACTORS. Even then using weird baselines for both. Purity culture. Taste or lack of it.

Calling Noah buff is like how in the 2000s anything above size 4 was considered big. N calling Finn the various things he's called is disrespectful to Harry Styles.

I dis/agree about the ED takes as they're not solely reliant on his physique. But they're not devoid of relying on those. I guess it depends whose justification you read. Matters not to me since I disagree with all.

Will having a butt is canon. They're giving him tight pants. The cast too have spoken about it. They gave him short shorts. I think it's their way of showing his flamboyance or preference towards not loose clothing unlike the other boys in his group and even the teens.

It's easy to make anything weird if you put your mind to it. And we know the fandom has an overactive imagination generally. But in ways antithetical to the supposed message of the show and hell even the legacy of Tumblr.

But freedom of expression enshrines freedom to bullshit. So here we are.

The reversal confuses me because I genuinely feel there is no sweeping intent tying all the people who partake in it. People do it cuz of Noah Finn weirdness. Or sometimes it's to kind of make byler feel more equal. Let's switch what's happened so far. So now Mike's the delicate one and the one pining while Will's the cool mofo slinging guns and tearing his shirts as he flexes to upturn a car. "Told you, physique!"

I would put more thought into it. But I'm not being paid enough or at all. N that's an area that's important to me but not top of the list.

Canon is superior simply cuz it's canon. It's superior even with its flaws and imperfections and bad execution and misplaced intentions and all that jazz. Because that's the only truth that can be debated upon.

Headcanons are their own thing and have fun go ham.

Fanon is rust. And we have seen it fucking up the fandom machinery. It basically checks a lot of the boxes to classify as orwellian. But it's a silly show so I feel silly saying it. But ya.

Just don't give a fuck. Be rude to people who are rude to you. Assert your dominance by pissing on bad takes. What do I tell you man? Fight fire with water.

[ryuichirou]

what are your opinions on your own country's hetalia character (if they exist)? if they don't, what's your ideal hetalia character/personality for your country? for me, i used to be a hetalia fan way back in 2012 and my country didn't have a character, so we just made OC interpretations which was pretty fun tbh. there was even a popular unofficial ship between my country's most popular OC version and another for historical ties. now i come back to hetalia and my country has a canon character and it feels surreal. he's nothing like the OC versions but i still like him <3

Interesting question, Anon!

First of all, congrats on your country becoming a canon character, this is wonderful, especially if you’re enjoying him! It’s probably a bittersweet feeling, considering you had your OC version for so long, it’s probably very dear to you, so I’m glad the canon version still makes you happy <3

We’re from Russia, but I was born in Turkmenistan, so I guess I’ll answer about both.

Sooo Vanya is our boy! And I don’t draw him very often, but it’s just because I get too preoccupied with drawing other characters whom I also adore. But still, we love him very much, both his cute and scary side. That’s probably expected of us, since we love yandere/yangire/sadodere type in general lol

Not to get too deep here, but I think Himaruya did a good job in capturing the contrast between two sides that are usually attributed to Russia: simplicity and scariness. I really don’t like it when Russia and Russians in media (and in general) are defaulted to being an absolute irrational evil, and despite being the scariest (almost satanic lol) character from the main cast, Ivan feels ehh more nuanced than that? At least he is more entertaining because of how weird his schemes are and how simple his actual desires are. It’s like… demonizing, but in a fun over-the-top way, not in a superhero movie villain type of way.

Now, Turkmenistan, who isn’t a character in Hetalia and honestly it’s a shame. If you’ve heard anything about this country, you know what I’m talking about: a rapping president? Horses and dogs everywhere? A rapping president on a horse? A fucking monument for a book that the president has written? Turkmenistan would be so over the top and obnoxious and I personally would love him to death.

I don’t have an OC of Turkmenistan, but I do have Ashgabat (the capital of Turkmenistan). This is a super old drawing though, from 2018, he needs redesigning...

He wears a white coat and has super white teeth, because the city of Ashgabat is like 85% white marble. He has a lot of money (coming from all the natural gas and oil), but wastes it on luxurious clothes, accessories and mobile phones. Without his expensive clothes, he looks kind of plain. He also manages to be very naive and cunning at the same time. He really wants to look cool, modern and tech-forward, but he’s too traditional and conservative to pull it off. But he’s very good with horses and dogs: Akhal-teke and alabay are his pride and joy. Oh, and he RAPS. Obviously, he raps…

Look at me, got carried away again lol but I hope it answers your question!

[smallcatsims]

So we can kind of see Jojen and Meera here, as well as another shot of Jyana. These sims are based on book descriptions, and the genetics of Howland and Jyana, not the show actors. Though I liked the show casting of Jojen and Meera just fine.

So Meera is working on her body skill here, though I don’t have very good clothing options for tomboy ladies who wear pants and swordfight, so send me recommendations if you have some. Jojen is into art, because I feel like it’s helpful if he’s able to draw out the things he’s seen in his greendreams to help others understand them.

The Reeds in my mind are just very chill people who do things their own way, dress a little bit below their station since they trek through swamps and catch frogs and stuff, and are looked down upon by the other nobles as in canon for being a little weird.  But they are received by other families of similar social standing, considering their high rank and Howland’s friendship with Ned, which many sims are interested in exploiting. Jojen of course will inherit the Reed estate and title and Meera has a respectable dowry of $10,000 simoleans for now, but they don’t have a lot of marriage offers because sims do think they are a little weird, and Howland won’t force them to marry anyone they don’t love.

[thehylianidiot]

Hi folks. Just a teensy bit of a slow trying to got the next arc for that Fairy Tail role swap fanfic I've been working on (slow progress, constantly second guessing myself, but you know what? I'll take it at my own pace)

So in the meantime, I guess I'll share progress in the drawing aspect so I can get some feedback, and I've given it my usual over-thinking-it treatment so I might as well share it.

I've been working on making drawing references for the each of the main cast. This is after trying to draw characters for a few chapters and going: I really need a reference to keep it consistent.

Why do that? You already got the canon designs. Two reasons.

One: It's a role swap. The designs fit the canon roles, but may not 100% fit in when a character has to do something else in the story. Take Mavis for instance: her design is based around her status as Fairy Tail's first guildmaster, but it would look a teensy bit out of place as the guild's newest recruit.

Two: Limitations of the artist. I can't draw all the detail the manga's creator puts into these characters at my skill level. Heck, this is the first time I've ever drawn characters beyond just a t-shirt and pants. So, I need some sort of simplified design that fit my skill level so I don't get overwhelmed with every chapter's drawing (I swear I will learn shading eventually).

First time making a character sheet so I set some rules: hands to sides, look at the camera, feet pointing away from each other. Whether or not each character follows these rules is another story, and can help as a characterization exercise as well.

Is there room for improvement? Yes, but nothing's stopping me from making an updated version down the road.

I just got one design in this post, and I guess I'll try for one post like this each arc, but here's the swap design for Zeref (and Happy). I put details/notes in the keep reading section.

I really like Zeref's canon design. It's a good silhouette, and it tells a lot about the character (clothing from another time period, same color scheme as a certain other main character, wears used-to-be emotionally significant item, plenty of triangular shapes in form to represent danger). But I can't for the life of me draw all that loose fabric.

Luckily, I found that the Mildian uniforms were much simpler (and were hilariously enough black-on-white instead of white-on-black), so I used that as a basis. The only issue is that I only have one manga panel (barely a full page!) to go off of.

So make up the shoes (that I did have to look at the canon design for), forget the dang belt in the middle, add dark red for a teensy bit for color (because gold wasn't working, and didn't want dark blue), and uh ... tada I guess.

Happy's got a simple design to begin with that I have no drawing difficulties with. And he's still the tag-along cat (although add in a little bit of being the voice of reason at times, which is really weird for Happy but I feel like it works here). The furball's perfect as is.

Design with notes on a few more details:

Explanations to the words on screen

Unkept (blame Happy): the cat just decided he had a habit of sitting there and I let that habit stay there. Also, I don't know how to hair.

No high colar: Because I can't draw one. I know I can't draw one, so I won't bother trying right this minute.

No eye contact: Did not look at the camera.

Important neck item: Oh look, a parallel to the character he swapped with.

Bit of red: I think this also may be a bit of reference to his debut volume's design before switching to black.

Used to fit: Doesn't even go down to the waist.

Trying not to fiddle: Arms are to the side. Barely.

Again used to fit: A smarter artist would know how to emphasize this in the design. I am not one of them.

Baggy: I tried.

Pointy: Because I don't know how cloth boots work.

Not his cat: It stuck during the writing part.

That's all for this post. Thoughts? First time doing any character design period, so would love feedback.

I got Mavis's design drawn out too (that one took a bit more creativity), but want to experiment a bit more with color first. So I guess I'll post that next arc.

Thank you very much for reading my overly-long post. Best wishes!

[lovely-luminary]

Ouma is too powerful.

[lorenfangor]

I genuinely, truly, seriously do not want to start Discourse over this, but it’s my blog and I feel like it’s worth saying that to me AniTV’s racism is like. actively jarring and upsetting, in ways that the books never were. and I’m not just talking about the colorism involved in Nadia Nascimento’s casting as Cassie (making a dark-skinned girl far lighter than she is in the books is Bad), there’s more going on here

changing Michelle’s name to Aisha is weird and stereotypical, especially since there’s no reason to do it except to draw extra attention to the fact that she’s Black, I guess? She has all of one appearance, it’s not like she’s a major character with a backstory to suggest that name. Ax going from canonically brown in an ethnically ambiguous/multiracial way to Super White is also jarring as hell, especially since he does take DNA from Cassie and Marco both.

Also the relationship between Jake and Cassie is downplayed, with the only ship tease in season 1 involving Temrash trying to honeypot Cassie into letting him go, while Rachel/Tobias is made the main romantic focus. As much as I love R/T it’s weird to me that the pair of characters who start out the series openly admitting they like each other and the only two to really get solid time calling one another boyfriend/girlfriend don’t get any of that for the first 20 episodes, and while I certainly can’t prove racism or reluctance to portray an interracial relationship, it’s very gross-feeling to me that Jake and Cassie, who like each other and tell the reader so from book 1, are barely even friends onscreen while Rachel and Tobias get a shitton of unspoken backstory invented from whole cloth for the TV show.

also uh. Marco goes from a middle-class kid who grew up in the same neighborhood as Jake and Rachel and only speaks English but is still Latino to a heavily accented walking stereotype who talks about his “hood” and drops slang and extra Spanish into his conversations almost to prove that he’s Really Not White. that. bothers me.

and it’s -

I don’t want to Cancel AniTV or whatever, it’s a 22-year-old show that ran for less than two seasons and nobody involved cared that much, and this is all stuff that didn’t exist in the source material? but I would have appreciated more awareness going in that I was going to be seeing something more racist than even other 90s sci fi shows were, rather than just harmlessly goofy.

[051093]

shaking faith | 707

wc: 2958

pairing: saeyoung “707″ choi x reader

genre: canon compliant, angst w/ smidge of fluff, mutual pining, sad fic for sad boy

description: in which he comes to check on you after a fight, only to find you asleep — and he confesses things he shouldn’t have.

my masterlist.

Saeyoung has more work than ever, and he can’t do any of it.

Every time he finds himself close to being productive, his memory betrays him, bringing him back to fated encounter with Saeran a few days ago. His long lost twin brother with hair the color of cream and coral, turquoise irises like black holes. You, your back pressed against Saeran’s chest, your neck lodged in the crook of his arm as he threatened your life. The sentence you cried out, your frightened eyes swimming with tears—

I love you!

“Fuck,” he hisses, nimble hands lifting from the keyboard to knot in his crimson hair.

Try as he might, he can’t forget how your words made him feel: how high his heart leapt, how a tide of fierce happiness seemed to soothe every ache in his body. When the syllables left your lips, everything was okay, and you were just two young adults in love. He wanted so badly to cross the room and sweep you into his arms like he should’ve done on day one, to hold you close and promise you he’d spend the rest of his life shielding you from harm.

But the fantasy only lasted a few meager seconds, and reality returned like a dagger to his stomach: your life was in danger and Saeran was deranged. And both were his fault.

After Saeran had left and the countdown stopped, Saeyoung was left with a horrible clutter of emotions he couldn’t decipher, his head swimming with fear, confusion, hatred, betrayal, and hope all at once. He went into overdrive, like his laptop sometimes did when he had too many programs running, and he ran the last command he could: yelling at you.

“Luciel…” He hated that name but loved the way you said it then, so fondly and kindly that it filled his frozen heart with warmth. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”

“No,” he snapped back. “Not only that, but I don’t think you should be in the RFA anymore. Forget about us. Forget about the party. As soon as it’s safe, leave.”

Even without looking at you, he sensed the flash of hurt in your expression. “Why are you deciding my future?”

“Because I know what’s best for you.” He closed his eyes, exasperated. “Look, you’re free to do whatever you want, but my thoughts won’t change.”

“What are your thoughts?”

“This is nothing for a person like you to get involved in.” He swiveled, eyes ablaze. “ I am nothing for a person like you to get involved with. You’ll only get hurt, you understand me?”

“I’d like to decide that for myself,” you responded coolly.

“Then you’re asking for it,” he snarled. “The darkness, the loneliness, the heartbreak, the demons. When you’re engulfed in these things because of me, you’ll remember that you were stupid enough to want it.”

“I want you.” Your response came through louder and clearer than anything Saeyoung could’ve spat through his lying teeth. “I want you. Let me help you fight these demons. Let me guide you out of this darkness.”

“That’s…impossible,” he muttered, averting his gaze. “I need to work. Don’t bother me.”

You stood up from your seat, making long, confident strides across the apartment until you were standing so close that he could smell the lovely scent of your hair.

“Aren’t you being too one-sided?” You breathed. “What am I supposed to do about my feelings for you?”

His heart danced with a maddening flutter, but his face told a different story, contorting with rage. “I said don’t bother me!”

He hated the way you flinched and stepped back into the kitchen counter. He hated how sad you looked. He hated himself.

“I don’t care about your feelings, alright?” He spat. “Get your priorities straight. You’re living with a bomb right now.”

“Luciel—”

“You could’ve died today.” His voice cracked. “It’s not the time to think about your feelings for me. Just worry about staying alive, will you?”

You only blinked back. He wished he could shake some sense into you, he was so frustrated, but he knew he couldn’t—he couldn’t keep himself at a single touch.

“How can you be so naive? So calm?” He sighed deeply. “Please, Y/N, for the first time in your life, put yourself first. If you ever get hurt, I’ll…” He forgot how to speak. “I’ll…”

“I know,” you said, quietly but firmly, “that this is your way of caring about me.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed, but his voice lacked resolve and you both knew it. “You’re free to think whatever you want, because we’ll never see each other again once this hacker thing is resolved. Just do yourself a favor in the meantime: stop wasting your emotions on me.”

You looked like you wanted to touch him too, your hand twitching at your side, and he would’ve liked nothing more than for you to cradle his jaw with a caring hand, to smooth away the creases of stress in his face. But he was glad you didn’t.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Like he held all the stars in the sky, like he was the only man in the world. He turned, drawing his jacket closer to his chest. “God, this won’t do. I’m going out to the hallway and I’ll come back when you’re asleep. Sort yourself out in the meantime.”

Unable to look at you another time, he left the apartment, pacing in the hallway and muttering to himself agitatedly. He came back a few hours later to a dimly lit and silent apartment, indicators that you’d indeed fallen asleep. He drew out a chair, opened his laptop, and tried to work, juggling restoring the apartment’s security algorithm and getting Vanderwood and the agency off his ass. But it’s been a vicious cycle of almost focusing, remembering you love him, and losing any sense of concentration all over again, and he’s starting to think he won’t get anything done tonight no matter how much longer he spends staring at his screen.

He closes his laptop, turns off the light, and, without really thinking, makes his way to your room.

Cast in the soft glow of a night light, you’ve been reduced to a lump under the blanket in your unconscious state. Saeyoung slips soundlessly past the door and stands by your pillow, his golden gaze taking in the long lashes splayed against your cheeks, the subtle rise and fall of your breathing, the tousled hair that shrouds your face.

For as long as he’s known you, you’ve been headstrong, bold, outspoken; incredibly, unconditionally kind, always standing up for what you think is right. In the last few days, especially, you’ve been hovering over Saeyoung’s shoulder despite him begging you not to, drilling into his head to please use you as a resource; to let you help; to let you into his head and his heart. Between planning the party, communicating with the other R.F.A. members, and nagging at Saeyoung, you haven’t even stopped to take a breath. And his heart aches with contentment, so much that it nearly physically hurts, to see you so peaceful.

He comes to a crouch, and just being so close to you brings a flush of color to his cheeks. You’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen no matter what expression you’re wearing, but you look younger now that your face is absent of worry or sadness. He wishes he could capture your innocence right now and store it away in a place where the dangers of the world can never taint it.

He’d do anything to keep you from harm, to keep you so undisturbed, even if it means taking the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Y/N,” he breathes, your name hardly a whisper on his tongue. “You’re asleep.”

You don’t stir. Again, so naturally he barely thinks beforehand, he sweeps your hair from your face with a gentle hand, tucking the stray locks behind your ear.

“You’ve been talking all day, but you’re so quiet when you’re sleeping,” he continues. “You’re so damn weird, you know that? I had to have hurt you by saying all those things, but you still manage to be so bright…”

And thank goodness you’re asleep, because the way he’s looking at you right now and the tenderness in his words contradict everything he shouted at you earlier today.

“You’re so genuine and honest. And I’m just complicated and two-faced.” He takes a deep breath. “The 707 from the chatroom is optimistic, supportive, friendly…but that’s just a mask. This icy person, Saeyoung, is me. My background, my upbringing — everything about me is so dark and pessimistic that I will always be incapable of making you happy, no matter how much I wish I could. I want you to know that.

“You should get angry at me,” he mutters. “I wish you would once in a while. But no, you just have to be so understanding all the time. I can’t believe you’re real sometimes — that one person can be so wonderful, that I got so lucky to meet you.

“God, what am I doing? I — I clearly need to get some sleep. But before I go, I want to tell you this, Y/N, regardless of whether you can hear me or not.

“Don’t trust me.” He fights to keep his voice steady. “Don’t trust me, don’t trust V, and don’t trust anyone in the R.F.A. Please be less nice to me, so it’ll hurt less when I have to disappear. And, when I do, forget about me and be happy. Please. You have to be happy, okay?”

His trembling hand finds yours beneath the blanket and he squeezes gently, an unspoken farewell. He stays that way for a few heartbeats longer, then rises from his crouch and turns around, padding back towards the door.

“Saeyoung?”

His knees nearly give out from beneath him, he’s so shocked to hear your voice.

“Saeyoung,” you say again, and he slowly turns around, his breath batted.

Your beautiful eyes meet his, the blanket falling a little lower as you sit up. You’re wearing a white blouse that leaves your lovely neck and shoulders on full display. You’re so damn beautiful, your skin and hair set aglow by the soft light behind you, an angel sitting barely-clothed in bed with his name dangling from your sweet lips. He’s absolutely gutted. And panicked , because he’s nowhere near ready to have this conversation with you right now.

“How much did you hear?”

You hesitate. “Every word.”

He starts to turn away, face flushing with embarrassment.

“You don’t have to talk,” you say, and he stops in his steps. “I just…want to be with you tonight.”

He swallows around a dry throat. “I don’t think — ”

“Today was really scary,” you say, your voice softening. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep if I don’t have company.”

He stands still for what feels like entire minutes, his lower lip between his teeth, every limb in his body gravitating toward you but his head screaming at him to stay put.

“Please, Saeyoung?”

But his resolve crumbles around him like snow.

He sinks into the mattress beside you, his hands quivering with nervous energy. The two of you sit in silence for a few moments more, his amber eyes locked with yours as if asking what’s next. Then, there’s a rustle of blankets, a soft sigh — and you’ve wound your arms around his neck.

He caves at your slightest touch, and you feel the way the tension leaves his body, his shoulders sagging as you draw him close. He burrows his face in the crook of your neck and breathes in the sweet scent of your skin; relishes in your feather-light hands tracing comforting circles on his back, the warmth from your body and comfort from your care. You hold him tightly enough that he can’t slip away, gently enough that he won’t break, and, maybe for the first time in his whole life, he feels cared for. Protected.

The sound of your pulse nearly drowns out the sound of your voice, you’re speaking so quietly. “Is this okay?”

“This is perfect.” Saeyoung murmurs. He curls an arm around your waist, his hand accidentally riding up the hem of your blouse to brush against the warm, bare skin beneath, and he blushes a deep red that makes his hair look monochrome. “You’re perfect.”

He feels your breath catch in your throat, your heart skip a beat. “You can’t say things like that if you don’t want me to fall for you.”

“I know,” he sighs. “It just slipped out.”

For a while, the two of you lay in silence, wrapped up in each other’s arms with legs entwined beneath the covers, hearts beating in a rapid but perfect unison. Your fingers comb through his silky hair, your touch so soft and affectionate that Saeyoung’s eyelids begin to feel heavy, all of the troubling thoughts in his mind replaced by all that you are. It’s not until he begins to drift off does your voice taint the room’s silence once more.

“It’s not Seven or Luciel that I have feelings for, you know.” A beat. “It’s Saeyoung.”

And he’s wide awake again.

“The boy who came to my rescue recently. The boy who can be cold sometimes, but only because he cares so much that he feels as if he’ll drown in it all. His line of work forbids him from having friends and family, but he does — and he loves them more than anything, and he knows being friends with him will put them in danger.” You swallow. “He knows being in love with him is basically a death sentence.

“But he's worth it. Because danger is nothing compared to everything else that comes with being by his side: care, protection, kindness, laughter, and so much happiness.”

You dust a hand beneath his jaw, tilting his chin up so you can gaze into his eyes, and his heart is hammering so hard he swears you can feel it through the material of his T-shirt.

“I meant what I said earlier. It wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment, impulsive declaration,” you whisper. “I love you.”

His breath hitches in his throat, his blood running cold, but the way his heart sings is unmistakable. He feels the same way and he knows it, no matter how hard he’ll try denying the truth.

“And I understand if you can’t feel the same way, but I only ask that, if this really is as temporary as you say, that you remember me.” Your voice trembles. “To remember, years from now, how my heart and my soul once belonged to you. How you once made me feel like I could fly. Like I was safe.”

Saeyoung hears your words echo long after you’ve finished talking. Everything about this has him approaching sensory overload — your confession, your fingers brushing his hair out of his face, your dilated pupils and breathy tone, the feeling of your skin beneath his hands and the tip of your nose just brushing his. In his stomach, a fire ignites where there’s only ever been small flames, and he does the only thing he can think of doing, the only thing he wants to do so badly that he no longer can control himself.

He closes the distance between you and kisses you, his hands tense on your hips and his face burning. For a horrible second, he wonders if he’s overstepped his boundary, if you’re ready — but then you begin to kiss him back, and the fire grows like it never has. Your lips part and he loses all consciousness aside from the taste of your mouth, the wonderful pressure that has him reeling. Your hands navigate his skin until they flutter to the sides of his neck, your thumbs grazing his jaw and coaxing him into a blissful stupor. His entire world reduces down to you and you only, your lips so incredibly soft and sweet, and he kisses you slowly but deeply, melting into your touch.

The curious way kisses do, this one comes to its natural end in time. He leans his forehead against yours and the two of you stay there in a comfortable but sad silence, his fingers lacing through yours reassuringly.

“I love you too, Y/N,” he murmurs, his amber gaze so soft and loving that you have no trouble believing him at all. “You already knew that, I think, but I really do, so much that it scares me. And I’m sorry that this has to be so complicated. I hope you understand that I have to be cautious, as much for your sake as my own.

“But I’m done pushing you away,” he promises. “Because now that I know you feel the same way, I can’t lose you like I’ve lost everyone else. I’ve learned that the world doesn’t seem quite so bleak with you around. You make me happier and give me strength more than anyone I’ve ever known.” He cradles your hair, looking at you with all the sincerity and affection in the world. “It will be difficult, and there are so many things we need to figure out first, but we’ll get there. I’m sure of it.” He leans his forehead against yours. “There’s nothing I can’t do with you beside me.”

You lean in and seal his promise with one last lingering kiss. The two of you fall asleep in each other’s arms that night, basked in a loving, safe warmth that you’ll find out all too soon is only fleeting.

[artificialqueens]

Maybe You're My Enemy (Diamond Chaney) - Ortega

a/n: hey, hi, hello! welcome to the first canon compliant thing i have written since 2017, i am *~ petrified! ~* . i had to write something to fix these two though after the events of episode 8 because i just love them dearly (and the fact in the subsequent episode Lawrence just dropped in the fact they’d shared a bed didn’t help this at all). thank you so much to @purecamp for reading it over and reassuring me it’s not a heap of shit (so if it turns out that it is then just blame her xo). also the song it’s set to is enemy by Charli XCX in case u want to get the immersive vibes!

fic summary: On one side of Scotland, Lawrence disappears from social media. On the other, Ellie reflects.

***

They say, “Keep your friends close”

But you’re closer, I love when you’re here

I’m so far away sometimes, I’m distant, yeah

The sky is grey. The clouds are grey. The stagnant water of the quay is grey, and so’s the metal rail that Ellie’s holding on to as he narrows his eyes, tries to stop the wind from hitting them and making him tear up.

As if the wind would be the only reason.

He brings his gaze into focus on the HMS Unicorn, sat in the water in front of him like some massive whale that’s been planted in a bathtub. It’s a fucking ugly ship; a glorified tugboat on steroids with a big bowsprit sticking out at the front all out of place, but he likes the little bust of the once-white unicorn that sticks out from under it. Ellie remembers getting brought here for a school trip in Primary 3, pointing to the unicorn all excited and getting laughed at by the boys in his class that he knew were going to grow up to be the ones that gave the teachers lip and got suspended in high school.

He remembers that Bryce made up the fact that one of the boys had “said the f word” in the gift shop later that day, just so Ellie could have the satisfaction of watching them get screamed at by their teacher. Ellie still fucking loves him for that.

Ellie thinks the unicorn is out of place in all this grey. He remembers the time he did his unicorn mix when he opened for Willam, how nervous he’d been and messaging Lawrence about it and getting a “this you coming out to me as a furry?” in return which made him laugh and forget why he’d even been nervous in the first place. He can’t help the smile the memory brings to his face even if he wants to.

And he wants to.

Lawrence always could make him smile, get a laugh from him even when he didn’t feel like it. He remembers with a blow to his heart what Lawrence had said on the show- “you’re not terribly funny? Like you don’t have…zinger-y punchlines?” - and how Tia had laughed and Ellie had wanted so much to bite back but didn’t.

Because he always could draw a laugh out of Lawrence. Granted he was usually laughing at him rather than with him, but Ellie could still put a smile on his face by acting dumb, saying things that Lawrence would subsequently repeat in a screech of disbelief that would always make Ellie laugh harder anyway. He’d always self-impose ridiculous dares on himself in front of him: in Hive, “here, what if I did the entire shot rainbow?”, in Nandos, “d’you think I could do the wing roulette by myself?”, in Glasgow on the Subway on the way to a gig, “dare me to get off at Ibrox and I’ll go to the Louden Tavern dressed like this?”. Ellie had been used to being the class clown for Lawrence, the jester for the queen.

Or maybe just a fool.

Ellie’s always hated the colour grey.

You might help me, intimacy

I’ll admit, I’m scared

Maybe, maybe you can reach me, yeah

His surroundings turn to silver as he shoves his hands in his pockets, heads towards the V&A museum that’s still glinting despite the lack of sunlight. He’s stopped by two teenage girls that are polite and shy and squeaky-voiced as they ask for a photo- he supposes that’s what he gets when he goes out wearing the pink and purple fur coat with the hearts on it. Ellie forces a smile and thanks them for supporting him and they tell him he’s their favourite in return.

After they walk away he thinks they must have been lying, but then he feels the frown etch itself onto his face as he shakes his head. The self-doubt is a hangover from filming that he needs to shake off.

He squints at the museum as he walks past, fleetingly thinks about going in and looking at some of the old fashion to cheer him up. A’whora’s promised to go with him when he’s eventually allowed to come up to visit, and Ellie snorts at the idea of the fashion queen of the London scene in Dundee. The thought of A’whora’s reaction to the Wellgate shopping centre- the Credit Union, the B&M, the Jobcentre Plus- puts the first smile on his face he’s had in days.

Lawrence had gone round the museum with him too, when Ellie had dropped him off at the train station the day after a gig and they’d been killing time. It had been weird to just dick about like that together the first few times. Weird the fact there was no makeup, glue and wigs, no alcohol or gay anthems to yell over. Just two boys walking around a museum together. Like a date.

Ellie makes a face before he even realises. Not this.

The first time they did all of it together was weird. Just like everything Lawrence had written. Nandos, cinema, staying at his. That last one especially. Ellie can still remember the way he’d stared up at the bumpy ceiling from his position on Lawrence’s couch in the pitch dark, street lamps from outside casting shadows through the blinds. The room was too cold and the blanket was too small and he hadn’t slept a wink but he’d still do it all over again.

The first time they’d both lain on Lawrence’s bed the morning after the night before, cracking up at Scottish You Laugh You Lose compilations on Youtube and Ellie being unable to help the tears that streamed down his face at Lawrence imitating “big shoe, big shoeeee!”. The way they’d been close and the way their arms had touched and the way Ellie had felt ridiculous for the way his heart was hammering. Just a friend.

The first time they’d found each other under the dark lights of CCs when they’d both been through in Edinburgh to support Alice by chance. The way Ellie’s heart had lit up like a firework when he saw him. The way they’d laced their fingers together without even having to ask permission first, the way everything just seemed to be as simple as tequila rose shots and pink lights and leaning against the wall as they smoked outside.

The way everything else had just happened so easily.

Ellie squeezes his eyes shut before he can realise what he’s doing. The memories have forced their way in, kicked down a door in his head that he’d been sure he’d bolted shut.

He needs to change the locks.

Maybe you’re my enemy

Now I’ve finally let you come a little close to me,

Maybe you’re my enemy

You’re the only one who knows the way I’m really feelin’

Ellie is in the same Stitch onesie he’s been shrugging on since the last episode aired. It stinks. He’s joked to A'whora that he can probably smell him through the phone, and A'whora’s asked if he just sweats out Mango Loco Monster. Ellie makes some joke about wringing out his clothes into a pint glass if he did, which makes A'whora retch on camera.

He’s glad they made up at least. They didn’t have too much of a choice, to be fair. Apart from the way they get on so well, their bond and their friendship, A'whora’s the only other one who knows what it’s like to be in Ellie’s situation.

Except A'whora never stabbed Tayce in the back.

“You should talk to him,” A'whora insists, bringing the whole sorry situation up in a pause where Ellie must have looked as if he was about to make a vodka bleach mixer.

Ellie looks pointedly back at him through the screen. “I’ve been telling you to talk to Tayce for months.”

He watches A'whora pull an awkward face and he’s satisfied he’s hit a nerve. “That’s different though. You and Lawrence don’t live together.”

“Yeah. Least I wasn’t stupid enough to move in with someone I fancied, how’s that going for you?”

A'whora splutters a laugh that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. Ellie feels guilty all over again. He feels like that’s his default these days. “Sorry, chick, I shouldn’t have-”

“No, I mean. It’s fine. Just have to act as if I’m not in love with the bitch every time I’m around her, it’s not hard,” A'whora deadpans.

Ellie frowns. “You know Tayce feels the same. Everyone knows it.”

“No I don’t,” A'whora says instantly back to him, shaking his head and dissolving momentarily into pixels. “Besides, even if she did, like…it’s easier if she didn’t, y'know? All this…publicity, every move getting analysed. It’s easier to just…not.”

Ellie narrows his eyes. “You’re doing a smashing job making the case for me and Lawrence.”

“You know what I mean! You don’t get people asking where Lawrence is in every live you do. You don’t get people going through the show fucking…frame by frame and then editing every time you breathe around each other together and setting it to a bloody Little Mix song.”

Ellie bursts out laughing and starts singing Black Magic down the phone to him, which makes A'whora look pointedly at him before clearly being unable to hold it for long and instead laughing with him.

Both their laughter dies down and Ellie watches as A'whora smiles sadly, sincerely. “He’s worth the risk, Els.”

“Oh my God, prison. Who the fuck are you, Nicholas Sparks?”

The reference flies over A'whora's head and Ellie starts explaining the plot of the A Walk to Remember, steering the conversation out of the waters it had become marooned in, the captain of his very own HMS Unicorn.

He feels more like he’s aboard the Titanic with every message that goes unread.

Now it’s really clear to me

You could do a little damage, you could cut me deeper

“It didn’t get you a badge though, was it worth it?”

Ellie’s asked himself that every day since the episode aired. Since he made the decision, pretty much. Financially? Yes it was. It’s pretty well-known at this point in the grand scheme of Drag Race that with each week you’re on the likelihood of securing more bookings is increased, and now with his slot at Drag Fest he feels as if he’s hit the jackpot.

Everything else? Not so much.

Ellie still feels his stomach drop if he thinks enough about that untucked, which he does all the time. Too much, in fact. The aggression in Lawrence’s voice which Ellie knew all too well was a manifestation of hurt on so many levels. The way Lawrence chose the conflict that Ellie wished he could have avoided. The way Lawrence left his feelings bare while Ellie couldn’t trust himself to do the same in case he said something he might regret.

The fact Lawrence had thought Ellie had set him up to fail was maybe what hurt the most, though. Ellie had wanted to ask him how he thought he’d be able to do that after everything they’d been through together. He’d tried to tell him he didn’t think it was possible for him to fail at something he shines at. He’d wanted to grab Lawrence’s pink fucking headpiece and bash him over the head with it until he realised that he’s Lawrence fucking Chaney, he is the Scottish drag queen. Lawrence is the one who will say something at a gig one week and it’ll be common drag parlance across the country by the next. Lawrence is the one getting booked by the BBC Social to make educational videos. Lawrence is the one on posters across Glasgow, for fuck’s sake.

Ellie might not have been thinking about the worst case scenario in that moment, but only because he genuinely didn’t think there could be one.

After all, he’d had his opportunity to sabotage Lawrence. Ellie remembers the first day when the producers had wanted to set up the Scottish queen rivalry, asked for something shady they could use as a soundbite. The way he’d sought out Lawrence on a smoke break and told him about the situation and reassured him that he hadn’t given them anything, and the way Lawrence had just smiled back at him, softly and genuinely, and told Ellie he’d done the same. The way they’d minutely linked pinkies together before breaking them and walking back inside as if they’d barely shared so much as a glance, neither of them wanting to draw any suspicion their way.

And he could’ve been harsher in that untucked if he’d wanted. Could’ve said how for someone that was meant to care so much about friendship and sisterhood, Lawrence had been doing a great job shitting on him from a great height about his lack of challenge wins and his run on the show.  

But he didn’t, because…well. He knows why.

Because the knowledge that he’d hurt Lawrence and lost his trust had done more damage than any joke Lawrence made at his expense could ever do.

Ellie goes live on the Tuesday afternoon. A comment on the chat reads, “are u A’whora and Lawrence still friends???”

“Yeah, me and A’whora are still friends!” Ellie bats the comment away with a fake smile.

He’ll blame his lack of comprehension skills if he’s asked about it.

I feel guilty, I feel nervous, I feel certain now

Maybe, maybe you can reach me

He doesn’t know what possesses him to do it.

Maybe it’s when he wakes up on Friday and Lawrence’s Twitter isn’t loading. Maybe it’s when he reads the other Scottish girls condemning the fans, the word fatphobia leaping out, grabbing Ellie’s heart and wrenching it tight.

Surely not this?

Ellie searches Twitter and what he finds makes him feel ill. He doesn’t know what he had expected- he’d known the frantic tweet urging the fans to be kind that he’d typed out before he went to sleep hadn’t exactly been going to create world peace overnight- but he hadn’t expected any of this. Everyone loves Lawrence, surely.

Although perhaps he’s just talking from experience.

Maybe it’s when he shoots Lawrence a message that goes unopened. In all honesty Ellie doesn’t blame him. A flimsy sentiment about hoping he’s okay that clocks in at under 250 characters isn’t going to cut it, and he’s grateful when Bimini, with all their empathy and ability to read a situation as clear as day, texts him and tells him that Lawrence has replied to them and he’s…well, he’s managing.

Maybe it’s when Ellie goes live with A’whora and he manages to mention Lawrence entirely too many times. A cry for attention or an old habit that’s dying hard? He can’t tell. Perhaps it’s both.

It’s definitely got something to do with the Facebook post.

Whatever it is, Ellie finds himself stuffing any old random items of clothing in a backpack and hoping it makes an outfit, shoving the spare key into the soil of the plant pot outside his front door and texting Anne to tell her where it is in case…fuck knows, the flat goes on fire while he’s away or something. He looks up the train times as he’s on his way to the station; a terrible decision, really, as when he’s still fifteen minutes away he discovers there’s one in ten. Somehow he manages to make it to the station with just a minute to spare and his heart lifts to find that the ticket barriers are open, so he dashes through them and hurtles onto the train that’s waiting at the platform. He catches his breath as he slumps into a table seat, having to take his mask off for a couple of seconds just so he can breathe properly. The way his heart is going at the rate the train’s about to isn’t helping.

The chimes of the train announcement cut through his attempts at slowing his heart down, and the little robotic woman’s voice confirms that his ridiculous, spur-of-the-moment decision is actually happening.

“This is Dundee. This train is for Glasgow Queen Street.”

Because this is all so last minute, but he needs to see Lawrence. He’s apologised probably ten times by now but he knows he needs to make it eleven. He knows (he hopes) that Lawrence needs that eleventh time too. He knows that Lawrence needs Ellie’s persistence, knows that it’s all just an attempt at self-preservation. Lawrence’s attempts at shutting Ellie out are just inviting him to bring a battering ram. At least, he hopes. But like A’whora had said…he’s worth the risk.

The train starts moving, and even if he wanted to back out now he couldn’t.

So cold at the surface, I’m scared of nothin’

Underneath, I’m nervous

Can you reach me?  

Ellie waits for the subway at Buchanan Street and his glazed-over eyes focus on a massive poster of Lawrence on the platform opposite. He briefly considers throwing himself under the next train.

The journey down had passed somehow in the blink of an eye and also agonisingly slowly. Too much time to sit and stare out of the window but not enough time to figure out what he’s going to say. He still doesn’t know. He’d said it all those months ago, he’s said it through texts and DMs. This time feels different, though. This time is different. This time there’s no cameras or runners or pink tables, or distance between them or tension at the fact nothing had aired yet.

It’s going to be the pair of them and Lawrence’s flat. Just like it’s been so many times before.

Ellie thinks he’ll probably just open his mouth, say whatever gets there first and hope it hits the right notes; a terrible decision arrived upon as a result of the lack of any other option. His mind is a messed up ball of television static, a knotted yarn of white noise that he can’t find the end of. He feels as if it’s made of the noise the train makes as it screams into the station, metal on metal and the low whoosh of the wind through the tunnel and the rickety shaking of the doors as they slide open and people stream off.

He picks up his bag and sinks down into the horrifically patterned upholstery of the seats, settling himself in for the journey. The little metal tin can of a train doesn’t take long to fire through the seven stops before Govan and with each one that passes Ellie can feel his nerves spiking and his mouth growing dry.

What if Lawrence isn’t even in? What if it’s all got too much and he’s gone back to Helensburgh for the foreseeable? Ellie could get a train up there, he supposes; he’s already on this side of the country, although he doesn’t know if Lawrence would appreciate the gesture or call the police on him.

Ellie concludes it would be worth it anyway.

He emerges from the Subway and the grey seems to hit him all over again, seeping into his clothes and forcing him to fight through the sadness that hits him like a wave. There’s a little beam of sunshine fighting to escape the clouds though, and Ellie hopes it’s some form of pathetic fallacy. Or whatever that one about the weather matching your feelings was. Fucked if he ever paid attention in Nat 5 English.

The streets of red brick tenements feel like pens of hostility as he passes windows that serve as frames for Union Jacks and Red Hand of Ulster flags. Even being raised in a Christian household doesn’t equip him to identify with this form of religion; where the disciples are football players and the gods are flags and the hymns are about killing Catholics. Ellie has always worried about Lawrence living here, told him as much, but he’s always been met with a bark of a laugh back and some comment about how he’s only saying that because he’s lived such a sheltered little life in Dundee and wouldn’t last five minutes trying to inhabit Glasgow and all its cheerful sectarianism. Lawrence has always had a very blythe attitude to the whole thing, and Ellie remembers when he’d held his hand on the way back from the Subway in full drag after a gig like it was nothing, the way some dick in an orange and blue scarf had shouted at them from across the street and Lawrence had just yelled back with an “awrite, babes?” as if he had a death wish.

Which is what makes this whole thing so grim. The Lawrence who drunkenly and sarcastically greets bigots at three in the morning from across the street doesn’t marry up with the Lawrence that’s holed up in his flat in the face of negativity. Ellie supposes that one homophobic Rangers fan is one homophobic Rangers fan, but Twitter can seem like the whole world’s population, and if Lawrence thinks the world hates him just because he’s reacted to something that was Ellie’s fault…

He feels his gut wrench.

Ellie turns into Lawrence’s street and feels ill. He could always go home. Turn and walk back to the Subway, train back to Queen Street, back to Dundee, back to the flat. Like nothing had ever happened. Like he hadn’t even consciously made the decision, like it was all a dream.

He sleepwalks to Lawrence’s close door anyway, just like he knew he would.

His hand shakes as he presses the buzzer too hard, and the panic rises in his throat as the seconds pass agonisingly slowly. When there’s a crackle from the intercom, he freezes in fear.

“Hello?”

It’s Kiko’s voice. Of course his flatmate had to be the one to answer, drag out the humiliation of the whole thing. Ellie can hear the shake to his voice as he replies.

“Hey, it’s Ellie.”

“…Ellie?”

He chooses to ignore the disbelief, acts as if it’s normal for him to have travelled across the country to turn up on Lawrence’s doorstep in the middle of a pandemic when there’s a travel ban in place. He’s considering this essential travel anyway.

“Is Lawrence in at all?”

Kiko, for her part, seems to pick up on the way the whole visit is masquerading as routine. In the split second before she replies, Ellie finds himself holding his breath. He steels himself, prepares for a “no, he’s actually…”, to send him back to Dundee like a crumpled sheet of paper tossed into a bin.

So Ellie feels like his throat’s going to close up when Kiko replies down the intercom. “Yeah, two secs. I’ll buzz you up.”

The dread settles in his gut like a weight as the buzzer rings out into the street, harsh and loud and doing nothing for Ellie’s derailed train of thought. He pushes on the door, takes his first step into the close and the echo seems to hit him deep in his chest. He finds himself wishing Lawrence lives four up but he’s only on the first floor, and as Ellie puts his foot on the first step of the staircase he keeps his eyes trained on the stairs because he knows the moment he looks up he’s going to see somebody standing there holding the door open and even though he’s had hours to prepare himself, weeks even, he’s not ready for that in the slightest.

And when he finally brings his gaze onto the front door with four steps to go, he’s not ready for the way the sight of Lawrence almost knocks him straight back down again. He’s slumped against the doorframe and has very clearly not slept- since when, Ellie couldn’t guess. A black hoodie is swamping him and a pair of navy sweatpants are doing the same, making him seem smaller than he already is. The sight of his hair up in that tiny bun hurts Ellie’s heart because it makes him want to smile, reminds him of the Lawrence he’d dick about in the workroom and the smoking area and the hotel corridors with before it all went so wrong. His arms are folded and he’s looking at the tiles on the landing floor until Ellie reaches the doorway, shifts awkwardly.

“Hi.”

Lawrence doesn’t quite meet his eyes. It’s a minute detail that hurts Ellie more than he would have expected. He doesn’t reply for a second, then seems to relent. “Hey.”

Another pause. The atmosphere makes Ellie wish he’d worn a thicker jacket.

“You’re not meant to be here, you know. Wee Nicky’s probably had snipers trained on you since you got off the train,” Lawrence says, delivering the quip with a bitter, barbed edge that makes Ellie think it’s less of a joke and more wishful thinking.

“Wouldn’t be any less than I deserve, I’m sure,” Ellie smiles sadly, unable to make it meet his eyes. Lawrence’s expression remains unimpressed.

“So why are you here, then,” he not so much as demands an answer but disinterestedly inquires. Ellie bites his bottom lip before he replies, as if he’s forcing himself to make sure his words are perfect.

“I just came down because…well, I wanted to see how you were. I know the past week must have been shit for you.”

Lawrence raises his eyebrows, his eyes growing wide as if to really drive home to Ellie how much of an understatement he already knows he’s made. “Yeah.”

Ellie sighs, wanting desperately to get the next part right. “And I felt like I needed to say I’m sorry. Y’know, in front of you.”

“You said sorry back when we filmed. We’re over it, it’s fine,” Lawrence says flatly, conveying that everything is not fine.

“It’s not fine, though. I wouldn’t have come down if it was fine. Things haven’t been fine since that day, and like…I miss you, Lawrence, I don’t want to lose you as a friend, or as a sister, or as…” Ellie stumbles, looking to the floor as he tries to articulate the other facet of their relationship. “…whatever else we are. Whatever else we were. I’m sorry for fucking everything up.”

There’s a silence in which the pair of them freeze and hold their breath. Time could very well be standing still for all Ellie knows. He immediately regrets bringing up all of…that. He should’ve kept it to friendship, shouldn’t have added anything on. Before he can overthink any more or begin to backtrack, a small sigh from Lawrence makes him look up.

“I thought you hated me,” he says. His voice is small and the words are unexpected. There’s so much Ellie could say in response. He settles on a joke.

“No, I think you’re a cunt. There’s a difference,” Ellie smiles tightly, the joke tentative. The snort it gets from Lawrence makes his smile grow without him being able to help it. “Was that a good one? Thought I was the unfunniest person on the planet?”

“We weren’t talking about your Bake Off improv,” Lawrence raises his eyebrows as he smirks, and Ellie fakes a wounded laugh.

“Shady cow.”

“I’m sorry,” Lawrence says out of nowhere, his smile gone all of a sudden.

Ellie tries to drag the joke out a little longer, hold onto the sparks they’ve just created. “Nah, it was shit, you’re right.”

“No, Ellie…” Lawrence shakes his head, worrying his lip between his teeth a little. “I am sorry.”

Ellie feels the panic wash over him when he clocks the glisten in his eyes. “It’s fine, girl.”

“It’s not fine. I was a dick to you so many times, no fuckin’ wonder I thought you’d set me up. I would too if I had somebody talking down to me like I did to you,” Lawrence says gravely. His gaze is fixed on his floor and just as Ellie is about to speak he catches sight of two tears that fall onto the red carpet, the darkness akin to blood. His horror grows as Lawrence finally snaps his head up, tears shining in his eyes as he sighs helplessly in a shaky voice. “You’re amazing, Ellie, you’re such a talent, and…fuck, I missed you.”

His words mean more to him that Ellie had expected them to. He doesn’t want to let that show, though, because that’s too much, that means too much for the situation just now and he can deal with that realisation at a later date. For now, Ellie points at him in mock-accusation. “Hey listen, I’m the one that got the train down to come and make a big speech to you and say sorry. Buy your own damn train ticket for that.”

Lawrence’s voice is thick with tears as he lets out a short laugh. “Sorry.”

“Wee bitch. Always have to make everything about you,” Ellie rolls his eyes, getting another teary laugh out of Lawrence and raising his hopes that maybe they’ll be okay.

And then the banks break and Lawrence makes a little choked-up noise, a sob that’s not fully a sob. His eyes meet Ellie’s and they’re full of so much sadness and regret that just looking at them creates a crack in Ellie’s heart, one that matches the crack in Lawrence’s voice as he speaks again.

“This has all been shit to do without you.”

Ellie doesn’t think before opening his arms out, shaking his head affectionately. “Don’t be silly. C’mere.”

When Lawrence immediately opens out his own and they meet each other in the middle and hug tightly, Ellie feels like a balloon that’s been let go and is floating up to the sky.

The clouds aren’t grey.

The way they’re holding each other brings back too many memories. Seeing each other at gigs and feeling butterflies take hold of his stomach. Coming off stage after a number and conveying his pride in him without even having to say a word. Saying goodbye at train stations with disappointment lodging itself in his heart. All the nostalgia makes Ellie want to cry, but he can’t start now. Instead, he breaths a shaky sigh, shakes his head before he speaks.

“You’ve always had me, okay? You’ve always got me. We’ve said sorry now, that’s the end of it. Periodt,” Ellie murmurs against his shoulder, adding on his trademark at the end. The laugh he gets muffled against his chest in return makes him feel lighter.

“I’ve not showered. I definitely stink. You don’t have to keep hugging me, you know.”

“You don’t. I want to,” Ellie says back. He means it.

It’s Lawrence that slides out of the hug first but he’s still standing close as he quickly wipes away his tears, looks Ellie up and down with a smirk on his face. “So where’s your Travelodge, hen?”

Ellie’s sheepish when he makes eye contact with him again, shrugs one strap of the rucksack off before replying. “You know damn well I’ve not booked anywhere.”

“Fuckin’ hell. Right, come on,” Lawrence shakes his head affectionately, stepping back into his hallway and letting Ellie finally cross the threshold to drop his bag like an anchor in the flat. It’s the physical manifestation of the burden finally being lifted off of him, the guilt and the regret melting away in favour of the flutter of his heart and a few small sparks that he wants to put in resin. “I get to choose the film later as reparations. Don’t trust you since you made us watch Cat In The Hat.”

Ellie gives a shocked gasp, genuinely offended. “It’s good!”

“Is it fuck. In fact, just for that I’m going to make you sit through something sci-fi and geeky and you’re gonna hate it,” Lawrence smiles with genuine glee, and Ellie can’t even bring himself to be mad about it. As the pair of them walk through to the living room, Lawrence jumps onto the sofa and fixes Ellie with a look that is clearly meant to be serious but that simultaneously Lawrence can’t commit to and Ellie can’t believe. “You’re sleeping here tonight, by the way.”

Ellie raises his eyebrows as he fakes his agreement, going along with the charade Lawrence is beginning. They both know they’ll end up curled up together on the sofa with neither of them having an explanation for how it’s happened, but at the same time knowing they don’t have to explain themselves. They know that Ellie will end up falling asleep slumped against Lawrence and that he’ll have to gently shake him awake, that he’ll wordlessly offer Ellie a hand to drag him off the couch with and that they’ll go through to Lawrence’s room like always. They know that they’ll wake up tangled together like the sheets and that Ellie will be there for him, that he’ll help Lawrence piece himself back together and they’ll go back to the start. Well, maybe not the start. Perhaps somewhere better.

Ellie keeps his friends close, but Lawrence is something a little bit more. Something a little bit closer.

Baby, you’re my enemy.

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

Have u read the new articles that Vulture published about the GG reboot? It includes astonishing new information about GG 2.0 👀

https://www.vulture.com/article/gossip-girl-reboot-behind-the-scenes.html

https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/gossip-girl-reboot-cast.html

oh, i'd just read the cast one this morning (& it rubbed me the wrong way, lmao) and i just read the behind the scenes one - idk if it's formatted badly or my laptop is out of date or what, but it was. a very difficult thing to scroll by? i'm guessing you want to know how i feel (well, i hope so, otherwise the rest of this answer is totally unsolicited, lkfdhlkdg.) putting it under a read more so you can opt-in if you want LMAO

the behind the scenes article left me feeling a little, uh. weird. but i can't pinpoint why and i need some time to just think on it. it's possible i'm just overthinking *shrugs*

a big part of me feels like there's an implicit irony in spending a lot of money to criticise wealthy people, but at the same time, if the show actually does what it's hoping to do, i think it'd be really cool. it possibly runs the risk of turning into the thing that it's criticising in the same way the original show did, but hopefully that's something they're aware of.

julien and zoya being half sisters is.... their vibe in the trailer seemed very gay and i thought that is what they were hinting at, RIP. a part of me is disappointed that it isn't. nothing like the classic outsider and queen bee enemies to lovers arc.... but then again, them being half-sisters would have a completely different level of family dynamics and drama and i am definitely into that, as well. it's all about execution, i guess!

the cast article pissed me off a bit despite having interesting information partially because i disagreed with the character assignment, lmao. i think it would've been much better to just talk about the character attributes than to compare them to the 07 characters, but that's been my stance from day #1.

"aki is just like nate because he's clueless!" me, looking at aki, who is a pink haired cinephile who name-drops gaspar noé, to quote that article, and thinking about how much howard & anne would've freaked out if nate dyed his hair pink. like, nate (& aki, i'm sure, who we barely know right now) has a whole personality outside of being "clueless" and im. tired actually

idk, i just. *shrugs and rolls eyes* it didn't make sense at points! like zoya being a mix of three characters ("outsider like jenny, do-gooder like serena, individualist like vanessa") - it felt. weird. like there isn't a clear parallel to be drawn but they still wanna draw one? also "the wealthiest of the kids and the one with the most guilt about money," doesn't sound like dan, it sounds like nate. audrey, also, other than the hepburn thing, reminds me more of jenny than of blair. everyone talks about blair's "style" but people forget that jenny was a wholeass designer and within show-canon, making a lot of her clothes by hand in ways that were up to par to professional designers.

the chuck -> max thing made me laugh because of gg: acapulco, in which chuck's character is actually named max, but "i wrote it not realising how much like chuck he was" makes me feel like, unfortunately for poor max, i already have a really bad first impression of him.

[thevictorianghost]

A look back at 2020 - and a thank you to the Zutara fandom

Okay.

So.

I’ve never done this before. I know 2020 has been… a year. To say the least. A messy, sad, hell of a year. I’m not saying my 2020 was perfect. There were many events that were supposed to happen but got cancelled because of COVID. But if you could believe it, 2019 was so much worse for me, especially creative-wise. So I decided to make this post about how my 2020 went, because it went a lot better than 2019!

Never again, 2019. Never again.

Also if you feel like you haven’t been creative or haven’t had the energy to do everything you wanted to do, please don’t take this post as a “haha I did so much better than you guys!” Because that is ABSOLUTELY NOT what I want to achieve. I just want to give myself a pat on the back. Honestly, I think what really helped this year was when I got into a slump for one type of creative endeavour, I jumped to the next. I set myself to start something and finished it. Then, if I felt burnt out about that thing? Like writing a fic? I got into cosplay. Or video editing. Or something else. And then I came back to writing. It was really fun to learn new things and to do multiple kinds of projects through the year!

The Zutara fandom thank you letter is at the end, so if you want to skip my ramblings, you can find the title below! 

So anyway. Here goes!

Video editing:

It’s not that well-known on my Tumblr, but I have a Youtube channel! I made myself a video editing challenge back in January - and I crushed it! Back in 2019, I quit video editing for many months because I didn’t have the motivation to continue doing so. But then in December last year, I found a BUNCH of my old (and I mean, VERY old) videos I’d made as a kid. And it re-invigorated my love for video editing because I realized how far I’d come and that I wanted to do it more! So I told myself: one video a month. Twelve in one year. That’s it. Do that. And I ended up making TWENTY videos this year! I’m so proud of myself!

I even made MORE than twenty videos. A few of these just aren’t published. I made a few more “educational” videos because I’m considering making a brand new Youtube channel dedicated to History and pop culture! I don’t know if it’ll end up being… you know… a thing, but hey! Why not?

I also made some unpublished short edits for a possible Instagram account I’d like to create, too! All for Titanic. An example of those short videos can be found here! Again, I don’t know if that Instagram account will end up being… a thing… but I have faith!

Cosplay:

I got back into cosplay this year! And I learned new skills thanks to it! I learned how to work with EVA foam to create my own Blue Spirit mask (using this tutorial!). There’s a few projects currently on the backburner, but I’m sure I’ll come back to them eventually!

I also learned recently how to sew a pair of opera gloves (because haha, fuck you if you want to buy any that aren’t in size small!) for a Rose Dewitt-Bukater cosplay with my sewing machine I bought way back in like… March… but was honestly too afraid to use. But I did it! I pushed through my fear and I did it! I’ve been practicing more and more with my sewing machine as I repurpose old clothes for my cosplay. And it’s going great!

Writing:

I got back into fanfic! I hadn’t written ANYTHING fanfic related in a while, especially not multi-chapter fics. But this year, I finished THREE novel-length fanfictions. My fanfics The Prince’s Bride, my Star Wars/The Princess Bride AU, and Never Let Me Go, my Avatar: The Last Airbender/Titanic AU, are currently all published on AO3! I haven’t been much in the Star Wars fandom since writing The Prince’s Bride, but I did meet @stressedinadress with who I talk about Star Wars and anything in particular! Thank you for being my friend!

My other novel-length fic, All roads lead to Paris, a Miraculous Ladybug/A Monster in Paris/Ratatouille crossover fic is currently being uploaded every Wednesdays! I’ve also written a Titanic/The Great Gatsby crossover one-shot called Make it count; Meet me at the clock that had been living in my brain for years but I’d never had the guts to write it. But then I did!

I’m especially proud of Never Let Me Go. Not that I’m not proud of my other fics, but this one in particular has a very special place in my heart. It’s the longest story I’ve EVER written and made me love Titanic all over again. Zuko and Katara were the perfect characters to be cast as Jack and Rose. I got back into drawing entirely thanks to this fic. I’d been telling myself “I can’t draw to save my life” for YEARS but then I decided to try again and I’m much better than I was back then! I’m so humbled by all the comments, all the bookmarks, the kudos and the love this story has received. We’ve JUST REACHED 5000 HITS!! Before the end of the year!! That’s so AWESOME!!

I’m tentatively coming back to original fiction after writing a lot of fanfic, especially a Greek Mythology retelling (which is, you know, fanfiction but with stories that don’t have copyrights!). I think writing fanfiction really helped me figure out what I love about writing and has helped me tremendously in creating my own style and voice. It’s been an incredible journey and yes, my Greek Mythology retelling was inspired by a Zutara Greek Mythology AU! So you know, I’m staying on-brand! haha

I’m also currently working on another ATLA fic, heavily inspired by my “what I would have wanted for LOK” post you can find here. It’s going to be much, MUCH shorter than Never Let Me Go, but it’s already longer than Not Like Everyone Else, so I’m really happy with this one. A bunch of bite-sized chapters in the POVs of all these lovely characters after the War and my take on where they should have ended up - and the world.

Zutara:

And finally, but certainly not the least, I got back into the Zutara fandom and really contributed! I made metas I’m really proud of (like this one on Katara’s abandonment issues you can find here!). I wrote the aforementioned fanfic Never Let Me Go. I even made a video about Zutara after my latest rewatch of ATLA (you can watch ZUTARA | Zuko x Katara - BATTLESHIPS here!).

I also made friends along the way! @darkcrowprincess​, @harharj​, @angelsabloom​ and, more recently, @heavensweetheart​. I wanted to thank you for putting up with my weird rants and obsessions! :)

We’re all such a lovely bunch and don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere! I want to thank, especially, @firelxdykatara​, @antarcticasx​, @my-bated-breath​, @peartarts​,  @pineapple-frenzy​ and @hayleynfoster​ for your metas, fics, art, etc.!  You’ve been making my 2020 better. This isn’t an exhaustive list, so if I’ve forgotten someone, I’m so sorry! 

Also I hope everyone who have been harassed recently, like @babytreehugger​, knows that we’re all standing behind you and supporting you.

This is a really special fandom indeed. It took me years before I could rewatch ATLA knowing Zutara wasn’t endgame, but even if it hurts that they’re not canon, we have countless fics, art, poems, animatics, even published authors whose books are basically Zutara AUs! As stated by those same authors! Isn’t that amazing?? WE HAVE A STAR!! WE HAVE A FRICKING STAR!!! Has anyone forgotten that??

And look. I’ve been, for the past few years, in the Star Wars fandom. I’ve been in many different fandoms over the years. It’s been… rough. But I’ve never seen such an encouraging, loving, compassionate fandom. I know it can be difficult outside of our fandom, especially with people fighting on Twitter and Instagram and even on Tumblr with people harassing others. But this fandom, fifteen years later, is so smart, so kind, so positive and so inspiring. 

If you’ve been reading up ‘till now, thank you! 

Also: You can do whatever you set your mind to! I believe in you! Go do the thing if you want to! And never forget to be kind to yourself. 

Happy holidays! Let’s hope (fingers crossed!) that 2021 will be a better year. 

thevictorianghost

[cadence-talle]

Cold

Pairing: Tam Song/Fitz Vacker

Wordcount: 2,242

Summary: Shadows are cold. 

Tam knows that, has since he manifested. They’re cold and smooth and not-quite-solid, something dark and intangible just out of reach. But he understands them, so he can control them. 

He can’t control these.

(Based off a headcanon by @holesinmyfalseconfidence​ on the now-infamous angst post.)

Other notes: This is set during Flashback, at the beginning of Sophie and Fitz’s infirmary stay. I messed around with the timeline a little to make it work, so if you see canon discrepancies, just go with it. 

Read it on ao3 or under the cut!

Shadows are cold.

Tam knows that, has since he manifested. They’re cold and smooth and not-quite-solid, something dark and intangible just out of reach. But he understands them, so he can control them. 

He can’t control these.

The first time he tries, he’s halfway to a panic attack, rushing over from Tiergan’s house as soon as Elwin hails him. He’s just glad he can do something, anything, glad he’s not as useless as he felt when he’d heard the news.

Except he is, because he can’t help. The shadows slip through his fingers, more sinisterly liquid than anything else. Tam pulls at them helplessly, watching them slither up and around Fitz’s heart, and something in his gut clenches.

All around the room, the shadows stretch longer, moving towards Tam. Their chill is familiar, comforting. A bit of normal in this utterly incomprehensible situation. 

Slowly, he wraps the darkness around the odd shadows that have embedded themselves in Fitz’s chest. Slowly, he lifts them up, relying on his control of the normal shadows to do the work. Slowly, slowly, afraid of what may happen if this goes wrong, Tam pushes them away from the sedated boy on the cot. 

They slither away into the corners of the Healing Center, and Tam shivers. 

Shadows are cold, and so is the room. 

/-/-/-/

The room is cold.

Tam wakes up with a start, confused by the temperature until he remembers where he is. He’s not sure how long he slept, but a cursory glance at the room shows that nothing’s changed. Elwin’s rattling around in his office, Foxfire’s quiet outside the door, and Sophie and Fitz are still asleep. 

If asleep is even the right word. Sedated sounds too cool, senseless, too harsh. Comatose, perhaps?

Whatever the word, the unnatural calm scares him.

Tam stands up and stretches, moving over to Fitz’s cot before he can stop himself. Fitz is lying still, but his face is twisted into an expression of pain that even sedatives can’t fix. Tam bites his lip and looks away, reaching out a hand to feel for any more of the weird shadows. They seem to be gone, thank goodness, although there’s a strange chill to the area around Fitz’s heart that Tam doesn’t quite like. 

He flops into a chair and pushes his bangs out of his face, turning to look at the other boy. Which is probably creepy, but Tam doesn’t really care; it’s strangely therapeutic to watch his chest rise and fall, a sure sign that he’s alive, at least. 

After a few minutes, Tam moves away from the bed- watching Fitz is calming, but he’s not sure how much he can do it without it being really weird. He’s about to head over to the cafeteria and see if they have any food when someone behind him makes a small noise. 

Tam spins around just in time to see Fitz’s eyes open, staring at the ceiling in a confused way. 

“Ow,” he says. Tam rushes over and he blinks. “Tam? What- happened?”

Tam opens his mouth to respond, but before he can say you got attacked by creepy shadows and I’ve been waiting in the Healing Center for eighteen hours for you to wake up, Elwin sticks his head out of his office. 

“Fitz is awake? The sedatives wore off already?” Tam nods and Elwin mutters something that might be a curse, turning back to his office. He exits with a glass vial containing an elixir a frightening shade of green. “Okay, drink this.”

Fitz takes the bottle. “Is this going to make me go to sleep again?” When Elwin nods, he pushes it away. “No, thank you.”

“I know how you’re feeling,” Elwin says. “Sophie tells me her opinions on sedatives every time she’s in here. But your bones need to mend themselves, and they’ll do that faster if you’re not awake.”

Fitz sighs and uncorks the vial, bringing it to his lips. He holds it there for a moment, meeting Tam’s eyes with an emotion Tam can’t quite name. Then he downs the elixir and passes out again. 

Tam releases a long breath and sits back down, grabbing Fitz’s hand almost out of instinct. It feels like a piece of ice. 

The room is cold, and so is Fitz. 

/-/-/-/

Fitz is cold. 

He keeps shivering in his sleep, tossing back and forth no matter how many blankets Elwin piles on top of him. Tam’s not sure, but he and Lady Zillah think it’s the echoes, some faraway pain reaching him even sedated. 

Tam hates it. It makes Fitz seem small, unprotected, and he’ll do anything to fight the chill. He’s about to get another blanket when the Vackers show up.

They’ve been coming once or twice a day since the accident, faces pale and eyes red. Quietly, Biana has told him that they can’t be here all the time since her parents are going forward with the high-maintenance job of moving Alvar to Everglen. Something had made Tam scowl at that- Fitz is their son, the son who didn’t betray them, and they can’t even be bothered to stay?

But looking at them now, with their rumpled clothes and tear-stained cheeks, Tam’s anger is fading away. They look terrible, like they haven’t slept in centuries. Della rushes to her son immediately, grabbing his hand. Alden follows her and stands by the cot, casting a look at the sleeping Sophie on the room’s other side. She woke up two days ago, but Elwin is making her sleep far more than she usually does. Tam thinks this is probably smart, since Sophie, from what he can tell, simply Does Not sleep. Alden turns to Elwin. 

“Any change?”

Elwin shakes his head, glasses slipping precariously down his nose. “No. His bones are mending, though slower than I’d like. And Lady Zillah believes we’ll only be able to fight the echoes once he’s awake. She’s working with Tam to control shadowflux right now.”

Alden turns to Tam, fixing him with a look Tam can’t quite decipher. “Hmm. What about Sophie?”

Elwin launches into an explanation of the elixirs he’s using and Biana appears in the corner next to Tam. He jumps. 

“Don’t do that.”

Biana gives him a halfhearted smile and says, “Sorry. Bad habit. How’s Fitz doing?”

Tam bites his lip. “Okay, I think. He’s shivering a lot, but that’s probably just a side effect of the echoes. Elwin says he’s making progress, though, so that’s good.”

“Yeah.” Biana stares at him in a way uncannily similar to her father’s look just a minute before. “I’m glad you’re here with him, by the way. It’s good.”

Tam blinks. “He’s in a coma.”

Biana snorts slightly and moves over towards her brother, a sad look coming over her face. Tam looks at the three of them- Alden, Della, and Biana, all looking down at the still-unconscious Fitz- and sighs. 

Fitz is cold, and so is his family. 

/-/-/-/

His family is cold. 

Or, they aren’t, not really. Tiergan is stressed, constantly pacing and murmuring and hailing different people. Wylie’s working with his Mentor, attempting to figure out how to recreate what he did to Ruy. Linh is quiet and sad and eerily calm, making sure everyone takes care of themselves. They’re not rude, they’re trying, but they don’t understand. 

Tam comes home six days after what Elwin has deemed The Shadow Incident. (He didn’t call it that out loud, but Tam had heard him muttering to himself as he prepped more elixirs.) He takes a shower, changes his clothes, and tries very hard not to scream.

It doesn’t work. Linh finds him curled up on the carpet of his room, shadows gathering around him like he’s some sort of magnet. She gives a small sigh and wraps her arms around him, hooking her chin over his shoulder. 

“Hey,” she murmurs. “You okay?”

Tam doesn’t know. There aren’t words to describe how he feels right now- it’s just a hollow emptiness in his stomach, a dryness in his throat. Like some vital part of him is missing. 

“I-” he starts. “He-” 

Linh waits patiently, some sort of twin bond magic telling her what he needs. Tam bites his lip and tries to think. The words spill out unbidden. 

“It should have been me.”

“Tam.” Linh says quietly. He shakes his head, because it’s the truth. It’s what he’s been trying to avoid this whole time, the words that have been in his head since Elwin hails him. 

“It should have been me. He’s almost dead, and I- I wasn’t there to help.”

He feels tears prick the corners of his eyes, feels his sister’s arms tighten around him, but all he can see is Fitz, lying motionless on a hospital cot. All he can see is a Wanderling with dark brown bark and teal leaves, growing from the ground at an impossible rate. A sign that nothing will ever be the same again.

His family is cold, and so is Tam. 

/-/-/-/

Tam is cold.

Granted, that’s probably his fault for deciding to wear a sleeveless tunic, but it’s true all the same. The room he’s in is large, high-ceilinged and round, moonlight streaming through a round window high above. It offers no warmth and very little light, forcing Tam to squint even just to see his Mentor. And right now, inky strands of shadowflux are blocking his vision even further. 

“Good,” Lady Zillah says as the shadowflux drifts closer to him, her voice nearly disembodied in the darkness. “Now bring it closer- force it to obey you.”

Tam grimaces and concentrates, twisting the shadowflux in a tight spiral all around him. As it gets closer, it blocks out all the light, even from the skylight above. It crowds around him, whispering in voices Tam wishes he didn’t recognize. 

Failure. 

Useless.

Weak.

He bows his head and growls slightly, reaching for the shadowflux. It slips away with an eerie grace, the voices still whispering. 

Failure. 

Useless.

Weak.

Tam clenches his fists and draws it closer, forcing the shadows into a smaller circle. The voices seem to laugh. 

Failure. 

Useless.

Weak.

A new voice has joined, one so heartachingly familiar Tam wants to cover his ears to block it out. The words ring inside his head;

Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. 

With a final shout, he dispels the shadowflux, panting heavily. Lady Zillah steps forward wearing an utterly unimpressed look. 

“You control it,” she says cooly. “Not the other way around.”

Tam glares. “I know. I just- need a break for a second.”

Lady Zillah examines him, blue eyes narrowed, before she says, “You’re afraid.”

“What? No, I’m not.”

“You are,” Lady Zillah says calmly. “You’re afraid of shadowflux, and that’s why you cannot control it.”

Tam scowls. “I put an echo in my hand, didn’t I? I wasn’t afraid of it hurting me.”

“No. But you’re afraid of what it’s done to your friends.”

Tam crosses his arms, staring her down. “Can you blame me? You saw what happened to Sophie, what the echoes have done to her. Who wouldn’t be afraid of that?”

“Someone who could control shadowflux,” Lady Zillah replies mildly. “Now try again.” Tam heaves a sigh and reaches for the shadowflux that still hangs in the air, feeling their freezing temperature without even touching them. 

Tam is cold, and so are the shadows. 

 The shadows are cold. 

They gather around Tam’s feet as he sits in the Healing Center a week and a half after the attack, all alone except for sedated Fitz. Elwin’s taken Sophie out for a walk around Foxfire, a chance for her to see something other than the same four walls over and over again. Tam’s glad she’s getting out, but a small part of him wishes it was Fitz waking up, Fitz taking a walk, Fitz recovering. 

Even after all these days, Tam still doesn’t feel sure Fitz isn’t going to die. 

He traces an absentminded pattern on the bedsheet of Fitz’s cot, swirls and loops and simple lines. It’s a simple, boring activity, and Tam finds himself beginning to talk before he can help himself. 

“It’s weird, seeing you asleep all the time.”

Fitz doesn’t respond. Which is unsurprising, since he’s in a coma. Tam continues. 

“Biana said something when she was here yesterday, about how she’s starting to forget what you look like awake. I- I remember.” 

Tam twists his hands in his lap, uncertain why he’s even saying this. It’s not as if Fitz can hear him, or answer. 

“Your smile is annoyingly bright. You do this weird thing where you pinch the inside of your thumb when you’re thinking. You walk with this little hop sometimes, like you want to run but have to control yourself.” 

He tilts his head to the side, staring down at the floor and takes a deep breath. 

“Lady Zillah says I’m afraid, and… I guess I am.”

A soft snort emanates from where Fitz’s head lies on the pillow. “You, afraid of something? That’d be a first.”

Tam jerks his head up. Fitz’s eyes are open, staring straight at him. “I- Fitz?”

Fitz grins at him and sits up, wincing slightly. “Hey.”

And all around the healing center, the shadows recede, filling the room with light. Tam blinks and grins back at Fitz- Fitz! Here! Awake!- and something in his chest does a little flip. 

Shadows are cold, but Fitz’s smile is warm. 

[laughingpinecone]

Trick or Treat 2020 letter!

I am laughingpineapple on AO3  

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

All requests are art or fic - for art, the stuff I like is the kind that depicts the characters doing something. I’ll always be happier with a very simple drawing of two characters walking together or sharing a cup of coffee than with an ambitious composition that looks like an Avengers poster. I also enjoy seeing them wear different clothes, getting a feel of what their fashion sense is like beyond their canon outfit(s).

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic, hurt/comfort or just comfort from the ample canon hurt, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, canon-adjacent tropey plots, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploration of secondary bits of canon, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played straight, sensory details, sickfic, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, nerdy canon references, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Hurdy

I love the game’s world and all the little stories and legends that fill it. Great atmosphere, great lore, so if you feel like getting a little worldbuildy and indulging in the scenery and its story, please do! A focus on the sense of camaraderie in a caravan would also be great (like people could do on Gamecube.....). Hurdy’s a bit of an odd duck for that theme, but maybe he hitched a ride at some point? With whom? Amidatty or De Nam maybe, among the nominated characters? I love the whole cast so anyone goes. Do they travel together enough for them to cotton onto the weirdness of the whole Gurdy situation? Got any run-in with Lady Mio? Or what’s his status after the miasma is lifted, can he go back to Tipa, can he/they begin to heal? What does healing even look like for him and Gurdy?

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down... him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles... I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back. Dreaming Sissel but he’s strange... and wrong?

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right... I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being into it is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business)

Kentucky Route Zero: Carrington, Cate

Act after act, intermission after intermission, I somehow didn’t see the arts rising to such a dominant theme in KRZ and it’s stuck with me since the ending finally hit. It’s great and moving. So! Who better than good ol’ antler man to linger in those feels! Carrington’s playwright adventures or Carrington&anyone you fancy, either way I’d listen to him ramble for a week and I would like to know more about his big dramatic plans. Or maybe him helping someone, more or less accidentally, by offering his unique takes? Overriding my “no canon retellings” DNW for a hot second, did he ever figure out what was going down in the Death of the Hired Man (or Nap of the Hired Man as the case may be) interlude?

For Cate, I’m mostly interested in two things: life on the river and mushrooms. Maybe both! The Echo river ecosystem is intensely fascinating to me as opposed to life on the surface and life on the Zero, and yet all these environments are permeable. So what’s a moment in her daily life that encapsulates the river? Someone they picked up on the Mammoth, a strange island that popped up at some point? Cate&Will bonding extremely welcome, I’m love Will. And then there’s the mushroom hunting. I don’t know much about mushrooms, but I do know that they’re cool. Cate seems to agree, so if you’ve got a story or pic in you about her and them mushrooms, I’d love to see it.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. If &Manley or &Brighton, I am not interested in more lenient takes on their characters than canon’s. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?"/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue."? btw that ‘emphatically yes xeno’ from my general likes is only applicable here I guess so: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like...

Shenmue: Qiu Hsu, Xianzi Bei

Cormorants... kung fu... cormorant kung fu. They turned out to be my faves in a very likeable cast and I’d love to see either or both of them slice-of-life-ing it up in Niaowu, or anywhere up or down the river. The rest of the cast is welcome to join! Did Ren end up at Liu He Hall for whatever reason, or did Shenhua chat up a cormorant, as she does? Id love to see a spookier mood too! Ghost story time in Liu Jiao shrine maybe?

The Silver Case: Catherine, Kodai Sumio, Kuroyanagi Shinko, Kusabi Tetsugorou, Macalister Edo, Morishima Tokio

I‘m all for the surrealism, big things being introduced and never picked up again, Rashomon’ing it up with six explanations for the same thing where no single one can be true, people dying and then popping up again like nbd...  maybe the thing I like the most is characters transcending their humanity and looming over the dystopian world like ominous avatars. Correctness’ first ending had me swooning, that kind of mood is unparalleled. I have played TSC, FSR and 25W so far and have vague memories of K7. I’m aware of the “everything’s connected” readings but that’s not my main interest in these games. Mainly I see Lospass as a real island but also a metaphysical  place of transformation first and foremost, where strange things happen that don’t make sense elsewhere, but I’m good with anything that works for your story! There are a few & prompts for these fine folks in my Press Start letter [here].

For Catherine, I’d love to see something along the lines of her YAMI appearance, on Lospass on her own or hanging out with another character of your choice (or Tokio again). Sumio leaves me at a loss for words... if you’ve played 25W, maybe an expansion of his [intense ethereal whooshing] moment? He’s a gust away from vanishing from existence altogether... &Sakura and/or &/Tetsu if you want. Or his time in prison or a return to Lospass or whatever’s going on with that one, really. For Shinko I’m itching for different team-ups! Throw her at anyone you like and see what happens! FSR-era Tetsu could be cool, or off-the-grid Tetsu, or Tetsu&anyone... as for Edo, I’d be curious to see his pov on anyone and anything! WAS the Flower Sun and Rain the friends we met along the way? And Tokio... oh Tokio. Something about older Tokio and his gaggle of tulpas (Slash and whatshisface from YUKI who looks suspiciously like YAMI Tokio himself?)? Any...thing...about any part of his life from Lifecut onwards? Any portentous encounters?

[astharoshebarvon]

vampire knight

Will this be a rant? Of sorts, maybe.

It seems now there is another discourse in VK fandom, this time about whether Ren and Ai will be a romantic couple or not. Firstly, Hino is drawing them in a suggestive way, that’s true.

Do I care if they end up together or not? Not really. She has drawn Kaname and Zero in a suggestive way many times, hell, even in recent covers Zero is literally all over Kaname. Not to mention Zero/Kaname has way more fanfictions and incredible fanarts than either of the canon straight couples. It’s true, just check it.

Think what you want, above illustration is pure Zero/Kaname and Yume.

And, in the below one, Zero’s hand...Sorry, two rivals and enemies just don’t do that.

Look at the above illustration, that’s not how two guys stand if they are enemies, they just don’t.

Secondly, both Ai and Ren have an intense need of another’s blood. Now, many people say their relationship is creepy…

Sorry, but many shoujo mangas and mainstream novels have the same crap. The girl is obsessed with the boy and also ends up with him. Yikes. Gross.

And, those stories are celebrated. So, why be against these two? Oh, wait, it’s because they are not hetero.

Hino is not doing anything great even if they do come out as a couple, Clamp has done it many times and Clamp works are way more popular than Hino’s can ever be.

X, a shoujo genre manga has Kamui and Fuuma.

They loved each other, don’t even try to argue with me about it.

Seishirou and Subaru, the most tragic couple of manga and anime are also in it. CCS has Yue with Clow Reed, Yukito/Yue and Touya, Sakura and Tomoyo, some of these feelings are one sided, but none of them are hated.

These couples are way more popular than whole VK manga. Rg Veda, another shoujo has Amaterasu and Souma, Taishakuten and Ashura-ou, Yasha and Ashura can also be interpreted as an M/M couple. Oh, wait. That’s canon. They are together in Tsubasa.

And, don’t get me started on Fai and Kurogane. There you go people, these are shonen and shoujo mangas which have same sex couples.

And, the readers know there was something going on between Fai and Kurogane even if it’s not stated explicitly.

Clamp literally said,”do not call Fuuma and Kamui brothers”. They are soulmates. They don’t even mention the obsessed fangirl, kotori.

Arina Tanemura, whose stories are a perfect example of a  fangirl ending with the guy they were after, also has a single M/M couple in one of her works. Mostly in her stories, the main girl likes one guy, but in the end, that guy never ends up with her. He ends up with one of the obsessed fangirls.

Am I still bitter about how dirty the mangaka did Itsuki Otomiya? Yes. The sweetheart doesn’t even know Haine was his daughter, and the whole bloody cast had coloured illustrations, a freaking artbook is there for the series, but not a single illustration for him. Yikes.

I hope she redeems herself and makes Tokita and Chikage a couple in 31 Ai dreams. The only series of hers which didn’t have this cliché was Sakurahime Kaden and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne.

And, let’s be honest, Eiichi would have have ended up with another fangirl if he wasn’t dead in Full moon. Thank god he was spared that bullshit. But, then again, he dies. That’s not good either.

Gentleman’s alliance cross, Nekota are just bad. Yes, the art is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean the males of her series deserved to end up with obsessive fangirls.

The one with underage relationship, Nekota or whatever [thank god that was never picked up by Viz.] In this, the blue haired dude, Serizawa, who the main girl liked from the beginning didn’t end up with her, he ended up with a fangirl. Ugh.

And, it is incestuous, the girl has feelings for her underage cousin.  Right.

Her art is beautiful, but damn it, her stories are so annoying.

For her only M/M couple in shinshi doumei cross, she had to make one half of the MM couple a cross dresser.

The guy, Maora was wearing woman’s clothing every time he and Maguri were shown together. He was never once shown as his real, tall self with Maguri.

And, she has said she isn’t comfortable with yaoi, but is okay with shonen ai.

Right.

But the point is, it’s been done many times.

In Hana Kimi, one of the protagonist’s elder brother is gay. He was the school’s physician if I am not wrong. So, Hino is not doing anything new.

Kyou Kara Maou is a shoujo manga, but it has Wulfrum and Yuri, two guys as a main couple. Granted, nothing happens, but they are engaged.

The manga was published in Asuka, a shoujo magazine.

Same goes for uraboku, Luka loves Yuki, regardless of the fact whether he is a female or a male. Senshirou and Kuroto were together, Hotsuma and Shusei were married in previous lives and they were very much together in the present as well.

Do I think Ren and Ai will end up together, I dunno. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I don’t think she will show them as a couple. If she will, fine. If she doesn’t, then also fine. They have an intense desire to be with each other, and their relationship is not parallel to Kaname and Yuuki’s or Haruka and Juri’s.

One can say they are like Rido, Yuuki’s uncle, not like the above two couples.

There are many differences between them and the two couples.

And, let’s not forget the harem Sara created, in fact she even kissed one of the girls.

Do I care about Ren and Ai ? No.

My sole reason for reading this manga is: Yume. Just bring Yuuki back and show Yume happily ever after. I really don’t care who ends up with whom.

But some reasons regarding Renai are hypocritical. This manga has incest, why are you being bothered by it now? Hell, she drew Ichiru and Zero in suggestive way too, and Zero’s care for Ichiru could also be questioned in that case.

I am not sure if the above is Zero and Ichiru or Zero with another personality of his, I don’t want to see my artbook right now, but it can be seen as Zero and Ichiru.

We don’t like yuri and yaoi.

Well, in that case I really hope it happens so it’ll tick off the people who make this statement. Yes, it’s a derogatory statement.

If the mangaka wants to do it, she can, it’s her choice. Hate her for it, plenty do. Zekis and yumes do for their reasons. I dislike the way she does things too, I hate many things she has done. But, hey she still did them.

Read Yona of the dawn in that case, that’s the only series which isn’t “problematic”

But,  Kija and Jaeha can be shipped in that too. I do ship them. And, the author has drawn shonen ai doujinshi’s.

And, Yona was in love with Su-won in the beginning, who is her cousin. Incest is incest, whether it’s between siblings or cousins, they are family.

I really don’t think Hino will show Ren and Ai as a couple. Siblings who are weirdly close, yes. Romantic couple, I don’t think so. If I am wrong, fine.

Just give me my Yume happy ending, and Takuma and Seiren scenes. I literally don’t care about the kids relationship. I just don’t. First, I had to suffer through that traitor’s crap with the stupid bint, Sayori, now this.

Edit :  Finally I read this chapter…

I don’t understand how anyone can even compare whatever crap that is going on between Ai and Ren to Yume and Haruka / Juri. The Kuran couples never looked so fucking weird with each other.

I was absolutely right in thinking their feelings for each other are reminiscent of what Rido felt. Just because Ai is Yume’s daughter doesn’t mean she’s a perfect character. Give me a break. Then again she had a crush on Zero as well.

And, she was raised among people like Ruka and Aidou, traitors and obsessed idiots. It’s no wonder she turned out idiotic.

She looks weird when she says, “she had her sister with her” to Youko.

I am not going to post the image cause its just bad.

Yume and Haruka/Juri were never so fucking creepy. Never.

Ren is just so bland and sad in everything that I don’t know what to think. Youko was the only one who wasn’t weird in this Ch.

The author should just wrap this up, it’s neither interesting nor is evoking any feelings in readers. It’s as bad Sayori/Aidou crap. Just stop with the useless story arcs, show Kaname and Yuuki together and end this shit.

I really don’t think the two girls will end up together. Their scenes aren’t sweet, and if she wants to show them, just do it and move on. They are both boring and least interesting. They are so bad it will not matter whether are together or apart.

They are as bad as other creepily obsessed M/F couples in novels and shoujo manga where the obsessed fangirl ends with the boy. This trope itself is gross. Who even cares about them?

They are only being hyped because they are two girls. When people thought Ren was a boy there wasn’t much reaction. I know there wasn’t. But now that they are two girls…

Hate them because they are stupid, no point in saying we don’t like them because its FF relationship. That’s just bigotry. Or maybe the author should be honest and say I wanted Zero and Kaname to fuck but Yuuki kept on getting in the way. So, I decided to pair their daughters together. because according to the author incest is fine in VK.  Just drop this crap already Hino.

I mean what the hell is up with this boring arc ?

I don’t even understand why stupid shit like this is overlooked in MF couples but if same happens in same sex, everyone is like, looks its unhealthy.  Incest, age difference, obsessed idiots/ fangirls, they are all bad.

I love Clamp, but that Rika and Terada thing was just plain gross. Same goes for Rin and Sesshoumaru.

I kept on telling myself about the latter one, no they are a parent child relationship. But at one point, I had to accept it was anything but family love. I love Sesshoumaru and always will. But I can’t get behind Rin/Sessh or whatever nonsense it was. Sessrin is celebrated, it’s a fact. It’s creepy, don’t deny it.

I know some of their artists and Sesskag [yuck] kept on leaving rude comments on SessKik fanworks, my favourite ship.

And Terada/Rika thing is overlooked because, let’s be honest CCS is fucking awesome. I overlook it and concentrate on yue yukito/ touya, syaoran/sakura.

I just want this RenAi thing to go away. I can’t stand either of them. Just show Kaname and Yuuki together and end this series. Hino should wrap it up and start a new one. VK will not gain the popularity it had at one point no matter what. The author is just coming off as desperate.

[arundolyn]

Feel free to hate me for this, but everything for Blazblue. I imagine you rb'd it for a reason?

i rb’d it cause i am Always Salty and it looked interesting tbh

What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

taorag cause tao is baby

ragna/rachel cause rachel looks 12 and people are into it sexually + she treats him like garbage and its one sided

kagunoel is creepy

bang/litchi is weird cause bang is not really equipped for that kinda relationship with her esp cause of the stuff with roy and she wouldnt like. get over him that easily

kokonoe/kagura also cause like. “a woman wants to speak to you” “IS SHE HOT” kokonoe: hi kagura: never mind speaks for itself + so does “pay attention to who youre talking to before laying down your game” or whatever to that effect kokonoe says when she beats him even if its noncanon some win quotes are at least vaguely accurate sometimes

kaguhibi is Hm cause a) they might be related and b) hibiki only tolerates kagura

ragjin and ragnu and celirag and ragnoel etc etc etc cause theyre related you nasties

basically mori has a cast of 32+ (excluding mu izayoi and the kids) characters and barely anything is shippable and CERTAINLY not anything m/f cause its either weird or theres no chemistry

Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

makoto/kagura if thats even popular. she doesnt really like him like that anymore like she is Tired of him romantically

Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?

not that i can remember but probably. i dont think ive ever followed any ragjins besides like. one. but if anyone it would be a ragjin

Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

ragna/rachel, ragjin, ragnu, and kagunoel are all equally all horrible to me

Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

i dont think so

Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

uhhh i think not. i never really ship much and nobody really convinces me to ship anything. i either am indifferent or dont like it unless i ship it already

Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?

how people baby hibiki as if hes not a grown ass man and also an assassin and also reduce ragna purely to anger and being stupid when he’s actually fairly intelligent (ive literally been told i wrote him too smart) and emotionally complex

Have you received anon hate? What about?

MY PALETTES FOR SOME REASON?

Most disliked character(s)? Why?

rachel cause shes just kinda garbage pedobait, plat for the same reason but to a lesser degree cause she at least doesnt say weird ACTUAL BDSM SHIT but i can actually like. tolerate her unlike rachel. nu for ever conceivable reason possible. terumi is just a bastard man im legally obligated to hate him. susan is incredibly overrated

Most disliked arc? Why?

MU BEING SEPARATE FROM NOEL IN CF THAT WAS SO DUMB NOEL LITERALLY JUST ACCEPTED MU AS PART OF HERSELF AND NOW SHES SCARED OF THE POWER SHE JUST RECLAIMED TO PROTECT HER FRIENDS? FUCK OUTTA HERE WITH THAT. also everyone losing their memories in the embryo to cause unnecessary conflict AND everyone wanting to kill noel to cause even more unnecessary conflict cause mori obviously wouldnt let his fuckin waifu die so the tension is dead from the start

Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

people tend to think celica and noel are really annoying i guess and like. idk i like them

Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

fsr people hate celica being the sister that raised ragna and co but like. it doesnt bother me. i dont care about celirag. its weird to me cause thats his mom and nobodys gonna change my opinion on that tbh

Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

plat and mu could really wear more clothes honestly

Unpopular opinion about your fandom?

it is GARBAGE. at least the eng fandom is. i know this opinion is shared by my friends but like. im sure it isnt by the freakos who draw porn of rachel so like. yeah

Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?

translate your fucking novels mori and also the anime sucks

If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

i know this is like. not made for games but in the anime id change that weird scene that totally deviates from canon where ragna agrees to destroy everything with nu or whatever? garbage. id also change nu being alive in cf cause she doesnt need to be and it wouldnt affect ragnas lifelink cause they didnt die at the same time so shed just be in the boundary cause like. im sure he’s almost died before when he was fighting and she wasnt smelted yet PLUS people keep pulling her soul out of the boundary like its nothing so. yeah. also the scene where ragna goes black beast for no reason just so the embryo has a purpose. i would change a lot

Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…

instead of brotherly paradise getting TWO EXTENSIONS id extend the gag reel where kokonoe and relius bodyswap people instead of ragna deciding to save nu which makes little sense i would simply make him agree with hakumen and let him beat her to death. rip to mori and his waifus but im different

Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased?

not necessarily some ships just fuckin suck lmao

What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

the fixation on the female anatomy in the game and fandom is so tiring. esp transphobic jokes about mai

What is the purest ship in the fandom?

tsubaki/noel/makoto tbh

What are your thoughts on crack ships?

i jokingly brought up kagura/mustang fma so like. fuckin go for it its all in good fun

Popular character you hate?

SUSAN

Unpopular character you love?

kagura.....................

Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?

yes because im fixated on it but no because its a mess u feel

How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?

RAGNA DOESN’T DIE AND NU DOESN’T LIVE

Most shippable character?

kagura is the bi-est. makoto is a close second i think

Least shippable character?

rachel looks 12 and people want her to fuck. kokorach is the only valid ship cause theyre both old and tired of everyone so they can bitch about everyone together