#even though the pigment code is the same... no idea why

[pain-tool-sai]

really liking my lavender watercolor paint

[blog-sliverofjade]

Hearth Fires 2: Sneaky Like a Cat

Pairing: Remi Denier x OFC

Summary:  Lorel Maddox just wants to live as a human, run her bakery in peace, and forget. Unfortunately, the alpha of the local leopard pack has very different ideas. Remi Denier doesn’t know what to make of the female Changeling who wants nothing to do with him or the RainFire pack. He does know that he has a driving need to protect her. Even if it’s from herself. While they’re embroiled in a battle of wills, there’s a war brewing on the horizon. The outside threat could not only destroy everything they hold dear, but tear apart the fragile new bonds of the Trinity Accord, plunging the world into bloodshed to rival the Territorial Wars of centuries past.  

Word count: 2466

Hearth Fires Masterlist

Beta read by the invaluable pandabearer

Remi entered a familiar code into the comm screen and sprawled out on the large cushions scattered around the main floor of his aerie.  Waiting for the call to connect, he cracked a longneck and took a swig.  Stomach rumbling, he wished he’d at least gotten a cupcake before scaring the piss out of the little baker.

He knew she didn’t intend any harm to the pack.  But sometimes what happened wasn’t what one intended, as he knew very well.  Just like he hadn’t intended to throw out that ultimatum. He’d wanted to get a sense of her and make the offer.  Then she’d turned him down and it was like his brain had switched off and his alpha hindbrain had taken over.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been turned down since he started building RainFire; it was, however, the first time a lone submissive female had said no.  Generally, ones like her didn’t go roaming for as long as she had. The feeling that something was amiss with her hadn’t left him, like an itch that he just couldn’t scratch.

“I’m flattered I’m your drunk dial,” Lucas Hunter said dryly, “but I have a mate.”

“I’d’ve to be drinkin’ bad hooch to be drunk dialin’ your laide tchew,” he snorted.  “And I’d hope it’d make me blind.”

Hunter snorted, then reached down out of view of the screen and picked up a little, black cub by the scruff of her neck.  Naya purred loudly enough that Remi could hear it and butted her forehead against Lucas’ face, even though her body continued to dangle limply in his grasp.

“You know better than that,” her father frowned at her, unfazed by the cute affection, and tapped her nose.  The responding mewl was adorable enough to pierce even the most jaded heart. “No, you can’t have a cookie, but you can say hi to Remi.”  He pointed to the screen and set her on his lap. A fluffy black tail rose high and curled at the end in greeting.

“Quoi se fais du mal, possede?”  His cat stopped its irritated pacing and chuffed in amusement at the pair of bright green eyes that now took up most of the screen as she leaned in to greet him.

“She’s been using my chair as a scratching post.”  Remi coughed to cover a laugh at the other man’s deadpan expression that barely hid his amusement.  At the recount of her misdeed, she flopped onto her back and put one paw over an eye as if to say “oops.”  Hunter had answered in his office at DarkRiver HQ. If he’d been at home, which had cushions instead of traditional furniture much like Remi’s own, his daughter would have sharpened her claws on a tree instead.  “Can you make it quick? I have a meeting in ten.”

Remi laid out the situation to Lucas, who listened without interruption.

“She says she didn’t know ‘bout the expansion.”  He spread his hands wide.

“You posted to Packnet?”  Hunter referred to the network utilized by Changelings all across the world.  Even loners used it, primarily to keep track of claimed territory to avoid accidentally trespassing.  A mistake meant death for a predatory Changeling.

“’Course I did,” Remi snapped in frustration.  Lucas let that one slide. “Damnedest thing is she says she’s never heard of it!”  He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Bullshit,” he snorted, then darted a glance at Naya, who’d climbed up to drape herself across his shoulders.  “You just don’t like your options.”

“Could you run a submissive off your lands?” he snarled.  Lucas gave a low warning growl to remind him that they were both alphas; his cub stopped kneading his shoulders and her ears swivelled forward, looking for the threat.  Remi had to rein his cat in before they got into a pissing match; it had been on edge since he stepped into the bakery. The animal, too, was disturbed with the mystery that was Lorelei Cain Maddox.

“Buy her land, her mortgage, and any other debt out from under her if she doesn’t play ball.  It doesn’t have to come to combat.” A ruthless solution from an alpha who was as accustomed to fighting in the boardroom as he was with teeth and claws.  The merciless alpha stroked his daughter’s back, lulling her back to her sleepy state. He looked like a damn villain when he did that in that chair.

“Mais.”  Blowing out a breath, he took another drink to give himself time to consider the suggestion.  He shouldn’t have made the offer at all if she made his hackles rise, not until he figured out why.  Now he had to deal with the fallout and any leverage would serve to protect the pack, even if he didn’t use it to force her hand.  “Might have to. She looked like she’d rather chew an arm off than listen to me.”

“I can’t blame her if you were your usual charming self.”  Remi flipped him the bird, but there was no heat in his accompanying glare.  Lucas huffed in laughter. “You can’t help those who don’t want to be helped, you need to focus on your own.  If she won’t play ball with you, she might with your enemies.”

“Ca me rapelle, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.  I’m forwarding you something.” He set his bottle down and fired off the email as he spoke.  “Several folks in town reported receiving this.”

“’Trinity’s Goal is Human Genocide’,” Lucas read the subject line with a snort.  “’We won’t be replaced, trying to take power, subjugate the human race…’ Yeah, we had something like this awhile back, so did StoneWater.  Do you know where it came from?”

“We got someone working to trace it.  I was wonderin’ if your people have time to look at it, might be tied to the one you mentioned.”  The older pack had resources that RainFire simply didn’t have yet and he wasn’t above asking for help to keep his pack safe.

“It might be the same group, but extremists tend to use the same catchphrases; it’s like they just swap out the nouns.  I recommend keeping your sentinels on alert.” Remi nodded. He’d already briefed those that hadn’t brought the situation to his attention, but if this was a larger threat then they needed to know that, too.

“We’ve got some friends in the city, I’ll ask them to keep their ears to the ground.”

“This might be an individual, but if it’s a cell working to sway public opinion your friends will probably hear of it first.  I’ll have my team see what they can find.” Lucas’ eyes narrowed, but that didn’t hide the teasing glint in his green eyes that looked so much like his cat’s.  “You know, the mentorship was only meant to last the first year.” While that year had passed nearly nine months ago, the two of them had kept in regular contact.

“You don’t have to answer my calls,” he shrugged and tucked a hand behind his head.  “I could always ring up Hawke. Say, you got his number?”  Hunter scowled at the mention of the SnowDancer alpha.

“Are you so hard up you’d ask a wolf for help?”

“I’m asking my Trinity representative for help with somethin’ that might be a bigger problem, but if you’re too busy…”

“Naya, say ‘adieu’ to Oncle Couillon .”  She waved her tail back and forth.

“Bye-bye, cher.”  Remi blew the cub a kiss.  “Donne la belle Sascha un bec pour moi.”  Before hanging up, Lucas gave him one last scowl for telling him to kiss his mate for the other alpha.

He pulled out his organizer and began to plot.  She might be stubborn, but he had an entire pack behind him and he wasn't afraid to use it.

At the sound of the front door opening, Lorel set down the cranberry coloured frosting she was piping onto rows of cupcakes.  She wiped her hands off on a damp white washcloth that was already smeared pink and red with previous uses.

Stopping in the archway that led to the front, she stifled a groan.  The customer who’d entered with her daughter was a changeling: a leopard, to be specific, and one of many who'd managed to wander into her shop over the past week.  Even if she didn’t have a note in her scent that matched an element of Denier’s, she obviously had to be a member of RainFire.  It seemed like she'd already met half the freaking pack, and, in the southern custom that she was rapidly coming to learn, a quick chat was at least half an hour long.

She could hardly refuse to serve the woman; not only was it illegal, but it would be hypocritical.  Besides, changelings were extremely loyal and prolific customers at their favourite restaurants due to their higher caloric requirements.  And not to mention it was probably unhealthy for her if she pissed off RainFire.

Somehow, she was sure the asshole was behind the parade of leopards in her bakery, even if she had no way of proving the suspicion.  She had seen some underhanded tactics in her time, but this latest was the lowest of the low.  Standing up straight, she braced herself.

A little girl in a lavender tutu dress toddled up to the display case like she’d found Nirvana.  Her dark hair was tied up in loose buns that bobbled with every step of her purple, glitter rainboots.  It was impossible not to smile at the sheer joy that lit up her face, which was marked with what looked like slashes from a set of claws, yet they lacked the pigmentation and texture of scars.  They appeared to be birthmarks, albeit pale instead of dark.

“Cookie, pease?”

Seriously, those big, guileless eyes should be registered as lethal weapons.

“What kind would you like?” Lorel asked after glancing at the adult with her to make sure it was ok.

“Dat one!”  A tiny finger pressed to the plas-glas pointed to a set of sugar cookies shaped and frosted to look like various types of leaves: green fading to brown, yellow to red, and whatever other combination had occurred to her at the time.  Lorel picked one of her favourites: a maple leaf with yellow at its centre, surrounded by orange, and turning to red at the edges. For the veins, she’d drawn a knife through the frosting to create lines of colour that bled outward through the gradations.

“Make it a dozen, please, and a dozen each of the caramel apples, the maple pecan cupcakes, and, ooh, pumpkin cheesecake snickerdoodles,” the woman said, her eyes lighting up with the last order.

She nearly did a double-take.  That was her entire stock of each of those items and over half of her seasonal items.  Not that she was about to complain. She wrapped the maple leaf in a napkin and handed it to the girl, experience telling her that it wouldn’t last enough to warrant packaging.

“Thank you!” she chirped and rose on her tiptoes to take the leaf.  The cookie was bigger than both of her hands. Settling back on her heels, she took a bite and exclaimed in delight, eyes going impossibly wide.  Lorel struggled to breathe past the ache in her chest.

Avoiding eye contact with both of them, she quickly boxed up the goodies.  The sooner she got them out of there, the sooner she could breathe easy again.  It didn’t help that her cat was currently clawing at her with a fierce need to play with the cub.   Kid , she mentally reprimanded herself.

“Is something wrong?”  Lorel stared at the other woman for a heartbeat before she realized she’d been shaking her head while silently rebuking herself.

“Oh no.”  She donned a smile like well-worn armour.  “Just talking to myself. Thinking about how many to bake tomorrow, you know?”

The customer nodded and hummed in agreement, but something in her eyes said she wasn’t buying it.  

“It must be hard to move to a town where you don’t know much of anyone and take over your aunt’s business.”

Lorel’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t trust sympathy from a cat, not even one with a child that appeared to be loved and treasured.

“Small towns, everybody knows everybody.”  The other woman shrugged off the suspicion cast her way.  “By the way, I’m Tien and this is JoJo.” JoJo was currently spinning in the sun streaming through the window and watching her skirt flare out.  The glitter in her boots flashed brilliantly in the light. With each bite of her cookie, she hummed a happy little tune.

The pang in her chest was back.

“Lorel,” she flashed her customer service smile, the small one when she wasn’t really feeling like smiling.  Luckily, she was ringing up the sale and therefore had an excuse to avoid anything more than briefly flicking her eyes at Tien.  Then she gave the total and they went through the ritual of the transaction.

“Here’s my number.”  Tien jotted down the code on a slip of paper she’d found in her purse.  “Let me know if you ever want to talk or if you ever want to… I’d say go for coffee, but,” she broke off with a laugh and gestured at the espresso machine.  “Do lunch or something.”

She couldn’t decline without being rude, and being rude in a small southern town would spell disaster for her business.  And the other woman’s smile was so broad and genuine that she smiled back despite herself.

“Thank you.”  Lorel took the scrap and slipped it into her apron; today it was yellow and edged at the bottom with lace.  The lavender flowers on it matched the full-skirted dress she wore.

“Come on, kidlet.”  Tien herded the girl towards the exit.

“Bye!”  JoJo waved and skipped out the door, offering a bite of her cookie to her mom, who accepted with an “mmm!”

Lorel sank back against the counter and thrust her hands into her pockets, idly fingering the contact number.  How could they be so happy and obviously well-adjusted in a pack with an autocratic asshole like Denier? Although, was there really any other kind of alpha?  In her admittedly limited experience, the answer was no.

And yet neither of them had, had the hollow, guarded eyes that were the result of abuse from those in power.  While the rest of the pack seemed friendly enough, no doubt the carrot to Denier’s stick, it wasn’t something she was used to.

She crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the recycler.

No matter how honest she appeared to be, Tien was still Denier’s pawn.

Notes:   Remi isn’t canonically Cajun, it’s left ambiguous (“with a name like that sounds like he should be hunting gators in a swamp somewhere”).  But I like the idea that he can play the dumb swamprat, or the suave southern gentleman, or a shark in the boardroom because he learned how to dominate whatever room he was in and that he had to learn to blend in (*foreshadowing of my personal HC’s).

I'm a bit of a language nerd. The evolution of Louisiana French is interesting because it basically takes Acadian French and drifts it, then splices in some Choctaw.  And it appears to share some quirks and sentence structure with French Creoles. I'm not sure if that's due to sharing a "parent" language (I don't know enough to say) or due to cultural exchange in the region.

The Cajun French in this chapter comes from published dictionaries and articles written by native speakers, then cross-referenced (or simply plugged into google to see if similar results pop up). Then if I need to conjugate something or figure out grammar, I'll run it by my spouse who speaks Quebecois (which evolved from Acadian, too), but isn’t French Canadian.  So if it’s atrocious, my apologies and please let me know.

Laide tchew - ugly ass

Quoi se fais du mal - what trouble have you been getting into?

Possede - literally possessed one, a term for a mischievous child

Mais - Literally French for “but.” According to kenwheatonwrites.com it “means “well then,” and is used to delight, shock, exasperation — any number of things. It’s almost like “dude” or “fuck” in its ability to morph into anything depending on situation, tone, delivery and other factors.”

Ca me rapelle - That reminds me

Oncle - uncle

Couillon - idiot, imbecile, funny person. In standard French, it means dickhead or bastard. I like to think that Lucas knows standard French, which helps him to understand Remi when he's slipping into his native patois. ;)

Donne la belle Sascha un bec pour moi - give the lovely Sascha a kiss for me

Fun fact: "bec" can mean "kiss" and "beak." So I'll tell my pet birds "bec la bec!" I'm easily entertained, what can I say?

[bizarre-alien]

Stuart Pot is Black

The title itself will have mixed emotions, and they’re most likely strong ones. That’s perfectly fine and accepted as long as it’s respectful. I just want to share my theory and the evidence to said theory… Stuart Pot is a brother. He may even be from Wakanda. If that did something to you where you just want this erased from your life, treat yourself right and do not read on. It’s alright. It’s not for everyone. You’re a good person as long as you aren’t engaging in something you dislike and intentionally hurting someone’s feelings in the process! Okay, anyhow... I’ve been studying him, and there’s a lot to point out if you’re interested! Maybe you can read and digest some of this with 2D’s archived playlist on Spotify, which has a pretty black VIBE.

One place I want to point out 2D’s blackness is in his appearance. His skin tone is, for my first example, that of a light skinned brother from phase 1 to 3. It’s a slight amount of melanin, but it’s still there. Unfortunately, from his accumulated paychecks throughout these phases along with caving into the gentrification of himself, he went through a skin whitening surgery process. Melanin can still be slightly visible in the Humanz cover, but not much after that. Another theory is that he possibly has universal vitiligo and just lost the pigmentation all together.

My next example of his blackness in his appearance is his hair. When he was younger, his mother gave him silk presses to keep his hair healthy and straight. It was a great idea, but 2D wasn’t clear on what to get at the salon and they just gave him relaxers… You can see how his hair just deteriorates over time to a more crunchy, stiff, and thin appearance. His mother must be torn up inside from seeing that…

Healthy looking hair from a silk press! ☝🏾

Crunchier than granola from relaxers... ☝🏾  It’s not too late to do a big chop, son!

Lastly in this category, the blackness in his facial features. They are proportionate black features. His nose was wider in phases 1-3, but narrow in the phases onward. He has gotten a rhinoplasty because of the pressures of assimilation. His cheeks, his ears, and his eyes are structured the way we're structured. Bonus point, his hands are big. That’s a feature we have, as well. (just look at the pictures up there. lol)

The next place I want to point out 2D’s blackness is the music. A lot of the collaborators Gorillaz had were black, to my knowledge. It’s a weak point, so that’s why I’m mentioning this first. Also, Humanz, as much as it can be very relatable to all which is a wonderful thing, did highlight a lot of issues that black people face yesterday, today, but hopefully not tomorrow. This could be the moment the 2D is waking up and realizing that he’s not an outsider and that he may connect with the collaborators more than he thought he would. I plan to elaborate on this moment in a story set for early 2020, so be on the watch for that!

Another way 2D’s blackness surfaces in music is the way he sang in the early phases. In phase 1, the man had soul. His ad libs were well placed, and it seemed natural to him. It was critiqued by Murdoc, so that could be one of the reasons why he toned it down in Demon Days. It’s still there, but there aren’t many ad lib breaks like in the self-titled. Plastic Beach, he did that in Stylo for sure. In other songs though, it may or may not be considered as soulful as the other albums were. Yet, it comes back in Humanz from vibing with the collaborators! And, he brings it back in The Now Now since he feels free to do what he wants! Last thing I want to point out about his vocal choices, he has MAD bars in EVERY phase because we have the RHYTHM for that! PERIODT! Sorry, I got carried away from all the black excellence…

Last thing I’m pointing out in this category is his music production technique. I’m going to point out Hillbilly Man for this one. The drum pattern he used in this has the bounce that only the melanated kings and queens can possess. It has the bounce that gets us bouncing, twerking, moving, vibing, and shaking. It reminds me of the way Timbaland can make it bounce. Also, The Joplin Spider has that element of blackness in the synths and drum pattern. The way he was freestyling on the synths in the intro of the song, the way that the drum pattern is hard and steady, the way he spits that flame on top of the whole thing… My god.

My final point on how 2D can be black is through his relations with himself and others. His mother, according to Rise of The Ogre, is busty. Why does that need to be pointed out? Well, that’s what a lot of black women think. There had to have been a reason to why it was pointed out, right?

 Another thing, black people get along with everyone as a way of “code-switching”. It’s primarily used to be safe from cops who… well, you know. But, he became quite the chameleon over the years. In She’s My Collar, it shows that he would use different personas to get some loving. Being that this wasn’t originally my point, I didn’t have much time to elaborate on this.

Lastly, 2D would keep talking about how he needs to find himself. It’s possible that he’s just trying to find out his blackness that’s been suppressed and erased from the moment he was conscious of his life. People use drugs to fill a missing link in their hearts (a lot of the time is the lack of Jesus, but I’ll save that for a future sermon), so maybe 2D is doing the same thing. He may not relate to white people as much as he thinks he should, so that’s why the collaborators are mostly black. They tell a story and have memories and where he can relate. 

He straightens his hair and lightens his skin, but at what cost? What needs to be hidden? How come rhythm is in his DNA to where making music is child’s play? Maybe it’s because he’s black, but had it in his system to erase it the moment it surfaced. His mother did it to protect him from his racist family on his father’s side, and Murdoc had to do it to make him palatable enough for the band to get a cult following because you don’t really see bands with a black front man having that… And, if there are, let a sister know because she supports everybody black. If you made it this far, I really appreciate this. Thank you, and God bless.

[peebleswrites]

Forbidden Fruit, a Code Geass AU

Suzaku remembered waking up, on the beach, the shores of an island of all places. He remembered experiencing disorientation concerning his surroundings and his arrival. How did he get here? And why? Why couldn’t he recall anything prior to being stranded?

“I won’t get any answers here…” Survival instincts from training had kicked in. First things first, he needed to locate a source of drinkable water.

He remembered this more vividly than anything else.

A figure. It appeared to be that of a woman. The back was facing him. At first, he grew alarmed, wary that this person, whoever she may be, might pose a threat to his wellbeing. And then she turned. And that head of red hair that stuck out like a sore thumb on any given day, grabbed his attention, practically slapping him in the face for not recognizing her sooner.

“Kallen? Kallen Stadtfeld?”

He remembered her active response. She wasted no time in both covering that which she could and charging at him with a concealed weapon of some kind.

“A Black Knight’s uniform? Don’t tell me you’re one of–!”

Yes, that dark jacket. The design. She couldn’t be one of them, could she? Not Kallen Stadt—

“Kouzuki is my name! I’m Japanese!”

He remembered meeting her for the first time. That spit fire Guren pilot, Kouzuki Kallen. If asked to describe his feelings as he straddled her naked body, working to subdue her wildly moving form, he’d have to say he was somewhere between utterly confused and bewildered. So much that he paid little mind to the very obvious fact that she lacked proper clothing for the better part of their encounter.

Well…no…that’s a lie. He is still a boy, after all. However, he’s a soldier too. And a knight of third princess! He couldn’t dishonor his master and himself by gawking at a woman in such a vulnerable state! Though, even he had to admit…Kallen was just not the kind of beauty you could ignore easily.

“So, you have no idea how you got here either.”

He remembered the awkward part of forcing her clothes on because her being naked and his ‘captive’ just did not sit right with him for previously mentioned reasons. He easily compared her behavior to that of a drenched cat. Wild. Violent. Merciless. The list just goes on.

“You’re a lot different than you are at school.” The most obvious observation he’d made all day. Not just her behavior. Her expressions. Her voice. Her entire demeanor. It was like a switch had been flipped on her. Could this girl before him really be Kallen?

“Yeah, and you’re the same as ever…” In all honesty, despite her involvement with the Black Knights, he had to admit this Kallen was much more…pleasant to be around. Or perhaps pleasant wasn’t the correct term. All in all, he enjoyed her presence much more in this setting than at school. He truly believed she was quite the boring individual.

Oh, how wrong he was.

“The name Genbu Kururugi, the last samurai, weeps!” Her feisty, reckless tirade triggered the ole recipe of bitterness and resentment that permanently swelled within his lump of a heart. Forever would he be compared to his radical of a father. It was something he’d learned to live with over the years. But now…the secret had come out.

“My father didn’t commit suicide. I killed him. With this hand.” Gone was the boy who trembled at the feet of a foe who somehow knew too much. Gone was the feeble teenager who preached and preached on justice all the while harboring the very sin that was a direct catalyst in the equation that led to the very much anticipated downfall of his people. For that moment, for that split second, Suzaku stopped caring.

He was a killer. Day after day he tried to convince himself that maybe, just maybe, if he worked hard enough, he could one day be free of this sin but no. Area 11 and its inhabitants were a perpetual reminder.

He remembered Kallen’s face. He was expecting mortification. Lelouch, his best friend, gazed upon him in shock. He anticipated much worse from her and yet…her eyes were sad? Maybe he was seeing things. Maybe the crackling fire between them played tricks on his eyes. For her expression lasted but an instance.

“Zero…what he’s doing is wrong…”

“Oh, and you’re suddenly Mr. Right? Who is it that gets decide what’s right and wrong? Who gets to stand in judgement? Certainly not you! You’re nothing but a—!” The words were on her lips, teetering on the tip of her tongue.

“Go on and say it! I know what I am, Kallen! A disgrace to the Kururugi name! A murder! A hypocrite! I’ve heard it all before! But those labels don’t change how I feel about the state of this land! What being Japanese means to me! What it’s meant since our independence was stripped away!”

“So now you’ve got pride? Hah! Your pride means nothing if you’re fighting on the wrong side! The very fact that you oppose someone who’s done more for Japan in the last month than you’ve done in your entire life shows me that your so-called pride is nothing but a farce! It’s not real! How dare you call yourself Japanese!”

Every word she spat at him was like lava. It made him hot, hotter than he’d ever felt. Steamed, even. The kind of hot that compels men to act violently. The kind of provoking hot that urged him to hit something. He felt so driven all of the sudden by aggression and frustration, he was ready to…to…!

He remembered her eyes, wide with fury and shock the moment he lunged forward, tackling her into the cold cold sand below them. He remembered suffering from a well-aimed knee to the abdomen, courtesy of the Guren pilot who flung more ignited slurs his way. He couldn’t explain why he attacked her like this. Well…he could but he didn’t care to. This action would bring him shame every time he thought of it.

He thought of her eyes, a blue starkly contrasting the fiery pits of vengeance currently scorching his being. He thought of her breath, labored huffs of air hitting his flushed face at uneven intervals. He thought of her hair in splayed spikes of crimson laying construed about her face. He thought of her lips, dry as they were, his eyes never strayed too far from the full pink pair, parted and giving him the allusion of something soft.

And suddenly all thoughts stopped at that point.

“S….Suzak–…!” Too little too late. Had she called his name even a second sooner, he would’ve stopped himself. But she didn’t. And he was now comparing the softness of her lips to something plump, sweet, warm. Kissing her was like biting into a ripe peach on a hot summer afternoon. An odd comparison but it seemed to fit as far as he was concerned.

“……”

He remembered moving away from her, back to the fire, back to real life, back to the sad sap of Kururugi he’d learned to accept.

And he remembered biting into that peach one more time before night became morning. Later on, he would wonder how in the world Kallen managed to get her hands free from those bindings.

It would be weeks, perhaps even an entire month had passed in between their next encounter. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very pleasant meeting. The events prior, discovering Kallen’s ties with the Black Knights, being stranded with her, and most notably that kiss, were still fairly fresh within the Lancelot pilot’s mind.

Or rather, his ever-feisty hothead of a rival was in his head and he couldn’t seem to get rid of her. No matter how much he cared for his princess, the light of his life, that spark within Kallen…it dulled her shine.

A bit.

He saw her at school upon his return at long last. He wasn’t surprised to see her tense up whenever he was around. He knew her secret. And he was willing to bet he was the only one at Ashford who did. Unbeknownst to her, he’d never breathe a word about it.

“Just what in the hell kind of game are you trying to pull here, huh?” She’d cornered him, unceremoniously shoved him in a vacant classroom while obviously, and painfully, poking his side with that blasted knife wallet. Really, where does one obtain such a cute yet deadly accessory?

“I don’t know what you mean, Kallen.” Part of him didn’t. Part of him was waiting for her to question him.

Part of him was dying for it. A chance to share the same space, breathe the same air. A chance to look into those constantly blazing, fluid pools of raging cerulean. A chance to memorize those lips, to experience the nostalgia of his first encounter with the forbidden fruit.

“Don’t fuck with me, Suzaku!”

“You kiss Zero with that mouth–ow! It was a joke, sheesh!” Yeah, he supposed he earned himself that small stab from her blade.

“What’s your angle? Are you planning to blackmail me? It won’t work! I don’t care about exposing myself!”

“Wait, that’s not what I’m after all! Please, don’t do that!” Time to come clean. And fast. That blade didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “While we’re at school…I’m Suzaku, your friend. I won’t do anything to jeopardize your being here, Kallen. If anything, I’d like to persuade you to change sides.”

“Oh, how noble of you.” He was expecting that sarcastic jab.

“But…when we meet on the battlefield, I’ll be your enemy. And I will make it my duty to defeat you and Zero.” Blazing cerulean met the steely pigmentation of raw sage. And Kallen looked taken aback by his bold declaration. Taken aback and mildly provoked. That smirk covering her lips told him everything he needed to know about her stance on his words.

“You say that as if you really can stop us. I’ll beat that knightmare of yours, just wait!” She was seconds, mere seconds, away from removing the knife when calloused digits closed around the thinness of her wrist. Several quick maneuvers later and the Guren pilot met the cold hard surface of a beaker cabinet, face first.

“You’re underestimating me. I am a trained soldier. You’ve just gotten lucky overtime...”

“This ‘luck’ nearly defeated your precious Viceroy and gives you hell every time our units clash! You’re the one underestimating me!” How dare he impose his strength upon her. Oh, how she yearned to level the playing field. And level his head while she was at it.

Frustrated with her defiance, the male effortlessly whipped her form around, forcing her back into the cabinet while keeping a steady grip on her arm.

“You don’t have to do this Kallen! You come from a good family. Your father’s a noble! With your background, you could easily work from within and–!”

“Save the self-righteous work with the system speech for someone with nothing to fight for! You really think a halfbreed like me will be well received?! Oh, your father’s a noble~. Screw him and screw y–!”

He couldn’t resist. How could he? The tension between them was too great. Her eyes, they’d captivated him from the moment she yanked him from the hall. Even her scent, tantalizingly potent, reeled him in. And the bait that compelled him?

Her raw anger.

It was different than what he was used out of women. Most girls were nice, sweet, kind, soft, gentle. But Kallen…she was a fire. A ticking time bomb. A raging storm and he was slowly coming to terms with being blissfully caught up in her torrents.

Which is why when she finally snapped and slapped him, he did nothing more than cup his stinging cheek. He didn’t follow after her when she stormed off. In fact, he all but avoided Kallen for a pretty good portion of the day and the rest of the semester.

She scared him, for lack of a better word. And not because she was tough or one of his more formidable foes on the battlefield. It was off the battlefield that her presence shrouded him in veils of fear. He’d awaken at night, in cold sweats though the dream was definitely the opposite temperature. He’d randomly find himself thinking fondly of Euphemia only for the image to shift to that of Kallen.

Worst of all, he’d recall and crave that first taste.

This fruit, his sweet downfall.

Euphemia was dead. Area Eleven had succumbed to the terror that would soon become known as nothing other than the Black Rebellion. Suzaku was traumatized, deeply wounded, and wracked with terror. His heart, normally swelling bitterly now had a new accessory weighing it down.

Revenge.

“Zero!”

“No, it’s Lelouch!” Why…why did she have to be here? Why did she have to come at this exact moment? Why…did she follow him? Follow Zero. Follow Lelouch…she would pay dearly for choosing the wrong side. He gave her a way out. Time and time again. If this is the path she walked, so be it.

“Suzaku, no!”

“Don’t get in my way, Kallen!” He’d merely intended to shy her away from coming any closer. But when his gun fired…when he heard her cries of pain…it was like seeing Euphie’s demise from eyes of the monster before him.

No, how could he…

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way…Lelouch. He was supposed to shoot Lelouch, not Kallen.

After that, he was on autopilot. Blur. Everything he remembered was a blur.

Detaining Lelouch. A blur.

Treating Kallen’s gunshot wound. A blur.

Contacting the Avalon to meet him at the island. A blur.

And he’ll never forget her last words.

“S-Suzaku…I will…n-never…forgive you…”

Her last words as Kouzuki Kallen.

A/N: This was a bit longer than originally intended but it’s just one of those things where you write and you write and you keep writing until the message you want to get across is conveyed. When I tell you I’ve had this on my brain for YEARS. I mean, it’s been a loooong time but I finally buckled down and pumped this out sometime in 2018. Tell me what you think. Shall I continue or leave it as is? Thanks!

[neo-culture-mafia]

Crush Culture (K.DY)

You were single...that was it.

The sight of seeing other couples made you want to punch them. You were 20 and still have never had your first kiss. You were okay with that too. You were afriad of becoming apart of that gross couple no one could stand.

Yet, it was annoying when everyone had a significant other besides you...even the Junior Forces had someone. You were forever alone.

Your attitude was always the reason someone couldn't hold onto you. You were a hand full and that was an understatement half of the time. You were a bratty girl that wanted love -- but no one wanted you.

You sat at your circle table during the Valentine Day Holiday Party that Taeyong threw everywhere...well...his girlfriend threw. She throws it every year to have an excuse to dress up in a tight red dress and talk with the rest of the girlfriends that were also associated with the Mafia. You were always seen as 'one of the guys' compared to the other girls. You were the only female genuinely recruited and not just fucking their way in. Whenever the girls would go shopping, one of the boys would try to convince their girlfriends to take you along -- trying to get you to make friends.

You've tried making friends with them but they're just too snobby and judgemental. Then at the end of the day, you're back at the boys' lounge sitting in the corner with a lonely bottle of Soju.

You hit the volume button on your phone again as you're met with the time: 11:32 and a new notification. You quickly unlocked your phone and checked it. 'Timer: Your timer for 5 minutes has run out.'

You groaned and locked your phone. You put it on the table with annoyance and just looked into the dancing crowd. You play with your sleeve as you grimaced at it's color. It was red. You hated red. But to make the boss' wife happy; you followed the dress code knowing you found a loophole and how it would piss her off.

It reminded you of anger...and how you didn't want to be here while the color is plastered over every square inch of this damn room.

"Yah." You looked up to see your hero of the night: Doyoung.

"What do you want old man?" You rolled your eyes and he scoffed. "Fine sit alone then." He said and you snapped towards him. "I was joking." You quickly blurt out and he chuckled as he turned back and sat in the chair next to you. The red silk table cloth moving as his legs brush against it.

"Why aren't you dancing?" He asked and you shrugged. "Why aren't you?" You asked but you already knew the answer.

Like you, he was a handful to have as a partner. He hasn't secured a woman yet which was looked down upon by some. Most didn't care, like the boys...but the girls wanted someone new every once and awhile to brainwash and make their own.

Doyoung was adorned in a leather jacket and dark jeans. He found a loophole in the dress code too; his dark t-shirt having a red logo on it. It pissed Tae's girl off but he couldn't stand her either.

"Just don't want to. Not my thing ya know." He shrugged and downed all of his red wine. "God this is terrible." He groaned as he looked at the empty glass. You chuckled at his face as he set it down with a clunk of the cold glass.

You both sat there in comfortable silence and just chilled with each other. "Hey losers. Why aren't you dancing?" Kun came over as his wife scurried off to the hoard of girls in the middle of the dance floor.

"Aside from the fact I don't want to be here in the first place...? I just don't want to." You said and he chuckled. "Here's a wacky idea. Both of you dance with each other." He said taking your glass of wine away from you. You whined and held your hand out for it back.

Kun grabbed your hand and placed it on Doyoung's. "You won't get paid if you say no." Kun said and Doyoung just groaned.

"Paid?" You questioned. "The guys are paying me 20 dollars just to show up." Doyoung said and Kun nodded at the statement.

"What?!" You shrieked. "Yeah I know it ridiculous righ-" "I wanna be paid too!" You cut off Kun as Doyoung laughed. Kun gave up on you two and walked away. "I'm surrounded by children." He shook his head.

"We're the same age dumbass." Doyoung called back and Kun just held up his special finger as a response. You chuckled at the response. You felt pressure on your hand as you saw Doyoung's hand wrap around yours.

"We're here...why not make it special?" He asked and stood up. You shook your head no as you tried retracting your hand. "I don't dance." You shook your head again.

"And you think I do?" He cocked an eyebrow. You looked at him and just sighed. "Fine." You said as you let him pull you out of your seat. He guided you amongst the bodies of slow dancing and couples kissing.

He brought you to the middle of the floor above the huge dangling heart that was set to burst with confetti at midnight. He turned you around and put his hands on your waist hesitantly. He was a good height taller so your forehead just met his lips. So in order to maintain eye contact you had to look up at him.

You were lost for a moment until you put your arms gently on his shoulder. Some random slow love song played through the huge speakers. You both talked about some upcoming missions before you were interrupted. "Yeah I get it. What we do for work is very interesting -- yet I don't want to overhear how you decapitated a guy while I'm kissing my girlfriend at a Valentine's day dance." Jaehyun butted in with swollen lips and a trail of red pigment from his jaw to his collar.

You laughed at his physical state, your head burying into Doyoung's chest out of instinct to hide your face. His hand subconsciously went up your back a little.

"Dude. Go get a room if you're that desperate." Doyoung chuckled. "Why don't you go-" you cut off the younger before he said something he would regret.

"Alright enough. We'll shut up about work." You said and Jaehyun rolled his eyes. "Thank you." He said and walked the couple steps back over to his girlfriend.

You looked up again to already be met with his longing gaze. His eyes getting bigger then readjusting to your bright eyes he was waiting to see...yet he would never tell you that.

"So...how was your day?" You asked trying to appeal to Jaehyun's wishes on choice of conversation. "It was good. Yours?" He asked you; as he genuinely wanted to know the answer.

"It was...boring." You chuckled at the thought of you staying in bed all day until being reminded of the dance.

"Oh well I hope it looks up soon." Doyoung said and twirled you. You giggled at the unexpected dance move. "Where'd you learn to do that?" You asked once his hands were back on your back and holding you close. "Takes two to tango honey." He winked and you felt the heat rush to your cheeks.

"Guess you're right." You nodded and played with a few hairs on the nape of his neck.

"Yeah?" He asked and you nodded shortly again. You two were getting closer. You hadn't noticed how his big eyes were and how they twinkled even in the dimmest of lights, or how natural his hands felt on your back -- bringing you two closer as your bodies pushed against another's.

"Yeah." You breathed. He was so close and you didn't know you had wanted this so much until it was right here infront of you. "Yeah." He whispered and brought you closer up to his face. Your lips were grazing each others. It was like sparks of electricity.

Claps became apparent as you both realised what was happening. You both pushed each other away and just straightened your clothes out as the confetti fell in huge clumps around everyone's feet. Some kissed their partner as they continued dancing to the music. You ran a hand through your hair as did Doyoung. Both of you clearing of your throats and looking around to make sure no one else saw what was about to happen. Yet they did and the group of people in the corner of the room groaned as half of them lost money on the fact you two didn't kiss.

"Well...see you tomorrow." You both turned to each other at the same time. "Yeah totally." You both continued to copy each other. "Goodbye." You waved and bowed slightly as you walked past him and out the doors to get to your car.

You walked to the curb where rain still drizzled lightly. You noticed you had a bounce in your step as you walked with purpose. The heat in your chest and cheeks hadn't stopped as you got in your car.

..

You drove down the highway back to your apartment as you blasted the most cheesiest love songs you could think of.

You arrived at your home and ran up the stairs to your bedroom. You turned on all your lights and your music. You hopped and danced on your bed for the rest of the night...Doyoung doing the same at his own home.

You were on cloud 9 and nothing even happened. Even though you were happy you didn't know that Doyoung was happier. He had been waiting MONTHS to make a move. He's just so happy he didn't have to force it.

Maybe the crush culture was disgusting and overrated. Maybe it did make you want to become violent and light every heart shaped thing on fire. Yet, with you finding your own interest...you were wanting to become apart of the same group you despised.

------------

This was for Doyoung and his birthday💗💗

It wasn't my best work but I felt bad about not posting on his birthday. I needed more time to finish it and finally finished today.

With Love,

~J

[rgr-pop]

Here is probably everything else I wore out and about this year less often or less memorably, I guess? It doesn’t seem like it, but I guess! 

eyes:

Recently I’ve been trying to get use out of Subculture’s stone shade, Mercury. I really, really want to do grey and taupe and stone eye looks but I do not have what I need. This particular shade darkens a lot. I want to keep Subculture out to try to do new things with it–make that shade work more with the yellows, use the rosy shades, wear that metallic ONCE (I never have!!). I don’t really even remember wearing the Kristen Leanne palette this year, it was probably either the purple or the gold. This thing really is very pretty but it’s full of the kinds of potential looks I’ve already mastered and am unchallenged by. The UD Nocturnal palette is getting quite old and I’m trying to breathe new life into it–tried some looks with that purple and silver but it’s not the Cool Toned™ look I’m craving… I only use the mattes WnW’s revamped Comfort Zone palette (for how many years will we refer to it like that?) but I like them, as far as neutrals go. That Dior palette came from one of you guys and I’m still trying to figure out what it’s good for–I think I’m going to wear it on my face? That center shade in particular is just lovely for me. These just feel delicious.

Colourpop Sprinkle Me (this is kind of my go-to shimmery neutral “topper” shade, to the extent that I think it makes me lazy and I’m trying to use it left) and Don’t Leave, L’Oreal Infallible in Golden Emerald (these are still so good!), a Stila Magnificent Metals, the old kind you mix with a medium, in Metallic Gilded Gold. I did wear one of the Glitter and Glows this year but I guess it didn’t end up in here! MAC’s Bird of Prey pressed pigment from that LE Star Trek line–this remains just okay for me but I respect my choice to purchase it based on having the best of all the shade names! Bunch of fucking pencils, idk, I’m very lost when it comes to pencils: a NYX jumbo in Cashmere, a NYX retractable in Gold, Milani glitter retractable in Emerald Stone: they are all fine. A lot of this green and gold stuff was my NYE look. 

I seem to recall doing an all-over-the-face look with that fluorescent pink Sweetpea & Fay pigment. I still have this! Pigments last forever! I am gonna keep this out for a blush. 

There are three Grinch liquid liners from Pur that Westlin got me for Christmas (!) and I’ve been playing around with them. Reader, I’m out of practice. I’m not good at liquid liner. That is why I had coveted this set in the first place, because I didn’t have any and they’re the brush kind, which I always liked back in the days when we all wore liquid liner. But the learning curve is killing me a little bit here. 

Two things I got from @madmoths that I’m still playing around with. That CYO mascara is GREEN! A dark green, pretty subtle on bare lashes. I wore it a few times then I wanted to keep it closed for a while until I got a white primer to try it with, so it didn’t dry out (esp given I have 100 mascaras open currently). I will report how it looks over the primer! What color eyeshadow with an evergreen lash? This would be a great time for a milky matte pink or mauve, which I DO NOT have! Strawberry milk + pine is a good colour combination. Then, black cherry or plum (for spring) and maybe mustard yellow. Seems like that is the agenda! Then there is a MAC dazzleshadow in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. This has a plummy base with a looovely perfect light blue glitter in it, I’m trying to figure out the best way to layer it to bring out the blue. It is part of my cherry for spring plan! Sometimes I feel like I have a hard time wearing dark shades on my lid without feeling too…formal? And this is something I’m trying to get over. I think wearing them in particularly informal settings will help. (Maybe this is reservations about “sexy”?) This would look so good with a powder blue liner.

face:

I realize now that I should have put Anastasia’s Moonchild palette in my more used pile, I had totally forgotten about how all of January I wanted to be tin man. That silver-grey looks very flattering on me, but I want it to look grey. I want a fucking grey face highlighter. Pale princess problems :(

UD’s Bittersweet Afterglow blush, NYX’s Codebreaker ombre blush and Pinky powder blush: these are fine. Becca’s Opal is fine. That WnW Zodiac highlighting bar (Earth) is nice, it’s fine. It kinda made me like Mary Loumanizer, of all things, more, in comparison. That peachy Vera Mona thing is an eyeshadow that I wear as a blush. I am always thinking that I wish I had a peachy shimmery blush and forgetting I have that. I do not recommend those WnW stick blushes. I somewhat strongly recommend the Revolution liquid highlighters and the WnW Hello Halo liquid highlighters, the above are in the shades Liquid Champagne and Guilded (?) Glow. I like the Revolution one marginally better on me, easier to blend out.

I really wanted to like that Hourglass Vanish stick highlighter when it came out and I was amped to get a mini, it was so hyped and well-regarded. The shade is Champagne something or other. Maybe it’s just that I don’t wear foundation? But I don’t find this to be any nicer than any other stick highlighter I’ve tried, and I do like that kind of thing. It’s okay. 

That WnW Illuminating Palette is still pretty nice, I feel like whenever I get bored of it I find a new way to use it. I have an idea about that and that little Vintage pink blush-highlight, they are both relatively subtle and very smooth: I think I might try to use them as finishing powders all over my whole face. Will report back. 

That Colourpop blush is in the shade Bardot and I’m making a point to use it henceforth, these things don’t have forever shelf lives. It’s nice! I don’t love the super shock formula for blush specifically, I think it’s finnicky on a brush.

Oh! and my City Color Be Matte blush in Fresh Melon. Still my favorite. I’m a little concerned that it’s getting drier, and I cannot replace it!!

lips:

MAC Watch Me Simmer, still maybe my favorite lipstick of all time when I wear it, still haven’t found a dupe, lately I’m into wearing it very blotted out, because their cremes do emphasize lip weirdness and my lips have been VERY WEIRD. 

The only thing here whose color isn’t represented well is that Maybelline lipstick. It’s called Fiery Fuchsia and I got it on super clearance. It is fairly similar to the fuchsia from the new Maybelline line, the one Nyma Tang had me wanting to buy, but this one was on clearance for like $3 likely for that reason, AND its # is 810 (flint area code). So far I quite like it, one of my favorite lipstick color families on me is what I call “dark pinks,” which are hot lipstick pinks at a darker value that haven’t been desaturated. This one is the most vibrant one in my collection so far and I imagine it’ll be an everyday shade for me. I’d like to get myself a liner in this family, because I’ve been relying more on liners since my lips have been Extremely Weird.

Here is Fenty’s Vay Cray gloss–this gets less winter time wear from me, because it can emphasize Weirdness, but it is ideal in the summer. Revlon’s HD matte metallic something or other in HD Dazzle is fine, Lucas got it for me hoping it would replace this (the only lip item I have EVER LOST! and mourn daily). It doesn’t, but I like it. More of those Benefit glosses in Hoola and Bella Bamba. Tom Ford Indian Rose: this is really nice especially if you have Weird Lip problems, but I like that Bare Minerals one better, maybe! The Bite Sephora birthday gifts– the stick in Glace and the bullet in Chai–are good, they’re fine, I haven’t learned to love them. I’m mad at Bite because a very very old lipstick I had from them finally got like, lowkey rancid, and it was expensive, and I’m like: what if you didn’t use food grade ingredients, hm? I haven’t found a good reason to wear that green, UD’s Junkie, much since the Christmas season, but I’ll figure it out. That Rimmel is one of my favorite shades,109, but the last time I wore it it was Weird (due to weird lips), so I’ve been afraid of it.

That Colourpop shade is Scorpio Moon (lol of course I bought it) and the quality and experience of it is unbelievable and it makes me want to buy more of them all the time. I’m hoping to get Flower Szn. Their Lux Lipsticks could be the best thing on the market–not just for the price, but for any price–if they kept them consistent and were willing to fill out a permanent range, but they won’t, because they are Colourpop! So they become the best for the price, maybe, but I still think something like Maybelline is a safer bet across the range. Anyway this color is so strange–which is good, it is unique. It turned out to be way more cool-toned on me than I expected, but at the same time it is not cool-toned enough, so I keep wearing it hoping it will be a delicious creamy greige, but it is not. That has been a trend for me this year, I am craving a delicious creamy greige and I have none. Hence these NYX shades, Haze (the straight grey) and Castle (the lavender, what a cute name), both of which I reach for when I want greige, and I end up disappointed, even though they are both good, especially that purple, which is a dear shade to me! 

[lazardotsocial]

LAZAR DOT SOCIAL GEN 5: ROTATE

Pre-Launch Essay

It is my intention to start writing about each generation of lazar as I launch, in an attempt to communicate what I was thinking when I made them. In these essays I'll be going over some of the inspirations and intentions that lead me to make this terrible machine. Come along with me!

1. WELCOEM TO MY FUCK HOUSE

For a short period on January 29th 2015, tumblr was the best social media site in history. On that date it reached heights that have never since been approached, let alone surpassed. January 29th is day tumblr pushed an update containing a number of bugs that gave users the ability to style their posts in new ways. Far too many ways and far too powerful ways. Users could, for example, stick their posts to the browsers so they’d stay in place when you tried to scroll away. Or put their posts on top of other posts. Or insert text into the margins of the page. For the few hours before the change was rolled back, tumblr descended into total, beautiful chaos.

Now, the primary reason websites don’t let their users do this sort of thing is it’ll make your site completely unreadable (1). I do not respect this reason. Who said sites should be legible? The social is complete mess, so social media should be the same, so say I. I have been dreaming reenacting the glorious chaos of that winter night for a while and with generation 5 of Lazar, I am taking a stab at it.

2. The Feed

Gen 5 is also about the feed. In your standard feed, the kind you'd see on facebook or twitter, each post acts as an atomic unit. Posts are capable of being related but by default they are not. Each is it’s own universe, with no relationship to the posts above or below it. Or at least that’s the idea - I don’t think people are really capable of reading like that. We create connections between posts placed in proximity automatically, even if those connections aren’t intended or if they get us into trouble.

In Gen 5 posts are allowed to wander away from their proper chronological positioning, making their own decisions about placement in the feed. Posts can block or overlap other posts. The interactions between a post and it’s neighbors becomes very active and impossible to ignore. And why not? Those posts have a relationship and I've decided to make it an undeniable relationship.

Letting users freely pick their angle and offset is an intentionally over the top method of making that point. Every version of Lazar is ridiculous. I’m not interested in making a social media site that works. I’m interested in making a social media site that stimulates the imagination.

3. LA2AR

Gen 4 of Lazar ended in February, so it’s been slumbering for 5 months. During that time I threw away all the code I’ve been using for Lazar up until now and started over from scratch. The old lazar ran on Vue, google firebase, and google cloud functions (2). But I decided firebase has too many opinions about how it delivers data and so it had to go.

The new Lazar is a vanilla rails app. No front end javascript framework, just rails and erb. I want to keep this codebase simple and flexible. I want to be able to develop new and weird features quickly and with minimum fuss. Rails is a framework I already know, so hopefully the amount of time I have to spend learning. We’ll see how it pains out long term.

Making online art is often frustrating to me because of how much time I have to spend struggling with my tools. Every form of art involves some amount of technical skill and some about creative expression – you have to learn how to mix your pigments before you can paint a picture – but with tech art it feels like the technical requirements go on and on forever. At some point though you have to stop casting around for new tools and just make something. I want a set of skills and tools that let me quickly create and deploy new sites while still give me the flexibility to make whatever I want. I don’t I have that yet. But hopefully I'm working towards it.

4. Links

Here’s some stuff I was reading and thinking about while I made gen 6.

No More Pages and Reading Humanized, the blog posts that introduced the world to the idea of the infinite scroll. It's interesting to see what the idea was at the start and compare it how it turned out.

Twitter, The Intimacy Machine by C. Thi Nguyen. I’ve known about context collapse for a while but Nguyen’s insight about how Twitter’s limit character length leads to posts that require high levels of shared context is very interesting.

New_Public and Reboot – both organizations/newsletters focused on improving social media. They're also interested in social media but are doing something different what I'm doing.

Footnotes

1. The other reason websites don’t let their users just style their posts however they like is that some styling can break or attack other people’s computers. I grudgingly respect this reason and that’s why lazar isn’t quite as chaotic as tumblr was. I’d let you just write any CSS you want but I’m afraid you might do crimes with it :( It is possible to give the users styling power while stripping out the dangerous options (cohost is doing very exciting work in this space) but that’s a lot of work and I’m very lazy. Gen 5 represents one compromise between no options and all of them but I’ll likely return to this well with future generations.

2. Shout out again to Kate Compton’s excellent social media speedrun video which I used to build the foundation the first four generations used.

[cassatine]

So my copy of the TLJ artbook hasn’t arrived yet, but thanks to @ashesforfoxes​ I was able to stare at the concept art of the pages from the Jedi texts and ramble some. 

The script

Seems to be an alphabet of 30+ letters. The actual letters seem to take inspiration from several more or less ancient writing systems. I don’t know how it was designed, but a good half of the letters have simple shapes for which it’d be easy to find correspondences in a bunch of real writing systems. It’s a pretty good choice, gives an air of familiarity but not too much.

Some of the symbols associated with the illustrations do not occur in the text. Could be a set of numerical or symbols, astronomical, zodiacal, something something?

The dots between the letters are interpuncts I think. Interpuncts are word dividers, signalling the boundary between one word and the next (the use of spaces is far from universal – some writing systems are scriptio continua, they don’t use word dividers at all, a bunch of ancient scripts just used vertical lines, in some latin texts there can be multiple interpuncts to indicate the length of the pause, etc). Some of the pages in the Jedi book do use spaces instead, which is interesting.

It’s not fully random. There’s repeated words (one no less than seven times) and letter associations, but it really doesn’t look like a text in English with swapped letters + a few more phonemes either. I don’t think it’s meant to be deciphered anyway.

A note on the hand / calligraphy style – it’s relatively thick and kind of blocky, and probably an aesthetic choice considering there’s a lot of thinner lines in the illustrations.

The other books are probably written in different scripts (well if there’s anything inside the props - maybe they only did one book?); this is the best picture of the spines I could find and it’s still crap but there’s two decently visible scripts and none looks like the one in the concept art pages.

The manuscript

Generous use of space. Either the Jedi of old weren’t worried about their paper supply and/or its cost, either it’s a statement.

Not in so bad a state, considering the age it must have and the fact that it’s been kept in a damn tree for a number of years. 

Most of the text in in black, fading to brown, so in our-universe it’d probably be some kind of iron gall ink. Checks with the state of the manuscript as seen in the movie (brittle pages). But who knows what weird shit the Jedi of old used for pigments?

Red ink seems to be used for rubrication - it’s mostly a medieval thing, scribes would use red ink to write a header, signal the beginning of a section, emphasize something, etc. In The Book it seems to be mostly used in this way - the sixth page’s framed text is not rubrication but the goal is the same, emphasis.

Blue and gold (ink or paint, not actual gold leaf) are also used to emphasize parts of the text, words or standalone letters. Some seem to be initials, but others stand apart from the text. Both colors are also used for the illustrations, along with a bit of white. The red ink is only used in one illustration.

The gold is also used at the top of some pages or in-between paragraphs, with series of rectangular shapes, seemingly to mark different sections. Or it could be for the aesthetics. For a moment I thought it looked like Morse code, but i don’t really think it’s carrying meaning of its own.

The illustrations

The blue and gold illustrations seem to be cosmological/astronomical in nature. The red one on the final page is... different. The use of colors in illustrations may be codified somewhat, though the sample is too small to know for sure.

The first page is the one seen in TLj, without the “spent thousands of years in a tree” option. Looks like some kind of star chart to me, without the actual stars and with the Jedi Order’s symbol slapped on top. Or something like zodiac quadrants maybe. Compare to:

The compass of mystery

The design of the Lothal Temple grounds (x)

According to the artbook, Hidalgo and Chee shared a six-pages PDF of “ancient symbols” of the Jedi with the TLJ creative team, which informed “the shape of the library tree; the Jedi text covers and page designs; the temple’s celestial carving; and the reflecting pool mosaic.” I have no idea whether this was included - but both the TLJ symbols and this are informed by the same preexisting worldbuilding, so have it nonetheless. 

But really, five pages out of six have space-themed illustrations, most of which seem to deal with lunations. Second and fifth page’s illustrations seem to represent the waxing and waning phases of a moon. The little one at the bottom of the second page has a Nebra sky disc feel to me, stylistically, but it clearly represents moon phases. The other, bigger illustration of the second pages features another moon phases pattern, inscribed in a circle divided in two (maybe more moon imagery, a full one and a half one). The pattern of thinner lines could be random but they could also be more star-charty stuff or zodiac thingy. It could be some kind of representation of astronomical observations with a more symbolic representation slapped on top. Third page is in the same vein, and fourth page seems to represent orbits? Or more phases stuff.

I’d be surprised if any of it was, you know, scientifically accurate in any way.

The final page has something different, a geometric pattern in red. A six pages sample isn’t enough to know if it stands out in the books’ illustrations, but it does compared to the other ones we have. It could be purely for the pretty. Or not. It’s too abstract and symbolic and generic for me to hazard a guess. (If I was to, it kinda looks like cells)

Okay so that’s it for the basic observations. Now comes the real brainwank. Starting with the context. [Insert rant about context being key]

TLJ confirmed the Jedi originated on Ahch-to, which answers one question, but opens others - if this happened before the advent of space travel, it would most likely mean the early Jedi were indigenous to Ahch-to, i.e. a species that evolved locally, a cultural entity whose religious beliefs would later spread. If the Jedi started post-space travel, then it’s still possible they formed in relative isolation, but more likely that they either started out on a multicultural substrate and/or were in contact with other cultural entities. Very different origin stories.

We know there is a mythological or historical Prime Jedi. Probably a foundational figure, actual historicity but heavily mythologized. Could be the first (or recognized as such) to have used the Force, or the first to have explored it systematically and have explicited its rules, could be Space Jesus gathering disciples or Space Buddha of the balanced life

And how do the books fit in that? Were they written on Ahch-to? Later, after the Jedi started expanding? Do they predate the Sith Schism? We know they were foundational texts for the Jedi Order so they most likely do. We also know Luke recovered them during his quest for Force knowledge and brought them to Ahch-to. He does not seem to have actually read them in depth, if we believe Ghost Yoda, so the lessons he gives Rey are unlikely to be very representative of the books’ contents. That’s pretty much it.

Looking at the scripts and the bindings, they’re varied enough that they could come from different geographical and historical contexts. But then again it’s possible the texts themselves come from the same source and that the books Luke recovered are translated copies.

Another question would be: what are these texts, actually? Religious treatises? Religious cosmology? Histories of the early Jedi and their philosophies? A life of the Prime Jedi? Observations on the nature of the Force? Etc.

So back to the concept art pages we do have - they represents six pages of a much longer text, so it’s a small sample, and there’s no way to know how representative of the full book it is, even less of the full corpus of works in the Tree Library. 

But due to the illustrations, and because this is fiction so I can just wildly speculate, I think this specific book could be some kind of a cosmological treatise, hinting to the influence the observation of the rules behind the movements of astronomical bodies could have had on the formation of the early Jedi’s beliefs. 

Bear with me. TL:DR, religious and scientific thought weren’t always (generally accepted as) different realms of knowledge and rationality. Historically, they have the same roots, observation of the natural world and its cycles - observation taught us what to expect from the world, allowed early cultural groups and societies to find order and predictability in it. The divine comes in to explain the rules behind these cycles, because knowing what to expect is one thing, but we also need to know why, to make sense of the rules.

See: a fuckton of myths, early astronomy and astronomy being the same thing, alchemy and chemistry, thunderstones, the atomists and the presocratics, lbr literally anything before the Advent of Modern (Culturally Western) Rationality

Back to the GFFA, because otherwise I’m going to keep rambling, and the Jedi. And most importantly, the Force, i.e. what’s behind the rules in the GFFA. The Jedi never had a God Is Dead moment, because why would they? The modern Jedi Order was certainly not anti-science, and their understanding of the Force and its role in the natural world probably changed over time, but they would never have had reason to reassess its existence. 

I’m losing the point - the art in the concept art pages, imo, illustrate observations of natural cycles, definitely lunations, maybe other space stuff. Chances are the Jedi would not only see the Force as the root mechanism behind it all, but also, at least in their early days, believe these observable, external manifestations of the cosmic rules held deeper meaning relative to the nature of the Force.

As a final note because I think I’m mostly done with the bullet points, the lunations and the waxing and waning moons that make up most of the imagery in the concept art pages (and the fact that Ahch-to has two moons maybe but I’m not going there today) could point to that type of waxing-waning cycle being important in early Jedi thought, even mean that their view of the balance between light and dark followed that cycle.

[rainybirdsweets]

Sports Wear: Between Fashion, Innovation and Sustainability

Sport is an important part of many people’s lives—as both recreation and entertainment. It is also a sizeable industry with political and economic ramifications in today’s world. Within the last half-century or so, sports wear has become a driving force for new trends in fashion and for textile innovation. This special issue of Fashion Practice was inspired by the “Spandex to Sportstech—Fashion and Innovation in Sportswear” conference, organized in 2011 by guest editor Mette Bielefeldt Bruun at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen.

The stated purpose of Fashion Practice is to provide a site for multidisciplinary treatments of the practices of fashion. “Spandex to Sportstech” was designed as a cross-disciplinary forum for renewed consideration of functional, social, aesthetic and environmental issues connected with sportswear, and some of the papers presented here are rooted in original conference contributions. This journal issue is truly cross-disciplinary, beginning with fashion history, represented by Michael A. Langkj?r with “Urban Fitness, Gendered Practices, and Fine Art: The Significance of Antonio Lopez’s Sporty Styling of Fashion” and moving on to the sportswear industry itself with its brands and markets, represented by Kristine Holm-Jensen with “Specialized in Sportswear: Transformations of the Generic Knitwear Industry in Post-War Denmark.” Several articles then consider fiber and textile technologies and their design applications. Jane McCann leads this group with her “Sportswear Design for the Active Ageing.” McCann is followed by Deborah A. Christel and Nicole H. O’Donnell with “Assessment of Women’s Plus-Size Swimwear for Industry Applications.” Alicia Potuck, Sarah Meyers, Ariana Levitt, Erik Beaudette, Hong Xiao, C. C. Chu, and Huiju Park complete the group with their “Development of Thermochromic Pigment Based Sportswear for Detection of Physical Exhaustion.” In “What’s the Problem? Odor-control and the Smell of Sweat in Sportswear,” Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Madeline Buck, Kirsi Laitala and Marit Kjeldsberg look at how fiber technologies connect with our social values associated with body odor and its suppression; in doing so, Klepp et al. also mention the issue of sustainability. A forthright appraisal of the problem of sustainability within the sportswear industry is given by an industry representative to Lena Erdnü? in “A Perspective on Sustainability Initiatives of a Swedish Outdoor Brand: An Interview with Lennart Ekberg from Hagl?fs.” Finally, Lauren Downing Peters has contributed a review of the Museum of the City of New York’s 2013 exhibition: “Stephen Burrows: When Fashion Danced.”

A 'tool to empower': The evolution of women's sportswear

Before the advent of designer activewear, women's sports wear ranked low on the list of fashion priorities. But a new exhibition demonstrates that sporting attire has long been a valuable tool for self-expression and an important path towards greater liberation."Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960" includes about 65 ensembles from mainland Europe, the UK, and the US, ranging from Victorian hunting dresses and couture-level leisure wear to tailor-made team uniforms. Organized by the FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles and the American Federation of Arts, the show opens at the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh on July 3, before touring nationwide through 2024.

Design innovationGarments from the early 1800s are tailored to strolling in parks, gardening, and ice skating -- easy, acceptable activities for women propelled outside by an interest in horticulture, health and fresh air.

The idea of a woman exerting herself was still taboo: In 1806, an article in the popular British magazine La Belle Assemblée, excerpted in the show's comprehensive catalog, warned that, "the constitution of women is adapted only to moderate exercise; their feeble arms cannot perform work too laborious and too long continued, and the graces cannot be reconciled with fatigue and sun-burning."

That's the outlook for men's sports wear as the fall wholesale buying season gets under way this week. And while merchants and manufacturers have been expressing their traditional optimism as the new lines open, the unknown factors resulting from President Nixon's economic stabilization program have brought a modicum of caution to the trade.

Consumer spending for men's and boys’ apparel amounted to approximately $16‐billion last year, with sportswear a major but undefinable percentage of the total. What is even more significant, however, is that while production of a number of other categories of men's wear, such as suits and dress shirts, declined during the year, sportswear manufacturing was greater in 1971 than ever before.

And while statistics on the sportswear category are not collected by any government agency or trade association, conversations with retailers last week indicated that 1971's volume advances would he continued at the same rapid pace in 1972.

WHY ARE SPORTS BRAS IMPORTANT

Physical activity makes breasts bounce up, down and even in a figure-eight. Continuous and repetitive movements can result in soreness, pain and sagging.

Women's sports bra is made to reduce this movement. Breasts have no muscle, yet without proper support, the skin and Cooper's ligaments (ligaments near the breast which give them their size and shape) can break down and cause sagging. Once your Cooper's ligaments stretch out, they do not bounce back.

It doesn't matter what size breasts you have, everyone experiences bouncing during physical activity. Therefore, every woman, no matter what size she is, should wear a sports bra while running or exercising.

TYPES OF SPORTS BRAS

Compression bras work the way they sound, by compressing breasts against the chest to restrict movement.

Encapsulation bras have individual cups. Each cup surrounds and supports each breast. Most regular bras are encapsulation bras and have no compression.

Combination compression/encapsulation bras combine compression with individual cups and offer the most support.

Bra tanks, also known as shimmels, are tank tops with a built-in shelf bra. These are okay for low impact activities, but not for running.

Finally, there are differences in straps. Spaghetti straps provide less support than wider straps. Racer-back straps are more supportive than both spaghetti and scoop back.

FITTING A SPORTS BRA

You want a sports bra that fits well, both in the band and cups. Overall, your sports bra should feel a bit tighter than a regular bra, however, you should be able to breathe deeply and comfortably. Hook it in the middle and take some deep breaths. Is this comfortable? Good. It should be.

The band shouldn't move. It should fit snugly and comfortably. Raise your hands above your head. Did the elastic band move? If it crept up your rib cage, try a smaller band. If the bra has straps, try adjusting them.

Your breasts shouldn't bulge, pay close attention to any bulging at the top or by the underarm. Furthermore, the cups shouldn't have any wrinkles or gaps. If the cup fabric is wrinkled, try a smaller size.

Make sure there is nothing rubbing or chafing around the armholes, straps, seams, hooks, clasps or anything else. Many sports bras offer adjustable straps. Adjust them to feel supportive, yet not uncomfortable. Furthermore, make sure the straps aren't digging into your shoulders.

Underwires are supposed to sit flat on your ribs, not on your breasts. The front (between the wire) should be against your chest bone.

Luckily, most newer sports bras use high-tech fabrics, including moisture wicking. This can improve breathability and help remove excess moisture from sweat which can cause chafing. Cotton bras will stay wet, this can lead to uncomfortable skin irritations.

For the last step, jump up and down, jog in place, do jumping jacks. If it feels supportive, you're set! If not, keep looking.

How Sportswear Took Over Your Wardrobe

“Sportswear as casualwear is essentially a preppy invention – the carryover from hearty WASP athletic pursuits which gave us the likes of the sweatshirt, sweatpants and letterman jacket,” says Josh Sims, author of books such as Men of Style. “Sportswear was appreciated for being tough and practical.” Like military uniform, that other stalwart of menswear, mens sportswear set has long been valued for the rugged characteristics it both possesses in itself and indicates in its wearer. And in sport, like war, competition results in game-changing technological breakthroughs. What we wear on the fields of battle and play has advanced more dramatically than what we wear elsewhere. If sportswear is at the cutting edge of fashion right now, that’s because – in technical terms – it always has been. The current, unprecedented sportswear boom though can also be seen as a pendulum swing away from the hashtag-menswear sartorialism that followed the economic downturn and increased competition for jobs – coinciding with the 2007 airing of Mad Men. As employment rose again, so did jobs that didn’t impose traditional dress codes and a social media-fuelled emphasis on individual creativity.Then there’s the swelling fashionability of fitness, which has given us a legitimate excuse to wear sportswear outside the gym beyond comfort and sheer laziness. Instead of spending valuable time fastidiously parting our hair and folding our pocket squares, we’re throwing on hoodies and baseball caps. And if you’re running around town all day, it makes sense to wear shoes designed specifically for marathons. It’s arguably the luxury sector that’s setting the pace. Streetwear designers like Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga and Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton are running the show(s), elevating previously utilitarian sportswear to the very height of fashion. T-shirts, down jackets and sneakers, which grew by 25%, 15% and 10% respectively, were “standout categories” in the 2017 Bain Luxury Study. With its links to skateboarding, surfing and other sports, you could argue that streetwear – whatever that loaded term means – essentially is sportswear. “I’m not sure streetwear is the dominant mode, if you’re talking urban, hip-hop-driven streetwear,” contends Sims. “It’s sportswear with graphics, in effect. “There’s not much original design in streetwear – unlike sportswear, then and now – and what there is tends to be driven by – ta-da – sport.”

[pendragonfics]

Pretty

Paring: Bruce Banner/Reader

Tags: female reader, friends to lovers, hulk needs a hug, hulk feels, science experiments, science bros, fluff, self-esteem issues, Superfamily. 

Summary: Dr _________ works in the labs at the Avengers Compound, usually in the presence of Dr Bruce Banner, working on their project. She isn't often around Hulk, but still, she knows a thing or two about her lab partner, and his alter ego.

Alternatively titled, Tony Stark has too much time on his hands and too much interest in Bruce Banner's love-life.

Word Count: 3,055

Current Date: 2017-11-13

Some days he has no idea how he’ll do it, but every single day it still gets done. That’s the great Bruce Banner for you – he seems to be a mix of healthy scepticism, dad jokes and scientific formulae, but when really, he’s just a guy. Someone who made mistakes, like any other human…but instead of them being just a scar of the past, they are his present. His future. Dr Banner scouted you when you completed university with a fresh degree on biochemistry and evolutionary development, and while it was quite exciting to be an official scientist working with the Avengers, it was even more exciting that you were his lab partner to work on more humanitarian projects…and make sure there were less of those projects like the Ultron disaster.

You think highly of your lab partner, just like you do of all the people you are surrounded by in the facility; it was an honour that you were to work alongside world renowned scientists like Dr Helen Cho, Dr Jane Foster…the list goes on. Apart from how amazing the job was, though, you did love working with Dr Banner.

Which meant, for his former lab partner…

“Dr _________, be honest,” Tony Stark waltzed into the lab, like he owned the place. Well, he did own the facility, but still. Being humble never killed anyone. “What’s messier, my life, or my hair?”

You glance up from the computer monitor where you’re sequencing a genome, and frown. Like always, his hair is flawless, gelled the right way that makes all the women who read the weekly tabloids’ panties get wet. “No comment.” You reply, focusing back on the genetic code, where you’re trying to figure out how to replicate the same arrangement of genes that was required for the experiment. When you glance up once more from your screen to see that Mr Stark is still standing there, expecting an answer, you sigh. “Okay, uh, your life?”

He makes a noise like a groan. “Uh, wrong. Neither. I’m great.”

Bruce harrumphs from the Bunsen burner and beaker of the genetic solution before him. “Don’t let Pepper hear you say that, Shell Head.”

Tony smacks his lips together, and in retaliation, says, “C’mon, Bruce, what’s messier, your life or your hair?”

It’s only now you notice there’s a small tinge of green above his collar, and pausing your sequencing program, you place a hand on your lab partner’s shoulder. His dark brown eyes meet yours, and without words shared, you see the edge being taken from his stare, the pigment leaving his skin. He takes a deep breath – in through his nose, out through his mouth – and gives you a kind smile.

“Thanks, _________,” he nods.

Tony doesn’t get an answer to his question.

---

You’re in the library, making some serious headway through the latest book in the series you love. It’s your day off, after all, and when you’re not being a total nerd in the Avengers’ laboratory, you’re being a total dork in the library, in a world of the author’s, surrounded by the fictional life you would all but die to be a part of.

Except –

“_________, what’s this one about?” Pietro Maximoff was all over the place, as always. He was a good guy, yes, but he had a way of being completely mature when it came to serious matters surrounding life, death, and his sister…and a way of being puerile everywhere else. “None of these books are interesting…”

You slide your bookmark into the pages, and look across to the elder Maximoff. He’s laying upside down from the couch, his legs up, head hanging like a bobble-head doll. In his hands is a copy of The Time Traveller’s Wife.

“It’s my day off, Maximoff.” You say, not budging from your seat. You’re quite comfortable, and there’s no force on Earth that could get you to get out from your favourite seat in all of the library. No, scratch that, all the Avengers Compound. “If you want to mess with someone, I suggest that new guy, Ant Man.”

Pietro shakes his head. “I pranked him just this morning,” he confesses, still upside down, “I put mice in his bed.” You don’t question it. He nearly pranked you a few times, and you don’t try to get in on it, or know a detail. You’re a good lab assistant. Not an accessory to a crime. “How can you just read and read and read…?” he asks.

You don’t have to think. “Books are always there for me.” you tell him, “I grew up in a rough neighbourhood, and even though he was a soldier, my Dad read to me. Got me and my sister interested in science, using my brain. My stepdad wasn’t a fan of it, but jokes on him. I’m not working nights at a cannery.”

Pietro’s silent. Then, “Your Dad’s dead?”

You nod, “Gulf War.” Suddenly, you’re not in the mood for the fantasy fictional adventures in your book, and you stand up. “I’ll see you around, Pietro.” Even though you’re not a super-fast speedster, you don’t waste time leaving the library. But, in doing that, you don’t look where you’re going, and really, through the tears, you hardly see who you knock into, and land onto the floor of the library with.

“_________,” Bruce Banner manages to say. “What’s wrong?”

Your tears increase. You’re sobbing now, having relived something you’d rather not touch with a very long stick, because you’ve just knocked down your lab partner like a footballer, and that even through the tears, you can see a green tinge upon his forearm. “I – I’m – sorry,” you manage to say, wiping your eyes on the back of your shirtsleeve. “I didn’t see you –,”

You’re too busy babbling to see the tinge disappearing, but Bruce isn’t overcome with a crop of sadness, and picks up your book, and straightening the bent cover, brushes off the dirt from it. “Is this the latest book in the series?” He asks you, handing it to you, “I used to read these when I was about your age, wow, I didn’t know the author was still writing them!”

You nod. “It’s really, really good.”

“What happened to that character, the asshole?” he asks, pushing his glasses up his nose.

You shake your head, and laugh softly. “Spoilers, Dr Banner.”

Watching from the other end of the Avengers facility the security surveillance footage from his Stark phone, the Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist raised a brow at what he was seeing, causing the pancakes he was cooking for young Mr Parker, Steve, and himself to burn.

---

It’s a gala, dedicated to the fifth anniversary of the Battle of New York, or, commonly known to the public as The Incident. It’s just an excuse for the team to be seen in public together, as the press love to have it, and for everyone to get all dressed up for the night in very expensive clothing. Since you weren’t there for the original assembling of the Avengers, you don’t suppose they need you down in Manhattan for the event, and in yoga pants and a terribly old band tee, you’re taking the afternoon that you usually have off to enjoy the unseasonably quiet common area to yourself.

But that’s not what’s on the agenda, apparently, as Helen Cho rushes past wearing a white knee-length dress that covers her shoulder in a cape-like fashion. “_________!” She cries out, aghast, “I have been bribed, poked, prodded and humiliated from my lab coat into this thing! You cannot stay here when I have to look like this!” She all but lifts you from the couch, and shoves you in the direction of your bedroom. “Please, please, get ready, we’re leaving soon!”

You’re standing there, half-naked and afraid, and suddenly, you feel like the only thing you have that will pass as fancy is the lingerie that you bought for an ex-boyfriend who had broken it off with you the day after you purchased the silk and lace thing. But luckily for you, your twin sister (a researcher in Antarctica) gave you her nice non-winter clothes before departing to penguin land, and there’s a slip dress with a thin mesh layer embroidered with flowers. Luckily, you’re the same size, because in just ten minutes, you’re made up and hair acceptable, and being dragged off with Helen into the Quinjet that’s flying directly to the tower.

Clint Barton flies, as always, wearing a sort of bowtie and button-down, and Wanda has a dress that’s the colour of dark red wine, and with her eye makeup, looks like a force to be reckoned with.

So much your quiet introvert’s-night-in plans.

When you get there, the party is already kicked off, with the DJ playing popping hits after one another. You can see Thor dancing beside Steve, who both seem to have a flask in hand of something you won’t touch. There’s Vision, standing beside Dr Richards, and his wife, Susan, and they’re listening to Hank Pym intently. Your eyes find Bruce Banner’s, where he sits at the fringe, nursing a drink, keeping an eye on young Peter Parker who seems to be curled up in Bruce’s jacket.

You place a hand on Helen’s, and motion to the dance floor. “Enjoy yourself,” you tell her, and as she goes off to boogie, you gravitate to where your lab partner is, stopping only to grab a glass of champagne at the bar.

“Don’t we look out of place,” you say, taking a seat beside Bruce. “Enjoying yourself?”

He shrugs. “Trying to.” Frowning, he adds, “I didn’t know you were coming tonight, thought you wanted to binge Netflix.”

You laugh at that, and taking a sip of your drink, you say, “I was, until Dr Cho intercepted my plans. I’m not complaining, at least I don’t have to pay for my drinks,” you raise a brow, “So, about the project, the altering of genes? I never got a brief as why you wanted to work on it. I thought you were more of a biophysicist, rather than a genetic pioneer,” you comment. “In case you didn’t know, cloning is illegal.”

It’s Bruce’s turn to laugh. “I’m not planning on making any copies of any of the Avengers, if that’s what you’re asking,” he jokes, and glancing beside him, he watches as Peter nestles into his side. “I’m trying to find a way to separate me.”

You’re silent for a second. While you’re close with Bruce Banner, you don’t quite know the same man that his close friends do, his ex-lover Betty Ross did. But you do know of the stories, that the man who had been hit with gamma radiation hated the creature he became afterward.

“Okay.”

He’s silent, then, “Okay?” he repeats. “You’re not going to fight me on this?”

“I don’t want my personal opinions to cloud my scientific judgement, Dr Banner,” you clear your throat. “I – I’m still just a scientist, one year out from my PhD in the job that’s the opportunity of a lifetime.” You tell him honestly.

“Bruce! Bruce!” Thor calls out, beckoning him from the dancefloor. “Join us!”

You take this opportunity to excuse yourself, going to find the bathroom to cool off. Thank goodness that you’d only had one drink, because if it were a few more, you might have accidently confessed that you had some feelings for your co-worker. But when you’re gone from the seat beside him, the only thing left behind is the flute of champagne, you’re not there to see Bruce’s smile falter, and to see him decline to invitation to dance. Instead, he stays beside the sleeping Spider Man, and thinks about what he just said to you.

From the bar, Tony Stark might have beer-goggles on, but he can still see what’s going on between his friend and Dr _________ as clear as day.

---

It’s a very sunny day, and while you really should be working on the research to see how to separate Bruce Banner from The Hulk, you’re enjoying the warmth. It is supposed to be autumn, after all, and you’re not one for sitting around idly when there could be a day in the sun at stake. Well, not usually. But today, all the Avengers are out on the lawn, practicing their battle skills. Steve is battling it out with Bucky, Sam is flying around, as is Vision, and Tony. Clint and Nat are sparring, Wanda waiting on the side. Pietro is lifting weights. Bruce is doing push ups.

You’re eating a bagel all the while, sitting on a makeshift picnic blanket of your over shirt, your eyes following the team from a nearby hillock where you sit away, not distracting them. Because you’re not a hero, or even, a combatant, you don’t have to work on your fitness, at least, to this sort of extreme. You like to use the team’s swimming pool, and the yoga room when you have time. But now, you’re watching them show off their sheens of sweat, and gratefully, aren’t in that melee.

But it isn’t in any sort of order when Sam is knocked out from the sky somewhere near where Bruce is, and apart from the cursing you can hear the ex-military man doing, you can see the shaking of Bruce’s shoulders. Visually see the green spreading over his shoulders.

“Code green!” Tony calls out. “Bruce – hey –,” but he doesn’t finish, because before him, is not Bruce. It’s Hulk. And being shocked by the Falcon falling from the sky, he’s stressed. He’s mad.

You shove the rest of your bagel into your mouth, and against of running the opposite way, like someone else might, you don’t do that. You run toward where the Avengers are retreating, stopping only when Pietro catches your wrist, holding you back.

“You cannot, you need to go,” he tells you.

You shake your head. “I’ve studied his cells, he’s as human as he is Bruce Banner when he is Hulk,” you tell the speedster. “He’s just green, and frightened.” You shake your hand from his grip, and slowly this time, walk toward where the Hulk is.

“_________,” Tony warns.

You shake your head, and in a firm tone with a hard edge, you say, “Let me.”

Hearing your voice, the Hulk turns to you. He’s taller than you remember seeing last time you had observed him for your scientific analysis, but that’s probably because you’re about one hundred times closer than the minimum safe distance from him. Teeth gritted, he huffs, fist formed, arm raised.

“Hey, Hulk,” you smile, sitting down on the grass. “It’s _________. You know me, I’m a scientist. I work with your friend, Bruce.” You’re slow in every movement, treating the green beast before you like you would a deer or any other wild animal. “I just want to talk with you.”

Tony’s silent. Dumbfounded. From what you can see, he’s got a weird look on his face, like talking to the Hulk won’t fix a thing about the current situation. But against his judgement, your request is heard by the green big guy, and he seats himself down, opposite you.

“You want to talk?” he says, voice deep and rumbling, much like thunder.

You nod. “Yeah, about, uh, our friend Bruce. He’s very smart.” You say.

Hulk agrees, “Yes. You are…smart too.”

You smile, “Thank you, Hulk,” you push your hands into the grass, and noticing a stray purple flower growing in the grass, you pluck it from the earth. Even if it is a weed, you don’t care. You hold it out to Hulk, and say, “I heard you like purple.”

His hands are big, but still, he manages to take the flower from you, and holding it, he inspects the gift. “Pretty.”

You nod. “Yeah, pretty,” you echo, “When I was a little girl, I noticed that people aren’t very nice to things that aren’t pretty.” You tell the Hulk, and taking a deep breath, you add, “I wasn’t very pretty when I was younger. But I knew that I was worth something even though not everyone valued me.”

“_________ is pretty,” Hulk tells you, tucking the flower behind his ear.

You laugh at that. “Thanks, Hulk. No, I know that now. It’s just…I wanted you to know that you’re not just what the Avengers have you on the team for, to me.” You’re quiet, and add, “Hulk, our friend Bruce…he’s still learning that all of him is pretty. Like I learned when I was younger.”

Tony blinks, unsure of what’s going on.

Hulk is silent for a moment, considering what you’re saying. “What…”

Slowly, you pick yourself from the ground, and walking toward the Hulk, climb upon his leg, walking toward where his bare chest is. “Inside here, and outside too, you’re pretty. All of you, and all of Bruce Banner.” You place your hand upon where his heart is, and under his thick skin, you feel where his heartbeat is, fast, strong, but when you look to him, it slows, calming. “It’s okay.”

He nods.

Hours later, after more talking, you’re left with Bruce Banner in half-shredded shorts, and the team wondering what exactly happened. You help him inside, and going the extra mile, make sure that after he eats the nightly meal, he does all the regular things before going to sleep. But when you’re in your grass-stained jeans and plaid shirt, Bruce is in his pinstripe pyjamas, toothbrush in mouth, he spits the toothpaste, and asks a question.

“Did you really mean what you said back there?” He asks.

You nod, holding your arms close to your chest, “Yeah. All of it.”

A pink tinge covers his cheeks. “I’m pretty.”

---

Tony puts Peter to bed, and turns to Steve in the loungeroom of their suit, absolutely exhausted after the day, and the occurrence that happened during training earlier. Steve is wearing his Iron Man boxers, and a holey old Dodgers shirt that belongs in a museum, and is flicking through different TV stations that have equally boring shows on. As Tony sits, he turns the screen off, and faces the other man.

“How much meddling did you do to get those two together?” Steve asks.

Tony grins.

[thejilyship]

Wishing you all a Good Evening - Part Four

AN: Here is Part Four, it’s a bit shorter than previous parts, not by much but still. To my current knowledge, there is two parts left after this. But I could be wrong. We’ll see after I finish up the next part lmao

Comments and reblogs are sublime 

WC: 5.2 k

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE | PART SIX | PART SEVEN |  ff.net

Lily was sitting in the library on Thursday afternoon, trying to get through some homework before her next class. She had another hour or so before she had to start heading toward her digital imaging class and she couldn’t seem to get her mind to focus on her coding assignment that was due by six and her thoughts kept drifting off to how wonderful a caramel mocha latte sounded just then. Or maybe a hazelnut latte instead? Something with more caffeine than she needed and definitely something with chocolate.

She might have been addicted to caffeine.

Though she supposed there were worse things that she could be addicted to. She started humming a song that had been stuck in her head for a few hours now and typed out another line of code, successfully changing the shape of the dropdown menu she’d been editing for the last hour. She normally liked doing her homework for this class. Web design wasn’t something that she wanted to go into, but the class was fun and got her credits for her major.

She started working on the background color again; not because it was difficult but because she was picky and couldn’t make up her mind. She was going back and forth between two colors and didn’t notice when someone slid into the seat next to her.

The bloke cleared his throat and she jumped slightly, looking over at him with her hand over her heart. “Oh goodness,” She said, taking a deep breath.

“Oh goodness?” The bloke repeated, sounding as though he was scandalized by something, though Lily hadn’t the faintest idea what it could be. He looked slightly familiar, but Lily couldn’t place where she knew him from. He had long black hair that was pulled back into a messy half braid of sorts and he had about four piercings on the ear that she could see. “Did you actually just say ‘oh goodness?’ Are you an eighty-year-old grandmother?”

Lily opened her mouth to respond and then closed it and rolled her eyes. Her eye rolls had long since been able to stand on their own. She wasn’t going to argue about her word choice with him. He looked as though he wouldn’t care if she told him off for being rude anyway. He also looked as though he knew that he was being rude, so it would be a waste of her breath. (Though the fact that arguing was sometimes a waste of her breath, wasn’t always enough to deter her from the activity. She very much enjoyed arguing on occasion.) “Can I help you with something?” She asked.

“I’m not sure yet.” He said, taking a pack of gum out of his bag and slowly unwrapping a piece from the foil. He bent the stick of gum in half and placed it in his mouth before he laid the foil out on the table and started flattening it out with the back of his nail.

“Do I know you?” She asked, raising her brow.

“Not yet.” He said.

“Why did you sit down here?” She tried again. If this boy was attempting to flirt with her or something of the sort, he was doing a rather terrible job of it.

“Curiosity, I suppose.” He shrugged, still working at the foil.

“You’re being vague on purpose and I don’t appreciate it.” She said.

“Would you like some gum?” He asked, looking over at her with the most peculiar shade of blue eyes. They were so light and lacked pigmentation, that they looked gray. And the smirk he wore was a bit unsettling. It suggested that he knew more than she did, and that he might not tell her everything. Or anything.

“I’d prefer your name.” She said, though she accepted a piece of the gum when he held it out to her. It wasn’t coffee, but it would have to do for now. Maybe it was sugar she was addicted to?

“Sirius.” He said, and Lily gave a nod, remembering where she knew him from. He was one of James’ mates. Judging by his name, he was the one who had tweeted during James’ first show and let everyone know that they should start paying attention to the uni station.

“Alright Sirius, and what is it that you’re curious about?” She asked, wondering how a person like James who was a complete nerd (while somehow being a jock at the same time) could have stayed close friends with someone like Sirius; who looked as though he just didn’t give a shit about anything. She wondered what the other two members of their friend group were like.

“Well James is quite taken with you, and I guess I wanted to work out why that was.” He said, starting to fold up the foil now, though Lily didn’t know what shape he was going for.

“Quite taken with me?” She quirked a brow at him. “Now who’s the eighty-year-old?” She saw the corner of his mouth quirk up and smiled a bit herself.

“Alright, James fancies you. Is that better?”

“Less elderly, yes.” She nodded, sliding her foil over to him in case he wanted to fold it up into a little shape like he was doing with his own. And while his word choice was now less outdated, it still conveyed the same meaning, and that was really what Lily took issue with.

“Okay, so I came over here to see why James fancies you.”

“I hope it’s not because of anything that I’ve done.” She said, leaning back in her chair and looked around the library, not realizing that he’d appreciated what she’d said until she looked back to find that he was no longer looking down at the foil, but at her.

“I should have talked to you the first time that he made a fool of himself.” He said.

“Back in the pub? He did tell me that you warned him that he’d make an arse of himself.”

“No, not at the pub,” He shook his head. “At that party.”

“In Freshman year?” She asked, raising her brow. Did everyone remember that? And Mary had spent so much time harping on her for bringing it up as often as she did. She’d have to remember to tell her that James’ strange and angsty looking friend also remembered the party. She felt prematurely vindicated.

“Yes, in Freshman year. That’s the only other time you’ve talked to him, isn’t it?”

“Before this week, yes, that’s the only other time I’ve talked to him.”

“Well then that’s what I’m referring to.”

“Why would you have talked to me back then?” She asked, and he turned back to his micro-origami project with a heavy and dramatic sigh.

“Because he wouldn’t shut up about you for weeks after that. Kept going on about how he needed to apologize, though he never did get around to it. What was it that he even said to you?” His voice was light and air, “Just kidding, you don’t have to tell me because the bloody prat has reiterated the conversation dozens of times since that night.” He sat up a bit straighter and ran a hand through his hair in what was a scary good James impression, “And then I told her that any other girl at the party would have taken it as a compliment! What the bloody hell was I thinking, Sirius?”

“Why did you skip over the thing that I should have taken as a compliment? That was the very best part,” She grinned, very much appreciating this bloke taking the micky out of James for how he’d treated her despite the fact that he was supposedly one of James’s best mates since childhood.

Sirius looked at her and rolled her eyes. “You’re both hung up on it then.”

“He looked right at me and said ‘you have nice tits.’” She said, narrowing her eyes slightly and Sirius chuckled. The conversation had spiraled from there, but between that and him informing her that she should have been flattered that he thought so, she had been (rightfully) pissed.

“I don’t know how he thought he’d get away with that.” He shook his head and then waved off her comment, “But I already knew what he said. My point was that you’re hung up on it still.”

Lily however believed that she had every right to be upset about that evening. “I’m not hung up on it. I thought we were in agreement that he was a prat that night, that was all.”

“Yes, he was a prat. He’s still a prat.” Sirius shrugged. “And he’s still into you.”

“And why are you telling me this?”

“Because I don’t want you holding it against him. He’s not the same punk ass eighteen-year-old freshman that he was at that party.” Lily rolled her eyes.

“I’m not holding it against him,” Though she wasn’t exactly letting it go either. Again, she liked to argue.

“But you won’t go out with him.” He said, his tone suggesting that he was hitting the nail on the head.

Lily crossed her arms over her chest and snorted. “You’re right, I’m not. Both because I don’t have any desire to ask him out, and because he’s not asked me out either.” She sounded almost smug and Sirius looked confused.

“What do you mean he hasn’t asked you out?”

“Exactly that.” She turned back to her laptop and started messing with a few things, just so he would no longer have her full attention.

“That fucking wanker.” Sirius muttered, and Lily turned back to look at him.

“You seem genuinely upset right now.”

“I told him that he had to ask you out.” He said, sitting up straighter and running a hand through his hair; not dissimilar to the way that Lily had seen James run his hand through his hair a countless number of times, though he no longer looked as though he was attempting to impersonate him.

“And why did you tell him that he had to ask me out?”

Sirius groaned and shook his head. “Because he won’t shut up about you and it’s bloody insufferable.”

“Won’t shut up about me?” Lily snorted, “Yeah, alright.”

“What did the two of you talk about at the pub then?”

“Well if he won’t shut up about me, then shouldn’t you already know the answer to that?” She asked, causing him to roll his eyes. But then she realized what he was implying. She leaned back against her chair and turned to look at Sirius. “Wait. You told him that he had to ask me out at the pub? Last Friday?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, not getting what she was confused about.

“But that’s the first time that we’d talked in-“

“Two years, yes. I know.”

“He fancied me before last Friday?”

“Why do you think he watched your show?”

“It’s not my show.” She argued, though once again, she found herself feeling awfully confused where James Potter was concerned. “He didn’t like me the whole-“

“No, not the whole time.” He interrupted. Lily couldn’t find it in her to tell him to stop interrupting her. “I mean, probably the whole time, but there were times when he was dating people and he didn’t go on about you then.”

“What does that mean? How did he go on about me?”

Sirius shrugged. “You two had classes together, didn’t you? He said you did, but I don’t know how credible he is about these kinds of things. And then your show, your twitter…”

“So you’re telling me that James Potter, the football star of our college, has had a stupid school girl crush on me for the last two years?” She asked, deciding that that was completely implausible, and that Sirius must be messing with her.

He shrugged, “I guess I am. I told him if he didn’t ask you out then I was going to do something drastic. I suppose this will have to do. My actual plan was to woo you and then start dating you myself.” She looked him up and down and he smirked. “Is that plan still an option?”

“Woo me?”

“Yes I know, I’m eighty years old, we’ve already established that. But so are you, remember? This could work.” He was smirking at her again and she sighed.

“I don’t know if you’re joking or not.”

“Completely Sirius. All the time.”

“Alright, but that was a pun, which negates what you just said.”

He shrugged and stood up, “I’ve got to get to class. I’ll see you around I suppose.”

“Why will you see me around?” She asked.

He gave her a look. “Because my best mate is your co-host and I don’t want to walk back to my house three nights a week.”

“You could take the train.” She said, not really trying to be helpful so much as she just didn’t like that he was suggesting that he was going to hang out in the studio while they were live. She didn’t want him standing around behind the camera brooding while she was trying to concentrate.

“People with hair like mine, don’t take the train, red.” He started walking away and Lily pulled a face.

“Actually they do.” She called out. “All the time. They’re usually musicians and it’s the only method of transportation they can afford.” For a moment he gave no sign that he’d heard her, and then he flipped her off before turning down an isle of books and disappearing.

She huffed and slouched over in her chair. She still had a while before her class was set to start, but she started packing up her things anyway. It wasn’t as though she was going to get any work done after hearing all of that. Even if it wasn’t the truth entirely, it had to have been fabricated from bits of truth, right? She couldn’t believe all of it though. Maybe he had had a thing for her in passing and Sirius had just blown it out of proportion. Maybe he’d mentioned her three or four times in the last two years and Sirius had just really disliked hearing about her. After having talked with him for however long he’d been seated next to her, she thought that was entirely possible.

She looked over the desk after she’d gathered up her things to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything and spotted the foil that Sirius had been messing with. She reached over to pick it up- intending to throw it in the rubbish bin since it was a piece of garbage- and saw that it was artfully folded into a small, but unmistakable lily.

She thought it was pretty cool how he’d managed to make that, but still ended up throwing it out as she headed toward Hopper’s to get herself a coffee.

OOoOoOo

Lily was sitting in her dressing room/closet working on a project for class when she heard a crash come from somewhere that sounded both near, but not near enough for her to be concerned enough to check it out.

The writers had just finalized tomorrows show, and Lily was happy with what they had. And that’s why she was working on her actual homework instead of going over the script again.

When someone knocked on the door that was ajar, she turned off the music she’d been listening too and turned her chair to see James’ standing in the doorway looking rather frazzled and out of breath.

“I take it that crash I heard a moment ago was you?” Lily asked, raising a brow at him. He nodded and leaned against the frame.

“Can I talk to you for a moment?”

“Is this about what Sirius told me earlier in the library?” She asked, and she could tell by the subsequent look on his face that it definitely was about what Sirius had told her earlier in the library.

“He’s a prat-“

“Funny, he said the same thing about you. Then he said that he was going to try to woo me and gave me a lily made out of gum foil.” She chuckled, moving her laptop from her lap to her desk. “Well he didn’t so much give it to me as he just left it on the table, but still. You’re got yourself quite an interesting mate.”

James inspected her for a moment, clearly not sure how to take what she was saying. He looked around the room (closet) and since it wasn’t big enough for everything it had in it (Lily included) and another person, he decided to stay where he was, though he looked as though he needed to sit down.

“He is a strange one,” He agreed, taking his water bottle out of his bag and fidgeting with the cap.

“What did you want to talk about though?” She asked.

“He was joking when he said that he was going to ask you out, right?”

“He didn’t say he was going to ask me out, he said he was going to ‘woo’ me. He also said that you were ‘quite taken with me’ and then called me an eighty-year-old because I said ‘oh goodness.’” She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Okay, well he told me a lot of what he said to you,” James said, narrowing his eyes. “But you’re not acting like he said anything too bad. Which means that he was probably exaggerating when he told me- which he does, but I just thought that- I mean he did say in the pub that I didn’t have…” He shook his head. “And now I’m rambling. What is it that he said to you about me then?”

Lily chewed on the tip of her tongue for a moment and then shrugged. “He did a spot on impression of you, from that party freshman year, telling me that I should have taken you saying I had nice tits as a compliment.” She shrugged. “And he said that you only watched the show for the last couple years because you’ve been hung up on me since the party- which is ridiculous.” She added, pulling out her phone and pretending to check it because she didn’t want to look at him and see if it was true or not.

“It is ridiculous.” He agreed.

She looked back up and sighed, feeling slightly relieved. “I got the impression that he was trying to embarrass you. Don’t worry about it.” She shrugged one of her shoulders and he ran a hand through his hair.

“Oh, he was definitely trying to embarrass me.”

“And sus me out,” She added, remembering the first half of their conversation.

“Sus you out?” James looked a bit mortified at that for some reason.

“He thought you’d asked me out and that you fancy me, and he wanted to know why, but I told him that you hadn’t asked me out and that we’ve been getting along fine lately.” That was only half true, but she didn’t really want to give James a reason to ask her out now, did she? Definitely not.

James was quiet for a moment and then he nodded. “Alright, so we’re still good then? He didn’t ruin everything?”

“What would he have ruined?” She asked, honestly this time.

James shrugged, “I don’t know. We’ve been getting along lately, and I don’t want him to say anything that’s going to scare you into never speaking to me again. I’ve done enough of that all on my own,” He sighed and a small smile flittered across Lily’s lips. “That wouldn’t really make for good television.”

“If we did it right,” She shrugged. He chuckled, sounding relieved and Lily was starting to think that maybe Sirius had been telling more truth than fiction. She crossed her legs and pressed her lips together, not sure how she felt about that. Maybe she should try to remain impartial. Was that possible? Could she do that when she was directly involved in something? She could try.

“I suppose you’ve got a point there. Still, I think what we’ve got going now is pretty good.”

“We’ve done two shows,” She smiled, “We’d be looking for a new anchor if it wasn’t at least pretty good.”

He huffed, but he was smiling again, looking far more relaxed. “You know what I mean. People seem to like us together. If Twitter is anything to go by.”

Lily nodded, though not entirely sure what he meant by that, “I suppose we could make a pretty good team. But I’m still not going to say anything definitive until you’ve been here for at least a month.” She shrugged. “I’m optimistic about a lot of things, but not blindly so.”

“That’s fair. I can’t wait to get your definite assessment of my performance and our chemistry. As co-anchors.” He needlessly clarified, since she wouldn’t have assumed he meant anything else.

“Would you prefer an email or a hard copy of my review?” She asked, maintaining a serious expression for a moment and then cracking a grin.

“Oh, hard copy for sure.” He played along, “That way I’ll be able to carry your notes around and keep them with me when we do the show.”

“Of course,” She chuckled.

He nodded, “Alright, well. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” Lily nodded and then made to turn back to her work.

“You know, actually, before I go,” She turned back to look at him, her brow raised. “I just, well I’m inviting a lot of people from the show to a party that my mates and I are hosting on Saturday night,” He said, starting to fidget with his water bottle again.

“Hosting? So, is it like a dinner party?” She teased. She didn’t know why she always went back to a teasing tone, she should definitely be keeping some kind of boundaries up with this boy after everything that Sirius had told her. But she couldn’t exactly help it.

“Ha ha,” James mocked. “I just wanted to let you know that you’re also invited.” Lily nodded. “You know, in case you heard anything about it and were wondering. And no, it’s not a dinner party.”

“I hadn’t heard anything, but thanks for the invite.” He hesitated, looking as though he wanted to ask if she would be there or not, but in the end, he just nodded again, smiled at her and left. Lily turned back to her desk and took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to the party.

It wasn’t that she disliked parties of course, but after everything that Sirius had said, and then how James had just been acting, she couldn’t go and assume that there would be no presumptions made on James’ part. If she went, then he’d think that it meant something. Right?

Maybe she was looking too much into it.

There was no way to know, because she knew that Sirius couldn’t be trusted completely, but she also knew that James had more than friendly feelings toward her. And he knew that she knew. And knowing everything that she knew, and everything that he knew, she’s still been teasing and friendly toward him just now. She definitely couldn’t go.

She took another deep breath and let her head fall back so she was looking up at the ceiling. Everything was a mess.

oOoOoOo

“We’re going.” That was the first thing that Mary said after Lily had told her everything that had happened on Thursday. It was Saturday morning now, due to Mary spending the night at Em’s flat on Thursday and the show taking up most of Lily’s time on Friday, it was the first opportunity she’d had to talk to her best friend about everything that was going on.

“We’re not going.” She said, giving her a look. “Haven’t you listened to anything that I said?”

“Of course I listened,” She sighed. “But I meant that Em and I are going. And I meant it more as a piece of the conversation than a demand, you just heard what you wanted to hear. We were invited a while ago. Turns out Em is in a class with Remus something or other and he lives with James.” Mary shrugged. “So Em and I are going, and I would have invited you if James hadn’t.”

“But he did.”

“He did.” She agreed and then pursed her lips. “Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t fancy him.” She said.

“Right, for a whole laundry list of reasons, you don’t fancy him. I know that. And I understand that, but who cares if he fancies you? Maybe he’ll change his mind once he gets to know you.” She smirked, and Lily took a pillow off the couch they were sitting on and smacked Mary with it.

“What’s that supposed to me?” She asked, knowing that her friend was joking. At least she was hoping that Mary was joking.

“I didn’t mean it as an insult!” She laughed, taking the pillow to prevent Lily from using it against her again. “I just meant that who you are, and who he thinks you are based on whatever he’s seen of you the past couple of years are probably not the same person. You know how crushes work.”

She pressed her mouth into a thin line and thought about it. “So you think that he won’t like who I really am-“

“Because he’s created you into this perfect being in his head. So he’ll still like you because you’re awesome and all that, but he probably won’t fancy you because there’s no way you’re nearly as great as he thinks you are in his head.” She made a face. “I sound like a terrible friend right now- but you know what I’m talking about? The whole concept of meeting your hero’s and all.”

“I get what you’re trying to say, but you lack any tact at all and so yes, you do sound like a terrible friend.” She chuckled.

“Though on the other hand, you are amazing, and he might fall head over heels in love with your true self. The self that leaves expired milk in the fridge for a week and then yells at me when I leave my socks on the couch for more than five minutes.”

“I like how you started over correcting and then you started nagging me.” Lily shook her head. “So, you think I should go?”

“Everyone is going to be there.” She shrugged. “All your friends from the station and me, and that’s all the people that you know so…”

“You really are on a roll when it comes to putting me down today, aren’t you?” Lily poked Mary in the side and the other girl squirmed.

“Sorry, I had a orgo exam today. Teasing you is how I relieve stress. Teasing you is always how I’ve relieved stress.”

“I guess I was hoping that Em would change that.”

Mary poked Lily now. “But yes, I do think that you should go. I mean, what would be your excuse for not going?”

“Do I need to have an excuse? Maybe I just don’t want to go out tonight.”

“Maybe, but you do want to go out and see all your friends and get a little drunk and have fun. So, what would you tell him on Monday when you see him?”

“Nothing. I don’t owe him an explanation.”

“Okay, well if you ‘don’t owe him an explanation’ then why can’t you go to the party? Who cares if he fancies you? You think going to this party that they’re throwing for a very large number of people will be the equivalent of accepting his hand in marriage?”

“Okay, there was no point during our conversation where I used that much hyperbole.” Mary just shrugged. “So, you don’t think it’s a big deal? Because I do want to go, all my friends are going like you already pointed out. I just don’t want him to think that I’m going because of him.”

“But if you didn’t go it would be because of him.” Mary pointed out, though her reasoning seemed to be muddling Lily’s mind even further. “Do what you want, Lily. Don’t let a boy ruin a party for you.”

“But he’s throwing the party!”

“With like three other blokes. Also, who agrees to have three roommates? That’s got to be an insane living situation. Four blokes in one house?”

“That is quite a few.” Lily agreed and then sighed. “Alright, I’ll go. Because if I don’t, I’ll spend the night home alone wishing that I was off with you and Marlene.”

“Atta girl.” Mary smiled proudly. “Now can I un-pause this episode of Bill Nye Saves the World?”

“I love that you watch this with me.” Lily grinned, leaning against Mary’s shoulder.

“Yes, and I love that you interrupt the theme song with your rantings about some bloke. You know I don’t like blokes.” Lily rolled her eyes.

“Yes, well unfortunately I do, so every now and then you have to listen to me complain about them.”

“You don’t like them that much.”

“I don’t like anyone that much. Aside from you and like two other people.”

“Honestly, same. How do people have more than like, four friends?”

“It’s beyond me.” Lily shrugged, and then Mary hit play.

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Online Microblading Training – The Boons

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[moodring89]

CH.01 Down the Rabbit Hole

Pairing: Jeongguk x Reader / Side Yoonseok Chapter Rated: PG-13 (Future rating will change to M) Genre: Fantasy, Hybrid AU (Prince Bunkook. Sue me.), Royal AU, Cinderella / Labyrinth feels Summary: Yoongi's sister buys two tickets to the Autumn ball held at the Meadows, a notorious city known for its hybrid inhabitants, where she hopes to meet a certain bunny princeling. Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04

“I’m sorry, what –?”

Yoongi held up a piece of mail, “Autumn Ball to be held at the Meadows in celebration of Prince Jeon Jeongguk’s Coming of Age?” The envelope was ripped at the top from where he’d opened it, being all sorts of casual about incriminating himself. “There’s no way in hell that our father is going to allow you to attend. You know this and yet you spent money on a ticket.”

“On two tickets,” she said, as she snatched the envelope from his fingers. “And why not?”

He didn’t know how to not sound like a prejudiced asshole, but he went for it anyway. “Because there are hybrids living in the Meadows and there’s still a ton o’ shit that we don’t know about them yet.”

“This is the first social gathering where hybrids and humans will be allowed to mingle and co-exist with one another, and like, in a party setting, which is just a bonus. It’s fascinating. No – it’s historic and you can bet your uptight, manhwa loving ass that I’d love to be there.” The blonde lowered his eyes at her, pouting resolutely when she continued, “I spoke with our father and you know what he said? ‘Get one for your brother, too.’”

He sighed, passively, “Well, I wasn’t expecting that. I was just rather hoping he’d do that thing where he beats on his chest and roars his short response of ‘fuck’ and ‘no’ from atop the highest mountain.”

She patted his shoulder with mock sincerity, “There, there, take the loss as it comes, swiftly and sweetly. Do you even own a proper suit and tie?”

“I have about as many suits as you do ball gowns.”

“So, zero then? ‘Kay, sounds good. We’re real ahead of this thing.”

Yoongi grabbed for his car keys, wanting to get it over with. “Let’s hit the stores now, before I decide to go in my pajamas. You know that I would, too.” When it comes to his sister, Yoongi tended to cave in, perhaps too easily. Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, and most of the time – even things she could do living without, but he decided that she didn’t have to, like a new phone, or a bag.

They’d split up once they were inside the store, headed in two completely separate directions. She hadn’t expected half the town to be at this particular dress shop. Royal ball doesn’t exactly scream, ‘Let’s go to the local Mom-and-Pop boutique.’

The obnoxious text tone of Naruto’s catchphrase, ‘Believe it’ that she’d associated with Yoongi went off. She stared down at her phone.

Yoonji Unnie --------------------- It’s a fucking sausage fest here. 3:54pm

To: Yoonji Unnie --------------------- Funny, since it’s a clam-fam reunion over here, too. Any hopes of looking original have successfully gone out the window. 3:54pm

Yoonji Unnie --------------------- Unless we go with my pajama idea? 3:54pm

To: Yoonji Unnie --------------------- I’m not meeting the Prince of the Meadows in a camisole. 3:55pm

Yoonji Unnie --------------------- Gross. See you in the parking lot. 3:57pm

Yoongi was already inside the car, a plastic bag thrown carelessly into the backseat. She shut her door with a huff, somewhat affronted by it. “You were able to find a suit? I thought it was Wang city, far too many hand-to-gland casualities for you to possibly stay long enough to find something suitable.”

“Yeah, unlike you, I don’t care if I’m wearing the same shit as someone else, especially a fucking suit.” He started up the car and turned onto the main road, driving around idly, until they decided on their next stop. “Again, I would have gone in my striped pajamas without a single fuck to be spared. I like keeping my fucks to myself. However, something tells me that there is a dress code we have to adhere to...”

“Of course there is.”

Yoongi was scowling, as he tended to do so very naturally. “I would really hate to piss off the woodland creatures with our subpar fashion choices, so start calling out shops, and we’ll swing by to see if it’s packed.”

“Hybrids are people, not creatures,” she said, turning somewhat dejectedly to stare out the window. “Why do I have to remind you? You’re the intelligent one and yet you say the most asinine things.”

“What are you hoping to achieve by seeing the Prince? He will not favor you, as you do him.” It was such a sad anomaly, something that shouldn’t have happened, but it did, and it was too late. His sister had fallen in love through mere stories of the bunny princeling. What if the tales weren’t true? Don’t meet your heroes, wasn’t that the saying? The treaty between hybrids and humans had practically been forced, guns aimed at each other’s heads in a stalemate between two stubborn kings. It turned out that the two species needed to sustain each other, whether it was for the oil, the crops, or other various cargos: The union was not wanted, but it was necessary.

The thought that their father had even agreed to put them in some slight form of potential danger was preposterous to him. Although, it was possible that his darling sister was lying to him, right to his own fucking face. At least he could later credit himself for not being entirely blindsided by it. No one jukes Min Yoongi.  

“I don’t even expect to be allowed to speak with the Prince, so what does it matter?” They were stopped at a light. For a long moment, the silence played with the tension, thus swallowing the siblings up whole. She sighed, finding it be unbearable, “I only wish to look upon him, to take glimpse of his true nature for myself, instead by word of mouth.”

“Alright, enough. You can stop with the poetic shit. I get it…” Yoongi felt frustrated, stopping in front of a shopping mall. It didn’t appear to be as busy as all the other stores they had passed along the way, probably due to an even lower standard in quality. He surrendered his card as a form of an apology, which she graciously accepted. “Don’t make it long.”

She’d made it especially fucking long.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The tickets were a simple white cotton paper with speckled gold and elegant cursive. She half-mourned over the fact that she’d have to hand it over at the castle gates in order to get in. The girl kept the envelope, tucking it away inside the top drawer of her vanity. Tonight she would finally get to meet the Prince. After hearing so many stories of his time on the battlefield, of the scar which adorned his face along his cheek, how he’d spared a human General’s life.

Prince Jeongguk was an advocate for equality, a symbol of peace, and hope. He’d visited the Isles of Lunar and fed the sun to the poor. He did not leave, until all were healthy, and full. She’d heard that he’d brought in environmental scientists to study the moon enriched lands and that they’d found ways to sustain and harvest crops. That was how he’d inherited the nickname, ‘Lunar Prince’.

There were no photographs allowed to be taken of the Prince. However, the news articles were free to state as many details as they so desired. She’d tried to envision what he would look like given the various descriptions, tall and broad it had read, only one or two inches away from standing at six foot tall. Two velveteen rabbit ears sat atop a silky crown of raven black hair, pure white in color, and responsive to the change in his mood. One columnist in particular went on and on about the Prince’s dark eyes, how large, and doe-like they had appeared, despite their depth, and warmth. She’d rather enjoyed that bit.

For tonight, she’d wanted to dress in tears of silk and netted fabrics. The Meadows was said to be the pinnacle of nature itself, the homeland of the fae, and hybrid kind. Magic would exist in her world for only one night, but that was already more than what she could ever hope for. Her dress was a warm pigment of peach and was scattered with blossoms. Her hair was pinned up, save for a wavy strand here and there. Her skin would be devoid of any eye-catching jewelry and her makeup would be natural.

She would not pretend as though she belonged, because she didn’t. Yoongi stood in the doorway, wearing his suit more convincingly than she did her dress. Her brother should be more confident. Perhaps after tonight, he would be.

“I look ridiculous.”

She placed the tickets inside her clutch, “Oh, I’m very certain that we both look amazing. The word spiffy is still a thing and we are the definition.”

“Yeah, you should probably refrain from using that as a compliment.”

She laughed at his obvious discomfort, “I’ll be sure to use it at least three times tonight just to spite you.”

“Please do,” Yoongi said, twirling his keys in his hand impatiently. “Make sure to use it on your prince. He’ll then know for sure that you’re an ancient.”

“You wound me, brother.”

Yoongi rolled his eyes, wondering if he’d ever stop rolling them for the duration of the evening. The Meadows was almost an hour by car. They made the most of it by listening to whatever music Yoongi decided to put on, rapping along to old CDs that she’d been forced to listen to time and time again, and for as long as she could remember. His voice was perfect for it, which was why she encouraged him to continue making music, even if their father disapproved of it.

He’d threatened Yoongi with a florist position. It could be done rather easily, since the shop was run by family. Luckily, their father was currently away on business and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. If he’d been home tonight, she had no idea as to what would have happened. A huge argument, wasted money, and a solitude evening listening to the muddled sounds of Yoongi’s piano.

The Meadows was no longer a guarded territory and for the first time ever, humans were being granted free passage. The new lands held such a dark enchantment, a beauty that was so drastically different from what they’ve ever known that they’d spent the rest of the drive in a state of silent enrapt. They followed the cars in front of them to the castle, which was at the heart of the city. It was a citadel surrounded by forest and closed in by tall gates. Parking was easy enough, as Yoongi handed over his keys to the valet.

“You good? Do you need me to piggyback you?” Yoongi asked, watching as his sister hesitated, stumbling more so than walking. It was a sign that her nerves were getting the best of her. “We didn’t come all this way, dressed up like assholes for nothing, princess. Remember why you wanted to come here. To partake in a historic event, wasn’t it?” It seemed to be working, when he heard her laugh. “Plus, I’m all famished and in dire need of eating sweets off of doilies, or whatever the fuck they serve royals. Let’s at least get some food in our systems.”

She caught his arm, holding onto him for her own stability, “What if I lose my mind in there?”

“Then I’ll find it for you.”

Would it really be that simple?

[almasidaliano]

Plot Twist: IT IS A RACE THING

let's rip the bandaid off. it's a race thing. "oh no racism isn't an issue" shut the fuck up. seriously, im disappointed in my people so i'm going to address yall first. my melanated Kings and Queens; darlings what are yall doing? Why are we still taking this? Why are we subjecting ourselves to this kind of disrespect?

are we really just going to sit here and let history repeat itself? going to watch them shackle and kill us all again? what are you afraid of? our ancestors were scared. they were strong in their own way, we are stronger. they kept our culture alive, our roots. they sacrifice their freedom for ours, and look at this. look at us. playing into their game, letting them run the show. have we forgotten about the 1960s? when the civil rights movements picked up? yall forget Martin, Malcolm, Rosa?

if you are African American, meaning black (yes you mixed mfs are black, you can try to tread on the fence but im sorry to tell you, the day will come when you have to pick a side and what's worse is no matter what you pick the world already decided for you.) and born in america; your ancestors are slaves. you can't tell me, your blood, your heritage, your lineage doesn't deserve defending, protection.

we have a constitution. this doctrine is the "LAW OF THE LAND" (still we have individual state laws, hmm). in this document, the rights of people of color, and women were added into the admendments. people of color had to take citizenship tests, though they were never taught to read, and english wasn't even their first language. then there was the segregation. if you skin is pigmented, you are treated differently.

low income areas, "ghettos/hood" areas were designed for the communities to run like crabs in a bucket. they require dependency or rebellion. they isolated and rationed resources, discriminated and interfered with job security, then blamed the citizens of the community for their failures. provided the bare minimum (a bar they set) and do you know why the hate continued? because still we rose.

understand this : WE; ALL PEOPLE, ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE EQUAL, HOWEVER WE ARE NOT THE SAME.

this is why the problem started. human were created in "Gods image" (any god you believe in we will indulge the religious conversation later.) layman's terms? we are all gods.

we are not the same kind of gods though. like ying and yang right? so there is light and dark. society told us we should be afraid of the dark, that bad things happen in the dark, that monsters hide there. what's funny is that life teaches us the opposite; teaches us that monsters can dress nice and wear smiles too. there's the story of Lucifer right? Lucifer is not the Devil. the Devil in my opinion is the "God" of evil. like there is good energy and there is bad energy. the universe is made up of both. so boom right? Lucifer was right hand to God and got big headed wanted to be him couldn't boom gets casted out takes a third of angels and boom hell and allat right? so let's just break it down for a second.

alright so first, B I B L E: basic instructions before leaving earth. the Bible is written in code, one, and two it is allegorical. (all melanated people truly do need to crack open a book and get to reading.) Jesus (Yahshua) is melanated, wooly hair bronze skin? come on now. so the idea they are selling is this all power white man is saving us all. truthfully, who cares what he look like if he's here to save our souls? you would think that would be the thought process, however; for some people the truth does not get them what they want so they opt against it. Good and light became associated with white. "wear all white when you feeling godly" its supposed to holy and clean right? pale faces became the face of faith. hasn't anyone realized how blinding light is? the closer you look the less you see. they guide your focus. the stars light the night sky yet we have all of this light pollution, it is simply a means of distraction. the wind talks, did you know that? the trees whisper. nature is beautiful and most of the world will never know.

they divided us by color. our skin isn't even black, however because they are pale, pasty, white; they made us their opposite. even in their classification of us they revealed the truth. you see, white is the absence of all color. it is empty. whereas, black is compromised of every color.

did you know there are two types of humans? yes seriously. homo sapiens and neanderthals. fun fact: neanderthals are structured more chimp like. homo sapiens were living in Africa albinism was prominent so there were a lot of melanated people without melanin, getting skin cancer and dying. neanderthals came about when homo sapiens migrated to Europe and Eurasia. they mated and began creating all the many races and ethnicities we have today.

melanated people are built structurally different than white people. we are naturally stronger, faster, thicker, humane, etc than they are. this is where the hate comes from.

"jealousy is just love and hate at the same time. - aubrey" pride and envy are dangerous things. when trying to compete, they were met with failure and it manifested hate instead of motivation. look at america. it is built entirely on the ideas of others, the hardwork and manual labor of others. those leading our country have done nothing for us. they simply continue taking all the credit.

white people left Britain, and called it "fleeing from religious persecution". the truth is they were fleeing from classism. they were in their element and they were minnows and not sharks. they decided to find a new pond to swim in. they did just that. the Natives were abused, and disregarded. they pretended to be civil and took damn near everything from them, all of their legacies and memories, their safety.

white people are lazy and greedy. this is why there are so many dividing markers in our life, labels, roles. there is a grave lack of family values for them. there is this morphed idea that the world is here for them, like we are all here to aid them. they reek of entitlement. like success, joy, love and prosperity are guaranteed to them just because. it is not on them all. just like melanated people can't help their environment, neither can they. the rude awakening always comes once you become unsheltered from actuality.

the cards are stacked against us from the jump. due to our enivornments, children grow up in broken homes, homeless, or jumping from home to home. single parents run themselves ragged, over stressed. children end up in the streets trying to take some of the weight off of their parents. the world just see thugs and gangsters though. menaces to society. when the real menace is society.

still we rise. still we smile. still we laugh and we love. and its so disheartening, that those are the things festering their hatred for us. no one is perfect. no one is the worst thing they have ever done either. growth is constant.

all we have to do is decide to be ourselves. decide to impact the world the best way YOU know how. white people have talents, a multitude of gifts. instead of trying to get rid of everyone else's imagination, what about losing the fear and choosing to dream yourself? and maybe asking for help, should you need it.

who you are, is who you've always been. i mean, the you, you were before the world told you who you had to be. who you are, has and will never be dependent on anything out of your control. people use the wrong things to assess the quality of a person. things like religious views, political views, music preference, sexuality. things that do not have shit to do with you. its all more division markers.

trust yourself. fuck what society says. what does society actually know? only what they are told. think about this: pyschological control is basically brainwashing. so boom. then you got your mind, your heart and your gut. that would be logic, emotion, and intuition. your emotion and your intuition are in the same section of your body. your brain however, is all isolated while being the storage container for everything you see experience etc in life. your brain is what gets conditioned. all the preconceived notions you have about things came from somewhere. where? we know what we know because they told us. how do we know its true? the thing about logic is, it makes sense. so when your mind isn't making sense yet your heart and gut in agreement, listen to yourself. they tell you think before you speak because their conditioned processor is in your head. always follow your heart.

people on both sides still to this day suggest segregation. like folks really do not believe we can cohabitate in a productive civil mutually benefical and prosperous way and that without segregation, civil war and/or genocide is in the future. here's the thing.  they had every opportunity, to ship folks back, or even kick us out. now folks could just start up and leaving, yet we don't. we tuck our tails and put up with it. why? i think its due to fear of being a foreigner in your true motherland. fear of not being accepted there either. i also think it's due to the way our ancestors were treated; how they allowed themselves to be treated.

so look: i'm a mutt. both sides of the feud, so i can formulate a well rounded argument; however i am black. when the world sees me and when i see me too. i am black and proud, in a world hell bent on making me believe my genes deem me inferior or unworthy to anyone. i say that to say, nothing will change until we stop fighting each other and start fighting for one another. they misused and abused us. chained and locked us away like animals. beat us like animals. and before they started more actively and carelessly attacking us out loud again, they got smart. gave us rights, gave us "homes" "communities" we were grateful. for this illusion of freedom. we must get uncomfortable with this false freedom. they treated us like animals, then tried to make us the villians, fearful we would retaliate, when all we ever wanted to do was live, joyously in harmony.

they cannot stop hating us, because we will never hate them. its a losing battle for them. still, if we don't stand up and fight we will lose in the end. fear and trauma also sparks compliance in them. bears are not violent creatures. but you don't poke a bear you know? melanated people are bears. currently acting like bears at the zoo. how long are we going to let them poke the bear?

melanated people need to unite. Dr. King tried peace and it worked for a little bit. it was a bandaid fix. now it's time to try Malcolm's approach.

Thanks for listening. -Almasi.

[skywalkersapprentice]

Day 20- Happy

The most important lesson Ahsoka learns from Padme is that battle armour is more than the weapons you carry.

rating: g

pairings: none

word count: 2026

(read on ao3) 

Now that we’re 20 fics in, I just wanted to thank everyone who’s liked and reblogged and commented on them! I wasn’t even sure that I would get this far, but it’s honestly been fun pushing myself to write so much every day. Comments and reblogs make this easier, so thank you. :)

“Senator Amidala,” Ahsoka said, breathless as she entered the office. “Sorry I'm late.”

Padme looked up with a warm smile. “It's alright, Ahsoka. I'm not quite ready to go yet anyway.”

Ahsoka considered herself lucky that the Senator she'd been assigned to shadow for a day was Padme. She was quick to forgive and understanding of the fact that Ahsoka knew very little about politics. It would make the day go by much faster than if she'd been assigned to someone like Senator Burtoni or Orn Free Taa.

“Please hold still, milady,” her aide said, bending over Padme. She was applying a light red pigment to Padme's lips and Ahsoka stepped forward, curious. She knew what makeup was, of course, but she'd never seen anyone put it on. It looked more complicated than she'd originally thought- there were several brushes laid out on Padme's desk, and beside those were more colourful tubes and bottles.

Padme saw her looking. “Normally I do this at home,” she told her, “but today's debate was moved ahead by an hour, so there wasn't time.”

“I had no idea that there was so much of it,” Ahsoka commented, scanning the supplies on the desk. She recognized nail polish and lip pigment, but that was all. Did Padme do this every day?

“This is just the basics,” the aide said with a small grin. “You should see what she has at home.”

“Ahsoka,” Padme said slowly, as if something was dawning on her, “have you ever used makeup before?”

Ahsoka shook her head. “I've never needed to. My assignments aren't typically the undercover kind.”

“Undercover,” Padme repeated. “What about in your own time?”

Ahsoka didn't know how to explain to the Senator that Jedi were discouraged from having personal possessions. They strove to stay humble, hence the simple robes and tunics most Jedi wore. Makeup could be seen as a source of vanity, and that was also against the Jedi way. “You... could say that it's never come up before.”

The aide stepped back, setting a brush on the desk. “There. All done.”

“Thank you, Teckla.” Padme turned to Ahsoka. “How do I look?”

Ahsoka studied her for a moment. She still didn't really know what to look for, but Padme's eyes  seemed darker and there was colour in her cheeks. The lip pigment was mild, yet flattering. “You look... ready to take on the Senate,” Ahsoka decided.

“Don't put it all away just yet,” Padme said to Teckla, who was beginning to pack the brushes into a case.“After the debate, I have a free hour for lunch.” She looked up at Ahsoka, eyes twinkling. “Think you'd be interested in a makeover?”

Ahsoka hesitated. “I... I shouldn't.” It wasn't that she didn't want to- quite the opposite. It sounded fun, and she appreciated that Padme wanted to take the time out of her day to do that for her. But would she be betraying the Code if she did?

Padme seemed to read her mind. “Being a Senator is more than just debates and bills, Ahsoka. If Master Skywalker wants to you learn about politics, well... looking the part comes with the job.”

Sometimes, Ahsoka forgot Padme was a politician. This was not one of those times. “Maybe I'll let you explain that one to him,” she said dryly, and Padme grinned.

“Is that a yes?”

Well, Ahsoka thought, if it was part of the job...

“Yes.”

Try as she might, Ahsoka still didn't understand much of what the debate was about. The Senators seemed to use a lot of words to say very little, and often, squabbles broke out among the delegates. Ahsoka stood beside Padme throughout the debate, arms crossed, and tried not to let her mind wander. She would take battle droids over this any day.

But, this was what Padme had dedicated her life to, and Ahsoka respected her enough to at least try to pay attention.

“I'm sorry you had to come on a day like this,” Padme told her with a sigh as they filed out of the Senate chamber several hours later. “This is a rewarding job when things get done, but sometimes, it's just a lot of empty talk.”

“It seems like every job has it's ups and downs,” Ahsoka said. It was true of her own- it was rewarding to free planets from separatist control, and devastating to lose thousands of men in the process. She was beginning to understand that there was a different kind of war being fought in the Senate- a war between greed and compassion.

“Later, I have a meeting with a journalist that I'd like you to sit in on,” Padme said, “but for now, let's take a break.”

And that was how Ahsoka found herself sitting angled towards Padme on the couch in her office, the makeup case open on the table in front of them. Padme was regarding her options carefully.

“Well, none of my base creams and powders are the right colour for you,” she said, “but the eye and lip makeup should work just fine.”

Ahsoka glanced at the array of colours. The options were almost overwhelming. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I was a little girl on Naboo.” Padme began with a thin brush, dabbing it in a container of bronze pigment. “When I became Queen, I had handmaidens to help me get ready. I still know how to do my own makeup, of course, but it's been a while since I had someone else to practise on.” She laughed a little at the expression on Ahsoka's face. “You don't have to be nervous. I know what I'm doing, I promise.”

“At least one of us does,” Ahsoka said, closing her eyes as Padme brought the brush up to her face. She felt exposed like this, vulnerable in a way she wasn't sure she was comfortable with. It was almost like a trust exercise, although she'd never done one quite like this. “Why do you wear makeup, anyway?”

It was one thing she couldn't figure out. It was just so... unnecessary. What was the point?

The brush was withdrawn from her eyelid, just for a moment, and then it was back. “As I said earlier, it's part of the job. As a Senator, I have to look the part.” She moved the brush to Ahsoka's other eye. “But I do enjoy it. Naboo is a very artistic world, and makeup is one aspect of that. You should have seen my makeup when I was queen.”

The Naboo were known for their elaborate dress and hairstyles. It made sense to Ahsoka that they also expressed their creativity through bright eye and lip colours.

“Many worlds have their own methods and styles,” Padme continued. “There isn't just one way to wear it. In fact, half the fun is experimenting with colours.”

“Experimenting? Now I feel like I should be worried.” She wasn't though, not really. Once she'd gotten past the initial foreign feeling, it was... actually kind of nice. Just sitting down and talking while Padme did her makeup brought forth that sense of normal that she rarely felt anymore. There was no pressure here, just the small concern that she would look ridiculous with makeup on.

And if that were the case, it could always be washed off.

“You look great, Ahsoka. Trust me.” Padme gently tilted her head down so she could line her eyes with a pen of some kind. She used a spiky brush on her eyelashes, directing Ahsoka to look up, then applied something foreign to her lips. She sat back to admire her handiwork, wearing a satisfied expression.

Ahsoka blinked, assessing herself. Her eyes were heavier. Her lips felt strange. She touched her fingers to her cheek, wondering if she looked as odd as she felt.

“Come with me,” Padme said, and led her across the room, to the mirror mounted on the far wall. Ahsoka approached slowly. What if she hated it? What would she tell Padme?

Her fears were dashed as soon she was close enough to see her reflection.

Her eyelids were painted in an array of bronze and light orange shades, with just a hint of rose gold. The bronze contrasted nicely with the white of her eye markings. Her eyes looked darker, more defined and her lashes were longer. Her lips were dark red, the same colour as her dress.

Her first thought was that she looked older.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel...” Mentally, she tried out a few different words. Different. Surprised. Happy. “Confident.” It was a different kind of confidence than she was used to. It wasn't the loud confidence of being sure of herself and her abilities, but the quiet sort of confidence that came from taking pride in her appearance.

She knew she couldn't do this again. It wasn't the Jedi way to take pride in the way she looked.

But she couldn't help the smile that crossed her face as she locked eyes with Padme's reflection. “Thank you, Padme.”

Padme smiled back at her. “Glad I could help, Ahsoka. You look beautiful.”

It wasn't a word she'd ever associated with herself before. But as Ahsoka looked in the mirror, she found herself believing it.

“I think I see now, why you like this,” she said, turning around. “I feel so... different. But not in a bad way.”

Padme nodded. “When I was younger, one of my handmaidens likened makeup to battle armour. Once it's on, nobody can really touch you.”

It was a good way of looking at it, Ahsoka thought. Every day, she woke up and donned her boots and her weapon and went to war, while Padme dressed in elaborate outfits and makeup and fought a battle of words.

“I wasn't sure I was going to learn anything today,” she confessed. “I'm glad I was wrong.”

“So am I,” Padme said warmly. She put her arm around Ahsoka's shoulders. “We have twenty minutes left before my next meeting. So- how do you feel about nail polish?”

17 years later.

Jedi didn't take pride in their appearance. Jedi didn't wear makeup.

But Ahsoka had not been a Jedi in a very long time.

She didn't often seek comfort in material things, but she found the act of applying makeup to be relaxing. It had taken her a while to realize that she could be a warrior and still wear nail polish and eyeliner, but now it was simply a part of who she was.

In battle, the light glinted off both the metal of her saber and the red of her nails. In meditation, the light orange eyeshadow she preferred became visible.

Padme Amidala had taught her how to do these things, and she often thought of Padme as she painted her nails, or when she saw a certain shade of lip pigment. She thought of her now, as she put the finishing touches on her eyeshadow.

Padme, who had been there when Ahsoka needed advice and a hug. Padme, who had taught her about politics and how to navigate being a young girl in a hard galaxy. Padme, who for all her political skills, had been unable to hide how fiercely she loved Anakin Skywalker.

Padme, who had died around the same time he had.

She didn't want to assume the worst. But given what she now knew about Darth Vader, it was impossible not for her heart to feel heavy with the possibilities.

She was leaving for Atollon within the hour. From there, she would travel with Kanan and Ezra to Malachor. Although she wasn't sure what awaited them there, suspicions lingered in the back of her mind.

Somewhere, deep down, she already knew.

Padme had called makeup battle armour. Once it's on, nobody can really touch you. Ahsoka hoped that were true, because she would need to be untouchable, both inside and out, to win the fight ahead.

Ahsoka finished with a shade of dark red for her lips. She looked in the mirror and nodded to herself. The battle armour was on.

She straightened her shoulders, and went to war.

This was inspired by the fact that it looks like Ahsoka is wearing red nail polish in Star Wars Rebels. It also looks like she has eye makeup on. Maybe she doesn't, but I /love/ the idea of this strong female warrior also enjoying wearing makeup.

Also, research did not unveil much about makeup in the Star Wars universe, so. I tried.

[ikonxmx]

No Happy Endings | Wonho [M]

Warnings: Strong language, sexual suggestiveness. (no actual smut scene yet)

word count: 2,489

 “I don't think I have ever been so graphically threatened a day in my life,” Hoseok says clutching his heart.                                   

Part 2: Eating out, and eating out. Because apparently there's a difference.

“Let's go for dinner tonight. As a first official date.” Hoseok says still seated across from you. He's been here watching you quietly as you finish assignments since your earlier conversation ended.

“Why? I already said I'd pretend to be your girlfriend.” You say. Apparently, it's a bit too loud for his liking. His eyes widen and he looks around to make sure no one heard before turning back to you with a too-sweet smile.

“To keep appearances.” He answers.

You sigh and close your book. “You've obviously never done something like this before so I'm gonna give you a little run down. Dinner with your girlfriend after the relationship was reported and not announced… not a good idea. Your fans will think you don't care, some of them may think you're rubbing it in, others might think you had the information leaked intentionally.

“Lay low for a couple of weeks. Small private dates that you tried to keep hidden but somehow were crashed. A half-assed disguise like a mask and a hat shows an attempt to keep things down low. People will find it admirable that you're still being considerate of your fans even in a relationship. Got it?”

“Yeah… I think so.” Hoseok says looking at you in disbelief.

“You coming here today was already a bit too much, but you can say you were worried about how I'd be feeling after the news broke. We’ll go on an ice cream date two days from now. Remember the mask and hat.”

“But no one will know it's us.”

“They'll know. I won't be wearing a disguise. And besides, anyone who wants more information on your hidden relationship will probably follow you from your apartment. The night after the ice cream date you'll sneak out to my house. ‘I really wanted to see her, it's been so tough away from her these past few days, blah blah blah’. Play it up. You're young and in love,” you finish and begin packing your bags. “You're walking me home today too. Kiss my cheek at the door and get the hell on. That's another thing, we should set some boundaries here.”

Hoseok rose an amused eyebrow at you, “We should?”

“Yes. Although I've agreed to this I won't be your little play thing. We should be strictly professional at all times.”

Hoseok laughs, “We both know I wouldn't have to pay you to be my play thing.”

You roll your eyes and flip him off. His eyes widen and he looks around. “Careful.” He says in a harsh whisper.

You finishing packing your things and raise from your seat. “C’mon. It's 9 o’clock.”

Your walk home was filled with conversation. Back and forth information sharing. You told him the basics about your family. You let him know your major and class schedule. Your hobbies, your neighbor, you told him everything. He knows more about you than people you've shared classes with for the past two years.

“This is it.” You say as your apartment comes into view.

“I'll walk you up,” Hoseok says.

“There's no need to.”

“I insist.”

“Well, I decline.”

He huffs his frustration, “Too bad.” He says and walks past you into the door for your apartment building.

You stare at his retreating figure in shock. Pouting, you follow behind him quietly. He has no clue where he's going, though. You smirk as he stops at the stairs confused on whether or not to take them or continue down the brightly lit hallway he's been walking down. You scoff and purposely bump his shoulder as you walk past. You can hear him suck his teeth from behind you but nonetheless, he follows closely.

Two flights of stairs later and you're finally on your floor. Hoseok is the quietest he's been since showing up at your school and you appreciate the silence. However, it's quickly broken.

“Miss lady, you got some splaining to do!” Your neighbor says as she walks out of her apartment. A lit cigarette is hanging from her lips as she pulls the string in her silk robe to tighten it. She looks from you to Hoseok and takes a long drag of her cigarette. “The fuck is he?” She squints before blowing out her smoke.

“He's a-” you start only to be interrupted.

“I'm her boyfriend.” Hoseok jumps in quickly.

Your neighbor laughs a bit, “So the Internet tells the truth sometimes? Here I am thinking they're slandering my baby girl’s good name.” She says as she pulls your head down to her shoulder and lightly strokes your head.

You laugh and twist out of her grip.

“Hey, you ungrateful little shit. You get a boyfriend and suddenly my affection isn’t enough?!” She smirks and places her cigarette back to her lips.

“Of course it's enough, Mary.” You say playfully pouting.

“Yeah yeah yeah, you kiss ass.” She pulls the bud from her lips again and laughs. “Well, I was going to ask if it's true, but I can see it is. That bullshit stalker story you gave me yesterday. You could've just said the dick was too good to walk away at 9 last night.” She smirks.

“Jeez, Mary. That's disgusting.” You huff and fold your arms.

“Excuse me?” Hoseok says looking quite offended. “You weren't saying it was disgusting last night.”

Mary laughs, “You've played it up too much. I can tell you two haven't done anything” She winks. “Anyway, take care of her. She's a fucking angel and if you break her heart, I'll shove your balls up through your asshole and make them come out of your mouth. Got it?” Mary asks pointing her cigarette in his direction. She takes another drag before throwing it down and stomping to put it out. Before she even receives an answer, she's walking back into her apartment. The door slams behind her and fills the once quiet hallway with a loud bang.

“I don't think I have ever been so graphically threatened a day in my life,” Hoseok says clutching his heart.

You laugh and enter the code to get into your apartment.

“1-2-3-4? Are you kidding me? You need to change your code.” Hoseok reprimands you.

“It's easy to remember.” You shrug.

“Yeah, it's also easy to guess.” He rolls his eyes. “Change it to today’s date. Our official first day.”

“No.” You answer with an eye roll of your own.

You walk in and turn to face him. “Smile on your way out.”

“Give me something to smile about.” He smirks.

You stare at him blankly for a moment, “That's actually not a bad idea.” You note and swipe two fingers across your lipstick stained lips. The pigments transfer to your fingers easily and you roughly wipe your fingers across Hoseok's lips.

“Jeez!” He sputters and jumps away from you.

You smirk and close the door in his face.

“Why ice cream?” Hoseok asks as he picks a small bit up on the small spoon in his hand.

“Because it’s delicious.” You answer with your mouth full. “It also gives you a reason to drop your mask every now and then.”

Hoseok scrunches his nose, “Careful before it melts and falls from your mouth.”

You close your mouth and swallow the melting contents. Hoseok laughs and grabs a napkin.

“You’re a terribly messy eater.” He says wiping at your face. You pout and smack his hands away. With a roll of his eyes, he’s dropping the napkin and scooping at his own ice cream.

He’s kind of just playing with it and for some reason, it pisses you off.

“If you’re not gonna eat it then just give it to me.” You huff.

Hoseok looks at up at you through his lashes but doesn’t say anything. He drops his mask and brings the spoon to his lips.

It’s quiet between you two for awhile. Neither one of you really feels the need to talk. What can be said at this point? It was like that on the way to the ice cream shop as well. He’d slung his arm around you and smiled but other than that you guys weren’t really talking. It was a bit awkward. You played your role nonetheless. After a few minutes of silence passed you thought about how anyone watching this scene would think you two are total strangers. You are, but as far as most of the world is concerned you’ve been dating for four months already.

You wordlessly take your spoon and dig into Hoseok’s ice cream. He looks at you confused as you plop the spoon in your mouth.

“Did you want the ice cream that bad?” He asks.

You roll your eyes, “Take some of mine.” You say and offer him the bowl. He hesitates but takes some anyway. “It’s good right?”

He shrugs, “I just like plain vanilla.”

“That’s so boring.” You scoff.  

“Isn’t it?” He laughs. “I’m not that interesting.”

“The guy who needs a fake girlfriend for 6 months is saying he isn’t interesting?”

He laughs again, “Hard to believe, right?”

It’s quiet again for awhile. You two go on eating your separate ice creams and looking aimlessly out of the window.

“Hey, how come you never asked why?” Hoseok suddenly questions.

“Why what?” You say as you place another spoonful of ice cream in your mouth.

“Why I needed to lie.”

You shrug, “It wasn’t my business.”

He scoffs, “You’re involved in a lie but it’s not your business?”

“Look you’re paying me to keep my mouth shut, the less I know the better. Right?” You ask looking at him expectantly. He says nothing and drops his head back to his bowl of ice cream. You look at him a bit longer before doing the same, “Besides,” You start and gain his attention.

“Besides, what?” He asks.

“I just figured it had something to do with the girl that ran out before I ran in.”  You answer and go on eating the treat that’s quickly melting in front of you.

“Stay for 30 minutes.” You tell Hoseok the next night.

He’s at your house like you two had discussed at the library. The ice cream date had gone over like you’d predicted. Portal sites posted articles about your small date with tons of pictures connected. They’d caught moments of Hoseok smiling and the small scene you’d given when you stole a little of his ice cream.

“How did you know everything would go so smoothly… that all of that would happen?” Hoseok questions as he plops down on the first chair he finds.

You shrug, “I read a lot.”

“You read? Am I supposed to believe that? Hey… you’ve done something like this before, haven’t you?” He asks wagging an accusatory finger at your back.

“If I had, don’t you think they’d reference my ex in all of the articles being put out?”  

He frowns and drops his finger. You’ve got a point. They’d pulled information about you from thin air. Had you ever dated a celebrity before, he would’ve known about it by now. But it still makes no sense. How are you so knowledgeable on every move he needs to make? So far, he hasn’t received any negative backlash for the scandal. People called him a sweet boyfriend for checking up on you the day the news broke and they gushed over the pictures of the ice cream date.

‘We all knew Wonho oppa would make a great boyfriend.’

‘They’re such a well-matched couple.’

‘I hate to say but they look very good together.’

‘She seems like an okay person.’

You’d even managed to save your own face in the public eye. No one had anything negative to say about you. They all sympathized with how hard it must’ve been to keep the relationship a secret. There were a few angry people but they were far outshined by the supportive ones.

You decided not to consult the internet much for the next 6 months. For the sake of your own self-confidence. How brutal fans could be when their idols have confirmed dating is no secret, and you didn’t need to see someone pointing out flaws you already know exist.   

You and Hoseok use the 30 minutes to quietly watch television. IT moves quickly and soon he’s getting up to leave.

“How often do you eat out?” You quickly ask. You have to plan outings and dates for the next 6 months, and knowing his usual habits could help quite a bit.  

“Eat out, or eat out?” He says with a wiggle of his eyebrow.

Confusion is written clear across your face as you stare at him, “You just said the same thing twice.”

“Yeah, but-” He starts but stops to look at you with his own confused expression. “Hey, are you a virgin?” He quickly asks.

“No.” You answer with a roll of your eyes.

“Then how do you not pick up on all my innuendos?”

You clear your throat, “Ahhh. I get what you were saying now. I meant the nonsexual one.

The confused look is still on his face. “Has no one ever...?” He leaves the question hanging.      

“That’s not really important.”

He laughs and quickly drops his shoes and coat. “Want me to?” He asks as he drops a knee onto your bed and begins to crawl toward you. He connects his eyes with yours as he moves forward

You swallow quickly and avert your eyes. “No.”

He laughs, “It’s okay if you do.” He says and rests one of his hands on your ankle.

“If you come any closer I’ll kick you square in the balls.” You threaten and close your eyes tight. A hand sits purchase on your thigh and a very nervous you lets out a squeak before swinging your foot up.

“Fucking hell!” You hear Hoseok groan and open your eyes. Both of his hands move to cup his lower region and he falls from your bed to the floor with a loud thump. “ I was fucking kidding!” He calls.

Your eyes open wide in shock. You jump to the floor and hesitantly pat at his shoulders, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t mean to actually kick you!” You say in a bit of a panic.

“Shit!” Hoseok groans again rolling from side to side.

What the hell just happened?

Part 2 FIN.

A/N: It was sort of just a filler chapter. You might still like Hoseok now but you'll start hating him soon enough. And what do you guys think about Mary? With such an introverted character I figured someone loud and outspoken would compliment them well. Anywho, hope you enjoyed. :)

- AJ