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lutiaslayton · 1 year

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Hello everybody! This playthrough is finally starting, and with it goes my sanity. I am playing on DS (French version but you will probably never see photos of it), mobile (UK version, I might sometimes give screenshots), and emulator for the Japanese “Friendly” version, of which I will provide the most footage.

The “Friendly” version is a re-release of the first DS games which added the furigana to the text, made all weekly puzzles available from the start instead of locking them out as downloadable content, and perhaps had a few other features I am not aware of. I only realised once I reached the title screen that this was not technically the original, but oh well. When I compared the DS, non-“Friendly” version of London Holiday with its mobile re-release version, the differences were completely anecdotic (the kanji 言 replaced with its hiragana spelling twice, and hint coins being renamed from ヒントメダル to ひらめきコイン, their current name); so I hope that the differences will be just as minor, because I unfortunately do not have the means currently to check them.

Major disclaimer:

I DO NOT SPEAK JAPANESE. KEEP THAT IN MIND. All my conclusions are based on what little stuff I know here and there about the language, but I am not at all a reliable reference in the subject. If you can speak Japanese, then please do feel free to correct me anytime, add details I forgot, etc. Thank you!

Important Note:

In the Japanese version, puzzles are consistently referred to as 「ナゾ」 (pronounced “nazo”), while 「ナゾトキ」 (pronounced “nazotoki”) will usually refer to the act of solving such a puzzle. Both expressions are written in katakana, which is in Japanese a way to emphasise words (kind of like italics, if you will). Normally, you would expect to find both expressions written as 「謎」 and 「謎解き」, but the fact that they are written in katakana instead will be interpreted here as “the characters are talking about something similar, but distinct from the original meaning of these expressions.” In other words, not all puzzles are the same, and a distinction must be made between simple riddles or mysteries, and 𝓹𝓾𝔃𝔃𝓵𝓮𝓼™.

I will try to consistently translate 「ナゾ」 as “puzzle” all throughout, and will use any other word if the Japanese version did not use this specific magic word (e.g. if the Japanese version uses the regular spelling 「謎」 instead of the katakana spelling). Therefore, when characters use the word 「ナゾ」, I will consider that they are talking about something far more specific than simply a “mystery.”

Why do I emphasise on such a nitpick? Because a big part of this lore analysis… is to try to define what a “puzzle” even is to begin with.

In this post and the future ones, if you find screenshots which have coloured text, the rule is basically this: red if it’s a “puzzle”, blue if it has a similar meaning but is not the same type of “puzzle” as the one we are most interested in.

Anyway. Digression aside, let’s get started!

HD Version only: The Extra Cutscene

I don’t have all that many things to say about it, since you can watch it on Youtube just fine and the Japanese version doesn’t have much to say that the English translations don’t say as well. Still, just a few things:

Layton has packed a very small suitcase, while Luke has filled the trunk of the Laytonmobile to the brim. Could it be that after Last Specter, Miracle Mask and especially Azran Legacy, Luke is expecting to have yet another long journey? After all, it is just around the very beginning of August, so he’s probably on summer vacations (and that is assuming he isn’t homeschooled anyway during the rest of the time; he definitely was during the time they were travelling around the world in the Bostonius).

Layton, on the other hand, does not seem to expect to stay in St. Mystere for long; but then again, we are talking about the man who, about three years earlier, went off to Misthallery without even packing anything and ended up having to stay there for a few days. (Speaking of… neither did Emmy, for that matter.)

Also, I could analyse the fact that in order to reach St. Mystere, they crossed the Thames, and that thanks to Diabolical Box, we know the approximate location of Gressenheller within London (~9 Earlham St., Westminster); however, I will not do that, because DearestHershel already made a video entirely dedicated to locating St. Mystere using these exact points and others, and I do not disagree with his conclusions.

Letter from Luke to the Player

🇯🇵 親愛なる友人｛プレーヤー｝　へ 🗺️ To my dear friend, {Player}, 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 To my dear friend, {Player},

🇯🇵 ボクたちが、あの日、あの町で体験したことは、誰にもいえない秘密になってしまったんだ。なぜなら、これは… 🗺️ What we experienced that day in that town has become a secret that we can’t tell anyone. This is because… 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 The things we saw that day in the village became a secret we would have to keep from everyone for the rest of our lives. Because, you see…

Nerd talk aside, I would personally consider this letter to not be canon in-universe, notably because Luke specifically states that he will never divulge the secret of St. Mystere… only to proceed to do exactly that in his letter. Also because of the fact that this letter being canon would imply that someone sharing the Player’s name exists in the Laytonverse and that Luke knows them well enough to want to share details of his cases to them, including this one.

Whether you decide to make your personal self-insert character canon or not, this still raises the question of just how many people are aware of what transpired in St. Mystere. Layton and Luke seemingly decided to not tell anything to anyone at all in order to protect Flora; Bruno and the inhabitants of St. Mystere have been aware of pretty much everything for years (perhaps less so in the case of the robots) and will keep doing their thing; and Don Paolo is quite unlikely to tell anyone either due to the fact that pretty much every plan he had for the town, its treasure, and its robots, ended in failure (and also, depending on how we interpret his character, he would also keep the secret for Flora’s sake).

And yet, there is something that has been bothering me for many years…

親愛なるレイトン教授へ

あれから数か月になりますが、教授、お元気ですか？一緒に仕事をしている仲間からレイトン教授が遺産相続騒動を解決したという話を耳にして思わず手紙を書いてしまいました。

タージェントから世界を救ったあのレイトン教授が単なる遺産相続のナゾトキの依頼を引き受けるなんて。まさか…と思いましたが、ナゾには目がない教授ですし、きっと知的好奇心を刺激される不思議な出来事だったんでしょうね。

Dear Professor Layton,

It’s already been months since then, hasn’t it? I hope you’re well. When I heard from my colleagues that Professor Layton had resolved an inheritance dispute, I couldn’t help but write a letter.

I couldn’t believe that the same Professor Layton who saved the world from Targent accepted the simple request of solving an inheritance puzzle! But since you always have a penchant for puzzles, it must have been a curious case and quite the intellectual workout.

This letter was written by Emmy Altava and was revealed in the Japan-exclusive Azran Legacy art book (For the translation, I borrowed the one made by @the-azran-legacies for the general style, but took the liberty of altering a few words when I felt like their translation was deviating a bit too much from the original text). Needless to say… If only at first glance, this is an issue. Not only did Emmy hear of the case, but she also heard of it from her journalist coworkers? Well, then again: perhaps what should be said here was that Layton did indeed talk about the case to the media (reluctantly so), but left it at “We solved an inheritance dispute in a remote village, it was boring, nothing to see here.” And perhaps the reason Emmy heard of it from her coworkers was either because Layton had not solved a single case between AL and CV, or because this case was simply a “really, there is nothing to see here, I promise” and some journalists are not buying it.

PS: Wild ass theory. In the original trilogy, Luke isn’t writing his letters to “the player.” He’s writing them to Emmy. And in the case of Curious Village, Emmy received Luke’s letter some time after she sent Layton her own. After all, did you know that while CV, DB and UF all start with Luke writing a letter to someone, there is not a single letter to the player in the prequel trilogy games? In fact, perhaps we could even theorise that Luke only got Emmy’s address thanks precisely to the letter she sent to Layton? And he decided to write her a letter explaining her the whole story after he finally got news from her?

Cutscene #01

There is not much to say about the cutscene itself, apart from the fact that the country road they are taking leads to absolutely nowhere else (which is precisely what Puzzle #001 is about), and that aside from said narrow country road, there is not a single human-made element around them for miles. My 2018 past self had already emphasised on that, but St. Mystere is consistently described as being particularly isolated and secluded (due to the fact that it has only one exit, and that the crank being stolen later will close that only exit).

The Car Scene

Phew! We finally made it past the, um… first two lines of dialogue in the game after the mobile cutscene. Wow. This is going to be a long ride, isn’t it.

I will not give the entirety of the dialogue, but I will show the parts that caught my attention:

🇯🇵 …２ヶ月前、資産家、アレン・ラインフォード氏が亡くなった。 🗺️ …Two months ago, the wealthy Allen Rhineford passed away. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Two months ago, Baron Augustus Reinhold passed away. 🇯🇵 その後、彼の遺言状が開示されたが、そこには、実に興味深い内容が記されていた。 🗺️ Later, his will was disclosed, and it contained some really interesting details. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Shortly after his death, his will was disclosed. The contents of it were fascinating, to say the least.

Baron Augustus Reinhold is actually named Allen Rhineford in the Japanese version, according to the romanised version of アレン・ラインフォード. Also, it is to be noted that the Japanese version does not seem to refer to him as a baron, at least not yet.

(EDIT: I mistakenly wrote it as Lineford, thinking that there was no official romanised version; however, there actually is one, and it is indeed Rhineford, not Lineford. The source is this Japanese wikipedia page, which gives the romanised names of the characters according to the Japanese version. My bad!)

He died two months earlier; or rather, his death was publicly announced two months earlier, as we will learn much later. Either case, the event Layton refers to took place more or less two months before the day they arrive in St. Mystere, which means that this would have happened around the end of May/beginning of June 1963.

🇯🇵 …我が一族の家宝、「黄金の果実」をこの町のどこかに隠してある。 🗺️ …My family's heirloom, the "Golden Fruit," is hidden somewhere in this town. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 "The Reinhold family treasure, the Golden Apple, is hidden somewhere within this village. 🇯🇵 「黄金の果実」を探しあてた者に、私が所有するすべての遺産を相続させる… 🗺️ Whoever finds the "Golden Fruit" will inherit all of my property… 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 To whomever successfully locates this treasure, I offer the whole of my estate."

Fun fact: the original Japanese version refers to the Golden Apple as 「黄金の果実」, meaning Golden Fruit, rather than specifically an apple.

🇯🇵 遺言の内容を知った一族の者たちは、その「黄金の果実」を、先を争うように探した。 🗺️ The members of the family, who knew the contents of the will, scrambled to find the "golden fruit". 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Naturally, those who attended the reading of the will immediately set out in search of the Golden Apple. 🇯🇵 しかし、結局、誰も見つけることはできなかった。 🗺️ However, in the end, no one was able to find it. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 But in the end, everybody came back empty handed. 🇯🇵 そもそも、そんな家宝があったなんてことを誰ひとり聞いたことがなかったという。 🗺️ In the first place, no one had ever heard of such a family heirloom. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 It turns out that no one had even heard of such a treasure existing until its mention in the will.

The Japanese version specifies “family members,” while the English translation is more general—which could have implied that other unrelated people might have been present during the reading of the will (or at least, that is how I have interpreted it for years). It is a nitpick, since we are probably few to imagine that people from outside St. Mystere would have actually been present during the reading, if you think about it hard enough. But it is interesting to note that Layton is thus more or less saying here that the only people who bothered searching for the Golden Apple were the family members themselves, and that there is no clear mention of other outsiders coming to look for it.

If no outsider aside from Layton was warned, then this raises the question of just how Don Paolo came to hear about it in the first place… Current hypothesis is that he is stalking Layton and perhaps even reading his mail, simply put. There are dubious ways to read letters without opening them.

Did you notice that the scenery changes after Layton is finished explaining the basics of the case? It seems like the country road led them to go through a forest dense enough to block some of the sunlight. After Luke solves the puzzle, the background goes back to the brighter scenery.

🇯🇵 ああ。彼は莫大な財産をかけて、生涯最後のナゾを仕掛けたというわけだ。一体、何が目的なのかもわからない。 🗺️ Yes. He set up the last puzzle of his life with his vast fortune. I don't even know what the purpose is. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Quite. Augustus Reinhold staked his entire fortune just to create one more puzzle before his death.

Hey, would you look at that! ナゾ has been said in a dubious context, you know what this means. Take a shot everybody (I’m joking. Please don’t. Tea is amazing but there are health issues related to drinking too much of it).

Joke aside, there is something else to note: depending on how the sentence is read (I do hope someone who can speak Japanese could help clarify), Layton might be either saying that the baron staked his fortune on that “last puzzle,” or that he used said fortune to set up the puzzle in question—or, most likely, both, given the fact that we have another case of “ok perhaps this isn’t magic but you literally have to be the richest person on Earth to pull this off” on our hands.

Additionally, in the Japanese version exclusively, Layton has this additional line: “I don’t even know what the purpose [behind the treasure hunt] is.” This line was most likely removed from the translations due to the lack of space.

In fact, there was another instance in which the translations had no choice but to add another dialogue box and split Luke’s dialogue in two! This happened in this case:

🇯🇵 確かに先生とは気が合いそうですね。ところで、「黄金の果実」っていったい何なのでしょうか？ 🗺️ I’m sure he would have gotten along with you. By the way, what exactly is the “golden fruit”? [1|2] 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 It certainly sounds like you two would’ve gotten along, Professor! [2|2] 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 By the way, just what is this Golden Apple anyhow?

To be honest, I believe that splitting this dialogue into two different dialogue boxes makes more sense, since they are two vastly different sentences and lack a clear transition.

🇯🇵 宝石なのか、骨董品なのか、それもまたナゾだよ。実に興味深い。 🗺️ Is it a jewel or an antique, that is also a puzzle. Really interesting. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Some speculate it's a rare antique, while others say it could be a gem, yet its identity remains elusive. 🇯🇵 だけど、ルーク、私はこの一件に、他にも何かとてつもない秘密が隠されているような気がしてならないんだ。 🗺️ But, Luke, I can't help but feel that there are some other great secrets hidden in this case. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 But, Luke, I can't shake the feeling that this matter is linked to some larger mystery. Something huge.

So, have you noticed? The English translations have failed to account for the fact that Layton used the magic word in order to describe the nature of the Golden Apple. Just thought I would let you know, it would be a shame to forget to take a shot :p

Oh, and speaking of removing an important “puzzle” magic word through the translation, we have another one just a bit ahead:

🇯🇵 このナゾトキをラインフォード夫人に依頼されただけさ。 🗺️ I was commissionned by Mrs. Rhineford to do this puzzle solving. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Augustus Reinhold's wife, Lady Dahlia, has asked me to investigate the situation.

Anyway. Layton “can’t shake the feeling” that there is a lot more to the Golden Apple puzzle than a simple treasure hunt. But what could possibly lead him to this feeling? Well… the fact that St. Mystere is so isolated, that the Golden Apple would be an heirloom whose existence is unknown to the members of the family which is supposed to own it, even the fact that Lady Dahlia Reinhold would contact him specifically, perhaps… are some ever so slightly peculiar details, I suppose. Not to mention, perhaps, one thing related to the map puzzle, depending on how the puzzle lore goes. All this is not necessarily enough to truly raise the red flags just yet, but enough to spark some curiosity and suspicion.

🇯🇵 先生、なんだかはりきってますね。考古学者でありながら、どんなナゾでも解決する名探偵、 🗺️ Professor, I'm kind of excited. The great detective who can solve any puzzle while being an archaeologist, 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 This is all so exciting! 🇯🇵 エルシャール・レイトン、さっそく現場へ急行ってわけですね！ 🗺️ Hershel Layton, rushed to the scene immediately! 🇺🇸 I hope St. Mystere is ready for the famous archeologist and puzzle-solving detective, Hershel Layton! 🇬🇧 I hope St Mystere is ready for the famous archaeologist and puzzle-solving detective, Hershel Layton!

Come on, Luke, you have seen much harder puzzles than this. Though, if I were to open a map and see this blatantly not-to-scale drawing instead, I too would have at least a little moment of surprise.

So… This is when the crazy talk really starts getting in. What are your thoughts? Luke is evidently shocked just at the mere sight of it, so I fear that the Doylist explanation “Luke actually is holding a regular map, it’s just that the players are shown the puzzle instead” seems out of the table. Somehow, Luke is able to take this paper, solve the puzzle on it, and deduce from this drawing real life directions for what is for him, currently, the middle of nowhere.

Strange, really strange… It is almost as if the drawing itself were less the key to figuring out the real life directions to take, and rather a gatekeep preventing whoever looks at it from accessing the true map until the puzzle is solved.

Hm? Ah, don’t mind me, I was just rambling. I have not seen enough evidence in this particular instance yet, so the hypothesis that Luke would be surprised less by the fact of seeing a puzzle, and more by the fact that he would find a puzzle that would do Lady Dahlia’s bidding, is at this stage baseless conjecture. I will just keep this little bit of speculation in the back of my mind and see if more evidence to confirm it shows up later, under similar but different circumstances. (Spoiler alert: it does happen regarding the puzzle lore, and it is even crazier than I expected.)

🇯🇵 その地図を解読しないと町には着けないらしい。 🗺️ It seems that you can't get to the town without deciphering this map. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Lady Dahlia seems to have given us a test. We'll need to decipher this map in order to find the village. 🇯🇵 どうやら夫人は、私を試すつもりのようだ。 🗺️ It seems that she is going to test me. 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 She wants to see if we're capable of cracking the mystery surrounding the Reinhold fortune. 🇯🇵 私が遺産の謎を解ける人物かどうか…君はどう思う？　ルーク。 🗺️ I wonder if I'm the one who can solve the mystery of the inheritance... What do you think, Luke? 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 Care to give it a go, Luke?

Um. Ahem. Excuse me? That last sentence is quite intriguing, all the more so since it could have used the puzzle magic word, but decided to go with the regular kanji spelling instead. Funny how it was not translated at all in the English versions… I can imagine why, but that is still surprising. This sort of reminds me of the cryptic sentences Layton will sometimes say in the prequel trilogy for no reason other than to sound cool and cryptic.

Anyway. We FINALLY reached the first puzzle! Yayyyyy… oh, dear.

So, uh… You know what? I think I will leave the actual puzzle for another time. This post has already been WAY longer than I anticipated and I am exhausted x’D I would rather go back to it with a clearer mind rather than rush it.

And that is all! Just getting to the first puzzle has been quite the adventure, and trying to keep track of so many languages at once made things even worse. To be honest, in the future I will probably drop all languages other than Japanese and US + UK, including dropping French despite the fact that it is my mother language, because searching through the files is not a short task… and because I did not even get to show them here at all anyway, so this was pretty much extra work for nothing.

I guess I will go back to them one day if I ever make my archiving work public, but that will be the question for another time. For now, the website I made for CV is for local use only, because uploading it and its assets would be quite the hassle (not to mention “arguably illegal…?” I have no idea here).

In either case, the Italian, Spanish and German versions are certain to be dropped when I will move to other games. The European version of Curious Village contains the data for all languages at once, but starting from Diabolical Box onwards, this will no longer be the case; so unless I were to get the roms for all EU languages each time, I wouldn’t be able to do the datamining if I wanted to.

Still, speaking of languages! There is one last thing I would like to share, and that is a thorough comparison between the US and UK versions. Here goes!

The differences are either nonexistent or subtle most of the time, but as we can see, there are a few differences still. So… Should I refer to the US and UK versions as two different languages? One language and a half? Eh. Who knows. I have been treating them as two entirely separate languages so far, just to be thorough.

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#professor layton #lutiasplays #pl theory board #professor layton transcript

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comatosebunny09 · 1 year

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If you were a KNY character you'd be Ruka (lucky ass gets to fuck shinjuro but ANYWAY) because you have an air of wisdom and grace and if you deactivated your blog I'd be devastated and probably never recover and end up taking any advice you have as absolute truth like kyojuro

who would i be?

Why would you even say that? 🥲🥲🥲 I’ve been awake for 24 hours and I saw this and got really sad cause my muddled ass brain read “I will deactivate my blog” and I panicked. Anyways, Ruka? 🥹🥹🥹 I feel loved. I wish I would’ve gotten more time to know her, but thank you so much booboos. ❤️❤️❤️ I’m BLUSHING!!!

I can’t really think of a DS slayer to compare you to because you have your own flair and grace and I don’t think anyone in the show encapsulates that. I’d give you a bad ass OC who doesn’t take shit from nobody but will still make sure everybody eats and is taken care of and knows that they’re loved regardless of what they’ve got going on.

#also sorry for the red text #tumblr is still effed up

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strititty · 2 years

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CHAPTER 2

“Dude, I will literally piss on you.”

“You fucking piss on me I will drop you out the window so fast.”

“Just for that, I’m going to shit my pants.”

just having a giggle here.

but also the fact that all of them are just like 'yeah we'll carry him around, no need to go to a doctor or anything when his legs aren't working' is fucking hilarious. striders, my guy.

EB: haha yeah you look like a beverly hills house wife.

ds lookin like a salad dressing boy...

EB: yeah, if you're going for a donald trump look, i guess.

OH THANKS JOHN I WAS JUST ABOUT TO MAKE THAT JOKE LMAO

You let him work in peace, since he’s probably the only person here who is currently making any money, and you pester Jade again. She still hasn’t talked to you. You remember brief flashes of kissing her as Davepeta. Ugh, you want to die all over again. How fucking embarrassing.

UGHHH DAVEPETA THO... i love davepeta, i will not deny. davepeta my beloved. iirc dave has some issues with his time as them, showcased here, and i think that is absolutely fascinating. do not remember if they come up in more detail or not so //taps my fingers together on that one

i know there was - and might still be? - a bit of fandom uncertainty around davepeta. i remember when they first popped up my dash went absolutely insane over them and a few people absolutely hated the direction it took davesprite’s character in and like, i can see where they’re coming from? but it was also super cool to have a nyanbinary character pop up in my favorite web comic!

therefore, personally (and honestly i can say this about a lot of things), i don’t really mind what configuration people go for when they write dave(sprite) because in the end you gotta recognize that everybody comes at this with all sorts of different thoughts and interpretations. dave being embarrassed about his time as them is one really interesting way to read it, or dave still being close to nepeta, or davepeta as a whole in all their glory, or Whoops It’s Literally Everyone!!!

that’s a fun part of fandom, i think, being able to have all these different thoughts about one (two?) character(s?). it’s just so good.

#rng reread #davepeta

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terras-diary · 4 months

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game review - valkyrie elysium

it sucked. okay review over, thanks everybody.

okay so i will say more but just know i could have left it at that and it wouldn't make much of a difference.

context: i started this back in july of 2023 but then i booted up final fantasy xiv and well we know how that went.

story: what story? nothing happened. it's a walmart retelling of the love story of the first one plus the typical odin bad which was VP 1+2 (and maybe the ds game? never played that one) there is nothing original that is simultaneously good. it's the same shit but worse!!

also - in the original valkyrie profile games it's assumed that (at least this is what i got out of them) that there is a single valkyrie soul. it travels space and time to reincarnate into different human girls and takes the form of one of the three valkyrie. hrist in the far past, silmeria in the distant past, and lenneth in the present. they are separate personalities but at the end of the day they cannot exist all together. except that one time in valkyrie profile 2, but that was different.

so who is nora then. she's the valkyrie now. but where does she fall into the line? what about hilde? why did she 'betray' odin'? shouldn't they be the game girl? the game doesn't even answer what little questions it presents.

battling: it's not even in profile! okay, only half kidding (or am i) but none of these damn buttons do what you think they should do.

you can't cancel out of any moves you make. so if you see you are about to get hit, welp! too bad! you just have to sit there and watch nora get her ass beat. and god, when she gets knocked down it takes her twenty years to get back up. this isn't even an action game, it's like if you put my big ass in there and expected me to do this stuff. that's about how this game plays out.

no stores either. i kept all my items because up until the final boss gauntlet i didn't need them. i used all my items in those 3 fights and still, just by the skin of my teeth, did i beat the game. get good or whatever. you have to replay each chapter (to the end) to get and keep your items.

and the enemies. all five of them. plus their four recolors. so awesome.

other odds and ends: the voice acting is not synced to the lip movements at all. what's up with that?

the graphics suck. everything is brown, dreary and dark. there are thick black outlines over most things because it's too difficult to see otherwise.

why the fuck is this game called valkyrie elysium? valkyries = norse mythology and elyisum = greek mythology. it's simple stuff like that that makes you just know that they just didn't care.

and who is they you might ask? well square enix nor tri-ace could be bothered so it was handed off to soleil. you know one of the reasons i gave this game another chance is that i had such a good time with the star ocean 2 remake. that game was handed off to a (seemingly) no name studio only for me to find out it was founded by the same guy who was the battle programmer for valkyrie profile + star ocean. so i was willing to give it another chance, as i had only played for like two hours.

i shouldn't have. soleil makes like shitty anime fighting games. which explains the janky ass battle system.

one good thing i will say - you know i liked nora's design. hilde too. it wasn't too sexualized the way anime girls are now. they both had an oddly square jaw i found charming. i loved hilde's wavy long hair. at least their outfits were reminiscent of valkyrie profile.

conclusion: this is a shut up game. this is something so corporate so churned out of the cogs to feed as slop to valkyrie profile fans. no, i am not known to exaggerate at all. but seriously, don't waste your time. it's obvious no one else bothered so why should you?

#game review

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gonuclear · 3 years

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RYUSUI POG IN THE REAL?!

#arsene speaks #ds #dr stone #dr. stone #dr stone manga #shonen jump #ryusui nanami #nanami ryusui #everybody say thank you shonen jump banner #i like this manga coloring the best actually

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thealtoduck · 2 years

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Peter’s boyfriend with the powers of Invisible Woman…

Peter Parker x Male Reader

Warning: nudity, implied sex, unrealistic reader backstory

Summary: Generic superhero backstory + how you met Peter…

——

So guess what happens when your the best space cadet in your class… You get rewarded with going in to space while they are resupplying a space station (think like a high tech spacestation with gravity and such) with food, new tech and tools. Your orders where to stick around the astronauts of the mission and observe what they did.

But the astronauts ended up giving you some simple tasks around the space station as they found you to be responsible enough to handle yourself. But that would end up being a mistake…

You were going to get a tool box from the storage but just as you picked it up the alarms went off and the speaker could be heard saying ”Everybody back to the command bridge, theres a cosmic storm heading for the space station at high speed and the sheilds on the command bridge are the only ones strong enough to keep us safe”.

”Shit” you swore as you were literally as far away from the command bridge as you could get on the station, so you took of running towards the command bridge.

As you were running through a hallway you looked outside through a window and saw some red energy thing swirling around the space station. The speaker could then be heard again saying ”There is a leak somewhere in the facility causing cosmic energy to leak into the station so we need to seal the doors to the command bridge as soon as possible”.

You rushed towards the command bridge to get in before they were locked but then you heard something behind you. You turned back and saw a wave of the red energy you had seen outside coming towards you at a high speed.

You felt as if your body was set on fire as the radiation from the storm consumed your body. Then everything turned black…

When you woke you were in a lightly lit room, you sat up and saw that you were in a hospital. You looked around and saw some different ”Get well soon” gifts like cards, ballons and flowers. There was a card by your bedside table signed by all the astronauts on the station.

Doctors took notice that you were awake and came in dressed in hazmat suits since you had been exposed to so much radiation and told you everything that happened and how it was a medical miracle that you had survived.

You had to stay qurantined while they made sure you were okay and that you were radiation free.

Finally they let you have visitors like your parents and what would also be a welcomed suprise Peter Parker and his icon, legend, queen Aunt May.

Peter was a good friend of yours but with you being so far away when you became a space cadet you hadn’t had time to talk so much.

May had brought some nice sunflowers with a get well soon card attached. Peter had also brought you something, his Nintendo DS and some of his and yours favorite games to play so that you could pass the time you had to stay there. You thanked them and before they left you said to Peter ”By the way i’ll be back in Queens for a while, maybe we could catch up”. ”Yeah, of course” he said happily.

Once you were back in Queens you and Peter went out to eat at your favorite pizza place where Peter’s Uncle and Aunt or your parents had taken you when you were younger.

You managed to get the same old table you used to have when you were younger. The two of you then ordered and started catching up, he told you about how things were going with his studies, hanging with Ned and Mj, midtown and the fact that Flash was still a dick. You told him about your own studies and about your ”adventure” in space.

”I’ve really missed this” you said a bit sentimentaly. ”Me too” Peter said. ”What happened to us, it’s like we never see each other anymore” you said a bit sad. Peter’s expression changed slightly, he looked worried and said ”I can’t see you”.

”I know we both get so busy with our studies and other-” you started but was cut off by Peter saying ”No Y/n i mean i can’t see you anymore”. Which shocked you. ”Are you ending our friendship because we don’t hang out enough?!” you asked almost panicking.

”No Y/n! Look at your hands” Peter said worriedly. ”Look at my- OH MY GOD!” you yelled as you raised your hands only to see your shirt sleeves and a flying bracelet. You stood up in panic and ran towards the mens bathroom.

You looked yourself in the mirror by the sinks only to see your clothes being the frame of your body but not your actual body. Peter had followed you inside and asked ”Are you alright? How long has this been happening?”.

”It never happened before! What do i do?” you continued to panic. After a solid 8 minutes of you panicking and Peter trying to calm you down while at the same time trying to figure out a way to help you, Peter finally had an idea and brought out his phone and called someone for help.

Around 25 minutes after he called someone he received a call back and when he hung up Peter said ”Okay, i called a someone i know and he should be able to help us, he sent a car that’s waiting outside”.

Peter and you left the resturant and got into a car driven by a man named Happy Hogan. ”Tony’s not at the compound at the moment but he said you could use his lab so you could figure out what’s happening with your friend” Happy explained.

”Peter? Where are we going? What compound?” you asked. ”Oh? You have a lot to explain” Happy commented at Peter and drove away from the resturant. Peter then began a lengthy explaination of him becoming Spider-Man, working with Tony Stark and a bunch of other stuff.

It was a lot to take in but by the time you got to the Avengers Compund you had somewhat accepted all the crazy stuff that were happening. Peter showed you into the compound and guided the way to Tony Stark’s lab.

The lab was full of diffrent kinds of inventions that Tony Stark had made, Peter led you to a big cylinder shaped metal box with a door that had a bunch of wires leading to a computer beside it. ”What’s that?” you asked Peter.

”It’s a kind of scanner that should help us figure out what happened to you, step inside” he explained and opened the door. You walked in to the the big scanner and Peter closed the door behind you. Peter walked over to the computer and started the scanning.

At first everything went fine until there was some kind of disturbance in the scanner. ”Umm there is something wrong” Peter commented. ”What?” you asked a bit worried. ”Something on you is disturbing the scan” Peter informed you and thought for a moment.

He then got an idea and hoped you’d be okay with it. ”Y/n, i don’t want this to sound creepy but i think for the full body scan to work you might have to take of your clothes” Peter suggested with a small bush on his face a bit scared at what your reaction would be.

”Uhmm… Okay” you said a bit awkwardly while also starting to blush and got undressed inside the scanner until you were fully nude. Peter started the scan again which worked this time, when the scan finished Peter told you could come out while you waited for the scanners results. But the only thing he could see come out was your balled up flying clothes covering what would probably your crotch area if you were visible.

”Can i get dressed now?” you asked a bit embarassed. ”Yeah” Peter said just as embarassed at the thought that you were standing a few meters from him fully naked. You dropped all you clothes but your underwear on a table beside you (which would turn out to be a mistake) cause just as you were about to put on your underwear you noticed you could see your limbs again.

So you let out a small squeak which made Peter turn around and see you fully naked. ”I can see you again” he said in an amazed voiced but then he realized what he was seeing so he turned back and said ”Sorry, i didn’t mean to” while you were in a panic to at least put your pants back on. Then there was a small sound from the computer indicating that there was a result from the scan.

Peter went over to the computer and started checking what the scan had found. After you had gotten your pants on you walked over still bare chested and watched over his shoulder. ”Wow” Peter said as he checked the results and then explained ”I think i’ve figured it out, the thing that you were exposed in space must have somehow altered your DNA to make you be able to turn invisible”.

”Oh my god, i have superpowers now, what am i going to do?!” you said and started stressing out again. ”Hey, don’t worry i’ll help you figure it, i’ll help you learn how to control it” Peter said while grabbing a hold of your arms and pulling you slightly closer to him.

The two of made eye contact and before you knew it your lips were pressed against each other, Peter’s arm slipped around your bare waist and you brought up your hand under his shirt, soon enough the two of you lay naked on a pile of clothes on the floor while you fucked in Tony Stark’s lab.

The following week you moved in to the Avengers compund so that you could get help from Peter and the remaining Avengers to control your powers in a safer enviroment.

You would come to discover that you had another power to make forcefields that you could basically do a bit of whatever with, you could blast people with them, make objects or people you covered with them invisible, etc…

Tony even made you a suit that could turn invisible along with you so you wouldn’t have to strip down everytime you wanted to go unnoticed.

You sometimes came on patrols with Peter which became kinda like date nights for the two of you, as you took down criminals.

Peter would also try and visit you whenever he could in the compound and the two of would hang out, watch movies and cuddle.

#peter parker x male reader #peter parker x male!reader #spider man x male reader #spiderman x male reader #male reader #x male reader #x male!reader #x male reader fluff #x male reader headcanons #marvel x male reader #marvel x male!reader #mcu x male reader #male reader smut #x male reader smut #avengers x male reader #avengers x male!reader

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despairots · 2 years

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# ⌒ YOU GONNA SHARE OR?

𖥦 ˖⁩ ࣪ ִֶָ you didn’t know who to chose, they’re both so…

★ ( ˶ˆ꒳ˆ˵ ) › prompto x m!reader x noctis — poly, just teases, modern au.

a/n : mmm, promptis

warnings: sexual jokes, swearing :p

“fuck you!” “like, right now?” noct teased as i threw head into my pillow, prompto laughed turning of his DS, “we’ll stop teasing you if you just get ready.” prompto said as i glared at them both. “yeah? well get out if you want me to get ready.” i said as prompto and noct fist bumped each other before running out.

“those two idiots.” i smiled, getting up from my bed and opening my closet throwing on some forest green shirt with some dark green strips on it, ripped jeans with a black belt, sneakers and with some rings and necklaces. i grabbed my phone along with my airpods before running out, locking my door and heading out.

“took you long enough.” prompto said throwing an arm around me, “oh, can’t your boy take his time.” i gasped dramatically, leaning back dramatically as noct catched me, “can’t believe you said that to your dear bestfriend.” i commented, clinging onto noct, prompto pouting and looking away.

“just teasing~ where’s iggy and gladio?” i asked as we got into noct’s car, “said they’ll be waiting at us in the mall.” noct answered as i nodded pulling out my phone and airpods before playing music. “ohh~ what you listening there?” prompto snaked an arm around my waist, double tapping my phone.

“hayloft II?” i answered as he nuzzled his face into my neck, i furrowed my eyebrows, ‘totally unnecessary..? we’re just friends no biggie.’ i sighed, he tightened his grip on me as noct parked the car. “prompto~ let go.” i whined as i tried shaking him off, he mumbled a fine, letting go as we both exited.

noct grabbed my hand, calling ignis saying they arrived and gonna meet at GameStop (EBgames) hearing ignis on the other said saying sure.

“are you three dating?” i flared up at iris question, “u-uhh no…?” i mentally punched myself at the stuttering, iris looking me up and down, “you sure???” i gulped before nodding, i mean, i did have feelings for both of them and they were dating so i had no chance what so ever.

i sighed at the thought as everybody continued chatting and shopping, “you alright there, n/n?” gladio asked noticing my gloomy mood, “promise you won’t tease?” “promise.” “i like both noctis and prompto but they both dating and they probably not poly PLUS THEY PROBABLY SEE ME AS JUST A BESTFRIEND.” i explained as i sat down on a bench as noctis, prompto and iris went go kate & spades.

“hey, have you seen the way they act around you?” i looked at him with a confused look before shaking my head, he laughed before patting my shoulder, “look, they both like you. y’know what they said the other day to me and iggy? they said that your dense.” i groaned with gladio making fun of me.

“you just gotta let loose and see that they both like you and are willing to share you with each other.” i smiled at gladio, “thanks for making everything easier, gladdy.” “no problem kid.” he patted my head, noctis, prompto, and iris coming back from kate & spade, ignis coming back from old navy.

“aww~ n/n’s whining.” i glared at noct as he poked at my cheek, “you wanna get fucked up?” “sure but sorry i’m the top.” my cheeks turned red, “what the fuck!? not in that way!” i yelled as everybody laughed.

you see, we were all at gladio and ignis’s house deciding to have a sleepover, we were playing the games we brought from GameStop and both noctis and prompto kept flirting with me.

“it’s getting late, we should go to sleep.” ignis looked at his watch, “what? you want a proper sleep seclude?” i smirked as ignis rolled his eyes grabbing gladio and going to there shared rooms, iris already sleeping in her room leaving me and the two boys as we decided to watch a horror movie.

“why does the main character of every single horror movie gotta be stupid?” i muttered as i watched deena (i love her please 😕 don’t unfollow) observe ryan, i yawned feeling my eyes dropped, telling me to go to sleep.

i yawned letting my head collide with noct’s shoulder, “hey, noct, prompto…” they hummed looking at each other, “i like you both.” i said pecking noct’s lips and grabbed prompto’s hand leaving a kiss there before passing out on noct’s shoulder.

prompto flushed as he looked at his “bestfriend.” the move he pulled on both of them, noct still feeling his lips on his. guess they both underestimated him realizing he pulled the first move to confess and guess they decided to welcome him into their relationship.

#noctis x reader #prompto x reader #x male reader #ffxv #ff15 #final fantasy x reader #ffxv x male reader #modern au #prompto x noctis x reader #promptis #— hastaging feels like a job 🚬

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dacchamp · 1 year

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top 5 tonio moments 🤺 ?

IT'S TONIO TIME BABES!!!!!

1 - his win in monaco! I love that race with all my heart and he was so so so happy. I rewatch it a LOT.

2 - the day he won the championship (Unfortunaly I didn't see him win :(((( ) when i saw him all happy with his little flag and the awarss in his hand. He thanking everybody who helpes him including DS, BMW, Red Bull (ugh) and Robin (because why not). And of couse he had the chance to jump for JEV's embrace.!

Also he driving his car for the streets of Lisboa. Fucking great moment!

3 - In a livestream, Lando Norris callled him to ask for racing tips and tonio said he had more things to do than speak to him (iconic)

4 - His win in NYC last year and the most dumbest decision he had for a while: going to swim in that river (i forgot the name sorry 😭)

Fun fact: in a instagram comentary he said that after swimming in that river he could count with the six fingers he had on his hands (💀)

5 - there is a lot of moments I love between Tonio and a Robin BUT there's one in particular that I don't remember much of him... but I remember Tonio being on a livestrem on twitch and saying to Robin to come back to discord and then he said to Robin "I miss you". Like... I know that moment exist but i can't find it.

Shootout to the moments:

- when he won the championship, the President of Portugal called him... and he was in the bathroom... and he talked with the president siting there just like a normal person

- he showing his house to mitch, in a youtube video. He blaming the dog for making a mess with his punching bag is funny as f...

Maybe he has more moments but maybe I don't remember or i didn't watch them so... There you go 😙✌

#ask time #talking about tonio makes me so 🥺💕🥺💕🥺💕🥺💕🥺💕🥺💕#thanks raf 😙✌💕

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ingravinoveritas · 3 years

Audio

So, this delightfully juicy tidbit was brought to my attention today thanks to @thereallovebug: A new interview with Kate Beckinsale on the Armchair Expert podcast in which she and host Dax Shepard talk about their celebrity crushes, and Kate mentions Michael having a crush on Jude Law during the filming of Wilde.

Transcript below:

DS: “Who’s your--Jude Law’s for you?”

Kate: “No, Michael’s was Jude Law when we were dating, so I always assume that’s everybody’s.”

DS: “Ohh, right. That’s so in keeping with Michael, though.”

Kate: “But Michael was also playing his lover in a movie about Oscar Wilde at the time so he might’ve got carried away in his head.”

It’s first worth noting that Michael and Jude actually played rivals in Wilde, not lovers, so it is intriguing that Kate (mis)remembered it that way. Even more significant, though, is that it adds to the list of crushes Michael has loudly talked about having on men, and establishes that he is attracted to his male costars as well as female.

Another interesting thing is that Dax elaborates on his comment following this clip, saying that a crush on Jude Law was “on brand” for Michael. (”On brand” in what sense, one wonders? That Michael likes slim, pretty men? I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you...) While Dax expands on this by saying that Michael is an “artistic actor,” it doesn’t go beyond there...but for a hot second it almost like he was going to mention David as another “pretty” male costar of Michael’s.

This brings up another point, which is Kate’s seeming dismissal of Michael’s feelings as him getting “carried away in his head.” We know Michael has said previously that he doesn’t know where the line is between him and Aziraphale, and that it is very blurry. But again, Michael’s character in Wilde wasn’t a paramour of Jude’s character, so we know Michael can and does have feelings that surpass what he is acting in a given moment.

There’s no question in my mind that what Michael feels for David seems to go far beyond a mere crush, however...and while it might have started on the set of the show (or maybe even at the first table read), it’s been years since Good Omens came out, and Michael still seems just as besotted with David as ever.

So this was just a lovely piece of information to stumble across today, and seems to add further credence to the idea that Michael is highkey bi (or least definitely not 100% straight). Very, very interesting indeed...

#michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #david tennant #soft scottish hipster gigolo #kate beckinsale #interview #well i definitely won't be able to watch Wilde the same way again #bless #can't really blame Michael though because Jude was gorgeous in that movie #also Michael and David have a genuine connection and powerful chemistry and affection #the energy between them just crackles #truly a lovely sight #david is lowkey bi and michael is highkey bi #tell me again that they're not a couple #yes #ineffable lovers #good omens rpf #discourse

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misslilli · 2 years

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Felix Felicis

MSR. AU. M. | tagging @today-in-fic | read on AO3

Chapter 57 - Cupcakes And Coffee

[ Felix ]

At school on Monday, I'm quite surprised to find out that everybody seems to know about what has happened over the weekend - oh God, do they also know about my tantrum on the street? That'll ruin my reputation for good!

My worries are for nothing, no-one talks about that, I thank my lucky stars, and pretty soon, I'm exhausted by the giggles of my childish classmates. The fourth-graders create the most buzz, of course, so excited about the recent developments featuring their teacher.

It's kind of weird that everyone at school suddenly knows who I am, I've flown under the radar for quite some time now and while all the attention is kind of nice, it's also very overwhelming.

My best friend comes to my rescue at recess, pulling me away from the questions they all fire at me into a quiet corner of the school-yard. We sit on the stone wall that used to be our office, dangling our feet and just watching the other kids play until Suzie nudges my shoulder with her own.

"Are you okay, Fe?" I'm so glad I've got a friend like her, no-one ever bothered asking me that. Tilting my head from side to side, I contemplate my answer. Am I okay?

"Hmm… you know, at first, when I thought about Dad finding someone, I was so panicked and worried - I never thought he'd find someone as awesome as Miss Scully!" I have to stop myself from going into a rant about how she's so perfect in every way, Suzie hates that.

"She's pretty awesome, yeah. Little scary, but awesome!" At Suzie's correct assessment, I have to giggle when the thought of Miss Scully reprimanding my dad like she does with mischievous kids at school enters my mind.

Haha, you better watch out, Dad!

———

[ DS ]

Oh God, what a day! The kids have been an absolute nightmare today, giving me the worst headache with their incessant chatting, too excited to do any real work. I gave up trying to get them to settle down long enough to write the essay after recess with an exasperated sigh and had them work on the snowman craft instead.

My desk is the epitome of chaos, littered with textbooks and notebooks that I still have to grade today and snowmen of all shapes and sizes that I still have to hang up around the classroom. I'm proud to say they look a lot better than what I made yesterday. That one was an atrocity and if Alex hadn't stepped in to fix it, I'm sure the kids would've asked me if a First Grader made it.

Trying to rub the headache from behind my forehead, I look around to figure out which tiresome task I should tackle first, grading or decorating. Ugh. I just want to go home and curl up on the couch with a bag of Reese's to stuff my face with and some mind-numbing reality TV show I can stare at blankly.

I pick the lesser of two evils and grab some tape to start hanging up the snowmen around the classroom, letting my mind go blank with the mundane task. Outside, the kids waiting for the bus are having a snowball fight, enjoying it while it lasts and the sun melts away the last patches on the lawn. Their joyful faces and gleeful laughter make me smile and I look past them to the front steps, to see if maybe I can catch a glimpse of the Mulder boys leaving school.

Great, and now I'm out of tape too - seems like I can't get a break today. Muttering under my breath, the storm cloud over my head follows me all the way across school to the supply closet hoping against hope we're out of tape so I have a valid excuse to weasel my way out of my self-imposed duties.

When I return to my classroom roll of tape in hand, something seems… off. Something's different. It still smells like crayons and pencil shavings and books but there's also a hint of a familiar cologne in the air.

For a moment, I think I'm imagining things and my mind is playing cruel tricks on me, until I spot the Something Different. There, on top of the mess that's my desk, sits a single chocolate cupcake. Unmistakably home-made, with wonky frosting and a little sideways tilt to its form, it's also covered in M&Ms. In all the colors of the rainbow.

The card that's propped up next to it reads "Happy 1st Month Anniversary (idk if this is a thing…) - M" and right next to it, in the wobbly chicken-scrawl of a First-Grader "AND FELIX!". Oh boys.

It's a simple but oh so endearing gesture, warming the heart I clutch the card against, bringing a little glimmer of joy into a dreadful Monday.

Standing in line at Starbucks just like every Tuesday, head tilted back to ponder what to get from their selection, pointless because I always get the same thing once Pumpkin Spice and Peppermint Mocha are out of season, I don't notice my date walking in until I hear his familiar monotone in my ear.

"Excuse me, Miss, I was wondering if you could tell me: If you’re here, who’s running Heaven?" At his cheesy pick-up line, I turn around biting my lip to hide my grin and come face-to-face with the two Mulder boys, one with a shy grin matching my own and one with his face upturned, not bothering to hide the toothy grin.

"Hey boys!," I greet them, a little unsure about what to do with my hands and with Felix and the public setting of a busy Starbucks thrown into the mix, I'm acutely reminded of the times we stood awkwardly in front of each other on our first dates.

Mulder saves me from making a decision, leaning in and placing an innocent kiss on my cheek, its innocence only betrayed by the imperceptible small squeeze of his hands on my waist.

"Thank you for the cupcake, by the way, it was very thoughtful and absolutely delicious!" Felix is wearing the proud-of-his-dad grin again, patting Mulder's arm fondly.

"And it was all Dad's idea too, I only helped! But I did stop him from using the M&Ms from the floor, that's gross!" He's got such a knack for spilling secrets, blinking up so innocently at his dad to see if he gets a reaction, snickering to himself when Mulder gives him a brief glare before turning to the barista to place our order.

"We'll have a hot chocolate for the little man, a caramel macchiato for the pretty lady and I'll have a cup of coffee, black. Thanks!" I wonder if him complimenting me will ever stop sending an excited shiver down my spine or keep the blush from my face.

The barista throws amused glances at the both of us while we bicker about who gets to pay and Felix's exasperated tries to help by suggesting we should do rock-paper-scissors to please just make a decision.

Coffee in hand and Felix bouncing impatiently at the door, waiting for us to finish our order at the take-out station, my heart misses a few beats at the sudden proximity when Mulder reaches around to grab himself a stirrer, leaning in close to not be overheard by the bustling crowd around us.

"I can't stop thinking about you… and what's inside those bags!" The hairs on the back of my neck bristle at the low, gravelly tone of voice of his confession and the vivid memories of that night it evokes and it takes all my self-control not to turn around and kiss him silly, audience be damned.

I'm so distracted, the sugar pours steadily into my cup unnoticed, until he puts his hand over mine to tilt it upright with a self-satisfied chuckle at my embarrassed giggle.

"Ooopsie. You're quite the distraction yourself, mister!"

Felix takes what he apparently thinks is his spot now between us on our short walk, slipping his gloved free hand into mine as if it's the most natural thing in the world, swinging it back and forth with his bouncy step.

"I missed you at recess this week, buddy, Miss Anderson and I had absolutely nothing to talk about!" He giggles at my gross exaggeration, casting a quick glance at his dad before confessing that he only kept away because he was told to give me some space.

Thoroughly confused, I look up from him to a visibly uncomfortable Mulder. "You told him to stay away from me at school?"

"Well… no, that's not exactly what I said…" Felix interrupts him with a frown, never short of opportunities to embarrass his dad.

"Nonono, you said to give her some space, I heard you, Dad! And now that's not right either, what the heck, can you guys just make up your flipping mind? You're driving me crazy!"

———

[ Felix ]

I regret the words I said the second they tumble out of my mouth, as they get a raised eyebrow and that look only teachers can pull off in response. Oops.

I guess my sassiness only flies with Dad sometimes, my cuteness doesn't save me from a gentle but firm reminder that she doesn't particularly appreciate my tone, even when I'm right. I backpedal lightning fast, rephrasing my statement and I'm relieved that she tells me it's okay to come see her at recess. Beaming proudly that she thinks it's a tradition we shouldn't give up, even if we see each other outside of school too.

With that out of the way, I'm really enjoying this short walk, especially with the rare treat of real coffee-shop hot chocolate I don't get all to often. Way too soon, we have to part but I could definitely do without witnessing the kiss goodbye I knew was coming, at which I still have to make a face, ew gross!

A small wave and a goodbye for me later, we're headed back to our house and I get a pretty stern talking to from Dad as well, for misbehaving - okay okay, I get it, no need to tell me twice, I'm not that dense.

———

[ FM ]

I wasn't joking when I said the contents of those bags are driving me absolutely insane, sending my imagination into overdrive. I can barely concentrate on anything else, least of all on work. Reports I usually finish in under an hour take far too long to complete when your mind decides it's a good idea to drift off every few minutes. Or, instead of typing away, you find yourself surfing the online shop of Agent Provocateur, too turned on to stay on task.

In times like these, I guiltily envy those guys who can invite someone over whenever they want and don't have to wait until the coast is clear. Theoretically, it would be easy to send Felix off to stay with someone else, but I made a promise to him I wouldn't do that.

Building anticipation is nice and all that, but it's killing me, the waiting and imagining - I have no idea how I'm going to survive until Saturday, when we're finally alone in my house, without bursting into flames.

I can already see the headline that reads "Beloved small-town teacher causes a rare case of spontaneous human combustion" Read more on page 6.

~~~~~

Inching closer to the big night - I'm so sorry for the slow burn guys 😭😄 It'll be over soon, I promise ❤️

#xf #the x files #xf fanfic #felix felicis

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sharkselfies · 3 years

Text

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast Transcript - Episode 2

Here is a transcript for episode 2 of The Minds Behind The Terror! In this episode, showrunners Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh are joined by author Dan Simmons and actor Adam Nagaitis, who plays Cornelius Hickey. They cover episodes 4-6 of the show, getting into Hickey’s psychology and Adam’s incredible acting, Dan’s feelings about never revealing the monster too soon, Adam getting locked in a conference room with the Tuunbaq prop for twenty minutes, and the spectacle that is Carnivale.

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast - Episode 2

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

Soo Hugh: Welcome to The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast. I’m Soo Hugh, executive producer and showrunner of this labor of love, here with my partner in crime Dave Kajganich, executive producer and showrunner.

Dave Kajganich: Hello.

SH: Today we welcome The Terror author Dan Simmons, and actor Adam Nagaitis who plays Cornelius Hickey in the TV series. Dan is calling in from Colorado, and Adam you’re here from London.

Adam Nagaitis: I am! Hi!

DK: Adam and Dan, I don’t know that you have been introduced to one another, so welcome both we’re happy to have you!

AN: Thank you! It’s lovely to be here.

Dan Simmons: Thank you. I have to start with just a fanboy meltdown here, I don’t do this, I don’t praise actors that much even when I’ve met them, but I need to use a word that as a novelist and as a mature, American human being I don’t use because the younger generations have appropriated it, it’s the only adjective that they use in their whole vocabulary, but Adam, your performance as Cornelius Hickey was brilliant. It was awesome.

AN: Thank you so much, Dan, and obviously the feeling is beyond mutual. There is no Cornelius Hickey without you, so, um, really overwhelming to hear someone like you say that, so thank you so much.

SH: This is so touching.

DS: And I’ll confess something else to Adam, the first time I watched it, I thought your character was a good guy because he jumped down in that grave to put the lid back on.

[laughter]

DS: It was on my second viewing I thought, “Wait, he stole the boy’s ring! Bastard!”

SH: So this is the second podcast of this series, if you haven’t heard the first one, episode 1, we recommend highly that you go back and listen to those, that first episode will cover episodes 1.01-1.03. Today we’ll talk about episodes 1.04-1.06, and if you have not seen those episodes please, please don’t break our hearts and listen to this podcast! Watch the show first! We’ll have many spoilers that we’ll be discussing.

SH: So now since you guys have finally met one another, Dan and Hickey--Dan and Adam.

[laughter]

SH: Should we talk about, Dan, just how you first originally structured Hickey in the novel, and we know that you loved Hickey, but your experience watching the show in terms of seeing the changes that we have made and what we’ve kept from the book, how that affected you.

DS: Mostly the changes that you guys and Adam did for the character of Hickey I think, uh, I don’t wanna praise too much, but they’re marvelous. They showed me a succession of, um, not villains but a complex, sometimes wicked character in a way that I don’t think I got to in the book. My character was like--a bit too much like Iago in Othello, you know, he tended to be motiveless malevolence, or malignancy, which is the way you describe Iago. And there are many Iagos in the world, but the way that Adam created Hickey out of the soft clay of my introduction was marvelous to me. I could just see all the wheels turning in Hickey’s head, all the ways he’s looking for an edge, so I took it to maybe point C or D, you guys took it through Y.

DK: The last thing that we’ve seen Hickey do is that he has gone through the lower decks of Terror and has shat on a bed...

[laughter]

DK: ...and has found a resignation letter from Crozier that no one is meant to see, because Crozier is now in command of the expedition. We have laid out a different kind of ascension, if you will, or architecture for Hickey’s arc in the show from the book, and I wonder, Adam, if you could speak a little bit to having read, I think, part of the novel and been told to stop reading by me and Soo because we didn’t want you to be confused. How did you receive these episodes, and how did you plan to sort of make the--cover the distance between those two points in Hickey’s arc, which it’s a lot of distance to cover.

AN: There are pieces of the novel that stayed with me and unfortunately I could not get out of my head as much as I would try, ‘cause they were very potent aspects of Hickey, were always useful, but it’s as you said, Dan, it was just that the switch, I’m just backtracking ‘cause there’ll be a reason, but the switch from, the clarification for me, or the justification of his motivations was all really I had to find. A new soul, a new motor. And that motor sort of begins--perhaps changes gear, in episode 4, when Hickey is--I don’t wanna say betrayed? But you know, for the first time he’s proactive about a decision he makes when he goes and grabs Lady Silence.

[show audio]

Crozier: There’ll be no violence towards this woman without charges brought and well proved. Who is responsible for this?

Hickey: I am, sir.

AN: He’s pushing the boundaries of what his courage is allowing him to do at that point, and he knows that this is dangerous. But it’s also completely necessary and he can’t help himself. And I think he’s fairly sure of a reward. But what ends up happening, he considers himself constantly self-aware, like an incredibly high introspective IQ, that if he’s achieved anything in his life, it’s that he is completely honest with himself at all times. He has these conversations in the mirror all day, every day, just to make sure that he’s sharp, that nobody will call him out on any sort of fracture that they can see within him. He sees his weaknesses, he accepts--that’s a soulful narcissist, I suppose, as a way of describing him, but one thing that has escaped him he realizes is that his desperate need to be accepted, to be loved, to be seen, and be patted, and to be, um, to have that authority figure, whatever you wanna call it, allowing you the rite of passage.

[show audio]

Hickey: Captain Crozier, there’s something I wanna say, but I hardly dare speak the words.

Fitzjames: Oh, speak the words, Mr. Hickey.

Hickey: Well, of all I know in this world--and of this world… I tell you. That… I do not believe it is an animal we battle.

AN: And he realizes when he gets lashed, this day of sort of revelation, where he understands every time he gets hit, you know, he--I took a lot of the lashing I took through the way that Hickey’s described in the book, that his life has been this low level horror story, and pain is something that is incredibly interesting to him. It’s not something to be avoided, it’s something to be embraced.

[show audio]

[sound of the lashing, Hickey gasping in pain]

SH: Adam, if we had to break down the whipping scene, ‘cause I mean your performance in that moment, I mean, it’s so extraordinary, the amount of what you were able to pull out physically as well as just emotionally in your face in that scene. Will you walk us through, what did you internally--‘cause in all you were saying about Hickey being with one foot planted in practice but also at the same time being the self-aware philosopher, but in that moment of the lashing, some different, higher kind of understanding must have been in place, ‘cause pain is at work there. Was your process different in that scene?

AN: You must forgive me as well for goin’ on, ‘cause when I talk about Hickey I get lost

[Crosstalk, Soo reassuringly saying “No!”]

AN: and I go forever, but I remember it sort of breaking it down, preparing it was breaking it down into how you are perceived when you enter that realm of torture or judgement or whatever it is, and he always is gonna make sure that he didn’t lose the experience in stupid, human things like shame, or, you know, consideration of embarrassment, he never walks in--it’s almost as if there’s never anybody else in the room, he doesn’t care to cloud it. And that was the very first point, was to get in and go, “What does it mean to be punished as a boy?” I was thinking, “You know, that’s it, what does that mean? I wonder what they’re gonna do to me?” When he realizes that and these people around him, that--I don’t know, it’s kind of--I suppose it was such a strange collaboration of sensations, because at the one point, you know, I’m in this, as an actor I’m naked in this scene with all these people, and being punished as a boy should have taken Hickey down, you know, the shame should have overwhelmed him, and it should have been this sort of embarrassing situation, and instead it became empowering. He wasn’t afraid of crying and screaming, and again, it’s not--if it’s practical, and it helps, it’s no big deal. It’s just pain. And everybody else would be in pain, and it doesn’t matter. Even if, you know, if people perceive him as weak, he’ll find a way to get ‘em. It doesn’t matter.

[show audio]

Crozier: Again.

[whip cracking, ship creaking, muffled groan from Hickey]

SH: And something we haven’t talked about much yet in these podcasts is this theme of hubris and the hierarchy and the patriarchy, and Dan you explore it fully in your book. In terms of figuring out, you know, where our characters come from, and their foundations and backbones, they come from a very distinct historical period that really thought that their empire was the crowning achievement of human civilization, right? And that the royal navy is this prime embodiment of that conquest. They were gonna go out into the world, find that sea route to China, and the world will be theirs. In both the book and our show, that kind of thinking is what drives them into the heart of peril, right? And what was always interesting about the Hickey character, in some ways, was he questioned--in some ways he’s very--too modern for his times, in some way, in that he questioned that hierarchy, that patriarchy.

And that’s something that I think Dave and I can both sympathize with as well. The character was so interesting to write for because Hickey was in some ways an easy embodiment of our voice today. And then when you--when we watch your performance, what was great about your performance was it was never slippery, ‘cause it’s really easy to play Hickey as slippery. I always felt that your performance was always located in something very very direct. People can play characters like Hickey where you don’t--they never wanna commit to anything because he’s supposed to be nebulous, or too ambiguous. That was never the situation. When you had that smile on your face, when Irving is saying, you know, “climbing exercises!” we know you’re not playing Irving, which is great, and I think that’s such a success of your portrayal of Hickey, is it never feels slippery.

DK: Well an awful lot of people came in to audition for this part, and what we found was a lot of people, most people--in fact, everyone but you, Adam--played Hickey as a kind of pre-built villain, and when we saw your first tape come in and you were open-handed, and you were smiling your way through the same monologue that everyone else had put fangs on, we knew that you were our Hickey, because that kind of charisma, and that kind of confidence, and that kind of hubris, in a way, is what were going to be the magic ingredients, I think, it’s what we sort of loved about the opportunity for the show to take the Hickey from Dan’s book and sort of turn it in a different unexpected way so that readers who hadn’t read the book wouldn’t know right off the bat whether they were meant to sympathize with Hickey or be wary of him or both, and I think that’s a great achievement of the performance is you sort of feel you’re on both rails the whole time, and I think that’s kind of an amazing achievement.

AN: That’s how you wrote it! I mean that was exactly--I think that you saw what you wrote, the real strength of that character was in his understanding of himself and his understanding of the hierarchy and how this world functions, you know? He’s studied it, gave him an intelligence, that’s the way I saw it when I read it.

DS: But it’s pretty amazing to think that by this point in the show, you have stolen a dead boy’s ring, you have shit on your ex-boyfriend’s bed, you have murdered our favorite doctor--

[laughter]

I mean there’s a lot, you’ve done a lot of things to turn the audience against you, but I don’t think that’s how an audience will feel!

AN: All completely justified.

[laughter]

SH: You’re acquitted.

[laughter]

SH: Can I steer the conversation just slightly in a different direction, ‘cause Dan, you made our lives very difficult in one way, so you have these two incredible set pieces in your book

[Crosstalk, Dave saying “yes.”]

SH: and they happen to fall chronologically so close to each other that production wise we had to film them one episode apart.

[Dave laughing, and he laughs a few more times in the background throughout the following]

SH: So in 1.05 we have the huge Blanky mast Tuunbaq fight sequence, and then in 1.06 we have Carnivale. They are along with something that comes at the end of our show, they are--those two scenes--those two sequences are, you know, some of our biggest biggest, just, action set pieces. They’re just extraordinary spectacles. But Dave and I, you know, we grew many grey hairs in this process because they’re so fantastic in the book, they’re fan favorites in the book, we knew that we had to--we knew we were gonna be pillaged based on whether or not we succeeded in those scenes. So seeing the mast sequence and seeing Carnivale, what did you think? DS: I know the difficulty in putting two set pieces like that close to each other, I mean, the chase with Blanky was pretty dynamic, and even more so from the book to your show, it was very dynamic.

[show audio]

[Tuunbaq fight scene! tense music, Blanky yelling, Tuunbaq roaring]

Hodgson: Fire!

[cannon fires, the shot hits the Tuunbaq and it growls, Blanky falls and screams, the mast creaks]

DS: And I love the character of Blanky, all the way through to, you know, his ending. He’s wonderful.

SH: Speaking of the mast sequence, what we were discussing prior, this is the first time we actually get to see the Tuunbaq. We’re curious how both of you--you know, ‘cause Dave and I, we’ve been very careful about how we utilize and deploy the Tuunbaq in our show, and making sure also that narratively in the story-wise it didn’t feel like, “Oh, we need to ramp up this episode, we’ll throw the Tuunbaq in,” that we were very more deliberate about when we put the Tuunbaq in our show, and making sure that it didn’t, like Dave was saying, didn’t fit the monster of the week. But I mean Adam, you have a very particular relationship with the Tuunbaq that starts to become revealed in episode 4, could you just walk through how you were thinking about it?

AN: The way that I started to think about the Tuunbaq was as a character, that was the best way for me to think about it, as another, you know, another member of the narrative in general, and it’s a person--it, of all the people, there are only, including the Tuunbaq, there are two that I respect: Crozier, who I see as something of maybe a soul mate, would be a way of describing it; and the Tuunbaq, who I see as a person who is, he or she is, true to themselves and unafraid, and undeterred, and pure in their resolve, you know, and their execution, and so it’s almost admiration and mutual respect, and that when that Tuunbaq looks at me, and I look back, that I see myself. And I see what I might become, you know, and I have--and Hickey sees himself as having elements that the Tuunbaq doesn’t have, you know, the idea of, Hickey so rarely sees people that he acknowledges, that, in his mind, deserve or warrant his acknowledgement, and when he first meets eyes with the Tuunbaq, that’s what he goes through.

[show audio]

[wind whirling, footsteps, Tuunbaq growling]

DK: Dan I was always curious to ask you about the Tuunbaq in terms of your creation of that creature. I mean in our research we found elements of different sort of spirits from Inuit mythology that seem like the Tuunbaq is kind of an amalgam of, can you walk us through sort of how you hit on that idea and what parts of it are from Inuit mythology that you can remember and what parts of it are your own invention, or just how that creature came to be, it’s such an interesting, fascinating creation?

DS: That’s a good question, I’ll answer it, but first I wanted to add an unharmonious, non-praising comment, which is when I was watching the series on my little computer screen and I got to the Tuunbaq chasing Blanky up the rigging and so forth, I paused the show, walked out in my front yard, aimed west, and shouted, “Don’t show the fuckin’ Tuunbaq!”

[laughter]

DS: “Not yet!” I’m sure you heard that.

SH: Did you think we showed it too much in that sequence?

DS: I did when I saw the sequence. When I’d seen the show front to back, one and a half times now, I think it’s fine. Dave, you remember, when we first talked about things, that was--I was stressing that left, right, and center, which is--I was basing it on a favorite movie of mine, which nobody else has as a favorite movie, but it’s the 1951 version of The Thing. Howard Hawks directed it even though he gave the credit to his DP, but he directed it, and it got so every time a door opened, every head, every person turned to look. And the monster turned out to be James Arness in a silly suit. But the tension was tremendous, and I think you guys build up very nicely, you know, everybody’s ready, looking over his shoulder, there’s that scene where somebody does, and the wiser man says “It’s only the ice, Georgie, it’s only the ice,” but of course it’s not.

[show audio]

[Neptune the dog barking]

Strong: He’s been goin’ on like that since the wind died.

Hartnell: Take your wigs off.

[rustling, wind whistling, Neptune continues barking]

Hartnell: Don’t you hear that?

DK: It was a fine line to walk, because on the one hand, you know, I don’t know if anyone would have made the show if it didn’t have, you know, quote unquote “a monster” in it. So we were trying to be very intelligent on how we deployed the Tuunbaq in the show, and wanted to make sure that when we did it didn’t feel like it was meant to spice something up, that it felt sort of earned, in some way, and you were confident that the less we showed of the Tuunbaq the better. But that isn’t--it’s not the easiest sell if you don’t happen to agree with this point of view, and you know, luckily we were sort of able to have our cake and eat it too, in a way, but still, even when episodes one, two, and three aired, we were reading reviews and people’s comments online saying, “Is there a creature in this show or isn’t there?”

DS: Or what, yeah.

DK: Some people really want that settled, and so we tried to do it both ways, we tried to show just enough to make sure that it felt like we weren’t being coy about it, but not so much that we exhausted what’s interesting about it.

SH: And also the fear--there is a danger, if you put it off, ‘cause, Dan, Dave and I agree with you that you wanna hold off the reveal of the monster as long as possible because it’s just gonna be more satisfying that way, but there’s a tipping point to that as well, of course, you know, right? ‘Cause if you delay it too long then the expectations are almost too great. And when you delay the monster for so long the level of perfection that the audience is gonna expect is never--we were never gonna please them. So at some point, by finding that right balance point of “we show them enough that they know we’re not playing coy with them.”

DK: We also had a storytelling reason, a really good one, to make sure we did show it up front in the first third of the season, which is, you know, by the time you reach episode six you realize there’s something wrong with the Tuunbaq, that it is getting sick, or it is going off somehow, I mean, when Lady Silence finally decides that she’s going to offer her tongue to it in hopes that it will accept her as a Shaman and that she can contain this sort of mythological disaster that’s happening, and it rejects her, and it shows up to that scene looking a little woozy, and you know, there’s obviously a cause to be concerned about it.

[show audio]

[eerie music, Tuunbaq growling and snuffling]

DK: That wouldn’t have landed if we hadn’t seen, in some form, the Tuunbaq in all of its majestic glory. You know, we think of the Tuunbaq as quite presidential, in terms of its comportment, you know, that it is a pure expression of this mythology, it is the keeper of equilibrium, it is neither a hero nor a villain. But by the time we get to episode six, we should be feeling a little bit panicked about what this creature is becoming. It seems to be falling apart in front of us in the same way that the men are.

SH: Our Tuunbaq exists. We don’t play that game of “it’s a figment of our characters’ imagination.” That is one route we could have gone, we did not wanna do that.

DK: Adam, I don’t know if you remember, when we finally got the scale model head of the Tuunbaq to Hungary, and we had it in a conference room, I think, and I grabbed you from set and I didn’t tell you where you were going, and I took you to a door and I pushed you through it and closed it behind you, and in that room was the Tuunbaq, and you were the first person in the cast to see it. Do you remember what that experience was like?

[laughter]

AN: That was terrifying!

[laughter]

AN: I do remember, I remember that day very very well. It was just a head on a stick, wasn’t it?

DK: A big head, but yeah.

SH: Enormous.

DK: It was just the head--

AN: A great big head on a stick! And I knew the importance of it, so I sort of closed my eyes and opened them. I remember thinking, it was the eyes, the human eyes, that convinced me that it was a unique, thinking machine. It was a unique creature that had--that was worthy of respect, that was kind of the thing that I remember thinking about it. And of course it was terrifying. But yeah, I remember the teeth, the human teeth. It was so brilliant, it was so brilliantly conceived. I remember it was head height, and I just stood in front of it for a while.

DK: I remember it was twenty minutes before I opened the door!

AN: You opened it for a long time! I was like, uh, is it gonna move? It was great. It was really scary.

DK: So Dan, walk us through where it came from. I mean, this is a creation from, almost from scratch, I think, from you.

DS: Well first I built the Tuunbaq out of what I think is a good monster and would be a good monster in the Arctic. And after constructing it, I went just tearing through Inuit mythology and stories and oral tales for quite a while before I found the right creature. He was called Tuunbaq in the mythology, but it could’ve been Sedna, Sedna was a great sea monster. They have so many wonderful beings. But you guys summed it up in dialogue…

[show audio]

[man speaking Inuktitut, another man translating]

Translator: From the Shamans… the thing that eats on two legs and four… a thing made of muscles… and spells.

James Clark Ross: I don’t understand. Is he describing a man?

Translator: Sorry, Sir James. I don’t know what the hell he’s describing.

DS: That was the best summary of the Tuunbaq that I’ve heard. I’m gonna steal it from you if I ever do readings on this book again.

DK: Oh good.

[show audio]

[men cheering]

Fitzjames: There it is. We’ve not heard that sound in far too long.

DS: I especially enjoyed Carnivale. I like it that you didn’t follow my lead and turn the Carnivale on the ice into the scene from The Masque of the Red Death. I had a sailor who’d actually read that story in Boston in my novel, so he’s the one who set up the Carnivale with all the rooms from the Edgar Allan Poe story, and yours, the idea of celebrating, going home essentially, when the sun rose, that made a lot more sense to me.

DK: Well do you know the reason we went in that direction, I think in the writer’s room when we were discovering all the different sort of signs and symptoms of things like scurvy, nostalgia was considered a primary symptom of scurvy, and one way you could diagnose it. And we thought, well, if these men were going to throw a party and all bets were off in terms of what the theme of that party would be, we wanted to embrace the likelihood that a lot of those men who were in early stages of scurvy at that point might have leaned too heavily on nostalgia. And that gave us a kind of a surprising new sort of code to sort of explore in Carnivale.

[show audio]

Fitzjames: Come on, boys!

[cheering]

Fitzjames: Now, let’s get our hair good and powdered before that damn sun finds us again.

[more cheering]

DK: The idea that Dr. Stanley, who has a child back in England, and, you know, has a clear sense of what the kind of illness that’s on the table being discussed could do to the men, and he hears the news of the beginning of episode six that they’re probably running out of food and, you know, the episode, that episode six is called “A Mercy” for a reason, that really Stanley thinks he’s doing a great favor to all of the men by killing them. And it just was--I’m curious, when you watched that reveal in particular, that the Carnivale disaster was not going to come from the Tuunbaq but was going to come from somebody who was a kind of Cassandra in a way, like understood what was coming, in a way that lot of the men didn’t understand, whether that rang true emotionally to you in terms of how you would position these characters at that point in the novel.

DS: In the novel, you don’t have to compress time like that. The things can almost coexist and still work. So I had a little more freedom to do the Carnivale. But when you showed the malignant motives of the various people behind it, the doctor and so forth, the burgeoning insanity made sense.

[show audio]

[distorted music, liquid pouring, yelling]

Crozier: Hold him, hold him!!

[flames crackling, more yelling]

DK: Hickey’s arc between episode four and episode six, you sense someone who’s coming into a power, but doesn’t exactly know yet how he wants to use it, and is scanning other people and other relationships to try to find out where will the advantage come from. And I think what’s great about the final shot we have of Hickey in six, that is Hickey just before someone tells him, probably, that they’re going to be walking out.

AN: By the time we reach episode six, he’s well on the way to formulating in the material world, in our physical world, to formulating his sort of group. What’s going on inside him, what’s going on in his--maybe even subconsciously, or even very very very quietly consciously, is a furthering of his understanding that this universe is for him. These happenings are for him. They have his name all over them, his real--and since the beginning of his life he’s been checking the dials, trying to tune into the right radio station where there’s a clear voice of the numinous, or the supernatural, or the universe, or God, or whatever you wanna call it. He’s hoping for the clear voice that says his name.

DS: I have a question for Dave and Soo, which you looked at the muster of the crew as I did, you know, I had to decide who was what in a fictional term, you have about 127 interesting stories if you want to pursue them, but were you aware early on that there was gonna be one messiah developing in the story?

SH: I don’t know if we looked at it in terms of a messiah figure.

DS: Ah, but Hickey does.

DK: In these episodes, I think he doesn’t quite yet know what he’s going to become, except he knows he doesn’t have to be subservient anymore to other people’s versions of what he could become. I think he’s not quite sure where he is. He knows he’s just moved from one ladder to another ladder, he’s no longer on sort of the hierarchical ladder of the ships, he’s on a bigger ladder and he’s climbing, and he doesn’t quite yet know what heights that will reach, but it’s fascinating to see Hickey unleashed in these episodes, but not yet know what he’s going to put his power toward.

[audio from the show]

[the music from the end of episode six during the brief moment of sunrise plays]

SH: 1.04-1.06 takes place from the last sunrise of the year, and then the end of 1.06 is the sunrise of the year, so in terms of just that lovely visual metaphor, it’s also our dark nights, where we have polar nights. Did you guys, watching the episodes, did you guys feel that darkness? You know, Dave and I were so curious whether or not people understood what it feels like to live in perpetual darkness for months, and whether or not our audience was gonna get that. How did that come through for you? DS: The darkness, it was a hard thing, I think, to do in a series like this, it’s pressures, like the men in the ship not only have the pressure of the ice groaning and moaning and growling and pushing at the ship, they have the pressure of the months of darkness. And I think you did it well, I don’t know if it was a reviewer or a friend who said the show is all about--in the ship it’s all about claustrophobia, outside the ship it’s all agoraphobia, fear of open spaces.

SH: Oh that’s wonderful!

DK: Absolutely. We talked a lot about that in the writers’ room, about how there was--we didn’t know which was worse, you know, and characters would have different opinions about that. Is it better to be sort of sealed up in almost a coffin-like environment, or is it better to be exposed with no way to protect yourself? I don’t know what I would choose.

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

SH: So that is episodes 1.04-1.06, Dave and I are here with Dan and Adam, and it’s been such a pleasure you guys, thank you for joining us, and next time we’ll be covering episodes 1.07 and 1.08. Dan and Adam, both of you will be back as well.

DK: Wonderful.

DS: Great.

SH: Thank you!

[preview snippet from the next episode plays]

AN: In complete honesty, it never occurred to me that any of those things were cruel or despicable!

[laughter]

#the terror #the terror amc #the minds behind the terror #dave kajganich #soo hugh #dan simmons #adam nagaitis #personal #as with last time google doc link will be in the reblogs #and please lmk if you see any typos or other mistakes!

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princessmadafu · 3 years

Text

37 bleedin’ pages!

I have condensed them for you and left out most of the bits that the nasty evil British Press have already covered. Feel free to skip any boring bits.

Dax Shepard: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert's Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Mouse.

Monica Padman: Hi.

[...]

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Pretty ironic really, as Harry wades into fake news and how advertising algorithms are ruining us...

DS:...It's like the algorithms on the internet. You can't compete with that, a human.

PH: You can't if you have the awareness of what it's doing to you. And the fact that it's learning, which is scary. And advertising has been going on for hundreds of years, but done really responsibly. The difference here is targeted ads. If ads have always worked for companies, you can put on the TV, you can walk away, you can come back, your involvement is switching on switching off or changing the channel. Whereas now with algorithms is there, it's just feeding your habits. And it's also reading through your emails and everything else. So it's getting to know you, like, it gets to know the decisions you're gonna make before you make them, then it creates this echo chamber of no pushback, of no context of nothing. It's just perpetuating and feeding the bias and the habits that you already have inside of you, which is terrible.[...]

Harry needs to learn about AdBlock and Ghostery and VPNs and Tor and DuckDuckGo and Smartpage and all the other clever little ways the computer-literate have of ridding their lives of unwanted advertising. I haven't seen an ad in years. The only person feeding my habits is me. It’s called personal responsibility. Maybe Harry still needs a Nanny but most grown-ups don’t. Oh wait, I forgot, the “Meghan&Harry Show” fans are all kids.

PH: [...] It's a computer. It's like, who wrote the algorithms? You guys did? Probably all male and all white.

Oooh, let's be sexist and racist, Harry! Did you ever hear of these women or are they too scary?

https://biztechmagazine.com/article/2012/05/mothers-technology-10-women-who-invented-and-innovated-tech

Then they discuss Naked Vegas (this guy Dax has a thing about nudity) and Harry in Afghanistan. And discuss a calendar of naked men that DS and MP put together - their favourite male bodies. What a good job it's only gloating over naked male bodies and not naked female bodies. It's apparently acceptable, for some reason. Harry doesn't know who the guys are.

DS: Monica makes this for me every year and it's a calendar of all my favourite bodies of friends.

MP: And they're all men.

DS: They're all men.

MP: And they're all gorgeous bodies.

[...]

And is Harry nervous talking about mental health? He shouldn't be, he's been banging on about it for years.

PH: Yeah. Was I nervous? No. Not so much nervous. But I guess on this particular subject around mental health. Yeah. For me, it's always a, unfortunately, today's world is quite a sensitive subject, not just for the people who are sharing. But ultimately, the subject matter itself has to be handled with care. [...] It ends up getting weaponized by certain people.

Weaponised by certain people? Like him and Markle, for instance. Neither of 'em has any talent so they weaponise their mental health. Big big mental health bombs loaded with word salad to lob at their own families and cause huge distress. Not nice, Harry.

PH: That's how I've always felt when it comes to projection. I mean, hatred is a form of projection, right? [...] We're not born to hate people. So it manifests itself over a period of time. And of course, it can come from unresolved pain, or being hurt continually, as a young kid or through adult life. But ultimately, there's a source to it. There's a reason why you want to hate somebody else.

Like his dad, his brother...

PH: And actually have some compassion for them. Which is really hard when you're on the receiving end of this, like, just vile, toxic abuse. But the reality is, is you say, flip it. [...] Every single one of us wherever we are, wherever we come from, there will always try and find some way to be able to mask the actual feeling and be able to try and make us feel different to how we are actually feeling, perhaps having a feeling. Right, because so many people are just numb to it. That was a huge part of the beginning of my life, which was like, I rejected. I said, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm fine.

And now he's moved on to promoting his new mental health stuff with Oprah, The Me You Can't See...

PH: So if you are making that conscious decision to say: You know what, it's not self serving, but I want to share my story. I'm being asked to share my story to hopefully help someone or loads of other people. I'm probably going to get trolled. I'm probably going to get attacked by the same people that were doing anyway. If I'm willing to make that decision, surely that comes from a place of courage rather than weakness?

Or possibly naivety. Harry is only wanted for his money-making title and royal status; he has no mental health qualifications, he's not a mental health professional, he's not an expert, all he brings to the table is the glamour of being a prince of the BRF. Which he quite clearly hates. Markle is lining her pockets from their self-indulgent mental health whinge fest and he's too dim to see it. There follows the bit about the spectrum of upbringing that the press is covering nicely so I can skip the next few pages - the bits where Harry says he doesn't see that talking about his own issues is complaining, and “it's the job, right”, how he never wanted the job of being royal, and his therapy and how “massively self-critical” he is (yet still can't see that he's not being honest with himself), ooh and sharing his hatred of the British press - that's a good bit, let's skip to page 18:

PH I think the biggest issue for me was that being born into it, you inherit the risk, you inherit the risk that comes with it, you inherit every element of it without choice. And because of the way that the UK media are, they feel an ownership over you. Literally like a full on ownership. And then they give the impression to some of their, well, most of the readers, that that is the case. But I think it's a really dangerous place to be if you don't have a choice, but then, of course, then people quite rightly will turn around and go. So what if you didn't have a choice? It was privilege? [...] Page Six of the New York Post, they took pictures of my son being picked up from school on his first day [...] But I guess my point is the way that I look at it, especially now living here one hour outside LA. Like it's a feeding frenzy here. We spent the first three and a half months living at Tyler Perry's house. You let us stay. And the helicopter helicopters, the drones the paparazzi cutting the fence like it was madness. And people out there -Their response was, Well, what do you expect if you live in LA? It's like, Okay, well, first of all, we didn't mean to live in LA. This is like a staging area before we try and find a house. And secondly, how sad that if you live in LA and you're well known figure, you just have to accept it. The first security we had, I said, Well, where's the safest place? Inside. Just because I'm a well known person, you can't go outside anymore. [...] it's really, really sad. And of course, their argument is - the paparazzi and everybody else - is like all if you're in the public space, then it's absolutely fine for us to do it. So what is our human right as an individual and as a family, you're saying that if the moment we step foot out of our house, that it's open season and free game? What? Because of public interest?. There's no public interest in you taking your kids for a walk down the beach. Nothing...

And on and on it goes... He should've stayed in the UK then. The Cambridges are managing very nicely, thank you. They take their kids for walks on the beach, and we'd never seen them until they released their anniversary video the other week. Harry's clearly envious of William; Harry's mad wife is vitriolically envious of Catherine. Oh and I’m pretty sure it’s the mad wife who keeps phoning her go-to paps when she needs to be in the news again.

PH: [...] I believe we live in an age now where you've got certain elements of the media redefining to us what privacy means. There's a massive conflict of interest. And then you've got social media platforms, trying to redefine what free speech means. Why - I wonder why you're doing that. And again - so this has been happening for 15 years now. And we're living in this world where we've almost like all the laws have been completely flipped by the very people that need them flipped so they can make more money and they can capitalise off our pain, grief, and this sort of general self destructive mode that's happening at the moment [...]

He doesn't get how hypocritical this is, does he? The Markles are the ones capitalising on their grief, pain and the rest of it. And no-one would be interested in them without the royal bits because they have nothing else to offer. Failed actress and used-to-be-a-soldier wrapped up in festering bitterness.

Blah, blah... went shopping in a supermarket... saw lots of chewing gum... blah, blah... Archie on the back of his bicycle... girls want to be princesses... You don't need to be a princess, you can create the life that will be better than any princess or it's something along those lines... she said she expected [the press] to be fair... Pages and pages of how he hates the British press...

PH: [...] And especially when you can't defend yourself so yes, I think when you marry into it, especially when it's one Princess Diana's sons there is a certain amount of 'okay what I'm actually letting myself in for?' But very few people actually know - apart from the Brits - how toxic that element of the of the UK press is.[...]

We're up to page 24 now, if you're still with me. Oh here it is, Harry's unconscious bias... What’s the betting the mad wife has scripted this bit for him?

PH: [...] So going back to the whole sort of travelling around the Commonwealth, I thought I knew, right, having been able to travel that much and meet so many and such a diverse group of people. I thought I understood life. Especially bearing in mind most of the countries I was going to were, most of the communities are going to were people of colour. But then I was really shocked once I started doing therapy. And that bubble was burst. And I started doing my own work, really - a lot of work - and started to uncover and understand more about unconscious bias. And I was like, wow, I thought since I screwed up when I was younger, and then did the work. I thought I then knew. But I didn't. And I still don't fully know. It's like a constant working progress. And every single one of us has it. [...] Everyone has biases, of all sorts. But I think it's a really important point, especially now, after everything's happened in the last year and a half, like the world is changing, the younger generation are driving it. And you've got to like a multi-racial, cultural sort of movement happening, which has never happened before. But unconscious bias is the way that I understand it, is, again, it's not something that's wrong with you. Right? And you don't have to be defensive about it. That's the thing. No one's blaming you. But the moment that you acknowledge that you do have unconscious bias, what are you going to do about it? Because if you choose to do nothing you're continuing to fuel the problem, which means that you're then heading towards racism. Whereas unconscious bias is actually something that is inherent, unfortunately, in every single one of us. But that it is possible to educate yourself to be more aware of the problems and therefore be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Markle's got him well-trained on this one, hasn't she. I wonder if he's read anything critical of the unconscious bias movement, or just repeating what he's been told to. Oh and then he goes off about being in the army...

PH: I loved it. I love wearing the same uniform as everybody else. I love being treated the same. I love the expectation of if you want to get that job, or you want that promotion, or you want to finish this race, it's all on you. There's no special treatment, you're not going to get any help. If anything, you're probably going to get treated the opposite because everyone thinks that you've had an easy life. And everyone's always helped you get to where you are.

But...but...but, Harry wasn't treated the same, there was special treatment, he was helped to get to where he was. He scraped a couple of poor quality A Levels and got admitted to Sandhurst because he's a prince. Good old Wikipedia says:

In June 2003, Harry completed his education at Eton with two A-Levels,[22] achieving a grade B in art and D in geography, having decided to drop history of art after AS level.[23] He has been described as "a top tier athlete", having played competitive polo and rugby union.[24] One of Harry's former teachers, Sarah Forsyth, has asserted that Harry was a "weak student" and that staff at Eton conspired to help him cheat on examinations.[25][26] Both Eton and Harry denied the claims.[25][27] While a tribunal made no ruling on the cheating claim, it "accepted the prince had received help in preparing his A-level 'expressive' project, which he needed to pass to secure his place at Sandhurst."[25][28]

PH: And then suddenly, like - while I was at school, I hated exams. And I promised myself I'd never do exams again. Then I joined the army of which is full of exams. I still promised myself I'm never gonna do it and then I end up flying Apache [...]

Gods, it's getting boring. Even the interviewers are zoning out. Still ten pages to go. Wish I hadn't started this, I could be out weeding. Weather's nice, not too windy... Do I deserve a quick G&T yet?

PH: Or worse, was they turn around and say, right, because last week, you're out the front. This week, you got to carry his bergan, I'm like - what, 30 extra pounds? Nooo. But it was, it was the most normalising experience or job that I could have ever hoped for. And then going to Afghanistan twice [...] And someone said to me very recently, from the moment that you're born into today's world, life is trauma, so the sooner that we actually acknowledge that but but [...]

A-a-a-a-and he's back on the mental health thing, PTSD or PTSI,

PH: Post Traumatic Stress Injury is like: Well, that makes sense, because I just saw my mate get blown out. But the other piece of this is, what we need to remember is, the lot of the recruiting that we do in the UK, comes from certain cities and certain homes, where there's childhood trauma. So what we collectively have already got inside of us, the trigger of seeing something happen in Iraq, Afghanistan can be the trigger. So everyone goes: Oh, it's because they were on operations, and because they saw their makeup blown up. It's like, no. [...] So that's what I've been working on for years, for the last five years, which is like, and it started in therapy of like, I don't want to lose this thing, because I think it's, I feel so connected to my mum. [...]

They move on to parenting, which the press is rubbing its hands over... Harry blaming everyone but himself and his saintly mother - Charles, HMTQ, PP... "They f*ck you up, your mum and dad". But not the mum bit. He can't push his mum off her pedestal.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse if you don't know Larkin's poetry. How much more? Nearly there. Monica loves The Crown and doesn't realise it's fictitious.

DS: [...]Well, Harry, I've really really liked talking to you. You're very charming. You're very intelligent. You're handsome, and I can't wait to see your torso.

MP: Thank you so much for coming.

DS: So I just want to remind everyone that May 21 on Apple Plus, you should check out Oprah and Prince Harry's 'The Me You Can't See'. I have to imagine it's similar to her book, which I just read, which is absolutely incredible 'What happened to you?' So everyone should check out 'The me you can't see' on Apple plus May 21.

And still Harry won't shut up... Shut up, shut up. Cut his mic. You don't have to read this last bit, they've already wound up the interview...He still won’t shut up.

PH: Yeah, we're moving from the physical to the emotional, right, physically. At the beginning of this pandemic, people were panicking. And there was that fight or flight like, ahh what do we do like lockdown, survival? Yeah. And now that the vaccines have been sort of, we're getting to the point where more and more people are being vaccinated, we're now in the emotional phase of what I read in the New York Times article was called languishing, which is really interesting. It's like the is the middle child between flourishing and depression. You just feel flat, and it's not depressed. It's definitely not flourishing. You lack the energy and the will, the motivation, all that kind of stuff. Because you're kind of sitting there going - Well, what happens next? And I think it's really important that we talk about languishing. And it was coined by someone I can't remember who but I think it was the journalist who wrote the story was Adam Grant. No, he didn't come up with it. Someone else came up with him, he wrote this, the most amazing article about languishing and the fact that how important it is to be able to talk about it because - look when it comes to mental health, we need to realise and accept that every single one of us have mental health. There's varying degrees, as we said, you've got the mental illness, and then you've got the sort of the awareness and the work that you can put in, like, Where do you want to be that we shouldn't just sit there and go: Oh, mental illness is once we are literally on the floor crawling around in the foetal position needing help. But for me, I don't think I need therapy anymore. But I wanted. And when I say therapy, I mean, actual therapy, sitting down having a discussion with someone. But I also mean like, nature, like going for walks, like throwing the ball for my dog down the beach and stuff like that. There are certain things around the world that are free, some you have to pay for, but ultimately go searching for the things that make you feel good about yourself. Like that's the key to life, get rid of the bad stuff, get rid of the hate, and just focus on the good. And your whole life turns around from that. I hate this idea. And I was one of them. I fell for it. Right? I didn't acknowledge that clearly what happened to me when I was 12 years old, losing my mom and all the other pieces that happened, the traumatic experiences that happened to me since then, I didn't acknowledge them, when perhaps - maybe I need to deal with this because if I don't, how the hell am I going to be a decent father to my son and my daughter? Like that awareness, I didn't have then. But again, we've got what - 40 experts as part of this series, and the Surgeon General, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, she's absolutely fantastic. And she was talking about this concept of mental health being sort of public health, right. Because the services are so limited. There's not enough money. The problem is actually immense. How can we all help each other rather than this: 'Oh, once I'm broken, or once I'm suffering, I have to go here.' And there's not enough rooms or spaces for the amount of people or the for the need, when actually you can get ahead of it, and work on the prevention by sharing and being more vulnerable with each other, and being able to process this grief or this loss, or this trauma that every single one of us have experienced and will experience. So anyone who's sitting there going: 'I don't have a problem, and I never will have a problem.' Well, you probably are already contributing to the problem, because you probably got your blinkers on, you probably created your own echo chambers. So I think it's a that, that's certainly what I've experienced for my own process, my own journey, my family and my friends and everybody else is. Anyone who thinks, oh, we're fine. You're the one who's like, willing to talk about it. It's like, yeah, I'm willing to talk about it and talking about it. And the financial element as well. We're pouring money into on the downsteam, when it's like, Can we just focus upstream? Yeah, we focus on one thing, like to me listen to Oprah was what was one of the reasons that this whole thing started was two of the biggest issues that we're facing in today's world, I think, is the climate crisis, and mental health. And they're both intrinsically linked. Basically if we neglect our collective wellbeing, then we're screwed. Basically, because we can't look after ourselves. We can't look after each other. We can't look after each other, we can't look after this home that we all inhabit. So it's all part of the same thing.

DS: Prince Harry, I don't say this lightly. I love you. Thanks for coming. This was great.

M: Thank you so much.

PH: Thank you very much.

Wish I'd done my weeding.

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jalapeno-princess · 4 years

Text

All I Need is You

(Guys I miss Mark so fucking much *Cue Tori Vega I think we all miss Mark)

Songwriter Mark X Reader

Genre: Extremely fluffy angst (is that even a thing?)

Word Count: 5.8K

Summary: For all your life, your parents raised you to be the perfect daughter of every parent’s dreams. You did every single thing your parents forced you to do and never did you complain about anything they’d make you do, no matter how badly you wanted to. That all changed the day your path collides with Mark Tuan. After being stripped of your childhood completely in order to be respective and follow your parent’s desires, Mark shows you how beautiful life can be when you do the things you want to. Mark is the breath of fresh air from a life you feel so suffocated in. For the duration of your relationship, you did your best in hiding him from your parents in fear of them disapproving of the older boy. However, once you graduate from college, you decide you are old enough to make your own decisions and you build the courage to introduce your boyfriend to your family. The night starts off without a hitch; everyone seems to really like him up until your mom asks him what he does for a living. That’s when things take a turn for the worst and your mom gives you an ultimatum; to chose between the love of your life and your family.

A/N: Hey guys, so I’ve been wanting to write an imagine based on the song Paris by the chainsmokers for the longest time and here it is. Only when I reached the middle of writing the story did I realize this is the complete opposite of my other story “Second Chances” LOL. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this story (most of it is written in past tense so I hope you don’t get confused).

We were staying in Paris To get away from your parents And I thought, "Wow If I could take this in a shot right now I don't think that we could work this out" Out on the terrace I don't know if it's fair but I thought "How Could I let you fall by yourself While I'm wasted with someone else

"If we go down then we go down together They'll say you could do anything They'll say that I was clever If we go down then we go down together We'll get away with everything Let's show them we are better Let's show them we are better Let's show them we are better

“Hey, everything okay?”

It was currently 2:45 a.m. and normally, you’d be fast asleep right now but you couldn’t help feeling as if the bed grew more spacious and colder than it was when you first went to sleep. Mark was your own personal furnace; the two of you fell asleep pretty early after a long day of sightseeing and an even longer night of love making.

After multiple rounds of his all but gentle kisses on your neck, jaw and chest as he rammed himself in and out of your velvety walls, you both were too tired to get up and clean yourselves off. He immediately pulled you in to his chest and wrapped his arms tightly around your waist while placing his face in the crook of your neck and whispering sweet nothings until his dreams finally took a hold of him. It’s been like this for the last three weeks since you and Mark ran away to Paris in the hopes of hiding from your extremely overprotective and non-understanding parents.

You’d go sight seeing, visit a couple of museums, cute little coffee shops and sometimes you’d even go to a farmer’s market and you’d buy food to make for recipes you and Mark learned while watching whatever they had on television. Almost every single night ended up in sex; on a few occasions, there were drunken stupors where one of you or sometimes even both of you would have a little too much to drink and you’d have wild, kinky sex.

Then there were the days where you’d argue over minuscule and unnecessary things and usually Mark would be the first to give up and apologizing with his head between your thighs. Most of your love making sessions were soft, passionate and very romantic.

To strangers or people who weren’t familiar with him, Mark gave off an intimidating and sometimes standoffish kind of vibe. It was only because he was actually very shy and soft spoken and those who actually knew him were aware of how talkative and outgoing he could be around those he was comfortable with.

Unfortunately, your parents were the kind of people you’d always sought praise from and you’d do whatever you could to make them proud. Ever since you were a little girl, you went along with every command they would give you, you never complained about the clubs they’d put you in or the clothes they had you wear. It wasn’t as if you were the only child, you had three other siblings but since you were the youngest, your parents were a little more strict with you even if you never gave them a reason to question or mistrust you.

It wasn’t until Mark came in to your life that your relationship with your parents took a completely different turn. You’ve known Mark since middle school and although you hardly ever talked to him, you did admire him from afar and you could only wish to build up the courage so that maybe one day, you’d be able to at least say hello.

He was always such a social butterfly and made friends with anybody he’d interact with. All the girls in your grade had a crush on him, but you couldn’t blame them. Not only was he a sight for sore eyes, he was such a free spirit; he had decent grades and not once did the teachers have any problems with him like they did with his friends. But he was never one to genuinely care about his education, and unfortunately that was his downfall.

When you finally entered high school, it’s as if the world felt like it was time for you and Mark to come together and for your two worlds to become one. In your first semester, he was in almost every single one of your classes. You didn’t think you were the smartest person in your grade, but you did pretty well in all the subjects. All those years of long, grueling days of summer school actually paid off. Sometimes, you hated being the youngest.

Your parents expected so much out of you but they never seemed to care about anything that your two older brothers and your older sister did. They all got to join groups, clubs and sports that they genuinely liked whereas you were coerced in to learning how to play the violin and the cello. You were thankful that school was considerably easy for you seeing as how your parents made education your first priority.

While your brothers would play video games and your sister would talk on the phone with her friends, you’d be practicing math problems and read books about the civil war. You didn’t think you got to experience a legitimate childhood you’d witness all your classmates and friends had. For that reason alone, you always felt different from everybody else and it was the reason why you were so hesitant on continuing friendships with the few friends you did have from middle school.

You could never relate to anything they’d talk about; all their favorite movies they’d watch, the latest installment of Grand theft auto that they’d play, going to each other’s houses—you weren’t even allowed to cross the street by yourself let alone go out with your friends. Entering high school by yourself had to be one of the most scariest things you had to go through and because your siblings were at least five years older than you, none of them would be there at least if you needed someone to confide in or run to.

From all the stories you’d hear from each of them, their high school experiences were ones for the books. Both of your brothers joined each and every sport you could think of and your sister was the co-captain of the cheerleading team. She also had a few boyfriends in high school and you felt as if a lot of the mistakes she made were the reasons why your parents took complete control of your life.

It didn’t take long for Mark to acknowledge your existence; in fact, what you didn’t know was that back in middle school, he noticed you even if you didn’t realize it yourself. While all the girls would ogle over him and try to get his attention, he would find himself admiring you from afar.

Mark always thought you were so cute; you were always hesitant to answer the questions your teacher would ask you even if everyone was aware you knew the answer, whenever someone asked you for help you were always so quick to attend to them no matter what they were asking of you and he could never get the way you would blush when you were flustered out of his head.

He had no problem talking with other girls, but he’d become a mess at even just the thought of having to talk to you. Mark was quick to pick up on how you had most of your classes together, and he was going to use this to his advantage. Only a month in to school, both his algebra teacher and his language arts teacher pulled him to the side to tell him that he wasn’t doing too good in their classes. It wasn’t that Mark was purposefully failing his classes in order to get you to tutor him, he never was all that amazing in school to begin with.

High school wasn’t even half as easy as middle school was. Getting anything lower than a C wasn’t going to cut it and now that he had two Ds, he planned on asking you for some help. When Mark did approach you and asked you to help him catch up with a couple of missing assignments and to help teach him some algebra formulas, you had a hard time believing he was even talking to you. In the beginning of your tutoring sessions, he was always quite the gentleman.

He’d give you his full attention, always waited till you were done talking before he’d ask you a question, he’d tell you silly jokes so that it wasn’t always about studying and learning and sometimes he would drop you home after your meetings. It didn’t take long for your tutoring sessions to turn in to something more and only three months after getting to know each other, he asked you to be his girlfriend.

Dating Mark was a dream you never think would become a reality. He was extremely kind hearted and took care of you in ways you didn’t think you’d be able to experience. You were shocked when he confessed that he’s liked you for all these years, and you were quick to admit the same to him. Knowing how your parents could be, you decided to keep your relationship with Mark a secret and he was very understanding about the entire thing.

The two of you would sneak around during and after school for the entirety of your high school years and your love for one another only grew stronger as the time went by. You fell in love with him in tiny little coffee shops, in the back of the library where you’d be making out together when you were supposed to be studying. You’d lie to your parents and say you were preparing for tests and picking up on extra credit when really you’d be lying in the back of Mark’s truck, cuddling in his arms while looking up at the stars.

Mark did a great job at helping you take your mind off of how perfect you were supposed to be. He was the breath of fresh air that you’ve always craved and now that you had him, you didn’t think you would be able to let him go. Ever. He made you feel like a little kid again; you actually got to experience all sorts of things you’ve wanted to do as a child through your relationship. It didn’t take you long to fall in love with him.

Being in love was an indescribable feeling. Every time something good happened to you, he was the first person you wanted to tell and whenever something bad happened, he was the shoulder you wanted to cry on. He always knew the right thing to say; but if there ever was a time he didn’t know how to respond to something, he would just hold you comfortingly while whispering sweet, encouraging words in your ear.

People claimed that perfect people didn’t exist and if that’s the case, then Mark came pretty close. You felt as if he was sent in your life to be your safe haven; your sanity. The burst of color in your world of black and white. He had a habit of telling you he loved you every single day and even if he weren’t to do so, his actions spoke for him. You don’t know how you did it, but you actually did a great job in hiding Mark from your parents for the last few years.

There were times where you did come pretty close to getting caught; whether it was because of how loud you didn’t think you were while talking on the phone with him, or when you’d come back home with swollen lips and tousled hair. It didn’t matter to you though. A part of you was ready for whatever response you’d receive from your parents. Honestly, Mark was the kind of guy you’d bring home to your parents; so you weren’t afraid of the idea of introducing him to your family.

The only thing you were really worried about was what they would say when they were to find out you were hiding a boyfriend from them for over six years. After graduating from high school, both you and Mark went straight in to college. You went in to study criminal law and he had high hopes of becoming an engineer. Three months in to college, Mark decided it wasn’t for him and as his girlfriend, although you were upset at the idea, you supported and trusted his choices.

College wasn’t for everybody. With that being said, it was then that you found out he wanted to become a songwriter. In the few years that you’ve known him for, not once did he ever talk about wanting to write songs. You didn’t think he was passionate about music in general let alone wanting to write music for artists but when he showed you a few of the songs he had wrote, with most of them being about you, you knew he was extremely talented.

Mark always had a way with words and now that you saw them written down on paper, you knew you’d continue to support his dreams and his future endeavors and that you would do anything to help him if he needed it. Before you knew it, four years came and gone and you graduated from college with your bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. It didn’t take too long for law firms to reach out to you with internships and to see if you were interested to work for their companies. Mark was also very successful with his career.

He started off small; he wrote a few things here and there for some up and coming artists but it wasn’t anything too major. No matter how patient he was, there were times he did grow discouraged and felt like giving up but you never allowed him to. You saw how passionate he was about writing. You’d watch him stay up trying to write down any ideas that would pop through his head.

The road to success wasn’t easy, but when he got an offer from a record company to write songs for a popular artist you both listened to, he was extremely over the moon and made sure to let you know your love, your patient, your support and your determination to help him succeed was what kept him going.

The day came where you felt like you were ready to tell your parents about the man you were head over heels in love with and the reaction you got wasn’t one you were expecting. When you brought him over for dinner, both your mother and your sister raved over how good looking he was and your brothers tried their best to come off as the older, overprotective brothers boyfriends wouldn’t want to mess with. But when they heard Mark played fortnite, they were sold.

Even your father took a liking to him once Mark told him his favorite football team were the Patriots. Everything seemed to be going perfectly and you were so upset with yourself for keeping him a secret for so long. It wasn’t until your mother asked him what he did for a living that things only went downhill from there. I’m a songwriter. You could still remember the grave look on your mom’s face and with the way she motioned for you to follow her and your father in to the living room while excusing the three of you from the table, you knew it wasn’t going to be good.

You were angry that she didn’t wait for dinner to be finished or even for Mark to go home before ridiculing him on his career. It was obvious that she wasn’t too happy to hear he was a musician but it didn’t matter what she thought. Hell, you didn’t care about what anyone in your family thought about him. You loved Mark, with every beat of your heart and there was nothing your parents could say or do to change your mind about him.

“You are to break up with that boy immediately.”

Your eyes widened in shock at your mother’s command and for the first time looking her, hell, looking at your parents, you didn’t feel afraid of them. This time, you had something beautiful worth fighting for. This wasn’t something minuscule; it wasn’t something you could just stop like piano lessons or tennis practice. This was an 8 year long relationship she was telling you to end and there was no way you were going to lose against your parents without putting up a fight.

“No.”

The scoff that came from your mother’s throat wasn’t unexpected. This was the first time ever you talked back to either of your parents. This was the first time you actually said the word no in your 23 years of existence and damn, it felt really good.

“Excuse me? Did you just tell your mother no? Y/n, he’s a musician! He will never be able to give you the life you deserve! That is not a career! You’ll be the one having to take care of your entire family, I refuse to let this man ruin your life. You’re going to throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for—for someone whose position in your life isn’t promised. You know better than this, there are plenty more men in the world with better jobs and probably better living situations. Mrs.Choi’s son is a—“

“I don’t give a shit about Mrs.Choi’s son or Mrs.Park’s son or anyone’s damn son for that matter. I love Mark. I am in love with Mark. I only want Mark. Mark is all I need. I don’t care about what his job title is. It makes him happy and he’s pretty fucking amazing at what he does. But like I said, I don’t give a shit what he does for a living. He could be a garbage man and I’d still love him with every fiber of my being because that’s what love is mom. Love is not money, it’s not a big mansion in Beverly Hills with a doctor husband and six cars I will probably never drive. Love is what I feel when I’m with Mark. He takes care of me. He makes me laugh when I’m sad, he makes me smile even in the most inconvenient situations. He does my laundry, cleans our apartment, blow dries my hair when I’m tired, takes me to and pays for all my doctor’s appointments. We’ve been together for almost 8 years and these last 8 years have been the best years of my entire life because of him. The two of you stripped away the entirety of my childhood from me and Mark was the fountain of youth to help me experience actually being a human.” If looks could kill, the glare your mother was sending you would have you six feet under, but you didn’t care.

“I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m grown. I’m an adult for crying out loud you guys can’t tell me what to do anymore. I’m sorry you can’t accept it but I love Mark and I plan on doing so for the rest of my life and there’s nothing either of you can say or do to change my mind.”

“If you leave with him tonight, you are never allowed back in to this house ever again.” The burst of confidence and bravery you had confessing your love for Mark and the fact that you had every intention of staying with him went right out the window at your mother’s ultimatum. Was she really making you choose between your boyfriend and your family? There was no way you could choose between the two of them. Yes, Mark was the best thing that’s ever happened to you. But to lose all contact with your family because your parents were being unfair and irrational with their decision? She didn’t even take the time to listen to your words; did she not care about your health, happiness and well-being? Here was a man putting her youngest daughter on a pedestal, giving her the entire world and more but yet she still couldn’t accept that. You didn’t know the consequences of your next few words, but it wasn’t even a question. “Mark, we’re leaving. Let’s go.”

Your boyfriend came out from the kitchen and you had a feeling he probably heard the entire conversation between you and your parents, but your mind was so focused on leaving before things could get any worse. “Y/n, wait, sweetie think about this—think about what you’re doing—are you really willing to give up your family for a boy?”

“A man—he’s a man and yes—he’s all the family I could ever need. He’s shown me more love and support in our 8 years of being together than either of you did in the last 23 years of my existence. If you were a really family, you’d accept Mark for who he is and what he does and you’d be happy with the fact that he takes such good care of me but no. Your pride, your reputation, your wealth, your social status and your ego are more important than my feelings and what I want. You don’t care about me. You never cared about me you just cared about what others would think about me and I’m sick of it. I’m done. Have a nice rest of your life. Assholes.”

You marched out of the house and a huge weight was lifted off of your shoulders. With the rate you were walking, your boyfriend had to practically jog to catch up with you because you were filled with so many different emotions. Anger. Sadness. Grief. But no regret, nor any remorse. You knew you made the right decision in choosing Mark because not only did you choose Mark, you chose yourself. You were no longer going to allow your parents to dictate your life anymore.

“Baby—are you alright?” You gave him a sad smile before stealing a soft kiss from the corner of his mouth.

“Maybe not right now, but I will be. Take me home Mark.” Your siblings tried to get in touch with you for weeks, trying to get you to come back and to talk things out with your parents, but the damage was done. Neither of them were going to accept your relationship. It was a tough pill to swallow, but you accepted it for what it was.

Even if one day they came around and accepted Mark being a songwriter, there was no way you could ever forget the look of disgust on your mom’s face when Mark said what his job was nor could you forget how your dad just stood there and said nothing. It genuinely showed that neither of your parents really cared about you even if you were the star child out of the four of you and that’s what was hurting you the most.

Mark did his best to try and take your mind off what had happened and every time you’d look at him while he was sleeping, while he was cooking the two of you dinner or while the two of you would shower together, you’d see the glint in his eyes as he looked at you like you were one of the seven wonders of the world and you knew you made the right choice. You’d pick him again and again every single time.

He never brought up the fact that your parents didn’t accept his passion but you were sure it must have hurt him. Especially because that’s was caused you to be cut off from your entire family, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t extremely content with your decision. A few weeks ago, Mark got a call from the record company he was working for and gave him the opportunity to travel around Europe to work with a couple of the entertainers there and he didn’t hesitate to ask you to tag along with him.

The adventure started off in Italy, then you found yourselves in London and Greece. Each and every city was more than you could even imagine. The scenery was so beautiful, the food was delicious, the people were so sweet and the fact that you got to experience it all with your soulmate; your favorite person was a feeling you would never be able to fathom in to words.

Paris had to be your favorite place you had visited so far and you were sure it had to deal with the fact that it was the city of love and you were making the most of it with the love of your life by your side. It was currently winter in Paris right now; the temperature only grew colder as the days went by which is why you were shocked to see Mark outside on the balcony in only his underwear, but the sight did make your cheeks pink.

No matter how many times you’ve seen him naked, you always got so shy and flustered. He was freezing cold when you finally found your way behind him, you placed your chin on his shoulder blade and left a soft kiss there while lazily wrapping your arms around his hips. The giggle that fell from your lips at the feeling of your bare chest against his back couldn’t be helped, he was so cold and the frost nipped at your skin.

It took you a few moments to notice the cigarette in his hand and when you did, you grew worried. Mark hated cigarettes. He hated the smell and hated the negative effect they had on people’s bodies. However, you noticed he began smoking them after working with a well-known rapper who claimed that smoking helped him relax. It was a habit you weren’t too fond of; you knew it was probably damaging his lungs and you could taste the ash in his kisses, but you knew something had to be bothering him for him to want to even start smoking so you never tried stopping him.

For the last month, you haven’t seen a pack of cigarettes lying around the place nor did the scent linger on his clothes so you knew there was a chance he stopped. Seeing that ugly death stick in between his fingers made your blood boil; you didn’t want anything happening to his health because of a stupid decision he‘d make whenever he was upset.

“Go back to bed baby. I’ll be there soon, I just needed a little break. I’m fine.” You’ve been with Mark long enough to know when he was lying. You didn’t have to see him; the lack of confidence in his voice and the way he tensed up against your body made it clear that something was indeed on his mind, and there was no way you’d be able to go back to sleep knowing he was overthinking.

“Talk to me Mark. Something is obviously bothering you and I want to be able to help you.” He released a long sigh before putting out the cigarette and turning to face you. His eyes were red and puffy and there were dried tears on his cheeks.

The idea of him crying made your heart hurt; he was always the strong one in your relationship. No matter how rough life would get for him, he never showed that he was having a hard time. He hated burdening other people, especially you. So all his battles, he’d keep to himself. You hated that he never confided in you the way you always seemed to with him. You wanted to be able to help him carry the burden or to help fight the war in his mind that he was battling alone.

“Why did you do it?” You immediately looked at him in confusion. What was he talking about? What did you do that could be causing him so much distress and frustration?

“Mark—“

“You gave up everything to be with me. You’re completely cut off from your parents, you gave up your job at the law firm, you had to sell your car, you left all your friends without any explanation as to why you were leaving—just for me. I can’t give you everything that I want to just yet. I can’t promise to give you a big house, a nice car—we’ve been together for years and I have every intention on marrying you y/n but I can’t afford to buy you the ring of your dreams—I’m honestly nothing. I’m a college dropout trying to become a renowned songwriter y/n. Sure, I’ve been getting quite a few amazing opportunities but it isn’t enough for us to be set for the rest of our lives nor can we really be comfortable. Like your mom said, there are many men out there who’d be able to take care of you in the ways that I can’t. All I can do is love you y/n, and fuck. I love you more than you can even fathom yourself. But you deserve so much more and sometimes love isn’t enough—“

“Do you hear yourself right now? Are you really asking me why I left my life behind to be with you? My family, I love them dearly. But you know how I feel about my parents, how they sheltered me, overprotected me, forced me in to doing things I didn’t want to. They never did care about how I felt; not once did they stop and think maybe they were working me to the bone. I was never happy Mark. Until you came in to my life and I really don’t know what I would do if I were to lose you. I’m assuming you must’ve heard what my mom said and don’t you dare listen or even think what she said was true. You are not nothing Mark. You are so talented, so hardworking, so passionate and dedicated and if anyone deserves the world baby—it’s you. I meant what I said when I told her I couldn’t give less of a shit about any materialistic things. What’s a fucking Porsche going to do for me if my husband neglects me? What’s a big house if the person that I love isn’t there to share it with me?” You brought your hand up to cup his cheek and released a sigh of relief when he leaned in to your palm.

“You and I could live in a fucking box and I wouldn’t care and you wanna know why? Because you’re there. All I need is you. I don’t care where we go, who we meet, how much money we have in our bank accounts; as long as I have you right beside me, I’m not worried about anything. I can get another car Mark, I can find another job, I can make new friends—but there is never going to be another you. So stop beating yourself up about the decisions I made in the last few months. I did it for us. I did it because I love you. I will never love anyone the way I love you. Now get it out of your head that I deserve someone better than you because a man like that doesn’t exist. And yes—your love is enough Mark. It’s all that matters to me. The way you take care of me when I’m sick, or hold me close as we watch a scary movie. The way you take a bite out of my food to make sure it isn’t too hot, although I feel like you use that as an excuse just to try my food. The way you can be so tired, yet you want to sit down and listen to me go on about my day. You love me Mark. You never fail to say it, but it means more to me because you never fail to show it either.” At this point, his tears were flowing steadily from the bird of his eyelids and you found yourself wiping them away every time new tears fell.

“A person’s job title, the amount of education they’ve received, the kind of car they drive and the house they live in; none of that matters babe. I know you probably hear this all the time, but it’s what the inside that matters. Genuinely. All the wealth, the riches, it doesn’t make you better than anyone else. Your personality, your selflessness, your golden heart, your generosity, your patience, the love you never fail to show others, that’s why I fell in love with you. Oh—and your stupidly handsome looks but that’s besides the point. I’d go wherever it is that you’ll go. Whatever you need me to do, or be in order to help you grow as an artist or just a human being in general, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you Mark Tuan. And one day, when everything works out with your career, we can rub it in my parents faces. No more tears my love. It’s just you and I; and that’s what makes me the most happy. Oh—and I don’t need a big wedding or a huge diamond ring to get me to marry you. You could get me a ring pop for all I care. I just want to be with you. We could honestly elope in one of the hotel’s chapels if that’s what you want.”

He didn’t miss a beat before bringing his hands on either side of your face and roughly connecting your lips together. His mouth was warm and wet against yours, his kisses were rough and needy. It’s as if he was putting everything he wanted to say to you in to the kiss. How grateful he was for you. How much you meant to him. How much he loved you more than his heart could genuinely handle. Mark knew he needed to continue fighting for his dream in order to prove to you that you made the right decision in choosing him. Soon, the atmosphere was filled of sexual tension and it didn’t take too long for you to feel something hard against your thigh.

“I just—I hope—fuck. Thank you baby. I could never thank you enough for everything that you’ve done and continue to do for me. You’re the most ethereal being to walk on this earth you know that. I really, really do not deserve you but I will spend the rest of my life proving to you that I’m sure happy you chose me. Don’t tempt me, I might just go down to the gift shop and get you that ring pop. I love you—so fucking much my beautiful girl. God , only you could make me hard as a rock while I’m in the middle of crying—I know it’s 3 A.M, and I promised I would take you to the Champs-Élysées later on today, but I really want to show you just how grateful I am for you. I also kinda want to solve this problem in my pants and fuck the shit out of you so let’s go baby. You might have to rent a motor chair to get around once I’m done with you.”

#got7 imagines #got7 #got7 mark #mark tuan #mark tuan got7

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