#for a while it was going to be caleb (i even wrote a poem about it) but my thing was

[daisychainsandbowties]

CASPER LE FANTÔME???? Crying screaming can't believe that's how you chose ur name. Buried memories sticking a hand out of their grave.

i don’t even remember what this movie is about but yeahhhh. i loved the name as soon as it occurred to me, & i liked that it could be shortened to Cas, and i liked that it was 6 letters and there are other more poetic reasons too but those. are gay. so yeah i’m named after the dead boy from that movie 😌🙏

[critter-genfic-events]

This week, we have nine fics dealing with Grief or Mourning -dealing with the losses in the recent episodes of Critical Role, older losses, and imagined losses still in these character's futures. Check them out beneath the cut, and remember to comment and kudos if you like them!

divorce the first by Ink_Beneath_Her_Fingernails (3496,Not Rated) Warnings: Brief mentions of Molly's death, but it's not a focus. Pairings:

Common is the only language all of the Nein share, but it's not the first language of any of them.

Reccer says: There's such an aching sense of longing and grief and mourning in this fic that leaves you with the feeling of an old pain, almost too small to bother dealing with, not that you even could, but every day it sticks around like a rock in your shoe. It manages to slip under your defenses in a way fiction about things like death can't always do, while still touching on loss. There's also some really excellent development of worldbuilding and Wildemount here.

Proud by awaytobeunshaken (557,General) Warnings: None Pairings: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast

Beau isn't sure how to feel after her father's death. Caleb tries to comfort her anyway.

Reccer says: I liked it

a white and soundless place by BeatriceEagle (7064,Teen) Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death Pairings: Una Ermendrud & Caleb Widogast

A portrait of grief, from either side of the thing.

Reccer says: Una and Leofric feel like people, rather than saints.

psychopomp by hydraxx (3357,General) Warnings: Pairings: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast

Essek comes back to visit Blumenthal over the centuries after Caleb dies, while a long series of local innkeepers observe his mourning process.

Reccer says: It's a really sweet look at how Essek processes losing one of the people important to him, with background worldbuilding!

A Wisdom Without Face or Name by violettressed (17280,Teen) Warnings: major character death Pairings: Caduceus Clay & Jester Lavorre, Jester Lavorre & Essek Thelyss, Artagan & Jester Lavorre

Jester Lavorre spends a lifetime learning how to let go.

Reccer says: A great fic if you need a cry - there's little sparks of humor left by everyone being in character that make the entire thing even more heartfelt

Things to Do in Whitestone When Your Best Friend is Dead by untropicalisland (3038,General) Warnings: major character death Pairings: Ashton Greymoore & Laudna, Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III & Ashton Greymoore

Ashton tries to make sense of FCG's death while the party regroups in Whitestone following their return from Ruidus.

Reccer says: Ashton and FCG's relationship was so great, it's nice to see something that's got Ashton processing their death. And the Percy and Ashton's dynamic is pitch perfect and *chef's kiss*

Synonym for Tragedy by thetickingclock (1060,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings: Orym/Dorian Storm, Fearne Calloway & Orym & Dorian Storm, Dorian Storm & Cyrus Wyvernwind, Dorian Storm & Dariax Zaveon

Dorian and his brother. The music is different now.

Reccer says: Beautiful and haunting

like wildfire, it starts in my chest by ellis (ellabellachicketychella) (1523,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings: Dorian Storm & Cyrus Wyvernwind, Dorian Storm & Dariax Zaveon

If this is grief then the poems got it wrong-- or, i love how dorian's grief is rage so much. i wrote a little about it

Reccer says: A brilliant character study of Dorian after episode 93

To hold, to cut by thetickingclock (1665,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings:

A series of vignettes about the coping with grief through shared work

Reccer says: It felt true

This is one of our weekly communally-generated gen rec lists. Every week we announce a new theme and allow anyone to submit a fic recommendation. Please note that the summary and content notes are provided by the reccer, and may be different than what the author has provided. Please assume good intentions all around. <3

And hey, anyone includes you!

Next week, we'll be focusing on Fjord Stone! Know of something focusing on his backstory, or maybe his interior life during the campaign, that orphanage heist that happened after? You should rec it!

After that, we'll be changing things up a bit. Mentorship will be happening on the 15th, but after that, we're going to switch to a twice a month schedule - starting with Scanlan.

Any fics coming to mind? Well, then use this form to submit!

Oh! Also! Critter Gen Week is happening! We've been using the themes for our reclist - so if you're inspired by what you're reading, consider writing (or making art) for that week!

[aspiringsophrosyne]

Critical Role’s fights cannot be as long in animation as they are in the stream. They just cannot. And even if they could, they shouldn’t, because it’d be a massive slog in that context.

However.... some battles need to feel long, even if they’re not. They need to feel tense and dangerous, like you just want them to end already. Not in a boring way, but in a suspenseful, scared for characters you love way.

The final battle of campaign 2 is an obvious pick. But there are others in that campaign that come to mind besides that one.

Let's talk about one of them.

(Spoilers for Campaign 2, specifically the last arc, below.)

More than almost any other fight in Campaign 2, we need the one between the Nein and the Tomb Takers from episode 123 to feel long.

And there’s something we can do to get us there. We can make the fight feel longer without actually making it longer if we inter-cut the fight with other previous scenes.

In episode 121, while traveling with the Takers, the Nein takes watch. Jester with Yasha, and then Fjord with Beau. During these shifts, Jester and Fjord reveal their kiss, and Yasha and Beau reveal their upcoming date. Everyone is excited by these developments.

I say, don’t show the romance talks when they are supposed to happen in the timeline. Skip them. Then, during the fight, flash back to them.

Like so:

Beau slams down off the back of a giant eagle into the snow among the Tomb Takers, popping several of them in the face one after the other. We cut away to:

Beau: No, on that note, I kind of — We were in, like — We just walked through a creepy forest and we were, like, a mile beneath the earth and I kind of asked Yasha on a date. Fjord: You did what?! Beau: I know. Fjord: You asked her out on a date? Beau: Yeah, yeah. Fjord: What’d she say?

We cut back. Lucien stalks up to her while she’s still swinging and unawares. When she turns, he puts his hand to her throat. His eye tattoos glow. Her head rocks back, but not out of his grip. Blood gathers in the corners of her eyes like tears.

Beau: She said yes. She said yes. That she was— Fjord: Shit!

As blood pours down out of Beau’s eyes, out of her nose, as she gags up a thick trickle of blood from her lips, as Lucien’s grin widens in sadistic satisfaction, we don’t cut away. Instead, this audio plays over him Rending her Mind.

Beau: She was, like, really excited. She was like, “I’m happy about this because, like —" I don’t know whether it’s — I just want a fresh start with Yasha because we’ve been through so much.

[...]

Beau: So it just felt like maybe, maybe a date.

She sucks in a desperate, blood choked breath.

Caleb and Cad crawl backward through the snow, frantic and trying to get their magic to work. Yasha swoops down towards Beau in her eagle form. Just before she gets close enough to make the grab, we cut away:

Jester: But did you give her the poem? Yasha: Well, I was working on it and then I just sort of ended up writing her a letter. I still have a poem, but I just ended up writing her a letter. It felt weird and it felt like really I wasn’t ready yet. So I just wrote her a note and yeah, and then she asked me out on a date, yeah.

Yasha makes the grab, Beau’s free.

Later, when Fjord’s on the opposite side of the battle field from everyone else, he brings his blade down on Lucien’s back. It's blocked without him even turning around. As he does turn and the two lock blades, Fjord’s eyes travel to the rest of the group and we see-

Fjord: Hey, I meant to tell you, I-- I told Jester how I-- how I... Beau: You did? Sorry, Caduceus. Caduceus: (snores) Beau: You did? Fjord: Yeah, on the-- real, yeah. Beau: How’d it go? Fjord: It went okay. I was pretty nervous. Beau: Yeah? What do you mean okay, though? What’s okay? Fjord: No, it was good. I-- uh. We kissed. Beau: (gasping) Sorry, Caduceus. Sorry.

He’s struck, he teleports near Zoren. He’s closer to the rest than he was, but he’s not there yet.

....And I mean, I think you get the idea at this point. You'd maybe want to pace it out slower or a little differently, but this is just to give you an idea of what you could do.

What also could be cool is intercutting this fight or later ones with scenes where the Nein talk about the city; what’s coming to Exandria if they die in Eiselcross without stopping the Tomb Takers. Remind the audience what’s at stake on a macro level (the city coming to swallow the world) and a micro level (the Nein have started more intimate relationships and might not get the chance to experience them) to keep tension high.

This is just one example, but you could use it for multiple important fights. Other good candidates include both Iron Shepherd fights, the King’s Cage fight, the Cathedral Fight and one or both fights against the Sea Spawn that come for the orb.

Sometimes you really don’t need a lot of fancy effects or animation. Sometimes just some creative storyboarding and/or editing can elevate a story in a way you wouldn’t expect.

[thequeenofmyownscreen]

Sixteen things I noted about CR2E115 “Fetching Fables & Frosty Friends” and the Talks Machina about it :

Whyyyyy French again ??? At least I know Sam knows a little French, so I'm somehow less offended when it's him. But yeah at the of the ad, I felt this screenshot IN MY SOUL :

Matt, to Travis, about Beau who's running way ahead of Fjord : "She's a monk, she's faster than you." Travis, immediately and petulantly : "You don't know that !" Matt, not impressed, deadpan : "Yes. I do. It's on her character sheet."

I love Dagen so much. He tries to do a little bit of polite conversation, and Veth is like "Are you asking if anyone of us is single ?" and Jester doubles down with "Are you secretly in love with me ?", and then he calls them "colorful". He has worked with Vess and Ludinus before, so yeah that must be a change of pace for him.

Dagen, recalling the worst group he ever traveled with : "There was this rowdy bunch out of Syrinlya, Uthodurnian folk. Too boisterous. Too loud. When you're trying to make your way across landscape like this, you want to keep quiet. Just a bunch of fucking dwarves singing about what they had for breakfast, about what they had for lunch, tales of mysteries to the north ! They had beautiful voices, but they just wouldn't shut the fuck up. One day we got ambushed and they all got torn apart. I was the only survivor... I just feel bad for the poor halfling they dragged along." Me slowly realizing Matt is describing the first Hobbit movie : AMAZING !!

Caleb, 20 minutes after Veth and Jester started getting real with Dagen and are creating what I can only describe as an elaborate fan-fiction of Dagen and one of the travelers possibly named Sheila he might have fallen in love with - and named his axe after : "Hey, are we the worst ones yet ?" Dagen, through gritted teeth : "Gettin' real close..."

Laura looks so cute with her unicorn hoodie on.

Love that they knew they were messing with POWERFUL NECROTIC MAGIC, and that Liam pointed out that this kind of trap "pivoted the entire campaign one" (which to me was a clear indication that he wanted to do it, because this is Liam and he loves this kind of stuff). And still they went for it. For an hour. Man, did Caleb try. The last attempt, dramatically casting Dispel Magic while walking away, because he couldn't let it go, and still the stone rests, is an very funny visual.

Oh Beau read Yasha's poem ! Which was not a poem, but a wonderful letter. I love how Marisha was overjoyed as Ashley was reading it (as the voiceover).

Oh my god, the story of the Katzen Prince is everything. The revelation that Liam wrote that in a day, just before they were paying, is the cherry on top. Look, I fucking love fairy tales, and I had a book when I was young where it was all of the original versions (aka the dark endings, and even when it was a good ending for the hero, there were some brutal elements, like when birds pierce the eyes of Cinderella’s half-sisters at the end !!). So I LOVED this tale !!! It was sweet, melancholic, had a dream-like quality to it, and still a happy ending. I also want to see all of the art.

Awwww, I love when the monsters turn out not-so-monstery after all ! The Mighty Nein chose to be kind, even after they were ambushed, and so they got precious intel : finally, someone saw Lucien and his group, not but one day ago !!!

Travis broke. They invited the yetis to dinner in Caleb's tower, and they even read them a Zemnian bedtime story, and it broke Travis so much. This is so awesome. I love this visual of 4 yetis, being inside a magic tower, in a grand and warm hall, under tents for them to sleep like they usually do, surrounded by small cats and the Mighty Nein, listening to a man reading them a story in a language they don't know, and falling asleep in 5 minutes.

I trust Beau, Beau is always right and she should say it. And the way Marisha made her pitch was wholesome.

It's true, Brian is right to recall it, every time there is a Talks Machina with Liam and Taliesin, the vibe is "whatever the fuck is the opposite of toxic masculinity" - I think it's what he called it one time.

Dani is being tortured this episode, what will all the Fartist and chest hair re-growing stories.

Taliesin, about the pillar with the necromantic emerald : "I was amused. I could have possibly stayed a little longer... Until we had to resurrect someone !" HAHAHA the little shit (affectionate)

OH. Oh. This is the episode before the 2020 American election ? Aka, the Destiel Putin Election crazy night we had over here on Tumblr ??? IT'S SO CRAZY TO THINK ABOUT !!!

[en-hale-archives]

Me with You ~~

pairing ⑅ bestfriend!Jake x fem!reader

genre ⑅ friends to lovers, fluff, slow dancing, suggestive/smut

words/read time ⑅ 3.9k/12-19 mins

warnings ⑅ 18+ content, light cussing

synopsis ⑅ Jake is back in his hometown to spend time with his closest friend. During some fun and frivolous dancing, things start to heat up...

author's note ⑅ I’m really proud of how this story turned out. I'm not a huge fan of second person, so I wrote in first, but if anyone asks, I can copy and post again in second person. It's more fluff than anything, but it does get a bit steamier towards the end, so I’m just going to go ahead and put a warning.

————✧————

When the back door finally slammed shut and the cacophony of barks faded down the street, I could finally let out my sigh of relief that I had been holding in since this morning. I tapped on my phone. How many days had we been watching Mrs. Chen’s pets? And just how was I able to put up with hours of barking, the smell of fresh turd lying across the lawn, and dog walks till dark? Including their rigorous feeding times and bathroom breaks -- I’m surprised I haven’t exploded yet.

I had so much planned the minute they left my house, but instead, the sudden silence felt all too relaxing and I laid my head against the cold countertop. I could finally stop stressing, stop thinking, and stop worrying about reprimanding for chewing on my shoes or peeing in the house or the continued barking that never ended. I was free. I felt like I could’ve stayed laid on the countertop forever, drowning in the evening sun. Who knew watching five dogs would take such a burden out of a person. Jake and I had taken on the job of dog sitting for Mrs. Chen while she visited some family in Tokyo. We both switched off every other day; some of the dogs at my house and the others at his; until we realized it would be easier if he just spent the few days at my house as we co-doggy sat. He got up bright and early to take them on their walks while I prepared their highly detailed and specific meals. Then from there, we spent the rest of the day making sure they didn’t run off somewhere or cause too much destruction in the house. But alas, Mrs. Chen came back early from her getaway and picked up Toby, Caleb, Khao, Sofia, and Pickle on her way home. Although I was exhausted from watching 3-foot dogs all day, the pay was amazing for me, and it would help tremendously for all the online classes I was going to be taking next semester.

The warmth of the sun cast a comforting trance over my heavy eyelids, and soon enough I was fast asleep, standing in the middle of the kitchen with the soft sound of nothing surrounding me.

By the time I had fluttered my eyes open, I had realized I was now seated in my dining chair and a large black jacket was placed over my shoulders. I sat up and let out a yawn, wincing at the bright light coming from the tv and shaking my now numb arm awake. I must have been sleeping for a while because the evening sun had turned to pitch of black. The moonlight beamed through the window and danced along with the sways of the large oak tree out front. I stood up and walked over to the refrigerator in which I grabbed two water bottles and some leftover pasta.

I was sure that Jake hadn’t eaten since lunch, seeing as he only ate if someone sat food in front of his face. I dragged my feet up the stairs until I heard the slamming of a book and the fast typing of a keyboard come from the living room. I turned and looked behind me. Jake had settled his things on the coffee table and floor, large books, folders, and several amounts of crumpled up pieces of paper found their way around Jake, himself slouched up against the edge of the couch. He had changed clothes since the last time I had seen him, he now wore a plain blue shirt with grey sweats, his eyebrows furrowed as he worked hard on whatever he was getting at.

“Oh yes, I was starving!” Propping himself up on the couch, he took the plate of pasta. I placed the waters on the coffee table and settled comfortably on the couch beside him.

“I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anybody sleep standing up before. Look,” Jake took his phone off the charger. “I got a picture.” He pushed the screen in my face, and of course, there was my unconscious body laying on the counter, mouth open and all. I playfully pushed it back his way as his face lit up with a smile I was all too familiar with.

“What are you doing down here so late, it’s almost 12 in the morning,” I asked. Jake’s smile disappeared when he was reminded of the work he had been doing seconds before.

He let out a large huff of air. “Trying to get some words on paper but instead it turned into a paper massacre,” he jokingly replied, “sorry for the mess.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied, taking a swig of water. I was going to ask if he wanted to watch a late-night movie, or pull an all-nighter and talk endlessly until the sun rose, but I could tell by each passing second that Jake was worried about this, and he wanted the time he had now over the summer to work on his music. I wished I was motivated to work on my own music, but unlike Jake, I wasn’t in a globally popular boy band. My complicated best friend for over 10 years had been working his butt off since middle school. It was his annual time to sit back and relax while he had the time to, but instead, he chose to use that time to help watch a bunch of dogs with his hometown bestie. God, I loved him.

Jake pulled himself off the couch and right back onto the floor, leaving the rest of the pasta to me. He picked up his pen again and started scribbling down words as quickly as he could, trying hard not to forget the lyrics that had floated into his head. Until he stopped, closing his eyes for just a split second, and let out a powerful sigh. Crumpling up the sheet, he stacks it on top of the others in frustration and started frantically tapping his pencil against the table.

“Maybe it’s best to just try again in the morning,” I advised, taking a small bite of the pasta that was left by my side.

“How come I’m having such a hard time with this?” He gazed up at me frantically for a clue, as if I had the answer to fix a problem as big and as important as his was. I looked at his doleful eyes and the bags that were starting to grow underneath them. I couldn’t help but think, because I made you sit up and watch a bunch of dogs with me.

“Do you want me to see if I could come up with something?”

“If you want. But, hold on, I think my thoughts are coming back up.” He quickly grabbed another piece of paper, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

I tried my best to keep occupied by watching videos on my phone, but I found myself suddenly bored out of my mind. I laid out on my back and picked up one of Jake’s folders. Briefly looking through it, I couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous at the amount of fan art and letters, praising him and the other members. Followed with that were just more and more engene stuff, full of nothing but kind words and heartfelt messages. Part of me wished that I was able to travel with Jake and see the world like he was. How fun would it be to meet people that praised you? And how cool would it be to see that you had fans? I couldn’t help but plaster on a huge smile as I skimmed through some of the notes until I finally came to one with familiar handwriting.

Remember Me were the words written on the top of the paper in bold and bright colors. But the message written underneath is what caught my attention:

To the person that makes me the luckiest guy in the world, this song is for you. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same, but please just remember me -- it was Jake’s handwriting.

I didn’t feel like I was breaking any crime reading his stuff until this moment, but curiosity killed the cat, and right now I didn’t mind being a feline. I checked to make sure Jake was still busy, and he was, almost like he had teleported into his own world. I quietly turned back to the sheet and started reading. It was about a girl, presumably his crush I’m sure. She was someone important to him, someone who made him love so much that it hurt. But this was far from a happy song, in fact, it was terribly heartbreaking. She didn’t understand his love, she wasn’t able to interpret it like he wanted her to. But he confesses that he was scared of what telling her would do, worried that she wouldn’t feel the same. So instead, it was like he was apologizing, and asking that she forgive him for not being brave enough to tell her, and if he did ever get the courage to, for her to remember him even if she wasn’t able to love him like he wanted her to.

The song ends like how the title began, and I find myself flabbergasted at the beautiful mixes of rhymes and metaphors that read like a poem. This was the first of Jake’s songs that made me feel this way, like I had just finished watching a tragedy movie with Ryan Renolds starring. I blink back the tears that I didn’t realize were forming. How come he never told me this? We never kept secrets from each other, like ever. It never mattered the subject or the severity, we had always promised that we would be open and honest with each other. I wish I would’ve known this sooner, maybe I could’ve saved him from feeling this way. And what girl could it possibly be? I knew for sure I was the only girl he was presumably close to; but was there someone else?

I glanced down at Jake, who was still in a focused state of mind with the pencil in his mouth and mumbling lyrics softly under his breath. I tried picturing my bubbly Jake writing these agonizing words and miserably failed.

Jake looked up at me as if he could feel my gaze on the back of his head. “I think I’ve found the chorus, but it’s the rest of the song I’m not able to get, and how come it’s so hard to find another word that rhymes with severe? Beer? Sphere? Revere? Appear? Gosh, rhyming sucks some serious ass!”

“This song is beautiful.”

Jake furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “Huh?”

“This song I found in your folder.” I glanced back at it in my hand. “Remember Me.”

Jake’s gaze leaped from my eyes to the sheet, and I felt his body tense. “Where’d you get that from?”

“I was just going through one of your folders. Did you accidentally get it mixed up in your fan folder? Cause this is -”

“Did you read it?” He interrupted.

“Yeah, and it’s perfect.”

Jake glanced at me for a split second before turning back around, obviously uncomfortable. “I was watching one of those Kdramas you love so much and it inspired me. Could you help me rhyme with severe now?”

I knew Jake like the back of my hand, so I knew continuing on with this conversation would get him upset if he’s clearly avoiding it. But, I wasn’t going to just let him off that quickly. “Jake, come on, you can tell me anything. Who is this about?”

Jake looked back at me with a hint of something in his eyes, something I’ve never seen before, and something I wasn't able to decipher. “Nobody, I was just feeling really inspired, that's it.” His tone had switched from calm to agitated.

I give him my I’m-not-stupid look and he comes back with his own you’re-being-delusional stare. “It’s seriously nobody, truthfully and honestly.”

“Okay, okay I’ll back off.” I could tell he was starting to get defensive, and when he got like that, it took him at least a few hours before returning to normal. I watched Jake's Adam's apple move up and down, a way in which I could tell he knew I was not convinced in the slightest. “Well, sometimes we go through things that can remind us of situations like that, but not necessarily in that same exact context, you know? It has to be amplified for that audience appeal.”

“Okay...but have you ever felt this way before? Not exactly like how it’s written, but maybe somewhere along these lines?”

I thought I was going to get another vague answer, or worse, an aggravated one. But instead Jake looked down at his pencil as he tapped it along his wrist. “...maybe, but I think everyone can connect to the words in some way. I mean, everyone feels some kind of heartbreak in their life, right?” Jake's answer was still pretty vague, but at least I was able to get something out of him.

“Okay, but you know you can tell me anything, like, anything ever because you know that you’ll never actually have to feel this way, right?” I said, maybe too much in a hurry.

“Of course I know that.” He replied, giving one of his awkward grins.

“And if anyone has made you feel this way, then you know you can tell me that too cause there a sucker to lose out on a perfect person like you.” I teased in a sing-song way, poking his shoulder hard. Jake chuckled and poked me back.

A weird silence grew in the room, and Jake went back to trying to find rhyming words. I tried getting back on my phone, but I knew I needed to say something to let go of the tenseness in the air.

“Hey, crystal clear rhymes!”

He leaned his head back and looked up at me. “Nevermind, I give up for tonight.”

I could see the stress that played on his face. “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, but by the time I do, it’ll be too late.”

“What do you mean?”

Jake pulled his knees up to his chest and spoke. “This was going to go on our album comeback that needs to be finished in the next four months. By the time I think of something, it'll be too late and I’ll have to wait until the next four months. But by then, I'll have forgotten. This always happens and I have no idea how the hell to fix it.” I couldn’t tell if he wanted my help or just a bit of comfort.

“Did you try asking the other guys to see if they had any ideas?”

“Yeah, but they’re working on their own parts, I can’t ask them to do this too.”

“I’m sure they’d be willing to help if you asked,” I assured him.

“I know they would, but I just don’t want to. I always ask them for help, I thought being away from the studio and being back home would help my brainstorming abilities.” He gave a weary chuckle that almost sounded like a groan.

“Well, maybe tomorrow will come with better results.” I did my best to give him some motivation, but I could tell I was failing miserably at that too.

Jake watched as a car zoomed past the window, a low bass sounding off as it zoomed away. “I bet it’s easier to just listen to music than to try and come up with it. I remember when I would just blare NCT all day long and jam out in my room. It seemed so much easier back then to come up with stuff than it does now. I miss it.” He took a slight pause before continuing. “ Did you know that song you read was the easiest thing I have written in my life? I remember writing too. I just had this super weird feeling in my chest one day so I basically locked myself in my room and took maybe two hours and just wrote a bunch of words down and connected them to sound like a song. For once my mind had just gone blank and I couldn’t stop thinking and feeling that song, like I knew what it was supposed to sound like, I knew what the lyrics were supposed to mean. I just knew everything. And I miss that feeling, that feeling of like- '' He broke off his sentence when he looked back up to my eyes. It seemed like he was talking more to himself than to me. He swallowed hard and looked back at the pencil still in hand.

“Well, I'm sorry you don’t feel free anymore. I wish there was something I could do to make you feel like that again-”

“No, please don’t feel like that. It’s just something that had just recently started happening, something I really just can’t fix…” His voice gets softer and softer the more he spoke.

“Have you spoken to your manager about it?” I asked. “He’s super nice from what I understand. And he’ll probably have better answers than your friend who can barely play the piano, let alone produce an entire song.”

Jake laughed before I had the chance to. “ See, now you're underestimating yourself. Remember that song from freshman year? The one about-- what was his name, Josh?” Jake teased. I grabbed a pillow and slammed it into the back of his head. “Oh my gosh, I thought we promised we’d never bring it up again!”

Jake chuckled and laid his arm on the couch completely turning towards me. “How about we sneak out and go get ice cream and try to not wake up your mom in the process?”

I suddenly jumped to my feet when I have the perfect idea on how to cheer up the gloomy Mr. Shim. “Or, we could do something even better!”

“Urgh!” Jake groaned.

I grabbed my phone and hooked it up to the speaker. I was going to turn on his hit song Drunk-Dazed as a joke, but Jake needed this break from his career, so instead, I crunk up Beyonce as loud as it could go without disturbing my mom who slept upstairs. I turn back to Jake and reach out for his hands, already moving my hips to the music.

He shook his head and threw it back onto the couch as if throwing a temper tantrum. “I literally dance for a living.”

“Okay but this will be different, I promise.” I grabbed the piles of papers on the ground and threw them in the trash, I then pushed the coffee table near the wall and piled his folders and books neatly on top.

“Come on, cowboy!” I grabbed his hands and helped him up. He was reluctant to get up, but he threw one last groan before standing on his feet.

“This will get the brain juices flowing again!” I told him. I go back to my phone and switch it to one of my favorite Beyonce songs that she covered, At Last.

I sang dramatically to get Jake to smile, and luckily, it worked. I placed both my hands over his shoulders and swayed us back and forth, still miming the song as overly exaggerated as I could. Jake still couldn’t help but smile, and it didn’t take him long to join me in the rhythm and sway naturally with me. I learned at our middle school dance that Jake had perfect rhythm. He was able to impress the rest of the crowd when he busted out moves from BTS. Everyone was impressed, including me.

Now we were on a steady roll. I accidentally stepped on his feet a few times, but it was fine seeing as I was wearing foam flip-flops and he was barefooted. After a while, the song switched and played another of my favorites that didn’t match our style of dance, but we still moved slowly to the beat. Jake tried twirling me, but since I have two left feet, I almost ended up hitting the wall each time and Jake laughed loud at my clumsiness. The moonlight from the kitchen had now switched to the window in the living room. It gleamed through and glistened on Jake like a spotlight, just like the ones on the stage did for him. In a split second, I was reminded that he wouldn’t be here forever, just like he wasn’t here for the past year. I tried to not let it settle on my face that I was scared to see him go again, so I played up on the fun we were having now. Jake looked like he was at ease; finally, since he’d been here, he looked genuinely happy and I wasn’t going to ruin that.

After another handful of songs full of laughs and giggles, we were soon sweating and taking deeper breaths than normal. Each song was different from the one before, but it didn’t stop us from sticking to our style of dance. Even with the simplicity of the moves and the slowness of the steps, I had to take a minute to relax. I hooked my arms around his neck and rested my entire body on his. I could feel Jake’s own sweat seeping through his shirt, But I didn’t mind the wetness that was now attached to my cheek. I thought he would act awkward and ask for me to pull away, but instead, he gripped tighter on my hips and started slowly moving me side to side. I let out a long overdue sigh, trying my best to match the steady breathing of Jake’s with my own. It was actually therapeutic: hearing his heartbeat in one ear and the softness of the music in the other.

I tried to continue our steady breathing together, but his had picked up a bit, almost out of nowhere. I felt the heat of his breath on the nape of my neck, and it made my entire body tingle in a way it never had before. After this sudden feeling, I realized just how close we really were. His leg hair tickled my legs, I could feel the bone of his foot connecting to mine, I could feel his thin waist against mine as well. I felt like I needed to back up, but instead, I couldn’t and continued to sway softly against him. A few seconds later, Jake’s hands rose a little higher, planting themselves on my waist and tightening their grip as if they were trying to pull me closer than we already were.

The sensation hadn’t stopped though, it clung to my body like my damp shorts did on my thighs. Sooner or later I felt pressure on the lower part of my stomach and thought for sure that Jake was messing around and wasn’t feeling what I was, which indicated that I needed to pull back before this feeling became too much.

This is so embarrassing. I thought. How could I let myself feel like this? How was this in any way okay? I finally pulled back, the sensation becoming too unbearable, and glanced up at his face. His pupils were large in a way I hadn’t seen before. His mouth was slightly open and a drop of sweat slowly traced down his forehead, onto his nose. That pressure I was feeling on my stomach had now doubled in force, and Jake's face had switched from calm and subtle, to alarmed and panicked...

————✧————

(part 2 possibly...?)

Thank you guys so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! Please, leave any constructive criticism you have on helping improve my writing!

————✧————

None of the images are mine, They all belong to their rightful owners :)

[kienava]

~~i stayed up til 4 am and wrote beauyasha and i regret nothing~~

When the Nein return to the tower, Beau finally has a chance to read Yasha's poem.

Awkward conversation ensues in a room full of flowers.

_______

how do i wake my spirit cold? [AO3 link]

It had taken Beau a solid three reads to convince herself that this poem was actually real, not just something that her cold-snapped brain had imagined for a fleeting sense of warmth. She’d gone from staring at the words blankly to reading slowly, scrutinizing the angles of each letter, and on her seventh read she’d discovered that it was impossible to tear her eyes off the piece of parchment in her hands. This was now the eighteenth time in a row she’d scanned over these four lines, though she’d long since memorized their contents. At this point, she was less reading a poem and more gazing at a painting. Its beautiful simplicity hit all at once, like a thin blade between the ribs.

Many months ago, Beau might have guessed that Yasha’s handwriting would resemble her intimidating appearance, or maybe even her fighting style: sharp and strong, rough strokes and firm lines. Now, the slight, slanted script on the page came as no surprise, not when Beau had all but reached out and touched the soft edges hidden under layers of rage and anguish - and shawls. Yasha was big on shawls.

Eventually, Beau knew, she would have to put this piece of paper down and stop reading, but her hands and eyes had yet to consider that idea for themselves.

Her breath stayed steady despite her sparking nerves, years of practice kicking in to steady her. After she folded that piece of parchment up, what could she possibly do? Sleep? Not a gods-damned chance. The tower was safe and still, much unlike the thumping in her chest. As skilled as she’d become at controlling her lungs and diaphragm, the ability to keep her heart calm eluded her.

She knew it was a symptom of something that she’d avoided addressing for as long as possible, a creature that would longer allow itself to be pushed off and locked up. Beau had done her best to drown it alive when she’d learned why Yasha pressed her own heart between the pages of a book to desiccate along with torn petals and broken thorns. Loving dead flowers left little room to tend a new garden.

For all Beau’s attempts to do otherwise, she kept coming back to this, perennially doomed to weather the most apocalyptic storms.

In an effort to inspire some new consideration besides poetry, Beau let the paper flutter onto her desk and took to the fighting post. She’d been curious to see how adaptable the tower’s contents really were, and she’d asked Caleb for a variety of weighted staves to train with in this rendition. She grabbed the heaviest one from its mount on the wall. Maybe if she exhausted herself by whaling on the fighting post, she’d be able to fall asleep sometime in the next several hours.

As soon as she started swinging, it was clear that her plan would be fruitless. Her muscles could go on autopilot and run through routines she knew deep in her bones, and she’d built up too much stamina fighting gnolls and ghosts and undead sea monsters to tire herself to the point of genuine exhaustion.

Despite all of her mediation training, she couldn’t shut her brain off. She’d been in research mode for weeks now, mind racing constantly to piece together theories that somehow sounded less and less wild the more their group trekked on. Even while sparring with this helpless post, she exerted more effort willing herself not to sit back down at her desk and scour between the grains of the paper Yasha had given her for clarity and truth.

She made a last-ditch effort at meditating, sitting in the middle of the room with her legs crossed, counting her inhales and exhales. It was the first technique Dairon had taught her, the simplest form of breathwork. The goal was not to control or influence the breath, but to build awareness of one’s natural pace without judgment. At the time, Beau laughed at the possibility that she could go a second without judging (herself or others). But she'd changed so much since then.

She felt herself smile, recalling a conversation from what felt like ages ago.

Thank you for not judging me, Beau.

Have you seen me? Who am I to fucking judge?

I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you a lot.

Was that it? Was that the moment that the harmless flirting had developed its own sense of gravity? That Beau had suddenly found herself tongue-tied during their most superficial conversations, yet secretly hoping for even the briefest moment alone together?

Without intention, her breath had started to line up with the endearingly crooked meter of the poem repeating infinitely in her mind. She inhaled through one line, then emptied her lungs by the end of the next.

Each time she ran through that short stanza again, more questions frayed out like a string splitting endlessly. None of the answers she sought could be found in the library. She’d only need to go one floor down, not two.

All distractions exhausted, Beau considered knocking on someone else’s door instead of seeking the one stamped with lilacs, but she couldn’t come up with a good reason to do so. Veth and Caleb would be together, huddled in front of a cozy fire and having one of those intense conversations meant only for them. Caduceus usually went to sleep early anyway, and he’d eaten a whopping dinner. No way he’d still be up. Fjord had taken up his own meditation practice, and far be it from Beau to interrupt that. Jester - well, that was just a bad idea. If Beau mentioned the poem (and there was very little chance she’d be able to talk about anything else), Jester might just drag her down to Yasha’s room and throw her through right the door.

If Yasha could be brave, so could Beau. In fights, that was the very thing that pushed her to go as hard as she did. She knew that Yasha would be there to pull her out of a giant lobster claw if her risks didn’t pay off. They had each other's backs, always.

Would that still be the case when neither of them held a weapon in their hands?

Only one way to find out.

Beau opened and closed her own door as quietly as possible. Jester had some kind of sixth sense when it came to Beau’s interactions with Yasha, and Beau really didn’t want to explain anything when she wasn’t even entirely sure what was going on herself. She whispered the command word to the lift and sank slowly to the next floor down. She was careful to keep her knock quiet, though it probably wouldn’t wake Caduceus. No promises that Jester wouldn’t somehow hear it, no matter how thick Caleb claimed the walls were.

There was a long beat before Beau heard footsteps. Her stomach flipped - had she woken Yasha up? Normally she relied on some burst of brash confidence to start a conversation, and it had already taken her nearly an hour to build up the courage to step into the hallway and onto the lift. This was too different from the casual check-ins and mid-battle flirting that had happened more often in recent weeks, and Beau forgot every normal greeting she knew when the lilac-emblazoned door swung open.

She only had one thought: “Yasha.”

“Goodnight, Beau,” Yasha said. Quickly, she added, “Not goodnight like ‘goodbye, you should leave.’ Goodnight as in good morning. Like a greeting, I mean.”

“Ha, yeah. Goodnight, I guess,” Beau replied with a little wave. This was going about as badly as possible. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“No, no, no. I was just - well, I cannot read Zemnian, but those books Caleb gave us have very nice covers.”

“Yeah, they’re cool,” Beau said. She had an opening here. Might as well take it. “Speaking of reading...”

Yasha raised her eyebrows.

Beau tried to swallow the dryness in her mouth. It didn’t work. “I checked out your poem.”

“Oh, you did?” Yasha asked.

“You sound surprised.”

“Maybe a little.”

Beau wasn’t sure where to go with that, and all she could come up with was a stilted laugh.

Yasha joined in with her own quiet chuckle. The way she bit her lip, lost in thought, made it clear that she was just as much at a loss for words.

This was a bad idea. Beau hadn’t been thinking straight, obviously, when she’d come down here with a million questions and no plan for how to ask them.

“Okay,” Beau said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “I guess I’m gonna--”

“Do you want to come in?”

Beau blinked. “What? I mean, sure. Yeah.”

Yasha stepped back from the door to open it wider, and Beau stepped inside the flower-laden room for the first time since Caleb’s magical mansion tour.

The door settled shut behind them, and they were left standing in the middle of the bright, colorful blossoms.

“So,” Yasha started. She didn’t go on.

“Nice plants,” Beau commented, nearly smacking herself across the face for it.

Fortunately, Yasha smiled at that. “Caleb really thought of everything for this place.”

Beau’s mind flashed to the mirror mounted above her bed, and for the first time in many years she had to remind herself to breathe. She was more than getting ahead of herself.

“Anyway,” Yasha said, drawing out the end of the word a little more than normal, “what brings you down to the fifth floor?”

“Ah, just got lost on my way to the kitchen, thought I’d swing by,” Beau tried.

Every time Yasha let out even a small laugh, Beau counted it as a win.

The most concrete question burning in Beau’s skull was rooted in something ugly and frightened. She asked it anyway. “So did Jester put you up to that?”

“It was her idea, yes,” Yasha admitted.

“Oh,” Beau said, not quite catching her voice from cracking.

“I shouldn’t have said that. She only helped because I asked.”

“So it was your idea?”

“Not quite. I don’t think. Not the poem thing, specifically. I told her I wanted to...do something, for you, and that is what she suggested.”

Beau fought against the urge to convince herself that those words could mean anything other than what she wanted to hear. She’d been jumping through flaming mental hoops for weeks, maybe months, trying to talk herself out of this. And then Yasha had the pleasant audacity to write her a poem.

“No one’s ever done that before. For me,” Beau reiterated. She held her hands up. “Hey, I’m no expert, but I thought it was dope.”

“No, you didn’t,” Yasha dismissed.

“No, I did.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

Yasha busied herself by stroking the petal of a nearby flower with her thumb, a small smile creeping in.

“Why’d you write it?” Beau asked. 

Yasha’s fingers stilled. Her gaze stayed fixed on the flower in her hand, and her slight smile grew.

“Do you have a favorite flower, Beau?”

There was the answer Beau wanted to give, and then there was the truth. In the dense quiet, the latter won out. “Not really. Kinda wish I did. Do you?”

“I think...” Yasha gently plucked the flower from its stem. “I think they are all my favorite.”

“Really?”

Yasha nodded, cradling the flower in her palm.

It was, quite possibly, the happiest Beau had ever seen her. She suddenly wished that she knew the name of this plant, of every plant in the room. If something could bring Yasha such tranquil joy, it was worth knowing. 

“The ones in this room are from all over. I’ve never even heard of some of them,” Yasha said.

“Caleb probably read about a thousand botany books just for this.”

“Probably,” Yasha laughed.

“Come on. You’ve gotta have a favorite,” Beau pushed, in the back of her mind hoping that she could use the information for future reference.

Yasha shook her head. “My book...I was keeping it for Zuala at first, but I think I am also keeping it for myself now. I want to remember the places that I’ve been and the things that happened there. Because those things have brought me here, and I am very happy about that, even if some of what happened was...not so happy. I would not be here, with all of you, without every single one of those flowers.” 

She held her hand out, presenting the plucked flower. Beau stared at the five long, carefree, white petals, tinged with a sunshiny yellow at the tips. Slowly, she reached out and was surprised to find the petals were rich and soft like velvet. She couldn’t recall ever seeing it before - maybe it was from Xhorhas.

“And,” Yasha met Beau’s eyes, “finding new favorite flowers to add to my book does not mean I forget the old ones.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Beau agreed.

“This one reminds me a lot of you, actually,” Yasha said, almost whispering to herself. 

Beau felt her heart skip. She’d never been given a poem before, and she’d certainly been compared to something so delicate and precious. She wracked her brain for something witty to say, but she’d never been very good at that around Yasha. “It does?” she choked out.

“It grows in the desert,” Yasha explained. “It's very stubborn and strong. We called it Sunsbane. Even with very little water, it survives the hottest days. The buds stay closed for many years, but the plant stays strong. The roots grow deeper than you’d ever guess just from looking at it above the surface. It can take a long time, but when the nights get cool enough, the flowers finally bloom.” She paused, sweeping her hair behind her ear. “You probably didn’t come here to hear so much about plants, though.”

Beau could very well have been in the desert herself at the moment - her mouth went dry again, and she felt like it was about a thousand degrees in that room.

Untrusting of her own ability to form words after that, she lifted the flower from Yasha’s hand, then reached up and tucked its short stem back where Yasha had fixed her hair.

“Hey,” Beau managed.

“Mhm?”

“You can tell me about plants anytime, alright?”

“Alright,” Yasha returned. “Okay.”

Beau retreated a step, realizing how close they’d been standing. “White’s kinda more your color, though. Plus, the yellow really...your eyes, it - works. Looks nice. Um, goodnight.”

There was a strange look on Yasha’s face, like she was thinking too hard.

“What?” Beau risked asking.

“Just that...I didn’t answer your question yet. About the poem.”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s cool, honestly--”

“Beau.” Yasha said her name so softly that Beau had no choice but to stop protesting.

Yasha took the flower from behind her ear and clutched it to her chest. “You should know that I like this flower very much.”

So much of Beau’s old self - the person who’d just tried to leave again - wanted to bolt for the door, but her new self locked down and stood her ground. Inhale, exhale. “I think it likes you, too,” she said weakly.

Yasha waved her hand, still holding onto the flower. “Jester said some things, and I - well, I don’t know. I didn’t think I should hear them from someone else in case they weren’t true or--”

“They are,” Beau jumped in. “I don’t know what she said, exactly, but I can guess.”

“How do you mean?”

“Like I tried not to for a while. And then that became more impossible than it already was. Just like Sunsbane, I guess. Deep roots, you know?”

“I’m sorry,” Yasha said suddenly. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Not that I - I wasn’t expecting anything. You’ve surprised me in a lot of ways, is all.”

Beau couldn’t handle the guilt on Yasha’s face. It wasn’t her fault, everything that had happened to her, to them. Beau would’ve waited a thousand days in the desert if it meant letting Yasha heal and find herself.

The gap between them had shrunk again, somehow, but it was more unbearable than ever. It felt like every time they got closer by half, always lessening the space but never quite meeting. But Beau was very good at breaking things, and, for once, she could break something for good. Her palm met Yasha’s cheek, fingertips curling around a small braid hanging loosely.

“You said those flowers are pretty damn patient, right?” Beau said.

Yasha nodded almost imperceptibly, like she was afraid Beau’s hand would pull back.

“Then I think you have nothing to apologize for.”

“Still.”

“Well,” with much less confidence than she’d hoped for, Beau asked, “you gonna kiss me or what?”

Yasha’s eyes closed for a moment, her expression neutral save for the slight crease between her brows and the subtle part of her lips. When her eyes opened again, her gaze was angled down slightly, plotting a trajectory that Beau had hardly dared to dream of.

“You’re sure?” Yasha said softly.

Beau’s answer was no more than a breath of a laugh.

Yasha went on. “I just want to make sure that you are sure. I’m very sure, at this point, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be--”

Beau cut her off as gently as possible.

For a moment, Beau’s mind went blissfully blank.

Then it hit her. She was kissing Yasha.

It started soft - not tentative, but quiet.

And then, miracle of miracles, Yasha was kissing her back, and she was much less patient. She was lightning and thunder striking at once, a storm raw and deafening in its power. Beau wondered when her knees would give out under the sheer weight of it - until solid arms circled around her waist and pulled her in.

Desperate to hold onto something, Beau’s fingers wound into Yasha’s hair. Her other hand was trapped just below Yasha’s collarbone, grasping tighter until blunt nails scraped past a cloth edge and found skin.

Maybe Beau did have a favorite flower, after all.

***

[beauregardlionett]

this poem is my confessional (loving you isn’t a sin)

AO3 Link

A/N: big shout out to my man @sadwizardvibes for the inspiration AND for writing me a fucking song to go with this piece thanks for fueling my beauyasha brainrot man <3

If she was honest with herself, giving Beau that poem had been entirely an impulse decision. Yasha had told Jester she would work on it—which she did—and that she would find a special moment for it. But most of the moments she shared with Beau were special to her, so that didn’t exactly narrow things down. She cherished every conversation and tried her hardest to keep Beau safe. Especially after the events at the chantry, Yasha appreciated every moment she got with Beau.

So, she had handed the paper over and prayed she didn’t embarrass herself.

Beau had seemed flustered, touched, and Yasha had wanted nothing more than to kiss her then and there. But she had held back, because she wanted Beau to at least read the poem before anything else happened.

And then all of that insanity with Vess and Molly—no, Lucien—had happened, and Yasha found herself grateful nothing else had transpired between her and Beau. She hated to think the memory of their potential first kiss might have been marred by the events following.

Regardless, they were underway toward Aeor; the snowy landscapes were taxing, endless, and a little boring. Supposedly it was a good thing they had encountered none of the foretold beasts, but Yasha harbored a lot of pent up frustration and nerves. It would be nice to have something to take that out on.

At the end of their second day, Caleb set up his tower. He ushered them all inside to a haven of warmth and stained glass they were becoming steadily more familiar with. Dagon seemed understandably impressed with the magical structure and grateful for the guest room he was directed to.

Usually they would gather up for dinner together, but there seemed to be a silent, unanimous decision that exhaustion took precedence. They retired to their various rooms with yawns and quiet ‘good nights’, safe for the time being. Yasha lay on her back on the cot in the room with the floral mural. She traced an absent gaze over the patterns, identifying flowers in her head and hoping it would lull her anxious mind to sleep.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Molly—Lucien—and what they would do when they caught up to him. Yasha couldn’t stop thinking about Beau, about the poem she carefully tucked away to read later. Yasha couldn’t help but remember of Zualla as she stared at the flowers on her wall.

There was a knock at her door.

Pushing to her feet after a moment, Yasha walked to her door to poke her head out. She was confused about who might be at her door at this hour until her eyes found Beau fidgeting on the other side of the threshold.

“Hi,” Beau mumbled, hands behind her back.

“Hi,” Yasha breathed back, opening the door a little wider. “Are you okay? It’s late.”

“Yeah,” Beau said, voice pitching up a little at the end in a tell Yasha quickly realized meant she was nervous. “Yeah, I just uh…”

Yasha raised an eyebrow at Beau’s nerves, unused to a Beau who floundered. She realized in the second before Beau pulled the piece of parchment out from behind her back what this was about. The Aasimar flushed pink and her eyes flicked to the ground, embarrassed.

“This was…really beautiful, Yasha,” Beau mumbled, fingers fiddling with the edges of the paper. “But I uh…I noticed this.”

Yasha chanced a look up, Beau extending the paper and pointing to a tiny note scrawled in the bottom corner. She had forgotten about that.

In her messy, cramped handwriting, Yasha had scrawled the word harp? She had been considering turning her poem into a song, because it was always easier for her to express things through music. Plus, she knew that Beau enjoyed her music, so why wouldn’t she put it to chords? But Yasha ended up pushing the idea aside. It was one thing for Beau to like Yasha’s wordless performances, and a whole other for Yasha to direct poetry with music toward the woman of her affection.

“It was…just an idea,” Yasha said with a half-hearted dismissive gesture.

“Would you play it for me?”

Yasha felt her cheeks grow warmer, more red than pink now. But before she could give it too much thought, the Aasimar felt herself nodding. She stood aside and let Beau into her room, leading the monk back into the chamber painted with flowers.

Beau sat cross-legged on the floor across from Yasha as the Aasimar tuned her harp. She took a little longer with the task than strictly necessary, just so she could freak out in silence.

Of course, she had prepared chords for this, because she had run with the idea. But Yasha shied away from it, losing her courage. Music was something that had helped Yasha heal, a meditation in her own way. It brought her peace and offered her an outlet for emotions she didn’t quite know how to express. So, to have Beau sitting before her, eyes trained solely on Yasha, was intense and nerve-wracking.

If Yasha had learned anything, though, it was that she could trust Beau. The monk had been looking out for her, and for the entire group, since day one. Before Beau had trusted any of them, she had still been looking out for them. It was something Yasha admired about Beau—her capacity to care and to love despite everything she had been through. Beau inspired Yasha to keep fighting.

The least she could do was play this for her.

She didn’t need the parchment back. Yasha had spent hours pouring over the words and the chords to make sure it sounded perfect.

Oh, oh Beau, I’m grateful for you.

You waited while I wandered,

While everyone was wondering

If I’d ever come back, you stayed true.

Her voice faltered slightly at the start, uncertain and underused, but she persisted. Beau’s eyes on her simultaneously made her nervous and strengthened her resolve.

Oh, oh Beau, you mean so much to me,

I’ve lost so many people,

I cannot fathom losing

The woman who has loved so fearlessly.

Yasha rarely sang. She used to sing for Zualla in those quiet stolen moments years ago. When they were out in the fields alone, walking or hunting or just existing to stare at the stars. She sang once for Molly, both of them a little past tipsy after a good night for the circus. He had told her she possessed a voice fit for performances, but Yasha had waved him off.

Her voice was sweet, higher than her speaking voice because she sang from her nose and her head. It threw most people for a loop, but Beau merely sat there and stared. Her blue eyes were wide with awe, lips slightly parted. If Yasha didn’t know Beau couldn’t be charmed, she would almost think the monk under a spell.

And I’ve ambled and trekked over miles and miles,

Every step lead me straight back to you.

You gave me the space to learn where I belong

And I’ll tell you right now, it’s the truth.

It was almost like nothing else existed. Yasha’s fingertips buzzed against the taut strings of the harp, her voice vibrated in her chest, and Beau’s eyes stayed fixated on Yasha’s face. This was all that mattered right now, and Yasha couldn’t think of what existed before this, or what might exist after.

Oh, oh Beau, the one I’m thinking of,

I want to hold your hand and

Stand quietly beside you.

I want to confess, you’re my love.

The last strum of her harp faded into silence, and Yasha reveled in the peace vibrating through her veins. She had rarely known stillness like this before discovering music.

Beau sniffed, and Yasha twitched as she startled, eyes snapping up to Beau’s face. The monk still stared at her, eyes wide and watering.

No one’s ever written me a poem before. Yasha remembered the soft-spoken admission as a tear tumbled down Beau’s cheek. She guessed without asking that no one ever sung for Beau before, either.

“Yasha…” Beau breathed. “That was incredible. Your voice…”

The Aasimar ducked her head, not even trying to suppress the smile pulling at her lips. Beau’s awe was so genuine, Yasha barely knew how to face it head on.

“I didn’t know if you would…y’know want to hear it like that. Or if you would just rather read it,” Yasha rambled, running her fingers with absent focus up and down one string on her harp. “So…yeah, I mean, it’s a song, too. But it was originally a poem. For you.”

“Yeah,” Beau’s voice cracked. “I don’t—Yasha, that was…incredible. You’re incredible. You wrote that? For me?”

“Of course,” Yasha said, looking up again with a small frown. The note of disbelief in Beau’s voice upset her. Why wouldn’t she write a poem for Beau?

“Thank you,” Beau said, her voice overflowing with an emotion Yasha could empathize with, but couldn’t name.

“I am glad you liked it,” Yasha said as she set her harp aside. She didn’t know where to go from here. Jester had said Beau was waiting for Yasha to make the first move, and this…was this enough? It felt weird to question that kind of thing because Yasha had been married before. Theoretically, she should know how to do this. But then again, everything she and Zualla had done had been in secret. Yasha never learned how to express affection for someone openly.

And knowing what she did about Beau, Yasha figured that the monk had no better clue in any of this than she did.

“Maybe uhm…” Yasha started, but stopped. She didn’t want to mess this up. “Maybe after we finish this job…we could, y’know…get dinner? Just us?”

Watching a slow smile spread and pull at Beau’s lips was like watching a sunrise. It began slowly, a little hesitantly, colors bleeding into and washing away the darkness of Beau’s uncertainty. It was a gentle harbinger that lasted a lifetime in no time at all. Then, between one blink and the next, the sun. Beau grinned with wild abandon, lips pulled wide to reveal her teeth, and eyes scrunching at the corners with the force of it. Yasha’s heart went giddy in her chest at the mere sight of Beau’s joy.

“I’d like that,” Beau whispered. There was the same quiet, awed excitement in her voice from when she first received Yasha’s poem.

Yasha’s cheeks hurt from how hard she was smiling. “It’s a date.”

[mythvoiced]

which muse is the trickiest to get into character for? why were you drawn to each one of your characters?

@theimpalpable​​ |  — ⊱asks for muns with a multimuse or more than one muse⊰ 

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-. Which muse is the trickiest to get into character for?  I think that would be Patrick, which is quite something considering I keep stubbornly referring to him as my main muse - some main muse he is, fickle as he continues to be - and that is mostly because I keep struggling with connecting the different versions of Patrick that exist within my head. I don’t remember if I’ve described this before, but Patrick is meant to be a character with a secret internal monologue, a secondary character if you will, or more fittingly a deuteragonist because he’s meant to be experienced from an outsider’s point of view.

His manners, his facial expressions, his tensed nature, how quickly he dons and sheds personas, they don’t have quite the effect they’re meant to have if you can read his internal monologue.

This heavily contrasts with my writing style, though, that is characterised by a lot of dipping into said internal monologue, or even if it’s not a monologue and described from a 3rd person point of view, there’s still too much of that insight, those references that give enough hints to properly understand or get a hunch of what’s going on, when experiencing as I’d like him to get experienced can only be achieved by having NO HUNCH at all in regards to his thought process, his feelings, and everything related.

SO, it’s difficult getting into character because I’m constantly with one foot in and one foot out of his mental space.

-. Why were you drawn to each one of your characters? THIS one will be a TAD long, please forgive me ♥ I can start by saying that all my muses with mythological roots, specifically of the Norse, drew me in because of my adoration for the mythology that functions as the source of their base, starting from Patrick who kickstarted my obsession with everything Norse.

Many other characters pull me in because of their standpoint on things, their emotional journeys and their psychology: from Seona who’s hurt translating into unapologetic anger makes her so interesting to write, to Jungwoo and Taejoo who are just trying to survive and disappear within or from society, depending on which one you focus on, and so on and so forth.

And others just... provide me with a challenge I didn’t know I was looking for.

I can do a quick rundown (initial reasons, won’t list things that relate to subsequent changes):

Cesare: his 'caged animal’-like attitude towards just about anything and anyone he encounters, the way aggression used to be his first defence and the psychological divide between trauma-born reactions and natural werewolf instincts. Seona: her restless rage and the contrast between her actions and the person she’s justifying them with. Diana: I wanted a valkyrie and I love her ongoing identity crisis and how violently she defends herself against it. Eunjae: I can’t remember if the mind-reading or the social worker came before, might have happened at the same time, but the idea of an emotionally extremely reserved social worker with mind-reading abilities and a hidden past just has me going buck wild, everything from their attitude to their circumstances to their secrets has so much potential for so many different directions they could be taken into. Domenico: dorky vampire Caleb: Initially I just wanted a hunter muse again, but when I came up with his Sight and started developing his personality, I guess I just can’t get enough of a naturally self-denying and self-sacrificial person with a nurturing demeanour who is also Very Woke on issues and has, you know, those abilities. Sunhee: Lotte’s story gave me the opportunity to introduce someone who has to live through the repercussions of what happened to a loved one Catharina: sells info, steps on men’s feet with her heels, untrustworthy and wicked smart Yoshino: dorky tanuki with no sense of responsibility whatsoever Nathaniel: a challenge to myself, someone who’s views on morality I can’t justify with a traumatic past, he just is and just thinks the way he is and does, without redeemable reason Eros: writing him feels like watching a lover run their hand over silken drapes as they recite love poems with bittersweet undertones to their lover waiting for them in bed Samuel: always wanted an author muse and his ability came to me at random really, so I love the idea of combining the basics of his character with a personality trait I haven’t dived in a lot: inability to act Quincy: dorky time-traveller with very grey morals, sort of toeing the line between good and not so good Haniel: I wanted an angel who is so convinced with the idea that they’re doing good and doing it the right way too, that they’re fallen as a punishment to the very thing they thought was the most praiseworthy part of their attitude, someone who’s so convinced with her ideals she doesn’t realise how many people she’s hurting and damning Muninn: I love Norse mythology Jungwoo: when I first made him, I wanted to dwell into a representation of PTSD I hadn’t yet: plenty of my muses have PTSD, have been through things, but most of them are “””high-functioning”””; with Jungwoo, I wanted to explore not dealing with one’s symptoms well, living one’s own live passively and according to said symptoms, rather than with them; Jungwoo’s passivity is the core of his character and the things I’d like to explore, his passivity and his exhaustion Corey: neglected prodigy with enough good in his heart to not realise how angry he could be Kaeden: I love Goblin and grim reaper lores in general, and I’ve actually given writing a reaper shots before (Han, for one), so I thought I’d give it another one, but divert from the traditional exploration of reaper lore by having him... well... refuse to reap; when I came up with his backstory, the life of Kiha, my interest only grew because it opened such a vast amount of things to work with and also inspired me to connect more muses the way I had Kiha & Seona Lotte: initially, Lotte’s base characterisation was... my love song to the moon, everything I wrote about him, his appearance, his demeanour, his voice, his movements, was meant to remind or be compared to the moon, never equalled; I think that’s why his original concept didn’t inspire me to actually write him a lot, because it lacked a backstory beyond said concept; now though, with the memory loss added, and his indirect connection to Jungwoo, well, I’m dying to write him at all times Taejoo: I’ve always wanted to write a telekinetic character and this was the opportunity to do so; initially, though, Taejoo was meant to be a less... morally excusable character, his original concept depicted him as a character who felt marginalised for his abilities and thought himself not forced to abide by the rules & morals of the world that marginalised him, as a result; then, though, when I sat down and wrote out his full backstory, and added those little details, he lost most of that disinterest towards his peers and developed a near-obsessive nature to create or avoid certain impressions people may have in his regards; while the core of his concept is still ‘just trying to survive in a world that doesn’t want him for something he can’t change’, it is now driven forward by the opposite of the original idea meaning submitting to the best of his abilities to his surroundings and the people living in them, and it’s something I’ve never written before, and its similarities and stark differences to Jungwoo’s attitude make it all the more interesting Nota: I’ll admit, I wanted a tragic character and as a result of this lack of a proper central concept, I don’t write him a lot; his two defining features, the abuse in his home and his wish to be a musician don’t... fit together well, they don’t tie into the other, they just co-exist within his character so there’s a lot I need to work on because at the moment I am NOT drawn in by his character Sabriel: I was on an angel-muse making spree and wanted a Yoon Jeonghan muse, so... the two things just kind of got together and Sabriel happened; when I started working a little on their abilities and especially when I fully established what their role was in Heaven, I was drawn in by the fun, high-spirited personality, combined with good intentions and the truly vast powers of the rest of their character created a fun contrast I couldn’t wait to explore: they’re simultaneously one of my most harmless and most powerful muses Junghoon: I wanted a detective muse :3 but as I started developing him and his personality came forward, he became a muse that worked perfectly with the concept of ‘the cards someone is handled in life doesn’t determine their worth or their abilities’, to have such a studious & ambitious muse with ADHD who continues to look forward no matter what may be thrown his way, without showing anything but gratitude towards the things he’s given, and also having enough confidence to hold his own ALMOST unapologetically, he became a Great Guy basically; but I’ll be honest, I simply adore writing his personality, it speaks to me so well and is always something that gives me joy Kangmin: I wanted a perfectionist and the opportunity to explore how ‘all work and no play’ is detrimental to a person and not something that should be considered praiseworthy, how a solely work-oriented lifestyle can lead to an excessive amount of negativity with little to no rewards; the addition of past health problems, I’m not quite sure where it came from, and Kangmin themself has actually softened from what they were originally meant to be like (not excessively, simply more likely to NOT snap than SNAP as they were meant to be) and all in all they’ve become rather melancholic and something about this air surrounding them keeps drawing me in Beomsoo: another psychological aspect I was intrigued to explore: the absolute denial people can get stuck in during their grief, and the extremes to which a human mind would go to protect itself from a reality it can’t cope with; Beomsoo’s generally positive or at the very least neutral outlook on life and how, from an outside perspective, he seems to be a regular guy living a somewhat regular life, while in reality he’s denying something so big that it goes as far as fabricating memories to keep the pretences up, well, it’s quite interesting Chulsoo: I sincerely have no idea at the moment. That may be because he’s so fresh, but, I think continuously re-watching Love Me Harder might have had something to do with it, because I could feel the MV was inspiring me to write s o m e t h i n g, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what. Then I just… thought to make something up on the spot and kind of roll with whatever idea would stick first et viola, out came Chulsoo. Now he draws me in because he’s becoming meaner than anticipated, which is always an interesting turn of event

So, here is a rundown that was anything but quick, I am so sorry

[sonofhistory]

Could you post some cool/interesting/must-know facts on Ben Tallmadge? And perhaps Caleb as well? Thank you!

John Trumbull once started a painting of George Washington but Washington grew too busy for him to finish and he still had half to go. Trumbull then saw how identical Benjamin Tallmadge and Washington’s legs looked so he made Tallmadge sit for Washington’s legs. 

On a night in March 1771 while at Yale, Benjamin Tallmadge, Nathan Hale, Enoch Hale a few other fellow classmates roamed around and went a broke several windows on and around campus. 

Nathan Hale and Tallmadge signed off their letters to one another as Pythias and Damon which symbolizes love and willingness to die for the other in a heartbeat.

In his mid-teens he was “a chubby boy with a baby face.”

Benjamin Tallmadge stood guard with Alexander Hamilton for John Andre the night before Andre’s execution. They all talked the entire night and it got Tallmadge to open up about what happened to Nathan Hale because he didn’t talk about Hale since he was executed. 

Tallmadge used to participate in Greek and Roman plays during college which consisted of putting on makeup and dressing up in wigs and acting on stage. 

Tallmadge graduated Yale months earlier than his class with very high marks/grades because he was very smart; even though he screwed around his freshman and sophomore year and contracted a serious bout of measles in his junior and senior year. 

Both Ben and Nathan wrote each other letters telling one another they missed each other, how much they appreciated each other and wrote poems to and about one another. Ben also complained when Nathan didn’t write him enough. No joke, Ben referred to himself as Nathan’s “maiden”.

At the end of 1777, Tallmadge heard a girl wanted to meet him because she had spy info she had gathered. Benjamin met her at a tavern, but he was spotted and an alarm sounded. Armed British guards coming up fast, Tallmadge dashed outside, swung the girl up behind him on his horse and they both took off at full speed. (Kilmeade 39).

Tallmadge gave the first name in Samuel Culper in honor to his younger brother, Samuel who was in the Continentals and did some courier work for the ring. (Kilmeade 52). 

After escaping to the British side, Benedict Arnold sent him Tallmadge a letter telling him that he should join him and Tallmadge got very salty. 

Benjamin Tallmadge was a brony. 

Supposedly, after the war, after the death of John Andre, whenever someone would mention either Hale or Andre, he would burst into tears. 

Tallmadge was once threatened to be thrown overboard and he said he’d pull the person who threatened him down with him. 

During the revolution while he was guarding Andre on his horse, Andre asked Tallmadge what lay in store for him. Tallmadge did all he could to ignore this question with Andre pestered him. Tallmadge stopped his horse and “rather emotionally” said “I had a much-loved classmate in Yale College, by the name of Nathan Hale…General Washington wanted information respecting the strength, position and probable movements of the enemy. Captain Hale tendered his services…and was taken.” Tallmadge then paused and abruptly stared Andre in the eyes and snapped “Do you remember the sequel of the story?” and Andre replied “Yes” to which Tallmadge said “He was hanged as a spy!” Andre then said “But you surely do not consider his case and mine alike?” Tallmadge stared him dead in the face, “Yes, precisely similar; and similar will be your fate.” Andre then proceeded to size Tallmadge up until despair washed over his face and he realized that he was going to die. 

[worstmissionever]

similarities/parallels between bates motel and lost because everything happens for a reason

and i’m a huge lost nerd with too much free time and too much feelings for both tv shows. this post is a mess and it’s just a list of things. there are topics but the single points don’t appear in any order. I WILL SPOILER YOU BOTH SHOWS COMPLETELY, like, the fucking end. 

i do this for fun. carlton cuse both worked on lost and bates motel as a show runner and that’s my only connection. if i see too much, well, that’s me then but it’s FUN.

even if you don’t care about lost or haven’t seen it, it might be interesting...? you could at least read THE RULES until the lost part begins if you want to avoid spoilers.

index: 1. The Rules (BM & Lost part) 2. Dylan Thomas and Romero 3. Mental Institution/Hurley’s and Norman’s Question 4. books and poems 5. alpert vs. romero 6. shapeshifter 7. moving on 8. mother/jacob/men in black vs. norma/norman/mother

1. The Rules + games between certain people

in both shows an important reaccuring theme is the set of rules. rules between people or in certain places, in science... some people play games with each other and have to follow the rules. i start with bates motel.

BATES MOTEL

a) in bates motel you have norman and norma playing their relationship as a game (according to norman in 2x08), to love each other unconditionally. that is the goal. then there were rules which norma changed because the loss of trust between them.

example, 2x08:

norma: Nothing has changed.

norman: Everything has changed. You changed the rules.

norma: What rules? What are you talking about? 

norman: I don't trust you anymore, and that changes everything. Okay, it's all up for grabs now. You no longer know who I am either, because we're different.

norma: What? Stop it. Stop. Stop it, Norman.

norman: It was all just a game. The game was that we were devoted to each other, and no one could ever come between us, that we loved each other more than anyone could ever love another person.

norma: But we do love each other.

norman: Do we? Do we really, mother?

a powerful example of how the rules have changed or maybe what has been part of the rules all along is in 2x10:

norman: How can you ask me to live with this? 

norma: Because I will die if you leave. I will, I'll die, Norman. We're like the same person. If you kill yourself, I'll be there one step after. We have to be together. We're supposed to be together. No matter what, I will be with you every step. I will be right by your side, and we will face this together. Please.

norman: All right, mother. You win.

norma brought up the rule ‘if you die, i will die’ and norman says ‘you win’ when he decides not to kill himself. for her. off-topic: these two situations have been such a turning point for the show, everything changed after that, especially after norman says norma had won. like...another game starts and both of them don’t know the rules yet; if some of the old rules even apply anymore. i loooove that.

b) norman and mother have a similar game ongoing but it’s more vague and the first rule and also goal that stands out is mother’s need to protect norman. norman starts with not wanting to know the truth, with oblivion to what is happening/has happened, then he changes somehow the rules because he wants to know the truth, because their relationship doesn’t work that way anymore.

5x06:

mother: Like Adam wanting all the knowledge and eating the apple in the Garden of Eden, you get the truth, but you also see the pain. We are partners now, Norman. You have no choice. We are on even footing.

their ‘game’ ends when norman knows everything and mother doesn’t need to protect him anymore. somehow they both win in a....tragic way...lol not lol.

5x10:

mother: You know everything now, and there's nothing for me to protect you from.

c) everyone who is involved with the drug business, so basically the whole town. it only works (somehow) because people follow the rules they made up, especially in the beginning it’s ‘an eye for an eye’.

one example in 1x02:

shelby: The people in this town, they deal with things in a different way, but it gets dealt with.

norma: And what about the guy who was burned?

shelby: It'll be dealt with. An eye for an eye. It'll get handled.

you also have sheriff alex romero whose job seems to be to make up cover stories for situations like this.

d) chick mentions the rules in 3x02 when he meets dylan and caleb after they shot his dog.

chick: You know, there's rules, right? We respect the rules. That's how we respect each other, right? If we all understand the rules, then we can coexist. Isn't that right, Dylan? Yeah.

dylan: Yeah, I guess.

e) other rules. of course there are other rules. rules in the police station, ‘standard procedures’. rules in the mental institution, you can see the rules printed there on the wall. 

LOST

a) i will keep it short, lol. ben linus and charles widmore are rivals. charles wants to find the island (again) and ben wants to stop him. when one of widmore’s people threaten to kill ben’s daugther, ben believes that she won’t be harmed because of the ruuuuuules they seem to follow up to this point (4x09)

ben: So if you want to kill her, go ahead and do it—  [long story short, she gets killed] He changed the rules.

i love ben linus and i love norman bates and they say the same, gosh. later in that episode ben finds widmore and confronts him.

widmore: Have you come here to kill me, Benjamin?

ben: We both know I can't do that.

well that is one big rule. he stands right in front of the guy that killed is daugther and is bound by rules. i won’t go into lost-lore to give explanations, lol, that’s not the point right now.

ben: I'm here, Charles, to tell you that I'm going to kill your daughter. Penelope, is it? And once she's gone... once she's dead... then you'll understand how I feel. And you'll wish you hadn't changed the rules.

that sounds a lot like an eye for an eye to me, right? 

widmore: That island's mine, Benjamin. It always was. It will be again.

ben: But you'll never find it.

widmore: Then I suppose the hunt is on for both of us.

and that’s another example of a game that two characters play.

b) *heavy sigh* okay, another set of rules is brought to you by...MOTHER. yes, you’re still reading the lost part and it’s part of the biggest lost/bates motel parallel EVER, i tell you, i almost CHOKED ON MY EXISTENCE when i noticed it, but more later. first of all:

mother set up rules between her two surrogate children in 6x15:

mother: If they [other people] found you, they would hurt you.

jacob: Why would they hurt us?

mother: Because they're people, Jacob, and that's what people do.

boy in black: But we're people. Does that mean that we can hurt each other?

mother: I've made it so you can never hurt each other.

another imporant things mother says is that they can’t ever leave this island and that both of them ‘don’t have to worry’ about death, meaning they won’t be able to die (that easily, cough). rules.

the boy in black aka the man in black aka the smoke monster’s goal is to leave the island, desperately trying to find a loophole.

which brings us to 

c) the game between jacob and the man in black when they were LITTLE. they played an ancient senet game (imagine old chess or blackgammon). jacob moves a stone on the board, also 6x15.

boy in black: You can’t do that, Jacob.

jacob: Why not?

boy in black: Because it's against the rules.

jacob: You made the rules.

boy in black: I found it. One day, you can make up your own game and everyone else will have to follow your rules.

which brings us to

d) the game between jacob and the man in black when they were OLDER. like i said the man in black wants to find a loophole to leave this island. also, he really wants to kill jacob.

man in black: Do you have any idea how badly I wanna kill you? 

jacob: Yes. 

man in black: One of these days, sooner or later... I'm going to find a loophole, my friend. 

jacob: Well, when you do, I'll be right here.

there’s more about the three of them in the very end because it’s...a long one. and a messy one.

2. DYLAN THOMAS and Romero

i admit it, it’s...probably made up out of thin air but i love it, okay, it’s my little precious secret lost reference in the end of bates motel and i’m still laughing about it.

5x10. you remember the woman with her two children checking in after norman nearly died in the woods? one son was called dylan. NO, wait for it and hear me out.

norman: His name's Dylan? I have a brother named Dylan.

woman: Yeah? We named him after Dylan Thomas. The poet.

dylan thomas. so i googled that guy. he wrote a poem called ‘and death shall have no dominion’. WAIT FOR IT. 

I will quote wikipedia on you.

In the Season 6 soundtrack of Lost the piece which shares its name with the poem is played while detailing Richard Alpert's life.

Richard Alpert is played by Nestor Carbonell.

HAHA. THIS IS DELIGHTFUL.

Anyway.

3. Mental Institution / Hurley’s and Norman’s question

in both tv shows a character get’s treated in a mental institution and said character sees people that don’t exist but heavily influence their behavior. you got hurley in lost and of course norman in bates motel

but the funnier parallel is in a question both characters ask:

hurley: Did either of you see a guy run through here... in a bathrobe... with a coconut?

norman: When when she was in here, was she with anyone? Or maybe a man, very dark hair, eyes, 6', maybe with the look of an escaped convict?

in both situations, the questioned person somehow doubts if the other one is doing quite well. ok i think it’s funny...

4. book and poem references

in lost and bates motel you will find a lot references to mentioned books and poems, i already wrote three posts about examples in bates motel. (great expectations, fire and ice, the titanic one.)

in lost you have books like mice of men, carrie....and so much more, seriously, it’s lost.

5. Romero in Lost vs. Alpert in Bates Motel, ah shit, the other way 

as you might now, nestor carbonell plays sheriff romero on bates motel and richard alpert on lost and yes, there are similarities.

i want to mention a certain scene in 2x10 bates motel.

romero: I think you're smart enough to understand how things work around here. What you can do, what you can't do. And right now right now, there's a vacuum. Somebody's gonna fill that vacuum. That's as inevitable as the sun rising in the morning.

dylan: I'm not your guy. I didn't sign on for any of this.

romero: Well, somebody's going to, and I want to be sure that person who fills that vacuum, Dylan, understands the rules, because the rules are what make it possible for all of us to live here together in a peaceful manner.

So once again you have the rules here. but also romero who wants to recruit dylan to fill an important role. romero can’t take this job for himself so he needs to find someone who can do the job, someone who knows the rules and keep the balance. 

in lost richard alpert is an advisor to the leader of the island. he can’t ever be leader himself but he helps choosing one. he’s the person between jacob, basically his boss, and the people who come to the island. the scene of romero and dylan in bates motel very much reminded me of his role in lost. and romero is always in the middle between the drug business and the law/the town.

6. shapeshifter

the man in black appears in the shape of different people for the crashed people on the island, to manipulate them. i REALLY need a fanfic where norman lands on the lost island and sees the smoke monster as his mother. that’s just...i have so many feels about that.

7. Moving On

Oh, that’s a nice one, too. in the end of lost, it’s all about moving on. the losties meet in this flash sideways world, get together because they shared such an important part of their lives together, and together they move on. 

that’s pretty much what norman does in the end. when he sees himself in the woods, running towards norma. that’s his moving on. like the losties, norman and norma were always meant to be together and now, joined in the after life, they can move on together.

8. Jacob, the Man in Black, Mother vs. Norman, Mother and Norman

that’s my last one and it’s a tricky one and i won’t be able to give a proper conclusion because you can see it in a lot of different but very interesting ways. it’s long and messy and basically just a mind game so if you’re not into lost and that topic....no shame if you skip it.

6x15 lost plot:

a lonely island. claudia, pregnant, arrives on the island. she gives birth to jacob and another son, we call him the boy in black/man in black. a woman called simply mother (for realz) kills claudia and raises the boys. jacob is blonde, more innocent, does what mother says, wants to be good, in some way. the boy in black is dark haired, the opposite, asks questions, wants more autonomy. one day he learns that mother killed their real mother claudia and wants to join other people on the island. mother doesn’t like that because other people are BAD and forbids it but he goes anyway. he desperately wants to leave the island. meanwhile jacob and mother live their life. jacob sometimes chats and plays board games with the man in black. then mother learns that the man in black almost has found a way to leave the island so she kills every other person he was living with (my guess she’s a smoke monster btw). the man in black then kills mother. jacob is angry at him, throws him into a certain cave that turn people into something “worse than dead”. the man in black becomes a smoke monster, now is REALLY unable to leave the island. the dead body though still exists and jacob puts the man in black’s body next to mother’s body in a cave.

jacob and the man in black (he can take his old form) then live in a game-like world. the man in black tries to find a loophole to escape. meanwhile jacob brings people to the island to prove that they’re not mean. the man in black says everyone’s mean. lol  i put it very simple. 

let’s just start with one option.

jacob - norman

the man in black - mother

mother - norma

if you’re really into lost, bates motel and that topic, you can try to start playing with the idea. switch between characters. who could be who. 

or:

jacob - norman and mother - mother. then mother’s (lost) sentence ‘now you and i are the same’ would be a great reference to 5x06 bates motel right before norman kills sam. or you can say man in black - norman and mother - norma. so the man in black runs away because mother lied to him. and then he kills her.

or:

claudia is norma, mother is mother and both jacob and the man in black are parts of norman.

i know, i know, it’s messy, like i said. but i love to think about it.

-----------

ANYWAY. that’s it, i am done!

i can’t believe i wrote this post, lol.

if you have any suggestions or comments, let me know.

[sethmurfie-blog]

THE END - [Feb. 14, 10:14 p.m.]

ALRIGHT WELL HERE WE ARE, YUP THAT'S RIGHT, THE END OF THE LINE, THE TIP OF THE TRACK, THE TAIL OF THE ROSTER AND THE HORN OF THE HUB.

IT'S BEEN A PRETTY OBSTREPEROUS FEW YEARS, IF MY LAWYER HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT, AND YOU BETTER BELIEVE AND BE ETERNALLY GLAD THAT MY LAWYER ISN'T EVEN THE LEAST BIT REAL.

BUT AS I SIT HERE TIP-TYPING AWAY ON CALEB'S IRRATIONAL LAPTOP THAT HE BROUGHT ABOARD, AND AS WE WAIT FOR TAKE-OFF, I THINK ABOUT THE MELEE OF GETTING THROUGH SECURITY DOWN THERE AND WHAT A HASSLE THAT WAS. I GUESS NOTHING REALLY VERY SIGNIFICANT HAPPENED, CALEB OF COURSE HAD TO WEAR HIS FOUNTAIN OF GLOSTICKS ALL OVER HIS BODY SO THAT HE WAS TAKING EXTRA LONG AND I HUNG BACK IN MORTAL SHAME. AFTER HE WENT THROUGH, I STARTED TO WALK FORWARD TO ENTER THE LINE WHEN SOMEONE TAPPED MY SHOULDER, AND SO I WHIRLED AROUND.

"Hey."

PORRIDGE WAS STANDING THERE, SMILING WARILY WHILE HOLDING A BOWLING PIN IN HER HAND. I LOOKED DOWN AT IT BRIEFLY, THEN BACK UP AT HER AND SAID "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!”

SHE DIDN'T ANSWER. INSTEAD SHE JUST SAID, "Look at that. Now you're the one flying away."

I KEPT STARING. EVENTUALLY, AS THE HUM OF SECURITY AND AIRPORT CLATTER DRONED ON, I SAID "IS IT POSSIBLE YOU'RE GOING TO COME WITH US, OR, ARE YOU GOING BACK TO MORIARTY JAPAN?"

THE HUM WENT ON. PORRIDGE SAID, "I'll probably fly back in a week. Something like that. I obviously have some responsibilities to face up to." SHE HELD HER LEFT HAND UP, THE ONE WITH THE JEWEL-METAL- CIRCLE THING UPON IT, AND I LOOKED AT HER BLANKLY, CONFUSED. I THINK SHE SAW THE BLANKNESS IN MY EYES BECAUSE EVENTUALLY SHE SAID, "Seth." OR SHE KIND OF SIGHED IT.

"ᴇᴇᴇᴇᴇ—"

"WELL IF YOU EVER GET THE CHANCE I SUPPOSE THAT YOU COULD VISIT CALEB AND I IN ARID TROPICAL ANTARCTICA. I'M SURE WE'LL HAVE SOME MINUTE SPACE OR SOME SORT OF WITCH'S CHAMBER FOR YOUR CAPITAL BEING."

PORRIDGE SMILED SORT OF ODDLY AGAIN, AND SHE SAID, "I've—made choices that aren't—" SHE STOPPED AGAIN, AS IF SHE WERE HAVING TROUBLE TALKING. "—so good, all the time, but the big choice I've made is one I want to stick with. I guess I was just getting cold feet."

I LOOKED DOWN AT HER FEET, TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE PROBLEM WHEN I GOT A CLOSER LOOK AT THE BOWLING PIN IN HER HAND. THEN, I SAW THE RED MARKINGS.

"EXCUSE ME PORRIDGE MY DEAR IS THIS THE ANIMALISTIC CALLIGRAPHY BOWLING PIN THAT I MIGHT HAVE DROPPED DOWN AT THE MASQUERADE BALL?" I WAS STARING AT IT EVEN HARDER.

"Oh, yeah," SHE SAID, HALF-CHUCKLING. "You did drop it." AND THEN SHE HANDED IT TO ME, AND I SAW SOMETHING WRITTEN ON THE BACK.

“ᴇᴇᴇᴇᴇᴇᴇ—"

"WAIT STOP THE PRESSES AND FUCK THE MILLENNIALS, DID YOU ACTUALLY DEFILE THIS INVIOLABLE MASTERPIECE WITH YOUR OWN BRAND OF SCORCHED PITIFUL LIES—"

"No, I—" SHE REACHED FORWARD, STARTING TO PUT A HAND ON MY SHOULDER, BUT THEN WITHDRAWING. "I—wrote something I said to you, um, at the ice rink. But in the form it's supposed to be in. Just—" SHE HALF-LAUGHED, ROLLING HER SHOULDER LIKE SHE'D DONE BEFORE. "—wanted to see if you remember me."

"REMEMBER YOU? W-WHAT DO YOU—?"

THEN I STARTED TO READ THE WORDS. WRITTEN DOWN THE LENGTH OF THE PIN, I SAW IN FAMILIAR SHARPIED HANDWRITING, A POEM. IT SAID:

Only time tells where I'm going;

My world's not really one worth knowing.

Even bento boxes don't settle me down—

Get out and get wise before we drown.

Let's stop being cheesy 'cause I'm really just fine—

Entertained by Caleb and Seth for a time.

I STARED. "WHAT...?"

PORRIDGE STEPPED A LITTLE FORWARD, A BIZZARRE CHANT IN THE BACKGROUND GETTING LOUDER AND LOUDER. SECURITY THRUMMED AS SHE SAID, "Acrostic."

I LOOKED AT IT ONCE MORE. AND I LOOKED AT JUST THE FIRST LETTER OF EACH LINE. AND IT SAID

O

M

E

G

L

E

I STIRRED. "DID YOU—WAIT—"

"ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ, ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ, ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ, ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ—"

"A-ALL THAT TIME LONG AGO, WHEN I WAS TALKING TO SOMEONE WHO’S ALSO INTERESTED IN BOWLING AND THIER GRANDMOTHER—"

"ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ—"

"AND TELLING THEM ABOUT HOW MY GRANDMA WOULD DO BOWLING PIN CALLIGRAPHY WITH ME AND ALL THIS OTHER P-PERSONAL BULLSHIT, YOU WERE—"

"Seth," SHE SAID.

"ᴇᴇᴇᴇᴇᴇᴇ-ɴɪᴇ—"

"I've known you a while now."

"BUT—"

"ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ—"

“BUT HOW DID YOU RECOGNIZE IT WAS ME BASED ON A SINGLE SCRAP OF NET CONVERSATION?!"

SUDDENLY, PORRIDGE DID SOMETHING THAT I GUESS I CAN NEVER SEE COMING WITH HER EITHER. SHE THREW HER HEAD BACK, AND LAUGHED, VERY LOUDLY, AND VERY PROUDLY. "Who else could possibly be Seth Murfie?"

"I—I—"

"ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ-ᴇᴇɴɪᴇ—"

"PORRIDGE—"

AND BEFORE I KNEW IT THE SWARM OF BOYS RUSHED UPON ME AND WERE CARRYING ME TOWARD SECURITY, A THRONG PUSHING ME AWAY AS PORRIDGE SMILED AND WAVED, THE BOWLING PIN TIGHT IN MY GRIP. "GOODBYE" I SAID, THOUGH I COULD HARDLY HEAR IT OVER THE EENIE- ING THAT CARRIED ME OVER THE RAIL AND INTO THE GATE.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

AS I PREPARE TO START MY WONDERFUL NEW LIFE IN ANTARCTICA, HELPING MY BROTHER WITH SOME KIND OF LUGGAGE-APP BUSINESS OR WHATEVER IT IS (AND ALSO APPARENTLY DOING SOME SKYPE- CONDUCTING OF THE NEW YORK SYMPHONY PHILHARMONIC), KNOWING THAT I'LL BE AN ESSENTIAL TOOL IN THE K.B.I., I HAVE TO—

I HAVE TO—WAIT.

I WAS PAINTING ON THAT BOWLING PIN THAT NIGHT AT THE MASQUERADE BALL. CALEB'S DOING SOMETHING ON HIS PHONE RIGHT NOW, BUT SHOULD I INVARIABLY INFORM HIM THAT—

NO. HE'LL BE ACCEPTABLE. HE DOESN'T NEED TO KNOW THAT HE WAS FAR FROM CORRECT.

HE DOESN'T NEED TO KNOW THAT EVEN WITH MY MASK ON THAT MADE ME UNRECOGNIZABLE THAT NIGHT, THAT WITH THE BOWLING PIN CALLIGRIPHIED UNDER MY ARMPIT IT MEANT THAT THE UMBRELLA- WOMAN IN THE STRANGE BLUE-AND-BLACK MASK WOULD REMEMBER AN OLD OMEGLE CONVERSATION, AND SO KNEW THE WHOLE TIME WHOSE NECK SHE WAS PUTTING HER ARM AROUND. AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

WE’RE NEARLY ABOUT TO LAUNCH. WE’LL HAVE TO TURN OFF OUR BAGS, BOWLING BALLS, AND ELECTRONIC MACHINERY. SO ALRIGHT. FINE. GOODBYE AMERICA. GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR ACROSTIC POETRY. I CAN'T SAY I HAVE MANY COMPLAINTS, ALTHOUGH THINGS COULD HAVE BEEN EXPONENTIALLY BETTER. I GUESS I'M JUST RELIEVED, THAT AT SOME POINT, SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, DID, BRIEFLY—

L

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[viralhottopics]

6 Insane Ways Movies Are Trying To Be Authentic

A great artist knows that the most important details are the ones their audience might not necessarily notice — like the soft clouds in the background of the Mona Lisa, or the surprisingly detailed scribblings in John Doe’s notebook in Se7en, or the recipe for The Antidote that I’ve been hiding in my articles for the past few years. (“Antidote for what?” you might be asking. Don’t worry. All will become clear soon.) This is especially true of movies, that often hide the weirdest and most interesting work in the places nobody bothered to check. For example…

6

Everything In Zootopia Is Moving All The Time

What most people don’t realize about animated movies is that most of the frame isn’t actually animated. There’s usually a single static background with a few animated cells on top of them — this is clear in low-budget TV cartoons, where the moving frames tend to have a slightly different color from the immobile background, but it’s more cleverly hidden in big-budget Disney movies because of that aforementioned big budget. The reason they don’t animate the entire frame is, of course, because that would be insanely fucking time-consuming. It’s way easier to have one still picture while Batman or Scooby-Doo conduct their slapstick antics on an entirely different layer.

Unless you’re making Zootopia, in which case — for the first time in Disney history — absolutely everything is moving. And by “everything” I mean, in fact, “all the things.” Every shadow shimmers. Every car sputters. Every strand of hair twitches and wafts in the wind. All 30,000 leaves on that tree are moving, thanks to technology developed just for this movie.

Part of the reason this is so crazy is, as made clear in the first paragraph of this entry, it’s completely unneeded. As humans, we’re pretty dumb, and aren’t likely to notice that maybe that bush back there doesn’t have an ant crawling on it. But Disney had to push the boundaries, just like they always have, to create a living, breathing, utterly convincing world that is so magical and wondrous that it never even had to get around to explaining what the hell the predators eat in this universe. A fox can’t live on blueberries, guys.

5

John Carpenter Hinted Who The Thing Was With Eye Light

The Thing is a movie about a shape-shifting alien who infiltrates a team of rugged, hairy, stern men. The interstellar beast picks them off one by one, feasting on their sweet, succulent, deeply heterosexual juices, until only the manliest — Kurt Russell and Keith David — are left alive. One of the nerdiest film debates in modern pop culture is about the order in which this happens — The “thing” is indistinguishable from a human once it takes that human’s form, so a lot of the tension comes down to figuring out who can be saved and who needs to be consumed through cleansing fire. It’s sorta like being out to dinner with a bunch of your friends and one of them keeps farting.

Director John Carpenter specifically shot the movie so it’s unclear in what order who gets infected, and whether Russell or David are infected at the end. But it turns out there’s one detail that Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey kept secret until recently, and it has to do with eye light.

“Eye light” is a camera trick that puts a slight gleam in an actor’s eye, giving them slightly more life. You can see it here, with Keith David’s character Childs:

And here with Kurt Russell’s MacReady:

But not with David Clennon’s Palmer — who, in this scene, is revealed to be The Thing.

…Which, again, was intentional. That’s supposed to be the hint. Now, does this completely change the movie? Spoiler alert: Nope. I rewatched it, specifically watching for eye light stuff, and I didn’t notice any great foreshadowing or crazy hints. But it’s quite possible I’m just not smart enough to put the whole picture together. Since this is a whole new tool available for our collective movie-watching, feel free to post your wacky eye-light-based theories on my Facebook wall, after you’ve rewatched the movie of course.

4

Gangs Of New York Has Period-Appropriate Dialects

People love to offer their opinions on whether movie accents are “good” or “bad” because people love to pretend that they’re smarter than they are. A lot of folks ripped apart Charlie Hunnam’s accent in Pacific Rim because he talks like a mush-mouthed victim of a botched neural surgery, apparently not realizing that his real accent also sounds fake (also also that movie is perfect, and none shall dare criticize it before me). Everyone talks weird, and it all sounds insane, so can anyone really say what a “good” accent even sounds like?

Of course, and Tim Monich, the dialect coach for Gangs Of New York, managed to do the impossible by researching dead dialects — that is, ways of speaking that no living person had ever heard with their own ears — and teaching it to modern actors. “But how do you research a dead dialect?” Easily! Well, no, not easily at all — with incredible difficulty, in fact: Monich studied old poems and newspaper articles that were mocking the dialects to try and deduce the way people of the era spoke. Then he forced Liam Neeson and Leonardo DiCaprio to talk that way.

At one point, Neeson’s character called a bunch of his enemies “nancy boys,” only for Monich to clarify that the correct term for the era and location was “Miss Nancies.” Which was a huge relief for all the 19th-century New York hooligans in the audience, who totally would’ve noticed that sort of thing.

That set points to something else pretty cool about the film’s development. Those buildings you see in the background? They haven’t existed in over a hundred years, so Scorsese had most of 1860s New York rebuilt from scratch in Rome, because “had most of 1860s New York rebuilt from scratch in Rome” is the kind of predicate you can be the subject of when your name is Martin Scorsese. I’m allowed to make those kinds of stupid grammar jokes when my entry is about dialects, okay?

Anyway, here he is poking around the place, rambling like a crazy old man. The poor camera operator can’t keep track of what he’s even talking about. That is one of my favorite videos in the world. I honestly like it better than Gangs Of New York.

Oh, and speaking of dialects…

3

Arrival Makes Way More Sense Than It Needs To

Arrival is a sci-fi movie about figuring out an alien language and, spoiler alert, using it to see the future (it’s also one of the best movies I’ve ever seen oh my god go watch it so good). And since I brought it up, I know what you’re thinking: “Wow — did they actually invent a language that I can use to see the future?”

No. But they did do absolutely everything else. You know those weird circles that the aliens use to communicate? Yeah, that functions as a consistent language. You could learn to read and write in it just from watching the movie enough, if you’re that kind of person.

Then, they wrote an actual computer program that could interpret the language they made up. The stuff you see in the movie where a computer analyzes the symbol? That’s not just random, science-looking animations. That’s a program, written just for the movie, interpretting a language that was also written exactly for the movie, in real time. Science consultant Stephen Wolfram even came up with a scientific explanation for how the aliens travel. It involves quantum! All this despite the fact that 99 percent of audiences would’ve been fine with the explanation I just gave (which, if you’ve forgotten, is just the words “It involves quantum!”).

But you see, it really seems like this movie was made for that one percent of geniuses in the theater. There’s even a part later in the movie when Amy Adams is standing in front of a white board covered in physics jargon:

All those equations are relevant to the problems her and Jeremy Renner’s characters are facing in the movie right then, but — here’s the kicker — that wasn’t what was on the board when they shot it. Due to an oversight during shooting, the whiteboard was accidentally covered in high-school level physics, so they had Wolfram come up with a bunch of equations to use and then super-imposed them into that scene with computers (a process made especially difficult because of Amy Adams’ hair).

All so that every physicist who saw this movie could finally enjoy a sci-fi flick without ripping their own hair out in frustration.

2

The Witch: All The Materials And Music Are Authentic For the Time Period

If you haven’t seen The Witch, stop reading this article and go watch it right now. (Then come back and finish reading. I need your click-dollars to finance my underground squirrel-fighting ring.) If you’ve seen The Witch, then oh my god, how good was it? Sorry for fanboying out for this entire column. I promise I’ll get myself under control for next month.

Part of the reason people love The Witch is because it’s so beautiful. Well, there’s a reason for that: Like Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, it was shot almost entirely with natural light. Which, for indoor scenes, meant they had to use as many candles as possible.

I say “almost” entirely because of one scene involving a crow, which had to use a flickering lightbulb, since fire would’ve scared the crow. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’m not going to spoil the scene with the crow. If you have seen the movie, then there is not a sliver of a chance in hell that you’ve forgotten the scene with the crow.

On top of that, all the music was recorded with period-appropriate instruments, using period-appropriate techniques. Which is not something anybody would ever notice but certainly helps the movie feel unique. Even the story itself — and lots of the dialogue — is based on real accounts of witchcraft and possession from 17th-century Massachusetts. When Caleb is in the throes of a fever/possession, his delirious ranting is word-for-word the rantings of 17th-century children who were, allegedly, possessed by Satan. Making this officially the most metal movie anyone has ever seen. Also I’m going to move on because 400-year-old dead children aren’t very funny.

1

Meryl Streep Can Do Everything

Meryl Streep is so good that it’s become a punchline. People genuinely worry that she’s too burdened by how good she is, and that people expect perfection from her and take it for granted when she delivers. And after some research, I’ve figured out her secret: She’s not actually pretending. Like Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa, she’s doing all this shit for real.

The first, and most famous, example is her portrayal of Sophie in Sophie’s Choice. First, she learned German. Then she learned Polish. Then she learned to speak German in a Polish accent. Roger Ebert (whose opinions on film are unassailable) described it as “the only accent [he has] ever wanted to hug,” and I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds pretty positive?

But okay, accents are whatever — we’ve seen lots of accents in this article already. Fine! How about the freaking violin? That’s the hardest instrument to learn, according to people who argue about this sort of thing on the internet, and she learned to play in a matter of weeks.

Most recently, for the movie Ricki And The Flash, Streep learned to play guitar… from Neil Young, because that’s who teaches you guitar when you’re Meryl Streep. Jesus, between Streep and Scorsese, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that rich people just seem to have more opportunities to do cool stuff than people like me. Maybe I should become rich? Anyway, Streep then practiced with a band in a bar for months. By the time she actually got around to shooting the damn movie, she had ripped her fingers open on the strings.

Alright, enough gushing about cool stuff I like. Let’s end this article in the best way any article could ever end: with a video of Neil Young and Meryl Streep jamming out on a stratocaster that probably cost more than my fucking car.

Let’s be real. I drive a Civic.

JF Sargent is a senior editor for Cracked and the only writer you can trust. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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