#i just read it through. it's fun to see the changes from script to screen

[yuurayuura]

kiss me again (part 1)

🎬 kim sunwoo is not a professional actor, yet somehow he's making it very hard not to fall for his performance.

PAIRING 🎬 sunwoo x fem!reader TAGS 🎬 actors au, fluff, suggestive (smut in the next part) WORD COUNT 🎬 4.8k WARNINGS 🎬 nope! AUTHOR’S NOTE 🎬 i'm obviously not an actor so i don't know how any of this really works :p

"Time doesn't stop... Doesn't stand still... Ah, fuck. Line?"

Sunwoo breaks into a disbelieving grin for the third time that evening, shaking his head and feeling like a complete amateur. Y/n smiles in that subtle way she does when he fucks up his lines, flipping through the script and making the room echo with page noise. That smile has become too familiar to him now. She smiles like you would when a child says something unintentionally funny, but you don't want to make them feel stupid by openly laughing. It's that vibe. He needs to get it together.

It's so quiet and warm, almost humid, in the little meeting room they have table readings in nowadays, and he can feel the heat from his palms resting on his thighs. The little oscillating fan in the corner doesn't help in the slightest.

"It's okay," the director comments, scribbling something in the margins of the script that Y/n hands her. "We might change it. But as it is, the line is 'time never stops for anyone. It certainly hasn't for me, even if I wished it would. Many times.'"

"Right, sorry," Sunwoo says, pulling his collar in an attempt to let some cooler air in.

"Why don't we take a break?" The lead actress suggests, stretching her arms out. "We've been at it for hours."

Sunwoo keeps forgetting her name, but that's because they don't have any scenes together. In fact, most of the scenes he has are with Y/n, his on-screen love interest, and both of your roles are quite small. He suspects that much of it will be cut in the end, it's just a short film after all. He's only doing it because it's fun.

Y/n meets him by the water cooler, and hands him a copy of the script that sits warm in his hands, feeling like it's fresh off the printer.

"Thought you could use it," she says, with a twinkle in her eye like she's teasing him, but being nice about it. Maybe too nice? He's sure he deserves a lot more after his dismal display lately. It seems that's just the way she is, carefully teasing, maybe because they haven't known each other for that long. She's probably holding back, sticking to polite banter.

"I could, yeah," he mumbles through a smile, sipping his little paper cup of water. "I spilled coffee on mine earlier, that's why I didn't have one. Ugh. I feel like I'm just annoying everyone in there. I don't know what's up with my brain today."

Y/n shakes her head. "Nah, everyone has those days, I think. It's just your turn."

That makes him look up at her, and she meets his eyes with another gentle smile.

"I'm glad you're the one I'm paired with," she says, too casually, for that kind of statement. "I think it'll come out great."

"Ditto," Sunwoo says, more airy than he means to. "I mean. Yeah. I agree."

He wants to say that he's glad too, and we have good chemistry, don't you think?

He doesn't say that, though, that might be pushing it. They only met a couple of days ago. Although, from what he's read ahead in the script, they're going to need as much chemistry as possible to do the upcoming scenes. Their story is a tragic romance after all, with a lot of tension, eye contact, and desperate kissing.

He can't think about that now. It's not like either of them are professional actors, and that should lighten the pressure, but it doesn't, not really.

There's something about her that makes him want to be great, fantastic, so maybe she'll see him in a good light afterwards.

"Oh, duty calls," she smirks, and his heart does a little maneuver that he doesn't anticipate when she touches his arm to make him follow.

Y/n's POV:

Sunwoo is a good actor. Too good to do crap like this, you think, thoughts drifting in the parts of the table read that don't involve your character. He has this aura surrounding him that makes him so believable, even when he goes off script—or maybe especially then. 

When the casting director introduced them, you thought there had been some sort of mix up, because what in the world were you doing next to someone like that. Someone who commanded the room like he did, not to mention how good-looking he was. You saw his audition, and expected him to be the lead, or at least a major role. Not doing some tiny side story with you.

Your obvious bewilderment had made him chuckle, seemingly not understanding the confusion. Just like that, something you just did for extra credit in college became the highlight of your summer.

"Y/n," the writer hums, clicking her pen. "That's your cue."

"Shit, sorry," you mumble, and you don't miss the happy little twitch on Sunwoo's lips. He's probably glad he's not the only one who's messing up.

"So," Sunwoo says, when you're done for the day, and you try not to openly look at his lips when he's talking, but it's an impossible situation. They're very nice lips. "I had an idea, and tell me if I'm out of line, but I thought maybe we should do our own read, just us. I'm just not getting this middle part to stick, and Lord knows the scenes coming up aren't going to be easier."

"No, I was thinking the same thing," You nod, chewing the back end of your pencil. "I think that's a smart move for us. Then we can show up on Monday and dazzle the hell out of everyone at the reading with our amazing acting slash memory."

You smirk and Sunwoo chuckles, looking over at you for a second. His eyes are also very nice eyes. It's almost too much for just one person.

"Okay, then," he says, raising his eyebrows. "Who lives closer? I'm about fifteen minutes from here."

"Oh, then I win, my place is ten," You grin.

"Make yourself at home," you yell, disappearing to the bathroom to tidy up, just a little bit. "I'm sorry it's not sparkling here, I'm barely home lately."

You can hear Sunwoo's quiet chuckle from the living room, toeing off his shoes before he enters.

"Don't worry, I'm blind as a bat without my glasses anyway," he assures. "Won't be seeing anything tonight."

"Good," you joke, getting the light on your way back.

You make tea for yourself and instant coffee for Sunwoo, it's all you have to offer but he doesn't seem to mind, sipping it blissfully.

"This is somehow better than the coffee at the studio," he mumbles, making you grin.

"Damn. My condolences."

He laughs, and you flip the scripts to the right pages, settling in comfortably on the sofa. Sunwoo has put on his round reading glasses, and it might be the late hour and the tiredness speaking, but he looks so unfairly beautiful. Especially when the glasses slide down on the bridge of his nose a little, and he uses the back of his hand to push them back up.

He gives you a half timid look over the glasses. "Ready?"

"Yup, I can read us in, since you start."

You clear your throat, preparing to use your best narrator voice. "June's apartment, night time. June is sat by the window, looking out at the city. Minsoo enters, cold from the blizzard."

"I got the job," Sunwoo says, in character, looking at you with what feels like genuine excitement. "I finally got it."

You smile down at the script, getting into character as well. "That's really great. Congratulations."

You go through the scene several times, giving each other pointers and trying to make it fit as well as you can.

"This, wow," Sunwoo mumbles, running a hand through his hair. "Are we nailing this? I might just be tired, but I think we are."

His smile is so infectious, your cheeks are hurting from reciprocating it all night.

"Dude, I think we are," you agree, and Sunwoo snickers. "We could move on to the next one? But I feel like we should be standing if we do."

"Yeah, you're right."

You stand up and move to approximate positions in the small living room. It's a bit ridiculous at first, but it feels more real when you actually have to look at each other over some distance, and move across the room.

"Minsoo's apartment, night time," you say.

"June..." Sunwoo says, and it's crazy how good he is at doing that, flipping the switch from Sunwoo to the character instantly. His brows furrow when he looks at you, and you can feel it, how his body language is so in tune with what he's trying to say, the longing and the pain in his voice.

"We can't," you say, as June. "You know we can't."

You're pretty good at crying on command so you think, what the hell, might as well pull out all the stops tonight, feeling tears form in your eyes as you look over at Sunwoo.

He seems surprised for a second that you're crying, and you don't know if it's acting or not. Which really says it all about his skills.

"Please don't cry," he mumbles, starting to close the distance between you, but stopping halfway, holding himself back, and letting his arm fall from the outstretched position where he was reaching after you. "Please."

You blink and let a few tears escape, and the room is so silent you can hear them hit the floor beneath you. You follow the script and get down on your knees, vision blurring from the tears.

"Let's not end like this," Sunwoo pleads, closing in with gentle steps, stopping to lower himself to your level on the floor. "June. I love you so much, I don't want to make you cry."

He takes your hands in his, squeezing them, and then lets them go in favor of wiping tears from your cheeks with such tenderness, it's hypnotizing.

"Don't leave me, Min," You say, voice quivering in the quiet room. "I don't know what I'll do, when... When..."

You trail off and Sunwoo tilts your head up to meet his eyes, sending shivers down your spine.

"Shh," he breathes, his thumb wiping the edge of your lower lip, catching a tear.

You look into each other's eyes for five long seconds, trying to really convey the inner battle going on in your characters. You know he's counting, just like you are, and then Sunwoo pulls you in for the kiss.

You knew it was coming, of course you knew, you read it about a thousand times just to make sure. But it still makes your whole body light up. Your mind goes completely blank, forgetting any and every line you just rehearsed. All you can process is the feeling of Sunwoo's soft lips on yours, the longing in it, the collapse of his restrain. Minsoo's restrain, but, you know.

Sunwoo cups your face and you stand up on your knees, closer, but not close enough. You never want it to end but have to keep reminding yourself to be professional. Not let it slip how much you're enjoying this. He's a good kisser, not too forceful, but sweet and just desperate enough for this scene. You can't help the way your hand lifts and runs through the hair at the back of his neck, making him sigh into your mouth.

When you break it off, you're both a little out of breath, and you don't want to, but remember the script.

You push him away, almost making him lose his balance.

"We can't," you repeat, whispering. "I... I can't do this."

"June," Sunwoo pleads, watching you like a kicked dog as you get up and leave him there.

"Aaand, scene," You mumble, wiping the tears with your sleeve, chuckling. Not really ready to meet his eyes.

"Holy shit," Sunwoo breathes, now on his feet in front of you. "I didn't expect you to actually cry. That was impressive."

You laugh in disbelief. "That was impressive? You could be on TV, or like. Huge stages. I'm speechless, honestly. I don't know how you do it."

"Thank you," he mumbles, his ears pink. "I hope I didn't overdo it, with the... Um. With the kiss," he says, scratching his neck, and you want to pull him in for another one then and there.

"No, uh. It was excellent. Very believable."

"Back at you," Sunwoo smiles.

There isn't enough air in the room for this.

"Actually I thought I might try something, if it's alright," Sunwoo says, as you sit down on the couch again. "Regarding the kiss."

You can tell he's trying not to make it awkward. Which is cute.

"Sure, shoot," You reply, very hard at work to not seem so affected by this.

"I'm thinking, you know. Minsoo needs to show her what she means to him, how much he wishes he could stay... So I'll try to put some more emotion behind it. Maybe we can "choreograph" some moves into it. I'll show you what I mean."

You look at him and he looks almost shy, running a hand through his hair.

"If that's okay, of course."

"More emotion," You reply, a little breathier than intended. "Alright. Show me. You want me to cry? Set the mood?"

Sunwoo laughs, airy and wonderful. "No, that's alright. I'll pretend."

You shift a little, so you're on your knees on the couch, facing him. "Okay. I'm on the floor, Minsoo approaches. Go."

"Let's not end like this," Sunwoo says, his voice soft as he looks into your eyes, pleading. He knows the lines now, the script is abandoned on the floor where he left it. "June..."

He takes your hands, and his own are warm and gentle. "I love you so much, I don't want to make you cry."

He does what he did last time, except now you aren't crying, so when he touches your face it's just that—a touch. Very careful caresses across your cheeks. You try to focus, try not to let yourself get lost in his eyes.

"Don't leave me, Min," you whisper, and somehow it feels so much more intimate now, sitting like this. "I don't know what I'll do when... When..."

You lower your gaze and Sunwoo tilts your head back up, like he's supposed to. His eyes are so emotive, it's incredibly impressive to see the nuances he's able to work into a simple look. It makes you want to do better too. Try to even it out.

"Shh," he breathes, and this time it's barely audible at all.

He looks into your eyes and you can feel the thump thump thump of your heart, like a clock running too fast. You forget to count the seconds, but maybe that's good, maybe the sharp, surprised inhale that slips past your lips will make it more believable. Sunwoo's lips move against yours with purpose, but also a tender compassion that has you melting into his touch, wanting more. He pulls at your bottom lip when he sits back, just barely moving away, speaking against your mouth.

"Maybe," he breathes, breaking character, forehead against yours. "Maybe I could do something like this."

He wipes slowly at the imaginary tears, then presses a careful kiss under your left eye, then the right, before he captures your lips and takes your breath away once more.

"Or, maybe," he continues, still against your lips, voice so delightfully hushed and low, "I can move my hands?"

His left hand brushes through your hair at the side of your head, before coming to rest and holding you in place. The right hand slides over your shoulder and stops at the collarbone, thumb dipping into the groove there, and you can't help the slight sound that escapes you.

Sunwoo quickly looks at you to see if he's done something wrong, but you just blink quickly and nod.

"Yes, um. That's. Very good."

"Good," he breathes, smiling, and, fuck. Fuck. Jesus.

"I'm a worse actor than I thought," You confess, biting your lip in a smile.

"No, but, isn't it good if you actually... like it?" Sunwoo smiles, tentatively, still holding you. "Then you won't have to pretend as much?"

You can't argue with that logic.

When you kiss again, for the third-ish time that night, you know it's coming. But it doesn't help, it doesn't stop being mind-blowing for that reason. Sunwoo tries a few different spots to touch you, all very PG but still a lot. At one point, you decide to do that as well—why not—work in your character's desperateness a bit more acutely.

You touch his neck and put a hand on his chest, pulling his shirt a little, and he gasps, making you pull back in worry.

"No, no, do it again," he mumbles, looking flushed.

It's good to know he's also a little flustered. That boosts your confidence enough to pull him a little closer when you continue where they left off, change the angle a little, move a little over to offense rather than the defensive, slightly passive, and timid stance you've taken thus far.

He doesn't seem like he expected that, inhaling through his nose when your tongue experimentally touches his lower lip and your hand slides over the side of his neck again. You can feel his pulse knocking hard and steady under your fingertips, and it's difficult to say if it's the same tempo as your own. They sort of melt together into one, erratic beat.

"God," Sunwoo mumbles, and he smiles against your lips, making you break into a smile as well.

"Maybe that was a little too... Forward," you grin.

Sunwoo laughs again, and it's such a lovely sound.

"I don't know, I liked it," he says, looking bashful once more, sitting back on the couch.

You know that you'll get plenty of takes for this, and probably a lot of directions. These aren't decisions that are entirely up to you two, there's no real need to practice this much.

But you won't say that out loud. you know he must be aware of it too, he's more experienced, he knows how it works. Why would you bring this to an end, if he doesn't?

"You're a good kisser," you comment, unusually bold, looking at the table. Shooting him a quick grin.

"So are you," Sunwoo smiles, fiddling with your copy of the script that was on the couch.

"They won't see this coming."

"No, they won't," you laugh.

You nudge his leg, and you don't want the night to end yet, but you can barely keep your eyes open.

"The couch is yours for the night, if you want it. I think I have to go to bed now."

"Thanks," he smiles, nudging you back. "I was hoping you would suggest that. Was really dreading the walk home."

"Of course, silly," you mumble. Still smiling stupidly.

You take turns brushing your teeth (you actually had a spare toothbrush, pretty incredible), and when it's all done, you come out to say goodnight. Sunwoo sits on the couch, stifling a yawn, and you walk over to give him a pillow.

"You know," you start, voice raspy and tired. You sit down on the opposite end. "I had a friend, an actor friend, who told me that after doing pretend-kisses for jobs, regular kissing never held up anymore. That it changed, somehow, and real kissing didn't have the same spark."

Sunwoo looks at you in the low light, brows furrowed.

"I guess I could understand that. Since there's a lot of suspense and build up that maybe there isn't in real life, a lot of the time."

"Yeah," You breathe. His eyes are so warm.

"But at the same time... Nothing beats the real thing, in my opinion. It's not the same when it's planned out."

He cocks his head to the side a little. "Are you worried?"

"I wasn't when she said that, way back," you admit, hands twisting. "But... I don't know. That was pretty amazing, back there."

Sunwoo blinks, feigning innocence. "Our kiss?"

"Yeah," you mumble, blushing. "So now, I. Well. I don't know. Maybe she was on to something."

"No way," Sunwoo says, grinning, scooting a little closer. "There's nothing like that rush of uncertainty and just pure... realness that comes from a true kiss. You'll see, next time you do it. I'm sure of it. Don't worry."

You smile, and give a little shrug. "Okay. If you say so."

"And if not, well, I can't help it if I'm such a good kisser that no one else will compare."

Sunwoo giggles when you swing the pillow at him, eliciting a yelp.

"Should've known that would boost your ego too much."

"It's an excellent pickup line, though," he grins, hugging the pillow so you can't assault him with it. "Like, after kissing you, I'm not sure real kisses will do it for me... You should save that for future co-stars that you want to woo."

"I'm not trying to pick up or woo anyone, I was honestly worried!" You protest, glad that the lighting is low so he can't see your blushing cheeks as you get up.

"No, I know," he says quickly, "I'm not making fun, it was just... cute."

"Cheeky," You grin. "Goodnight, Sunwoo. Don't let the monsters and evil spirits drawn to big egos get ya."

Sunwoo chuckles. "I won't. I'm monster repelling. Goodnight, Y/n."

"Cut!" The director yells, and you turn your head, looking back and Sunwoo with a grin. He's already smiling at you, and it widens when your eyes meet.

You'd been right, the practice session did blow everyone away at the reading, and it helped even more now when they're actually filming.

"Love the energy," the director comments, flipping through the script. "But I'm thinking, maybe we could get even more passion in here? Heat it up a little?"

The writer scribbles notes and Sunwoo nods quickly, getting back to the starting position. You swallow thickly. More heat, eh? Great idea.

"Sunwoo if you can grab her more, like, intensely, that'd be great. And Y/n, really lean into it, like the character is giving in a little more. Show how much they want each other."

Splendid.

"Action!"

You do the scene as usual up until the kiss, and Sunwoo does like he's told, he ups the ante. Grabs you by the small of your back and molds you together until you don't know where you end and he starts. He bites your lip and you gasp, trace his jaw, his neck, and feel your pulse beating in wild protest. This is not good for your heart at all.

Pro actors are probably able to separate realities and not become so affected. But, like Sunwoo said, isn't it better if you like it and won't have to act so much?

"Cut! Wonderful, guys—let's do one more where we barely keep within the rating. Just to see."

Sunwoo eyes you, almost a little concerned, drinking his water.

"I just need a drink, I'll be quick," you yell, jogging to the water cooler.

Sunwoo's there when you turn around, looking that way again, like he's almost shy.

"Is there anything that's... off limits?" he asks, timidly fiddling with his cup. "I really don't want to overstep, but since we're going off script, I just. Yeah. Tell me and I won't do it."

You smile, swirling the leftover water in the cup. It's very attractive that he asks.

"I mean, no, I don't think there is... I don't know what you could do that would be crossing the line, really? Obviously, I'm not going to undress or anything. But other than that... I think... touching is okay."

Sunwoo guffaws and you laugh a little, obvious tension in the air.

"Okay, uh. Good," Sunwoo breathes. "Then. Let's go, I guess."

You get back into your positions, and you shoot him a thumbs up before it starts. Even though this—this is dangerous for sure.

"Aaand, action!"

This kiss feels different, maybe because this is something you haven't rehearsed for, in the same sense. You're both unprepared. You're not sure what Sunwoo has acted in before, but you can't imagine it's been quite this heated.

Sunwoo kisses you like it's his last hour or something, and you try to keep up, let yourself be swept away. Normally, you're very aware of your surroundings and the numerous people filming, watching and moving around in the room. Now, strangely, your mind blanks. It's a power Sunwoo has that scares you a little bit, making you forget everything.

The two of you push it. Sunwoo bites your lip again and makes you blush, pulling your hair a little. You let your hands roam properly, feeling his chest rise and fall and tracing the lean muscles on his abdomen. When you rest your hands on his hips, you boldly push one of them under the hem of his t-shirt, making contact with warm and soft skin, and Sunwoo full on moans into your mouth.

To say that it's affecting you would be an understatement.

Sunwoo traces the outline of your bra over the shirt you're wearing until he's fully cupping your breast, and wow. Wow.

It isn't until you finds yourself wanting to undo his pants, that the acute realization of the setting and people surrounding you dawns on you once more.

"Cut!"

There's scattered applause in the room, and you fall away from Sunwoo, panting, blushing, and sort of embarrassed that you let it go that far. But it was what you were supposed to do, so after a few seconds of catching your breath you get up, brush dust off your knees again, and look into Sunwoo's eyes almost defiantly, as if to prove to everyone that you're no wuss. This was nothing, you're no worse than a real actor.

And Sunwoo looks back up at you like a deer in the headlights, shuffling awkwardly on the floor while he waves off your outstretched hand.

"Um. Just. Give me a minute," he breathes, grinning sheepishly at the ground, face pink, and you could die when you realize why he can't get up yet.

"Oh, oh. Sorry—" you blurt, apologizing for some reason, and Sunwoo bites his lip, still grinning, his hand balled in a helpless fist next to him.

When you meet again, it's sundown, and you stand outside next to the food truck, watching beads of condensation roll leisurely down the closed hatch. Sunwoo stops next to you, hair wet from the shower, and leans on the truck, not realizing it's all slippery from the humidity.

He slips a little and bites his lip again like he wants to laugh, but thinks better of it. You watch him amused, eyebrow raised.

"Hey, uh," he starts, scratching his neck. "I just wanted to check that we're good, or that—well. Check if I need to apologize for... Before. Because I will, if you were... Um. If I made you uncomfortable. That was not my intent."

He meets your eyes, blush rising stubbornly on his face, and you aren't the slightest bit surprised by the urge to kiss him now. You can feel it in your fingers how they long to pull him in by the collar of his shirt and kiss away any awkwardness between you.

"Don't worry," you smile, and watch his shoulders relax a little more. "In my book, that was just superb acting."

Sunwoo finally lets out a breathy laugh that trills through the air as if it's been caged in. As if he was genuinely nervous that you were cross with him, which is ridiculous but endearing.

"Good," he mumbles, and you notice the tips of his ears are red now as well. "Good, um. Yeah. Final day of filming tomorrow, huh?"

You grin at the subject change and put your hands in your pockets, following Sunwoo on reflex as he turns slow, and starts walking to where his car is parked.

"Time flies," you agree, a twinge of something sad in your stomach. "It felt like it would last longer."

"Yeah," Sunwoo mumbles, stopping, clicking his keys. "It did."

You watch the car unlock and Sunwoo makes no move to get in, just stands there, looking at his keys jingling in his hand.

"Hey, you need a ride?" he says then, and you don't know if it's wishful thinking, or if he actually sounds hopeful. If he wants to drag this out for as long as possible, like you do.

"Yeah!" you say, a little too enthusiastically, even though you don't need a ride and you both know it.

Sunwoo's grin is wider than it's been all day.

Follow for part 2! It won't be very long, I'm working on it and it's about to get steamy🌞

[604to647]

Safest with You (Ch. 7 - The Third Date)

5.3K / Modern AU Retired Mob Enforcer!Din Djarin x fem!Reader

Summary: Din takes you to see a prize fight, and the evening does not end the way either of you expect.

Warnings: Fluff but also Angst, pet names as usual (pretty bird, baby, pretty girl, etc.), descriptions of blood splatter, mention of alcohol consumption, men (not Din) harassing reader at a bar, very poor description of boxing by a person who knows nothing about boxing (me.)

A/N: I'm...sorry about this 🫣 Our (first!) chapter with angst; oh my feelings - we will get through it together? For some levity, while I'm trying not to be too heavy handed with the Star Wars references, I did have a lot of fun plopping in some character names from The Mandalorian to make up Din's rag-tag group of mob enforcer friends. Picking a Hutt to insert was another story - I tried to pick a name that (exists and) fit into the scene, but I'm not married to it; if upon reading you think another Hutt family character's canon characteristics are more fitting, please let me know and I'll change it! Thanks and thanks as always for reading!

Series Masterlist

“Ok, hang on, I gotta let Rory into the meeting.”

The mosaic on the screen shifts, and Rory appears in a new tile, “I can’t believe it’s a Saturday and I’m taking a Zoom meeting.”

“Stoppppp. It’s for the greater good – please help me pick an outfit,” you plead with an exaggerated pout.

“You never ask for fashion advice?  We’re always asking you.”

“Ok, thank you for hyping me but for real I need help.  I’m going to a boxing match!?  Movies and pop culture tell me that every woman there is either wearing a bandage dress or a bikini and I’m not wearing either,” you step back to show off your bed that’s cover in heaps of clothing options.

You’re nervous.  Not because of anything Din’s said or done, and not even because it’s the “third date” (not as if you and Din are following any type of out-dated dating script), but because you’re stepping into Din’s world tonight.  So far, you and Din have been dating in a blissful little bubble, just the two of you (and Al!), but tonight, you were going to meet the people closest to him, his people.  When you had confessed your nerves to Din earlier, he had affectionately told you he was proud to be bringing you as his date tonight; you didn’t want to let him down.

In the end, you and your friends opt for a white, off the shoulder silk shirt, loosely tucked into a silver skirt.  The shoulder cut-out of the shirt drapes purposefully low down your arm, revealing the entire strap and more than a little of the top of your lacy black bra chosen especially for Din.  There, you think, it’s not a bikini, but it’s sexy.

Din couldn’t agree more.  Your little lingerie peek-a-boo is nearly all he can think about at the restaurant and the entire cab ride over to the fight venue.  A few times during dinner he might have lost his train of thought mid-sentence, teased mercilessly by that small triangle of lace and the ample curve of your breast that isn’t contained within.  You blush and smirk at his barely concealed drooling.  Now in the cab, Din has his arm draped around you, and you let him absentmindedly toy with the exposed strap; periodically he slips a finger or two under the strap and slides it down as far as your innocent looking white shirt will allow, then back up again.  You can feel your nipples harden against the soft lace, and by the time you step out of the cab, you’re flushed and your core is already fluttering. 

You take Din’s arm and walk with him towards the entrance, still somewhat nervous; Din senses your hesitancy and not used to seeing you withdrawn in any way, he pulls you aside before you get to the main doorway.

Holding you close, one hand lingering on your lower back and the other cupping your face, he gives you a long, deep kiss, meant to be soothing.  Opening your eyes and you murmur, “Just one more, please”.

“One more?”

“One more minute.  One more kiss.  While it’s still just the two of us,” you explain, wistfully.

“Pretty bird, we don’t have to go in.  Just say the word and we’ll go somewhere just you and me.  It can be just the two of us for as long as you’d like,” Din gently strokes your cheek with his thumb and gazes at you with sincerity brimming in his eyes.

Reaching up, you bring Din’s face down to yours and kiss him tenderly.  You want to let him know you’re okay.  You’re nervous, but also somewhat excited to see this world that’s such a big part of Din’s life, and the idea that he wants to include you and introduce you to his friends is actually so touching.  You nuzzle into your favourite little nook right under his jaw, and whisper, “Let’s go in.”

Din takes your hand, and holding on tightly, leads you in to the building.  It’s already insanely busy inside, filled with people here for the fight; as you thread through the crowd, even in the dim lighting, you hear lots of people shouting Din’s name – waving hello, clapping him on the shoulder as they go by.  Din leads you through a side door away from the bustle and takes you down a quiet side corridor; you’re about to ask where you’re going when you see some people up ahead wearing “Mando’s Gym” gear.  In the center of everything, there is an older gentleman in a colourful striped sweatsuit, and a young man, who is wearing baggy grey shorts and a loosely tied warm up robe; you recognize the younger man as Din’s sparring partner from the day you visit the gym after dropping your dry cleaning off at Peli’s.  Din is greeted enthusiastically by both men with big hugs; he claps the younger man on the back and introduces you, then, his voice filling with pride, brags, “Pretty bird, this is Jimmy.  Best middleweight division fighter this side of the bridge.  One of Mando’s best.  And our tireless chief, head coach, Greef Karga, the best of the best.”

You shake their hands happily, and they in turn seem happy to meet you as well; you think you spot them giving each other a knowing look, but it was so fleeting you’re not sure.  Regardless, you enthusiastically wish them luck and let them know how excited you are to be here. When he hears it’s your first fight, Greef tells you you’re in for a treat and gives you some novice spectator pointers – in particular, he tells you to watch out for a move call the “Mando Roll”, a move made famous by Din during his career.  Din hypes Jimmy up with some pep talk and some light combination drills before he takes your hand to go; you wave goodbye to the two men and wish them luck one last time before asking Din, “The Mando Roll, eh?  Didn’t realize I was here with a celebrity.”  You grin at him proudly, and Din’s chest puffs up a little but he responds humbly, “Nah.  Don’t believe everything you hear about me here.  Especially from Paz.  Don’t believe a thing Paz says.”

As if on cue, you come upon the man himself, who seems to be waiting for you and Din so you can all walk to your third row seats together. 

Paz is hilarious.  He has a deep booming voice, and a boisterous spirit about him; he’s huge, bigger than Din, but in the same way you don’t find Din’s size to be imposing, neither do you find Paz’s.  He regales you with childhood stories about Din and tells joke after joke, all the while pretending to ignore Din’s protests and looks of mortification that honestly make everything Paz says even funnier.  He doesn’t forget to ask you questions about yourself, and your heart melts when Din chimes in to brag about you when he thinks you’re not doing so enough yourself; Paz looks impressed before he gives you a mock look of condescension, “You sure you’re with the right guy?” jabbing his thumb at Din.  You look up at Din fondly and nod softly, “Yes, definitely.”  Din can’t stop looking at you either, eyes filled with adoration and, if he’s being honest with himself, maybe love.  When he pulls you in tightly, Paz gives him a look and nod of approval, which Din didn’t need, but finds himself appreciating nonetheless. 

The lights dim and the fighters’ ring entrances begin; you cheer loudly with Din and Paz when Jimmy goes by, looking pumped and intimidating.  The first few rounds of fighting go by in a blur; the fighters move with blinding fast speed, unleashing powerful punch after punch – it’s violent and graceful all at once.  Both Din and Paz are pointing things out to you, teaching you boxing terminology and noting finer points on the bout that you definitely wouldn’t notice otherwise; when the bell dings signaling the end of a particularly intense round, Paz turns to you, “Did you see that last move, with the bob and weave?  That’s the “Mando Roll”.  Your boy invented that!  It’s what’s going to win Jimmy this fight, you just watch.”   You look at Din, who’s got a cocky smile on his face, even though he’s running his hand through his curls, bashfully.  Your eyes shine with pride; you knew from the articles and awards at the gym and his apartment that Din had been a talented and successful fighter… but tonight you’re seeing for the first time that it was more than that.  He’s an important figure in this community, a leader with a legacy… just like his dad.  You make a mental note to share this thought with Din later; for now, you hope he can tell by the expression on your face how proud of him you are. And how proud you are to be here with him.

If you thought the excitement and intensity of the fight would die down a little in the later rounds, you were mistaken; if anything, the crowd gets rowdier and louder, amping the fighters up more, even though they have to be exhausted.  Nearing the end of round 10, Jimmy gets the upper hand against his opponent, drilling him against the ropes before stepping back and delivering a knock out uppercut.  This last punch happens as if in slow motion; Jimmy’s opponent’s feet leave the ground as the force from Jimmy’s glove propels him backwards, body twisting slightly before he falls to the ground unconscious.  Before you’ve finished processing what you’re watching, you’re hit with the losing fighter's blood splatter.  Most of it lands on the people sitting in the rows in front of you, but a fair amount lands on your shirt and you can feel a bit of it on your cheek.  Instinctively, you touch it with your hand, accidently smearing it.  Din looks at you in horror but gathers himself quickly to ask you with deep concern if you’re alright.  You have to admit, you’re not sure how to feel, but you let him know you’re okay with a reassuring smile before asking him to point you in the direction of the restroom so you can clean up.  In the restroom, the droplets that landed on your skin are easily and thoroughly cleaned off, but your shirt is a bit of a mess.  The delicate silk is splattered in a big, almost Pollock-esque pattern; you decide to leave it as is, figuring you’ll probably just turn it into a bigger mess if you try to clean it here. 

You get back to your seat as Jimmy is being declared the winner of the fight in the ring, and you’re glad to see that his opponent has regained consciousness and is standing up of his own accord.  You cheer as Jimmy’s arm is raised as the victor, but notice that Din doesn’t appear to be joining in the reverie.  In fact, he looks downright despondent.  Taking his hand, you give him a soft, but quizzical look and mouth, “Everything okay?”

No. Everything was not okay.  Din had seen a lot bloodshed in his life, hell, he had caused his fair share, but he's never become desensitized to the underlying violence.  He was not prepared for that type of violence, bloody violence, to touch you.  In the second before he had realized where the blood splatter had come from, all he saw was you covered in blood, and he had felt nothing but intense panic and fear.  And maybe, a little voice in his head adds, guilt. Even now, he is reeling from those feelings.  He doesn’t know how to articulate any of this, so instead he drops his eyes to your stained shirt and says sadly, “I’m sorry about the mess, pretty bird.” 

Ducking a little so you’re now holding his gaze, you look softly at Din, somehow knowing he’s feeling more than he’s letting on; you kiss him warmly and whisper, “It’s okay. I’m okay,” before wrapping your arms around Din’s neck and pulling him down into you.  You feel Din’s back muscles relax under your hands, as he presses you in tightly and just holds you for a minute.  Behind your back, Din and Paz lock eyes; a look of understanding passes between the two men before Din closes his eyes and let’s himself melt into your embrace.

Now that the fight is over, most of the crowd moves, almost as one, to a bar across the street for the planned after party.  Din’s mood seems to have lightened considerably; with his arm around your waist, he steers you through the crowd, shouting salutations to people he knows and sporadically introducing you to people as they come up to say hi.  You don’t remember all the names, but they all seem to be people that have known Din from when he was a child, watched Din box during his glory days, are somehow associated with the gym, knew Din’s dad or some combination of the above.  Even more memorable are some of the stories Din whispers in your ear when out of earshot of the person you just met (like the gym member who thought that the Mando’s locker rooms had a nude sauna.  They don’t), and you’re glad that the faces are all kind of a blur because otherwise, you might never be able to face some of these people again.  The entire bar erupts with cheers when Jimmy, Greef and some of the other team from Mando’s arrives; they head straight for Din and you give them your hearty congratulations once Din’s released them from his bear hugs.  You assure Jimmy that you thoroughly enjoyed your first boxing match and you’re glad it was one of his; when Greef learns that you saw the “Mando Roll” he looks like a proud papa bear, of Jimmy or you, you’re not sure.  Slowly, the entire friend group descends on your and Din’s location and you get a chance to meet them all.  In addition to Paz, there’s Woves, Mayfeld, Bo, Koska, and a few younger boxers from the gym, Brian, Santos, and Iggy tonight.  It’s a great group; everyone is welcoming and even appear eager to meet and get to know you.  You dance with Din, laugh at Paz’s jokes and sip drinks with the group. 

At a certain point, you need a bit of a breather, so you volunteer to go to the bar to get the next round of drinks for everyone.  When you give your order to the bartender, you’re told it might take a while given the number of drinks; honestly, you don’t mind and happily take the opportunity to give your social battery a mini-charge, check your messages, and just take in your surroundings.  You’ve missed a lot of messages and you’re about to dive into the group chat when you’re aware of someone standing directly in front of you.  You look up; it’s a stranger, and not one you remember Din introducing you to earlier in the evening. He’s standing uncomfortably close to you, as if you’re already acquainted, which you most certainly are not.  Once the stranger knows he has your attention, he lays on a thick, “Don’t think I’ve seen a pretty thing like you around here before.”  You appraise the man in front of you; he’s okay looking but there’s something about his posture, his presence that’s just... slimy.  Suddenly, you notice on either side of you his friends inching closer, flanking you, and they too seem to have a greasy, sluggish look about them.  You almost sigh; their intent is so obvious, and all the more insidious for not trying to hide it well. Under different circumstances, you would be feeling at best, harassed, and at worst, panic, but with Din and his friends just a few steps away, you know you’re perfectly safe.

“You wouldn’t have.  First time,” you give a thin smile, before making a gesture to show you need to check your phone now.

“Well let me and my friends show you a good time!  We know everyone here.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got a great group of hosts already,” and you point towards Din and his friends.  The men take a look in the direction you’re pointing and seem to hesitate, but then carry on as if what you said is a but a mere inconvenience.

Din had been talking to Paz when he looks over and sees you being surrounded at the bar and hisses, “Fucking Hutts.”  Paz looks over as well, “She looks like she can handle it.”  And it’s true, you really do look like you’re fine (annoyed, but fine), but Din sighs, “Yeah, but she shouldn’t have to.  Those guys are slime.  She shouldn’t be anywhere near them.”  Paz raises an eyebrow, “You wanna talk about what’s really bugging you?  I saw you back there when she got blood on her.  You worried she can’t handle being with a Mando?”

Din shakes his head; it’s not that.  He is sure you can handle anything… but should you have to?

“You’re worried she’s too sweet for all this?” Paz gestures generally.

Sighing again, Din shoulders droop a little, “Maybe.  She’s a good girl, you know?”  That little voice in his head from earlier is nagging him with more insistence now, too good.  He’s watching you, knowing you’d make eye contact with him if you needed help, but he really can’t stand you being so close to those assholes.  You’re not even giving Gorga Hutt and his cronies a forced smile anymore; he sees your mouth make the words: “No, I’m sure.  No, thank you” and he’s off, long strides reaching you with just a few steps.  He walks right past the man standing stupidly close to you, and maintaining eye contact with him, says, “Hutt.”  The man practically sneers back, “Mando,” as Din slides an arm protectively around your waist and turns to stare daggers at the 3 men who have now all lined up together.  Luckily, at this moment, the bartender appears and slides over a tray with all your drinks, so you tug on Din’s arm, “Do you mind helping me carry these?” and like that, the two of you leave the three Hutt men before they can get another word in.

Everyone is thrilled to get their refills, and you take the opportunity to ask, “How come those guys back there called you guys “The Mandos”?  Is it just because of the gym?”

Maybe you imagine it, but there seems to be moment of stalled silence where no one in the group speaks, before Bo pipes up and answers, “It was the name of our club when we were kids; the gym was like our clubhouse, so… look, we weren’t very creative kids, okay?”  Everyone laughs, and Bo waves you over and starts telling you some of the shenanigans the group got into when they were young.

“You really didn’t let her know what she’s stepping into, brother,” Paz says quietly so only Din hears.

Din looks at Paz with something like regret.  He’s doing a visual sweep of the room; it’s second nature to him in crowds like tonight’s, but it also serves to distract himself from the agitation of running into the Hutts.  He looks around the room and sees a few men leering at you; not just the Hutts, although Gorga is still at the bar where you left him and looking over with a sour expression, but other unsavoury types that Din is no stranger to.  Din can read the look he sees in their eyes: to folks like that, you were a mark.  Prey.  The voice in his head gets louder: You were a pretty bird and he had brought you into a den of hunters, and you didn’t even know.

Din’s so deep in his own thoughts, he doesn’t notice when a petite brunette breaks away from a group of girls hovering on the periphery of his friends and makes a beeline for you.

You’re in mid conversation with Bo, who you’re finding to be incredibly refreshing and interesting being a female body builder when you turn to put your empty glass down; however, turning back, you find a girl you haven’t met has wedged herself between you and Bo while you were faced away.  The look on Bo’s face indicates she’s just as surprised you are.

“So you’re Din’s date.”  This is stated more like a fact than a question.

“I guess I am,” you introduce yourself; the girl says her name is Vanessa and she’s giving you a smile but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, so you honestly can’t tell where this conversation is going.

“You know, so many of us girls have tried to lock Din down, maybe you’ll finally be the one to do it.”

Oh.  Does Din have… groupies?  “Oh!” you give a polite laugh, “I can honestly say that locking anyone down or having anyone lock me down, has not crossed my mind.”

“A couple of us girls have had a lot of fun trying,” she tilts her head in the direction of a group of girls that are hovering close by, “Din’s a total catch.  One of the best I’ve ever had.”

Ah ha.  This is new for you.  All your life you’ve been a girl’s girl, and one thing about being a girl’s girl is to never let men be the cause for contention, but man oh man, this girl is definitely fishing hard for a reaction from you; you know what she wants, but it’s honestly not in you to give.  Instead, you look at her with a sympathetic expression, “Oh I don’t doubt it.  Din’s probably one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”  It’s the truth and the best you can offer her.

She looks at you with disbelief before scampering off; Bo stifles a laugh before the two of you return to your conversation.

Din is starting to feel like he’s been away from you too long; then he knows he’s been away from you too long when Bo comes by and tells him about your little interlude with Vanessa.  He immediately finds you; slipping his arms around you from behind, Din nuzzles your neck and murmurs, “Sorry, I’ve been neglectful, baby.  Not leaving your side for the rest of the night, I promise.”

You turn in his arms and winding your arms around his waist, you happily press your mouth to his, “Don’t worry.  I’ve been thoroughly entertained.  I’ve been learning soooooooo much about you, Din.”  Your eyes are twinkling. 

Din should have known that you wouldn’t let Vanessa bother you; although he still feels like he has to address it.  He presses his forehead to yours, “So… I heard you had a visitor.”

“Oh right. Vanessa,” you chuckle.

“Pretty bird, there’s nothing going on, I promise.”

You give Din a quick, reassuring kiss, “Oh, I know.  I wasn’t bothered by what she said.”

“…but you were bothered?” Din pulls away to look at you, as if checking you over to make sure you were alright.

You tuck yourself under his chin and sigh, “It’s nothing really.  Just... surprising? It’s been a really long time since someone, never mind someone I don’t even know, has gone out of their way to be intentionally mean to me.”

Din feels his chest constrict.  Of course you would be perceptive enough to recognize casual cruelty when you saw it, and of course it would wound your tender heart, “I’m sorry, pretty bird.  You don’t deserve that.”

You burrow deeper into his arms, “Thank you.”

“I still want to make sure you know, there isn’t anyone else. Only you, baby.”

“Okay,” you lift your face to his and invite him to kiss you.  He melts into your lips, but can’t ignore the persistent voice in his head that’s only gotten louder over the course of the evening anymore.

---

In the cab on the way home, Din is quiet.  You snuggle extra close to him and when he tightens his arm around you, you nuzzle your way into your nook and press light kisses to his neck.

Din looks down at you and his heart breaks a little at the sweet look you give him; he can’t help himself, and he kisses you, soft and long – he knows he shouldn’t with what he’s about to do, but he also knows this could very well be his last chance to kiss you and he can’t convince himself to pass it up. 

He wonders how it could end like this – when he first saw you this evening, gorgeous and sexy as hell, teasing him with a peek at your black lace lingerie, he was sure tonight was the night he was finally going to take you upstairs and ruin you, not the night he was going to walk away. 

But he had made up his mind before leaving the bar.  Paz was right, you were too sweet for his world.  Din had been busy trying to make sure that he deserved you, he hadn’t thought about if you deserved what he would bring into your life.  You didn’t; you didn’t deserve to be on the periphery of violence, never knowing if it would touch you directly, you didn’t deserve to be in the company of lowlifes and scumbags that would take advantage of your kindness, and you certainly did not deserve to be the recipient of any nastiness simply for caring about him.  How could he bring this kind of darkness into your life?

You’ve been the best thing to happen to him in a long time, and Din’s heart aches knowing these are some of the last moments he will get to spend with you.  But when, out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of the same shirt that was so inviting to him earlier with blood splatter that looks almost black in the night, it hardens his resolve. 

You sigh deeply into the kisses, only breaking away and opening your eyes when the cab starts to slow down.  Din pays for the cab and helps you out; as soon as he closes the door of the car and it drives away, you make to walk into the building.  Tugging on his hand, you playfully ask, “Did you want to come up and get Al with me, or are you still pretending you don’t want to come up?”  To your surprise, Din doesn’t budge from his spot on the sidewalk and drops your hand.  He stuffs both hands in his pockets and can’t quite look at you when he says, “I don’t think I can come up.” You’re about to make a silly joke about it being the third date, when he continues, “…and I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

At first, you’re not sure you heard him correctly but then you see Din's face; while not quite facing you directly, you can see it looks downtrodden and tired, and you realize he's being serious.  You forget how to breathe for a moment and you don’t know what to say. Didn’t you just have a fun night, full of promise? Hadn’t he kissed you the entire cab ride over? Weren’t the last two weeks of getting to know each other romantic and deliciously tension filled? You’re confused and you say the first ridiculous thing that comes to mind, “You don’t… want to... court me anymore?”

Din didn’t think his heart could hurt anymore, but the way you were looking at him, confused and upset, was proving him wrong.  He shouldn’t have kissed you in the cab.  It had been selfish.  He knows he's been so selfish when it came to you, and that stops now. Din struggles to get the words out, “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I mean, tonight… I shouldn’t have taken you to the fight tonight.  You don’t belong in a place like that.  You showed up in a beautiful outfit and… fuck.” He’s getting flustered now, but he forces himself to press on, “…it’s ruined.” He gestures to the blood splatter on your shirt and hangs his head.

“It’s just a little blood, Din.  It will come out. Nothing has been ruined, I promise,” you can see he’s distressed and you want to comfort him.  You try making a little joke to lighten the mood, “I mean, I know you know a good dry cleaner.”

“It’s not right.  It never should have happened!  A girl like you doesn’t belong near any place like that.”

Oh.  You only now come to the realization that perhaps you hadn’t been paying attention and Din didn’t have fun tonight.  The date had been on his “turf”, so to speak, and around people he’s known a lot longer than he’s known you; maybe Din had had certain expectations on how the evening was supposed to go... expectations that you apparently didn’t meet. “Din, for the record… I had a lot of fun tonight.  I didn’t realize I wasn’t fitting in; I’m sorry if the evening didn’t go the way you had wanted.”  Now it’s you that can’t meet his eye.

“No, no, it’s not… it’s… fine.  It was just clear to me tonight that we come from different worlds and… maybe it’s not a good fit.  I’m sorry.”

You’re trying to swallow your feelings but they’re getting caught in your throat; you force yourself to say, “You don’t have to apologize.  I thought… well… it doesn’t matter what I thought. But it was only our third date, Din – you’re entitled to feel that I’m not for you.” You’re trying so hard to appear calm and neutral despite your heart breaking, that you miss Din wincing at those words. “I guess I want to say that I’m still glad we met, Din. And, thank you.  Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me these past few weeks – all the food when I worked late, helping me walk the dog… the books. Really, thank you.” You pause, shrug a little, then hold onto your arms, trying to make yourself as small as you feel while delaying the next words for as long as you can, “Goodbye.”

Din nods, “Goodbye.”

You walk away, finally free to cry when you realize that you still have to walk the dog.  Even though your tears are already spilling over, you turn around, “Din?” He’s still standing where he was, having not moved, but looks up when you call his name.  Once you have Din’s attention, you look away; you can’t bear to see the expression on his face as he watches you cry.  “I’m going to take Al for a walk. I’ll be back down in just a minute.” Your voice starts to break, “Is it okay if you’re not here when I do?”

“Of course.” Din turns and walks away from you.  You don’t see his own eyes have welled up before you turn to go in.

Inside, you clip the dog up and give him a lot of kisses in the elevator.  True to his word, Din is nowhere to be found when you get outside.  Al looks around, excitedly; most likely for Din.  Perhaps he can still smell him.  You kneel down and say sadly to your dog, “He’s not here, baby. Turns out he didn’t quite like us as much as we liked him.” Al licks a few tears off your cheek as if to comfort you and then trots off to start sniffing a tree.

---

Din watches you with Al from a distance away, out of sight.  He knew you were upset and he wanted to make sure you were safe, being out alone with your dog.  But if he was being honest, it was a perfectly safe neighbourhood – he just simply wanted to look at you for as long as he could.  He stays looking up at your apartment long after you’ve gone in, leaving only when your lights go out.

[asordinaryppl]

A3! Backstage Story Translation - Guy SR: My performance memories ~ Guy ~ - Part 1

nomadic bartender is the winter troupe's 10th play! you can read a translation of the event story here

also proofread by myuntachis <3

Guy: Mikage, could you take this cocktail to that table over there?

Hisoka: Got it.

[Door jingling]

Azuma: Good evening.

Tooru: Good evening, Gai.

Guy: Welcome. Were you two together?

Azuma: We met by chance outside the store.

Guy: I see. What will you be having today?

Tooru: Let me see… I think I’ll have a Journey.

Azuma: I’ll have one of the same.

Guy: Understood.

-

Guy: Thank you for waiting. Here’s your Journey.

Tooru: Thank you.

Azuma: Thanks for the drink.

Guy: By the way, MANKAI Company will be having a screening party soon…

Tooru: Yes, I know. Kureha bought two tickets, so we’re planning to go together.

Guy: Is that so? I did think it would be nice if you came…

Tooru: He was all excited, saying he would go no matter what.

Hisoka: Kureha gets his news fast.

Azuma: Fufu. He probably worked hard to get the tickets.

Guy: I have to make sure that not only the audience, but you two as well will enjoy yourselves, then.

-

Izumi: I saw your father and Kureha-kun entering the venue just now, Guy-san.

Guy: Is that so? My father did say they’d be coming, but knowing they’re actually here makes me happy.

Azuma: Fufu. Good for you.

Azuma: That reminds me, I think it’d be nice if we did something that matches the performance during the talk show.

Izumi: Something that matches the performance?

Guy: What do you mean?

Azuma: Since the setting makes it so easy… We could drink on stage, maybe.

Izumi: Wha!? I think that’s kind of…

Guy: Hm… It will be quite difficult to prepare for that right now… Had we thought of it yesterday, I would have drinks and snacks ready.

Izumi: That’s not what I’m trying to say…!

Guy: … I’m merely joking. I could tell Yukishiro was not being serious about this, after all.

Azuma: Fufu. Guy found me out. Sorry, I was joking, too.

Izumi: You really had me wondering whether you were being serious or not…

Izumi: Okay, it’s about time for you to start…

Hisoka: Zzz…

Guy: I believe we’d do good to wake up Mikage now.

Azuma: You’re right. We have to make sure our bar’s owner is awake, after all.

Guy: Mikage, we’ll be going up soon.

Azuma: Here you go, there’s marshmallows too.

Hisoka: Amph, nom nom… Alright.

-

Azuma: Guy, you often made cocktails in the dorm during the performance’s run.

Azuma: Did it feel any different from when you make them in the bar?

Guy: Let’s see…

Guy: As I was making the cocktails with what Whizz would do in mind, I ended up creating cocktails I don’t usually make.

Hisoka: Most of the cocktails you were making were the ones that appeared in the script.

Azuma: Everyone making a toast almost every night was quite memorable.

Azuma: Thanks to Guy being in control of our drinks, we went through the nights without drinking too much.

Guy: That was because I had to make sure everyone who was going to perform would be in shape to go onstage.

Guy: Also, I didn’t make the cocktails alone. Everyone helped, too.

Azuma: Everyone in the Winter Troupe tried creating a drink with someone in mind, didn’t we?

Hisoka: I think we used lots to decide who would make a cocktail for whom.

Guy: It was not easy to create a drink while thinking of someone else, but we still all managed to create something that left the other satisfied.

Guy: Having to think about the language of cocktails was also quite fun.

Guy: Simply by changing the maker and recipient, the cocktails that will be created will turn out different.

Guy: It would be interesting to have another chance to try this out.

Hisoka: … We should do it if there’s ever a rerun.

Azuma: Fufu. Good idea. 

part 1 | part 2

[backjustforberena]

Hi! Do you still accept writing prompts?

If you do, I have two: firstly, Rhaenys and Corlys’ gossip girl/the muppets moment, people-watching at the table in S1x05 (should be fun).

Secondly, in S2x04, IF EVER Corlys was able to bid farewell to Rhaenys as she prepares for Rook’s Rest, what would their conversation be like?

I love to know your take on these, but no pressure though.🙂

Listen, I am having a really, quite momentously, crap day (crap week, even) so you just gave me an excuse to rewatch that sequence and go full nerd. Thank you for that. Because if you give me a prompt (though I reserve the right to not follow through because if I write something I even remotely dislike then I am so sorry, it will never be published) like this, I am going to make sure it is canon compliant and that means clocking every single time they are on screen.

It's quite interesting, that specific scene, to consider from a POV because the audience is so aware and knowledgeable about everything and is seeing and hearing everything, but, of course, our characters are not. So it's fun to think about what they may assume or what they may not clock or what they might not read into or understand or even care about.

I do have a couple of "headcanons" that I apply to this scene, just from my understanding of Corlys and Rhaenys, and a couple of thoughts from rewatching it all again, so I'm going to jot them down for you to either interact with (omg please do) or for me to just come back to when I write this sequence:

In the original script (potentially still canon), Daemon is invited at the behest of Corlys. They know full-well that he's going to show up. My feeling is that Corlys is happy and Rhaenys is happy enough. It's not objectionable to her to cause a fuss by inviting Daemon. She's just hoping he behaves.

Rhaenys and Corlys have absolutely ZERO context for the green dress. Sorry, Alicent, but they don't. They haven't even got a diddly squat that you've changed your fashion sense because neither of them have been at court for the past three years. All she looks is late. Rhaenys and Corlys don't know about the strife over the succession, the details that led to Otto's dismissal, Cole's confession. Any of it. Rhaenys and Corlys do exchange a look before Alicent takes a seat. So, my take on this is that they put it down to a show of defiance purely over Otto's dismissal. It makes a point, but that's it. Not necessarily symptomatic of anything else. It's a snub to Viserys.

I think this leads into any observations they may have about Alicent speaking to her Hightower kin - it's just her ire at losing her father. Which, fair enough. Corlys is also looking at Viserys during his speech at an occasion when Rhaenys is not so that could be a fun little gossip.

Rhaenys taught Laenor that dance and Corlys saying "I thought he did very well" is a by-product sort of compliment. She did good teaching their kid. Do I have proof? No.

I think Corlys and Rhaenys have a nice time at the feast. I know, I know, shocking! Given the amount of crap happening and how tense it is and the bombs waiting to explode in every corner, I think they actually have a grand old time. Because they are oblivious to most of it. But also because every time you look at them, they seem very relaxed, once the dancing starts. They're chatting and eating and drinking.

I like to think that Rhaenys (who was the most wary of the match - though never against it per se) is happy. She's seeing her son happy with the match and even if it's not ideal, it's good to see. Everyone around her is merry and together and that's all she wants.

I don't think they can hear anything going on on that dancefloor. No Joffrey and Laenor, Laena and Daemon, Rhaenyra and Laenor, Daemon and Rhaenyra. None of it. So if they do look that way, then we're going off body language. And that's only if they can actually see well enough for that - like Viserys couldn't quite make out Daemon holding Rhaenyra's face.

Nothing is alarming until the riot, bar a slight discomfort over Laenor and Joffrey being so close (we cut to Rhaenys looking a bit serious). And what freaks them both out during the riot is they cannot see their kids whatsoever. IDK where the hell Laena goes by the end as we don't come back to her (ha, ha, headcanon time!) but Rhaenys and Corlys don't see Laenor from the start of the riot until people move out of the way and he starts screaming.

So, yeah, that's how I would start exploring something like that. And then you'd just have to think up topics and reactions to each beat even if it means missing them entirely. We don't cut to them at all during Gerald Royce's appearance, so maybe they didn't hear or see. It's all quite fun! I may give that a shot, even if I haven't got a single clue how long the evening takes (we've got at least one little time jump).

BUT onto the second part of your ask which is "IF EVER Corlys was able to bid farewell to Rhaenys as she prepares for Rook’s Rest, what would their conversation be like" - jeez, Louise, I don't know. Honestly, I wish I did. I'm still baffled that we got so small an interaction before she left (I mean, I get it but come on).

Now, normally, I'd be okay jut shooting the breeze and making something up or having a gut feeling but my issue is this: I'm not entirely sure what the dynamic is between Corlys and Rhaenys at this point. Because it's NOT what we see in the confrontation about Alyn. That doesn't remain: Corlys makes some teensy reparation by supporting her and showing up, they are there for at least a day or two, there's no sense of animosity or a particular disconnect in those council scenes or before she leaves.

But, of course, it can't be the same as always. Because the stakes have changed. Because they have had Alyn and Addam's existence spoken aloud, landing between them, and they are still a little bit fragile as a marriage. Not to mention she's off to war which is just massive in and of itself - it's earthquake stuff for Rhaenys personally. So I can't decide what would propel a conversation. The only thing that I sort of hold onto it something in the BTS book:

'Corlys backs her decision, albeit reluctantly. Toussaint notes, "No one stops Rhaenys from doing what she wants to do."'

So, I think that whatever that conversation was - if there was a conversation, it would be Rhaenys steering it. I don't think Corlys would ask her to change her mind. I don't even think he'd perhaps ask her to be careful. Because, at the end of the day, and not in a nasty way, his wishes won't do anything. In an interview, Steve said:

"[...] the fact is, he knew she was going to do something dangerous and he couldn't stop her."

[mieczy-stiles]

The thing about Luca is that. And I say this as a writer, I suppose, but also as a queer person, that he exudes a certain feeling of safety, and comfort. Like, to have him play something will mean he's going to give you his everything. No matter the character, you'll see a sincerity that isn't just the product of the script, or the demand of it, but also the mind of the actor.

To know that a person of his calibre is out there playing queer characters so effortlessly, and without a doubt in their mind, without any prejudice blinding his artistic choices and who he is as a person, it's obviously a ray of hope, but it is also, then, a kind of trust, even if it is just parasocial in many ways.

I know if it's Luca playing a certain queer character - regardless of what happens to them in the script, that is if the script is stupid and insincere to the queer perspective in certain ways - I'd still easily trust him to do justice to the queer experience, for how sincerely he plays everything.

The whole every-character-of-his having a underlying homoerotic quality to them is all fun and cool and great and beautiful, but also, it's so fucking refreshing

It's been decades of asking for the correct representation in media, it's been years and years of queerbaiting and, if not that, just general lack of care

I've been accustomed to just wanting some of my favourite characters to be gay. Just thinking and wishing and hoping that someone someday will let them reach the full scope of their personality, let them have the right sort of ending, see first the fabric of their person, and not just the thread of their sexuality, and maybe then write the script. There have been all sorts of emotions, and so to find now a person who is doing just that? It's pure beauty.

For a while now it's been changing, more and more shows and films are becoming inclusive and accepting and understanding of the queer gaze, and it's so beautiful that Luca contributes to it with his whole heart, and has been for a long while.

Many must remember how it used to get with artists and makers always denying or trying to tip toe around the obvious queerbait, or shying away from the conversations that involved that queer perspective, or outright rejecting the very idea- it happens still - but then you see the likes of Luca and Marwan being comfortable in each other's company and also about the love they shared on screen (especially, i think, it begs to say, with them being men), talking happily about their characters, making playlists for them, recommending poems for them

A lot many actors now are open to these conversations, a lot of them now talk about it with nuance and care, with just the right words, and though it's in no way any less a contribution to the conversation, or any less genuine, but again, there is something to be said about the ease Luca shows.

Again, as I said before.. it feels safe, with him.

In a lot of his interviews, he doesn't bat an eye before saying things like - I was lucky to have him as my husband. And he means it, you can tell that by the smile on his face. When people are focusing on the movies' objective and the friendships in it, he easily goes and says it's not only the friendship, but also the love.

In another of his interviews, there was once this question about Roberta, about if he knew what was demanded from him and how he prepared for a transsexual character. I remember it because I was almost sure I'll be hearing some generic answer like I studied trans people for this role and this that blah blah, something ignorant, basically. I was braced for it. But he just said. (And he was talking in english, and all that he was trying to say was conveyed more through his face and gestures, it was super cute actually) - I read the script, and I just felt something. I didn't think about playing a transsexual, but a woman, with a friend. It was important for me to show the love she had for him. So. I just played a woman helping out a friend :)

And I was like ?? wait that's? That's all? You're not going to go deep into the character's psyche and the great moral upstanding you must be feeling for doing a role like this? You're not going to talk about how you "prepared" for this role or how it was "different" for you?

I was so used to people doing that, his simple answer took me by surprise.

and that's what's so refreshing, so comforting.

There's no hesitation in him, no prejudice or preconceived notions or activism, even, compelling his choices and words.

It's just him, plain and simple.

He's committed to his art in a way that people rarely are. Especially in media, where even big companies and huge hollywood stars often fail you.

I wish more people in this world were like him. So gently open in his ways, so effortless in his understanding and acceptance that it becomes intrinsic to him.

He's one of the few people, I would say, who are an artist not just by work, but also by nature.

[phannibal]

finished the fight the future novelization!! overall it was an extremely mid adaptation that did not take advantage of the change in medium to do anything interesting, but it was still a fun read and honestly some plot points were clearer than in the movie. liveblog and standout moments under the cut :3

immediately the narration feels like someone is describing something that’s happening on screen. this is not a good thing; a good adaptation is able to use the strengths of its medium to tell the story in a way that is compelling in and of itself (day of the doctor perfect example) (this is why screen -> book adaptations fall flat when using a different author, the book author has a lot of guesswork to do wrt POVs, motivations, and other internal character stuff) (but do I really want to read a book by chris carter)

wait this is awesome face blindness can’t affect me in the written word. wow turns out that one guy was two guys all along

y’know it’s almost not fair to criticize this book for being a clunky adaptation bc fight the future leans so hard into its own cinematography in a way that makes it irreplicable in text. god I want to write a dissertation comparing this to the dotd novelization with references to the other x files and target novelizations and comparing franchises and impact of same vs. different author of the same story. waves sadly at my nonexistent media studies degree

he comes into the initial hearing and her heart LIFTS. this is what i’m talking about use the medium to give us character insight!!!

oh no fucking way. author just used “who’s” when the correct word was “whose.” probably worst mistake I have ever seen in a published book

the dialogue in particular does not translate well to text. maybe there’s a way to make m&s’ opening back and forth just as iconic and characteristic in print, or mulder’s drunken exposition slash tagline just as comedic yet foreboding, but as is, they (and other standout lines) just fall so flat

they don’t even say that he’s peeing on the independence day poster 😑

did this author come from fanfiction or something bc the amount of “the younger man” I’m having to roll my eyes at is obscene

this is the biggest glimpse we get into any character’s thoughts so i’m holding it to my chest forever and ever

god so the 3am “what are you implying” “is that what you’d like me to do” feel WAY more loaded in text

also “she had been thinking exactly that” 🥺

TWICE. yeah i bet

I’m like 90% sure some lines of dialogue are slightly different like just meaningless word order choices but I’m not putting on the movie to confirm

no okay the above is definitely true. “the one thing in the world he can’t live without” is NOT the original line but goes just as hard

have to include this bc it is absolutely the most changed dialogue in the whole book. wish i could see into this author’s head

realizing for the first time that the guy that planted the bomb = the guy eavesdropping on mulder in the bar = the guy driving the ambulance because in a book you have to spell that type of thing out

i DID actually pull up the movie upon reading these lines bc i was like i knowww i would remember this. i wonder if the author was working off of the original script or something and this was part of that? or if she was really just allowed to freestyle

god so we know in the movie he just kind of jumps down a random ice hole after he initially falls through. here it’s specifically and clearly a vent because ig this author could not rationalize him choosing to jump down a random hole

long af image so click to read but INSANE insane emphasis on the cpr scene for no reason. like that lasts 2 seconds in the movie but is fully a page and a half here, thanks for that at least ms elizabeth hand

protectively :')

why is this exchange so neutered?? where is the passion? where is "some hollow personal cause of mine" and "i can't. i won't"?

that's all i got! i think these excerpts really demonstrate the shortcomings of a direct, no-frills screen-to-text translation. i can't help thinking that this book was meant to be just another thing to put on shelves and sell, as opposed to being born of a genuine desire to retell the story in a new way. like i said, still fun though, and enough new tidbits to make it worthwhile!

[humbledragon669]

Script to Screen comparison: Episode 6 – The Very Last Day of the Rest of Their Lives P1 – additions and amendments

Standard Intro

Having followed the episodes through with the Script Book, I've tried to break the differences between the original script and the end result on screen into a couple of different categories:

Large changes (whole scenes/multiple lines of script.

Things that are in the original script but not in the finished episode (I'm calling these deletions). These and the large changes are in part 1 of the write up for this episode.

Things that aren't in the original script but are in the finished episode (I'm calling these additions).

Things that have been changed (I'm calling these ones amendments).

Not all of the changes fit neatly into one category or the other (there are shades of grey...). The first three of the differences will be presented within bullet lists, with a description. The last of the categories will be presented in a table. I'll make comments about anything I find particularly notable after each category.

Additions

There were a LOT of very minor differences in this particular episode (specifically, additions of “um”, “ah”, “oh”, “right”, “well”, among others), which I have not included in this episode’s write up.

The shots of the parallel members of The Them and the Horsemen (War vs. Pepper, etc.) after the two groups meet on the tarmac.

The shot of Madame Tracy and Aziraphale actually separating.

The shot of Madame Tracy returning the thundergun after it has been fired to Shadwell.

God’s scripted line about making choices: “It was time to decide who friends were.” Episode version: “It was time to decide who your friends were. And Adam had.”

Famine rushing at Wensleydale.

Gabriel’s request for Beelzebub to join him in a private discussion (“Can I…?”).

Aziraphale telling Crowley where the prophecy had come from, and Crowley reading it out (whilst on the bench).

Crowley’s reminder of Agnes’s prophecy before he and Aziraphale board the bus.

Gabriel’s reiteration that Heaven’s new contact is on his way.

The shot of Shadwell leaving his flat and entering Madame Tracy’s, including her seating him at the table.

Baddicombe introducing himself to Anathema.

Baddicombe’s exclamation at seeing his name on an envelope inside the package he has brought to Jasmine Cottage.

God’s original scripted line for the speech about Adam and summers: “There would never be one like this.” Episode version: “There would be other summers but there would never be one like this.”

Crowley’s exclamation before he says it’s time to leave the garden (“Right.”).

Crowley’s exclamation when Aziraphale tells him a table has become available at the Ritz.

The shot of the nightingale in the tree.

Just as with the deletions, I feel like most of these additions have been made with the sole purpose of making the end result the best it can possibly be, and there are a couple in particular that I think do this brilliantly. The first of those is the montage shot of each of The Them paired against their parallel member of the Four Horsemen.

I talked about it in the actual episode write up so I won’t repeat it too much here, but if you had any doubts that these two groups of beings are supposed to be mirror images of each other, this shot should dispel them, and sets us up very nicely for the individual battles between each pair that are coming up. It’s very simple, but brilliantly effective.

The shot of Aziraphale and Madame Tracy is one I really love, and is (in my humble opinion) a much better solution to this problem for a visual medium that the one presented in the script:

And Aziraphale is there in the flesh, standing next to Madame Tracy.

I mean, that just sounds… a little bit dull. #sorrynotsorry. I much prefer the fun little special effect we got in the finished episode, and it gives us the opportunity to see the shocked expressions on Shadwell and Crowley’s faces.

The last thing I want to touch upon, and it’s that shot of Shadwell leaving his flat and making his way into Madame Tracy’s. It doesn’t add anything to the storyline (not on an obvious level – for my interpretation of the sub-text in, see the write up I did for the episode itself), I just think it’s a beautiful piece of camerawork.

Amendments

Lots of these changes are pretty subtle, and I don’t know that the versions we see on the screen offer much in the way of changed or deeper meaning. As with the ones I highlighted in episode 5, quite a few of the dialogue changes feel like they may simply have been done because the version we hear in the finished episode felt more natural. The actors may not even have realised they were doing it. There are a handful of them that I would say that this is not the case with. First up:

This one is such a little thing, but I think it says a lot about how Crowley sees his plants. “Pot plants” doesn’t really tell you much about them, but “house plants” suggests that they actually have a purpose, a place in someone’s life. And whilst we’re on the subject of meanings being completely changed with the smallest change, let’s look at this one:

I actually talked about this difference in the episode write-up. In fact, I think it might have been the catalyst for me wanting to do the script-to-screen comparisons. Let’s see what I said about it back then:

Well. Pretty much nailed that first time around, didn’t I? Here’s the last example of the whole tiny-changes-big-consequences thing:

This one is interesting because it’s not the meaning that’s changed with the amendment, but the parallel made by the amended line that is lacking with the originally scripted one. Because now it matches the phrasing used by Crowley, prompting him and Aziraphale to depart from Berkeley Square:

CROWLEY: Time to leave the garden.

It makes me wonder, particularly given the deleted scene of Crowley and Aziraphale serendipitously arriving in the HQ lobby at the same time on their way out, if this line said by two different characters separated by distance actually happened at the same moment. And perhaps at the same time that Shadwell leaves his own “garden” – his flat. Probably not, but it would be pretty cool if it was.

There are two amendments to stage directions that I think are worth noting. Here’s the first:

I actually prefer the original setting for this one. There’s something about the placard being shown for the first time against a black background that I really like. After all, a black screen is so very similar to a literal “blank slate”, and I feel like that would have been a really good piece of sub-text for us to have at this point in time – that everybody gets to start afresh. Then there’s this little titbit:

This one intrigues me, because Crowley having a tartan tie would have screamed that something was amiss. Sure, the stage directions do state that this particular detail should be subtle, but I just don’t really know how that would have been achieved. I think whoever came up with the idea of changing that little element to be a collar instead deserves a medal. Last up, we have this little oddity:

Now, I have checked the lyrics (it was rather lacklustre research I’ll grant you, but I did do it), and I couldn’t find any reference to the originally scripted line being used by someone in a release of this popular song. I don’t know if this is a genuine mistake by the author, or whether he intended to change the lyric for the show. If it’s the latter, I think there’s probably something to be explored there (not here!). Even if it’s the former, I still find it interesting, given the attention to detail that’s paid to the production of this show in every other area.

I think that’s about all I’ve got. This being the last of the episodes, and there being no script book for season 2, this will be the last of the script-to-screen comparisons I do. I hope you’ve enjoyed them, maybe found something interesting in them that you can add to the brainrot library. They turned out to be a lot more intensive that I was anticipated, but they’ve certainly turned over some interesting points for me. I’m not quite done with the Script Book yet – the plan is to do a quick scan over the deleted scenes that are included in it, see if there are any interesting notes from them, and perhaps do a little summary of this whole experience. For now though, and as always, questions, comments, discussion are always welcome 😊

[numberonebidoofenjoyer]

Excerpt: Team Building

//a experiment of something, if you will. I’m a writer (at least, mostly fanfics at the moment) and I wanted to see what people would think if I did more novel-esque segments at times, or even instead of video script formats (drabbles basically.)

//if it’s not too much to ask, can anyone who reads lemme know what you think? :D Thank you for reading and (if you’re a follower) staying with me so far!

“What about Worry Seed?”

Lochland sighed, flipping quickly through his latest copies of the Pokedex, biting his pen. “Nope. Shroomish in this region wouldn’t learn it as quickly.”

“Well- maybe Mold Breaker-”

“Doesn’t worry either, we don’t have the right Pokemon.”

“Just catch one, bzzt!”

He closes the book in a bit of a huff, looking up at the Rotom Phone. “And if it doesn’t become a mainstay on my team? I don’t want to catch a Pokemon just to release it for no reason.” He adjusts his glasses. “The bond has to be special.”

His Rotom Phone falls quiet, his interface changing from catalogs of Pokemon and abilities toa single worried digital frown. Lochland immediately feels a bit guilty, sighing as he pulls himself off the bed, taking care not to step on Fang’s tale.

“I don’t- want the solution to be something that’s resolved by catching Pokemon.” He said, pulling a box of snacks out of a cupboard, wincing from the strain on his shoulder. “There comes a point where I have to work with the team I build. Half of it doesn’t work if it’s Pokemon that I don’t get to bond with.”

Roto floats over, hovering over his shoulder as he fills the bowl of chips. “I don’t want to say that you can’t form a bond with them, bzzt, but there may be the fact that after a bit…your team may not work?”

“What do you-?”

The screen shifts to a model of his Pokemon and their stats. “You’re going for a more speedy approach, right? But that only works for two of them, and Garlic hasn’t been very helpful in the past couple of battles, bzzt.”

“He- he hasn’t evolved yet, that’s not-”

“Furthermore, the only real advantage he’d gain is up against the fourth gym leader. You’d still have to get through Iono. And she has four Pokemon, and putting Pave in that fight is-”

“You’re not letting me get a word in, damnit!” Lochland twists around, eyes slit into daggers as he fights back. “There’s a way around that, I’m sure there’s some sort of ground -type or Rock-type move to take care of that!”

“....Or you accept this team isn’t like your first.”

As gentle and sympathetic as the words were, they stung into Lochland’s heart, stomach twisting as if he had been hit with a Twineedle and suffered a status effect. Silence haunted the dorm room for a minute.

“...You’re allowed to try and switch out other Pokemon, you’d be allowed to experiment. You don’t need to get it right the first time. And these are fun battles, bzzt! You don’t need to be a tank or able to dodge attacks. Your life isn’t-”

“In danger.”

Roto moved over, resting his rectangular body against Lochland as a sort of comfort. “Right, bzzt. Maybe you should give different Pokemon a shot and see what clicks. Like that Galarian Challenger- the one who almost made it to the Semi-Finals!”

“….Challenger Hop became a Professor, Roto.”

“Shush.” Roto tried not to show a smile on his screen as Lochland snorted. “Hmm…how about a Pancham? That seems up your alley!” It flickered between Pokemon. “Or a Chansey?”

Lochland looked pensive, before biting on a chip.“….Chansey sounds somewhat fun. Can I get a list of attributes?”

“Of course!”

Roto started to ramble, while Lochland sat in thought.

He supposed his partner had a point. He didn’t really ever get to expand his team beyond the six he used to have. Sure, Bessie’s strength and durability were elements he kept and loved, but that was mainly to make sure that he had something to hide behind while he could heal his own or his team’s injuries. He didn’t have to overthink every move anymore, right?

…He always wanted to use a Riolu….

He’d think about it.

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Interview: Luke Arnold on returning for Scrublands: Silver; “It’s about making the inevitable conclusion not too obvious.”

written by Peter Gray (16 April, 2025)

In the brand new season of Scrublands, it’s been a year since the life changing events of Scrublands and award-winning investigative journalist Martin Scarsden (Luke Arnold) has returned to his coastal hometown, Port Silver, WA, to set up a new life with partner Mandy Bond (Bella Heathcote). When he arrives to find his childhood friend Jasper brutally murdered and Mandy the prime suspect, Martin struggles with doubts – about Mandy and about his own ability to recognise the truth. As he pushes forward to find the real murderer and absolve Mandy, Martin confronts secrets about Port Silver and his long-buried past.

Following its acclaimed first season, Scrublands: Silver returns audiences to the fray of the Australian mystery created by author Chris Hammer. Back as investigative journalist Martin Scarsden, Luke Arnold spoke with our Peter Gray about allowing the mystery to unfold on screen for the audiences to uncover, the altered emotional state for his character this time around, and not letting his characterisation be clouded by the expectations set in the novel.

Congratulations on a second season. Did you know when making the first series that a second was always on the cards?

You never know, for sure. We knew there was obviously a following for the books, and we had a great time making the first one, but you never really know until you see it. And then, of course, when everyone else sees it. I guess there was always an idea of getting a chance, because there’s more books. It was never set in stone, though. I think (this second season) came off the back of the response of the success of the first season. Once that happened, it was like, well we’d better get moving to the next one.

Because of what your character went through in the first season, does that impact the way that you play him going forward?

I loved the character. I’m still in love with this character. But you’ve got to play with all the emotions that are going on in his head, because with Mandy (Bella Heathcote’s character), I know this person, I love this person, I trust this person, but they could have also done something very, very wrong. It’s an interesting thing, because we know at the end of the first season, Martin and Mandy are only just beginning to properly connect. Her storyline in the first season is so focused on the romance between her and Byron Swift (played by Jay Ryan). We only get a glimpse of it.

We know they’re in a relationship now, they’ve spent some time together, but the audience doesn’t get to see the extent of that. So there’s a little bit of negotiation going on. We want to show that they’re a lot closer, but we also get the idea that while something’s been started here, there’s still a level of them learning about each other. I think we quickly learn that he’s trying to figure out how truthful Mandy is being with him. But Mandy quickly realises that she maybe doesn’t have the full story on Martin either.

When I was watching it, and I don’t know what I can or can’t say, but we know there’s a body involved, and a knife, and blood, and a person…you immediately see that it’s a suspicious situation. Are you given all of the scripts in one sitting so you have a throughline? Or are you gradually been fed them so there’s a certain realisation in real time? So to speak…

On something like this, we were shooting all four episodes like one big movie. There was really no division. I’d read the book beforehand, and, like season one, there’s similarities to to the book. Chris Hammer is an amazing writer, but there are some things that work so well in prose that work on screen, and others that it’s more fun to go in another direction. We’ve done that here, to a degree, whilst keeping the heart of the book. We knew from the beginning. I’ve actually done a film before, which was a murder mystery, where I didn’t know who the murderer was, and it was fun to be fed stuff like that in the moment. It’s fun as an experiment. But everyone here knew the mystery that was being crafted.

I think it’s important to know what’s actually happened, because you want to play with ambiguity and you want to be able to really defend your character, but also know when to leave room to doubt each other. And for the audience to doubt characters, too. It’s about making the inevitable conclusion not too obvious.

With the first season, was there a bit of pressure in taking on a character that’s found their footing in the book first? Do you almost have to distance yourself from what you’re reading? What you think people have created in their minds for the character and go in like the book doesn’t exist in a way?

Yeah, pretty much. It’s great when you’re thinking about extra dimensions of the character. You have a lot more limited time on screen, even with four episodes, so you can’t get into a character’s head the same way as you can in a book. It’s great reading the book for inspiration to maybe get extra pieces of the character that can be in the background. But the moment anyone’s cast in something, the character’s going to change based on the energy of that person and what they bring to it. But if the audience isn’t getting that full picture, then sometimes trying to force the little elements and moments without the full context actually just confuses things. So it’s really important to look at what’s in the script, what the audience is going to see and make sure, especially in a mystery show, that you don’t need everything explained. You can just have a scene and be, like, “Oh, that’s an interesting little moment for these characters.”

Is there an extra step of emotional preparation for you in stepping back into the character? Do you tackle him the same way? With a different story comes a different mindset. He’s going to a place here that’s so personal for him, does that change the way you look at Martin in any way?

Yeah, it’s completely different. In the first season, Martin had no real emotional or personal connection to the mystery or the town at all. He is the outsider. He’s got his own stuff going on that affects him. You kind of do your best to give him somewhat of an arc relating to the mystery that shifts episode by episode, either with his own confidence or why he wants to solve this mystery. But he’s really an outsider in this world and everyone else in that town is personally affected by the mystery. It’s something that I think works in these mystery stories, but it’s usually the opposite for the lead in a show. Usually the lead is the one having gone through the emotional journey, experiencing big changes and deal with their past.

But here in season two, this is all Martin’s history. These are all the things that Martin has tried not to think about. His shame and his regret. So many things come up by going to back to Silver. So it was a very different kind of preparation this time and, you know, in some ways there was nowhere to hide for me this season. And it’s a bit of an easier job in the first season because I’m just focusing on the mystery. That’s my job. Everyone else gets emotional and I just get to ask the questions. I think, here, very early on we see that there’s some painful memories here for Martin, and that affects every part of the story.

Going off that mentality of Martin returning to his hometown, hopefully for you as a person it’s not something filled with tragedy and shame, but have you had that experience of having worked on films and television, you go back to your hometown and there’s a sense of being treated just that little bit differently?

To a degree, yes. The thing is, I moved around so much that I don’t have like a “hometown.” I think a lot of people, when they’re younger, they have that person that takes care of you and looks after you and is very important in those formative years. The person you know you wouldn’t have gotten through certain parts of your life without. But then in your teenage years you’re a little more self-centered. We’re so focused on the future that I think most of us have had experiences where we look back and think, “Shit, I haven’t called that person in ages.” You might not have been appreciative of what they did for you at that time, and I think that what was so easy to connect with Martin over.

I think the toughest thing for him is that he feels a certain way about what he did at that time and it wasn’t resolved. He hasn’t resolved who he was then, what he did, why he did it, and he has kind of blocked it out, which, I think, is what we think is the easy thing to do.

With the flashback scenes with Martin as a teenager, we can start piecing together this mystery of his own. Are you working with the younger actor in a way to bring uniformity to both performances, whether through mannerisms or cadence? Or do you let that be an entirely different variation to help with the separation he feels as a person now?

Having watched it, I think Ezra (Justin) does an amazing job. It feels like the one part of the show that I have nothing to do with. We talked here and there, but it’s one of those things where you get someone who looks similar enough and they call you by the same name, and the audience just kind of makes that jump relatively quickly. It’s a good likeness and he’s a great actor, and that’s what matters most. We met briefly in rehearsals, but it’s so different than in film where there’s more time to shoot. There might be more opportunities to really dig into that stuff, but the great thing that I saw in the end was that us workshopping wasn’t required. Ezra smashed it. I think the two performances marry up really well in the final product.

It really is a great time for Australian stories to be told at the moment, and I feel like Stan have found that sweet spot with their shows, like Scrublands. I really hope this series gets the attention the first did.

I’m really proud of it. I love being a part of this show. There’s some great things that came out of streaming, and some troubling things, but I think for Australia it’s so fantastic, because we used to have to try and find a hook for a network when making a show here. It would have to be slotted into their window and they may have to take out another show. And now it really means we have this high quality stuff and anyone in the world can pick it up and check it out. I think it’s been a really great year for homegrown content. And you’re right, Stan has been putting out great shows that everyone is seeing. Hopefully the audience rocks up for this as they did the first one, and maybe we get to keep going.

Well I’m hopeful I can chat yo you in a few years for Scrublands 3.

Thanks so much. It’s been a pleasure, Peter.

Scrublands: Silver is available to stream on Stan Australia from April 17th, 2025.

Source: The AU review

[aparticularbandit]

Loaded God Complex (V)

Summary: The problem with designing a Game that ends in your death during your most desperate hour is that sometimes things can get better.

…and then you still have to play a Game that ends in your death.

Or: The woman we know as Tsumugi has probably the best birthday of her life at what is probably the worst time to have it.

NOTE: Because this is pre-game, Tsumugi’s name is different. In this, she is primarily referred to as Tsukasa Yuki instead of Shirogane Tsumugi. Despite names you might recognize, every other character in this is an OC. Think of it as a reverse reference; Yuki seeded her scripts and games with references to people she knew and loved. We’re just seeing that in reverse.

Chapter Rating: M for brief nudity. Fic Rating: M for brief nudity.

AO3

previous chapter | next chapter

For the first time in months, Yuki doesn’t wake alone.

(She also wakes in a bed and not on the not-so-comfy couch in her office, but that’s less important.)

Even before she truly wakes, before she opens her eyes, Yuki feels Ryoko’s arm tight around her waist, Ryoko’s head burrowed between her shoulder blades, Ryoko’s legs tangled with her own.  She barely shifts, and Ryoko murmurs something unintelligible before tightening her grip on her, drawing her closer to her.

Yuki opens her eyes just enough to settle more comfortably in Ryoko’s gentle hold, relaxes with a comfortable sigh, and then closes them to slip off into another dream.

~

The second time Yuki wakes, it’s less pleasant.

Her phone buzzes on the bedside table – Yuki had not necessarily been consciously thinking when she placed it there; it was nothing more than an old, ingrained habit from the years she lived here with Ryoko before…before – and she groans, eyes cracking open, as she reads the caller ID.  Then she carefully disentangles herself from Ryoko’s grasp, sits up with a little groan, and answers the phone.

“Tsukasa Yuki,” she grumbles out.  “What do you need, Usa-chan?”

“Well, I was going through the script—”

Yuki groans again and kneads her forehead.  “I thought you said you didn’t read the script—”

“I don’t, but I needed to copy and paste stuff over for the flashback lights, you know, and Shuichi still doesn’t have a last name?  It says something about editing it in later?”

“Yes.  I haven’t thought of a good last name yet.  Nothing seems to fit.”  (This is a lie.  Yuki knows exactly what name she’s going to give him.  She just can’t put it in the script because they will catch her out.  It’s going to have to be something that goes live with the show.  Just like so many other of her changes.)  “I’ll have something before the first light drops.”  She taps her fingers on the bedside table.  “You did add that—”

“Yes, yes!  I added it!”

Yuki reaches for her glasses and pushes them on – anime villain style, because she feels like one right now.  “And the other thing,” she says, voice even more hushed, not wanting to wake Ryoko, yes, but also not wanting her to even possibly hear this, “the one I wanted you to add for the final trial?”

Usagi never pauses.  She jumps straight in.  “The screens for the audience, mmhm, I’ve got those added, and the place for the chat interactions, but Tsukasa-sama,” she says, hesitating, pausing, “what do you need all that for?”

“I thought it would be a fun gimmick.  Goes well with the robot.”  Yuki sighs and shoves a hand through her frazzled blue hair.  “Usa-chan?”

“Hm?”

“I’m taking the day off.”  Yuki taps her fingers on the table again, then pulls her hand into her lap.  “If anything comes up, I trust you’ll be able to take care of it for me.”

“B-b-but Tsukasa-sama—”

Yuki waits to hear what Usagi will say, but for a while, there’s nothing.  Maybe Usagi thought that Yuki would cut her off and stopped abruptly as a result of that, but that isn’t the case.  So she waits, expectant.

Finally, Usagi says, “Is this because of Mitsuki?”  She hesitates again, and Yuki can imagine her brow furrowing.  “Are you afraid, Tsukasa-sama?”

Yuki smiles, caught out, even though she knows Usagi can’t see that confirmation.  “I plainly want some time off before the Game starts, Usa-chan.  That’s all.”  She runs her finger in circles against her skin.  “Maybe a couple of days.  Everything you need should be plain to you.”

Again, that gentle quiet before Usagi says, “Okay.  I’ll protect your time.  However much you need before the Game, Tsukasa-sama.”

“Thank you, Usa-chan.”

Then Yuki hangs up, turns her phone on silent, and hides it in the back of the nearest drawer.  She starts to remove her glasses just as she feels Ryoko snake her arm around her waist again, as Ryoko kisses up the curve of her spine.  “I’m sorry,” she murmurs.  “I plainly didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Quit using that word,” Ryoko groans.  She nuzzles against Yuki’s neck.  “You’re…taking the day off?”  Her voice tightens.  “Now?”

At first, Yuki doesn’t turn to her.  Her gaze flits to the drawer where she shoved her phone.  “I sent in the finalized scripts yesterday,” she says quiet, trying not to realize (and yet still realizing all the same).  “They won’t need me again until the Game starts.  To make sure that everything.”  Her voice catches, and she pushes past it.  “Runs smoothly.”

She can’t breathe.

“I—”

She pushes that feeling away, pushes it down, pushes it into that drawer with her phone where it’s hidden and she can’t see it and she doesn’t have to acknowledge it and she doesn’t have to touch it, not now, not until she’s ready, not until—

“It seemed plain to me,” Yuki says, ignoring the shadow looming above her and turning in Ryoko’s grasp to meet her curious (annoyed) gaze, cupping her chin with one hand, and nuzzling against her, “that my time would be better spent with you.”

Ryoko kisses her, and Ryoko kisses her – wanting and greedy and needing, because they’re both such desperate things – and she smiles against her lips.  “Hungry, are you?”

“Starved.”  Yuki tugs Ryoko’s lower lip between her teeth, and then her stomach rumbles loud into the silence between them.  She scoots back and covers her mouth with one hand, eyes growing wide, as the grumbling returns.

That sparkle in Ryoko’s eyes returns, and she laughs – loud, boisterous, head tilting back until her white teeth shine.  She slaps her leg.  “You said starved, and then…and then—”  She laughs again, louder this time, and gasps in furtive fits.

Yuki crosses her arms and looks away.  (If she were an anime or visual novel character, there would be a shadow across her face, likely in an unappealing shade of blue.)  “I don’t think it’s very funny.”

“I do.”

“That’s plain to see.”

Ryoko crawls over to Yuki and kisses the tip of her nose.  “So we eat first.  There’s leftover birthday cake.  I can smear icing all over—”

“There was a cake?”  Yuki’s eyes widen.  “I never saw any cake.  Did I miss the candles, too?”

“After last time?  Fuck, no.  I’m not about to let you burn down the house again.”  Ryoko kisses Yuki’s cheek, then draws away from her with a sigh.  “Ruru-chan made the most amazing cake.  I can’t believe you didn’t have any!”  She pushes herself out of the bed and starts scrounging around for their clothes.  “It’s like you stuck yourself behind that bar and wouldn’t leave for nothing.”

Yuki glances down at her fingers and slowly taps them together.  She doesn’t say anything.  The only truthful answer she could give is her own avoidance: she hadn’t wanted to see what else around their house had changed in her absence.  She slowly tucks the sheet around her as she moves to the edge of the bed before something Ryoko flings at her lands in her face.  “Ow!”

“Put that on!” Ryoko says as she kneels down and takes Yuki’s sweater dress off the floor.  “Kitchen nudity is how your fucking tits get burned!”  She looks mournfully at her left breast, cups it in her hand, and runs her thumb along a white patch on her nipple.  “RIP Mi-chan.  You deserved better.”

As her girlfriend stares mournfully at her own scarred nipple, Yuki pulls Ryoko’s large sleep shirt over her head.  Then she slips from the bed to stretch the front of the shirt out, staring at its upside down image.  The Danganronpa 50th Anniversary Cast stare back up at her with differing expressions.  She can almost – almost – pick out Mitsuki in the background.  The Ultimate Mortician.  It set her perfectly in line to examine the bodies (and to modify things as needed to match with the script).  She and Mitsuki ran the shows back then, and they’d been so good at covering the other’s flaws.  They’d both been insistent that Ryoko – the character, not her girlfriend – not be placed anywhere near the middle of the promotional art, although she often is in any of the fanart, and Mitsuki—

“I can’t believe you still wear this thing.”  Ryoko holds Yuki’s sweater dress aloft as she stands.  “You stole this from me years ago—”

“It was a gift!” Yuki exclaims, letting the front of Ryoko’s sleep shirt drop, its edge brushing against her thighs.  “It was the first gift you ever gave me!”

“Yeah, because you stole it and wouldn’t give it back.”  Ryoko sticks her tongue out at Yuki.  “Well, I’m gonna wear it now.  It’s mine after all!”  She pulls it over her head and then shoves the sleeves up before twirling on her heel.  “See?  It fits me so much better!”

Yuki rolls her eyes.  “Yeah, but you hate that thing.  Besides, I used it as a basis for one of my most popular character outfits, so you can’t just—”  She cuts herself off as Ryoko shoves her hands into her pockets, as Ryoko’s eyes widen, as Ryoko pulls the small box out of her pocket.  Oh.  Then she bites her lower lip and looks away before Ryoko can say anything.

For a moment, Ryoko just stares at the box.  “Yu-chan,” she says, hesitant, gaze not leaving the box, “what is this?”

“Nothing,” Yuki lies.

“So it’ll be okay if I open it, right?”

“No!”  Yuki moves towards her to try and grab the box away, but Ryoko holds it aloft, out of her reach.  As a result, Yuki wraps her arms around Ryoko’s waist and collapses on the floor, hiding her face in the edge of the sweater dress.  “Just…just put it back!  And forget about it!”

Instead, Ryoko gently unclasps Yuki’s hands and returns to the bed, sitting just on its edge.  She holds the box in the palm of her hand for a few seconds – enough time for Yuki to make another swipe for it, if she wanted, but she doesn’t.  It won’t do any good, not the way Ryoko is staring at it.  If only she hadn’t forgotten—

Ryoko flips the lid on the box and lifts the ring from inside it – a single diamond set in white gold, smaller alternating rubies and sapphires trailing from it down either side of a rose gold band.  She holds it up to the light, and every gem sparkles.  (Her eyes do, too, their light reflecting within.)  “Yu-chan,” she says again, quieter, a near hush, “what is this?”

“I should think it’s plain to you what it is.”  Yuki doesn’t move from where she stays collapsed on the floor, hands clasped together in her lap.  “I…I got it about a month before….”  She can’t complete that part of the sentence – won’t complete it – and so continues as though she has, “But I never found the right time to….”  That sentence, too, falls incomplete from her lips.

“And you….”  Ryoko’s gaze finally moves from the ring to Yuki.  “You brought this to…to your birthday party?”

Yuki can’t meet her eyes.  “I thought it was your engagement party.  I thought….”  She swallows.  “I didn’t think I would change your mind, but I plainly thought that I shouldn’t keep it.  But I…I couldn’t sell it, and I couldn’t get rid of it, so I plainly thought—”

“You thought you would give it to me as an…an engagement present?”  Ryoko raises a brow.  “Yu-chan, that’s plainly pretty fucked.”

“I know.”  Yuki glances up just in time to see Ryoko slip it on her finger.  “Don’t—”

“Why not?  It’s mine, isn’t it?”  Ryoko sets the ring on the finger where it belongs – where it just fits – and then holds her hand up to the light, her fingers outstretched.  She stares at it for another few minutes, saying nothing.  “Hey, hey,” she says, finally.  “Yuki, do you…want to marry me?”

This isn’t fair.

“Yes.”

This isn’t fair.

Yuki slowly sits next to Ryoko on the bed again.  She takes Ryoko’s free hand in hers, but her gaze doesn’t leave her fiancée.  “I think it’s quite plain to see that.”

This isn’t fair.

Ryoko finally looks away from the ring on her finger and turns to Yuki.  She takes Yuki’s face in both of her hands – the ring cold against her cheek – and draws her into another kiss.

THIS ISN’T FAIR.

Yuki knows that she’s crying before Ryoko lifts her fingers with a smile, before she brushes her thumb along her cheekbone to wipe them away.  She must think they’re tears of joy, and Yuki has no intention of telling her otherwise.  It wouldn’t do any good.  What would she say?  Instead, she murmurs, “We can…we can figure everything out after…after the Game, okay?  We only just…we’re plainly not even—”

But Ryoko kisses her again, and Yuki can’t stop crying.

[bunnyfern]

Chapter 4

Double Take And Never Give

First - Previous - Next

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ 𝄞

Today was the day that Crowe had to start acting lessons. And she was stressing out.

Well, it was more like full on panicking and sweating through her shirt. The idea of being on tv terrified her, but at least none of it would be live so millions of people could see her fuck up and die of embarrassment. But even then, who knows if she’ll be able to form proper sentences in front of a large group of people filming her every move. 

Kelly had informed her yesterday of what Gustavo had planned for her and the band, giving Crowe a sheet of paper with lines to practice with in preparation for class. Reading her lines while cleaning her apartment or reorganizing the shelves was easy enough. Moving to the mirror in her bathroom though, got her stammering and avoiding eye contact with even herself. Crowe found it incredibly annoying and stupid that she was acting like this, or not acting. It was hard for her to not overthink this. 

“It’s fine,” Looking at the light brown eyes in the mirror. “Just. I have to just,” Darting her eyes around the dirty bathroom. “Say this line.” Bringing the sheet up and not a single noise coming out. She slunk down to the floor and sighed. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this. He can’t be right.” Everything was silent aside from next door. It sounded lively over there, but laughing brought her back to the script, sighing once more.

And continued to sit. Until she felt a small wet spot on her pants, “What the-” Crowe shot up and stepped away from the mysterious liquid. “Ew ew ew ew, gross.” Groaning and blocking it out of her mind. 

But if she had to do this to stay in school which means staying a songwriter for the band and Gustavo, then she had to push herself out of her comfort zone. It’s easier for her to stay and fight through the anxiety plaguing her all through the night than going back and dealing with loneliness for the rest of her life. 

So on the way to Rocque Records the next day, the only thing Crowe did was ready her voice with some tongue twisters and memorization of her lines. Fumbling her words when one of the boys was looking in her direction, starting over and over again. And Carlos thought it was a fun game in seeing how much he could make Crowe stutter her lines. He got up to five times before she finally gave up. 

Logan was the one who asked, “So, is that for the acting role you’re gonna do?” The rest looked at her and she answered, wanting to rest as much as she could before getting to work. Putting the folder down on her lap, “No. Well, technically . But this is for my acting class. I don’t have a role yet.” She didn’t know how many classes she had to take before landing a part, let alone auditioning for one. 

But it has to be soon or I’ll get kicked out of school. It’s easy for her to overthink. 

“And you have to do that?” Kendall knew nothing about the details of what she had to do to be in school, only hearing it in a passing statement from Kelly. “Yeah. If I wanna stay living here,” she began to count out her list, “Be your guys’ assistant, be a songwriter and get away from the cold, depressing weather. Then yeah.” Crowe didn’t want to lose any of this or do anything that could potentially get her fired. 

She laid her head back, waiting for the drive to be over. 

⟡

“You,” Gustavo and an older woman, presumably the acting coach, entered the empty room where Crowe was quietly waiting. “Are you ready to be on the big screen?” He seemed to be in good spirits, probably because he got away from the band for a minute. 

“Should I answer that?” Crowe second guessed herself in wanting to do this. Thinking for a split second to change it to singing, but only for a microsecond. Darting her eyes between the two adults and swallowing her fear. 

“If you want to honestly, you can. It might help calm your nerves down.” The woman was confident, in the way she stood and spoke. Leaving Crowe to mimic her confidence, straightening her posture. 

Gustavo stood by Crowe to give her the run down of the day ahead. “Alright, I’m going to be working with the dogs on harmonies while you do some acting. Either me or Kelly will come check up on you about every hour or so, see how you’re doing.”

Crowe nodded. 

“Good. Now, get to work!” Yelling at the two, waving and shutting the door behind him. 

Crowe waited for instructions, not sure if she needs to be doing something specific or not. Her teacher could feel the nervousness radiating off of the younger girl, “It’s fine if you’re nervous or scared, just let me know. I want you to be comfortable.” A large purse was placed on the table, taking out random objects and setting them in a line. “Now, it’ll be a bit different since I’m only teaching you and not a proper class with more students. But that just means you’ll get all my attention.” Her warm smile sedated Crowe’s fears for a short minute before starting her lessons. 

She motioned for Crowe to stand up. Handing her a rubber chicken, Crowe eyed the yellow plastic as she wasn’t sure how this had anything to do with acting. 

Apparently her teacher said it could help represent her feelings of anxiousness, letting her squeeze it and hear the ear aching sound that came from it. 

Crowe laughed a little. Like this is going to work. 

The surprising thing is, it did help her in some way. As for the next few hours, it consisted of only Kelly checking in, stretching to help loosen her stiff muscles with yoga, and belting screeches from the chicken. And since Crowe read her lines yesterday, she had to perform it while learning about markers. 

Halfway through the lesson, both her teacher and Gustavo let the teens have a break for lunch. The outside felt like a good idea to Crowe as she could stretch her legs properly, from all the moving around in the room, and feel the warmth of the sun. 

“What are you doing out here?” Kendall’s voice was heard as he walked out the double doors of Rocque Records.

Crowe waved hi to him. “I was going crazy in there learning so much stuff, needed to see the outside world for a bit.” Sipping on her cold strawberry banana smoothie. “You?”

“Carlos wanted corn dogs and sent me to buy some. And Gustavo is killing us in there with all that singing.” Flopping his head on the back of the bench and sighing. 

She just hummed, knowing how Gustavo might be working them down to the bone. It was just luck she had a nice teacher. 

“You can join us upstairs if you want, we’re just hanging out until he calls us back in.” Kendall suggested to her as he got up to pay for Carlos’ food. It was a nice thought but she didn’t want to deal with a certain someone. 

“No, I’m good.” An appreciative nod came from her. 

Kendall didn’t push her knowing that Crowe wasn’t too fond of James, and that was probably putting it lightly . He knew how dramatic, and sometimes shallow, James could get but he didn’t think it was so bad that it made her not want to hang out with the rest of them. 

Him and the others barely had time to hang out with her, aside from when they’re working. And the only time she would talk to them outside of it was because of work related things and nothing else. Making it harder for the band to know anything besides her name. 

Kendall left Crowe alone on the bench, going back to the boys and thinking about ways to get her talking. 

The smoothie had cooled Crowe down and ready to continue. It made her miss Minnesota a tiny bit, being used to the freezing temperatures rather than the heat that welcomed her everyday. But that was the only thing she missed, and because of that she promised herself that she would get accustomed to the way LA people lived. Even if it meant sweating through her jacket multiple times a day, it was worth it in her eyes. 

⟡

It was an exhausting day for the teens, more so for the boys than Crowe. They had gotten back to the Palm Woods as night was approaching, wanting to relax near the pool they all laid on the empty lounge chairs. 

“Thank goodness we can escape the stresses of Hollywood at the amazing Palm Woods pool.” Kendall was more than ready to relax, probably fall asleep on the chair if he could. Crowe mumbled, “It’s not that amazing.” As soon as they got comfortable a loud ringing was heard as a lady rushed towards the five, “What’s this? I didn’t order extras.” Standing behind them with a clipboard in her hands and headset on. 

Once it registered in Crowe’s mind what she meant, remembering what she learned earlier, she collected her things to leave the set.

“We live here, this is our pool.” Kendall and the others didn’t understand and continued to stay seated, chilling. The woman explained how they were using the set for a dog food commercial starring Lightning the TV Wonder Dog, taking a look at the dog who wore a silk robe waiting. Waving to Lightning and saying hi, “Adorable.” Crowe said, still seated and Lightning barking back to say hey. 

“Strike the five.” Screaming into her headset and leaving, having workers take the teens away. Crowe was too slow in leaving as she, along with the rest of the boys, got picked up by the crew and carried into the lobby. “Let go.” Struggling against the grip the men had on her legs and arms, wanting to be dropped on the floor rather than feel like a sack of potatoes. 

Getting dropped on the couches as they could care less if the five got hurt, with Crowe landing in the middle of Kendall and Logan. Carlos and James on the other one feeling just as frustrated, then acting calm again. Crowe stayed frustrated as she fixed her ponytail.

Kendall didn’t seem fazed by it, “Well, at least we can recharge in the stylish Palm Woods lobby.” Him and Logan each putting an arm next to Crowe’s shoulders as she crossed her arms, a frown forming on her face. “Ah, the five hockey players from Minnesota.” Entering the lobby was Mr. Bitters, who didn’t seem too pleased with the teens. “Not a hockey player.” Crowe getting mistaken for one again. 

There was a pointer in his hand as he listed off the rules written on the white board, but emphasizing a single one. “No loitering in the lobby after 9:00 pm. Oh, look at the time. 9:01.” Not missing the single time difference. 

Shooing them away and into the elevator, pressing the button and watching the doors close. They went up in silence, Logan looked at the shorter girl and saw her messing with the necklace. Crowe felt eyes on her and turned to see Logan, he flashed a grin at her and waited to see if she would return it. She wasn’t sure what he wanted, mimicking a small grin so he could stop staring at her. It worked as he turned away, her face reverting into one of just plain annoyance. 

Crowe shuffled away from the group as they reached their separate apartments but failed as Carlos dragged her inside, his arm resting across her shoulder.

Unbeknownst to him, forcing Crowe to stay with the boys for longer than she wanted to. Sitting on the drab couch as two boys sat on each side of her, “Then there’s the gracious interior of our very own apartment 2-J.” Kendall defeatedly said about the lame decor of the place, mostly covered in the worst color someone could pick to live with and a space littered with awful upkeep. 

“Just like 2-H” It wasn’t too different from Crowe’s apartment, only being smaller since it was only her living there. 

She didn’t complain much since she was more than grateful of getting her own place thanks to Kelly, where Crowe was originally going to share a room with Katie. But after informing Kelly that she, or rather her dad, could pay for a separate apartment, Kelly changed the arrangements and made it so the girl could be alone and not pay out of pocket. 

“This place is horrible.” Logan and Carlos said, jinxing them as the couch legs broke and crashed onto the floor. Making the five bump into each other and groan, tired of their place. Kendall shot up and headed to the door, the others following them except for Crowe who stayed in place. Logan was at the back and realized she wasn’t following, lightly grabbing her wrist and tugging her along to join the boys back down into the lobby. Crowe let Logan drag her to the elevator, not saying anything since she was drained from the day. 

The boys were more than comfortable in hugging, touching her shoulders or resting their arms on her, even Katie rested her head on Crowe before. It was something she didn’t think co-workers did, being so friendly with one another. What did make sense was the boys since they grew up with each other for years, but they’ve only known her since working together so there wasn’t a reason to be this friendly. But she didn’t shy away from it either, liking the attention they gave her but would never dare to admit it. 

Logan dropped her hand as they reached the front desk, Kendall ringing the bell even after Mr. Bitters came out of his office. “What? I’m busy.” Not bothering to finish the food in his mouth before speaking, annoyed at teens bothering him this late. “We’d like a nicer apartment, please.” Kendall asked nicely as Carlos backed him up, “How come everyone else gets one of those cool apartments?” Pointing to a way nicer, luxurious apartment where it didn’t look like it got thrown up on and better paint. “And ours is a big-time dump.” Crowe nodded, staying quiet. 

“2-J, 2-H, a dump?” Spitting his half eaten food on Logan and Kendall. “If by ‘dump’, you mean ‘really cool’ .” Bringing the teens back up again for the second time to the apartment, turning into a tour guide as he showed them the wonders inside the place. “As you know, the Palm Woods is home of the future famous. Do you know how many showbiz legends have stayed in this very room?” Stopping in the middle of the room and turning to look at them. 

Kendall gave a rebuttal, “Do you know how many stains and smells there are in this very room?” Mr. Bitters switched up his wording, “If you spill, it’s a stain. When Lindsay Lohan throws up chocolate milk, it’s history.” Fanning down to where a brown spot sat as it looked like no one bothered to clean or touch it since it was considered ‘history’. 

Don’t think about it, don’t look at it. 

Crowe found it disgusting, covering her mouth to not gag as Logan and Kendall felt the same as her and James and Carlos who found it interesting. “And this slight blemish, the result of a Shia Labeouf indoor soccer game.” Said ‘blemish’ was a hole as big as Bitters head and at the height of him, certainly not a small flaw someone could overlook. 

The boys heard that and got excited to play soccer indoors, but Bitters quickly extinguished the thought and moved on to the tv. “And are you telling me, that you’re too good, for the tv enjoyed by Kanye West, when he was known around here as Lil’ Kanye West?” 

He’s gone insane thinking those things are impressive. Rolling her eyes.

“Can we at least paint the place?” Kendall hoped. Crowe was hoping the same.

“No, cause your lease specifically states that there will be no painting..” Bitters rushed over to a framed picture of the Knights, “No hanging of personal pictures-” Taking it down and revealing a chunk of wall missing, causing Crowe to squeak out a laugh and face away from it. “I’ll allow this one.” Placing it back, “No construction of any kind. And there is no way I am putting five hockey-playing hooligans into one of my finer apartments.” Heading out of the room and Crowe not bothering to correct him anymore. Accepting the fact that she was now a hockey player. 

“So installing an indoor swirly slide is completely out of the question?” Carlos questioned as if he could even possibly find a way to do that. 

“This matter, like this door, is closed.” Slamming it shut as he was finished with the conversation. The picture falling from the sudden bang, “I’m surprised the pipe didn’t burst.” Once again, Carlos jinxing it to make it worse. “Pipe just burst.” James was defeated as was Kendall, “Yep. We need a new crib.”

Showering the five in water, Crowe jolting at the suddenness and clutching her necklace to not freak her out even more. Keeping her anger at bay. “Yeah right, like that’s just gonna fall from the sky.” Sarcasm coming from Logan.

Crowe had enough of tonight and left to her place, not bothering to say bye to the boys. The four didn’t stop her, understanding how annoyed she might be. Kendall was the only one who noticed her face and the grip she had on the necklace, worried if something they did made her upset. Brushing it aside for the night and put asking about it off for another day. 

She went straight to the bathroom and took a look in her mirror, noticing her roots showing more than ever. Switching into a different set of clothes, she got to work on redying. Since it was only her roots, it didn’t take too long. 

“Not bad.” Checking herself out, “Maybe I should paint my nails..” Nodding to herself and searching underneath the sink for the classic black nail polish. After finding it, she sat on the living room floor and turned the tv on to have background noise. 

Landing on a movie that Katie told her about, Crowe was more into old time-y movies so she didn’t know about the current actors. But Katie didn’t have trouble catching her up with all the ‘hot’ celebs and the gossip surrounding them. It was entertaining watching Katie be shocked over Crowe not knowing much. 

She blew on her nails to dry and headed to her room, grabbing her journal to write before going to bed. 

‘I gotta keep believing that everything takes time’. Something, something, uhh.. ‘If you’re staying or leaving, I’ll follow your lead’ I need something before that though, like, ‘you decide, it’s alright, I’ll I will be there’. 

The next day Crowe yawned as she waited for the four outside the door, texting Kelly to let her know they’ll be on the way soon. 

Ever since Kelly gave her the phone, she spent hours looking through everything she could. It was her first phone so it was all exciting for her. Crowe just had to be reminded to ask for Mrs. Knight’s number, so she wrote a note like usual. She even considered asking the boys for their numbers, but decided against it. 

And it was like they knew she was thinking about them. Each of them looked to be in better spirits than yesterday as they were wondering what the day would entail, with her lacking the same excitement. 

Arriving at Rocque Records Kelly redirected the five into a meeting room where Gustavo, Griffin, his team, and other workers were there waiting. 

The boys went to one side of the table while Crowe joined Kelly and Gustavo. Taking a notepad and pen out of her bag and listening to the presenters up front.

“We call it, The Ultimate Teen Crib,” Showing off an overly decorated space with anything cool that a regular teen could think of, amazing the boys and Crowe. “Filled with amazing home electronics, arcade games-” Getting cut off by Carlos’ excitement, “A swirly slide!”

How in the world..? Glancing at Carlos like he jinxed the slide into existence.

“Cool, right?” Griffin was pleased with the boy's reaction. “Put a swirly slide in my office.” The man next to him leaving to do just that.

“Griffin, I don’t know what this is,” Gustavo motioned to the board. “But I need to work with the dogs on harmonies and songwriting today.” Upset at his boss.

“Change your plans. Our ancient Japanese founder, Mr. Fujizaki, wants to dump our music division.” Crowe scribbled down notes as he continued. “But your boys are going to change his mind.” 

Kendall was skeptical, “And we get to live in there?” 

“Yes.” Crowe was shocked for a brief second until he went on. “For two hours, while you shoot a promotional video surrounded by RCM/CBT/ Global Net/Sanyoid products,”

What is with the weird fucking name. Struggling to keep up with writing the incredibly long name.

“Which will show Fujizaki why our future rock stars are perfect for selling his blenders, plasma tvs, and missile defense systems.” Moving to the front and sitting down, “What was the last thing?” Crowe mumbled to herself, becoming curious with her boss’ way of thinking. “Oh, and do some interviews. You know, why they love to sing, why they wear that helmet,” motioning to Carlos of course, “And why they love RCM/CBT/ Global net/Sanyoid arcade games, industrial-strength playground slides, and the new XZ5 Micro Laptop. Look how tiny.” Showing off the compact product his assistant handed to him.

James slapped the table, “And we could all wear bandannas. It could be our thing. Bandannas.” Waving his hands as he said the last thing. Crowe chuckled, “No way.” As the boys agreed with her, displeased with James’ suggestion. He squinted in her direction across the table, making a sour face. 

Gustavo grew tired of Griffin, “You can’t keep coming into my studio every day and interrupting my training sessions.” Griffin was quick to one up his worker, “Yes, I can. And do the interviews by the water. Fujizaki thinks water is lucky. It’s weird.” 

Definitely weird. Referring to the man and the one saying it.

Kelly double checked with everything Griffin wanted, “But you want a performance in the teen hangout crib thing.” He confirmed her thinking and then pulled a fast one on the group, again. It’s like it was his favorite thing to do to his employee. 

“And I need it in two days, or the music division will be gone. But have fun with it.” Leaving the stunned group without another word and an unguilty smile of what he’s done to them, just like he did the first time they came here. 

Crowe was having a hard time wrapping her head around the situation but Kelly easily took over, “Ok, we’ll build the teenage crib here in Studio A. I’ll find a nice beach location for the interviews and put in some calls for a hot director.” Heading out to start and Crowe following her to help with anything but a gaping Gustavo stopped both of them in their tracks. “ I’m a hot director. And we’re doing everything here, because it’s easier, quicker, and cheaper. You, I want to show you where you’re gonna build this thing.” Taking the head of designing the crib with him, Kelly and Crowe going with them. 

Before they got too far Kelly had Crowe stop, “I want you to watch the boys while we get everything ready.” Crowe sighed, “Do I have to?” Kelly gave her a smile, “Yes, you’re their assistant. I need you to make sure they don’t get into any trouble. Please, and I’ll text you when we need the boys over.” Kelly gave her shoulder a squeeze, knowing the boys would find a way of getting into a problem somehow. 

Crowe nodded and went back to the four, seeing them grab the board of the hangout crib. They were already pushing their luck. 

“What are you doing with that?” Eyeing them as she flipped her bag open, switching the notepad with the phone and putting it in her jacket pocket for easier access. “We just wanna take it back to our place and look at it.” Kendall answered for the group. “To just look at it and nothing else. Right ?” They all nodded and went ahead of her back to the apartment, following as she wasn’t convinced. And she had to make sure they didn’t do anything stupid, needing to stay with them. 

Once they all got back, Kendall held up the board in place of their rundown apartment and looked between the two sights. “No. No way. It’s impossible.” Logan disagreed with the thought the others had, Crowe confused on what he was getting at until it clicked in her brain. 

“A week ago, we were a hockey team in Minnesota.” Kendall handed off the board to Logan, seeing Crowe with a frown and trying to include her too. “And figure skater.” Straining like it was the worst thing he could possibly say. 

What’s so wrong with that? And I don’t want to be included! 

“And today we’re a band in LA. Anything is possible.” Talking to mostly the two negatives as Carlos and James were on his side from the beginning. 

“No.” Crowe stated. “Ok, you have a point.” Looking baffled at Logan as he played along with their thinking. “But how are we gonna get all this on here?” 

James brought up the bandanna idea again, “Take any color you want.” Crowe looked at him amused that he still tried to get the others to wear them. “We're not wearing bandanas in the video, ok?” Kendall shut his idea down. “You know what? You guys never support my risky fashion choices.” James got defensive towards the others. “Cause they’re bad fashion choices.” Crowe explained, James being shocked at her response and fought back. “And you know any better? You always wear jackets!” 

“At least it’s better than your stupid ideas!” Shouting back. 

“They are-” James began but got interrupted by Kendall. “Quiet!” Staring daggers back and forth between the two bickering teens. The two shutting up. 

Refocusing the two on the mission at hand. “Now, the first step is getting the set designer to build the ultrateen crib here, and not Rocque Records.” Kendall crossed his arms and looked at the four for ideas. “Yeah, that’s simple. And how are we gonna do that?” Logan questioned as Crowe looked at him to stop egging the teen on. “Logan, are you forgetting the Palm Woods is home of the future famous?” Giving him an open ended question, knowing he would follow.

Each of them sprinted to the door but Crowe began to panic and shouted at them before they got out. “Wait!” Making the teens bump into each other and turn back to her. “I’m your assistant, and Kelly told me to not let you idiots do something that’ll cause trouble. And this, will cause more than trouble!” Putting a stop to the plan as quickly as she could before anything got too serious. There was a silent conversation between the four, nodding and shaking their heads like they were talking out loud. And she didn’t like that, it was like middle school all over again. 

Kendall took the lead, “Oh come on, don’t you want a cool crib instead of this shitty one.” 

“No.” Crowe was quick, “I’m fine with my shitty apartment.” standing her ground. Except that it was rocky and she was about to fall. 

James nudged Kendall’s arm, “C’mon, she doesn’t know how to have fun. Let’s go without her.” He said it like she wasn’t in the room, but Kendall shushed him. 

“So you want to keep living in the small place you have? With stains and holes in the wall? Bad smells included?” Kendall was buttering her up and she knew it, faltering in her opinion. “No.” Mumbled Crowe, not proud that she was going along with them. 

I’m just keeping an eye on them. That’s what I’m supposed to do. So technically, I am doing my job. 

Kendall took that as permission and grinned ear to ear as he led the group down into the lobby. Deciding to take the stairs instead, Crowe was told that it was quicker than the elevator but she didn’t think so. 

Sprinting down to the lobby, Kendall flung his hands out to stop the four, “Wait for it.” 

A hand swung in the air and slapped Kendall. “Trevor, I trusted you with my heart, my soul, my money.” A crying Camille, wearing a black tight fitting dress, shouted. 

“Camille.” Kendall said, not fazed by the slap.

“What?” Breaking character and relaxing her face.

“We need to borrow your acting.” The four being in sync again with Crowe falling behind and adding. “Please?”

Camille shrugged her shoulders and agreed even though they haven’t given her any details, only that she needed a business suit. Before they all headed to the construction area where the designer was, they had to change her outfit. Camille dragged Crowe upstairs into her apartment to get the right clothes for the part, bringing Crowe into her room. 

It was a decent size room, covered in posters, pictures and scripts overflowing on her desk. Crowe stood awkwardly by her door as Camille opened her closet, seeing a variety of different outfits from regular dresses to the outlandish astronaut costume. Shuffling clothes around, Crowe decided to speak, “You have a pretty room, it suits you.” Thinking about the lack of upkeep in her own apartment. 

Camille whipped her head around, smiling brightly, “Thanks. Sit, it’ll take a minute.” Waving to Crowe to get comfortable, so she did and sat at the edge of her bed. Worried that she might accidentally mess something up. “And uh, thanks. For helping us. Well, mostly the guys, I guess.” Scanning the ground as Crowe was flustered, fiddling with the necklace.

“Of course, that’s what friends do.” Switching the dress to a business suit.

Crowe stuttered, “We, uh, we’re like. Us two, are like. I mean. We’re..Friends?” Thinking she heard wrong and didn’t want to embarrass herself. 

But Camille was confident and made it sound obvious, “Duh, of course we are. Now how does this look?” Spinning to show off the look, waiting for an approval from the other girl. Crowe nodded, “You look good.” Finishing the look with high heels, “I know I do, now let’s go.” Exiting the room and joining the boys again.

On the way to the construction area, Kendall was giving Camille the rundown on what she needed to do, handing her a card and clipboard with mindless papers. James gave Crowe a confused look, “Why are you all smiley? You look creepy.” Wondering if something happened when the girls were upstairs. She softly shook her head. “Nothing. And shut up. You look like that and I don’t say anything.” brushing it off and going back into her own world. 

That didn’t lessen his curiosity, instead it frustrated him more. James could easily read his friends when they didn’t directly tell him something, but he couldn’t pin down the girl and her odd mannerisms. He could also predict what they were going to say or do, they’ve been friends for so long that they’ve all adopted some of the same mannerisms from each other, blurring how or who it came from. 

But from the day he met her at the auditions, everything she did contradicted what he thought of her. Like her going into acting even though she didn’t want to sing at a singing competition, opting to do songwriting for them. A ringing from Kendall’s phone brought him back to attention. James found her more frustrating than ever. 

Kendall had answered and put the caller on hold, “Do your Griffin impression, now.” Giving the call over to Logan but refusing, stomping on his foot to comply.

“Hello? Uh-huh. Yes. Move that set to the Palm Woods, now. Ok, I need to touch my llama now. Bye.” Ending it with something that Griffin would more than likely say. The boys cheered as the plan was now set in motion.

“I owned them in there.” Camille patting herself on the back with Crowe agreeing.

“All you’ve done is set us up for big-time trouble.” Logan still not being happy with the plan. 

“Oh, our little Logey, so pessimistic.” Kendall used a nickname for him, one that Crowe didn’t want to hear again. “So scared of everything.” Carlos teased him. “And so hot.” Camille blurted out, everyone looking at her and Crowe looking amused at her friend’s thoughts. Making a mental note to ask her about it later, maybe when they hang out together. 

The idea of that excited her, hanging out and talking about boys. Well, it was more like talking about Camille’s crush since Crowe didn’t have one. 

What do people do at sleepovers? I gotta find out later. This time making a real note. 

Logan pushed what Camille said aside and went for Carlos, “And I’m not scared. I’m realistic, as in, what are you gonna tell your mom about the crew that’ll be invading your apartment tomorrow from 11:00 to 3:00?” Logan got him there as Kendall couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse. “And Crowe, what happened to being on my side?” Putting some blame on her for leaving him to fight for himself. 

Crowe crossed her arms, “I still think this is going to blow up in our faces,” Kendall looked at her hurt and hand on his chest, thinking he fully convinced her on the crib. “ But, ” making sure that Kendall knew the rest. “Why not give them a chance? I wanna see how far you dorks can get before giving up.” The three were surprised at her explanation, ready to argue back as Camille laughed at them. “Plus, even if I wanted to, I couldn't stop you guys. You would just drag me along anyways.” 

And I really need to keep track of everything, even though I wasn’t supposed to let you do this. Mentally sighing and hoping this’ll be over soon. 

Logan understood her reasoning, there were times where he was pulled along with the rest dreading the punishment that followed suit. Feeling a bit comforted as he knew that she was still, in some way, against the idea just as much as he was. 

The five waved bye to Camille in the elevator as they headed towards their apartment. “You wanna come in and have some lunch?” Kendall asked Crowe. “I have some work to do, sorry.” Getting her keys out. “It’s cool, maybe next time?” Kendall really wanted her over so Crowe shrugged and mumbled a maybe. 

James eyed her suspiciously as this was the ‘millionth’ time she refused free food. Wondering if she’s hiding something. 

Eyes were burning the back of her head, not checking to see who and closed her door. Flipping her small tv on, grabbing a small thing of crackers and eating half of them. Darkness overcoming her vision as she nodded off to sleep.

Jolting awake by sudden knocks on the door, slowly blinking to get rid of the tiredness in her eyes. Lazily walking to the door. 

“Crowe.” Katie smirked. 

“Katie.” Crowe said with a yawn. 

“Come with me.” Pulling her arm out the door and riding the elevator down, Crowe had to ask what they were doing.

The younger girl had explained how they needed to ‘borrow’ a white board from Mr. Bitters.

“You mean steal,” Laughing at the choice of words Katie used, “Yeah, alright. Do I grab it and you distract Bitters, or..?” Trailing off to follow the youngers say in it. Katie nodded her head in agreement since she knew she was better at creating the distraction if they needed it. 

Peeking behind plants, the two girls stalked the manager. Waiting for the moment he went into the office so Crowe could rush by and grab the board while Katie kept watch.

“Go, go, go.” Pushing Crowe into the crowd and sneaking towards the office. They had a harder time in just taking it as groups of people would enter and leave or just stay. This made it the perfect time for Crowe to use her acting skills, making herself seem like she worked there and was unsatisfied with the placement of the boards.

“Hmm, I think we need to redo this one. Don’t you think so?” Asking a random hotel guest, striking the woman with confusion as she nodded along and left.

It was light and easy to tuck under her arm, waving Katie along as they went back to the elevator.

They bursted out laughing, “Who were you talking to?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t wanna seem suspicious.” Crowe face palmed to cover the growing smile.

“So what exactly do you need it for?” The sleeve of her jacket erasing the previous words and making it clean, or as best as she could. 

⟡

“First, you’re gonna need more future stars from the Palm Woods.” Katie slapped the board with a stick that Crowe didn’t know she had. Beginning the ‘meeting’, “I recommend the Jennifers for their lack of fear.” Crowe nodded along as she knew the three girls could handle themselves.

Crowe covered the next part. “Next, you’ll need cordless power tools, saw dust, cool code phrases,” Sneaking in the last part as Crowe always wanted to do it from all the shows and movies she’d watched. “And-” 

Kendall paused the two, “Wait, Katie, Crowe.” Everyone looked at him, “Where did you guys get the whiteboard?” 

Katie and Crowe shared a look, naturally keeping a straight face. 

“Speaking of Bitters, you have to keep him in his cage all day.” Katie told the four boys. “But the key to this whole ultra 2-J makeover, is convincing Gustavo to shoot the interviews by the pool like that dog food commercial last night” 

“Right. And Crowe, you can take the pictures.” Kendall stated more than suggesting it.

“What?” A small voice crack coming through. 

But Kendall continued, either not hearing or just choosing to ignore her. “And once our teen dream remodeling is complete, he’ll have no time and no choice but to shoot our rock performance right here.” Shooting up in enthusiasm. 

“And I get the first turn on the swirly slide.” Katie crossed her arms and stated it, not letting anyone else have a say in the matter. 

“I get first turn on the swirly slide.” Carlos fought back.

The two beginning to argue, yelling louder than the other before Kendall stopped them. “You can go together.” Quieting another pair of bickering kids. 

James was more than ready to start, pulling out different colored bandannas. Annoying Crowe and the three, “We’re not wearing bandannas.” Kendall eyed him. It was evident that he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. And Crowe wanted to remove that word out of his vocabulary. James got defensive, “Bandannas are cool!” Storming off into another room to get away from the negative crowd. 

“No they’re not .” Crowe whispered but James overheard her, “Quiet bird.” Stomping off as he passed the girl, Crowe did a double take when she heard the rude ‘nickname’. She let the first time slide as she thought she hadn’t heard him right but after having to spend more time with him, it was apparent that he thought less of her since he couldn’t be bothered in saying her name. Getting heated at it. 

Seriously? Bird? That’s the weakest insult I’ve heard yet. 

Crowe huffed at the overdramatic boy, not putting effort in fighting back and leaving as the other’s witnessed everything go down. Slamming the door shut without thinking twice. The rest looked at each other, a silent conversation went on as they wondered why the two couldn’t stand each other. Carlos and Logan didn’t think much of it, moving on from it. 

But the Knight’s were opposite, looking at each other and going off to have a ‘secret meeting’ of their own. Kendall could understand Crowe in not liking James, but none of them knew James’ reason for not liking Crowe since they found her nice to be around. 

“Has Crowe said anything to you about James?” Kendall sat on Katie’s bed while she paced around. “Hmm, nope. She only mentioned how you guys are idiots.” He gave a sarcastic laugh, “What did you guys talk about when you went over? There’s gotta be something.” 

Katie shook her head. “We just talked about movies and shows. Well, I mostly did since she doesn’t know any recent stuff.” She stopped and looked at her brother, “I can go over there and just ask.” This time Kendall shook his head. “If she doesn’t want to tell us then it’s fine. I don’t want her to feel like she has to.” 

She shrugged, “What about James? Are you gonna ask him?” taking a seat next to Kendall. He sighed. “Maybe.” 

⟡

Crowe barely got a wink of sleep last night. 

“You need to get closer, Crowe.” Kendall waved her forward. 

Crowe was a good distance away from the band. And the pool. She knew that she was just being paranoid, but the drawing of blood from her tongue couldn’t lessen the feeling. “It’s like, perspective stuff.” Yelling back to him, inching the tiniest bit closer and crouching closer to the concrete floor. Mumbling to herself, “That’s a thing. Right? Yeah. That’s real. Maybe. Haha, I would know.” shaking but holding her hands steady enough to take some good pictures. 

Crowe gave the printed pictures over to Kendall who led the five inside Rocque Records. Yelling was heard as they got closer, easily figuring out that it was Gustavo. Logan wanted to back out even more now, but Kendall pushed forward.

“Heel. Stay. Speak.” Gustavo treated the five like they were actual dogs, holding his hand up to command them. Crowe only thought he meant it in a figurative way, not literally.

The group wasn’t stunned by it one bit. “Crowe took some pictures of the pool at the Palm Woods, the greatest pool ever.” The four backed Kendall up in nodding along, with Crowe zoning out. “Very lucky water. It’s a great location for the interviews.” The stack of pictures were handed to Kelly, flipping through them and being impressed with the quality.

“Hot directors shoot there all the time.” Carlos mentioned, before shouting out, “Swirly slide!” James slapped the back of his head, reminding him to not mess up the plan.

Gustavo was less than pleased. “Oh, the dogs are directing my video now. Well, let me tell you how it works here. You are the dogs,” obviously pointing to the five. “And I am the trainer.” Pointing to himself. “Now sit.”

Not one of them listened. 

“Don’t sit.” Trying to use reverse psychology. 

The boys were immediate in sitting down, Kendall having to pull Crowe back onto the couch with them. Kendall gave her a worried glance, she hasn’t said anything since they were at the pool taking pictures. He knew the girl didn’t like to talk a lot but not be this quiet.

Gustavo was clearly frustrated at the five, with Kelly convincing him to change the location too. “This pool looks great. And it’s close enough that we could be back here by 3:00 to shoot the performance at the Ultrateen Hangout place.” Literally moving to the side of the teens. 

“No, yeah! You do what I say, and I say no, no, no!” Stomping on the ground like he was having a tantrum about not getting his way. It caused the backdrop to collapse on the floor and for Crowe to snap back into reality. Loud crashing following suit as Gustavo turned to look at the mess “Hey, let’s do the interviews at the Palm Woods.” Defeated.

Mr. Bitters passed the band and Crowe, ecstatic from the check Kelly gave him. Katie popped up, “The bird is in the cage,” turning to Crowe, “Sorry.” Turning back, “And the Jennifers are in place.” 

What? Looking at her. 

“Ok team, remember your missions.” The band hopped off their chairs with Kendall listing off the roles they had. “James, you stall Gustavo. Carlos, Katie, and Camille, you head to Rocque Records and fake build the Ultrateen crib. While Logan, Crowe, and I install the swirly slide and all those other electronic goodies.” Everyone nodded in accordance. 

Gustavo called James over, setting the plan in motion as everyone else scattered to the correct location. Kendall took the lead like usual, having the two negatives follow the positive. 

Stashed away in one of the bushes in front of the hotel were three tree hats, not giving the two negative thinkers a choice in wearing it. Kendall then pulled out black paint from his back jean pocket and reached for Logan first, swiping it across his cheeks so they were matching. Doing the same to Crowe, who flinched at the sudden movement and felt the cold paint send a chill down her back.

“Was the eye black really necessary?” Logan questioned.

“No.” He replied with Crowe shrugging her shoulders, thinking it was a nice touch. Before the construction workers had the chance to enter the lobby, the three teens bolted inside getting stopped by brunette Jennifer. 

“Just to be clear, we get to be in the video, which will be seen by a lot of people, right?” Double checking to see if they lied to her.

But Kendall reassured her, “Are you kidding? It’s gonna be seen in Japan .” 

Brunette Jennifer looked to Crowe, wanting her reassurance as well. Trusting her more than the two boys. Surprised, Crowe nodded and hummed in agreement. Brunette Jennifer gave Crowe a smile and got into the role of a manager as the three went into hiding again. The set designer who was there at the meeting, was told by Jennifer to keep quiet so as to not disturb the other residents and showed the way to the elevators. 

The set designer, not questioning it for a second, led her team upstairs and past the teens. 

“I still say this is a bad idea.” Logan complained once again to Kendall, wanting to quit before anything got out of hand. Crowe wasn’t sure where she landed anymore. Wanting the boys to succeed and gain a new crib, and wanting them to quit, scared of the repercussions awaiting her. 

Kendall placed a hand on his shoulder, “Hey, a life without risk is a life unlived, my friend. Now off the apartment 2-J.” He jolted into action, leaving the two behind sitting in uncertainty. “Do people really say that?” Crowe whispered to Logan. Having Kendall retrace his steps to grab the two and pull them along. 

This would’ve been easier for Crowe if she wasn’t carrying around a heavy bag filled with various random items. It dragged her down on the flight up, putting pressure on one side of her shoulder more than the other. Wanting to even out the ache, she switched sides and had it lay against her left side with the strap on her right. Trying to be quiet as they moved. 

Sneaking around each corner until they reached 2-J. Each of them pressed an ear up against the door. “So far, so good. Look, I told you guys there was nothing to worry about.” Kendall was still more than confident in this. It did seem like everything was going smoothly, so Crowe relaxed a bit as Logan did the same. Now all they had to do was wait until they finished building. 

How long are they gonna take? I need a nap. 

A word wasn’t spoken between the three as they stood around, but Crowe could feel a pair of eyes on her. Fiddling with the necklace to seem busy, even if it didn’t look like it. 

Kendall had purposely made Crowe join him and Logan, wanting to find out the reason why she was acting so weird earlier and the day before. He found it harder to directly ask her what the problem was than asking his friends, unsure if the words would make it worse rather than helpful. But he didn’t get the chance to think any longer as a phone began to ring.

Logan lifted it to see the caller id, “It’s the set designer. I’m worried.” Freaking out which made Crowe start to panic. Kendall snatched the phone out of his hand, putting it to Logan’s ear so he could answer. 

Crowe could faintly hear what was being said, the two boys pushing the phone back towards the other. Kendall had enough as he stomped on Logan’s foot again, forcing the fake Griffin voice out of him. “Hello?”

Kendall and Crowe leaned in closer, hearing the other end of the line. The set designer let ‘Griffin’ know that the ceiling was too low, having issues in continuing with construction. They wanted to burst through the ceiling to be able to fit everything planned inside the small apartment. Logan was completely panicking as he said they would be arrested if they allowed it to happen. The designer asked again as she wanted a clear answer, waiting for the go ahead. 

It was obvious to Crowe that they had to end it here, hoping Kendall felt the same. It was a relief when Kendall seldomly shook his head, giving up. A part of her feeling sorry for the boy who tried so hard to make this come true.

“It was, fun for as long, as it lasted..? That’s a saying, right? Or maybe not. I think I only heard it once.” Crowe tried to lighten Kendall’s mood. And it worked for a quick second. 

But maybe she should’ve paid attention to Logan. “Yes.” Logan said into the phone then promptly hung up. Shocking all three of them. Making Crowe panic all over again. 

“You better be right about this taking risks thing.” Logan referred back to what Kendall said earlier, hoping he made the right decision. 

An explosion and rumbling came after, possibly being heard throughout the whole hotel. Scaring the three and causing Logan to jump into Kendall’s arms while Crowe clutched the strap of her bag, squeezing it so hard her knuckles could turn white. 

Logan leapt out of Kendall’s catch, the three of them hearing foot stomps coming closer. Crowe wasn’t sure if it was coming from inside the blown up apartment or out of it, only being confirmed by three girls yelling out “Code red, code red! Bitters is on his way.” Brunette Jennifer warned them. “What is going on up here?” The three Jennifers asked. 

“Please tell me you guys are good at teen scream horror flicks.” Kendall wondered.

“They’re desperate.” Curly Jennifer stated, blonde Jennifer upped their deal, “We want talking parts in your next three videos. You do all our ironing for the next month. And we sing backup on your next track.” Crowe thought they were being a bit ridiculous in their requests, they were asking for a lot more than the boys could deliver.

“Done.” Logan agreed, surprising Crowe once again. Blonde Jennifer promptly asked for a bottle of ketchup, possibly going for a bloody look and covering themselves in it. 

We don’t ha-

Out of thin air, Kendall held up two bottles and gave them to the actresses. The three being told to hide while they changed Bitters route. Kendall grabbed the two, dragging all of them inside a closet and waiting for the Jennifers acting skills. A blood curdling scream came from the girls and blamed the manager for the faulty installation of a fridge. Threatening to sue the hotel as they fled, with Bitters begging them not to and running after them. 

The three popped their heads out, “They’re good.” The boys in sync. Crowe had to agree, thinking she should add some notes on how they were able to get into character so quickly. 

With their job done, they headed to the elevator. Riding down Kendall thought out loud, “Ok, Bitters is gone, and we just have to keep Gustavo occupied for one more hour.” The excitement being heard clearly. And Logan had changed his attitude, “I can’t believe it. I think we’re actually gonna make it. I’m not even scared.” 

Crowe was actually starting to believe it herself, wanting the boys to accomplish the goal of changing their crib into something that was actually livable. But she got reminded again that maybe she should tell the boys to stop jinxing themselves, as the elevator beeped and revealed a furious Bitters and Gustavo.

Screams came from the boys and a tight grip on her bag came from the girl again. 

“Why are the Jennifers dripping ketchup all over my Palm Woods?” Bitters showed a fry dipped in ketchup to the teens. 

Gustavo stole the fry from Bitters, “Dogs, interviews now!” Eating the fry and grabbing the collars of the boys, pulling them out of the elevator and along with him to outside. Crowe got out too, following the boys but looking back at the hotel manager who had a smug face and waved bye. 

She didn’t have an idea on how to stop Bitters so she decided to go against following him upstairs, hoping Kendall could come up with an idea quickly. “Code red, code red.” Was the only thing Kendall could spit out to James, being pulled back by Gustavo.

James understood but was uncertain what he needed to do, looking to the girl for an answer. 

“Bitters, he’s headed upstairs. You need to stop him.” Still clutching the strap and nervously pacing back and forth. Crowe didn’t think she was pacing for long, but once she turned to James to see if he had any clue in how to stop him, he was covered head to toe in bandannas. Shock was clear on her face as James didn’t say anything and just bolted inside to stop Bitters. 

By that stupid getup it was obvious to Crowe that she needed to follow him and hope he didn’t do anything too dumb. 

Flinging the stair entrance door open and climbing multiple flights of stairs, being out of breath from all the running she’s done in the past few minutes. “Ugh, I really, don’t like, stairs.” Huffing between words. Pushing the last door open and reaching James, catching the end of his sentence. 

James laughed to himself, only just to realize the girl in front of him wheezing. He stood and stared at her, not saying anything. Crowe was able to steady her breathing, glancing around the hallway to notice it was only the two of them there. “Where’s Bitters? What did you do?”

“Uhhh,” James tried looking anywhere besides her face as she was eyeing him down. “Don’t worry, I dealt with him.” Waving it off. Crowe was about to question him further but a buzzing in her pocket stopped her. It was from Kelly. “We’re dead. Oh, we are so dead. I’m going to be fired.” Pacing back and forth and panicking, mumbling to herself to find a way out of this. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t planned. And now I’m going to be kicked out. Or worse…what am I going to do? I can’t go back. I don’t want to, I just- 

Steady arms halted her in her steps, “Stop freaking out. You’re making me freak out!” Genuine concern in his voice at the girls’ worries. Only squeaks coming from Crowe before forcing out a coherent sentence. “I can’t do this!” losing her cool on James as he questioned again. “What is it?” 

“Kelly,” flashing the phone in his face then back to her. “She’s asking if I know anything about the crib.”

“Don’t answer her.” James stated as he was starting to worry as well but faked being calm for Crowe. That was somewhat working on her. 

“I have to! She’s technically my boss too. And I don’t want to get fired!” Her voice cracked at the end. Shaky hands lifted the phone, hovering her fingers over the buttons and hesitating to type out an explanation or excuse. Mumbling to figure something out but crossing each thing out. 

Just then James’ phone buzzed, taking it out to check who it was. The warmth from her shoulders leaving, missing it just as quickly and wanting it back so she could stay sane somehow.

“Kendall. He wants to regroup downstairs.” He typed out a response and put it away, motioning for the girl to follow him to meet up with the others. 

Steps echoed as the two went down, Crowe focused on the steps in front of her rather than focusing on the possible reactions of her bosses. Subconsciously chipping away at her nail polish and going back to mumbling.

James kept glancing back, wondering if he should say something to ease her mind. Worried since this was the first time she’s acted like this. Even if they didn’t know each other for long, this didn’t seem normal. Maybe for Logan though. Losing the chance to as they exited the stairway.

Crowe tilted her head up and noticed James’ odd appearance, gripping the back of his shirt and pulling him back. The sudden pull caused James to bump into Crowe and look back at her with confusion.

“You’re still wearing the bandannas.” Crowe whispered, afraid someone might be around the corner. It seemed like he forgot about it too, rushing to take off the purple garments. Crowe helped him, stuffing one or two in her bag to hide the evidence. James took the majority of them and stashed it in a potted plant next to him, waiting until everything calmed down before retrieving them. 

She eyed him up and down, giving the boy a nod to show they were in the clear. They peaked around the corner, hoping to spot one of the guys and join them to avoid any more suspicion. 

Kendall, Logan and Carlos were running in the lobby, bumping into each other before heading to the elevator. James and Crowe caught up to them, slipping inside just in time and the five riding the elevator up in anticipation. 

“We are so done for.” Crowe thought aloud as the boys were jumping with excitement to see the new decked out crib. 

Kendall had to reassure her for the final time. “We are not. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” But Crowe could only worry. She felt a tug inside her and pushed the thought aside, if the boys thought everything was going to work out, then she would have to think the same. 

“I hope you’re right.” I really do. 

A ding signaled that they reached the desired floor, the five rushing over to the opened apartment. All their eyes lit up at the sight of the bright colorful modern room, it was astonishing how only a few hours could change so much. 

Crowe took a few steps inside, amazed that they were able to pull it off. 

Carlos skipped over to her, “See, told ya it’ll be fine.” He gasped at the sight of the bright yellow swirly slide, running over with Katie to get to the top. Crowe laughed at his optimism, wondering how he fared in his part of the plan. 

They, actually did it. 

Still bewildered at the apartment. There was another tug, her mind telling her how cool it’ll be to live here. But she had to remind herself that it wasn’t for her, it was for the band. They had the nicely furnished place while she got stuck with the stains, a small speck of jealousy creeping up. 

She would never dare to admit it though, deciding to bottle it up and throw it out to sea, where she wouldn’t swim to see it again. Where all the other ones went too. An idea came to mind. 

Crowe watched the boys scatter, with her going to the swivel chair to write. Logan sat next to her and spun, laughing and getting dizzy. She took her journal out and looked for a page, a song she was working on already.  

‘I can’t couldn’t tell you, why she felt that way’. Hmm, ‘she wants to go home, and?’ or maybe but, ‘nobody’s home’. Do I really want to go home? 

Her mind was calming down from the antics she went through today, getting it all down on paper. Within a minute, Gustavo, Kelly, and the filming crew had flooded in, setting up the proper equipment to film the boys. 

Katie and Carlos finally went down the swirly slide, Kendall was playing dome hockey while James jumped on the couch. Everyone was having a fun time, except for Gustavo of course. All he did was grunt, not processing any words while Kelly explained that they didn’t have time to move everything out. He was obviously frustrated with what the teens had done, but for now he had to deal with it. 

“Light it and shoot it!” Yelling in Kendall’s face. 

Gustavo had directed some of the construction crew to move some of the furniture around for the boys to dance, having the stylist work on their outfits. Crowe had to move away so as to not be in the shot, even if she was learning how to be an actress, today wouldn’t be the day for it. She awkwardly walked over to Kelly, unsure of how she felt with the situation. But thankfully Kelly didn’t give her a hard time, “The boys put you up to this, didn’t they?” Side eyeing Crowe with a slight smile. 

“Hehe, kinda.” Shrugging, technically it was their idea but deep down Crowe wanted to do it too. It was a sweet adrenaline rush she didn’t know she had. If none of the guys had reassured her that they wouldn’t get fired, she still would’ve been a bumbling mess right now. Even though Crowe hadn’t known them for long, she found it quite embarrassing how she would go along with the crazy ideas. 

It was like they would decide on what they wanted to do and they could easily change her mind, but she was completely fine with it if it meant spending time with them. Another idea struck her, rushing to fish her book out again to jot down more things. 

Maybe something like, ‘changing my point of view, everyday something new’ uhhh, ‘anything to get next to you’..? That sounds more romantic than friendly. 

She didn't consider herself to be a hopeless romantic since she's never dated anyone before. It was kind of a waste of time in her mind, all of the different hobbies she did growing up filled that spot of interest. But if being a songwriter meant writing about love that she’s never experienced then she just had to find out, hoping that Camille had some answers and not the annoying boys. 

Plus if some of her gigs included a love interest, then she had to figure out how couples interacted. But she didn’t have to worry about that now, it was future Crowe’s problems.

⟡

“Cut! Print!” Gustavo yelled, wrapping up the shoot. “And strike the set.” 

Crowe jumped off her seat, from shock and because one of the crew members pushed her off to take it away. It was a jumble of construction and film crew going back and forth through the door, carrying heavy furniture and appliances. 

The five were confused, “Where are they going with that?” Kendall yelled at the worker. 

The set designer stated it matter of factly, “Back to the warehouse.” like she had no consideration for the teens and she probably didn’t, it was her job after all. 

“The whole couch?” Kendall and James were the most upset at that, already missing the new couch. 

Gustavo caught the five’s attention. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you dogs think you were gonna get to keep this stuff?” Loudly laughing at their misfortune right in their faces. Carlos cried out for the swirly slide. “Oh, that’s really, really good.” Gustavo gladly continued as the five gathered near him, “The little dogs thought they outsmarted the big dog.” Finishing off with wild barking, the teens flinching back as Kelly had an unamused look on her face. 

Everyone continued to put the old apartment back, “Not the color.” Crowe complained, her least favorite part of the place. They even replaced the hardwood back with the shaggy carpet, rubble, crumbs and all. Like it was meant to stay there and be a part of the apartment. Being pushed around as the workers placed the couch back accordingly, leaving the five teens to fall back on it. It probably wasn’t the best idea to sit down, if it fell once, it’ll fall twice as hard. 

Tilting to the side and crashing hard, Crowe got squished between Carlos and James, upset that all their hard work went to waste just as quickly. But being reminded again that if something was going her way, it was bound to get her hopes up. 

“But I do have to admit, we did get some pretty great stuff today.” Gustavo rubbed salt in the wound. “Let’s just hope Fujizaki thinks so tomorrow.” Leaving triumphantly as he won this round. 

Kelly called Crowe over before they fully left, “I need you and the boys over at 9 tomorrow so we have time before the call.” Crowe nodded, but Kelly could tell there was something else on her mind. “What is it?” Crowe shook her head, “Nothing. I’ll make sure we’re there on time.” she didn’t want to explain her disappointment, Kelly was one of her bosses too and she didn’t want to get personal with her issues. 

After that Kelly left the band and Crowe, the boys still lingered on the couch and weren’t making any efforts in moving. She took that as her sign to leave too, “Uh, I should head back.” Backing away. “I’ll be over here before 9 tomorrow. I was really hoping you guys could have kept the crib.” Awkwardly laughing at the situation and shutting the door behind her, going the next door over to her apartment.

Her apartment looked the same, nothing had changed and yet she wished something did. The only difference that she could see was some of her furniture had shifted due to the construction. She couldn’t bother moving it, instead going to her room to sleep. 

But before she could, more inspiration struck her. So she pulled her journal out and went to the same page as before, one that she started back in Minnesota. 

‘Her feelings she hides, she’s losing her mind’…’she can’t find her place, she’s lost inside’. That sounds so stupid, ugh. 

Crowe groaned and slammed it shut, throwing it on the floor and covering herself with a blanket. Wanting to find sleep instead of whatever feelings she was writing about. 

The next morning Crowe had to drag the tired boys out of the apartment and to Rocque Records. Each of their faces showed that they weren’t over the re-redo of the place, “Come one guys, at least act like you’re happy. Especially in front of Fujizaki, and then you can go back to moping around.” There wasn’t a way for them to get the crib back and she knew that, and there was nothing she could do to cheer them up. 

Griffin, his team, Kelly and Gustavo were on one side, having Crowe join them and leave the boys on the other. It took a few minutes before the call was set up properly and in that time Gustavo hadn’t said a word to any of the dogs which was more worrying than him actually saying something. 

Once the meeting started, they went right into showing the video Gustavo had shot yesterday. While it was playing, everyone whipped their heads back to Fujizaki who looked to be asleep. At least Crowe hoped so. It wasn’t until someone helped him back up that she let out the breath she was holding in. 

Kendall’s interview came up and everyone stared at the old man for a reaction. Coughing was the only thing he did, which in Crowe’s mind was better than nothing. It was Carlos’ interview that had Crowe look back at the boy in disbelief, curious about the kind of things he’s up to for a rock being thrown at him and to just brush it off. In Logan’s, Crowe let out a small giggle at his comment about being a risk taker. Knowing that yesterday he was fully against taking risks. 

But him talking about one of RMCA’s electronics, Fujizaki let out a single laugh and seemed proud of it. 

The screen faded to black, waiting for the final say from him, everyone leaning in to hear. 

“I like the boys.” Fujizaki said while coughing hunched over. 

Everyone erupted in cheers, the boys gaining back the excitement for what they had done. Crowe let out a sigh of relief and Kelly high fived her. One of Fujizaki’s men rolled him out of view, ending the meeting. Some of Griffin's team left the room, but he stayed to give Gustavo his final word. 

“I’ve never seen Fujizaki so excited.” Looking down at Gustavo. 

That was excited?

“Frankly, I think it’s the first time I’ve seen him move.” Griffin planted his hand on Gustavo's shoulder. “You were a good boy today, Gustavo. Good boy.” Patting the top of his head like he was Griffin’s dog, leaving without another word. And leaving Crowe to wonder how Griffin got this weird and what was up with the ‘dogs’. 

Gustavo walked up to the boys as Kendall wanted to calm him down before he yelled at them. “So we learned a lot here today, didn’t we?” Crowe snuck over to the boy’s side, knowing she was in as much trouble as they were. “You did some things. We did some things.” Joking around to avoid any harsh punishment. 

“Ten hours of harmonies! And acting!” Yelling, not forgetting about their accomplice. “No breaks! Move out!” Pointing them in the direction of the studio. The boys dropped their heads and sauntered out without fighting back. Crowe followed after them, going her own way to her practice room. 

Halfway through the ten hours of acting, her teacher allowed her to sneak out for a quick break even if Gustavo didn’t approve. It was easy to find them, she just had to listen close enough. Finding them in the recording booth, she cracked the door open enough for a small peek inside but not to reveal herself. They were trying their best to focus on singing even if their hearts weren’t in it. The sight made Crowe feel for the boy’s, she’s not the best at cheering anyone up but for them, she would try her best. 

Leaving the boy’s alone to practice and back to her class. 

What about baking? Or uhh, food? People like food. What else do they like? What do people normally like? Scrambling her mind and entering the room to continue. 

Five more hours had passed and the teens were finally allowed to head back to the hotel. The boys’ heads drooped the same way it did hours earlier, having Crowe lead them back to the apartment herself so they wouldn’t bump into anything. When they got out of the elevator, the formation changed with her near the back. She was so close to entering her own apartment but was pulled back by Carlos, having her stay longer with them. Again. 

The five wobbled inside, only stopping when they heard Katie say hi. 

“Well, I love what you’ve done with the place.” Mrs. Knight was sitting on the brightly colored orange couch, complementing the new apartment. 

Lifting their heads, the boys sprinted over to check every nook and crevice to make sure everything was back, while Crowe stood frozen in shock. 

Gustavo and Kelly snuck up behind her, causing her to turn around and back up into the boys who turned to him in confusion.

“Uhh, good job today.” Gustavo didn’t sound pleased with admitting that.

“This is awesome.” Kendall was surprised at the producer.

What Gustavo said next caused even more confusion. “This is a bone.”

“Come again?” Logan wasn’t sure he heard correctly. 

Gustavo struggled in acting like a decent person. “I realized today, sort of, that if you really want to train dogs properly, you need to throw them a treat now and then.” It had fully set in that Crowe and the band were his dogs, it wasn’t exactly a bad saying but it was something she had to get used to. She just wished he had more treats. “So enjoy your treat. You’re not getting any more.” A static face remained on him, not fully expressing his gratitude to them but still making a sort of effort. 

After that, Kelly had explained that the shoot had caused a delay in their work schedule, wanting them at the studio even earlier than normal the next day. Crowe and Kendall would make sure they get there on time, Carlos promising that they wouldn’t have any more surprises for the two. 

A banging could be heard from somewhere in the apartment and then a burst from the wall revealed a more than furious hotel manager covered in dust. “You’ve completely devastated this apartment.” Bitters complained. 

“You locked him in a supply closet?” Logan and Crowe “That’s where he went?” were both mad at James’ action. 

James looked between the two, defending himself in the most idiotic way, “No. Bandanna man did.” Holding up another purple bandanna. Crowe tried to rip it out of his hand but unfortunately he was taller, putting it just out of her reach. 

“This is a total lease violation.” Bitters noticed the swirly slide, acting calm then reverting back to anger. “I want all of you out of here tomorrow!” 

It wasn’t looking good for the teens, but thankfully Kelly stepped in and put his anger to rest. “What if I add another grand to your ‘making it happen’ fee? And another, for the one next door?” Kelly handed over two checks to the now pleased manager, wishing them a good day before leaving them alone.

The only thing Crowe was stuck on was the ‘next door’ part, wondering if it was what she thought it meant. The four boys rushed back to play dome hockey while Crowe went to question Kelly. “What do you mean, next door?” 

Kelly had a smile on her face and motioned her head in the direction of a door. Katie followed her line of sight and went over to open it with Crowe behind her. Excited to show it off.

Turning it revealed it to be unlocked, noticing a lock on her side. It took Crowe a minute to realize that it was her apartment, that it was a connecting door to the guy’s apartment. Stepping inside with Katie to check out the new furnishings. She laughed to herself, excited to see what her room looked like as well. 

The last thing Crowe heard from Gustavo before he left, was him yelling that he doesn’t like the dogs. 

And it was pretty easy to determine who he was talking about. 

“Did you know about this?” Crowe looked to Katie who was chilling on her new couch. It was a soft green colored couch with darker green pillows and throw blankets decorating the ends. The style was completely different than the one next door. Crowe’s was a darken tone but cozier feel, with most of the colors being shades of green, black, and a few pink's littered around. While theirs was a more modern colorful display and decorations. 

“Yeah, I helped with some of the decorating.” Katie pointed to some plants that rested above the bookcase next to the tv and the flower printed rug. “Since you liked more old stuff, I thought it was a good choice. Mom made sure none of the guy workers went inside your room, it was only us.” Crowe felt her heart soften.

They did all this for me? The inside of her cheek being bitten again. 

Crowe looked at her suspiciously, “You didn’t go through my stuff, right ?” Katie sat up defensively, “Of course not. I’m not that rude.” Crowe rolled her eyes, saying that she knew she wouldn’t do that. Taking a few steps into the kitchen and noticing her sticky notes were moved there. “Oh shit, that reminds me.”

Katie looked at her as Crowe placed her bag on the counter and took her phone out. “I’ll be back,” going to the connected doors instead of out in the hallway. “You can help me decorate more if you want when I get back.” Katie nodded and switched the tv on, flipping through the channels.

The boys were still jumping around from the excitement. With Mrs. Knight nowhere to be seen, Crowe went up to Kendall who was playing dome hockey with Carlos. “Hey, Kendall?” He turned around just when Carlos scored a point, leaving him frustrated at him for taking a cheap shot. “Sorry for interrupting your game.”

Kendall shrugged, not making it a big deal. “What’s up? You wanna play with us? We can have Logan be on Carlos’ team.” She shot that idea down, “I just wanted to know where your mom is, if she’s busy I can ask her another time.” He hummed, scanning the living room and not finding her either.

“Oh, I think she went to the bathroom. What did you need? I can help.” Kendall asked. “It’s cool, I can wait until she’s out.” And she didn’t have to wait long. “Mom, Crowe needs you.” Crowe could feel her cheeks heat up, turning around to face Mrs. Knight but thanking Kendall before walking over.

Mrs. Knight began to pull out dishes to start making dinner, “What is it dear? Is everything ok?” Crowe nodded, “Uhh, Kelly got me a phone so she can contact me easier. And I thought, maybe, you can have my number too.” Mrs. Knight’s smile was warm, making Crowe ramble. “In case like, you can’t get ahold of Kendall. Or one of the guys. Even Katie, sometimes. Like when they’re busy. Or, when their phone dies. I don’t know. If you want to check up on them.” She bit her tongue to stop rambling even more.

“Of course,” She pulled her phone out, Crowe doing the same. “Did you not have one before?” Crowe darted her eyes away and shook her head, embarrassed. She handed her phone to Mrs. Knight so she could put the numbers in. “I guess that means you don’t have your parents number, either?” Crowe said no again. “I’ll have to ask Kelly for it next time.” She was finishing up.

“What?” Crowe’s hands slightly shook, “Why do you need h-their number?” Mrs. Knight gave the phone back and resumed making dinner. “In case you get hurt or something. I need to let them know, and it’s safer that way.”

Yeah..no. Definitely not. I uh-wha- oh!

“I can ask Kelly,” She blurted out. “It’s easier that way. So, I can also have their number saved. Like you said, safer that way.” Mrs. Knight nodded, “That works for me. Just let me know when you can. Are you joining us for dinner this time?” Crowe thought about it then declined like usual, “I want to finish decorating, but thank you. And thank you, for also helping with my apartment.” Mrs. Knight said it was no problem, she was happy to help.

Before she went back, Mrs. Knight asked her to remind Katie to be back when dinner’s ready. Crowe nodded, glancing at the guys and going back to her place.

Katie was laughing at a movie while Crowe went to the fridge, taking the sticky note off and ripping it to pieces to throw away. She brought a box from her room out, opening it near the bookcase and started placing them. Katie got up to help, leaving the tv on for background noise. Crowe left that box for Katie as she grabbed another one, it contained most of her trinkets that she’s collected or was gifted over the years. 

Most of the hour had the two girls finding places to put Crowe’s things or Katie asking about each thing she took out. There wasn’t a story to much of the items, only some of the books and supplies from one of her hobbies. She never went into much detail, only saying how it was passed down to her or the plain and simple, just bought. 

Throughout the whole time, Katie was taking everything in and trying to get a better picture of Crowe. But nothing was coming up, she seemed normal enough. So she didn’t put any more effort in finding anything out that she didn’t want to tell. 

That was until Crowe slammed a box closed that Katie was close to seeing inside. “Sorry,” Crowe picked up the box, “This is, kinda more personal. Private stuff. Only for my eyes. You know?” Swallowing her words and putting it back into her room, burying it deep in the back of her closet. 

“My bad. I didn’t mean to snoop.” Katie stole a glance at the box, only noticing it being labeled with a number. Crowe waved it off, “That’s my fault. Sorry.” After that display, Katie made sure to relay the information to Kendall. She felt a tiny bit bad that she was going to tell her brother but it was his fault that she was curious too. 

Before long, Mrs. Knight yelled for Katie to eat dinner. Katie waved her bye and left, Crowe saying that she’ll be able to finish herself. 

“Now,” Crowe clicked her tongue, rummaging through one of her old journals. “I know I wrote it down. But where ? That’s the true question.” Quickly flipping the pages before landing on a heavily doodled covered page. “He better fucking answer.” Punching in the numbers and waiting. 

Her phone rang five times before someone on the other end picked up. 

⟡⟡⟡⟡⟡

[k00299539]

Animation Brief 02 - Re-Invention in Storytelling

Above: Honse

So I can't really lie about this one, I was in some kind of fugue state this whole brief. I was struggling a lot with insomnia and found it hard to engage with school at all. I actually didn't even show up for like two weeks and learned third hand I was in a group with Summer and Zu, a group for what? I took to Moodle to find out...

Okay I didn't really take to Moodle, I kinda glanced through the brief and surmised we had to make a three minute animation of a classic nursery rhyme. Sounds simple enough.

I'd been in contact with Zu and Summer over Instagram so I wasn't totally lost but I skipped the day where we were supposed to script our animation. This meant I turned up the next day for storyboarding with a script ... but no Summer or Zu. Did I mention our group was literally assembled from the people who didn't turn up the day they put the groups together?

So basically I sat down with pad and pencil and went through the script. My goal was to abstain from editing or embellishing the script and just draw each scene as I read it, keeping track of how many scenes, shots and backgrounds we would need for an animation. I figured once I had the script made visual, the editing and alteration would come naturally.

Above: Boarystoard

Now, what you might be wondering is; "Why are you showing the storyboard before telling us the nursery rhyme?" and I have a good reason for that. I didn't know either. Actually that's not entirely true, I could surmise from the name "Spoon" in the script that the rhyme was probably "Hey Diddle Diddle" but I was beyond confused as to how that became such a sobering tale of war and grief.

At about this time, Zu showed up and I had the answers to most of my questions. As it turned out, it wasn't just a nursery rhyme we were given for the brief but a time period and a genre. So being the lucky number (group) seven we were, we got 19th Century and War Movie in this lottery.

Hey Diddle Diddle is such a fun little rhyme, unlike the all the other groups rhymes, it's a genuine nonsense poem with no accepted origin. To me there's something liberating and anarchistic about that, the reader simply has to accept the mental image of partying animals and bipedal cutlery. I think had I scripted the animatic without knowledge of the genre or period, I would've focused on the fiddling cat and the cow leaving orbit. It writes itself in my opinion; a violin soundtrack to the sublime image of the cow achieving the impossible. But it wasn't to be.

Anyway, in my absence Zu and Summer had collaborated on the story with Summer writing the final script I had received over Instagram with zero context. And honestly, they did a better job than I would've thought possible. Highlighting the line "And the Dish ran away with the Spoon" and turning that into a refugee escape attempt as the impetus for a story was genius. I like to tinker with everything but other than streamlining the story for screen, I couldn't find anything I wanted to change.

Above: Nonsense

Above is the nursery rhyme itself, the initial story treatment by Zu and Summer and the final script by Summer. To briefly explain the beats of the story:

Three competing empires (Dog, Cat and Bull) encroach on a peaceful land.

As the land becomes a battlefield, it's citizens flee.

Among them is our protagonist; Dish and his son; Spoon.

Spoon is tragically killed during their attempted escape as Dish watches helplessly.

Dish is overcome with grief, he formulates a crazy plan to bring down the three empires.

Dish travels to each empire, impersonating a messenger of another. He plays the three factions against each other through false alliances, culminating in mutual destruction.

Dish returns to the site of his son's death and lays down a bouquet of flowers.

If you compare my abbreviated story to the scripts above you can see how I edited them a little bit. I was mostly trying to simplify the story to it's essential elements, half because I think that makes for a better story and half because I wanted to cut our number of shots down to the minimum.

Anyway with both myself and Zu in school for once, we went through both our storyboards and combined them into one, having hashed out exactly how we wanted the story to flow on screen. Summer also did a pass on the storyboard but it wasn't til a couple of days later I got my hands on that version.

Above: Combo Storyboard

Although we still had yet to meet up all three in person, we were communicating the whole time through Instagram. Paul let us know the next step after the initial rough storyboard was make it into an animatic to figure out the timing and begin research for the final storyboard.

Zu did a quick pass on the first animatic in Adobe Animate, although I never actually saw it cause he sent it as an animate file and I couldn't open it lol. I knew from talking to him though that it was the storyboard with each frame lasting for about six seconds on screen to reach the three minute runtime. This gave me a helpful reference for later when I was timing the final storyboard.

Based on Paul's feedback we broke the research down into six(ish) categories:

Landscapes/Background Design

Apparel/Costume Design

Visual Aesthetic/Style

Character Design

Mise-en-scène/Prop Design

Miscellaneous

There was talk of us dividing up the categories between the three of us ... but honestly we mostly just did whatever and pooled our research together in the end. In fairness to Zu and Summer they handled a lot more of this stuff than I did. Summer came up with great costume designs and decided on the cartoon Over the Garden Wall as our main Visual Design inspiration. Zu did lots of research on backgrounds and the 19th Century in general, and handled a lot of the boring work like pinning our stuff up on the wall.

During this I was mostly refining the story, creating the character designs and finalizing the storyboard.

Above: Summer's Storyboard ... Summerboard

Having Summer's board on hand was a great help when putting together the final version. One of the most fun parts of this project was synthesizing our ideas together, and in that sense Zu and Summer were great to work with. We each had our own distinct perspective but we were all willing to collaborate. We were truly a film making democracy...

Anyway before getting into the final storyboard I first have to go over the character designs. This was an area me and Summer collaborated on, although somewhat indirectly. We both designed the characters and their costumes separately and then I tried to mix and match the two in the final storyboard. Most of the conceptual work belongs to Summer and the actual drawings were me.

Above: Some of Summer's costume designs

Another interesting bit of this project was how often I found that the three us came to similar conclusions completely separately. Like in the above there's a lot of small details in Summer's designs which also appeared in mine, despite us working independently.

Above: A man named Dish

I actually just remembered the above designs which were drawn at the same time me and Zu worked on the storyboards. This was before Summer suggested the Over the Garden Wall aesthetic. At the time I was going for a semi-realistic Naoki Urasawa type design. I love Urasawa's work but honestly Summer had the right idea, simple designs made for quicker drawing which allowed to prototype more freely and really polish our ideas in a way we simply wouldn't have had time for with more complicated designs.

That's also not even mentioning the fact that I think the cartoony designs contrast the sombre tone of the story. If you make the characters too realistic, you run the risk of becoming melodramatic. Animation has a great disarming power and oftentimes stories like ours hit hardest when the audience isn't expecting them to. With this all in mind I set about creating the final character designs.

Above: Honse and friends :)

From left to right we have:

A four high stack of Dish heads for measuring proportions.

Dish from behind sans body.

Dish from the side.

Dish from the front.

Dish from the front after the death of Spoon.

Spoon from the front.

The Cat Emperor.

The Dog Emperor.

The Bull Emperor.

A generic soldier.

The Horse.

The Owl.

I think the design sheet mostly speaks for itself. There are definitely a couple of things I'd like to have done given I had more time, like obviously drawing full turnarounds for the whole cast or settling on a colour design.

A couple of details I'd like to mention specifically; As seen in the older semi-realistic sketch, I really liked the idea of Dish having a distinct, separate design after the death of Spoon, as though he became a different person with the loss of his son. I tried to reinforce this with the gaunter appearance, stubbly facial hair, and the way his hair-swirl reversed direction (probably my favourite thing from the whole project). Spoon's shirt is oversized as it's a hand-me-down from his father. The Emperors have a full-beard split between them, as we decided to kind of code facial hair as evil in this project. The Emperor's designs are anachronistic in general, looking more similar to the 20th century Nazi Uniforms than contemporary 19th Century fashion. This was intended to be a bit of commentary on the nature of evil and how the progress of technology (or modernity) facilitates the horrors of war.

I'm running out of space here, so I'll finish this update in another post.

[timpac-capstone]

Spring Update 2: Revised Animatic and Animation has Started.

After showing the initial animatic at a critique and to a couple of friends and professors, the common consensus was that it dragged on too long. This is the third version of the animatic, the second version had the montage scene replaced with a 3-hours-later card, and the golden tape scene was removed. From the critique a lot of people didn't get the golden tape scene, what I intended with it was that people would project their own worst memory into it instead of me trying to make it my worst memory, which is the marco polo game in the script. They also thought I should get rid of the montage scene which I personally liked but I tried it out just to see how things worked out. It still seemed a bit choppy and dragged on until I emailed the first draft to last semester's capstone professor and she had a lot of critiques about the basketball scene. That's when a lightbulb went off in my mind, "What if instead of trying to fix it I just remove it". And oh my god the animatic worked so much better and thank god because that scene had a lot of moving parts and complicated backgrounds that I didn't even know if it would be possible to animate at my skill level. Don't get me wrong it did hurt a little to delete a week's worth of work but that's how it is when producing an animation.

Highly recommend reading this book for your observational research during the fall semester. I was an idiot and started reading it in the spring so I barely got halfway through it before I had to start the actual animation process but what I did read was very useful. The main reason why I didn't read it beforehand was because I hate reading books, I feel that video tutorials are way more efficient and easy to understand than reading 400 pages but this book has a lot of pictures and the author's personality really shines through which makes it fun to read. However, you should be highlighting and writing notes on the side of the pages rather than just reading the pages. The more active you are in your research the more you will retain.

Also as the page from the book suggests you should record/time actions you want to animate by performing them yourself. I was really struggling with the last scene where Dillon goes back to bed. By recording myself I was able to see so many small details of my arm and leg placement as I changed positions. I tried this a couple of times with my first attempt being very slow and in this version, I did it a lot faster.

Similar to how my first animation test for the animatic was the walk cycle for Brain Cell 2, so was my Toon Boom Harmony test. I thought this would be the perfect thing to work on first cause this walk cycle requires a lot of different aspects of digital and traditional animation to make it happen and then once I know where everything is I can try and master it by working on the simpler cuts.

First, and probably simplest, is how do I even draw on this thing. I was having a lot of problems with Toon Boom in the beginning because it didn't like the size of my laptop's monitor so I checked out one of the monitors from the Fablab. I then set up my own animation station in the back of the bunker. This was a bit of an annoying aspect working with Toon Boom because if I had some downtime throughout the day, especially at the Fablab, I couldn't work on it because my screen wasn't acceptable and I needed space for the tablet. At the very least what this setup did for me, psychologically, I had a place where I could associate my stress with instead of keeping everything in my room. Until my other roommate let me borrow a monitor he wasn't using, then most of the animating I did at home cause I like having a place with sunlight.

From animating this one walk cycle I learned how to draw, color, make new frames for a layer, create symbols for the eyes and mouth which is useful for when characters are talking, how to insert spines/rigs into certain body parts or drawn pieces such as the legs so that I don't have to draw them frame by frame, how to rotate, resize, and move a drawing using pegs, and how to parent objects. Sometimes I would also get happy accidents such as the legs moving a bit before the body, this goes to a classic principle in animation which is anticipation. I was also really happy with how I was closely able to match the timing of the animation to the animatic, the bag still feels like it has a heavy weight to it.

I would also keep a notebook next to me and write down anything new I would learn so that I was more actively researching when clicking through Toon Boom tutorials on YouTube.

Once the walk cycle was finished and I was happy with how it looked I split up the animatic into 9 different scenes and then tried fully animating Scene 2 since that and Scene 6 is where that specific walk appears. However, that proved to be quite difficult because of how many different camera angles are in Scene 2, such as close-up shots of Bran Cell 1 on the couch, wide shots of Bran Cell 1 & 2, and then that one still with the door. There were simply too many moving parts to animate this on one file so then I thought "What if I split them even further to the cuts that make up each scene".

Now it's difficult to constitute what is considered the ending of a scene but I personally considered a scene done whenever there was a huge change in setting/background or if it felt like there was a new topic being discussed. So scene 1 is Dillon going to bed so we are in and rotating about his bedroom but once we enter inside his brain I call that scene 2 because the backgrounds are completely different for a good length of time. Then when Brain Cell 2 inserts the tape into the VHS player I called that scene 3 since they are not trying to figure out what the VHS tapes might be or how they work anymore but instead the focus is shifted toward the presentation memory even though they are still in the brain room and 2 cuts are in Dillon's bedroom. Some scenes like scene 5 flip back and forth between the brain room and the bedroom and quite honestly scene 6, which is the one where they drag in the new bag and ends when Cell 2 reaches in for another tape, could be argued to be a part of scene 5, especially since scene 3 has both the Brain room and Dillon's bedroom, but you really have to go off your personal feelings as to what will help you best in breaking down your animatic to simple parts.

Unlike scenes, cuts are very easy to define. A cut is whenever the camera angle of the scene is moved. If you think of it in a live-action sense if I wanted to get a different camera angle of my actors I would yell "CUT" and they would take a break while I set up my camera in a new position. Some scenes, like scenes 1 and 6, had only 2 cuts while scene 2 had 20 cuts, in total Bedtime had 80 cuts which includes stills and repeat shots. This made it a lot easier to work out the math as to how much time I had left to make the animation and which scenes and cuts required more priority if I wanted to make a good finished product. Scene 4, which is the montage scene, could be cut out completely if I really was stressed for time while scene 2, the dragging of the first VHS tapes bag, was not easily avoidable since that created the whole setup of the plot.

This can take up a lot of space on your hard drive and it can get annoying to transfer the assets/layers from one Toon Boom file to another so I would combine the cuts that had the exact same camera angles to make life a bit easier for me. I'm not 100% sure this is how people in the industry organize their files but to some degree, they definitely have to do it this way. Remember that you have several teams of people working on an animated project and the way people get paid, at least in Japan, is by the amount of cuts you do per episode.

Now that everything was nicely organized and I knew that my goal was to reach 80 cuts before the beginning of April I had a feasible plan of action. From February 28th to April 8th, I had to do at the very least 2 cuts a day in order to have the animation part done before the day of the exhibition. Obviously, I wasn't just going to do 2 cuts a day because I would be working up to the wire and that's not factoring in the time it takes to make the backgrounds and sounds for the animation so I definitely hoped that during spring break I could do at least 4 a day or get the harder cuts out of the way. If I wasn't able to complete 2 cuts then at the very least I had to start working on 2 cuts and then hopefully the next day I could do 3 or 4 to make up for lost time. Also, it's best to break this up into smaller pieces as well, so instead of "I need to finish 80 cuts as fast as possible" I would say to myself "I need to finish 14 cuts this week as fast as possible" which is why there is a number on the side with how many cuts I still had left to do. This way I can give myself some leisure time or work on other aspects of the capstone or school work and not stress myself out because I still have 43 cuts left. And if I got ahead of schedule by finishing my 14 cuts I felt more motivated to keep working at a steady pace.

Originally I was going to hire somebody to do the backgrounds for me but I ended up doing them myself in Toon Boom because I couldn't really find anybody cheap and even if I did I wouldn't know how to describe what type of backgrounds I wanted cause I needed to do some on my own regardless. I needed 27 backgrounds maximum, some were reusable so it was probably close to 20 but even then that would be way too expensive to make somebody else do for me so might as well do them all myself. That way they are all the same quality and I can save some money that can be allocated somewhere else such as voice actors. If you know some people who are good at digital painting and you have a good idea of what you want I would definitely suggest hiring someone to do the backgrounds. In the industry, everybody is a specialist in only one field, so one person does all the backgrounds while a different person makes the character designs and then a third person is the actual animator. But because Stevens' budget is so limiting for a project like this you have to really pick your battles.

Also highly recommend exporting your cuts as TIF Image Sequences and compositing them in After Effects, the one on the left is a TIF Sequence. When I export into a video format through Toon Boom the colors get a little bit whitewashed. This will however eat up a lot of your hard drive space especially since some cuts will need every layer to be its own separate image sequence. If it's just a still or a single stationary layer then just export it as one image and then extend it. If you're gonna go crazy with compositing in After Effects then you should definitely invest in an external hard drive to make life easier for yourself and it's just a good way to keep your capstone stuff out of harm's way, you never know what may happen to your laptop.

What I want you to take away from this specific post is that ORGANIZATION IS KEY TO A FINISHED ANIMATION. You cannot work on it every day for every second of the spring semester cause you'll get burned out like I did in April. If you can mathematically prove to yourself that you're in a good spot and can afford to give yourself breaks once in a while then your project will come out amazing. If you constantly keep yourself under stress then you'll start taking shortcuts where they don't need to be taken and your animation will suffer because of it.

[gnomeniche]

director, writer, actor: dhmis's students as creatives

hey guys. i would like to propose the idea that the three protagonists of dhmis represent different creative roles involved in the production of television. red represents a director, yellow represents a writer, and duck represents an actor.

this theory is somewhat similar to the "generations" theory, but with creative roles instead, as both are more fun lenses to look at the three through than actual theories about the future or past of the story. i am not saying that they are LITERALLY these roles (F*LM THEORY DO NOT INTERACT).

but! by looking at the imagery associated with them and what the former two found when they breached the reality of their world (in webseries and tv show), i can make a case for the idea that they REPRESENT them.

(i originally floated this idea in this post, where i said it was extremely underbaked, but i am baking it Right Now. it is occupying my brain and i am obsessed with it.)

the director: red and the tv machine

in the webseries, red discovers the nature of their reality by accidentally stumbling into a set-version of their kitchen and seeing the cameras that film their world. when he breaches reality in "dreams", he finds a "tv machine" made of screens showing the world he once lived in. he finds that he can edit aspects of the world when he messes with the machine, swapping out characters and setpieces, one which is the idea he floated earlier in the episode.

red’s version of the “backstage” is electric, filled with glowing screens and machinery. this and the imagery of screens, sets, edits, and cameras bring to mind a director. red's phone motif could be read as relating to the need for directors to arrange and communicate with every piece of the production, and he literally moves things around the set in production on the machine. the higher power he discovers is roy, often interpreted as a producer, who directors work with to get productions made.

what does red want? he's sick of his awful reality. he wants something nicer, something he can control, something that isn't here. you could say that he wants a change of scenery. or a Scene Change, as it were. he wants to decide what he gets to do, and if he isn't given something to hold his interest, he re-Directs the episodes in his attempts to leave. he discovers their reality while searching for an alternative route in the "computers" lesson, and he hijacks the "transport" lesson to escape.

he has a minor association with ears, as an ear was taken from him in the kickstarter videos, and what is a phone but another way to listen? read alongside his desires, he ultimately wants others to “Listen To Me.” a director’s job is to give directions and make decisions by hearing out collaborators’ feedback.

the world the three of them live in has an interest in crushing each of their specific kinds of creativity, so despite red's inclinations, he is not able to direct anything. he has been assigned the role of "the apathetic one," or the one who does not make decisions or visualize anything more. even outside his role, red's trauma from the lessons leads to him being reluctant to speak about what he wants, so he often remains silent about his desires until he cannot help it anymore. but when he tries to assert his will, everything tells him he is wrong for doing so. the world shows him that all he will find if he tries to make his own decisions is nothing new or interesting, just bleak hopelessness.

in "dreams," red's failures in the "real world" are because he cannot convey his ideas alone. he has plenty of ideas, sure! but he has trouble solidifying them into words and performing them well. when he finds the media machine, he is restricted in what he can do by the "scripts" and "actors" he is given by the show. a director can be as inventive in his craft as he wants; without a script or actors to work with, his ideas are mere shadows.

the writer: yellow and the show bible

in the tv show, one of the first things yellow does on new batteries is discover the sigils seen in the background throughout the show and on lesley's book. he writes in the language composing their world. when he breaches reality in "electricity," he goes up through unrealized future ideas for the show and assists lesley, the "showrunner," from whom he receives a "show bible."

yellow’s version of the “backstage” is organic, filled with music and art. this and the imagery of books, writing, ideas, and symbols bring to mind a writer. plus, yellow is the most artistically adept of the trio, shown by his clown painting, trumpet-playing, and entire cast of imaginary friends. this imaginative streak lends itself to writing fiction. the higher power he discovers is lesley, often interpreted as a showrunner, whose ideas show writers must attend to.

what does yellow want? he's shown to be the most interested in the lessons, and what he wants when he gets his batteries is to know more. he's hungry for new ideas, and he's dissatisfied with pointless learning. the point he wants, since he begs to stay with lesley, is to get to create. he wants to learn from the writing around him and then try it himself. it's just that his lack of batteries prevents him from thinking. a blocked writer, so to speak.

he has a minor association with hands, as a finger was taken from him in the kickstarter videos and his hands often get messed up in the show. read alongside his desires, he ultimately wants others to “Make Things With Me.” a writer’s job is to use their hands to make ideas into something solid.

the world the three of them live in has an interest in crushing each of their specific kinds of creativity, so despite yellow's inclinations, he is not able to write anything. he has been assigned the role of "the stupid one," or the one who never thinks about anything or comes up with anything new. even outside his role, yellow is quite literally prevented from thinking, reading, or writing by his corroded batteries, so he tries to be creative in any other way he can. but when he tries to do anything artistic, everything around him insults and destroys his efforts. the world tells him that his desire to create is pointless because his ideas are worthless.

in “electricity,” yellow's failure to inform his friends is because they do not take him seriously. they ignore what he wants to tell them in favor of their priorities, and the "show bible" is rendered something shreddable. one of a writer's greatest challenges is getting people to care about their words. if directors or actors fail to take interest in their writing, the script may as well be garbage.

the actor: duck and the viewers' eyes

so where does that leave duck? he has not had an episode where he (successfully) breaches reality yet (RIP webseries duck, 2011-2015), but i can still make the case with what we have that he represents an actor.

throughout the tv show, duck makes the most of his roles unless they conflict with his preconception of what is supposed to happen in the episode. he is enthusiastic about "jobs" until it seems like the lesson has been thrown off, at which point he is stubborn about returning to the earlier script. in "death" and "transport," he adapts easily and with a sense of humor to the role he is given. if he's dead, he's dead, but that doesn't mean a character like him can't annoy the reaper! if the lesson was on transport anyway, there's no trouble with going along with the road trip escape, as long as he stays in-character! he manages to twist his part in new directions without technically straying outside the role and provoking backlash from the world. (and even in "death", he was killed. but he became his own replacement anyway, so it was... fine?)

close attention to the script that you were given, as well as using interpretation while still playing the part well, are qualities of a good actor. also, he seems to feel at more home on the set than his friends. he has the most charismatic presence in the trio, and even when he is uncomfortable with the situations happening, the home-set itself is a place he likes. also, his personality is dramatic, expressive, and egotistical, which are all stereotypes of actors.

though it seems like duck is doing fine at expressing his creative inclination to act, i will argue that in duck, the world tries to crush a way that actors can be creative within a role: by putting their own self/feelings into the character. he has been assigned the role of "the uptight one," or the one who never strays from expectations or expresses feelings against the grain. even outside his role, duck's trauma from the lessons has rendered him afraid to act or think independently, so he only expresses his true feelings from behind the veneer of the role. but when he can no longer take the pain and must express himself, everything around him tries to destroy him entirely and violently. the world tells him that his self, his thoughts, and his feelings are an unneeded hindrance to proper fulfillment of the role.

the idea of attention to role relates to both his want and his failure. duck wants to survive this show and remain with his friends, so he makes the most of what the show gives him. but this ties him ONLY to what he is given, as despite all their interpretation, an actor who is not improvising but playing a particular role on a show needs material to work with in interpreting their character. they need to know the script and work with the director.

he also has a lot of motifs that could play into him representing an "actor"

he keeps losing one of his eyes. an actor is always subject to someone else's gaze, even as they interpret the role through their own eyes. these are the eyes of everyone who views their performance. he even has some fourth-wall-breaking lines related to this (though i doubt he means them with literal knowledge). "i'm the best one," the favorite of the audience. "people want to know what your final guess would have been." "what people?" the audience, of course. his association with eyes could say “Watch Me”

his repeated deaths and replacements could allude to shifting from role to role, as the mechanics of the show-world mean that duck's essence shifts from body to body.

green, his main color, is allegedly uncreative, and though actors are absolutely creatives themselves, some may see them as mere subordinates to directors/writers and an outlet for their creative voices. this might also relate to his repeated deaths; sometimes, overbearing higher-ups on productions might demand that they perform something a certain way and treat them poorly or replace them if they do not.

and keeping this in mind, i’m curious to see what he may discover when he finally succeeds in breaching reality.

the three of them and the creative team

on a tv show, all these roles are replacable. directors and writers change from episode to episode, and actors can leave or get written out. they are all beholden to powers higher than them, whether it's the showrunner or the execs, and they must please if they are to remain on the show. the trio are repeatedly replaced when they die, and they are literally living under higher powers that punish them for doing things wrong.

though they are restricted by the show they are in, the three of them all have creative potential within them. whenever one gain some kind of autonomy, we see this potential bloom: red starts conceptualizing scenes, yellow starts analyzing and writing. but all alone, the student who tries to break free cannot truly gain control over their world. they fall back into the cycle due to either their own failures or those of others.

i've emphasized how each of these creative types, assuming that they do not overlap in one person, cannot create a show on its own. it is the same for these three: they cannot find a solution to their suffering alone. if they want to control the television show of their lives, they must work together. they need to become creators, not just students, and they need each other to do that.

other tidbits

this is just to end this with something fun!

red and duck are closer to each other than yellow. directors and actors work closely together while shooting and thus speak with each other often. i could make a joke about them losing focus and having a consensual workplace relationship here but i won't

yellow and duck seem to have a contentious relationship, but they both get along fairly well with red. i do not know if the writer and the actor often interact in production. however, i feel like both interact with the director more than the other.

red listens more to yellow’s ideas than duck does. though both actors and directors need to be on board with the script, the director is more often the one who decides to make a script a reality.

red is the largest one. the director is often seen as the biggest player in creating a work of film, though again, it is a collaborative process and auteurship is fake. also, red is in the driver's seat throughout "transport" and becomes the boss in "jobs".

duck seems more at home in front of the camera than red, who is uncomfortable with eyes on him, and he is faster to pick up on negative changes in situation than yellow, who must observe and think things through first. you could read this as red-as-director feeling more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it and yellow-as-writer needing to really work through an idea before feeling comfortable putting it out there, whereas duck-as-actor is okay with people watching him and better on the spot when something goes wrong.

(last edited Nov 21, 2022. will continue to be edited as more ideas come to mind)

[inkskinned]

she trails one finger down my cheek, sighing. "I'm gonna miss you."

i roll my eyes, lying back against her uncolored bedspread, watching the room settle into the correct form. she always gets like this, right before an Assignment. she takes our Roles a little bit too seriously. my brain is already sloshing with the pacing of the Narrative - a little stilted, a little distant. I'd been in Close Third in the last one, and more poetic. her hands make shadow puppets on the bright pink walls; the room shifts and become covered in art; shifts and become covered in band posters. then back to pink.

she'd been my Best Friend Forever since kindergarten, usually. the oldest we'd ever met each other was in middle school, but that Assignment had been pretty bleak anyway, and she'd only been in-and-out of the picture. I'd barely seen her. i loved her, usually, from the moment i met her - she usually had done something Charming in some way, solidifying our bond for the Audience.

"you're gonna be fine," i tell her. "we'll be back here in no time."

she sighs and curls up next to me, turning so our noses almost touch. she smells familiar, like drying ink. then she smells like mint and mown grass. then she smells like herself, for a second, before she's back to peppermint. "well, you're gonna be fine," she says. "The Main Character always is."

"this again." i roll my eyes a second time. this Assignment feels like it is heavy in the eye-rolling. i had told her before: i'm jealous of her Role just like she's jealous of mine. the Best Friend Forever gets to be quirky, spunky, cute. she always has a personality like a firecracker - even if sometimes that firecracker had a harsh edge to it. in most Assignments, she'd run around, starting - or getting me out of - loads of trouble. she gets to have grand adventures without too much Character Development, which is always painful for me and kind of annoying. she is always Assigned cool interests and hobbies, whereas i can feel my singular Driving Interest crystalizing in my bloodstream. "i think this time i'm Interested in yearbook. Gag me." I mime choking, she wrinkles her little lopsided nose in a giggle.

"you just hate it from stuff that's leftover from your last Assignment, though." she looks up at the ceiling. "you'll be actually Interested soon. in this one i'm gonna have a secret thing about fashion magazines. now that is gag-me."

"remember when you were like, so -"

"like so into porcelain dolls?"

"and i was like, Interested in -"

"you were deep in the paint of effing biology." she wrinkles her nose again, like a little mouse, and i realize i love this new face, the way i love all of her faces. i like this tic she has. sometimes her tics are supposed-to-be-ugly; i love them every time anyway. she's my Best Friend Forever, I can't not love whatever she is. she bites her lip. "oh gosh. i'm already talking like the Assignment. that's quick."

"sounds Young Adult. I haven't been able to swear in, like, a millennia." i don't usually get to swear though, regardless of Audience, since swearing is a Best Friend Forever thing. although sometimes i would be Assigned to just-swear if it was a big-deal kind of moment, and those Assignments were fun. the words would pop out of my mouth like a soap bubble, big and afraid of themselves. and my Best Friend Forever would always look at me, shocked and awestruck.

i loved when she looked at me like that. it wasn't in every Assignment, but it was always so gratifying to be in her eye like that. to be seen, the way a Best Friend Forever sees you.

she takes my hand gently. she's usually a little bit bigger than me, but in this one, she's smaller than average. slim. we're probably going to have a Big Fight about jealousy - whenever she's slimmer, the Audience needs to know she's also Insecure about it. Usually it's the other way around - I'm slimmer, and Insecure that i don't have her curves. in those, she's always "better with boys." until, at least...

like she reads my mind, she sighs again. "I know. i just hate the part where you meet Him."

i'm not startled by how on-the-same-page (ha! maybe i'm Funny in this one) we are. she's my Forever person. the Him changes a lot, but she is a delicate constant. she knows me - even when i'm not-me. or not this me. whatever. "i mean, it might be different this time."

she sits up. i sit up too, disoriented by the strange violence of the action. she pushes the heel of her palm into her cheekbone. "it sucks, you know?"

i can tell by how she wrinkles her nose that she is understating it. i've known her Forever, after all.

nose wrinkle. "we're always the most dynamic and interesting part. you and i, and how we grow up together, and how we interact, and how we try to get over the same things. i know we have a lot of Big Fights, but we always end back up together at the end."

it's a sore subject. i betray her a lot for Him. i can't help it. "i know, but maybe this time - i mean, it's not always ..."

her eyes flash while she turns to me. "you just, like, get caught up in Him. every time. and i have to, like, watch you leave."

"i don't always leave." i feel pouty, suspicious that she is right. it is a Main Character thing to be Right in The End, not a Best Friend Forever thing. i don't always do it the Right Way, but I always end up back here, apologizing to her. she always ends up being okay with it, because i'm always Right.

"you do always leave. and it doesn't make any effing sense, because He never makes sense like we do, you know, like... you both are never - like, your Development with Him, is never like, actually...." she moves her hands around in the air as if trying to find the term, but gives up. "the Audience even thinks it."

I hold my breath at her blasphemy. "don't bring the Audience into -"

she grabs at the roots of her hair. "i'm right, though. you meet Him, and because you are a girl, and you are the Main Character, you love Him, and you forget about me." her hands drop to her lap and her thin shoulders pull forward as if she has been suddenly deflated. the anger all seeping out around her. she's usually not able to stay angry at me long - loving me is her Role.

the air feels heavy between us. thick of something unwritten. i don't know the rules of this one. in the space between Assignments, she can be a little wild. her Role doesn't sink her as deep into the Assignment - she has wiggle room where i don't.

i try to tease her, nudging her with my shoulder. "i didn't realize you had a jealous Assignment this time."

she looks up at me. biting the inside of her cheek. i can see her jaw working against the muscle. "i'm always jealous," she whispers.

"that's natural," i assure her. "it's a Best Friend Forever thing. I'm always jealous, too, just a little. you know that."

"it's because we actually see each other. because we actually know each other. because we're made for each other." she doesn't drop my eyes. her hands take mine again, warm and soft. again, that feeling that she is a familiar love - a long love, a deep love - comes sloshing up inside me. i was made to love her, and i was also made to betray her. in order for the Character Development to work, i have to love her hard, so it hurts when i choose Him. she has to love me hard, too. "it's..." she breathes deep, as if through a choke. i wonder how much longer before we'll be in the Assignment, and unable to talk like this. it can't be much longer at all. "it's just stupid. every time, you see Him, and for no reason, he's just better and you leave and -"

"you know i don't want to hurt you, though!" it's an old argument. i feel the pattern of it, glad to be back on script. "you know i never -"

"you just see Him, and it's like magic, and it doesn't mater that He makes no sense - "

"it's about growing up! it's about Character Development! it's not about you, you know that, i love you, i just always Love Him, and -"

"and i am jealous -" she grabs my face, desperate, her voice thick. the room around us starts to shift, and i can tell by how it is pulling itself together that it's solidifying into the Assignment. someone is writing us into a space. her words are garbled for a second, and i feel the hair on the back of my neck rise as she fights the Assignment.

"we're gonna be okay," i promise, "i'll love you the whole time, you know that, even if -"

when she kisses me, something happens in the pit of my stomach. i've been Kissed many times, by many Hims. it is sometimes electric, dizzying, powerful. it is sometimes cataclysmic. it is sometimes rushed, hurried, overwhelming - sometimes harsh, dominant. i have been Kissed until i saw stars, and Kissed perfect.

this is not that. i don't have words for this. i have no narrative. there is only her, and only me, and no story, her hands on my cheeks. i realize, in the seconds we have - she's crying.

then i am on her bed again, which is pink and purple patchwork, and she is across the room, lying on the floor, kicking her heels up while she reads a magazine lazily. we've known each other from preschool, when she punched someone for stealing my candy. we both got detention - who knew preschoolers could get detention - and we'd be inseparable ever since. she listens to loud music but loves fashion magazines; and i love her.

she's saying something, but my old phone pings, lying on top of the Yearbook editing i'm doing. i look down, frozen. she asks me something, but i can't hear her, staring at the notification on my screen. i don't even notice her getting up to investigate.

her hair tickles my cheek while she reads the phone over my shoulder.

she grins. "oh my gosh." she says. "you got invited to the party, holy guacamole. do you know who's gonna be there? baby, you need to go."

i know i need to. after all, after a little complaining, i am going to go. we will try on all her clothes first. and while i'm there, i'll be a Main Character, and not-quit-fit-in.

and while i'm there, i'm going meet Him. and it will be Magical. for some reason, there are tears pricking at the side of my eyes, even though i have no idea why. this story is funny, and light, and amusing.

she grabs my hand, and she is warm, and familiar, and i feel Insecure that she's so thin. i feel Insecure - and - something - a memory, or a -

"come on," she says, and, for a second, something in her eyes is deeply sad, and the time between us feels like fraying satin.

but then she breaks out into a grin. "i know just what to dress you in. i can't wait. you're gonna meet Him."