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messinwitheddie · 4 months

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Somehow this anonymous ask was deleted as I posted it?? So, hopefully whoever sent this asks sees it. Luckily I had the questions written down (helps me visualize sometimes)

1: Was tallest Red sick? If so, how long did he have it and did Purple see the signs? When did he die?

2: Hitz is the one out of the three whose upgraded vessel didn’t get destroyed during the last battle. Where is he now at the time?

3: I like to learn about tallest Spittle. He is one nicely built Irken. Confident enough to pose naked and loving how it intimidate his rivals.😆 what has he done for the empire during his reign? How did he pass away? Who was his closest staff workers?

4: How Was Hoola’s encounter with humans so far? What does he think of them and has he done any study of their world or at least learn form one?

5:How fond of Hitz and Soxx was of Dava? Enough to want to ally with her? Want her to be their life mate and have their sworms?(or was that towards Kii?)

6:Did Purple survive the battle against the control brains? Did he take back his throne or did he sit this own out? If the 6th era started, how is irk fairing after all this trauma over the years being led by each crazed, power tripping leaders and super computers?

7:If they can go back to the natural way of breeding, would they? If the irkens can find a way to limit the rick factors and death tolls. And only using the smeetiry method if it’s in dire need for population control. Surely there must have been a small amount of irkens who wish to have smeets of their own?

8: Out of all tallest, who’s reign was the least damaging to the empire and is more towards fixing itself from the inside while trying to gain Allie’s and trading partners on the outside? Any in favor?

9: When the time comes for them to die, will Zim and Dib see each other in the afterlife or will their paths be separated? Will they still watch over others?

10:What’s Cini’s favorite color? What would it be like if Lich was to be his personal guard? How would the interaction be between the two for the most part?

(Sorry this is all text. I will absolutely illustrate to these answers at some point... Catching up on other drawings this week. I like the numbering system; helps me stay focused. I is shit at focusing lol)

1. Red wasn't sick exactly. He and Purple suffered chronic joint and back pain, especially after their official measuring process which limited their physical activity. Red slowly developed a drinking problem after ID I, so his robes were a little tighter on him than Purple, even if on livestream that seemed unnoticeable. Red's reoccurring headaches started shortly after the Massive escaped the florpis hole.

The Massive's medical staff was OVERLOADED with emergencies at the time. Maybe something ailing late Red was misdiagnosed or overlooked in the chaos, but he was young and relatively healthy for his abnormal height. Nothing concerning showed on any of the maintenance tests Medic Hoola or the imperial PAK technician ran on his PAK. Late Red's death via aneurysm was unexpected. It shocked the empire. It nearly destroyed Tallest Purple. Purple didn't take Red's complaints seriously for a while. He will always blame himself for this. At the same time, a repressed part of him wonders if Red's death wasn't a freak coincidence. Tallests are telepathically/ wirelessly synced directly to the control brains. They often express displeasure with Red/ Purple's work performance... Maybe this was their way of punishing them? Their way of keeping Purple humble and in line...? He tries not to wonder. Outside his personal chambers, they can hear...

The exact date Red passed away, I honestly don't remember when I said originally or if I ever specified. I would have to look it up... In my AU Zim left earth a little under 2 years after the events of ETF. Red passed away some time between then and when Zim returned to earth (18 years after the events of ETF).

2. Self indulgent ending for Hitz (or his updated flesh vessel at least). The exact details have not been fleshed out. To sumarize, the one single surviving back-up flesh vessel, Purple winds up adopting the newborn updated Hitz and raises him as his own on Mem's mystery planet. New Hitz is a very big, very challenging smeet, but the evil, greed and hatred that infested his original vessel never infests new self. New Hitz is showered with love and friendship growing up. He has the same compulsive need to be orderly and follow rules and a logical routine, but he has no desire to enforce rules through violence and fear.

3. (Trying to gloss over this part, but… yeah) Spittle was the 21st tallest of the 4th era. He wasn't the brightest drone; he could barely manage the label on a nutrition shake. BUT, he had the good sense to surround himself with bright drones and listened to their counsel. He trusted the judgment of his staff, frylords and military nobles.

Spittle had a competitive streak and inferiority complex. He also had body image issues, if that wasn’t obvious. So in his efforts to build a strong, thriving empire and a flawless physique to match he invested large sums of monies and resources into medical research; improving the irken population's overall health.

Improving quality control and labor-drone's burnout on Producia, Foodcourtia and the other major snacking systems was advised by the frylords of his day, so he enlisted more service drones and made it mandatory for encoded full-time soldiers to work shifts for service drones due for a reprieve (vacation). For a soldier to refuse to show for service-drone duty or fail to perform the job correctly was considered a punishable offense. His advisor and battle pilot comrad, Blinx, cautioned him about declaring war until the armada was upgraded. So Blinx invested heavily in military research. Within the first century of Spittle's reign, he commissioned and mass produced three new battle crafts, the Spittle Runner (named after him), the shuvver and the ripper. Navigational tech upgrades were installed in all the Armada's ships. Maintenance on all crafts were performed more often and the regulations themselves were updated and reinforcedmore strictly.

Spittle had enlisted for battle pilot training when he was a cadet, so he especially enjoyed discussing battle crafts, space battles, racing stats ect.

Funding for Irken military and battle pilot academies was increased as was the number of training hours needed to graduate. Training improved exponentially and the stats of cadets across the board improved. The youth of his day confidentiality believed Spittle was leading them into a platinum age of Irken history...

He seemed untouchable, but Spittle had two character flaws; he had a habit of showboating and taunting his enemies and he never learned his limits. After declaring the only war during his short reign, Spittle started a strict body building regimen. He injured himself at the gym. In an attempt to rush his recovery and gain results, Spittle went against the advice of his medic. He took a cocktail of performance enhancers. His heart gave out.

His advisor, Blinx was measured the next tallest and the war Spittle declared lead to the pandemic that decimated the Irken population when Cini was a smeet.

4. The only two humans Hoola has interacted with so far is with Reg (Dib's oldest child) and Lyr (Gaz's only child). He is pleasantly shocked by how kind they are to him, considering how much these humans know about the Irken race and their endless warpath. He likes these young humans. They're funny creatures; very expressive and curious. Reg especially asks a lot of questions. Hoola knows giving away too much information may be a punishable offense, but he is sick of the injustices plaguing the empire and his life clock has been detonated, starting his 10 year retirement countdown to death.

He enjoys participating in Reg's interview. Lyr is especially fond of Hoola. He considers him their Irken grandpa. Lyr is deeply troubled when Hoola explains to him how retiring works in the Irken empire.

5. Dava was long dead when Hitz, Soxx and Kii ruled as tallests if their respective hives. Soxx and Hitz would have HATED Dava. Dava allowed her drones too many perks and freedoms. She encouraged disobedience. She spat on tradition. Kii ruled the same subterranean territories Dava and her allies ruled. She admired Dava or how her legacy described Dava, as a smeet but failed to honor her memory in the long run.

6. Purple survives several battles against the control brains. He dies long before the final battle. He lived a comfortable-ish life in Mem's hive. He did what he could to help the resistance.

7. I think it would take a few generations to get used to the idea of a natural/ smeetery option birthing system. The smeetery has been the only method of birth permitted in the empire for thousands of years. Most Irkens would choose to let the smeetery replenish the population, but if the alternative method is decriminalized eventually more drones might find the natural method appealing. It would be a huge win for drone rights if natural pregnancies weren’t a punishable offense.

8. Hmmm… Late Cini probably fits that description as far as my ocs go. Spittle is a close 2nd. But I haven't written lore fot 17 or 18 other late reigns of tallests.

9. I'm sure Zim and Dib will run into each other. Where and when I'm not certain. Zim is relieved Dib has kept tabs on his family / descendants. Otherwise, it would take Zim forever to recap.

10. Cini's favorite color is neon pink. He is also fond of iridescent silver or iridescent pink, and sequins of any color.

#invader zim #asks #irken #oc #au #lore #long post is long

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hekatekun · 2 years

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hiii i really really love the way you write and the themes you touch on in your posts id love to hear if theres any books/media that influenced your writing style + the things you focus on in your analyses !

omg hiiii thank you<3 this got annoying so lemme put it under cut lol

This is actually really hard for me to pin down I've been racking my brains over this one. I tend to be a little bit of everywhere, just whatever catches my interest at the time. Most of my personal reading is nonfiction within the realm of philosophy/theology + history + english criticism; whatever fiction I do get around to tends to be horror and/or satire. House of Leaves by MZD actually has just about everything that tickles my fancy. Finally read it beginning of 2021 and I truly haven't been the same since. That's definitely a big one.

But to give you an idea here's the pile of books I'm looking at on my desk as I type this is: an anthology of John Wesley's sermons (founder of Methodism), House of Leaves, an anthology of Percy Shelley's poetry + prose, "The Sphinx in the City" essays on urban living + feminism, the communist manifesto, a dissertation on the influence of Hermann Hesse in Japan, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" essays by a "conservative cultural critic", and how could i forget the 70pgs of the unabomber's manifesto i printed out.

Currently been slowly making my way through "Romanticism and Consciousness" which are essays on the historical/political background influencing Romantic literature. More often than not I tend to look for essays and critical readings of works before I actually do read said work proper. I don't recommend this btw I just never listen to my own advice. But like, this book inspired me to buy the Shelley anthology. And some of the essays in the Shelley anthology analyzing him I actually found online weeks prior and added them to my digital library. I'd rather read them physically, as I tend to highlight my books. I find highlighting + margin notes really help me stay focused otherwise simply Sitting And Reading makes me go a lil nutz unless the book really is that good. I backed an artist's first comic book that had me ensnared recently. Independent comics tend to do a number on me. Yes I'm still a huge homestuck fan. Will be going 8 years strong.

I reread Brave New World late 2020 after, somehow, getting my hands on it in middle school. Comparing the way the protagonist kills himself at the end vs trying to read Huxley's theological pieces, he should've stuck to the racist satire. I'm still gonna try to finish the Perennial Philosophy, though. All this rambling has me realizing the childhood series I grew up on was A Series of Unfortunate Events, so I think I'm starting to notice a trend.

But actually the biggest media type I consume is games I fucking love video games. I think I cried playing Disco Elysium. I wish more games understood its medium as well as DE. I think that's really what you have to find is stuff that understands its medium. Ososan is a show that is really fucking good at being a tv show, and I think it helps because it doesn't necessarily draw from anything prior because it's such a different beast from osokun (the ososan manga actually came out like a few months after it aired I learned recently).

I don't watch many movies or shows, and the ones I do make me really wanna read the original source material just so I could compare (A Clockwork Orange, American Psycho). I just last watched the Belladonna of Sadness and I think that's an animated movie that understands it's an animated movie. Why go for realism when you've got watercolors?

My other main criteria for any piece of work is that it makes me want to pick up smoking. I don't think I could explain this further if you asked.

Aside from. Any of whatever I just said. My writing background is largely academic with some journalistic experience. It makes media analysis really easy. It also helps that there's technically no wrong answer when it comes to critical readings, just like any school essay you just have to be able to back up your claims with evidence and articulate the connections you see. Prose is a new beast that I am attempting to tame but I think 1. You need to have fun with the learning process and I do in fact enjoy learning. This includes a willingness to examine and reexamine your own words even after you're done working on a piece and analyzing what you can/need to improve on. 2. I really enjoy being able to construct a sentence in a million different ways and I will always have a tab open for the Merriam-Webster dictionary-thesaurus while writing ANYTHING. 3. Did I mention having fun? I really have fun writing I love writing as a hobbyist. 4. Consume and question everything in equal measure. This will eventually produce something.

#ask #i hope i answered this well enough this is fucking word vomit lmao

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that-was-anticlimactic · 3 years

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reki with tourette’s headcanons

[ID: it’s reki from sk8 the infinity wearing a yellow sweatshirt with his hands on his hips. he’s wearing a red bracelet on his right wrist and he’s smiling. behind him is a touette’s syndrome awareness flag. end ID.]

so. @zukkaclawthorne got me hooked on reki with ts and now imma post headcanons i wrote oops

okay so first—that little skateboard he plays with??? stim toy, actually.

he likes the sound the wheels make—that whirrrrrr sound. it makes his arms flappy :)

he also finds the rolling motion soothing and relaxing and it always calms him down—it takes his mind to a happy place

he rocks back and forth and shakes his legs a lot. that also contributed to why he was terrible at skateboarding the first few times he tried—because his body would be like “time to rock back and forth!” and it would mess him up

neck twitches for days :)

no but for real—neck twitching is one of his worst tics because sometimes—if he’s in a bad mood or if he’s sad or anxious—it gets harsh and violent and really strains his neck.

so, langa gives him neck / upper back neck massages to help with the pain

he went through this phase for a couple of months where whenever his neck would twitch, he would snap his fingers two times.

he has a lot of hand tics which can be stressful when he makes skateboards because sometimes he’ll be in the groove and then suddenly he’ll mess something up

speaking of messing things up, he has a tendency to dig the bottom of his palm into his forehead whenever he feels like he does something stupid—he doesn’t even realize it until someone points it out.

he feels like even more of a failure of a skater because of his tics because they can hold him back and make the course more dangerous.

if his blinking tic resurfaces, sometimes the blinking gets so intense that he literally cannot see for anywhere between five seconds and a minute depending on how bad it is. that is how he got some of his worst scars.

or sometimes he’ll make a really aggressive hand motion and it throws him off balance on the skateboard due to the intensity

anyways back to hand tics: he points a lot and does symbols like the “rock on” sign or certain numbers (for some reason, the most common number for reki to throw up is four—though sometimes he throws up whatever number he hears) he also grunts a lot as a tic so he sounds angry even when he is’t.

sometimes, his hand tics really hurt and his hands become shaky and his fingers start to feel the way his heart feels when he’s anxious. langa helps in different ways—he holds reki’s hand, he gives him something to fidget with to try to distract him (sometimes it’s his own fingers—he’ll just set them in reki’s palm and be like “let me carry some of the pain”—no, reki didn’t totally cry when he said that what)

sometimes, reki sticks pencils in his ears. his teachers have been trying to stop it since he was young, but he always did it anyways—he couldn’t help it.

his hair is also long enough for him to chew on. yes, he chews on the tips of his hair because i say so. sometimes, to stop him from doing that (and from swallowing his own hair), langa will try to make him laugh so it falls out of his mouth and then he’ll scoot close and tuck the hair behind reki’s ears… once they start dating, he kisses him too. but also that’s one reason why he wears the headband—to try to keep his hair out of his face so he doesn’t chew on it.

reki’s favorite form of stimming (other than his skateboard toy, that is) is stress balls. he’s got a couple of stress balls in his room or backpack—even one with string attached so he can carry it around his wrist. he just really likes the texture of them.

after his second race against adam, cherry and joe were so proud of him and also impressed and worried dads that they bought reki a big stress ball, like, the size of a stuffed animal. it was a blue cat. he uses it all the time.

speaking of fricking adam, we all know he would so use reki’s tics against him during a race. like, when he grabbed his wrist and “danced” with him, he would mock reki’s tics or say creepy things about how his verbal tics are music and his motor tics are him dancing along and it makes him so uncomfortable and like even more shaken

oh and adam purposely does things to trigger his tics, like when i mentioned that number tic??? yeah, adam will purposefully say numbers to make reki do the hand gestures

one time, reki wanted to tell langa that he loved him but got nervous so he signed it in sign language instead. but, since reki’s tics are occasionally hand gestures, langa thought that it was just a tic and mentally was like “i wish that was for me…” and reki is like “i wish he knew it was real…” and joe, cherry, shadow, and miya are all facepalming and groaning at their obliviousness

reki prefers taking hand written notes to electronic notes because he draws / doodles to stim and he can’t really doodle well on a laptop. so, he’ll doodle in class all of the time

sometimes, his pictures / notes turn out pretty bad / illegible depending on how bad his tics are, but that doesn’t phase reki. it used to when he was younger, but it doesn’t bother him at all anymore. in fact, he thinks it adds personality

during class, he’ll draw pictures for langa and slid them on his desk. they’re usually really random things like the teacher or the back of someone’s head or squiggly lines or whatever he sees outside. more often than not, it’s abstract art. langa loves these drawings and he keeps them all on his desk in his room.

reki also started drawing pictures for the rest of the sk8 crew and gives it to them during races. when he gave everyone their first doodle, he was like “i’m not the best artist ever and sometimes my tics mess up the doodle, but i thought of you while i drew it so i want you to have it”

(shadow didn’t shed a couple of unwilling dad tears when he got home that night what)

anyways, they all keep them. every single one. miya puts them in their school binder so they don’t feel as alone / isolated at school.

although shadow and miya give reki a lot of crap / teasing about not being as good as everyone else, the second they hear anyone comment about “the weird red head that makes noises” and comments on his ts in a negative way, oh, they will stop you.

sometimes, reki whispers words he hears under his breath as a tic (echolalia, baby~) and when he overhears people saying stuff about “that redhead that always follows snow around” or about him not being good enough or how he’s an idiot to face adam, he ends up muttering that too. and it’s not a one and done kind of thing—like. he does it for days. it makes him so upset (and i already hc him, with depression so it just makes it worse)

having tics while having injuries is not a good combination—especially if it’s with a broken arm. the crew made sure to keep an eye of reki’s comfort / pain level after adam broke his arm and literally tried to kill him in their final race. joe let reki squeeze his hand whenever he felt the urge to tic and cherry would ask him how much pain he was in after he ticced and depending on how bad it would be, would make joe or shadow fetch a heating pad or an icepack for reki.

joe also taught reki about the magical thing called physical therapy tape and helped him put it on his shoulders, neck, and back one time. it was his idea to use the tape on reki’s fingers when he was injured to make him feel better (because it literally makes my fingers feel better)

also langa kisses each of reki’s fingers and knuckles, slowly and tenderly, soft so he doesn’t hurt him or trigger a tic. a way of showing that he loves him not despite his tics, but even with his tics and that he loves him and his tics.

cherry isn’t always the best at showing he cares, so he’ll wear a ts ribbon sometimes in a way to show support (and it makes reki beam)

shadow once gave reki a flower shaped stress ball because there were “extra at work” (not true—he went looking for one)

miya didn’t really know much about ts at first and asked why reki made those noises and made weird movements all the time and langa explained so then that night when miya got home, they did research on ts so they could understand it better. later, they told reki that whenever they called him a slime, they meant it purely about skateboarding and it had nothing to do with his tics—even that his tics didn’t make him less of a skater

all his life, reki had been the different one: the one no one wanted on the team because sometimes his tics messed him up, the one who was asked to leave classes during tests because his tics were too distracting and made him take the test in the hall, when sometimes he’d get too overwhelmed by how close people were in the halls or at races and would have panic attacks, how he rocked in his chair and adjusted his position seventeen times an hour and sat on his feet while the other kids didn’t, how he shook his legs more aggressively than others, how he couldn’t skate as well as everyone else because of his tics and because he wasn’t good enough

which is probably part of the depression that weighs on his shoulders

the first time reki had a panic attack during a race due to closeness and overstimulating noises (and this is the first one after the sk8 crew happened) langa was racing and wasn’t there to help, so shadow kind of panicked and like picked him up under the armpits and carried him away from the crowd since reki could barely process anything other than panic and the sound and feeling of static and they sat in shadow’s car for the rest of the race and once he felt better, he gave shadow a huge hug and shadow returned it.

one time it happened and cherry was nearby and he saw the signs before it got bad (remembered from the previous time / his own experiences) and helped talk reki down before it got bad (he has a soothing voice)

usually, though, when / if it happens (because reki usually feels safe there), langa is the one who helps

but it got so much worse after skating against adam the first time because he no longer felt safe and suddenly everyone cheering adam’s name even after witnessing what he did to reki was too much but langa was racing adam so langa wasn’t there and this time it was joe who kneeled in front of him and started talking just loud enough for reki to hear and he was like “you’re safe—we won’t let anyone hurt you. we won’t let him hurt langa. you’re safe. i’m here and so is cherry and shadow and miya and langa will be waiting for you at the end of the race…”

it happens again at the next race he goes to—and this time it’s miya who notices and they tug on langa’s sleeve and is like “i think you need to take reki somewhere else” and langa does :)

okay i’ll end on a positive ts note or two—langa asks reki to add the ts ribbon to the design on his skateboard

shadow finds chewelry at the store one day when he’s shopping and buys it for reki (and gets a matching one for langa!)

once reki came back after his mental health break, the first thing joe said to him was, and this is nonnegotiable “reki! i missed you and your tics!”

miya once overheard reki muttering to himself about his annoying tics were, so they intervened and was like “your tics aren’t annoying. they’re you and anyone who think s they’re annoying is an idiot”

and for the first time in his life, reki doesn’t feel alone and isolated and so different from everyone (at least, he’s working on that last one) and he’s finally found a group of people who want him on their team and a boyfriend who always supports him and makes him feel less isolated, tics and all <3

i uhh I have a lot of feelings,,,

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darth-does-stuff · 3 years

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ok so i need to place this information somewhere and i just decided id post it here

idk if im even gonna post the actual superhero au fic but im posting it here anyways

this superhero au is gonna fit all the angst in here because there is little angst in the chaos crew au lmao

but here are the separate arcs each is gonna face in this au under the cut

(there is gonna be some graphic stuff so be warned)

(it is also going to be very long)

heed the tags guys

Logan

A very important factor for his entire character in this au is that he has cybernetics. His right eye, his left arm, and the lower half of his left leg. This happened due to an explosion, his arm and lower left leg essentially blown off, and shrapnel piercing his eye.

His arc centers around his cybernetics, thinking they are a burden, and feeling like he doesn’t fit in, along with feeling inadequate.

Logan struggles with thinking that his cybernetics aren’t truly a part of him, just something he has to deal with. A burden. He resents it, there’s no sugarcoating it. He wishes he had his human limbs back.

In his arc, he’ll deal with the fact he has them, and that no amount of wishing will ever change it. He accepts them as a part of himself, an imperfect part, for sure, but every human is imperfect. Hell, even human parts of himself are imperfect, so it fits right in.

Before he accepts it as a part of himself, though, he deals with feelings of inadequacy. People often pitied him (keep in mind they thought he had prosthetics), trying to ‘lighten the load’ for him. He appreciated the thought, but they never let him do anything. He felt like they were belittling him. Logan tried to brush it off, but deep down, he worried that he truly was inadequate. Was he weak? Should he even be doing these things? Was he good enough? Sometimes...Logan felt he wasn’t.

But, once he hits the arc with accepting his cybernetics, he faces this feeling of inadequacy and proves it wrong. He’s been doing things normal humans couldn’t dream of and the city’s still thriving. He’s faced countless robbers, countless villains, and found a home with the team. He was good enough. He was okay. He’d be fine. Of course, sometimes he’d still have those feelings of not being good enough, but he could deal with it now. It wasn’t something that haunted his nightmares.

But, even after the whole cybernetic arc, he still faces the problem of not fitting in. Even before having superpowers and cybernetics, he wasn’t like other children. He was the eldest child, so his parents were basically helicopter parents, afraid he was going to get hurt in some way. As he got older and he had more siblings, they got a bit more lax, but he still hadn’t done things normal children had done. He didn’t explore, didn’t interact much with other children (though that was more of his doing), barely went outside, and had his every move basically monitored. Logan preferred reading a book to playing at the park, drawing a picture instead of hanging out with friends, etc., etc. So, he always felt a bit like an outsider. It only got worse once he had the incident.

Now, he had fucking powers and literal robotics attached to his body, and he was scared. He was angry. He was...confused. How would his life change? What would happen to him? Then, all of a sudden, he got roped into being a fucking vigilante and just had to deal with it.

Then, he joins this team, all of them so much more normal than him, and he still doesn’t know what to do. He’s scared they are going to judge him, belittle him, like so many before them had done.

But...they don’t. They accept him, they joke with him, they are happy with him. And, he slowly starts to relax. He comes out of his shell and he feels...complete. It’s okay he isn’t normal. It’s okay he doesn’t exactly fit in. Everything is okay.

He doesn’t blame his parents for being helicopter parents, he still loves them and his siblings. He knows they were worried about him. Sure, they did mess up, but he’s made countless mistakes in his life too. He doesn’t blame them or his siblings. They helped him become who he is and he is eternally grateful for that.

Patton

Patton faces the problem of his public image and his own self-image. In public and when he is Typhoon, he puts on this bright and chipper personality. And it’s grueling to keep up because that is not who he truly is. He’s much more mischievous, much more sarcastic, much more brash, much more himself.

He tries to keep up this optimistic persona because he doesn’t want backlash. He’s afraid of what people would say if they saw the real thing. So, he puts up an image. Smile, all the time. Wave enthusiastically. Don’t let them see through you. Act like you’re fine. You always have to be fine, right? That’s what Patton thinks, at least.

With his arc, he slowly learns to just accept himself. It helps when Virgil joins the team, because he sees him not putting up a facade. He acts himself, dark and broody, sarcastic and sardonic. And nobody really questioned it or gave him backlash. Patton has this moment of ‘Oh’ because he realizes that he can show what he truly is. He no longer has to hide.

When he first starts showing himself as he actually is, he’s scared. It’s only natural, no matter how much you prepared for it, you will still be scared. Some people notice. There are a few news articles as some just want drama. But, his team, his friends, his family backs him up and it strengthens his resolve. He learns to ignore those types of people, knowing they only want drama. He can finally be...himself.

Roman

Oh boy, this is going to be a doozy.

Roman’s angst is that his entire world view changes, his beliefs (not religious) crumble. Everything just seems to flip for him.

Roman had always thought that everyone could be redeemed. No matter the deed. Everyone deserves a second chance. He’s faced criminals and villains with this belief at the forefront of his mind.

When everything else seemed to be crumbling around him, this belief sustained him. It kept him going. It was a constant when nothing else stayed the same.

But now? Now everything is foreign. Everything is changing with nothing being that constant that he so desperately needed. This situation he is facing hits even closer to home because--well, I’m afraid I can’t say because of spoilers, but let’s just say it may involve a certain mustached villain ;)

But, anyways, in his arc, he realizes that everything can’t just be sunshine and daisies. He’s known this before, but it hits full force now. He has to accept that some people can’t be redeemed, that some are just...evil. He hates to admit it, but he knows it’s true.

His friends--no, family backed him up. They helped him with this realization, helped to make sure he doesn’t break. And he is so, so, so, so grateful and thankful for them.

He knows that some people can’t change. He’s...well, he’s not fine with it, but he accepts it at the very least. And when he looks around at his family, seeing how genuine and kind they are, he knows that, no matter what, all he needs is his family to survive.

Virgil

He faces problems with his self-esteem, his own anxiety, and his fear of lack of self-control.

He has little self-esteem. He always has, really. Since he was a kid, he always overthought everything he did, criticized himself severely, always tried to push himself harder, in unhealthy amounts. It all left him feeling so tired.

He kept doing this even into adulthood, checking himself, always wondering if he could do better, barely feeling good about things he did. Things he wanted to be proud of, but just couldn’t.

When he joins the team, it’s a slow process. He was immensely afraid of being judged, of being insulted, of them. They were all these heroes the city recognized and praised and he was left feeling like shit, in his mind at least. He felt like he couldn’t keep up. Virgil kept trying to push himself harder to at least try and be on the same level as them, but ended up pushing much too hard, passing out from exhaustion and stress.

They realized his mindset, having had once had this mindset themselves, and help him deal with it, help him try to minimize it because it’s not something you can be fully rid of. They know this themselves because sometimes they still get those moments, where they feel they aren’t doing enough and push harder, too harder. But, the best they can do is to deal with it. And that’s exactly what Virgil does.

His anxiety is also a doozy.

It holds him back so much. Especially with fear of failing. He doesn’t want to fail anybody. He wants to do the best he can and do it perfectly. But, the problem is that he can’t. He knows he can’t and it terrifies him. His anxiety and fear of failing prevent him from doing so many things just because of what could go wrong.

The team also helps with this. They provide somebody he can rant to and offer solutions and different types of perspective. They help him to realize that if you only worry about what could go wrong, then you wouldn’t be able to do anything, you wouldn’t be able to live. Because with that mindset, you aren’t living, you are only surviving.

And they help Virgil see this point. Help him to not let his anxiety hold him back from things he really wants to do. And it provides him with so many opportunities.

They all know that sometimes, it’s going to happen. Sometimes, Virgil just can’t be able to do something because the fear practically paralyzes him. It’s like with his self-esteem issues. It’s not something you can be rid of, just something you have to deal with. They help him when this happens, help bring him back to reality and help to calm him down.

Lastly, his fear of no self-control. You have to remember that their powers can be heavily influenced by emotions. Strong bursts of emotions can work it into overdrive. Too much use of their powers can also use all of their energy. In very extreme cases, it can lead to death.

But, while Virgil is also afraid of the side effects, he’s mostly afraid of what his powers can do to other people, innocent people. And, to him, it’s a found fear. It’s happened before. He’s hurt others without meaning to and he vowed to never do it again. This is partly why he became a vigilante, to protect others instead of hurting them. But he is so afraid of still harming them and he has nightmares about it. It practically haunts him. He fears turning into those killers and villains he’s fought.

Once again, the team is very helpful in debunking this. They’ve explained their own experiences, explained how they themselves have hurt innocents without meaning to, and it’s something you have to just...deal with, like all other problems. It doesn’t make you a bad person. Him worrying about being a bad person just proves furthermore that he isn’t. After all, a bad person wouldn’t care about it. But, he does. And that is what provides the difference.

Janus

spoilers spoilers spoilers

Remus

spoilers spoilers spoilers-

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kaimelia · 4 years

Text

Happily Ever After

Amelia smiled widely as she looked at the scene in front of her; her husband chasing their 4-year-old son around the grass in the park as their 2-year-old daughter lay draped across her lap, picking at the grass and flowers scattered around her. It all felt unreal, she often wondered what she did to truly deserve this type of joy. She knew that this happiness wouldn’t last forever, between the dramatic and exhausting birth of their daughter Charlotte and Scout’s broken arm last year, they’d had some hardships but every time, they got through it. Together.

“Mommy!” She glanced up to see her son running towards her while giggling. “Daddy’s gonna catch me!” Amelia held out her other arm to catch him as he bolted towards her, shielding him as Link approached them.

“And what are you doing to him?” She questioned, watching as he sat down across from her on their small blanket. He matched the grin on her face and held his hands out to take Charlotte, who was mumbling ‘Dada’ while attempting to break out of her mother’s grasp.

“Daddy was gonna catch me so I came to you to protect me.” Amelia looked down at her son’s wide eyes and pulled him to sit on her leg. “Quick, we have to help Char! Mommy! Daddy’s gonna get her!” Scout frowned as his sister climbed onto her father’s lap and settled into his embrace.

“I think Char just wants to spend some time with Daddy.” Link grinned at his son, raising his eyebrows as the little girl laughed in his arms. “So,” Amelia began, looking into her husband’s eyes while smiling, “Mommy and Daddy have a surprise for you.” Scout shifted in her lap to look up at her.

“Surprise?” He questioned, his eyes wide with curiosity. She brushed his blonde hair out of his face, laughing softly at his expression.

“Yup, a surprise,” Link spoke. Both of the children turned to their father. “We decided that for Scout’s birthday, we could go to New York to see Grandma and your Aunties.” Scout quickly stood up, clapping his hands in excitement. They’d only spent a short amount of time with Amelia’s side of the family, but the kids had quickly come to especially love their Aunt Nancy and Grandma Carolyn, allowing Amelia to bond more with them, too. Scout had been asking for months to go and visit them in New York, along with going to the Museum of National History to see the dinosaurs.

“Really?” Link nodded as his son quickly ran to him, throwing his small arms around his father. “We’re gonna go to New York!” Charlotte matched her brother’s excitement and clapped her hands together while smiling widely. Their excitement calmed after a few moments as Scout turned back to his mother. “Thank you!” Amelia grinned and embraced him tightly. Link noticed a tear rolling down her face, confusion spreading across his expression.

“You okay?” He whispered, placing a hand on her arm. She nodded.

“I’m good.” Scout pulled away, drawing his father’s attention as he ran around on the grass.

“I have to go catch your son, but you’re not avoiding this,” he muttered, standing up to chase the little boy, with Charlotte on his back. Amelia laughed and shook her head, her smile wide as she watched her family.

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

She softly closed Charlotte’s bedroom door, tiptoeing down the hallway towards the light coming from her and Link’s bedroom. She found him laying on the bed with his iPad in hand while watching a baseball game. Amelia crawled into bed next to him, throwing an arm over his body and sighing, nuzzling her face into his chest. He set the tablet down on the table after shutting it off and pulled her closer to his body. “I love you,” she whispered, relaxing as his hand ran through his hair. “I feel like I don’t tell you that enough, but I do.” He kissed the top of her head, shifting so he was laying down with her head on his chest.

“Are you okay?” She lifted up her head, seeing his confused expression. “You’ve been weird today.” She laid her head back down and wrapped her arm around him tighter.

“I was just thinking while we were at the park. About how lucky we are, and how happy I am. I mean, a few years ago if you had told me this is what my life would be like, I would’ve told you that you’re insane.”

“Yeah, after you rejected me.” She lightly slapped his chest, emitting a laugh from him.

“You didn’t even like me. You just did it because Maggie told you to.”

“Maybe I didn’t like you at the time, but I thought you were hot.” Amelia giggled, shaking her head slowly.

“You’re absolutely ridiculous.” She placed her arm back around his body and closed her eyes. “I still love you, though.” Link turned off the lamp beside him, pulling the covers up over their bodies.

“I kind of love you too.” He laughed softly.

“What?” She asked, turning her head to look up at him.

“Just how you were saying how a few years ago, this all would’ve sounded insane to us. Our lives sound like a fairytale, I don’t think I would’ve believed this was possible.” She leaned up, placing a quick kiss on his lips.

“That’s because you’re my happily ever after.”

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

A/N: hi everyone, im really sorry for the delay in posting. this is the last one shot I'll be writing for a little bit. over these past few weeks, one of my family members got a really big and frankly a scary diagnosis, and we’re trying to figure that out and I honestly dont know what's going to happen. grey’s didn't prepare me for this one. I'm also applying to schools, and its a lot of work for me right now. so, I’ll be taking a break for I dont know how long. but that you to everyone who has supported and liked my writing, I never thought id have so many people who enjoyed my writing. thank you for understanding

-ali

#grey's anatomy #greys abc #greys fanfic #amelia shepherd #amelink #amelia x link #Atticus Lincoln #amelink fanfic #amelink fanfiction #my fics

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queer-as-used-by-tolkien · 3 years

Text

First attempt at drawing? No

First time posting? Yes

Am I BAD at drawing people? YES (especially asura)

Posting anyway? YES

[Image ID: human Commander imparts wise advice to Gorrik while standing in the rain. There are no stars tonight but They watch over us just the same.] (Gorrik is the faint, purple blob to the Commander's right.)

----

Gorrik knew it instantly when the Commander, leather armor rent and Caladbolg askew on her back, returned from the Mists without Blish. He ducked his head and stared at his receiver. "You did it, Commander! We're receiving a signal from the tracker!" He feigned cheerfulness well. But those who knew him - Blish would have known, Taimi might know - would see he was blatantly ignoring the obvious. You did it, Commander.

But Taimi could never look away. "Wait... where's - "

Gorrik couldn't listen to her. "I had my doubts about whether the sword's magnetic pull would - "

Commander interrupted him. Gorrik barely felt the flash of irritation that would normally have occasioned. "Gorrik, there's something I need to - "

Gorrik talked over her, because he knew, she didn't need to say it, couldn't she let him - ? " - would still be functional, but, like always - " Gorrik pressed through the tightness in his throat, but he can't help it - "Blish was one hundred percent correct. I don't - "

"Listen to me!" Commander insisted.

Couldn't she see he was grieving in his own way? " - don't know how I ever doubted him!" his voice jumped slightly higher and Gorrik couldn't hide it anymore - "Blish can do anything he puts his mind to..." he was still staring at the receiver, but his eyes were closed and holding back tears.

Taimi, now. "Gorrik. Please."

It was her voice, devastated, lost, ruined, that broke it for him. Blish had had so much to live for. After a long moment - "did he say anything?"

"He said he's sorry."

Light fractured around the corners of Gorrik's vision - the Commander's gaze held pity and Taimi's eyes were on the floor and her ears were quivering, and he wasn't sure if he was angry or - or proud or selfish or missing or lost - "but I saved him."

It was too - there were too many people. Too much. They didn't know him - couldn't understand him - hadn't spent hundreds of late nights attempting the impossible for his dying brother -

He left.

"Gorrik, wait," Taimi called from behind him, sounding less despairing and more confused and uncertain, but Gorrik couldn't stop. He couldn't stay. He couldn't -

He was on the other side of Sun's Refuge, in the silent halls and tunnels near the entrance where there were no people, before he slowed down.

A breath of wind stirred in the close tunnels; nothing should be here. Gorrik looked up but saw nothing. "Blish," he murmured, and his heart quivered in his chest and for one-point-oh-two seconds he believed it just might be his brother, come back - because Gorrik had saved him. He had - there was no - he had no reason to die. He said he was sorry.

What had happened? Had a minion smashed his body? Had he been Branded? Had a Brandstorm disrupted his workings? Had a stray bolt of lightning fried his circuits? He said he was sorry. How did he - ? Was that something he, maybe, had preprogrammed himself in the event of his death? Or did he - had he - had he known he was about to die, because - no, no.

Blish had always been strong. Then he had been so delicate and weak - Gorrik had known every piece of his machinery and it was all his brother, it was all - every cog and gear - it was all Blish. And it was all Gorrik's labor of love. And he was so vulnerable and so, so, so fragile.

All the pieces were. Every one could break and his brother would be disabled, and every time it did Gorrik would drop everything (which he probably couldn't do anyway without Blish) - he would spend agonizing hours and days poking around inside the machinery of his brother's body to find the broken piece without breaking anything else, and fixing it and putting it in and marveling at the miracle that was his brother's life.

Gorrik had known Blish inside and out. Blish had needed it, Blish had appreciated it, Blish had loved him for it, even though it was never perfect and Gorrik sometimes wondered if he ever got used to seeing things through optic lenses and feeling everything bluntly and hearing his voice come out strange, but it all let out in a bigger heart and a kindness and a gentle empathy for everything.

Gorrik had always loved him for it and he couldn't find it in him to wish he wasn't, that it hadn't all led to him dying because he felt too strongly, because that was who he was.

Gorrik wandered the deserted places of Sun's Refuge, avoiding people and staring at where some intrusion of Brand had poked into the cavern, and wondering -

Finally he wandered outside. It was nighttime; and it was raining. Gorrik walked slowly past the Sunspear sentries. A little ways past them, he lifted his eyes from the ground and saw, on a cliff ahead, the silhouette of the Commander standing against the sky, contrasted sharply with the glow of Caladbolg, which she held limply in her off hand.

He didn't know why - something told him to, he felt like he should - but he circled the cliff until he found a way up. It was slippery from the rain and, while it was mostly a gentle slope, at places the way was narrow, or obscured by the scraggly desert shrubs growing in the crevices. But he cautiously went along, stepping carefully and trying not to slip, until he came to the top of the cliff. There were a few dead harpies, and the Commander's companion, Beorn, had curled up under a tree for shelter from the rain.

The Commander had sheathed Caladbolg and her hands were stretched up against the dark, cloudy sky. Her eyes were closed against the rain, but otherwise did not react to it.

Gorrik glanced from the Commander to the sky. There was something, Gorrik knew, that was profound about this moment for the Commander. Gorrik stared at the sky for a moment that stretched and lengthened until it broke:

"My father and my mentor are up there."

Gorrik looked at her and found she had lowered her hands and was looking down at him rather intently.

She said, "Blish is up there too."

These words struck Gorrik like a blade to the heart; his throat closed up and his eyes stung.

He turned his gaze back to the sky. He had no reply. Her words were simple, but they conveyed the powerful: she understood. And she knew something. Up there, beyond the clouds, was where Commander's father and mentor - her deaths, her losses - were waiting. Up there, beyond the clouds, in the same space, was Blish.

Unbidden, the vision of the Commander with her hands reaching, stretching high into the sky. Gorrik's throat went dry in - anticipation? Fear? "What were you doing?"

"Beyond those clouds," said the Commander at ear-height - he looked and saw she'd knelt down on one knee, still staring at the sky - "is a constellation known to the humans as the Hands of Lyssa. The stars form two hands - presumably the hands of Lyssa, pressing down on the world. But they are seen the same from here, from Kryta, from Orr. We touched hands from across continents. That was what separated us then. Now we touch hands across - " now she sighed, a deep, long, sad sigh - "now we reach across world, or dream, or death."

Gorrik looked at the sky and, in his mind's eye, saw beyond the clouds to the shimmering outline of hands, reaching down. Or, in reverse; hands reaching up. Both were true. Both joined at the stars.

"Does it ever - do you ever feel them?"

"As clearly as this," Commander said, laying her hand upon his shoulder gently.

They were there, and he could feel it, because he knew they were there. The Commander wore a glove; Gorrik's own clothing provided an extra layer. They were not actually touching. But they were.

Gorrik lifted his own hand toward the sky, then let it fall, trembling slightly.

"But the clouds - " Gorrik knew he sounded lost, even childish, but he did not care. His hand curled into his chest and he felt a renewed pang of loss. The clouds were the single greatest barrier between himself and his brother.

The Commander closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath; it was not the impatient sigh of an older asura, irritated about his fixation on entomology. It was the slow, peaceful inhalation of someone at relative peace. "There are no stars tonight," she admitted quietly. "But they watch over us just the same."

They, Gorrik knew, did not mean the stars. They meant the Commander's father and her mentor, they meant Blish, they meant - well, the loved ones of anyone who reached to the stars.

"The Olmakhan," Gorrik breathed in new understanding.

Commander nodded, eyes still closed. "They look to the stars for guidance, for wisdom, for help. I look to the stars for comfort and peace."

She meant that everybody saw the stars differently. Gorrik raised a hand against the sky; not as the Commander had done, as if holding the sky up, her hand pressed flat against some surface, but as one searching. His fingertips outstretched, grasping, as it were, through the clouds.

He did not know where the constellation of hands was, but maybe Blish didn't either. Their hands were searching in the dark, and when the clouds parted they would find each other. Or maybe Blish had his hand out, waiting, with that smile of his and the understanding look - which Gorrik had often enough already mentally projected onto the expressionless form of the metal body his brother had been trapped inside.

That look - the one he had seen often in his childhood, the older brother explaining how things worked, watching him figure it out. Later, that soft, understanding, slightly amused look when Gorrik first discovered that there was a whole scientific field associated with bugs. Even later, the look came as Gorrik built a miracle so his brother could live - but it was not amusement anymore. It was pride. Blish would wait for him to find the stars. Whatever that look had held over the years, it had always held patience. And love.

There are no stars tonight, but They watch over us just the same.

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mianix · 5 years

Text

Gift Fic for FoxHughesArt ~ “PDA at the DPD”

My very good friend FoxHughesArt just posted their first Reed900 artwork and was kind enough, since they knew Reed900 is my fandom love, to share the WIP with me before they posted the final piece. I was so inspired, I had to write something for them and this is it.

Alex ~ thank you so much for chatting with me over the last couple of months. For letting me chatter on when I’m sad and letting me do the same for you. Your art is lovely and inspiring ~ Just like you. 💙

“PDA at the DPD”

As they walked into the DCPD, Nines felt anticipation.

Gavin had once told him this particular part of his day was better than his morning coffee. They would get up, feed the cat and carry about getting ready for work as any working partners might do if they found themselves staying over with one another. But the moment they found a vacant elevator, there was electricity in the air between them.

Gavin liked a bit of pretense and Nines indulged him in this, because it seemed to end in benefit for them both.

“Fuckin’ thing follows me everywhere.” Gavin said annoyedly to the officer who checked them through the security gate. Nines remained silent, watching, as usual. Gavin turned to him. “What are you looking at RoboPrick?”

“A middle aged man with a smoking addiction, foul mouth and a receding hairline.” Nines replied simply. He saw Gavin blush, his eyes narrow and Nines felt a small twinge of victory at catching the Detective off guard. He enjoyed teasing him and found Gavin liked to be teased in more ways than just verbally. Nines opted to walk through the terminal, ignoring Gavin as he did and it had the calculated effect. He could feel Gavin’s eyes on him as they came to the elevator doors and he felt static run through his skin.

Nines stepped inside and felt Gavin’s eyes watching him still as he turned and casually pressed the button that would take them to the homicide department. The Detective’s heart rate was elevated and that made his bio components hum sweetly. The moments ticked by as the doors slowly shut and the moment they did the two found themselves tangled in one another.

Gavin pushed Nines against the wall, kissing him deeply with a measured grin on his face. Nines let him lead, because it seemed to please him so early in the morning, but he also knew once they were done for the day it would be Gavin submitting to him.

And they loved their routine… Oh yes.

“Did you really mean that shit about my hair?” Gavin asked in between deep, messy kisses. He was grinning though, good humored about the jab at his ego.

“Only about 84 percent.” Nines replied and Gavin pulled back to narrow his eyes at him. Nines only leaned in and whispered against his swollen lips “Any hair loss can probably be attributed to me, Detective.” Nines continued as he wound his fingers into Gavin’s hair and pulled back, getting a startled gasp, then grin from him as he leaned down and kissed him slowly and calculating.

“Keep that shit up an we’ll be-” Gavin began, but was cut off as the elevator stopped prematurely.

Without warning, the elevator doors opened and they were able to right themselves before an interloper from another floor stopped their progress. Nines was able to easily compose himself, but Gavin looked so flustered the officer who entered had given him an odd look.

“What the fuck you looking at?” Gavin had barked, face reddening further. The man turned away and the three stood awkwardly as the elevator ascended again.

Nines cast his eyes sideways and saw Gavin’s hand mere inches from his own. A new idea formed and he reached out to take hold of it, only for Gavin to snatch it away. Nines raised an eyebrow at him and noted Gavin looked annoyed, shaking his head at him, then indicating the officer in front of him.

Gavin waited till the officer exited to his floor and the elevator began its ascension before turning to Nines.

“Don’t do shit like that in front of people.”

“I’m not allowed to hold your hand or I’m just not allowed to do it in front of co-workers now?” Nines asked and felt annoyed either way.

“We work here. It’s unprofessional.” Gavin mumbled, face still red from the make out session they had just had. Nines narrowed his eyes at him.

“You didn’t seem to share this same opinion a moment ago when you were letting me sample the coffee from the back of your tongue.” Nines replied and felt a small victory at the vivid blush that overcame the Detective’s face at these words.

“That’s different. No one can see us in here.”

At this, Nines stared at him pointedly, but Gavin was avoiding his eyes now.

A part of Nines knew, of course, that this shouldn’t be bothering him near as much as it actually was. This was their workplace, after all and public displays of affection weren’t exactly encouraged. But a simple hand hold behind a person’s back who wouldn’t even notice?

He thought often about moments like this one where he was denied simply because it proved inconvenient for the Detective. No matter his own personal wants. He’d caved in pursuit of a happy medium, because he knew that Gavin wouldn’t. He never did. Nines was tired of it.

Gavin must’ve noticed the shift in mood, because he leaned forward and put his hand to Nines’ face to draw him back to him. Nines only stared, unaffected when Gavin leaned in and tried to kiss him.

“I’m sorry, Detective. But as a place of business, such actions would be highly inappropriate.” Nines said evenly, almost robotically.

“Are you serious?” Gavin asked as he pulled back a ways. But the answer was plain as day on Nines face. “Whatever.”

Gavin turned and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets as they made their way to their floor. Once the doors opened he didn’t even wait for Nines as he stepped out. Nines figured Gavin might throw a tantrum about this, as he usually did when he didn’t get his way, but there was no way he was going to be the one to cave this time. In fact, as he saw Connor walking over to him, he decided that there was a much better alternative at hand.

“Everything okay, Nines?” Connor asked, side glancing Gavin who walked by him without a word.

“Of course. Do you have a minute? I’d like to go over a case with you before I get started on my own daily briefing.”

“Sure thing.” Connor replied, but Nines knew that Connor was onto him. This was a Gavin code between them, meaning he needed to discuss the Detective or needed help with something regarding him. They would huddle at Connor’s desk, pouring over some random file, but would converse inside their heads. If Gavin suspected as much he never said. Only Hank seemed to catch on.

“You guys working on a GV200 error?” Hank asked with a smirk as he sat back in his chair.

“GV600 actually.” Connor replied with a grin.

“Shit. That bad huh? I don’t want to know how high up that number can go.” Hank said as he turned to look at Gavin. He was working at his terminal, but he was obviously stewing over their conversation.

[RK800]: You do realize he might be very angry at you about this later?

[RK900]: He’s much more fun when he’s riled up.

[RK800]: Be sensible. You could just try discussing this like adults.

At this, Nines leaned back in his chair and looked towards Gavin.

“Excuse me, Detective. Could I speak with you for a moment?” Nines called across the bullpen. Gavin didn’t reply, only put up his middle finger at them. “It’s very important.” Nines continued and Gavin set down his coffee so his other hand was free to flip him off with both hands. Nines turned to Connor, knowing he proved his point.

[RK800]: Plan B then?

[RK900]: Plan B it is.

Nines knew the Detective well enough and despite his hard persona, he was weak for specific things and Nines was one of them. He also knew that Gavin didn’t believe anything that he could not emotionally feel. If he wanted him to be the first to cave, then he’d need to remind him of what he was missing. A plan began to formulate and, despite the very real chance Gavin would be even angrier at him, the other possibilities of what could come of this were so enticing that Nines could not consider any other alternative.

After conversing a bit with Connor, Nines moved to his designated seat and began his morning briefing via terminal. No sense in slacking off work. He felt Gavin watching him, trying to capture his attention, but opted to ignore him. After a time, paperwork was dropped off on his desk and he took the opportunity to finally address the Detective.

“May I borrow a pencil, Gavin?” Nines asked as he looked up to find Gavin tapping away furiously at his phone. The man’s eyes moved from the screen to his and narrowed, but he opted not to answer him. Although cute, Gavin could never play this game quite as well as Nines did. “Too bad, I guess you’ll have to finish this paperwork entirely on your own.”

“You have arms, don’t you? Get it yourself asshole. I’m busy.” Gavin grumbled as he let his eyes go back to his phone.

Nines could’ve simply reached across his desk, over to Gavin’s, and plucked a pencil out of its holder. It was within his reach, but an idea was forming, so Nines instead stood and walked around the desk to stand behind Gavin. He leaned down, reaching his arm out over the Detective’s shoulder as the side of his face lightly touched the helix piercing on the back of his ear.

He felt the Detective tense, as he knew Gavin would, considering he often reacted to Nines playing with this piercing under both leisure and intimate circumstances. If Gavin wanted to object he could have, but he sat still.

“I think…,” Nines stated in a low voice right next to Gavin’s ear. “Hmmm…,” He continued, letting the rumble of his voice vibrate through the delicate metal piece as he prolonged this torture. He idly picked up one pencil after another as if it was a very important decision. “This one looks…sturdy.”

Gavin’s vitals had elevated and Nines smirked to himself when he turned ever so slightly to see Gavin’s face bright red. The hands holding the phone were gripping it tightly and his jaw was clenched. He was trying so hard to keep his eyes forward. Time to get his attention.

Through precalculation, Nines knew the right angle to let go of the pencil as he pulled it back so that it would land, almost perfectly, between the Detective’s thighs on the chair. As calculated, it did just that and Nines began to reach down to grab it when his hand was stopped by Gavin just as his fingertips feathered over the seam of his jeans.

“I’ll fucking get it, asshole.” Gavin said, but his voice was higher than normal and that only pleased Nines more.

“Are you sure, Detective. I have arms after all. Don’t I?” Nines said, mimicking Gavin’s own words. Gavin lifted the pencil up quickly and Nines barely hid his own amusement as he took it from him. “Thank you, Gavin.” He whispered as he pulled back, letting the side of his cheek run along the side of Gavin’s as he did so.

When he made it back to his desk, the look on Gavin’s face gave him great pleasure. A beautiful shade of red, as well as his ears. The same shade he saw often when Gavin was overwhelmed by him physically and emotionally. Gavin’s eyes met his and he stood up, walking off in the direction of the bathrooms.

To think, it was still only early morning and he had hours of ideas planned for Gavin. He only hoped he wouldn’t cave too quickly, as Nines shivered at the thought of prolonging this sense of control for as long as he could.

Gavin Reed was going down.

Gavin splashed cold water over his face, dipping his hand back down to the faucet and filling again to repeat the action until his face settled into its natural tone. Phckin androids…

All this because he didn’t want to hold Nines’ hand? When had his partner become so damn particular about this stuff? It was one of the things he liked about Nines, his no nonsense, no strings attached approach to everything. So why now was he being so pushy about this PDA shit?

Gavin looked at himself in the mirror and his mind drifted to a few moments ago. There was a lingering scent on him from Nines, which Gavin didn’t think androids could have smells, but Nines did. The more he thought on it, it was a mixture of elements from his apartment. So, to Gavin, Nines smelled like home. When he realized what his own thought just was he felt his face redden again with embarrassment. Nines smelled like home? Get a grip Gavin, phck…

He knew, of course, what Nines was doing and he decided he wasn’t going to fall for it. If Nines could avoid and ignore him, then so too could Gavin. He wouldn’t give him the pleasure of flustering Gavin again. He psyched himself up in the mirror, took a couple of deep breaths before he walked out of the bathroom.

He expected to see Nines sitting at their desks, but he was once again huddled with Connor over at his desk. Gavin watched them with a frown. Did he talk to Connor about what happened in the elevator? The two were close as brothers and Nines had told him plenty of times when he couldn’t seem to adjust to some social interactions it was Connor he relied on.

“What about me? I can teach you lots of stuff about social interactions.” Gavin had said at the time, slightly hurt Nines wouldn’t come to him. Nines though lifted a brow at him.

“Forgive me Gavin, but the only social interactions I feel I can learn from you are the kind of things I’ll save for people I don’t wish to interact with. If I need schooling on the proper ways to flip off people, I assure that you’ll be the first one I seek out.” Nines had said in reply, but Gavin had found that funny and only laughed.

That was another thing Gavin liked about Nines. His blunt wit was attractive as all hell and Gavin didn’t mind taking a few blows to his ego. He couldn’t even be mad at him and usually if he was it wasn’t for very long.

The one saving grace, as Gavin saw it, is that this lover’s spat would likely be forgotten by the time they went home tonight. Here they were partners, but at home, they were whatever the fuck they wanted to be and Gavin loved that. He didn’t have to be mean Detective Reed and Nines could stop being so damned uptight and instead come unbound and undone.

At this thought his face reignited. His mind was flooded with Nines face, flushed blue, mouth parted…

“Phck.” Gavin breathed as he grabbed his coffee cup and went to refill it. If he wasn’t careful he might have to make a run for the men’s room, but this time for a completely different reason. He opted to ignore Nines unless absolutely necessary for the job. Then, when the day was done and they headed home he’d be generous and let Nines apologize to him for being a dick. Maybe draw it out for a little bit of extra attention in the bedroom…

Ego restored, Gavin walked confidently to his desk and grudgingly started doing paperwork, making sure to keep his eyes off of Nines.

The day passed by slowly without Nines constant intervention in his work day. He went to lunch with Tina instead, but opted not to mention their spat. As much as he loved Tina, she tended to side sometimes with Nines on specific things. So he let her talk about the newly deviated receptionist android she’d been going on about for a month. It was kinda cute to see her crushing so hard and he did his due diligence to encourage her to finally just ask her on a date. There was not much else he could do.

Afternoon came and went and Nines continued to remain by Connor’s side, pouring over documents and reviewing evidence down in the evidence room. Every time Nines walked by him he ignored him, hoping he might glance his way, but his attention was completely on Connor and Gavin felt himself sulking every time Nines refused to look at him.

Finally, Gavin had enough when his watch showed 7:47pm and Nines made no move to leave. So he stood and stretched, figuring he’d venture down into the evidence room himself on the pretense of a case he was working on to see what the hell they were up to. As he began to walk though, they emerged and Connor called out to him.

“Detective Reed. It’s late, you should be heading home.” Connor said and at this Gavin’s eyes turned to look at Nines.

“What about you?” Gavin asked.

“Connor has asked me to remain for a time to go over additional evidence that was found for his current case. They’re bringing it down now, but it’s a ways out of Detroit, so head home without me and I will catch up with you once we’ve finished here.” Nines replied coolly.

Gavin just stared at him, trying so hard not to show his disappointment. In a moment of weakness he heard his voice announce his obvious insecurity.

“You’re coming home tonight, right?”

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Phck!

“I’m not yet sure, it all depends on the-”

“Whatever.” Gavin said quickly to mask his growing apprehension. He didn’t wait for a reply, just walked back to his desk and collected his bag. He thought he heard Connor call after him, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get away.

He felt his eyes sting a bit, but managed to compose himself. Why the hell did that hurt so much? He realized that since he became Nines life partner that he’d never went home alone. He’d not fallen asleep without Nines beside him. So Nines so casually denying him this comfort hurt. Like he had lost something in the exchange of words.

Gavin’s drive home was in silence. He didn’t want to listen to the radio and coasted his way home in a haze. His mind wouldn’t stop overthinking everything. When he arrived home he was greeted warmly by his cat, Dick, who danced around his ankles for want of attention and food. Gavin obliged, soaking in the affection the cat offered as a substitute in Nines absence.

A few hours into a few bad movies and TV shows Gavin checked his phone. 11:23pm and still no word from Nines. Despite everything, he was worried. He opened his messenger and clicked the name “RoboPrick”.

[TrashHuman]: You coming home soon?

He smirked slightly at seeing his username permanently changed because Nines refused to tell him how to change it. To anyone else it would seem they hated each other, but in all honesty these were terms if endurement.

[RoboPrick]: At present we are analyzing over 230 various types of dirt to calculate which one was found on a boot at a crime scene. This particular sample has ground mica found in it, so we’re cross referencing drilling plants and other possible locations against this particular type.

[TrashHuman]: Is that a yes or a no ya prick?

[RoboPrick]: The task will likely take all night between the two of us, so no. I will meet you at the office in the morning.

[TrashHuman]: Whatever.

Gavin tossed his phone off to the side, feeling pissed but figuring there wasn’t much he could do about it now. Boy would he make Nines pay for this tomorrow. What if he called himself in sick and refused to open the door if Nines tried to come see him? Then he remembered the time he fought with Nines and the android had completely removed his door from the other side with a simple screwdriver, breaking his lock in the process…and later his bed frame.

Gavin blushed and resigned himself to going to bed and work tomorrow. He figured he wasn’t going to hear from Nines again, but then his phone went off again.

[RoboPrick]: <3

Gavin felt his face redden even further, that small emoji meaning more to him in that moment then the sender could possibly understand. He stood and padded his way into his bedroom, crawling into his bed and realizing he was missing something.

“Dick? Here kitty, kitty, kitty!” He called out in the usual way he addressed his feline friend. The cat was normally found following him around the apartment, but he noticed that the cat stood outside the door looking in at him. “Get in here asshole.”

Gavin tapped the empty side of the bed and the cat came to jump up. But instead it stood on its hind legs, front paws on the bed as it observed the empty side that typically held Nines. Dick looked at him, then meowed. Gavin realized that the cat often fell asleep ON Nines, or laying between them. The android could turn up his body temperature and the cat had fallen in love with this feature. Just like Gavin, who had relied on Nines being here for things to feel normal, Dick too seemed reluctant without him present.

Instead, the cat wandered the apartment yowling all night for the android that was nowhere to be found. Eventually, before sunrise, the cat jumped up beside Gavin and curled up in Nines’ vacant spot. Gavin, who often suffered from insomnia, pulled the cat close to provide him the warmth he was obviously missing. The cat purred in his arms and the vibration coming from the cat seemed enough to make him feel like Nines was there. So he finally slept.

Gavin coasted through his morning barely feeling it. His morning coffee was bland without whatever the hell it was Nines did to make it taste like liquid sex, his ride in just made him irritated because without his partner there to focus on he noticed how many stupid people were driving the streets of Detroit. It was so rainy out he was practically soaked as he ran into the building. Then, worst of all, he had to face the elevator all on his own. Gavin stood and looked at it for a while and when it opened its doors to him he felt cold. He turned, instead, and took the stairs.

Only when he reached the doors leading into the homicide department did he feel a little life returning to him. He would see Nines and maybe the android had forgiven him enough to stop with the games.

But it wasn’t the RK900 that greeted him as he entered, but Connor, wearing gray sweatpants and a DCPD hooded sweater.

“Good morning, Detective Reed.” Connor said jovially.

“What’s with the outfit?” Gavin asked, not use to seeing Connor in anything but his android issued uniform.

“Ahh, yes. Well, you see. Nines and I got up early this morning to scout some potential sites for the ground mica we found last night when it began to downpour. Our clothing was completely soaked through before we realized it. So I’m wearing this today.” Connor replied, a slight blush on his face.

“Don’t you two even know when to come in out of the rain?” Gavin asked, rolling his eyes. Cyberlife could’ve at least equipped them with common sense. Oh well. “Where’s Nines?”

“Locker room.”

Gavin left Connor behind and stood just outside the locker room doors. He was trying to psych himself up to talk this out rationally with Nines. He wouldn’t give in, of course, but surely Nines felt how bad his night was without Gavin there? He felt his stomach sink at the thought of what if Nines felt no difference at all? What if he never even gave Gavin another thought after he’d left? This worked Gavin up alright, but it was not rational at all.

“Nines! Where the fuck are you? We need to talk.” Gavin called as he slammed the door open and stepped inside the locker room. It was, for the most part, vacant.

“Back here, Detective. One moment please.” Nines called out from the back of the room.

“No one minute please bullshit, we’re talking about this n-” Gavin began as he stomped his way back to where he knew Nines would be, only to stop dead in his tracks at the sight that awaited him.

Nines stood, tall and lean, in nothing but a towel. His skin was still wet, gleaming under the harsh lighting from above and as he turned to view Gavin his hair was a soft mess of curls with one fierce gray eye peeking out from beneath. This wasn’t work Nines, but leisure Nines.

Gavin swallowed hard as his eyes went to every inch he could memorize, because Nines was fucking beautiful like this. His hair curled when he didn’t set it back with gel and Gavin’s heart swelled to see him so off guard. Especially after the terrible night he’d had.

“I can’t sleep.” He had told Nines when they first got together, confiding in him about his issues with insomnia. Nines had lain down with him and recited his favorite books from memory so Gavin could fall asleep, cheek pressed to his chest as the drone of his biocomponents and the hum of his voice emanating from there soothed him. He’d not had another sleepless night, not since last night.

Other times he’d run his hands through Nines hair, messing it up so it could curl over his eye just as it was now. The way it would caress his face as Nines hovered over him and how warm it was against his lips as he gave in, gladly, to his demanding lover. Always a look of such tenderness behind those curls.

Gavin felt a rush of warmth, such affection that he was overwhelmed by it.

“Yes, Gavin?” Nines asked as he waited for whatever it was Gavin had originally meant to say. But for all his bravado, he couldn’t bring himself to argue with Nines about this. Because he fucking missed this and him, but he didn’t know how to just fucking tell him. So he turned, without a word and walked back out into the main area of the department.

As Gavin stepped into the bullpen he heard a clattering of noise coming from the very center and noticed Fowler trying to get everyone’s attention.

“Listen up everyone. Lieutenant Anderson has something he wants to say. Pipe down Philips!” Fowler said, pointing his death glare towards an officer who was still talking. “The floor is yours Hank.”

“Thanks, Jeffrey.” Hank replied, then cleared his throat when he realized all eyes were on him. “Today marks an important milestone for the DCPD. Not only has crime decreased in the last year, but solved cases are up. While I stand among you good men and women who work tirelessly for the city of Detroit and its people, I think we can all agree that this is due in large part to the tireless efforts of our android counterparts who work at our side willingly.” Hank said with a pause, before continuing. “One year ago, today, the first android prototype of his kind walked through the doors of Jimmy’s bar and found himself a royal pain in the ass.”

The room laughed and Gavin noticed that Connor, while smiling, was blushing a bit.

“I wasn’t pleasant, or even baseline decent. But he persisted. Not only did he stay by my side when chaos reigned, he stayed with us once he had the choice to leave. He was a major figure in the history books who could’ve gone on to do great things, but instead he chose to remain my partner and all of our friends. So I wanted to thank him and mark his one year anniversary so he remembers just how appreciated, needed and loved he really is here.”

Hank pulled up a small bag from under his desk and set it in front of Connor.

“Some of the guys pooled in to get you this.” Hank said, fondly watching the emotional roller coaster that was Connor’s face. At this, Gavin noticed Nines had joined him, watching curiously.

Connor looked around, obviously not use to such attention, but he reached into the bag and pulled out a small box. He opened it and his face immediately lit up.

“We got you a new coin, but this one is one of a kind. Just like you Con.” Hank said warmly. “Look at the inscription on the back.”

“Faithful friend. Great humanitarian. Lover of Dogs.” Connor read aloud and there were a few chuckles from around, but a few silent tears as well. Connor, among them. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you. I will cherish this.”

Connor stood and put his hand out for Hank to shake, a sign of respect, but Hank wasn’t having it. He took Connor’s hand and pulled him into a tight embrace. Connor accepted it and nearly lost his composure as his fingers grasped to the old man’s jacket.

Gavin looked around and saw his co-workers smiling, Tina Chen recording the moment on Hank’s phone and even Fowler was grinning from ear to ear. Gavin turned and looked at Nines, who was smiling so big it was a sight to behold. And Gavin understood, because as he looked down to see Nines’ hand right next to his own all he wanted in that moment was to slip his hand into Nines’ and show him and everyone that he loved and appreciated all the small things Nines did to make his life better than it ever was before him.

Gavin slowly moved his hand, so close to Nines he could feel the warmth it radiated. At the last moment though, Nines lifted his hand with the others and clapped as Connor turned from Hank to grin widely at them all. Moment gone, Gavin lost his composure.

He turned and grabbed Nines by the lapel of his jacket, turning him towards him and kissed him full on the lips in view for everyone to see. He didn’t care who saw or if it was proper etiquette. He wasn’t going to waste another moment doubting. Nines was startled, but eased into the kiss naturally. Because that’s what this was. Fucking natural. Gavin pulled away from Nines, still holding his lapel as he addressed his aghast co-workers.

“You see that fuckers? Nines is MINE. I fucking love him. We make out, we have sex and it’s fuckin great! If any of you asshats has any problems with that then I got a fist I call ‘no fucks given’ to introduce your face to.” Gavin said in quick succession, daring anyone to cross him.

The room was deadly silent, awkward even as everyone just stared. Tina had turned Hank’s phone on them and no doubt recorded the whole damn thing. GOOD. Then a voice rang out over the silence.

“No one gives a shit you’re gay for Nines Reed!” Fowler said, chuckling.

“Everyone knows about your make out sessions in the elevator, asshat!” Tina chimed in.

Gavin stood, dead still and narrowed his eyes at the room.

“Are you a moron Reed? This is a Government building. There’s camera’s everywhere you dumbshit.” Hank chimed in and Gavin noticed a few nervous chuckles starting up around them, turning into an uproar.

Still clinging to Nines’ jacket, Gavin leaned in closer to Nines as he glowered at the room.

“Did you know about this RoboPrick?” Gavin whispered to Nines.

Nines leaned in and circled Gavin protectively in his arms, pressing a smirking mouth to the side of his head.

“Of course I did, Detective. Don’t play coy, you did too… It’s all part of the thrill.” Nines replied and Gavin felt his face burn, red hot. Without a word, he pulled Nines along towards the elevator.

“Reed! It’s only 10:30 in the morning, where the fuck do you think you’re-” Fowler started, but bristled when Gavin only lifted up his hand and flipped him off without even turning back.

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jeonsdear · 6 years

Text

Milk and Moonshine

↬ Pairing: Taehyung x Reader (oc: female) ↬ Genre: neighbour!au, art student!taehyung, fluff ↬ Rating: sfw ↬ Word Count: 2.3 K ↬ Warnings: none ↬ Accompanying song: Billie Eilish (with Khalid) - lovely ↬ Summary:

Kim Taehyung was everything this neighbourhood wasn’t: Warm, playful, kind and artsy. And he had your milk.

↬ Notes: This little oneshot is my attempt at conquering my writer’s block *cries a little*. Shoutout to @softjeon for inspiring this story and coming up with the title xx

— Fic also posted to Ao3 — English isn’t my first language so excuse any mistakes — I track jeonsdear fanfiction (follow the tag for updates) — If you don’t want to miss any more updates, you can sign up for being tagged in my works here.

read my stories here send me messages here find me on archive of our own here

There were exactly three kind of people you would find in a club on a Tuesday night: University students whose rhythm of life didn’t match the expectations of the working population, middle-aged men that were going through a divorce and hoped to find some validation in the crowd of young 20-something women and finally, people like you.

Your eyes scanned the crowd of sweaty bodies while your hands were working on cleaning the tequila glass before putting it back in its place. One of your colleagues caught your eyes and subtly moved his head in the direction of the unconventional couple in the very back of the club. The bass of the music echoed in your bones while you observed how the quickly-balding man put his hand on the thigh of the girl and leaned forwards to whisper some sweet vanities in her ear, making the female giggle. If you weren’t wrong, and you never were, this girl was still a minor. Meaning your bouncer missed a fake ID. You nodded your head at your colleague, thereof he moved away from behind the bar and pushed his way through dancing bodies to seek out your club’s doorkeeper.

With your psychology degree came a mountain of debts and housing expenses, and while you had tried finding a part-time job for the hours you had no classes to attend, you had had no luck. So when your roommate from freshmen year had proposed on working behind the bar of her father’s club downtown, the promise of well-paid nightshifts had lured you in. And granted, you came to like it. While normally you would barely be able to keep your eyes open after a whole day of back to back classes, the loud music and the screaming colours of the lights had your head buzzing. Swaying from side to side to Dua Lipa’s new song, you saw how your bouncer approached the couple, radiating danger. Mino’s appearance was absolutely terrifying and you couldn’t help but chuckle at how the man covered behind his female companion. While your bouncer looked like he could kill men with bare hands, everyone who knew him outside of this club knew his vegan soul couldn’t even harm mosquitos. You saw Mino’s lips moving and you were pretty sure he was threatening the male with the police. Not only did he, most probably, provide the girl with a fake ID but he also obviously made sexual advances towards a minor. While not all of society’s daytime rules applied to the club, the security of minor’s was taken very seriously.

It was close to four when you stepped out into the chilly morning air, taking a deep breath and allowing your body to loosen up. You knew it would take your head the whole twenty-minute walk to your apartment for it to forget the strong bass of the music.

The autumn leaves crunched under your feet as you thought about how peaceful it felt being up while everyone was still asleep. Life was better when the moon was watching over you. People stopped acting like society constructed machines, working their nine to six jobs and coming home to loveless marriages.

When you approached the tall building, your small apartment was located in, you wondered whether Taehyung was up already. Kim Taehyung was your neighbour and more than often your source of life-saving milk. Due to your night-time job and your daytime student occupation, getting groceries was not your top priority. But you needed your bowl of cereal after you’ve woken up. It was mandatory. By now, you probably owed him a few litres.

Pressing the button for the escalator, you hummed while waiting for it to arrive. When the doors opened you entered the small space that reeked of pee and thing you didn’t want to know about. This building was as sleazy as the whole neighbourhood but rent was low and you couldn’t afford to be fussy. And at the end of the day you fit in. With your clothes and hair smelling of smoke and alcohol, your eyes lined with dark eyeliner and lips dark red. Like many residents of this apartment complex you came home in the wee hours of the morning. You really fit in. Unlike the boy that appeared on the other side as the escalator doors opened on your level.

Kim Taehyung was everything this neighbourhood wasn’t: Warm, playful, kind and artsy. As soon as he saw you, his boxy smile lit up his pretty and slightly sleepy face and both your arms moved forward to keep the doors open.

“Morning.”, both of you breathed out at the same time and his low laugh made you smile. Taehyung really was a stark contrast to his surroundings, you realized, as you took in his appearance. Face framed by light, tussled hair he was spotting round glasses today. He had a colourful button-down tucked into his lightly wrinkly dress pants while the loafer on his feet looked worn out. Kim Taehyung was a contradiction and he knew it. He looked like he belonged to the part of town full of artists and not in the neighbourhood of night owls. And he definitely wasn’t dressed for his job at the bakery, but both of you knew that this is where he was heading to.

“Good night?”, he asked while still spotting his smile, eyes taking in your make-up.

“I like the purple.”

He pointed at your eyeshadow and you grinned because it had literally taken you an hour to make your eyes look like the dawn.

“Thanks. I like the glasses. Are you off to work?”

“Yep. And you’re off to bed?”

“Yeah.”

He lowered his head slightly and smiled at you through his thick eyelashes. Taehyung was ridiculously beautiful and you couldn’t help the light blush coating your cheeks.

“So…will you ask me for milk again tonight?”

His undertone was teasing but you still pouted at him before you nodded shyly.

“Probably?”

Taehyung grinned widely and moved into the space of the escalator while you stepped outside.

“I’ll make sure to get some after my shift then.”, he winked before the doors closed on you.

You probably should feel bad for constantly asking him for milk…oh no you definitely should. But it also meant that you got to see him often, and you might just have to sacrifice your pride for this minor detail.

And that’s how it was for several months. You coming home from work and Taehyung leaving for work. Asking him for milk when you woke up and him making sure he always had some in the fridge.

You had never asked him but the paint on his pants from time to time made you assume he was an art student. It wouldn’t surprise you, if you were honest. Taehyung radiated art. The way he looked, talked, walked and smiled. Taehyung was art.

Chuckling about your thoughts, you swirled your hair up into a ponytail before splashing cold water onto your puffy face. It was only noon but since today was your free day you decided to binge on Netflix instead of sleeping in. Honestly, you deserved bombarding yourself with brain cell rotting content.

Gulping down some orange juice you noticed you were out of milk once again. With a guilty sigh you nibble at your lip while the fridge hummed in the background. Did the number of times you appeared at Taehyung’s door asking for milk already border on disrespect? Should you just head down and buy your own pack? But that would mean you wouldn’t have an excuse to talk to him. And he never signalised he was annoyed, did he? He would have surely said something if he wanted you to stop asking him for milk.

Quickly changing into something else than your PJ’s, you stepped out of your door and walked down the hallway towards apartment 35. You knew that Taehyung had to be back from his job at the bakery at this time and his Thursday class wouldn’t start until 4. The wooden door looked like it was about to fall apart any second, so your knuckles against it kept the knocking soft. The jazz tunes coming from within and the low grunting confirmed your assumption of the boy being home. And a few moments later, Taehyung appeared in your view, spotting tousled hair and light sweat running down his neck.

Seeing you, a huge grin took over his face before he mentioned for you to come in.

“Fridge.”, is all he said while you stood frozen on your spot.

His whole apartment was filled with moving boxes, books spilt all over the floor and pictures in the process of being wrapped.

“You’re lucky I haven’t cut the fridge off yet.”, he hummed while stepping over a pile of books, not noticing how you weren’t following him.

Slowly you closed the door behind you while your thoughts were racing.

Was he moving away? Why? Why did he not tell you? Or did you forget it? Where was he moving?

“You…you are moving?”

Even to your own ears your voice sounded empty and you tried to mask it with an awkward chuckle.

“Hmm.”, he nodded while he stood on his tiptoes to take down a drawing from the wall.

“But why?”

You sounded like you couldn’t fathom why anyone would consider moving away from this horrendous place and it made Taehyung love.

“I moved here with the hopes of finding inspiration. For this year’s art project.”

“And you didn’t?”

His shoulders visibly tensed before Taehyung turned around and smiled at you.

“Oh no I have. But I have submitted it already. And no offence but this place is terrible, it really kills my usual muse.”

His usual muse?

“I-I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Taehyung smiled and pointed towards a wall of drawings, each one of them radiating life. Sunrises, puppies, abstract drawings with bright colours and a one portraying a group of boys.

“That’s what I like. Do you understand now?”

You nodded slowly before hesitatingly smiling up at him.

“I always thought you were out of place here.”

“Geez, thanks!”, he laughed while you counted the moles on his face. Ever since he had grabbed your hand he hadn’t let it go and you didn’t mind at all. Instead, you tightened your hold on his fingers slightly and acted like you didn’t see his surprised expression when he felt your fingers move.

“Where are you moving to?”

“A little down south. I’m staying here, just changing the neighbourhood.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Even though something inside you didn’t want him to move away and would have rather stopped him packing up, you volunteered to help him. For all the packs of milk, that is. While you were working alongside him you found out that his parents had a farm down in Daegu and that he was missing them dearly. The boys in the picture you had seen earlier were his closest friends and the reason he had moved to your neighbourhood was his project portraying life after the dark.

“You could have told me earlier, you know. I could have taken you with me to work, we have many people fit for your project.”

Taehyung only giggled and passed you the scissors with which you cut the paper that was wrapped around a pretty picture.

“You still can.”

His words filled you with a little hope. Hope of seeing him again, even though he was moving away.

When you laid in bed the day after Taehyung had officially moved out, you couldn’t help but feel sad. Somehow, the boy had become a bright star in your usual dark nights and with him gone, everything felt more…lifeless. As if his presence had given the building warmth. Coming home from work, you didn’t look forward stepping into the escalator anymore. You started buying your own packs of milk and every time you poured it over your cereal you had to think of Taehyung. You both had been so caught up in each other’s life stories that you had forgotten to ask for his number. Granted, you could seek him out at his job but you didn’t want to intrude. After all, Kim Taehyung had only been a neighbour. He didn’t have any obligations towards you and with a sigh you decided to forget about him. Many other boys had cute little moles on their skin.

As it was getting close to Christmas, the air was freezing cold as you hurried inside your apartment seeking shelter. You put the grocery bags on the kitchen counter before you lit the few candles in your living space. Somehow you had gotten into the Christmas spirit and you were really craving cookies. So you had looked up a few recipes and printed the ones you liked best, which were know pinned to your wall as instruction.

With soft music playing in the background you got to work. You were just hand-deep in cookie dough when your door rang.

With a frown you quickly whipped your hands before you approached the door and asking “Who is this?”

“It’s me. Taehyung.”, came the deep sound of his voice and you had to stop yourself from squealing. Taehyung was standing in front of your door?

You forced your huge grin off your face as you opened the door to be mad by his boxy smile.

“Did you smell the cookies?”, you teased, revelling in how good he looked.

“From miles away, yes. Can I come in? I have something to dip those cookies in!”

Your eyes caught the milk in his bag and you couldn’t help but blush.

“Is that enough bribe for you to let me in?”, he asked, voice wavering of unsureness but you grabbed his arm and pulled him into your apartment.

“You don’t need to bribe me.”

Subscribed: @cams59 @jiminandlemonade @airaplinept2 @ktheaven

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akysi · 5 years

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Always wanted to do one of these, and now I have. :D 8 years of improvement, wow! I’m also really bad at picking things so I don’t know if I picked the ones that best represent my progress, but eh. I did some edits, but the original base for this can still be found here. Extended thoughts about each year below, it’s a lot! Here’s to bigger and better things in 2019 (please ;_;)

2010: I started drawing digitally in 2006, though regrettably I didn’t save any of the art I did back then. 2010 was when I joined DeviantART, and thus when I started uploading art online. I had frequented DA well before that though (from about 2007 I think), and influence from the artists I followed are pretty evident. A few notable ones were ShaloneSK, Fourth-Star (now SeaSaltShrimp), and thazumi, all primarily dragon artists. Though none of my traditional art is showcased here, this was still a time when I did it often, usually via doodles in class when I was bored. The digital art you see here was made with my first tablet, a Wacom Graphire 3, and Photoshop Elements 3 that came with it. I had little knowledge of file quality, layering, colouring, and other mainstays in using Photoshop properly. Humble beginnings are these! My art education at this point was limited at best, but art was always something I did in my spare time. And like all of the art years leading up to 2010, I drew almost entirely dragons. Aside from practicing foxes for a story I had at the time, I wasn’t interested in drawing much else. I didn’t draw people at all until college, but we’ll get to that. 2011: Christmas 2010 / New Year’s 2011 marked the time I got Photoshop CS5, a version of PS I still use today. For a while I was obsessed with the idea of PS’s Pen Tool, as I saw it could give me much cleaner line art than what I could achieve on my own. I was finally able to test that when getting CS5, and while it worked well for the time, I soon learned the tenets of line weight and tapering, something I would have to practice myself. Up to this point all of my lines were either shaky or fabricated via the Pen Tool, and it shows. This was also a year of trying to mimic Fourth-Star’s dynamic perspective...without any knowledge of how it actually worked. Not a lot of improvement happened here outside of that. 2012: This was the year I bought my Bamboo Create tablet, something I still use with my laptop nowadays. I remember trying it out at my friend’s house before I bought my own, and really loving how I was able to do the line tapering without the pen tool. It still took a lot more practice, but looking back now it was easy to see I was on the way to making line art one of my art’s strongest qualities; something that stays true today. I find it ironic that line art used to be one of the weakest aspects of my digital art, but I suppose that speaks to how far I’ve come. I did more fanart this year, oddly enough. I’d always done it before but I guess I felt shy about sharing it. Notable fandoms were Danny Phantom and Sonic. I didn’t grow up with either, but ended up liking them both a lot, and would doodle them as much as my dragons. 2013: I graduated high school and started my first year of art college, specifically Art Fundamentals at Sheridan College. At this point, everyone I knew pointed to that school (and only that school) for anything related to what I wanted to do; if it wasn’t fine art, go to Sheridan. So I went into college with a bit of tunnel vision at first, but I knew from the start that I would be gunning for animation. Not to animate specifically, but to do character design / concept art for animation. I would learn later on what having this tunnel vision would mean for me, but we’ll get to that later too. This is about the point where more expansion of design and subject matter occurs, albeit slowly. The art featured here doesn’t include my schoolwork, but the much needed increase of anatomy, structure drawing and other college level art courses started me on a path to better things. I still had a long way to go though, and Fundies could only do so much. Unlike most people I actually got decent practice from it given my limited art background, but I still can’t say it was at peak efficiency. This was the first year I actually started drawing people, and it certainly didn’t come without its growing pains.

2014: Surprising no one, I didn’t get into Sheridan after my first year, though that didn’t stop me from being disappointed at the time. I took what was effectively the second year of Fundies, called Visual and Creative Arts (VCA). This was the year that sparked my interest in graphic / logo design, an interesting turn of events all things considered, and that would stick with me a lot more than I expected. This year also featured a few smatterings of character designs, or more specifically design sheets with multiple views, costumes, etc. Character design was a required segment of the animation portfolio, so this is likely what spurred my practice in it, aside from my pre-existing interest. That does not mean I knew how to rotate a character though, yikes! At this point I’d gotten pretty good at clean line art in Photoshop with my current tablet, as well as the merits of high quality imagery. There was a lot of purple in this year and 2015, though that’s nothing really new for me.

2015: This was easily the busiest (and most path altering) year. Second semester of VCA happened during this time, but also what would be new beginnings for me. If I didn’t get into Sheridan animation, I had a choice to make for a plan B: Either stay at Sheridan for VCA Year 3 and try again for animation, or try to get into animation at another school. My buddy Amelia then dropped Seneca’s name in one of my elective classes, and I had no idea how much of a fateful conversation that would be. She mentioned it was considered a second to or even better than Sheridan, and that at least provided a clearer answer for me. A lot of trepidation followed: I didn’t get into Sheridan animation for the third time, and thus applied to Seneca (and a few other places). I was pretty scared of being a first year again at a new school with new people, and while my art definitely reflected the time I spent at Sheridan, I had no confidence in it being good enough for a portfolio given my track record. But low and behold, I got in! I was on my way to a three year rollercoaster of all-nighters, amazing ride-or-die classmates, and relentless, rigorous training. The art from this year does reflect this, both in quantity and quality of uploads, though in more of a “transition period” kind of way. This was the year I really started to draw human characters, most notably with the creation of my first comic project: Starglass Zodiac. This was the first time I had a story idea with a primarily human cast, much less a comic idea, though the designs for them didn’t start appearing in my uploads until the following year. As you might expect I didn’t have a lot of confidence in drawing people. Ironically, my first year of animation taught me all the skills I initially needed for the portfolios!

2016: When I mentioned a path altering year for 2015, I was referring specifically to the path in my art education. 2016 was a path altering year for everything else, and a polarizing one at that. 2016 was a year that was kind to no one, and while the details of what happened to me are not really relevant to this post, there’s no denying what effect it had behind the scenes. This was the year that I fully realized I’d developed symptoms of depression, and with my increasing anxiety to match, this didn’t (and still doesn’t) go so well. I don’t think that’s really reflected in my art, however. Regardless of my mental state, the outside view of my art still features the colourful characters that they always had. By this point I was in my finishing first year / starting second year, and this was easily the best time for me. My time to shine, if you will, at least when it came to character design class. We had an overarching story project that was perfect for SGZ, so I used that time to develop the characters. The double-edged sword of troubled times is my escapism is cranked to 11, so this was probably the year that spurred the most story ideas out of me. This year (and part of the next) started both Id Pariah and Feather Knights. I got my iPad Pro for Christmas this year too, and that proved to be a game changer in the amount of art I could make. I was already used to the Cintiqs at my school, and I was lucky to finally have a screen tablet of my own. 2017: The end of my second year and the beginning of my third and final year of animation. Classes split, streams chosen and a world of missed opportunities began. I didn’t do a lot of art at the beginning of the year, aside from the beginning of my Feather Knights stuff. On top of that, my college had a 5-week long teacher’s strike that literally no one wanted to be a part of, effectively derailing all hope for a good semester. Attempting to do a short film project with this happening was a recipe for disaster. During this strike was the start of my first month long challenge though: Huevember. It was an uncertain time, and most of us were not compelled to get much school work done. Completing Huevember did feel like an accomplishment though, as I was actually able to keep up with it even when school started again. I’d say this art year focused a lot on colour for this reason. What art I was able to complete outside of my schoolwork saw a lot of expansion in that area. In all honesty 2016-2018 tends to blend together for me, for better or worse. 2018: My graduating year. The strike did its damage to my final semester too, but ultimately I survived. Despite completing 5 years of college, my path became the most unclear. Third year taught me a lot of things about myself and how I approach art, but most were not positive revelations. The expectations set out for me are ones that I cannot achieve. However, I have more time than ever to do art, making this year the most art I’ve made to date. I also participated in Inktober, which reminded me how far I’ve come as an artist, despite not doing traditional art for what felt like a century. My illustrative work for Inktober ended up being some of my best art this year, and the prompts made me get creative in more ways than one. The dark cloud hanging over my head has not disappeared since 2016 however, and the toll that has taken shows more everyday. As far as my art was concerned I did more of what I loved, mostly in the form of character sheets and designs. It’s all I can do, for now. 2019, I have one thing to say: Don’t you DARE.

#art #artists on tumblr #art improvement #Akysi #Art by Akysi #Katie MacKenzie #Katie MacKenzie Art #digital art #2010-2018 #my OCs

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booksbookandmorebooks · 5 years

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Homecoming - The Cinematography.

Hello my lovelies I’m back with my first post of the new year! i thought id start it off with something a little different. When looking at how much I upload and how sporadic my posts seem to be lately I started thinking about what else I do with my time (besides reading) and well, honestly my only other hobby is that I tend to binge watch a lot of shows. In the past month I have binged watched Alias Grace, The OA and shamefully quite a few more including the show I’m here to talk about today, homecoming. So, I thought why not incorporate my passion into my blog. So, from here on out this blog will not only be dedicated to books that I love it will also include my reviews on the recent shows I have been watching. I really hope you enjoy this little change up and enjoy my reviews.

So without further ado let’s get started!

This show is about a young woman known as Heidi (Julia Roberts) who we initially see harassed by a department of defence official. Who is extremely interested in the time she spent employed and head of the project formerly known as home coming. A facility described and branded as a a type of institute focused on helping former soldiers transition back to civilian life after their service and help them adjust. While jumping between the present day and a series of flashbacks we see our characters realise that not only have they been lying to the people around them they have also been lying to themselves and now is the time to face up to the truth and the repercussions of some very questionable choices.

Stats:

Title: Homecoming

Genre: Psychological thriller / Drama

Release date: 02.11.2018

No. of episodes / seasons: 1 Season – 10 Episodes

Episode duration: 25-30 minutes.

Main cast: Julia Roberts, Bobby Cannavale, Stephan James.

Rotten tomatoes rating: 98%

So to start off with this show is not exactly your normal stero-typical show. If anything, the first half of episode one I was unsure if this was something I would actually enjoy. It all seemed a little too out there but I pushed through and once I had finished episode one I was hooked. The main issue I can see people having with it would be the odd shots and the odd pacing. These are one of a few topics I will be discussing and analysing below. While these factors can be a little daunting and seem a little pretentious, when you really look at them, they become so interesting to watch unfold. You can really let your imagination run with this series, it feels more like an art form in some senses than just a show. Instead of it being a throw away show that is trying to appear edgy, it genuinely provides the audience with this feeling of uneasy and eeriness throughout. This series not only stuck with me for the storyline and the shocking twists but also because of the intensity of emotions you feel when watching. When talking about this with a friend I realised that this show is more addictive due to the anticipation of what experimental shot or method we would experience next, more than overall enjoyment of the show.

In this post I will mainly be talking about the methods ,themes and the many approaches the director and producers have used to create this show and how they in turn, translated to me personally.

One of the most common shots we see for the first half of the show are these downward angle shots, now im not massively into my media studies so there are most probably a fast amount of terminologies I am missing but bare with me. These shots tend to make you feel like you are watching an animal in a maze. You get to see the characters from a bird’s eye view and watch them wind their way around their surroundings. When watching this I couldn’t help but feel the characters, any characters involved in this method were puppets being watching and manipulated, Even the bigger characters who we initially believe to have power and control are being used. Almost like animals in a testing lab. This is confirmed for me when in the episode the camera pans out to reveal the design of the building our series mainly takes place in. It is a big building with huge celling to floor walls of glass. Almost like an observatory, furthering my theory of observation through testing, a theme we know towards the end of the series is very important to the story development.

Another very important feature in this series is the change in aspect ratio and how its used to differentiate the two time periods that the show is set in. (past and present) the use of this method while a little jarring at first (it had me checking the tv and the app when I watched it) is so clever because when jumping between two different time periods it is so easy to confuse the audience and risk the chance of the storylines becoming messy and convoluted but with this it was almost impossible not to follow. We see the present depicted with two black sections of either side of the screen and the past in full screen view. Now as I mentioned, this method while clever isn’t something that you would necessarily deem as clever. You may see it like I did at first, something there that has no real meaning, it is just to further the weird feeling this show creates, that is until episode eight. Contained in one scene that I won’t spoil for you; a particular character has a huge revelation and the director not only shows the severity and shocking nature of this through the use of facial expressions and music but the aspect ratio we have been used to seeing in the present is used to demonstrate the character being bought into the light. We see that in her moment the camera shot widens and the present is left in full screen mode. To symbolise that her character is no longer in the dark and she can finally see the bigger picture. Something that when it happened I had to take a minute to appreciate it. It blew my mind that how such a simple change can really impact the feeling that you have when watching a show like this.

While on the subject of time differences I want to also mention a more common method but one that proved just as effective. In the shots of the past the colours are all desaturated and have this sad melancholy feel to them which really do help show the vast dullness of our main characters present life. Especially when compared to the flashbacks. The bright lights, the white walls and open nature of the building our main character is working in, the fake over the top smiles everyone sports, the over helpfulness of Heidi when compared to the reclusive and reluctant (almost isolated) whisper of a person we now see. Simple yet, very very effective.

Now as I mentioned, after to talking to some friends that have watched this show the biggest problem most people seemed to share was the pacing. I often heard it referred to as an issue and while I can understand it from their point of view I have to very strongly disagree. This was not an issue for me, this show was not meant to be rushed. It was supposed to burn slowly and gradually to help you grow as a viewer alongside the characters. If this show was rushed the audience would most definitely feel robbed. A piece of art like this is not something to be watched flippantly in one sitting and be disregarded upon a pile of throw away trash tv. This is really something.

I feel the shows pacing is intentionally slow because it mirrors the story and the story telling method. The relationships are gradually built through therapy sessions, a method of help that is used to slowly help the victim. All those subtle sighs, glances and twitches that help define a character are lost if not handled with care and time. You’re not only watching these people, you’re growing with them. It’s a way to engage the audience without them knowing it. Hooking and drawing you in. it captivates you and on reflection once I finished this show, I was fascinated by how it managed to do such an amazing job at that.

Not only that, but at this pace you are provided with enough time to form your own opinions and feelings towards these people, their choices and their pasts, instead of being provided with a set narrative. This way your feelings are not dictated to you, you’re not presented with the black and white ideal of good and bad, in fact this show often tends to blur those lines. Making peoples seemingly bad decisions almost justifiable. We are provided with on numerous occasions scenarios that show not only the redeeming qualities of a person but their flaws and we are able to form our own views on them in our own time. Something that wouldn’t be possible without a slow burner.

I really could continue analysing this show because there are just so many amazing factors. From music to the close-up face shots or the intensity of the volume that changes so frequently but I will stop, I have to at some point. All my friends are bored of me talking this show up, so I suggest you go and watch it yourself. You can only learn so much from a review after all. But if you are looking for something that will leave you speechless and stay with you for weeks after, I can’t recommend this highly enough, if that’s not enough the amazing talent of Julia Roberts should at least tempt you a little. I really hope you enjoy the show and can start looking for your own explanations and feelings towards this alien methodology! Until next time have a great week!

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dholwrites · 6 years

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Potential AU : University AU🖤🖤🖤

This is based on my 2 year knowledge of being in a US University.

Aymeric

He is majoring in International Politics and Management, and captain of the college’s volleyball team. Aymeric is also the VIP customer of the tea spot in the campus and is the

Aymeric is not in any kind of frats, but every year he gets plenty of invites to the party frats. Sororities loves him with all their heart because he’s pretty, kind AND smart.

Everyone believes him to be a mysterious, cool character that is infinitely a million times better than them.

But as the part time tea shop barista knows that the amount of sugar that Aymeric consume is absurd and he once nearly spilled all his drink because he was trying to lean down to pet a stray cat.

After you quit your job, he quickly tracks you down because it turns out that you’re the only person that could make his tea right and he needs your ‘Halone Bless hands to work for him.’

With you both spending so much time together and helping each other out, Lucia can only bet how much time will pass before he confess to you

Estinien

He’s part of crew, football, and volleyball with Aymeric. You will see him at every sporting event most likely playing for the college team. Estinien doesn’t have a sports scholarship, he actually has an Academic scholarship.

You don’t know what his degree is but the both of you keeps running into each other during the first week of the semester, and you hope with all your might that he doesn’t think that you’re a stalker.

To make it worst your ‘friend’ sets the both of you on a double date with Aymeric and Estinien because they’re trying to see if they can get a shot with Aymeric while you distract ‘the scary guy.’ But it turns out that the both of you click really well in both humor and hobbies.

Estinien starts to stop for a short bit when you guys run into each other to have a small chat. Then it moves to small meetings over coffee or lunch, then meetings outside of the campus, during times where you think he should be busy but he makes time for you anyway.

Whenever anyone ask you if you’re dating him, you could never answer correctly because technically he never did ask you out. Simply lots of strategic meetings with lots of hand holding and conversations.

You had to ring him up later to make sure that you were dating each other

Thancred

You (his roommate) never see him in any of your core classes despite being in the same class, but for some reason always wake up to him stumbling home at 3am from a party on campus or across town. A few times with a lady in hand until you threaten to keep him locked out.

Thancred will always cramp for his exams because he wants time to go out partying until he remembers that he has an exam the next morning at 7am. Then he’s gonna skip to the library or back to your shared room to beg for your help. You’ve never seen his results back but Thancred seems to have no problem partying it up the following night.

The following semester with him wasn’t as bad, he started to hanging around the room more often, even bringing in his small group of friends to introduce you to them.

He told you that he wanted to show you something. So Thancred drove you out of town into the countryside. As it starts to get dark he pulls you over to a meadow full wild flowers with a stream running through. There surrounded by fireflies, he ask you to be his

“I thought you were gonna kill me” *gasp* “You have that little faith in me?”

“Do you do this to all the girls you ask out?” *gasp* “This is my special place!”

G’raha Tia

He’s your college crypted, AKA sightings of him are far and few in between but coming across him is a surreal experience. Rumor has it that he is actually the campus ghost that died after being locked in the restricted section of the library.

You first run into him sleeping in the farthest corner of the library, curled up in the chair right next to the giant window overlooking the walk way below. It was like finding Sleeping Beauty because “Oh, he’s kinda cute.”

He knows his way around the library strangely well, G’raha seems to know all the placements of the books that is not even registered in the library system yet. Really likes to drag you around to show off his knowledge because no one nicely asked before and he really wants to show off.

Also for some reason his school ID grants him access into the restricted sections. When you ask about the rumor, the red of his hair covers up his face and he looks away mumbling. Turns out he just feel asleep in the room and people thought he died.

Just a few hours before his graduation, G’raha has asked you to meet him right where you’ve first meet him. He sits on the open window sill in his graduation robes. The serious look on his face tells you that this is important news.

Cid

Spends most of his time in the Engineering building or in the mechanics shop. He has a fully grown beard and gray hair so a lot of his students believe that he’s the professor. Actually he’s just the student teacher trying to get his mechanical engineering degree

You brought in your old car passed down from your family, hoping to see if you can get a student discount on repairs being made.

Cid already lovestruck by the car, offers to do all the replacements and a full body work for free if you just let him work on the car

It turns out to be an old model car that he has been eyeing

You’re now stuck with a hot and sweat Cid giving you the puppy eyes for him to trick out and polish up your car. If you lose your composure to the gaze, then the rest of your day will be spent smelling like car oil and grease after a wet hug.

On the few days when he’s working on the car, you’re free to watch him work on the car. Bent over the hood and shirtless. Jess is done with you

Alphinaud

Politics major, he looks and is clearly younger than everyone with his attitude and no one can take him seriously when he’s asking around for room numbers. Who let this kid into the building??? He’s the person that would be wearing a suit to every class to try to look more mature.

He still draws in his sketchbooks on days where he doesn’t have class and with his horrible sense of style, Alphinaud is almost unrecognizable. Hours later he makes the mistake of leaving it on a bench as he hurries to get ready for his next class.

You found the sketchbook at your frequent lunch area, with no name and half the book filled with life-like drawings. A few of them were actually beautiful drawings of you.

You did the only thing you could have done. Scanned and posted the pictures into social media and try to track the artist on the campus down. Hopefully get an explanation of the drawings.

Alphinaud stars to panic the second he starts to see his sketches online because YOU WERE SUPPOSE TO SEE THAT. Because you got the ball rolling, and news travel fast. By the time the sketchbook was back in his arms, he’s gotten multiple art job offers.

As much as he appreciates it, he much rather do it without being outed for his crush on you

Haurchefant

He’s the brightest person in the room the second you walk in, like pretty much glowing. Haurchefant is quick to introduce himself and start chatting with reckless abandon until class starts. Even then he might fling a few notes your way

The best friend that you want to have in your college life because he is totally chill with just hanging around in your room or heading to a party down the block. But he always makes sure that your sleep schedule is in order, and you’re getting the right amount of exercise and decent food.

With how handsy he gets, everyone is quick to assume that the both of you are a couple and as soon as you officially become one, you’ve realize how comfortable being around him is.

Your both seen always hugging each other after he walks you to class. Even holding your hands when your fingers start to grow cold. Sometimes he’ll cook your food when you’re not feed all that well.

People start to point out how much lopsided the relationship looks, with him acting like your nanny or a lost puppy following you around. It starts to boil a doubt inside you. Perhaps you’ve been using him all this time.

Hien

Foreign exchange student that sits in the back of the classroom because it’s the only place he can be without obstructing everyone’s view with his body and hair.

Everyone is speculating if he has a girl at home or not, and anyone who is friends with him is very vague about the answer. The rumors start to spring up that he’s actually in an arranged marriage and he’s doing the exchange to try to avoid the wedding.

While he isn’t fond of talking about his home situation, he loves to answer your questions about his home in general. Expertly weaving together details. One thing to be amazed by is that he’s so well spoken in a language that isn’t his own. But Hien proves in presentations and in paper that he is as comfortable in this language as his own.

Hien likes to track you down and spend time with you outside of class if he can, it’s one of the best ways to avoid getting girls and spend time with someone who can get him familiar with the area.

After all the finals are done, he ask you for one last favor. To meet his parents and for him to meet yours. For what? He would like your hand in marriage.

#ffxiv writing meme #writing meme #I might be a bit too hyped on the soup I just had #this one took me all week to make #so much sugar #and i'm gonna crash in like 30 mins #I'm not gonna remember this tomorrow #and I sure hope I won't regret this

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rebels-advocate-blog · 6 years

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fbi: don’t move

hOwDy hO, hErE wE gO

Ivan is a completely ordinary, totally unassuming, simple meme-loving guy, and Alfred is the FBI agent who secretly lives in his camera. Governments and grudges are thrown aside as chance encounters in Washington D.C. bring them closer and closer together.

read it with your own eyes on fanfiction.net!

read it with your own eyes on archive of our own!

or, just scroll down a bit and read the first chapter right here! (with stolen eyes)

fbi: don’t move

Ivan laughed, which was to say he snorted very, very lightly. Even snorting was an overstatement; a silent wisp of breath escaped him as he swiped away at his screen, liking the photo and commenting: LOLOKOLKOLOLOL1!1! He switched gears to search up the hashtag under the meme, something he almost never did, and found a semi-sorted collection of posts following the same theme. He wasted no time screenshotting a few of his favorites to pirate for himself later.

Soon. Soon he would break 999K followers. And then, and then. Then he would have a million followers. A million was a lot, depending on who you asked. Beyoncé only had fifteen million—at least on Twitter. (On Instagram she had eleven hundred million.) He wanted to rule the Internet.

Ivan turned his phone off and threw it across the bed, forcing himself to get up and move if he wanted to retrieve it. Stretching languidly, he rolled out of the warmth of the covers and faced the day.

He dressed in comfortable, durable clothes; Ivan had recently secured a position as a horticulturist for the Smithsonian Gardens along the National Mall, which was a fancy way of saying he cut grass and trimmed hedges all day, except it was really nice grass and they were really nice hedges. Obviously, wearing his favorite scarf was less than ideal for the sweaty work, but Ivan would never and could never take it off. He slipped into his boots and thrust a spare pair of gloves into his pocket. Sadly, he couldn't use his phone on the job, but he could use headphones. He began to hum to himself, imagining the songs he would listen to on his first shift.

Before shoving his phone into his bag, Ivan took a glance at the blank screen. A strange feeling overcame him as his eyes drifted upwards, making contact with the minuscule blue dots of light inside his camera lens. He held its gaze for a brief, piqued interest that lasted about two seconds, then giggled. "Goodbye, Mr. FBI," he sang to himself.

It was silly. He dropped the phone into his bag and left his apartment with haste.

Alfred grabbed street food on the way to work, washing it down with a hefty Starbucks to go. Whipping the shades off from overtop his regular glasses, he strode into headquarters. Immediately, he had to give up his meal so it could be scanned for toxins while he himself was stripped and searched. Elizabeta Héderváry, chief of the gray division, took an eternity to scrutinize Alfred's badge. Alfred tapped his toes and fidgeted to himself. Predictably, Ivan would be online in seven minutes. "Alright, Jones." She handed back Alfred's ID. "You're clear. But don't let me catch you in here again, or it's straight to the slammer." She drew a line across her throat.

Alfred gratefully collected his food and his badge. "Wait, what the? Dude, I work here!"

She stared him down.

Alfred, without hesitation, steadied himself and stared back.

After a few seconds of silence, Chief Héderváry burst into hearty laughter. "I'm only testing you, kid! I guess it's very Gilbert of me. But gosh, you would have thought I had just admitted to you that the tooth fairy isn't real, or that Santa is Illuminati propaganda, or that JFK is still alive up on a secret moon base in space...oops." She covered her mouth. "I've said too much."

Alfred blinked slowly. "Okay. I'll just...get to work then, um, before you zap me and wipe my memory."

The agent nodded. "Better bolt. Gotta keep you on your feet." She then began drawing her stun gun, but Alfred had already disappeared down the hall. He frantically dove into an arriving elevator and jammed a finger down on the button to close the doors as the clunky boots of the Héderváry's footsteps came closer. Alfred hugged his food to his chest and pressed into the corner of the tiny metal box. He had had his memory wiped before, he was certain, and had even had to do it to others once or twice—it was a ghastly, abominable experience. The chief's image appeared between the elevator's two closing doors and Alfred screamed, but when the shot was fired the elevator had already begun its descent.

Alfred shivered, cradling himself. He was safe for now. He dug into his food and snuck out a bite of greasy fry. It would be two hundred more dings of the elevator before he arrived at the secret underground black zone where all the FBI agents monitored their respecting, (un)suspecting citizens.

Alfred had finished half of his coffee before he made it to the negative two hundredth floor. It was pretty swampy down there, due to the thick consistency of cubicles, the heat coming off of so much compressed technology, and also due to the government having concealed the fact that, yes, Washington D.C. had really been built atop a swamp. He had his semi-greasy fingerprints scanned a second time and then navigated the maze toward his cubicle. He only had two minutes at best before Ivan came home.

Ivan was Alfred's monitor man, Alfred's subject of spy. Alfred had Ivan's schedule practically burned into his brain: he woke up at six-thirty, dabbled on his phone for fifteen minutes, then put it in his pocket and didn't use it again until four, when he got off work. Ivan did not have a computer, making Alfred's hacking tasks both easier and harder by reserving everything to Ivan's cell phone. Alfred would transfer Ivan's morning visuals to Alfred's own laptop to monitor in the morning, and Alfred usually came to headquarters to watch Ivan during the rest of his day. Sometimes he took shifts with another agent, but lately Alfred had been finding himself at headquarters more and more. After all, it was important to develop a deep understanding of your subject, even if your subject had no idea you even existed.

Alfred fired up his special, government-issued laptop, opening the monitor. Just in time, too; Ivan's face soon filled the screen. Alfred sighed. It was on.

Alfred knew almost everything about Ivan. His names (Ivan "Vanya" Braginsky), his family (one older sister and one younger sister), and even the songs he sang in the shower (surprisingly a lot of Taylor Swift). Alfred knew Ivan was the head of a semi-famous online meme domain. Alfred knew Ivan watered the sunflowers in his window every day as soon as he came home. Alfred knew Ivan didn't have many friends. Alfred knew Ivan had long, red scars circling around his neck, hidden under that huge off-white scarf he always wore. Alfred knew Ivan liked soft things and had five blankets on his bed. Alfred also knew that Ivan was at the top of the FBI's list of suspected dangerous Russian intelligence agents, and it was Alfred's duty to report any fishy activity. So far, Alfred had observed none.

Other than the fact that Alfred had to be constantly alert in his job, monitoring Ivan was pretty easy. Ivan had a cute face, and often made little childish noises and expressions whenever he saw something that grabbed his attention. Alfred had trained in the Russian language for years and still couldn't capture the melodiousness of Ivan's murmurs to himself. Sometimes Ivan would be scrolling through social media at night and fall asleep on his phone, which was annoying but undeniably adorable. And he was an immigrant; Alfred could damn well appreciate the hard work it must have taken Ivan to leave his homeland and adjust to life here.

However, this morning, Ivan had addressed Alfred personally, saying "Goodbye, Mr. FBI" before he put his phone away, and that had been hella creepy.

Ivan wasn't saying anything now, just staring at the screen, his eyelids half-shut, eyes moving in line formation over whatever he was reading. Alfred took a sip of his Starbucks and tapped into Ivan's phone display, bringing up a rectangle of white with a thick block of Helvetica text. Alfred's eyes scanned it himself, knowing it was another online post, and Alfred had read thousands of Ivan's. They were quality. When he finished laughing, he switched focus back to Ivan's camera visual; the ceiling behind Ivan was moving as Ivan sat down at his kitchen table. Ivan picked at his lip, snorting a little. The sound of his bags hitting the floor echoed to Alfred, and soon Ivan began humming a sweet song.

Alfred kicked back in his ultra-comfort wheely chair and popped in another fry, enjoying the music. He had no reason to feel so comfortable in the artificial presence of a creepy Russian, yet his wariness was drowned out by tribute for the memes. And Ivan's face. Thank god Ivan at least had a nice face that Alfred got to stare at all evening.

There was a knock on the wall of Alfred's cubicle. He spun around too quickly in the wheely chair and had to overcorrect, graciously spilling a couple of fries into his lap. "Whaddya want?"

It was Toris. A fellow FBI monitor, the long-haired Lithuanian stood stiff in the doorway to Alfred's workspace, making more eye contact with Alfred's inspirational NASA star map poster than with Alfred. "Hi. Um, Felicks went to the bathroom, so I was going to be taking break, and if I remember correctly, you told me to 'mosey on over when you get a chance, because I got the goods?'"

"Aw yeah!" Alfred pushed down his laptop screen so it was at a forty-five degree angle. Toris knew who Ivan was, and sometimes covered Alfred's shifts when Alfred stayed up too late playing video games or reading Marvel fanfiction, but Alfred still didn't want to be interrupted on the job. After all, both Ivan's screen and his camera were blank and black; he must have gone to take his daily shower. "Right here, man. Check it out. They were handin' them out all down the Mall, and I managed to snag a few extras!"

Toris took the item in his hand and inspected it cautiously. "This is a…a SAVE THE WHALES sticker?"

"No, a SAVE THE WHALES magnet!" Alfred corrected, spinning it over. "I thought you might want one, since your space is so plain and boring and all. It'd give you something to look at other than Felicks's fancy skirt collection, or whatever."

The tips of Toris's ears turned red. "They're designer." Yet he didn't refuse the magnet.

Not every FBI monitor happened to be stationed in the vicinity of their subject; Felicks lived halfway across the world from Toris, and was an alleged underground market weapons dealer, with emphasis on alleged. Mostly he just took selfies in the bathtub and embarrassed Toris to no end. Alfred considered himself lucky that Ivan was only half a city away, though they had yet to cross paths in public.

Toris drifted out with the magnet in hand and Alfred was left to finish dinner in peace. He flipped his screen back up and found that Ivan was at the stove, cooking his own meal while watching a Vine compilation. Alfred grinned, keeping up both the front camera and screen views as he dug in so he could laugh along with Ivan. "I smell like beef." A long time passed. They finished eating their dinners at the same time; Alfred imagined the noodle casserole thing Ivan had cooked tasted better than Alfred's weak Starbucks.

Now Ivan had set his phone against the wall to rest while he washed the dishes. He was mumbling peacefully to himself again, but Alfred couldn't tell if he was singing or talking over the sound of swishing water and clinking silverware. After a couple more plates, Ivan's movements slowed, and his gaze slowly climbed back up to the phone screen. The phone camera. "Are you there, Mr. FBI?" he whispered.

Alfred jolted in his seat. It was just like this morning! No warning, no nothing. In English! There was no way Ivan could ever know, of course, that he was being monitored, so the sudden unprompted conversations with a seemingly inanimate object had to stem from Ivan's latest meme obsession. Alfred knew about it.

He was onto them.

"How was your day?" Ivan asked, redirecting his gaze towards the skillet he was scrubbing. "Mine was well. I planted flowers today, and I had a nice conversation with a policeman. Do you talk to police often, Mr. FBI?"

Alfred let his shoulders relax, his mind wandering unintentionally, following Ivan's statements. Coincidentally, his brother Matthew was a DC police officer and friend of the division, but sadly, they didn't have many chances to talk. "What are you doing, man?" Alfred blurted out. "You know this is weird, right?"

Alas, Ivan would never be able to hear Alfred. He had already begun saying something else by the time Alfred was done speaking: "...and work around the people, because it is so fun inside, and there's AC! People are scared to talk to me when I am working outside. But at least I don't have to stand all day." Ivan's voice had gotten quieter, forcing Alfred to pay closer attention. "Do you stand all day when you work, Mr. FBI?"

"Hell no." Alfred kicked the wheels of his chair. "But don't get excited—it's a curse, dude. I would choose a nice garden with fresh air over this stuffy old garage any day."

Ivan was silent and complacent, as if he was really listening, Dora the Explorer-like, and Alfred still couldn't discern if it was endearing or eerie. Ivan's eyelids were halfway shut, a tiny smile gracing his lips. He waited a second more, then nodded. "Is your work boring, Mr. FBI?"

He considered. "Yeah. Not that you're that boring, but…" Alfred let the sentence hang. It wasn't as if it mattered if he finished it, anyway. And the fact was that Ivan was pretty boring. He was the only one ever in his apartment, and went to bed early on Friday nights. On Saturdays he did laundry and cleaned, and every Sunday he napped and called his sisters! "I'm just glad you work so much so I don't have to. Wow, I did not mean for that to sound mean. Um, it's true, though. If you had a computer, things would be differen—"

"Agent Jones?" a recognizable accented voice peeped around the doorway. "Whom are you talking to?"

For the second time that day, Alfred jumped and pushed down his screen, muting Ivan. "No one, good golly, don't scare me like that!"

Chief Arthur Kirkland, Alfred's boss and the head of the black division, didn't appear to notice or care. He stood stiffer than Toris had, clipboard and pencil in hand. "Okay, so, listen. You're mates with Agent Beilschmidt, right? He never checked in with Chief Héderváry and she wanted me to ask—"

Alfred adjusted his glasses, scrunching up his nose. "Which Beilschmidt?"

"The elder." Arthur steeled himself, putting a perplexed finger to his temple. "Apparently, Gilbert's gone MIA."

Alfred crossed his arms. "I haven't seen him since office bowling on Friday. He got his arm stuck in the ball return. Today Héderváry tried to stun me when I checked in! What is up with the gray division?"

Kirkland shook his head to himself, beginning to pace in place. His eyes were as wide as quarters, staring unforgivably at his clipboard as if it held all the answers. "With Carriedo missing already, I'm sure there's foul play to suspect, or even worse—the Mafia. They're on the same team; it's too much of a coincidence. It also means—" He gasped suddenly, raising his crazy blond head in epiphany. Then his voice lowered to a whisper. "It means someone else will be next."

Alfred sat up straighter, suddenly excited. "Whoa, really? Can I help? What case were they working on before they disappeared? Who saw them last? Where—"

"No." Arthur Kirkland was cross. "Not your division. Just let them handle it. Who are you monitoring, again?"

He hesitated. "Ivan. I mean, Braginsky. The...the guy—"

"The Russian spy, right." Arthur stuck his pen behind his ear. "Well. I'll be off, then. Remember to record any—"

"I know, I know." Alfred waved his hand. He felt more and more antsy the longer the Chief was in his space. "Just get on with it. It's fine."

"Right." Arthur frowned and touched his headpiece, half-turned away. "Good day, then. Do your work."

Alfred swiveled back to Ivan, groaning loudly as Arthur departed. Sometimes he felt like he was never taken seriously, but then again, he did sit at a desk and watch a famous memer's life all day. He wasn't sure if such a job should be taken seriously or not.

"I wish I was in a different division," Alfred blurted out. While he had been distracted by Arthur, Ivan had finished washing dishes and was now wiping down his stove and countertops. "I want to do more field agent stuff. My job would be a lot less boring if, instead of hacking all your gadgets and watching you from behind this screen, I could actually go out and spy on you. You know, like, shadow you from around street corners, hiding in the bushes with binoculars, open up the refrigerator door and BAM I'm there!" Alfred slapped his hands on his knees, grinning. "Eat all your food. Make you drop your croissant."

Ivan was still smiling to himself in that charming, unnerving way as he strangled the last drops of water from his rag and hung it over the faucet to dry. "What do you like to do when you're not working, Mr. FBI? Or do you work all the time? I imagine you taking shifts with someone else. Which FBI do I speak to now?"

"Nope, just me. I mean, other black division monitors like Toris sometimes, or Ludwig Beilschmidt if I can convince him, but mostly just me. They all have other guys to watch; y'all suspected criminals are weird. If I wasn't here I would be at NASA." Alfred glanced wistfully at the star chart above his head. "But they wanted me to work on computers, and I wanted to go to space. Diddly darn dang, I love space."

Ivan waited five more seconds before responding. "That's nice."

Alfred nodded fervently. "Damn right it is. Arthur—what a mom—says I waste my talents—"

"I hope you are having an good day, wherever you are," Ivan mused. "I assume you work at FBI headquarters. I walked by that place today. Tomorrow I work in the butterfly garden. It is very close, and my favorite place to work."

"That's rad. I've been there. It's right next to the Museum of Natural—"

"It is next to the Museum of Natural History." Ivan was staring directly at the camera. For the many months Alfred had been Ivan's monitor, he hadn't noticed the purple hue his eyes took on in this dim kitchen glow. "Very beautiful, da? Convenient that most of the Smithsonian buildings are close to each other, all in the same place. I can look at prize artifacts and arrange flowers at the same time."

Alfred was silent. A vision of Ivan with a butterfly perched atop his big nose entered Alfred's mind. He wished Ivan used his phone on the job, wondering what Ivan actually looked like while working. The phone was harder to hack when it was turned completely off; Ivan normally kept it like that during the day while Alfred was away.

"Oh. That reminds me. One moment, Mr. FBI." Ivan walked off out of view.

An idea began to take shape in Alfred's mind, replacing the image of Ivan and the butterfly. Really, allowing Ivan to go that whole slot of time without documentation was a bad strategy, especially if Ivan really was a dangerous Russian intelligence agent. Who knew what he could be up to? And with all the gray division field agents being abducted by the Mafia, apparently, there would be less people to go out and make sure Ivan wasn't, like, putting poison into the plants or something. Alfred could step up and ask. Alfred wanted to see Ivan irl.

And speaking of Ivan, where the heck was he?

Alfred instinctively leaned forward before forgetting it was impossible to see around the kitchen through Ivan's phone. He was positioned so he was staring at Ivan's undecorated refrigerator. He couldn't even hear Ivan, though he remembered Ivan had excused himself.

Ivan never did this. After dishes he would always make himself a lunch for the next day, spend another thirty minutes online, read a little of the book he was slowly working through, check his phone again, and then get ready for bed. Alfred stared frustratedly at the screen, willing it to shift. "Hey, get back over here!" he protested. "You can't just leave me hanging like this!"

From the other room came a thump and a crinkle of plastic that sounded like an empty Doritos bag.

"Ivan!" Alfred huffed. "Don't make me do it!" He brought up a tab of the phone's controls. His finger hovered over the mouse. "Alright, you asked for it. Hear that? I'm doing it, Braginsky!" He pressed a button, making the phone burst into a frantic buzzing.

A few seconds later Ivan reentered the kitchen, his soft boi face appearing innocent and concerned through the screen. Alfred shut the phone's buzzing off, crossing his arms smugly. "Explain yourself."

Ivan, however, didn't say anything. He picked up the phone, opened it, and went straight to his meme account. Alfred felt betrayed when Ivan didn't speak any more, just swiped through his feeds. "So close," he mumbled to himself, having switched back to Russian. Alfred was a bit startled by this, as well; if Ivan knew (or thought he knew) that no one was going to hear and respond to him, why had he been using English when he spoke to "Mr. FBI?" Alfred accepted it was just another of his quirks that made Alfred's job easier. But it signified that their conversation was now over.

"Okay, whatever, it's chill, then." Alfred glanced at the time. He still had a few long hours to go before Ivan clocked in for the night. He had been caught off-guard by the unprompted half-conversation, and now was embarrassed at how he had whined about being ignored. Deep down, Alfred didn't really believe Ivan was a criminal or a spy. Criminals didn't get drunk on vodka home alone and laugh so pleasantly. Spies didn't jump on their beds in excitement whenever it snowed and knit their own oven mitts. Ivan was as ordinary and unassuming and simple as one could be, and immigrant or otherwise he had absolutely no reason to be on the FBI black list.

So Alfred sighed and settled into his cubicle for another evening of memes, same as always. He waited, watched and waited, stole food from Toris and waited, but it turned out that Mr. FBI didn't even get a "Goodnight."

Ivan had no intention of telling his phone goodnight. In fact, he had been reading (and posting) so many FBI memes lately that he left his phone on his bed under the covers in paranoia while he went to the bathroom. But not because it was gross to have someone watching him do his business, which it was. It was because under his sink, squeezed behind the water pipe, was a laptop computer no one knew about but himself and an invisible faction of Russian hackers. Stored on that computer was vital information he had been slowly leeching from the Smithsonian Institute. He didn't know what the circle would do with the info when he sent it, wrapped up with ribbons and bows over a deep web email provider, but he knew if he didn't do his job there would be consequences. He made sure to flush the toilet and run the water on his way out.

Ivan hopped into bed and picked his phone back up, humming as if nothing had happened. He refused to look at the camera lens again, but chided himself. If someone really was watching him, he would know. He distracted himself by checking his meme account once more.

Ivan buried his body under the massive pile of blankets, turning off the lamp and letting his phone screen be the only source of light in the room. He had read that blue light before bed destroyed the eyes, but figured he was already too far gone in that direction to fix anything now. Someone had commented "Congratulations! Heart emoji, fireworks emoji, clapping hands emoji," on his most recent post. Ivan's breaths picked up as he doubled back to check his follower count, gasping when he saw it.

He had broken one million.

I have nothing to say for myself.

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xtremedespair3d · 4 years

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HajiKo Anime: Winter-Spring 2020 + Summer First Impressions

I wasn’t willing to return to Tumblr to keep making these posts about my anime reviews which they’re the only thing I make because I was burned out on making them and I wanted to commit on writing my novel but I ended up abandoning it now because I was frustrated with everything about it, from harsh criticism I didn’t ask for to not figuring out the story well enough.

Then I tried to keep my reviews going by making threads on Twitter, but later I wasn’t satisfied with how they turned out nor like writing them because I was feeling limited, and I was even debating on whether to keep the Twitter thread format going, returning to Tumblr or just simply tweet my tiers of every anime I watch, so what better way to keep this review series going? It’s to return to Tumblr because I really like reviewing anime and Tumblr has been the most comfortable space to make my reviews and giving it a new name, HajiKo Anime, as in my name I go on Twitter as Hajime Komaeda.

So, kept you waiting, huh?

I had a lot of stuff to do in my life to the point that it drives me totally insane to the point of questioning my will to live, and then there’s also the pandemic which everything gets delayed and cancelled, even upcoming anime!

The biggest problem with making my reviews is sometimes I have to force myself on commenting on other shows I don't have much thought on, only like few I have tons of feelings I want to express, so I really hope things will be any better once I’m back on Tumblr to make these reviews I liked doing.

By continuing to make these reviews by including my new tiers, let me remind how do I interpret the ranking tiers:

S: 10-9

A: 8

B: 7

C: 6-4

D: 3-1

E: 0

Let’s keep in mind that I wouldn’t give full reviews on literally everything I watch because sometimes I don’t have much thought on so I’ll just skip them, I make lengthy reviews on some shows because I genuinely have feelings on these shows, that was one of my struggles with my other reviews, some of them were forced but I promise I will only do lengthy reviews to some shows I have lots of thoughts to talk about.

First off with Winter which is looking qutie strong even for the beginning of the decade:

Winter 2020

(Higher resolution)

Ishuzoku Reviewers: Perhaps one of the best ecchi series I've ever watched in years to the point where the ecchi really gets near-hentai level... so much so it caused controversy for Funimation and Japanese television alike, with Funimation removing the license and cancelled the English dub due to its content, and the series being removed on Tokyo MX. Though I might say that I wouldn't go that far to consider this as the best ecchi series of all time because there are a couple of things I really hated about the show, it can be a little too biased on some fetishes, includes fetishes I’m not a fan of, etc. But still, I admire the show for taking risks by going beyond the limits of Japanese television.

ID: INVADED: This is the most surprising show I've ever seen this season, it may also happen to be somewhat underrated. How can a dying studio like NAZ produce something really well-animated for once? All thanks to Ei Aoiki. I'm not really much of an animation expert but I really hope there might be someone who will make an article saying "How Ei Aoki saved Studio NAZ with ID: INVADED."

BanG Dream season 3: This third season of Bandori is THE BEST Bandori season ever, this made me like RAS (RAISE A SUILEN) even more.

Eizouken: This was an interesting series about making anime that may or may not compete with SHIROBAKO, though even if they have the same theme of making anime, they're completely different in terms of setting. The animation, even from what I've seen with Masaaki Yuasa and Science Saru with Devilman Crybaby, surprisingly looks like the series was actually fully hand-drawn instead of Adobe Flash, though Adobe Flash is still present in the opening.

Isekai Quartet 2: This second season of Isekai Quartet was a huge letdown compared to its predecessor, my biggest deal breaker is how they wasted the Shield Hero characters into minor roles, they straight-up overhyped them. The last few episodes seemed like they were slowly redeeming themselves on making the Shield Hero characters have some more screentime. Now that the series got a third season, let’s see how they will handle the Shield Hero characters this time if they’ll truly become main character status to be shown on the OP and ED, or they continue to be minor characters on the classroom where most of the supporting and minor characters from the main isekai properties attend to. Also, at one episode there was this cameo of these two characters from a series called Cautious Hero, if they end up becoming actual main characters or something, I’m not even gonna bother binging the series just like I did with Shield Hero.

Nekopara: I was skeptical about this series, but upon watching the first episode alone, this is a very comfy series, but its existence and inclusion of original characters will always baffle me.

Honorable mentions:

Azur Lane The Animation: As of July 2020, I think I might have accepted the fact that a lot of people (At least the Western side of the AL fanbase) hate the anime and they say it sucks, I’m really spoiled about it and it sucks to feel that way. I’ve always been hype as hell when I was watching the series from the very beginning, it had all kinds of easter eggs and references I couldn’t stop pointing them out since I’m an avid Azur Lane player (JP version only), and the best part is that at one episode, it had a bath scene where in the Blu-Ray version, the whole scene happens to feature official animated nipples! Official Azur Lane nipples in official media! I wish this could happen very often, even official artists would occasionally draw their characters in full R-18, such as Sirius and Ark Royal. (NSFW, CLICK WITH CAUTION)

Sure, sometimes the series had some quality, especially at the end of episode 4, but that doesn’t make the series automatically garbage or anything. The Azur Lane anime is NOT GARBAGE, PERIOD. Got that?

If I had the time, I’d seriously love to rewatch the series (Using the BD rips of course) to prove everyone wrong.

In terms of the future of Azur Lane anime, as much as I’d love to see this get more seasons and even movies to beat Kancolle to the punch, we’re now getting an anime adaptation of the Twitter 4komas, well, at least that’s certainly something cool. With that being said, I bet people are gonna be like “This is way better than the main anime” which I won’t condone it like hell. Let me say it again, the main Azur Lane anime is not garbage.

Fate/Grand Order Babylonia: Long after watching the series when it was on the air, I’ve been thinking that this was probably okay, Babylonia is not my most favorite singularity throughout FGO because the previous ones deserve some respect and I’m biased to the Shinjuku singularity for obvious reasons. I do wish they would adapt pretty much every singularity but they’re tediously long that they need to make hundreds of anime of each, so they just happen to skip all that and decided to make a Babylonia series and the upcoming Camelot movies because they’re the most favorite. I don’t really buy it on why are they the most favorite, but okay.

My Hero Academia season 4 and My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising: Heroes Rising was probably the last movie I’ve seen going to the theater before the pandemic happened.

Castlevania season 3: For some reason I didn’t like this season as much as the first two (Unpopular opinion).

Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle: I was very skeptical throughout the first half of the season, but this second half was making me in high spirits, although I would still prefer the original PSO2 anime over this.

Moving on to Spring:

Spring 2020

(Higher resolution)

Fruits Basket: Fruits Basket continues to be an excellent series, balancing comedy and drama the way I like with the comedy always making me laugh and the drama always making me tense. (I don't wanna see or talk about EP9 ever again.)

Shin Sakura Wars The Animation: Sanzigen continues to deliver quite a lot even after BanG Dream! season 3, not only we get one but TWO shows this season. My main problem with Shin Sakura Wars The Animation is that they really must have abused the hand drawn parts so much, and this was a really frustrating problem that this should be A tier instead, but it was still quite good regardless, I love Sanzigen to death.

Watanuki-san Chi To: This was a neat second season and this makes me strongly believe that the Watanuki-san Chi series are the future of VTuber anime, or dorama as what the series is, and I’m still mad that there are still no subtitles for this, neither official subs nor fan subs.

My few complaints for Watanuki-san Chi To is that Ikuko's role that kinda takes Futaba's place a little too much since Futaba was working at a karaoke bar most of the time and Ikuko and Futaba had interacted on-screen like twice (or three if that ending from episode 3 counts) on episodes 5 and 12 (the final one). I'm hoping that we'll get more of the Watanuki sisters and Ikuko interacting together on-screen some more but I think things will be the same with Futaba continuing to work on the karaoke bar.

Then there’s episode 12 which was the episode where Ikuko leaves the Watanuki house after finding her real parents, the episode was kind of predictable as Ikuko returned and decided to stay with the Watanuki sisters afterwards. This is one of the few, if not, the first time that something definitely made me say and feel something was actually predictable, but not that I would hate on it or anything.

Another complaint I have for this entire season is that it lacked the crowd laughs the first season had, the first season felt like it was true a comedy and having no laughs this season gave an entirely different atmosphere and I wasn't very comfortable with it.

Despite the flaws, I give huge thumbs ups for what they did with the world and the characters, they finally happen to bring the characters from the audio drama played by various other VTubers, and we finally happen to explore outside of the world for a little bit between shots of the streets where Ikuko walked through at the beginning of the series and the karaoke bar, not just sticking to the Watanuki house over and over.

The best part of introducing the newer characters is that they finally showed male characters for once, one of which was Futaba's boyfriend, Kenji, who's sort of a recurring background character frequently mentioned in the first season, he happened to finally have his body revealed, but still no face reveal. And there was also this other male guest character in episode 3, he was interesting to say the least. Finally, something to make the series not sexist.

I wouldn't really consider myself as the most dedicated Western Watanuki-san Chi fan. As much as I'd like to call myself that, I don't really speak Japanese to understand the series some more and I would have to be a badass to actually make fansubs, some events happened in Japan, which I don't live in Japan, and I don't buy the merch, let alone the Blu-Rays and the audio dramas. The worst part about the audio dramas is they're purchasable on Pixiv Booth, which Pixiv doesn't really let me use my debit card (or might if I were to use my Wallet app or something). I for one wouldn't really consider myself as the ONLY person who watches the Watanuki-san Chi, I wouldn't be watching the series if it wasn't for the people who have been uploading torrents of every episode on Nyaa, there's a very niche amount of people who do watch the series.

(I probably shouldn’t talk too much about piracy related things and sites like Nyaa, and I try to make my review posts as formal as possible to stay away from such things, but I’m just an independent reviewer who makes these posts as a hobby, I’m not a big anime news site or anything and I can say whatever the fuck I want, so who cares?)

BanG Dream! Garupa Pico Ohmori and Welcome to the Japari Park season 2: These ones are definitely the absolute surprise and looks like things are definitely gonna get absolutely better. They both premiered between late April to early May, so they're kind of a special case.

Kaguya-sama season 2: I didn't get the first season as much, but this second season is finally making me feel better about the series. (Probably because when I binged the first season, I multitasked and get occasionally distracted, that's why I didn't get it at first)

Argonavis from BanG Dream: This one's quite an interesting series. Not as good as the mainline female-centric series, but as a self-contained universe, it's pretty good on its own. It even handles topics that the base series won't even do, like music industry and money. Although Chuchu is probably the closest thing we experience when she's a music producer character of sorts but she's more entitled to her own band, money is a far more important issue the series doesn't want ot tackle, and Argonavis does it right.

The only thing that almost ruined the series is the unnecessarily dark final episode where the entire episode was basically Banri passing out after doing their debut performance in Destiny Rock Festival and Argonavis were having a hard time about what to do if something were to happen with Banri and they made a song dedicated to him afterwards. Episode 12 should have been the final episode, we didn’t need to see a rollercoaster episode, this should be played out more as an OVA, but I digress. This isn’t the weakest or the worst finale but it’s seriously unnecessary.

Now I just hope the second season makes the other bands teased in the last few episodes become regulars, just like how the first season of the female Bandori where they teased a lot of the other bands, and then from season 2 onwards, the other bands have become regulars. I just really hope they'll make the other bands from Argonavis be full CG because they were all hand drawn for some reason, and I also need season 4 of main female Bandori series so bad so they can introduce Morfonica which in anime format they're introduced in the Garupa Pico Ohmori series.

Brand New Animal: It partially is because BNA starts with B, but he main reason is that I thought it was alright, and as a Netflix series that I can binge in one run, it's easily forgettable. Not the weakest of TRIGGER, but I feel rather indifferent with this.

Princess Connect ReDive: This was my absolute least favorite of Spring, I couldn't stress enough on how much of a Konosuba wannabe this is, it's such a poor imitation and I wish the actual game wasn't this ridiculously bad. From the over-the-top wacky tone to goofier background character designs and a very retarded MC. I don't know why but I thought this would be a simple way to get into Princess Connect without getting into the game because I see fan arts a lot, and Japan apparently seems to like this, as evidence with the fan arts and as much as I would like to like this more because of it, it just didn’t work for me, the animation is alright, though. At least this is way better than the NOT Shadowverse anime.

I got a comment from someone saying that the Konosuba influence comes from the director of the Puriconne series and this series serves to introduce the game as an original story for non-Puriconne players without touching any major plot points.

And finally let’s talk about my first impressions to all the shows I’m watching this Summer season:

Fire Force season 2: I was hoping this season can be a little bit better animated than the first, but upon the first episode of this season alone the terrible pacing is still there, but then the second episode, things get really interesting. The story is the main thing that will keep me intrigued for the rest of the series.

Dokyuu Hentai HxEros: The first time I heard about this series was when I retweeted and saving a Suketto Sanjou-related picture by artist Rakko where he hid a reply where someone posted a link to the Amazon page of the upcoming volume of the manga of HxEros (which the manga is not by Rakko and this is totally unrelated, what the hell was the guy who made the reply thinking?), that was a little while before I heard that this was getting animated.

At first I was 50/50 on watching it or not, but I saw the news that there’ll be this “H Energy Unleashed” version, which is the “uncensored” version and that sold me, but I continue to be unsure on watching it, that is until the day of the premiere where I was randomly seeing screenshots of the episode on my timeline, particularly scenes where the girl Kirara was completely naked, and I was absolutely sold on it and decided to watch it, and after doing so, I kinda dig it.

However, I dislike Kirara because of how she is. It makes me feel bad for how she used to be when she was a kid during some flashbacks where she was a dirty minded girl to present day where she’s a hardcore tsundere hiding her horniness, the way she is, it really makes me hard to empathize with her. She’s pretty cute and hot too.

Re:Zero season 2: It feels weird having a second season of Re:Zero considering it’s been 4 years since the first season came out, and after watching the first episode, now I just feel unprepared.

Oregairu season 3: While I was watching the episode, I was randomly reminiscing some memories and characters I remember from the first two seasons and who do I like, which I kinda like most characters, but Komachi is my least favorite because she constantly says “gross” to poor Hachiman, geez.

Uzaki-chan: This was a pretty solid series and this is definitely being AOTS. However, recently I found something very hilarious that I’m dying to talk about.

Remember the time when there was a controversy from an SJW where they criticized the Uzaki-chan Japanese Red Cross poster because of her big boobs? Well, that’s a separate story, but things with Uzaki-chan gets more laughable, as I stumbled upon this tweet a few days ago and...

Anime News Network gave the first episode a 1.5 star review?!

Holy jesus... What is that?! What the fuck is that?!

Yikes, Anime News Network are a bunch of clowns!

I’m really glad ANN is getting the hate it deserves, I just don’t like ANN when they do reviews, I never liked them since their discussion post on Netsuzou Trap and then episode 0 of Saekano season 2.

All that aside, this series is going to be quite a fun ride.

This Summer season could have been strong if only Akudama Drive and Danmachi season 3 weren’t delayed, but that’s for the better as Fall 2020 is looking like it’s the strongest season of the year, and you’ll find out why in September.

And that’s it for all my reviews! I really hope you enjoyed my biased reviews and I can’t wait to continue to make these reviews just like I used to. Also, let me address that I don’t make money from making these reviews, I only write these posts for fun.

Anyways, see you in Fall 2020 for my review for this Summer season and what am I gonna watch in Fall!

Check out my Carrd.

#HajiKoAnime #anime #review

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allenmendezsr · 4 years

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