#in fact its probably more difficult to write well for younger age groups because you have to break down the concepts well

[aroaceleovaldez]

a quick helpful reference guide:

Children's books - Target demographic is generally up to like age 10 - basically elementary school and below, for us Americans.

Middle-grade books - Target demographic is approximately middle schoolers (ages 11-15).

YA (Young Adult) - Target demographic is about 15-20ish year olds, so high schoolers and early college.

There is such thing as "upper middle-grade books" (targeted more towards the upper range of middle grade, so middle schoolers going into high school) and other such more specific intended target demographic age ranges within those groupings.

What these ranges mean is that the books differ in how they present subject matter to be appropriate to the intended audience demographic. Obviously, books geared towards younger kids are going to be shorter, use simpler language, and present concepts in ways that are easier to understand for younger children. As the target age demographic increases, the length, word choice, and presentation of topics will become more complex. The actual subject matter within the book itself is unrelated to this classification system for the most part - the books are graded on what's presumed appropriate for that age-range in terms of how children learn and their presumed literacy and reading comprehension at that age, rather than the topic itself.

Rick Riordan is a middle-grade author, and his books are usually middle-grade - including the entirety of the Riordanverse and Daughter of the Deep. The only exception is The Sun And The Star, which is loosely either upper middle-grade or YA, as Mark Oshiro is a YA author and co-authored it.

[sukirichi]

Like, what happens to Mia? How does Gojo end up picking us? Naoya? How about Naoya? 😭😭😭🙏🏼😔

Omggg if you’re not going to continue reckless, can you please please please tell us how it ends? 😭😭😭 I don’t think I can bear living not knowing how it ends 😭 please? 😔😢🙏🏼😭

okay well here’s how it was gonna go, pls keep in mind my storytelling in asks and in writing are diff so this might be explained crappily HAHAHAHA but basically in reckless...

gojo gets shot in the head by his abusive dad bcos he finally stood up against him, but that backfired. his father is really adamant on control, and gojo loses his memories at the same time y/n gave birth. she decided to keep the baby after deciding that she wants a family after all, but when gojo woke up with mixed and lost memories, he only remembers mia and everything after her accident was gone. gojo becomes distorted and even becomes harsh sometimes, especially when y/n said they had a baby and she was his friend, bcos gojo’s mindset was from way back to six years ago, where he had lots of issues with his family and mia’s that he was wary who to trust.

so,,, they didn’t want gojo to hurt y/n bcos he’s such in an emotional mess that he has no control of himself. eventually, y/n decides to stay away but the baby is adopted by gojo and mia, who gets married for the sake of business and gojo’s current situation. truthfully, mia doesn’t want to marry him bcos it would hurt y/n and she’s not that awful. mia and y/n become friends after realizing they’re pretty similar and actually find genuine friendship with one another. she doesn’t have a choice tho and gojo, mia, along with gojo’s mom who divorced her husband for his abuse move to the states where they raised y/n and gojo’s daughter, sayori, leaving y/n all alone in tokyo who then becomes vice president of kamo enterprises. basically, it shows the repeated history of y/n’s father choosing to hide her from her real parents, and she begins to understand why he did that bcos she also has not really met her own daughter. y/n knows mia and gojo could take care of sayori better than she could, especially with the fact that gojo’s memories are mixed and transfixed on the timeline of him dating mia, mia giving birth to sayori, then them getting married. y/n is not present at all in his memories. gojo thinks he was the one in a car accident, not mia.

sayori is about four years old when gojo decides to come back to tokyo. now that he’s disowned and his mother has also left, gojo becomes a successful model in the states. he comes home bcos he remembers geto and wants to start their own agency (gojo as a model, geto as the photographer.) mia is wary at first for fear gojo might remember everything. she’s not being selfish; the doctors warned that anything that could potentially trigger gojo’s memories that his subconscious has erased could be detrimental to him. mia tries to hold it off but gojo insists, so the gojo/yamazaki family go back and that’s where gojo meets y/n, who he first thought was geto’s new wife.

in the reckless fanart, geto’s photo is like this.

geto’s ring is silver - it’s his dead wife’s ring. the hand caressing him is gold - it’s y/n wearing the ring of gojo’s mother, who by then has already apologized before they all left.

geto and y/n become best friends on the course of four years. missing her daughter, y/n becomes attached to mei (geto’s daughter) and acts more like a mom than an aunt. geto basks in this faux family they’ve built, though he makes sure mei is not too dependent or expecting that y/n would be her mom. he falls in love with y/n and he notices how after gojo left, she becomes softer and a lot sweeter. all the anger and hatred disappeared, all thanks to y/n finding peace with her new life and making up with her mother, Valeria, who once overdosed on drugs after it was exposed to the public that Y/N is a child she abandoned. y/n saved Valeria by rushing her to the hospital, which is also the same time that Y/N saw gojo being wheeled in the emergency room with a bullet in his head.

now that gojo is back, he can’t help but notice that y/n is avoiding him. she feels familiar but he plays it off over her being a close friend and possible lover of geto. meanwhile, y/n’s dedication to pretending he doesn’t exist breaks slowly when she sees sayori, a beautiful little girl who’s growing up, call mia as her “mommy.” it hurts her that she missed her first words, first steps, or that she’s being excluded in the family that is truly hers, but everyone is happy and doing great that she chooses to be the only who isn’t for the sake of everyone else.

in ch2, gojo goes to a carnival/amusement park and takes a polaroid photo with y/n. he finds them in one of the stuff he left behind in the penthouse he used to live in; shocked bcos y/n had been adamant they never met before. that’s when he begins to confront her on who she really is what they really used to be. he feels guilty that he can’t remember, but most of all, gojo is torn inside that y/n had been all alone the whole time when he promised he would be there.

its complicated for them since gojo x mia are already married, and sayori got her mom’s stubborness so its difficult for her to believe someone she never met before is her real mom and mia is...well, mia. mia actually helps sayori accept that she is not the real mom, apologizing to the child for lying to them and it ends up with sayori running away and getting lost for a few hours. sayori is scared since tokyo is alien to her and she doesn’t speak japanese, but when y/n finds her, she comes running to her arms and that is when she begins to soften up around her real mom.

this is where the slowburn with gojo and y/n begins. for them, getting to know each other once more on a clean slate is both refreshing yet scary, especially since one has erased the past in their mind and the other is desperately trying to forget it. the thing about the mia x gojo as a married couple and parents is that gojo deep down feels he does not love mia that way. he can’t explain why there’s just something missing or confusing in his life. he loves mia out of respect and friendship, but he would never admit that he is not in love with his wife. however, he plays it over the fact that its “just the broken memories” and lies to himself that he is very much in love with her. when he meets y/n again, however, it makes sense. he does love y/n and him forgetting her was a defense mechanism of his system to erase the most painful times of his life, and that included his guilt for hurting y/n with the abuse of his parents who controlled the way he acted around her. as for mia, she also does not love gojo and she probably never did, but for the sake of his well being and for sayori’s future (which was entrusted to her by y/n) she stayed with him. now though, mia knows its time to let go.

geto...it is not easy for geto. he loves y/n so much because of her tenacity and kindness, but he also loves her enough to know she is happier with someone else. to him, he’s content knowing that she felt less lonely when he was around and that he helped make her smile. in the end, geto has closure with y/n who apologizes for not returning his feelings.

NAOYAAAAA though...ofc i gave him a good ending 💕 after he was brutally rejected by Mia, y/n cheers him up by setting Naoya up with a law professor around his age, who is Ayame. Ayame is supposed to be named Suki tbh 😋 but I thought the self insert is a little too much so I changed it to Ayame. Ayame is pretty funny and even respects that Naoya is uncomfortable on the first date, telling him that it doesn’t have to be that kind of date and she doesn’t expect anything from him. Ayame’s bubbly yet blunt nature is a breath of fresh air from Mia’s secretive and perfectionist nature and the two become good friends. Naoya and Ayame end up hanging out a lot bcos “thats what friends do” but it doesn’t take long before they go out together. And ofc, Naoya is a little ashamed that Ayame was the first to confess and she beat him to it, but they get married and are happy nonetheless 💕 Mia ends up as a successful doctor who helps her family with the business, divorces Gojo, but she still has no plans to marry and is perfectly happy and content to focus on her career.

Eventually, Gojo and Y/N get married once everything is sorted out. Gojo becomes a well known model in Tokyo as well, and Gojo Group is absorbed by Y/N herself after proving Gojo’s father guilty of attempted murder. Gojo doesn’t want anything more to do with the corporate world though, but Y/N stays and kicks ass as a vice president to all the merged companies.

Y/N and Valeria also makes up after Valeria is indebted to Y/N who saved her life, and Valeria’s parents become more supportive and start to see Valeria more as a person than a child to inherit the business. Albeit being in her 40s, Valeria enjoys the youth she lost only now, but also enjoys being the grandmother to Sayori. Its a little awkward between Valeria and Y/N after everything that happened, but they’re trying and are even dubbed as the iconic motherly duo who is unbeatable in their games.

Gojo’s father is thrown into prison, and his main victim, his own wife, also shows recovery from the years of abuse. Although her obsessive control with Gojo and his sister (the eldest Gojo child) was not right, his mom was left with no choice but to keep them on close watch and control their lives because she was trying to keep them safe from their father’s wrath. In the end, Gojo’s mom makes up by being a better mother, and Gojo and his sister forgives her while also apologizing that both of them left home when they knew their mom always shouldered the abuse to protect her kids.

Overall, its a happy ending for most of the characters! the last chapter is Sayori’s wedding to Naoya and Ayame’s son, Naori, who is a few years younger than his bride. Gojo is grumbling to Y/N about how his little girl is all grown up now, and that their son, Shinichiro, who is 18 in that timeline is also maturing and would be leaving the nest soon. Y/N thinks its adorable and asks Gojo to just enjoy the union because its only one of the many great memories they would still have to make.

That’s how it would end! Gojo Best Dad and Gojo DILF. Everyone is happy!

Basically the theme of Reckless is that sometimes the most unexpected things we do out of character can end up as one of the greatest things to ever happen, which in their case was the suprise baby. They went through a lot and it has a lot of psychological themes, along with heavy family drama, but overall I wanted the series to be a heartwarming one by the end. I really would’ve loved to see it all happen but I am also happy to share it to you guys in this way.

So yeah, happy reading and thanks so much for supporting Reckless !! I was also thinking of doing maybe like a bonus chapter where the characters pretend it was all a movie and they’re actors that you can talk to, but that didn’t happen so :// anyways I hope you enjoyed this and thank you for reading up until here 💕

[missyasf]

Game Of Hearts

| 1 |

↳ Summary: Your life is in monotonous tones of grey, day in, day out. Nothing matters besides your sister, the only thing you remember is seeing fireworks before waking up to Tokyo abandoned . Soon enough you are properly introduced to the deadly Borderlands where you must fight for your life in Games to survive. When things can’t possibly get worse soon division arises and rivalries are made. No matter what though, you are constantly plagued by a blonde who, no matter how hard you try, just can’t seem to go too far without.

↳ Pairing: Chishiya/Reader

↳ Genre: Angst, smut, thriller

Word Count: 11k

___| Next

Trigger Warning: ⚠️ much like the manga/Netflix adaptation this will be a dark fic which includes mentions of prostitution, attempted murder, child ab*se, sexual harassment, heavy grief and attempted suic*de among other things. Additional warnings will be added for chapters when triggers are brought up. Please read with caution if these are triggers for you or just skip all together! 

Side mention: This could be considered a prequel to the current Alice In Borderland. I’m writing based off the Manga bc I was a glutton and couldn’t wait no spoilers will be present as of...

Escapism

noun

the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy ♡ 

You had known all about this during your short lifespan, as a child you’d often play pretend with your sister that you were movie stars living in a five star hotel rather than the shitty busted up apartment on the wrong side of town. Escapism came in, many forms. It was often a way for people to cope psychologically, simply because sometimes, facing the reality of your situation can be too much for one person to handle mentally. 

Or at least, that was the topic of your lecture today in class. The human mind always fascinated you. Even at the young tender age when your mom died and you watched your once cozy little family fall apart piece by piece until nothing was left in its wake. 

It was your fascination that drove you now for most things, why? Why, why, why? You always wondered what the motive was behind someone’s actions, not only thing but you wanted to  understand them better, to try and sympathize. You were already fairly intuitive in nature. It wasn’t difficult to read people. In fact your line of work made it easy, you’d watch a man who would be excited to be with you reach for his left finger as if used to touching something. A wedding band perhaps? 

The lowlife cheater was fairly common in a whore house after all. Or the man who had been pissy this morning behind you in line because you had decided to try something new on the menu and you weren’t fast enough, obviously because he was tardy and woke up late, his shirt unbeknownst to him was button the wrong way and his tie loose and even the way his hair fell were all signs of being late to work. 

It was the little things you noticed in people’s facial expressions, the way they moved and spoke. You could read people like a book, and sure sometimes it was useful. But you often wished you weren’t so perceptive. It drove you mad knowing when a potential love interest was no longer interested through a simple text or a friend not wanting to talk by their tone. Sometimes you wished you could just blot it all out, still, you lived like this day in and day out, you were used to this kind of thing and honestly. Friends? Love? Your gaze dropped a little to your feet, the pumps you were wearing a jet black and the heel too high for any respectable woman to ever wear. 

...It wasn’t like you ever had any of those in your life and you had struggled to come to terms with the fact that you could survive without that kind of support. Still...it made you envious, the couple happily holding hands on the sidewalk. The group of friends all laughing at a table while they studied. Oftentimes these feelings are muted, but when you’re faced with something you’ve always craved, those muted feelings suddenly become hyperactive in your mind. 

It’s pathetic, honestly. 

“How dare you! You disgusting slut!” 

In this moment however, you were brought back to reality at just what was happening, you squeaked loudly as you dodged the shoe the woman had thrown at you. This was all a regular occurrence, you had a lot of regulars who weren’t the most amazing people but hey, money was money. But along with them they also left a trail which their wives and girlfriends always followed. And then they always blamed you instead of their partner for leaving them for a prostitute despite you never having agreed to anything such as that.

It really wasn’t your fault, you were just trying to make a living while juggling with keeping up your own education, paying your fathers debts, rent and still somehow getting food on the table. What part time college job could provide that?

Prostitution wasn’t a job you would’ve gone into willingly but given the past and your trauma that was already laced in it you had been learning that sometimes because of the trauma we experience, sometimes people go back to that same trauma and actively participate in it as a way of feeling like they’re in control. 

That whatever happened before, would never happen again if you were in control. You weren’t sure if you qualified under this category, trauma came in many forms but the one most used as an example in your class was that a study showed that women who were assaulted often develop a kink for consensual non consent as a way of coping with what happened, except this time, it’s in a controlled environment where it can end the moment they want it too. 

Again, you weren’t sure you fell into this category, but you often wondered if your line of work was intertwined with your earlier memories when you were younger, if anything it brought comfort to you. Much of it, blotted out now simply because your mind couldn’t take it. Trauma expressed through amnesia was also much more common than many thought, and it’s so small, so easy to miss. After all how can you be aware of something if you have no memory of it anymore?

“Security!” Your manager screeched, two of the bodyguards were already between you and the feral woman who was ready to gut you clean as she screamed hysterically, her husband...your regular....at her side trying to get her to calm down only for her to come to her senses and slap him clean across the face. You didn’t condone violence, but he did have it coming...

You weren’t about to justify cheaters, you couldn’t imagine the hurt someone had to feel that not only did their partner cheat on them, but it was with someone...like you...You had been trying not to put down your job occupation, sex workers were just as valid as anyone else...you knew you would’ve thought this way if it was anyone but you in this position. 

You sighed as you ran your hands through your hair, watching the couple get dragged out of the tight space of the brothel, “Jesus christ....didn’t you say you stopped using perfume because of this?” Miki, your manager sighed as she crossed her arms. You didn’t want to say your manager was your friend but she was the closest you had as you’d often complain to her about most of your problems. Sex work often attracted broken people, it wasn’t something she wasn’t used to. 

“Yeah, but apparently he never got around to washing his clothes…” You wiped your mouth on the back of your hand, “Lipstick stain,” You glanced down at the ruby pink color that stained your skin now, “Fuck...that did hurt.” You rubbed your sore cheek that was still throbbing from where she had first slapped it when she ripped the door open of the room where she got to see with her own eyes you riding her husband. 

It had happened so many times now you weren’t even embarrassed about someone walking in let alone a partner. Miki gave you a lopsided smile as she patted your shoulder, “Guess that just pays for being one of the best here. Did you at least get paid.” 

You nodded, “Yeah, I always make them pay in advanced but I was hoping to get a tip afterwards...He was a lawyer so you know he had good money.” You sighed, crossing your arms, you were well aware of his partner because a lot of the time he didn’t even come in for sex anymore. It was funny how humans work. 

He often felt his wife was overbearing and you had suspected some sort of verbal abuse by the way he talked about her constant screaming. Truthfully, you don’t think he ever intended on cheating with her. He just wanted someone to talk to without being judged, you could relate with sympathy to that, but he unfortunately chose to walk into a brothel instead of a therapy clinic and this truly was the only inevitable outcome. Still, you hope if for anyone’s sake, he gets that divorce for himself. 

 “Hey I think I’m gonna call it a day. I need to get back to Nanami, she was wanting to talk to me about college applications.” You sighed as you rubbed your neck, ever since she had graduated high school she had been chomping at the bit to start applying for college, maybe to just get out of the house and into a dorm. You couldn’t blame her and if she did that it would lighten your load a little. 

Guilt washed over you at the thought as Miki chuckled, “They grow up pretty fast huh? My brother was the same way, except the moment he found out I was a sex worker was the moment he called me a whore and we haven’t talked since. That was probably about five years ago,” She crossed her arms as she sighed, “Crazy how the things we do for the ones we love, never appreciate our effort...I’ll see you tomorrow then?” 

“If I’m not bruising.” You offered a weak smile as you nodded at her before going back to your room to get changed. Truthfully, you much like anyone else, often wished you could go to a world where reality wasn’t a concept any longer. Where you could lay out in the sun for the whole day and just soak up it’s rays with no worries or trepidations. 

But sooner then later everyone had to face their fears. Even you, you supposed. But no matter how hard you fought your demons, they always came back tenfold. Again, you supposed your story was no different from tens of thousands, and yet you all live on regardless. Maybe it’s you who should be the one seeking therapy. Pulling on your jeans and the cropped top over your head before pulling the jacket over your arms and grabbing your bag. 

The walk home was as quiet as ever, your hood over your head and earbuds any unwanted attention, it wasn’t too late at night, only eleven PM and your work had just been getting started but that had ruined the night for you and besides, you had already failed a test today, you could use the sleep tonight. 

Occasionally you’d hear the sirens of  a cop car passing by or a bystander shout, nothing out of the ordinary in this neighborhood. Walking up to the apartment complex you pulled the key from your bag as you unlocked the door. Quietly stepping insides as you shut the door before locking it once more. Your nose wrinkled at the smell of stale air mixed with rotten...something…

If anything, you were always lacking in something, you had been so busy most of the day that you never had time to clean anything leaving the house in a horrible state. Not that you thought this was much of a house. 

Walking down the narrow hallway you opened the rickety door with a missing lock as you gave a brief smile to the small clump of bedsheets. Your sister was curled up and on her phone, eyes darting to the door with a hint of fear before she jumped up, “Y/n! You’re home earlier from night shift already!?” 

You offered a smile as you set down your bag and nodded, sitting down on the mattress that laid on the floor as you replied, “Yeah, a coworker needed the extra hours so I let them cover for me tonight. Besides, you wanted to talk about college applications?” Your sister was under the impression your late night job was bartending at some hole in the wall downtown, where in all actuality you just went there to drink a few days and talk to the loud and sometimes obnoxious, but good hearted bartender who loved talking about his nerdy underaged friends that couldn’t do anything beside stay and drink soda. 

It wasn’t that you didn’t think your sister would accept you, if she knew what you were actually doing. Fear, most times came in many different forms and this was one of them. You simply didn’t want to be judged, even by her. So nobody in your life truly knew who you were, and therefore, how could you hold the expectation for people to accept you into society if you were already self sabotaging yourself? 

All philosophy aside, you were simply a lost soul, looking for your way in the cruel reality called life. 

“Yes!” Nanami was chipper as always as she squealed, clapping her hands, “I…! I was thinking about applying to the university you attend! Maybe I'll get a grant and move into the dorms there? I already applied for several jobs, I’m just waiting on a callback!” 

You offered a small smile as you hugged your knees to your chest, “I think you’d like it there, there’s lots to do around campus. But what will you go in for? The only advice I can offer is be sure it’s what you want to do.” 

Nanami’s face faltered a little as she hummed, “Well...I thought maybe working with animals? I’d love to be an assistant surgeon in veterinarian? I know it’s a pretty...sad job but...I really like the idea of being able to heal such innocent things.” Your smile tugged into a gentle one at your sister. She was too tender for this world.

It had been your goal sense the day your mother died that you took care of your sister, it didn’t matter what happened to you. You could rot for all you cared at the end of the day, all you wanted was to look up and see your sister's smile and her happiness in life blossom. She more than anyone deserved it. 

“I think you’ll be great at it.” You encouraged as you rested your chin on your hand, always happy to see her bounce in excitement as you yawned, your body was used to your demanding schedule but it was always more than happy to welcome a few extra hours of sleep.”

Hearing the door loudly slam close caused you both to jump, Nanami hurriedly crawled back in bed, pretending to be asleep as you frowned. Your dad must’ve come back home from wherever he was. 

“Y/n! Just stay here! Can’t you talk to him later?” Nanami looked scared, she always did when he was around. But you weren’t about to stand down to the bastard any day of the week, you offered a weak smile as you replied. 

“It’s fine Nami, I’ll be just a few minutes.” You replied, you knew that she knew, that was probably a lie. But you’d try your best, for her sake at least. But somebody had to put this guy in his place occasionally and it was always you. It results in a lot of screaming sometimes, other times he’d break down in tears or on a bad occasion you’d get shoved to the ground, a few times hit. Nothing major. 

Walking out of the room you leaned against the wall of the entrance of the hallway watching your father stumble around in the living room, “Did you finally talk to the loan company?” You called out as you asked, not in a forgiving mood tonight. He had said he’d do this for two weeks in a row. The company that sank your whole family into the ground. The reason your mother couldn’t take it anymore and put a blade to her wrist. 

Your father stood up, looking a little wobbly, obviously drunk, “Now listen here little girl I don’t have shit to own to you or anyone else.” You sighed as you tucked your tongue into your cheek, annoyance flowing inside you as you straightened up. You weren’t going to be bullied into being scared of this guy. 

“Actually you do,” Your smile twisted into something more sharp, more bitter and sinister as you walked forward, “See, if you hadn’t of gotten involved in something shady like loan sharks we wouldn’t be drowning in debt and mom wouldn’t have killed herself because of you and both your daughters wouldn’t hate you. I know you drink away all our money in some pathetic attempt to escape from the cold reality that you fucked up your whole life and watched your family slip from your fingers while not even trying to do anything other then put us in further shit,” You closed your eyes as you tilted your head, “But the least you could do, is admit that. You owe us at least that for being a total fuck up.” 

You opened your eyes to find pure rage brewing in your fathers eyes as you smiled once more, this time a false sense of sickly sweet tone to it as you shrugged, “Or you could live in denial, at this point, there really isn’t anything you can do to get anyone back ♡ ” 

You had turned around, planning to tell Nanami that maybe she should go sleep over at a friends house today but you never got the chance, suddenly being slammed into the wall and flecks of spit hitting your face, “I am your fucking father! I deserve respect from you and your worthless sister! Do you know how much I provide for you both?” 

Anger splintered through your veins as you grabbed onto his wrists, his fingers digging into your neck as you squirmed, “Like fucking what!? A shitty broken down apartment that your vacant from because you’re too fucking ashamed of yourself to even look at us sober!?” 

Much like years in the past you weren’t surprised to hear Nanami cry as she rushed out of the room at the sound of you both screaming, “Stop!” She cried out, trying to break you both up, “Stop! Don’t fight! Why…! Why can’t we all just get along!” She sobbed only for your dad to shove her down making her curl up in defeat. 

Alarm bells were triggered in your head at the sight of Nanami on the ground, she had never actually gotten hurt while in your sight and it was triggering something deep inside you as you watched him stalk up to her. Your hands shaking and rage boiling in your mind as you grabbed the closet thing you could find. An empty beer bottle on the table. 

Your vision blurred and you don’t quite remember what happened other than glass shattering over his head and the brute force of you shoving something before blood was stained on your hands. 

How did you end up sitting against the wall? Why was there….blood on your hands…? Your fingers trembled at the metallic sticky substance. All you could hear were Nanami’s sobs and cries as she frantically pushed herself away from the body slumped on the ground. 

“You…! He…!” Nanami’s eyes brimmed with tears as you heard a loud boom making you jump, your eyes darting to the open window where….fireworks, big and bold crashed and crackled before you felt like you were sucked into a vortex making your whole vision black out. 

Your head felt fuzzy and there was ringing in your ears as you groaned, curling up into yourself as the darkness beckoned you closer before you forcibly opened your eyes. You were laying against the hardwood floor. Beams of light streaked through the window and you could see dust particles in the air against the shower of sunshine that streamed in. 

...Wait...Light? The thought had perplexed your head enough to make you push up from the ground, memories pulling into your mind as your breath became shallow, suddenly looking to the side where...you slumped against the wall. It must’ve just been a bad dream….your eyes flickered to Nanami’s curled up figure...a really vivid dream…? Something wrenched in your gut as you rubbed your eyes. What happened? “Nami…!” You whispered, forcing your muscles to move despite their protest as she whined. 

After another moment she reluctantly opened her eyes, flickering around before she suddenly scrambled up, taking a deep breath as if realizing what had happened before, looking towards where your dad once was she frowned, “...I...What…” She seemed just as perplexed as you and if her face was anything to go by, last night had obviously happened, “Is dad…” She looked at the absent place of the floor. 

Leaning against the wall your eyes darted around the room, “I guess so…” You silently felt relief at knowing your dad was still very much alive as you leaned back as you closed your eyes, trying to remember what had happened before everything went dark...oh..! The fireworks...had it been a celebration last night? Your brows pinched together, something felt...off...getting up you opened the door to the apartment walking out. 

“Y/n? Y/n! Hey! Where are you going!” Nanami called out, quickly chasing after you as you frowned, cars were parked odd and there was no one out on the street...as in...at all...Something was very wrong and you couldn’t figure out what. 

“Wow...it..must be a slow day…” Nanami felt a sense of discomfort at the lack of life as you both walked down the side walk, it didn’t just feel like a slow day it felt, apocalyptic. As if humanity just left on it’s own leaving nothing but an empty city behind. Cars were parked on the curb and a few even left in the street.

“No, it’s like everyone vanished...This is really weird.” You wrapped your arms around yourself as you frowned, looking around as you came closer to where typically it would be a booming part of the downtown but it was empty, just as everything before. 

“Well, maybe it’s a national holiday?” Nanami rubbed her head, trying to make sense of the situation just as much as you, surely everyone wasn’t...gone...right? She looked around as she bit her lip, second guessing herself at all the cars that were vacant, “Hey Y/n.” 

You paused as you looked at your sister, curving an eyebrow as she offered a weak smile, “What if everyone got raptured away like they talk about in christanity?” Your expression flattened as she giggled, obviously getting a rise out of you as you crossed your arms. 

Raptured? Where? To heaven? “Wouldn’t it be fire and brimstone then if that was the case?” Nanami pouted at your words as you shrugged, snickering yourself at her expression, the tables now turned as you sighed, “I don’t think there’s anyone left in Tokyo...I mean, it feels like...we’d have seen someone by now...right?” 

“Well…” Nanami frowned once more, a little disturbed at your words as she spoke, “There’s no way everyone could be gone I mean, where would they go? And how could we miss something like that...Maybe the police found us and now we’re under some weird simulation.” 

Chills spilled down your spine as you shoved her making her whine, “Don’t say that! That makes me feel all weird…! I didn’t…!” You cut yourself off, you didn’t what? Murder your own dad in cold blood...you looked down at your hands, they were free of any blood but it still felt like something like sin lingered. Like no matter where you went, it would always be stuck to you.

You didn’t like this, not one bit. Briefly you felt the urge to go hunt down your dad, he was a deadbeat but you would never...you’d never kill him....Right?

“Well…” Nanami hummed her eyes scanning ahead before they jumped to the mall that was up ahead, “Hey…! If nobody is here...maybe we could make use of it! Come on! Let's go!” You yelped at her grabbing your arm before dragging you ahead. Cars were all parked and yet not a single person exited through the mall's entrance. Something just felt off! You wrapped your arms around yourself as you warily looked around the empty mall, “Nanami I really don’t like this!” You looked around, concern bubbling inside you as she ran ahead into the store, digging through the section of clothes as she giggled. 

“Relax! I doubt any of this is real and even so…! Who’s going to stop us!?” She shrugged as she bounced in excitement, “Oh my god! I had dreamed of something like this happening! Now we can do whatever we want! Go wherever we want! Y/n!” She gasped with a smile, “Now we don’t even have to worry about money!” 

“We don’t even know if this is permanent.” You looked around warily, not partaking as she began plucking off the racks, “Regardless of what this is, I don’t like it. I want to go back home, our home. This just doesn’t…” You shook your head, “This just doesn’t feel right.” 

“Well you can feel that way!” Nanami clacked her tongue as she gave a childish smile, “But I’m gonna go through this whole store and get a new wardrobe so feel free to sit on the bench and tell me what you think looks good!” 

Looking away you sighed, unable to pinch the anxious feeling you had away as you sat down reluctantly as Nanami went into the changing room. Well...at least she was smiling and she was happy...With each outfit Nanami tried out and giggled, you giggled with her and maybe things weren’t so bad after all…

“What a perfect day.” Nanami hugged you close as she sighed, yawning as you looked up at the sky in awe, you had seen a single star while living in Tokyo before, but now it was filled with constellations and millions of stars that stretched for miles. You could stare at it for days and days. The sun had just set a little over half an hour ago and you were ready to retire and find something to eat at the apartment. 

You and Nanami had tried going to the food court but much to your dismay everything had been...rotten...soiled and ruined, meaning there was no point in trying to find anything there and you were getting really hungry despite devouring bags of chips you had both got at the convenient store, another thing that stood out to you was that there was no electricity...at all..

Looking back up to the sidewalk something caught your eyes...was that…! Light!? “Hey! Nanami look!” You shook her making her squeak as she looked up ahead, “It’s the hospital! They have electricity there which means there’s other people! Of course! Why didn’t we think to check essential areas!? Come on! Lets go! I wanna figure out what happened.” 

“Alright! It sucks that this is already over but at least I can finally charge my phone, the battery is pretty low.” Nanami nodded in agreement as you both made your way up the road. 

The walk wasn’t too far and you felt excitement fill you at the sight of the hospital all lit up as you walked into the entrance, a frown slowly setting on your lips once more as you walked past the receptionist desk and…! Oh there’s other people! 

You felt relief wash over your as you ran up, there were at least seven other other people here at least! “Hey! Guys oh my god. I thought everyone was gone! What’s going on?” You asked, smiling bright in relief that you and Nanami weren’t the only ones left behind. Was this some kind of evac point or…?

Silence ensued and you slowly began to frown as you felt everyone stare at you as if you were insane, “Um…” You wrapped a hand around your arm, suddenly feeling as if everyone knew something you didn’t, “What’s going on…?” You furrowed your brows as you tilted your head, unsure of why everyone was looking at you like this. 

Somebody looked like they were going to talk to you, a guy relatively around your age but a woman stopped him- his girlfriend maybe? “Stop, the less that know the better chance we have.” She said quietly though you still heard just enough. Fear twisted inside you as you took a cautious step back...The...the less you knew? 

“Wow, you guys are assholes,” A girl suddenly whistled out, she was sitting in a waiting chair, a cowboy hat on her head paired with distressed jeans and...a bikini top? Strange but you’d roll with it if it meant getting answers. She stood up as she offered a smile, “Akari, nice to meet ya’. You folk must be new to the Borderlands huh?” She jutted her bottom lip a little as you frowned. 

“Um I’m Y/n and this is my sister Nanami...?” You introduced yourself despite feeling confused as you raised a brow, “Borderlands…?” You echoed, what was that supposed to be? Other than Tokyo?

Akari gave a nod as she let out a brief chuckle, as if amused by your confusion but you sensed she had no real ill will unlike....your eyes checked to the couple that stood off in the corner on their own, “That’s what they call it here,” She nodded in affirmation as your eyes darted back to her in confusion, “To be frank with ya’, I don’t have a damn clue what's going on. Nobody does. But ever since you crossed the threshold there’s no going back, so I’ll be brief. We’re all considered outsiders here and we participate in games at venues such as this to extend our stay.”

Nanami and you looked at one another confused as Akari waved you over to the table in front of a TV, “Here, you’ll wanna put these on, it’s for the game.” She explained as you carefully picked up the metal bracelet, something about it felt ominous as you reluctantly put it on, jumping at the way it latched together and there was no getting it off now, “Word of advice, just don’t panic and you probably won’t die.” 

“What?!” You screeched as Akari smacked your back, panic evident in your voice as you turned around to face her making her laugh again, this girl was insane! She had to be! “You’re…! You’re joking!” 

Akari wrinkled her nose as she tilted her head, “Ah shit, I wish I was- Oh…! There’s the last player!” Just on que everyone turned to look at who had arrived, someone heaving breaths with their hands on their knees as if they had sprinted. You were mildly worried at why he seemed so scared but you had a feeling that was the least of your problems right now.

“Y/n what’s going on…?” Nanami frightened grabbed your arm as she hid a little behind you due to all these immensing strangers that looked like they were ready to feed you to the sharks, literally. 

The guy walked past you both as he put on his bracelet, your eyes sharp as you watched it latch together automatically, your gaze jumping to everyone's wrists to notice you were all now wearing one. The TV suddenly lit up. 

Game 

You squinted your eyes a little at the sight of the screen, just what were you about to unwillingly participate in…?

Difficulty: 5♣

“The game you will be participating in is, Monster under the bed.”

A playing card? Monster under the bed? Your brows furrowed as you looked at Nanami who shrugged a little despite her concerned expression, looking just as confused as you. You could’ve made a joke out of this, surely it would’ve been easier. Maybe everyone would bust out laughing and you’d be at the end of a poor joke but...somehow you felt that wasn’t the case. Thus paying very close attention to whatever was on this screen, 

“Everyone will be sectioned off into pairs by the number chosen on your bracelet, when the doors to the ward open you will have three rounds ten minutes each to figure out who is the monster under the bed that must be returned to its own, once the ten minutes is up you must hide before you are found. If the selected pair that is the monster is chosen correctly it’s a Game Clear.  If the monster is not found by the end of the third round or if the pair fails to hide it’s a Game Over.” 

Rules: 

Once the doors are open you and your partner must find a hiding spot by the time limit

Both partners must be hidden. If one is exposed to the monster it’s a Game Over for both partners

There will be an X marked on the ground to place the monster of your guess onto. 

You will have three rounds of ten minutes each to find the monster.

Any attempt to remove bracelets results in a Game Over

If the monster is not found by the third round a Game Over.

The only Game Clear condition required is for the monster to be returned by the third round.

What…

What!? 

“Now the game will commence, you have five minutes to figure out who you have been paired up with before the doors open.”

Your mind was blanking as you watched everyone look down at their bracelet, hurriedly you lifted your arm as your mind blanked 2 looking back at Nanami her lips were already quivering as she sniffled lifting her arm in defeat as your lips dropped open, 5.

“Hey! Guess you’re my partner!” Akari grinned as she wrapped an arm around Nanami who sniffled, “Oh…” She looked between you both, “Oh! Oh don’t worry! We’re not the monster so I’ll make sure your sister lives! You should go find your partner.” 

Your hands trembled unsure of what to do before you went to hug Nanami, “Whatever happens just stay calm okay! I need to go find my partner now!” You whispered, kissing her cheek as she sniffled while nodding. 

Everybody was shuffling around looking for their partner now, you passed by a few people, 4, 1, 3...did you even have a partner…? You scanned around, your throat tightening a little in panic, there had to be a mistake! There were only 8 people surrounding you- you yelped at the tight grip that suddenly held your arm forcing you to turn around to be met with a white hooded figure, a lollipop handle hanging and earbuds in before sighing, “So it appears I’m stuck with someone useless.” The man concluded as he stood up making you back away a little as your lips parted somewhat indignantly. 

How...how rude! You looked up, unable to fully make out his face but you could tell you didn’t like him one bit, “I’ll…! First of all I’m not useless! I’m just trying to understand what's going on! This is insane! We aren’t actually going to die from this, are we!?” Pushing his hood down you were immediately met with a snide gaze and cat eyes that leered at you like you were nothing more then dirt beneath his feet, long blonde hair pushed behind his shoulders and his bangs hanging low, suddenly a viscous side smile appeared on his lips, “Apparently so, otherwise I wouldn’t have watched half my last game get their brains blown out and the other half hung.” 

You reeled a little away from the blonde, your face dropped in semi horror, unsure if this was just a sick joke or he was serious. You searched his face a thousand times over, but for the first time in your life, you couldn’t figure out what his goal was. You couldn’t figure out anything about him, except he was exceptionally cold, “Well I don’t suppose I have much choice to doubt you,” He said with an annoying sing song tone as he rattled his wrist that showed the bracelet with a matching 2 on it, “My name is Chishiya, just stay out of my way and we’ll both live.” 

How arrogant! You scoffed as he walked past you, not the least bit bothered at your offense as you whipped around, glaring at his back. How come out of everyone you got stuck with the most…! Pompous! Arrogant! Ugh! You crossed your arms as you followed behind him, stilling secretly sending daggers into his back with your eyes as everyone shuffled into the ward. 

Hospital beds were scattered around the room, a few closets and one large vent at the bottom right corner of the room ahead. 

“Wait, what is this?” The first person to speak was a fair thin older gentleman, he appeared friendly as he observed the room around him, everyone looked around in confusion as you noticed what he meant. 

Any possible hiding spot was covered by either sheets of metal or locked tight...How were any of you supposed to hide if…!? The rules mentioned nothing about solving puzzles to gain access to a hiding spot!

“Forget that,” Another man said with a sneer he was broad and a bit older, well into his late twenties at least, perhaps a gym coach? Or maybe a wrestler of some sort? He looked like he could break you and nearly every other person in this room like a twig, “We need to figure out who’s the monster. “ He cracked his knuckles as you leered a little away and nobody spoke for a second. 

Of course, who would out themselves as the monster, more importantly, how does one even know they’re the monster? You could immediately feel tension rise as the previous, more patient man spoke, a little more collected, “How about we just check one another's’ watches! If anywhere it would show us on that! One pair should work on solving these puzzles here so everyone has a place to hide” 

“Unless the monster is among us and it sabotages us so we all die by the time limit.” The girlfriend crossed her arms as she darted her eyes around. Truthfully you didn’t know what to believe, the wording on the soundbox was rather confusing as to just what were you looking for. Was the monster supposed to be in the group or it’s own entity?

“If that were the case it would’ve showed up on our watches, which it didn’t. So that won’t work.” Chishiya spoke matter of fact, his tone cool as his eyes gazed across the room before he walked away from the group inspecting various hiding spots granted you didn’t think he was about to help anyone but himself, if anything you were at least lucky that him securing a hiding spot meant it was one for you as well. 

You looked at everyone in confusion, some arguing while others scattered to look for a hiding spot as the clock ticked down. You breathed in relief at the sight of Nanami and Akari both going for a bed to hide under. Your gaze finally found Chishiya’s form before following him, unsure of what you were supposed to do, if anything outside trying to figure out just what the monster even was. 

You glanced up at the digital clock that stood above the entrance you had just come in from, it was already a minute in before you searched the floor where you found a red X in the center of the room, that must’ve been the...what? Offering spot? You cringed a little at the idea. Looking forward you peered behind Chishiya’s shoulder deciding to not think about that, it seemed the metal sheet that had wrapped around the bed and was sealed to the ground was locked by some sort of metal device…? Contraption? Lock?

“Isn’t hiding under a bed a bit obvious…?” You frowned as you crossed your arms, unsure as you looked behind your shoulder once more to where accusations were already being thrown in the group. 

“The vent is a decoy to make you waste time, I already checked,” Chishiya replied, his fingers nimble as they rattled the metal, “And even if someone were to accomplish it in the time limit it’s the most obvious spot the monster would first check. Next would be the closet given it’s at eye level and the first thing one is drawn too when they walk into a room.” 

Your lips parted a little in surprise at his assessment...obviously he wasn’t just overconfident, “And why this spot?” If he had really thought about all this in less than a minute then...did he have a reason for this spot? You now found yourself, slightly less annoyed and a little more curious as to what was going on in his mind. 

“If the monster were to check a bed it would be after his eyes are drawn to the closet. Next in that line of sight would be the vent directly across it, which would be his next place to look if not his first and vice versa. The beds are all staggered throughout the room making them less conspicuous compared to the other hiding places, the bed on the far end of the room would be no good.” 

Your brows furrowed in curiosity at his assessment as you watched Chishiya blow a piece of hair from his face, wiggling out one piece of the knotted metal, “It’s too far from the entrance where as the one in the middle is by average the one most people would start with, where as the first? It’s almost too soon in the start to look there thus making it the safest.” 

“It’s them! They’re over there conspiring!” You both twisted around to watch the broad man point an accusing finger at you both as your eyes darted from him to the clock on the wall, which read at six minutes. A few other pairs, relievingly so was your sister had started working on a hiding spot while a few others stood around and argued. 

Your face coiled a little as you replied, not appreciating the accusation to such a baseless accusation, did they not realize the longer they argued the less time they had to secure a hiding spot? “Someone who’s terrible at playing the minority would often be the first to point fingers. There’s only six minutes left before the first round is over and we need to hide. But if you want to talk about this then sure,” 

You stepped closer as you crossed your arms, scanning over him before continuing, “Let’s talk about the chances of you being the monster, ever since you first came in you’ve been all twitchy and acting like something is wrong. Even when we first got paired up, you seemed a little panicked. Anyways,” You turned around as you spoke, “How do we know one pair is a monster and not one single person?” 

“Eh,” Akari sat on the bed that her and Nanami chose as Nanami fumbled to work out the puzzle, she had always been good at those! You felt assured as your heart beat frantically at the idea of them not being able to get a hiding spot in time, “Let’s all calm down,” She gave an awkward laugh, “This isn’t a hearts game, we shouldn’t divide our trust. This is a team building after all which means this game should be making us work together, the last thing we need to do is throw that away on our own accord.” 

“...Team building?” You frowned as you murmured having not been aware that this was some sort of game category...Hearts? Clubs? The memory of the playing card flashing on the screen appeared in your mind again, right...was that to stand for some kind of game genre? If Clubs stood for team building then...there should be no reason that the monster is any of you. Why would they even suggest that to begin with?

Then...what was the monster? 

“One minute remaining.”

The lights suddenly began flickering, “Got it.” Chishiya yanked the last piece of metal undone as he pulled the sheet of metal off, everyone was now scrambling and the few who had not done their puzzle were now panicking. Getting down you crawled under the bed, your back flat to the ground as you inhaled sharply as you noticed the lights beginning to dim, “This is...uncomfortable.” You mumbled, trying to ignore being pressed shoulder to shoulder with a man you didn’t even know besides him having a god complex, “We should’ve went with the vent.” 

“By all means, if you want to try and get yourself killed already. Go for it.” You turned to look at him, dark endless cat eyes meeting you as you harshly glared at him, why was he so condescending!? 

You were about to snap back something before you realized it was completely dark and the door slammed open causing you to jump. Was your heart always this loud? You could see the heavy boots step against the ground making you unsteadily inhale, swallowing as you closed your eyes. You could only place your trust that Chishiya hadn’t picked a horrible spot. 

More importantly your mind was plagued with worry for your sister, you had been so caught up you hadn’t even tried to help her yet...did she even…! You heard a sudden loud scream from two people causing you to stiffen as you looked up at the bed frame lined with wooden planks. You could only cower back down at blood suddenly painting the floor.

Your stomach suddenly churned as you covered your mouth. So he wasn’t lying. Chishiya however looked just as nonpulsed as he did when he first told you himself, his eyes blankly staring up at the bed frame as if this was just a regular game of hide and seek as people screamed as they were torn apart. 

Or that’s at least what you assumed it was. 

After an agonizing few minutes the doors finally closed and the lights flickered back on making you breath in relief as you waited a moment, could you even bear to face what was waiting on the floor? You winced a little before something caught your eye. What was with all this extra wood stuck in the frame? 

Chishiya had already gotten out from under the bed and before you suddenly heard a few girls scream, your sister among them making you puff and breath as you scrambled from beneath the bed.

Standing up your mouth agape at the horrid sight of the female and the broad male that had been too focused on accusing others, they didn’t have...enough time...it looked like they had been completely mutilated, blood pouring on the floor and the smell made you want to gag as you looked away. 

“Well, now what do we do.” Akari scratched her head, also not looking phased that two people had just been brutally killed. Your eyes stayed placed on the bodies before they slowly trailed to your hands, the memory of blood staining them still fresh in your mind. 

“Well we have to figure out where the monster is?” The girlfriend of the couple spoke up, she looked around somewhat suspiciously, “But I’m not sure where we could find it? Maybe it has to do with the bracelets? Maybe there’s a clue hidden.” 

“Oh what about in the cabinets?” The collected man from before offered as he went to search the cabinets, your frown furthered as you glanced around. Everyone was now getting along, still on edge but along at least. 

Chishiya only leaned against the wall, his hands in his pocket as he rolled the lollipop in his mouth, his gaze the same steely one it was before as if he had done his job in securing his temporary salvation and was now done. 

Or maybe he just didn’t know what to do? It was obvious his strength didn’t lie in teamwork, clearly. But then again, you weren’t sure what was going on, you couldn’t get a read on him. Crossing your arms you stayed beside him, your eyes briefly washing over your sister who was working Akari to dig through a desk together. 

“Cabinets and drawers are too obvious.” 

Chishiya’s eyes flickered to your figure, his expression just as cold if not...a little smug maybe? He said nothing in return as you continued, “If we’re looking for a monster, it’s obvious it’s a metaphor for something. Inanimate most likely,” Your eyes flickered around the room, inhaling sharply, why did it feel like the answer was right in front of you? 

Think…! You glanced at the clock, only six minutes left. The rounds were really short…! “It’d be something small and inconspicuous, something that’s in plain sight….but easy to miss...and the game said it was a pair which means there’s more than likely two.” 

“Three,” You glanced at Chishiya as he spoke, pulling the lollipop from his mouth, that permanent smug look on his face as he answered, “Two is what they want you to think and if you spend a round searching for each like they hope it’s game over by three.” 

You rubbed your neck as you frowned, “It’s already the second round and we haven’t even found one…” You glanced around before you suddenly perked up, “Wait…!” Getting back down on the floor you laid on your back as you pushed yourself under the bed, “Chishiya! Help me get this thing out!” 

Within a moment the blonde appeared as well, his eye sharp and keen as they noticed straight away what you were tugging at, “You think this is the monster?” 

You looked at him as you raised a brow, “We have less than four minutes left on our second round, you have a better idea?” Chishiya said no more but helped regardless, successfully with the both of you maneuvering it around from beneath the wooden boards you managed to get it out. 

Holding it up you looked at it, “It’s a poppet doll.” You turned to face him as you smiled in accomplishment, “They’re typically used as curses to place upon people in folklore. If anything is a monster, this would be it.” 

Excited at your first victory you pulled out from beneath the bed as you waved it up, “Hey guys! We need to start looking for something similar to this! If not a replica.” Everyone huddled around you examining the doll before the microphone sounded, “One minute remaining.”

Everyone had immediately scrambled back to their hiding place as you ran to the red X, placing the poppet on it, that's the reason that had to be there right!? You’d just have to see, hurriedly you ran back to your spot under the bed. Making it just in time as the lights flickered off. 

The door slamming open once more as you slowly inhaled, it had to work right? If not...then you were at a loss for what to search for and you were utterly screwed. 

The boots stomped against the floor past the bed as you closed your eyes, unable to calm yourself. After a moment you heard a screech and something rip open before screams followed making you jump. Chishiya’s eyes were on the feet that stood by the closet that had been obviously ripped open. 

You heard the sound of something wet and a gurgle before a body slumped to the floor and you could hear begging before something got snapped in half causing you to close your eyes once more...Did you make it angry!? Was that not it? Fuck. You had never felt this stressed before as it roamed around, passing in front of your bed as you tensed.

Was this your last moment alive? Truly? 

Much to your relief, the door closed once more before the lights followed, flickering on, relaxing a little you sighed as you reluctantly got out from underneath the bed with Chishiya to see what had happened. Much to your horror it was the man who had been so kind this whole game and his partner. 

The monster didn’t check anywhere in the first round, yet he did this round? You tried to block out the bodies slumped in the corner as you glanced at the red X, the poppet doll gone. 

“Why- why were they killed!” Nanami’s eyes began to water as she grabbed her head, “This makes no sense!” 

“If it accepts the doll that means we only need two more. What happened to them is irrelevant.” Chishiya stuffed his hands back into his pocket as you glared at him sideways, not appreciating his careless tone. You could deal with it, but you didn’t want your sister dragged into it. 

Grabbing your chin you thought about it for a moment, “Well...the game said to return the monster to its own and…” You glance down at the X, was there some kind of unsaid rule that if you didn’t get all three of them on the first try that it would start hunting down players? “How would a mother feel if they only returned one of its children?” 

“This thing doesn’t have feelings,” The girlfriend of the partners replied coldly, her eyes like steel of her own as she clung to her boyfriend, “It’s as he said,” She waved to Chishiya, “It doesn’t matter, we’ll be like them if we don’t figure this out.” 

You glanced around the room, “Tell me this, if it doesn’t matter, then why did they give us all these different hiding spots?” Everyone was silent, all eyes on you as if your question didn’t make any sense, your eyes flickered to the clock that was nearing eight minutes, you didn’t have time to monologue, “No think about it. The monster never intended to look for us- that was never stated in the rules. So why did they give us all of these choices if we only needed one per pair? My point being, if we found one poppet in our hiding spot then...You get where I’m going with this? Chishiya.” 

He glanced up at you acknowledgement as you curved a brow, your lips threatening to tug into a smile as you tilted your head, “How confident are you in solving that vent?” 

He glanced back down and for the first time, you watch a cocky wide smirk twist onto his lips, “You’re lucky to have someone as smart as me here to be able to open it.” You tucked your tongue into your cheek as in annoyance as he sauntered over to the vent already getting to work, “As for everyone else, we need to open up as many of these as possible to find the other two.” 

Everyone immediately scrambled to get to work, with only seven minutes on the clock this was...going to be difficult. First Nanami and Akari searched all the opened spots as you worked on another bed. Rubbing your head as muttered, “Shit...I never was good with puzzles.” You awkwardly hung your head in defeat temporarily, briefly letting your eyes shift to Chishiya who was fiddling with several locks, his gaze sharp and you couldn’t even imagine all the calculations going on in his mind. You were somewhat envious of what it would be like to be that perceptive to anything adhering to logic and solution. 

“Aha! Found one!” Akari yanked the poppet from the top of the closest as Nanami covered her mouth, looking like she was gonna throw up being so close to so many dead bodies. You ignored the grisly sight at the second victory of the poppet doll. Akari quickly placed it on the X as you began to work on the puzzle once more, looking up at the clock. Oh no...Oh no there was only three minutes left!

“Chishiya! Hows that puzzle coming along.” You called out, trying not to sound alarmed but you could see the clear cut annoyance on his face as he continued working through the locks, “If you’d like to help while struggling on a novice lock feel free.” He replied condescendingly, not appreciating the pressure. 

You rolled your eyes with huff as you finally managed to get it undone, feeling triumphant as you searched under the bed but there was no luck, “There’s nothing here!”

“Or here!” 

Several people called out as well as you rubbed your head, standing up, “If the only other place that hasn’t been searched is the vent then maybe there’s only two? It did say a pair.” You felt a lump of anxiety well in your chest at the sight of the clock ticking close to a minute and half. 

“Should we really take the risk?” The boyfriend asked as he rubbed his neck, concern on his face as he looked around, “If we’re wrong then we’ll all…” 

You hadn’t even thought of that…

“...! Hey.” You turned to Chishiya who seemed to be trying to get your attention making you immediately come over, if he was asking for you it’d have to be for something important given there was nearly less then two minute on the clock, “Hold this right here.” He immediately pushed your hand onto the lock right where he wanted it, “This is a two handle mechanism meaning that there needs to be two people unlocking it. Push down and out at the same time.”

“Hide! Everyone needs to hide now!”

The lights were beginning to flicker as everyone scrambled to hide, stress evidently put on your shoulders now more than ever. You could only hope he was right with your life on the line, “Now!” You pushed down on your side, the lock sliding as you pulled out, pulling a piece of metal holding up the lock directly out as Chishiya did the same with his side. 

The lock fell off as well as the metal of the gate of the vent, you immediately with no hesitation leaned inside it was dark and hard to make it out anything besides the steep drop off. So he was right, this was a waste of time for a hiding place. 

Looking down you caught sight of wood before laughing in relief, “It’s here! Wait shit! Chishiya! It’s too far down in the vent, you’re gonna have to lower me down to reach it. Time?” 

“Forty five seconds.” You felt unfamiliar hands on your hips lifting you up as you were lowered down, “We have time.” 

You squinted trying to see as you reached down, “Lower me further! I’m not quite in reach,” Your muscles began to ache in your shoulder as you reached harder, growling in frustration, “Time!?” You were lowered a little further, the wooden poppet brushing against your fingers. 

“Thirty seconds! Could you go a little faster?” 

“Could you lower me a little quicker- Ah! Hey did you almost let go!?” You snarled back, grabbing the poppet doll, giving a good yank as it lodged in between the crevice it was in, “Get me back up! I got it. Time!” 

“Twenty seconds.” Chishiya called back, pulling you up as you gasped, pain from the metal jabbing into your stomach evident as you were met with a darkening room. Setting your feet firmly on the floor your eyes flew to the flock fifteen seconds and your spot was all the way across the room….! 

“Where are we supposed to hide!? We can’t get all the way there in time!” You hissed out running to the X as you dropped the poppet down. The lights shut off as the final five seconds counted down and before you could do anything you were shoved to the floor as you squeaked. Your body throbbing in pain and your mouth immediately covered as you were met with the coverage of a bed but neither one of you were bold enough to try and scramble beneath it as the doors slammed open. 

Fuck.

Your whole body was tense as your eyes squeezed shut, you were just a little ahead of the X here, if this is all the poppet dolls...they’d have no reason to go further into the room...unless...Your hand squeezed tight around the wrist of the hand that covered your mouth as you tried to calm yourself at the loud thudded footsteps. 

It was quiet for a moment before you heard more walking before the doors closed. 

“Game Cleared”

The lights turned on as you fell limp against the side of the bed, Chishiya’s hand removed from mouth as you pushed your hair from your face, closing your eyes as you breathed in relief, “Holy shit.” Was all you could mutter to yourself, you had never been more grateful to breathe air in your whole life. 

“I guess you weren’t that useless after all huh.” Chishiya clacked his tongue as you turned your head to look at him, raising your brows as your face contorted into something between insult and amusement. 

You’ve only known this man for a half an hour and yet...something about his words, if you dug down deep past that smug expression of his, was this a compliment? Looking away you pressed your tongue into your cheek, trying to keep from smiling, “Yeah, and you’re still conceited and arrogant but, I guess you have a good reason to be.” You glanced back at him again but you could hardly hold his gaze, something in that brief moment was electrified between you both as you laughed somewhat sheepishly, closing your eyes as you looked away once more. 

What the fuck was even wrong with you? If this was back before today you would’ve totally kicked this guy in the balls and went about your day.

“Y/n!” You straightened up at the sound of Nanami’s voice, your expression brightening as you stood up, quickly running to her as you hugged her tight, “I can’t believe that just happened…” She whispered to you as she pressed her face into your neck. You couldn’t either but, you were thankful you had survived this game. Whatever it was. 

“Come on, let's get out of this room.” You tugged on her arm, no longer wanting to be in this death room despite knowing it was all over. Pulling her out you paused at the sight of the TV and a...register…? You bracelet unlocked as you took it off, tossing it on the table as you tilted your head. 

“Congratulations Game ''Clear ``.''

“...Now issuing visas to those who survived the game…?” You furrowed your brows as you glanced at Nanami who rubbed her head in confusion. You grabbed the receipt as you looked it over with a frown before picking up the 5 of clubs playing card along with it. Odd. 

“It’s how many days you’re allowed to stay now! Almost a whole week, that's a good score for a first game!” Akari called out as she patted your back making you jump a little. 

Almost a whole week…”Until we have to play again to...continue our stay?” You raised a brow, deciding not to ask what happens if you refused. While you had many questions, you had a feeling you knew the answer to that one. 

A part of you couldn’t even believe this had happened, or was it all still a dream. 

“Hey…! Sorry for all of that in there,” You turned to see...oh…! It was the boyfriend of the partner, the gifrlfriend stayed behind looking brooding, “I’m Ryu and that’s my girlfriend Hiroko I was...ah…” He faltered a little, rubbing the back of his neck as his gaze flittered to his girlfriend who was glaring him down, “You should stop by the Beach- I...I think you guys would make good additions! Bye!” He hurried not even finishing his original sentence before scurrying off making you furrow your brows at what he even meant. 

“The hell?” Akari raised a brow as she watched the guy run off, “Seems to me he wanted to chat more…guess we know who's really pulling balls in that relationship.” 

Nanami suddenly snickered, covering her mouth as she giggled, “Hey Akari! Why don’t we stay together! We did really well in the game together!” 

“Awh shit, if you guys really want me too!” Akari offered a quirky smile as you laughed, you had no problems with someone staying behind with you. Looking past Akari your smile faded a little at the sight of a white hoodie exiting the entrance. 

“Hey- I’ll be right back!” You pushed past the both of them who paid you no mind as you pushed out of the exit and down the stone steps, not sure why your feet were making you chase after such an egotistical man but…!

“Chishiya!” You called out, making the man pause, he turned around, pulling the earbuds out as he glanced up from his hoodie, raising his brows in acknowledgement, “Um…” Why did you even chase after him…? You stepped down the last step as you wrapped your arms around yourself. 

It was silent for a moment as you berated yourself internally for why you seemed so speechless all of a sudden. Chishiya however didn’t seem to mind, his eyes absent now as he stared up at the hospital, “I used to do my clinical rotations here.” 

You were broken out of your silent thrashing of internal humiliation as you raised your brows, lips parting in curiosity as you asked, “You were a doctor?” 

“No,” Chishiya snorted, that amused calico look of his on his face once more as he looked down at you, “I was a medical student. Training to be a doctor but that obviously didn’t happen…” His lips curved into a frown, his eyes cold once more as they looked back up at the building, “I came here tonight to see if anyone I knew would be here.” 

“Oh…” You looked away, feeling somewhat awkward and unsure of how to reply to him as silence took over once more beside the occasional rustling of the wind in the tree’s, the urge to speak overtaking you to the point you couldn't resist, “Chishiya...I…” You looked away, feeling somewhat bashful, “We...made a really good team back there.” You forced yourself to look up at him as you offered a bright yet subtly shy smile, “If you want...you could stay with us…?” 

Chishiya pulled the lollipop stick from his mouth, letting it drop to the ground as he spoke, “No thanks.” You turned to him in surprise as you frowned a little, you shouldn’t have expected anything less…

“Oh...I understand.” You offered a weak smile as he turned his back on you and began to walk once more, “I just have one more question,” You called out causing him to pause, “...Do you by any chance know about a place called the Beach?”

Note: Whew...! As a lurker in the Alice in borderland fandom I saw a lot of people complaining about the lack of Chishiya fics so I decided to volunteer myself and take on for the team to write a series for this little blonde fucker so PLEASE let me know your thoughts and I hope you enjoy!! Also

[shihalyfie]

The paradox of the relationship between Takeru and Hikari

The issue of the relationship between Takeru and Hikari has been a question of interest since the series first aired, and especially after 02, which prominently depicted them constantly hanging out together and clearly having some kind of relation to each other...and yet, strangely, very rarely having a real heart-to-heart or even talking to each other much at all. The constant juxtapositions of them standing next to each other all of the time in both the series and in external media, combined with the fact they’re so associated with each other in terms of being Adventure returnees and with Digimon partners with similar evolutions, makes one almost mentally geared to associate them with each other, and yet we never really get to hear what they think about each other in the entirety of Adventure or 02′s running.

Part of this is because Takeru and Hikari are the two most “difficult to read” characters in the 02 team -- Hikari because she compulsively suppresses any selfish or negative feeling she has, and Takeru because he covers up his problems with a smile and pretends everything is okay, until it’s not. And, as it turns out, that “gap in communication” exists between the two of them as well; in the web of 02′s relationships, it’s a strange mix between being “comfortable around” each other, and yet not truly knowing each other...

Disclaimer before we continue: With some exceptions related to unambiguous canon depictions, I try to write my meta about relationships between characters in such a way that both shipping readings and non-shipping readings are possible in most cases, and my main reason for this is that I very strongly believe that even if you do ship the pair in question, it’s rather reductive (and not very fun) to stop an analysis at “anyway it’s because they’re in love” or something and not go any further. If you don’t care for Takeru/Hikari as a ship, I hope you can take this analysis as-is, and if you do happen to ship it, I hope you can take my analysis of the gaps in their relationship as “things they would have to consider and overcome for such a relationship to be possible” (i.e. a possible fanfic prompt?) and not me trying to dismiss the ship as inherently possible or impossible.

A second disclaimer: A lot of the important key points below are heavily dependent on how they were presented in the Japanese version of 02, especially in regards to the key 02 episode 13. The American English dub took a very large number of liberties with a lot of the below aspects, so if you are reading this with only that version as a reference, please be aware that there may be significant differences for the sake of avoiding confusion.

Hikari didn’t get to spend much of the series with the rest of the Adventure group, having been a “latecomer”, but once she enters, it’s rather interesting how much Takeru doesn’t socialize much with her. Granted, part of this was because of the circumstances -- there was a lot to be done, and Hikari had a cold relapse not long after they’d entered the Digital World -- but you’d really think Takeru would be interested in at least socializing with someone who’s actually his age, and yet we don’t get any real depiction of doing so outside of discussing important matters. It’s not to say that they never had any kind of conversation offscreen, but by the time we get to the end of Adventure, we have zero scope of what they actually think of each other.

By the time we get to 02, it turns out that this is probably by design.

First of all, we very quickly learn that the two of them did not keep up between Adventure and 02 -- they’re meeting each other again for the first time in a long time, and the last time they did meet was when they were much younger (probably their last meeting being the one depicted in the flashback in 02 episode 27). This is understandable considering that, up until the beginning of 02, Takeru lived in Sangenjaya and not Odaiba, meaning that it wasn’t like they’d have opportunities to meet up much in real life either, but the point is that this is how little contact and how little involvement they’d had in each other’s lives up until this point.

So, once the plot of 02 kicks off and the two of them become active as Chosen Children again, the two of them end up hanging out a lot. So much that Daisuke starts accusing them of having something between them. And the two of them never say anything to really firmly deny him, which of course only makes him more confused and upset, until 02 episode 17, when the concrete connection between them is established to the rest of the 02 team, and it’s properly disclosed that they were part of a whole adventure back in 1999 together.

Takeru knew Hikari before, and she’s still the one he knows the best out of this team, and on Hikari’s part, Takeru understands the nature of “being a Chosen Child” in ways the others don’t, and both of them had that formative experience that the others don’t understand. But 02 is a series that’s not only about relationships, but also about the differing nature of relationships -- it’s true that, having known each other well beforehand and also being all-around decent people, the two of them would certainly have an extra level of investment in each other’s welfare, but...

In 02 episode 13, we learn that as much as Takeru knows Hikari, he doesn’t really know her, and on Hikari’s part, she’s still incapable of communicating the extent of her thoughts so that he can.

The conversation between Takeru and Hikari behind the school in this episode is the first time we get to really see an opportunity for the two of them to bare their actual emotions, but nothing that can be called a "conversation" is had between them. Hikari is still plagued by a compulsive desire to not be a burden to others, including the idea of “burdening” her brother, and, when Takeru finally prompts her on what’s going on, she says nothing that properly clarifies what she’s going through, nothing but a cryptic mention of the “sea”, a statement that she "might be going away”, and a reference to her brother having always protected her beforehand. Takeru takes it as a sign that Hikari’s become overly dependent on Taichi, and snaps at her angrily -- a persistent symptom of him being unable to regulate his emotions properly -- and, unable to handle it, runs off awkwardly, leaving her alone to eventually be taken away. Later in the episode, Takeru reflects that he’d basically just doomed Hikari by his own actions, and with his last words to her having been something awful.

Ultimately, some degree of progress is made in that Hikari realizes that Takeru reaching out to her earlier makes him someone she should be reaching out to for help -- in the end, nobody in the 02 group had yet been able to reach out to her emotionally because of how closed-in she was, and the only people she truly trusted with her feelings up until that point were Taichi and Tailmon. So in other words, Takeru is another person she can finally “trust” with her feelings and welfare. But while Takeru is finally able to connect to her in some sense with this, when the two finally close off the episode and return to the real world, everything ends in complete silence. They do not say a single word to each other. They’re getting by with a sense of “inherent trust”, and their disconnect was resolved with that alone this time, but this problem hasn’t been fully solved yet and will be rearing its ugly head again by the time we get around to the Jogress arcs.

And so the two of them return back to their “comfortable with each other” status quo -- but, again, 02 is a series that portrays relationships in a very multi-layered and multifaceted form, and being comfortable around someone still doesn’t necessarily merit emotional closeness (for instance, Ken was pretty clearly indicated as being “comfortable” and straightforward in terms of working with Miyako in 02 episodes 25 and 33, but there’s no doubt that Daisuke’s the one who was more properly addressing the things he emotionally needed most at the time, which could arguably be said to be exactly why Ken was having a hard time adjusting to him at first). We see them “go off together” to do...completely mundane and practical things, like discussing why they’re still able to come to the Digital World in 02 episode 22, or trying to have their Digimon partners evolve on their own in 02 episode 24 -- they’re not having any kind of emotional heart-to-heart, they’re just there.

When you look at the wider picture, you can see that Hikari and Takeru’s relative comfort around each other at this point is largely because they’re still not comfortable being alone with anyone else yet. So far, they kind of had a bonding (not really bonding) session back in 02 episode 13, and they hadn’t had anything of the sort with anyone else, and they’re still the only people who understand certain things relevant to the adventure in 1999 that the others don’t. They’re both still ridiculously closed-in and guarded, and not trusting anyone with their feelings -- they can’t even trust each other with their feelings -- so they’re getting by on hanging out with each other because it’s either that or go off to be completely alone. As the two most “emotionally isolated” people in this group, there’s a wall between them and the others, and that wall is only slightly thinner between each other -- and you can even imagine that they’re willing to hang out with each other because they won’t be bothering that wall and causing intimidation.

And by the time we roll around to 02 episode 31, we learn that, this whole time, nothing has improved. Takeru sees that something is going on with Hikari, but does and says nothing -- perhaps because he’s not sure what to say, perhaps because he’s afraid of lashing out at her again, whatever it is -- but he can’t and won’t speak to her nor address her feelings.

In the end, the person who does establish that ability to “communicate” with Hikari is not Takeru but Miyako -- an aggressive, in-your-face, overly honest person who gets straight to the point and refuses to hold back, whose messy personality causes Hikari to become assertive in handling her and allows Hikari to finally vocalize one of her truly sensitive feelings, and who’s able to use her immense emotional sensitivity to identify what Hikari needs and break through to her.

But just because Miyako ended up being the person Hikari needs to move on past this issue does not mean Takeru’s role wasn’t important, nor that Miyako coming into Hikari’s life means that all of her relationships are inferior or pointless -- rather, a recurring element of 02′s portrayal of relationships is that everything has a ripple effect, and that “opening up” one person’s heart allows them to open up to others as well (see how Daisuke reaching out to Ken eventually helped him reach out to the others in the group, how even in this very same episode Miyako expresses that this experience helped her understand Ken better as well, how Daisuke’s experiences end up giving him a healthier relationship with the rest of the group, how Iori and Takeru’s Jogress ordeal helps them both become better at reaching out to Ken...). Unlike how they’d both closed off 02 episode 13, Hikari and Takeru end this one by talking -- with Hikari’s newfound confidence from her dealings with Miyako allowing her to more openly speak what she’s thinking with Takeru.

One thing you might notice is that after 02 episode 31, Takeru and Hikari are never seen going off on their own together for the rest of the series -- because, again, their “latching” onto hanging out with each other at the exclusion of anyone else was because they were that isolated from everyone else, but not anymore! Hikari starts to hang out more with Miyako as the two of them become more comfortable hanging out after the events of said episode; after all, Miyako had come to understand the real reason why Hikari “keeps so much inside” and that she needs to actively reach out to her, and Hikari is able to properly trust Miyako with her feelings, meaning that now that Hikari is starting to open up, she doesn’t need to fall back on her “truce” with Takeru to get by. Which ends up leaving Takeru rather alone for the following set of episodes. Well, seemingly alone, but...

...he’s not truly alone, because this is also where Iori realizes that there’s a lot more going on with Takeru and that he needs to make a proactive effort to understand him, and it doesn’t take long for Takeru to realize what Iori’s doing (especially when Yamato tips him off that Iori asked about him in 02 episode 35). Once again, very much unlike Hikari, Iori is straightforward and to-the-point, and is much better at cutting through all of the complicated layers Takeru puts up in an attempt to cover up his emotions.

The rest of the series has them in significantly more emotionally tense situations than before, and while the fact they end up spending the rest of the series with their respective Jogress partners instead of each other is partially sheer pragmatics, it’s also how the two of them start taking a more active role in actually checking on the others’ emotions and communicating with them in regards to their feelings. This is a huge deal -- compare this to back in 02 episode 13 when they were practically the only people willing to have this kind of serious, emotional conversation with each other -- and said attempt at a serious conversation exploded in their faces. (The other time one of them had made an attempt at something vaguely resembling a heart-to-heart during that time was 02 episode 11, which also resulted in Takeru blowing up explosively.) But here they’re capable of communicating clearly and openly and making their positions known in a way that gets through to their respective Jogress partners’ issues, without being stifled by anything.

But, again: just because they don’t “go off together” anymore doesn’t mean they stopped being important people to each other or comfortable around each other -- it’s just that now they’ve stopped wandering off together for the sake of blocking themselves away from others, and no longer trapped in this strange, paradoxical relationship of knowing-but-not-truly-knowing each other they had all the way back in 02 episode 13. The relationship they had back then was something built off of coping mechanisms, and not something you could truly say was healthy, not when their communication was stilted and Takeru had snapped at her so badly -- but both of them learning to open up more and be more honest with their feelings means that they may well have an actual healthy dynamic going forward.

And for all it’s worth, we learn that they’re still on very good terms by the time of Kizuna, getting breakfast together in the opening -- but it’s left ambiguous if their reason for doing so like this was because they still have a penchant for particularly hanging out together, or whether it was just circumstance because they were free to get breakfast after the Digimon incident (they act independently for the rest of the movie). Moreover, their relationships with the others in the 02 group are still going strong, because as per the drama CD, Takeru’s happy to hang out with Daisuke like it’s nothing and actively join in to reach out to Iori (it’s said Daisuke was approaching Iori “first” despite Takeru being there, so both of them were hanging out independently and decided to pick up Iori together), and Hikari comes in with Miyako, expressing a very firm intent to hang out with her for their trip, and ultimately it’s established that them not being with the rest of the group at the time of the movie was sheer scheduling circumstance and not necessarily them going out of their way to operate away from them.

So in other words, whatever relation you can say they have at this point, or their ability to get along, is not based on them falling back on each other as an unhealthy coping mechanism of silence, but one carried out in a more genuine manner.

[glitterytidalwavedragon]

Expanding into my other Fandoms (I’m gonna have to take a stance) Read the whole thing please.

One of my oldest and most beloved anime is Inuyasha. As of late I have been binged watching the hell out of it as I am getting my BFF into different anime shows. We are really close to entering the Yashahime part of the series, and she asked if I planned to write fanfiction involving the one character which made me even watch the show as a 10-year-old.

Sesshomaru

The first episode I ever watched involved this aloof, entitled dog fighting his brother over the sword in their father’s grave. Specifically, it was part 3 of that whole episode series were Kagome pulled out the sword. I at the time had 3 dogs of German Sheppard/wolf hybrid, they were MASSIVE dogs, fell in love with the big white fluff that was Sesshomaru’s demon form. I use to sneak staying up and watch the show faithfully to see the goodest boy as it was only on at 11pm EST on adult swim. Which meant it was bad and I was breaking the rules, I felt like a rebel.

Now I hesitated answering that question. She has no idea of what is in Yashahime, she is being careful not to spoil it so I told her I didn’t know. Recently, to find out what the feel is for Sesshomaru content, I looked into the tag on tumblr…

OH MY GOD.

Sesshomaru’s tag is FLOODED with hate. Like every four post, there is hate, distain, and attacking happening. As someone who watches Yashahime, I quickly knew why.

Sessrin.

Even now I sigh. And I sigh HARD. I am not for, nor am I against the Sessrin train. Same for the Sesskagu train. I think both sides need to look at things on a logical prospective. I plan to do just that. I know I will get hate from the either side and maybe some support as well. But if I am going to do anything in this fandom (as I like doing ships and reader inserts) it will come up.

So, like my Kaiba post, and my Sebastian Heel post, I will use my research skills as well as my COLLEGE DEGREE WHICH HAS BOTH ART AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY labelled on it to explain why this progression in the story is normal to anti-Sessrin fans and why this isn’t a crime by story standards nor should we look at it as a crime.

AS WELL

Explain to Sessrin fans why it is so weird for non-shippers to see it play out and why so much hate formed.

As I let out another sigh, we shall begin. Let’s start at an historical prospective. (Links at the bottom).

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING! I’LL BE ABLE TO TELL!

~~

I will start with the information I can access right away.

While finding charts on the life-span of common folk in 1590’s Feudal Japan is rather difficult, Ancient.edu states that the average lifespan was about 50. To put this in perspective, the average lifespan of Europeans at the time was somewhere between 40-45 with the latter being rare. Since most of us reading are not from Japanese descent, I will through Europe in this first.

If we look at the same time frame of 1590, we are looking at most of Western Europe had now entered the age of Renaissance. According to sources from Learning Resources in association with the National Gallery of Art, marriage was not what TV drama’s from HBO or Hulu depicted. By today standards they would be a crime, as the average age for marriage of an adult female was age 14…

The reasoning behind the young marriage age had multiple factors. First being, females were considered an adult once they were menstruating. Birthing also proved to be fatal, and since the lifespan was at best 40 and 45 if they were lucky, there was really no room to wait. Also Europe at the time had became hugely focused on making sure blood lines were legitimate, meaning to ensure the girl was a virgin, the moment she was able to reproduced she was married off. Those they married were not young teenagers either. Most marriages, a man would be in their thirties, and had probably multiple wives as women died more than men when not counting the battle field.

To make matters worse for the Renaissance Lady, these marriages would leave many young males unable to marry and if their husband died in battle, well, unfortunately they were not seen as desirable. This was due to the idea of a ‘free woman’. Should the girl not have a father, brother or uncle to return to as they too died, a widow had her freedom. But that freedom came at a cost. She would be assumed to have slept around, and in many writings, such as the Canterbury Tales, where Geoffrey Chaucer writes about a Window on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land survived her five husbands and the men in her family. In short, she was made to be a slut and to be looked down upon as no man controlled her.

The point of talking about Europe is because that is something most of us Non-Asian or Japanese people consume and like to paint in large romantic brush strokes of knights and magic. Honestly, reading G.R.R.Martin Song of Ice and Fire, he uses this model as we see the Queen of Dragons, Danny start off at age thirteen shortly after she had her first menstruation.  

Now let’s look at Feudal Japan.

As stated before, the lifespan was around 50 years. In some populations, this was even shorter. Nagaoka, Hirata, Yokota and Matsu’ura’s on demographic data at the Yuigahama-minami area in Kamakura, Japan and found both male and female remains that suggested life expectancy to have ended around age 24-25. This was largely due to living conditions and public health. In areas like these, it would make the most sense to marry and repopulate quickly as the expectancy of life was half the national average at the time.

To my frustration, I could not find a clear marriage age for Japanese women at the time of the edo period. HOWEVER, where there is a will there is a way. I took a look at famous Lords or Daimyo’s of the time. The average age of marriage of their wives was between 12-14. Much younger than I expected, but it made sense considering this is a time where war ran the show and marriage was strictly about political gain. One of these Daimyo’s was Masamune Date, who was also 13, but then as he got older took concubines who became considerably younger than him as he became older. The goal was to have as many children as possible for hires and for political marriages to gain power.

Now lets look at Inuyasha the MANGA

Lets get the manga timeline proper here. The whole adventure took place in 11 months, a month shy of Kagome’s 16th birthday. Doing a few estimations, Rin would have travelled with Sesshomaru about 8-9 of those months. But before we get into the relationship, lets look at something the ANIME made a huge mistake with in the beginning and tried to fix as the story went on.

For some reason I could only fine gifs for the Early appearances of Sesshomaru so bear with me.

Early appearances in the manga

 ^ He was so fickle and a trickster then...

Now early apperances in the anime.

Later appearance in the manga

Laster appearance in the anime

Notice the issue here? 

Sesshomaru was CONSIDERABLY younger looking in the start of the manga. In the anime, he started off looking like an fully adult male. But as the anime went on, they tried to make Sesshomaru look younger with subtle changes to his jaw line, eye size, and his height. Yeah, his height had changed. They made him shorter.

While in the manga, we see this young-teen looking demon, slowly mature over 11 months to look like he is in his later teens and by series end, closer to being in his late teens or twenty. Yes, art changes over time, but the anime went a reverse route. I can only guess they spoke to the author of Inuyasha about her ships, as they did Drama CDs, and realized the mistake that was made in making him more mature than he was.

You can’t tell me he doesn’t look closer to his manga self in the final act, because he does.

Since we are on the topic of the anime, lets be clear. The anime timeline and manga timeline are very different. The story in the anime (in the English) suggests that OVER a year has past since Kagome started her journey. They try to fix this in the final act, but it was still so muddled as previous seasons are to be taken as cannon. This could have been due to an translation error in the early production when the anime no longer had anymore manga material to reference. But whatever the case, for English viewers the time the group spent together felt much longer.

So now we come to the heart of the issue.

Because of the mistakes of the anime, a lot of anti-sessrin see the relationship as father daughter. I’ll be honest, watching the anime and solely the anime as a teenager and as an adult (as the manga was on hold for a very long time due to author’s health. I was in college when it finished.), I too thought it was just a father-daughter relationship and Jaken the nanny who got punched all the time. In fact, the English took hard liberties with Kagura, as the English dubs often do with characters, and made it very clear her feelings for the demon lord and Sesshomaru very much recognized them (though he never responded). Even in her death scene, it felt as if he was saying good bye to a friend more than love interest. But who really knows, as there are things that point otherwise.  When another demon mock’s Kagura’s death, Sesshomaru gets super pissy.

The manga did also play with this fact when it came out in English, idk if the wording or message is different in the Japanese. Translation errors happen a lot even in todays releases, look at Kuroshitsuji.  So of course most anti-sessrin’s did not see this coming in Yashahime when Rin was named mother. In fact it felt like a betrayal as we were sure Sesshomaru had no romantic feelings.

Then there was the Kohaku/Rin mashup that was hinted left and right. The English anime, with its overly dramatic and blunt emotions made it appear one way. That in the end the two kids would probably be married. Then the anime as a whole made Sesshomaru older than intended. I can see why and understand how this became a problem.

On the other side of that coin.

If you followed the dub, seen ‘Swords of an Honorable Ruler’ and read the manga… Sesshomaru was not fatherly to Rin at all. In fact, Jaken picked up all of that leg work. Rin worried for Kohaku, but clearly loved Lord Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru cared about Kagura but he almost CRIED when he lost Rin.

We have to remember that Sesshomaru and Rin’s relationship must have been very hard for the demon. While we never see his mental process expect for a few rare times, we have to remember he hated humans. In the movie, he blamed a human for the early death of his father, Sesshomaru killed without mercy. It made sense that he wouldn’t be fatherly to Rin as her just being there should have caused countless inner conflicts. Hell, he even says his father’s weakness was humans, and look who picked up that trait.

Sesshomaru was designed to, someday, walk in his father’s footsteps. So sess/rin, not a surprise. Also when you see it in a historical perspective, Rin having kids around age 15-16, makes sense. In fact you could argue he waited too long for the time period.

We also need to look more at the manga when concerned with Yashahime. 8-9 months is all Rin travelled with him and he was like hold up, and left her at the village because he KNEW she needed to come to her own conclusion. That no matter what she picked he would live with and protect her. Unconditional love on his end. She cannon wise spent YEARS living with humans and MONTHS with Sesshomaru. Again, by manga standards of cannon.

Now I can already hear the screaming about age and what not. Some sources say Sesshomaru is over 900, by the rule of thumb, if we look at anime and movie releases, we have Sesshomaru being over 500 with no define age and Inuyasha around 270 years old being more pinpointed due to the movie. Just by going by ANIME CANNON. Kagome and Inuyasha, you have a 15 year old with a 270 year old man. If you say being pinned to the tree doesn’t count, then you have 220.

Also, here is something very interesting. In the episode where Inuyasha meets the unmother, he tells her, thinking it was his mom, she died when he was very small and we have flash backs later in the series of him being small running from demons. Demons clearly age much slower than humans, even half-demons. Inuyasha can be 270 but mentally and physically be 15, the same logic works for Sesshomaru, who in the manga is not much older than Inuyasha.

In the manga, there wasn’t any grooming, in the anime, there was a ton of mess-ups but no grooming.

Would this fly in todays world? HELL NO! NO, its gross, she’s a kid. Stop.

I know any fanfic I write will lean heavily on the side of father/daughter because that is what I grew up seeing on the screen. I can’t think of Rin as an adult because years of seeing her as a cheerful little girl. It’s like seeing G.O.T Arya about to have sex for the first time in season 8… I remember when she was a kid on the show. It was way to weird and I had to look away until it ended. But that’s my 2021 mentality.

But Inuyasha is not taking place in 2021. Feudal Japan is a whole other era with its own beliefs, morals and way of life. Those who understand this have nothing wrong with them. They just understand history.

Also, just to bang some nails in…

Anyone remember Bleach? Remember the MOST accepted couple was Ichigo and Rukia…. Rukia who was hundreds of years old and Ichigo who was 15… or Ichigo’s mom who was a teenager and his dad also hundreds of years old.

Most of this also boils down to Sesshomaru being a dude. As in reverse roles in animes its accepted and they don’t have the same historical context. Inuyasha is based off of historical context of Feudal Japan.

We need to stop spreading hate. We can’t accept some forms of literature because its European fantasy but bash other fantasy based literature for doing the same thing.

Sure, its weird for those who were use to seeing the father/daughter dynamic. Yes, there are extreme sessrin fans who post really questionable illegal content when they decide to leave Rin as an 8-year-old…

But this wasn’t ever meant to be perverted. The story was meant to make sense on a logical and historical base.

I hope everyone takes the time to read this. I love Inuyasha, I love Sesshomaru. I am just sick of seeing so many people fighting over what should be the revival of a beloved series. While yes, there is still room for sess/rin not being a thing, until it is stated otherwise, why hate each other? This fandom will only lose people by doing this. Calling people names or accusing them of illegal endorsement can hurt someone these days over social media.

Tumblr allows you to block tags. You don’t have to read anything or watch anything you don’t like. We gain nothing from attacking each other but can lose so much by doing so. Fanart, really good fan fiction, friends, ideas, sharing fond memories. Both sides have the right to feel as they feel, but no right in hurting each other.

A fandom is meant to bring people together. Not start a war…

Thank you.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.20402

http://www.italianrenaissanceresources.com/units/unit-2/essays/husbands-and-wives/#:~:text=Marriage%20not%20only%20reflected%20order,to%20ensure%20the%20bride's%20virginity.

https://www.ancient.eu/Canterbury_Tales/

https://www.ancient.eu/article/1424/daily-life-in-medieval-japan/#:~:text=Just%20as%20Japanese%20people%20today,in%20Western%20Europe%2C%20for%20example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_Masamune

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megohime

[romanceboys]

(interview) vogue korea april issue 2020 - perfect taemin

1. superm was another chance for taemin’s ever-evolving performance to be showcased. i thought a lot about how to create synergy with these exceptional performers. to put it simply, i wanted us to come off as energetic. but these days i’ve had a change of heart. our identity is definitely important. rather than just working hard, for superm to show off their colours well we need to show our personalities; we should be seen as one team. to be able to formulate a solid and clear colour is our homework. that’s why it’s regrettable. we couldn’t come up with a novel choreography to carry our new identity. we tried a lot in the practice room. superm seems to have found its musical identity but hasn’t gotten a hold of its performance character yet. the stages are too vague. 2. now that you are finally promoting with your best friend kai in one group, you two must’ve shared your concerns. since this friend is someone who has a lot of passion and ambition, he talks about various things. for instance, this style is pretty good, this choreography is quite trendy. thanks to him i’ve learned a lot. he is also very knowledgeable about the latest ‘hottest’ genres. we talk about these things often and even watch videos together. kai gives off ‘popular’ vibes. compared to him, my interests are quite unusual. nowadays kai is interested in music while i am into science. 3. is it science fiction? these days we’ve been watching videos on the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics together. 4. what aspect of it interested you? originally i was very curious, after seeing a recommended video on youtube i learned about quantum mechanics for the first time. i couldn’t understand the explanation, even those who were explaining it said it was a difficult concept. that was very fascinating to me. kind of like magic.  5. are you reading books on the subject too? the subjects of the books i read are different (laughs). there’s a book that was published long ago called ‘regarding the pain of others.’ it is a pessimistic book that gathers contradictory opinions of people for instance ‘people find joy in the pain of others, it is instinctual.’ as a celebrity, there are times when you are criticized but there are also times when you receive comfort from people. rather than blaming others, while reading this book, i began to think ‘people are like that, at most i shouldn’t behave like them.’ my interests are all over the place. 6. what makes you and kai click? we converse well. our opinions almost never clash and we respect each other. moreover, we fully understand our own roles in superm. 7. what position do you hold in superm? since i can’t ask if it’s the main dancer. in pictures and interviews, i’m the center. baekhyun hyung is the leader (laughs). 8. when the conversation wasn’t flowing well during the talkshow interview, i saw you neatly concluding it.  that does happen. nct and wayv are still in the learning phase. that’s why i first listen to all of their thoughts during interviews then flesh it out with details later. 9. compared to when you set out abroad as shinee then promoting overseas as superm now, the status of k-pop has changed. looking at how superm was able to start off with an arena tour in the us and europe made me feel that k-pop is a ‘hot’ topic. in the past, we’d use venues of this scale for smtown concerts. even if you promote mainly in asia, seeing the audience section will make you realise the perception of k-pop has changed. 10. though k-pop’s scope has expanded and diversified, its definition has become simple. what are your concerns? my first concern is language. after i was able to communicate via language during my japanese activities, there were so many advantages. though each country overseas has its own language, i felt that i needed to learn english first. there are many international fans who want to experience the chemistry between our members, they’d feel much closer to us if we communicated using (a common) language. k-pop isn’t one dimensional. it’s not only about the music, there is music video, style, etc. included. people would make dance covers in the past, now they even emulate the styling. all of this is korean pop culture. 11. superm were on the ellen degeneres show and jimmy kimmel live. before we went on the ellen show we really rehearsed the interview a lot. america’s atmosphere is different so you receive questions that are never asked in korea. they don’t disclose the questions in advance either. we were also worried because the emcee could ad-lib. we came up with the most probable questions and practiced, we also received lessons from american comedians. compared to that, we went on jimmy kimmel live without any prep. 12. what went according to plan and what didn’t? the questions were not as intense as expected, ellen was well aware about k-pop culture so it went smoothly. 13. is there a dance genre you’re into these days? contemporary, lyrical hiphop, in the future as superm i think i’ll be able to show more, not the kind of dancing that you do after learning a given choreography but the kind that is full of emotions. it’s about giving meaning to your gestures. it isn’t out yet but my concert vcr features lyrical hiphop. in it i think i’m dancing alone with a giant full moon as my backdrop but get confused when there are two of us, either it’s another person or a shadow. a choreographer with a body type similar to mine had to dress in all black to come across as my shadow. i wore an oriental outfit with smokey makeup. 14. how do you usually come up with your ideas? i get inspired by the choreographers and creative directors. i imagine it as we converse then the idea develops. 15. was there a time you were inspired by fashion? of course. art begins with the five senses. what you see with your eyes, the things you can feel, clothes, food, perfume, music that you listen to are all sources of inspiration. i create private accounts to follow fashion brands. 16. having debuted at the age of 16, you are still young but your work experience has been long. i was in certain situations because of this. it doesn’t happen as often now but even in my early 20s, i completely belonged to the senior category at broadcasting stations. they are my juniors but many of them are also hyungs, i’m their senior but i’m also the youngest. now there are even staff members who are younger than me. they’re too formal with me (laughs). 17. are there juniors that ask you for advice or help? the superm members! especially ten, he is very curious. when we come out of a company meeting, he’ll get surprised and say “wow, hyung everything you said was right.” i even hear things like ‘veteran’ and ‘seer.’ apparently my predictions come true. but i try not to advise them as much. taking the initiative to say something feels overwhelming. 18. born in 1993 between millennials and gen z, do you share any characteristics with those in your age bracket? we’ve picked out a few of their traits. the first one is ‘they don’t eat fast food.’ me too! i took care of my health well ever since i started out with shinee. i was brainwashed from home to avoid foods that harmed the body. not even ramyeon, snacks were also banned. and just like that in my 20s i started carrying out the regime on my own. it’s become a habit to look after my health ever since i moved out. i always eat things that are good for my body, if the hyungs are taking vitamins, i’d ask for one too. 19. i suddenly recall a variety show where you were the only one who skipped the sauce and ate the meat on its own! one should not eat irritable foods. my mother’s words. 20. how about ‘they watch videos on youtube rather than tv. even the ads don’t particularly bother them.’ that’s right. i watch youtube more often than tv, while watching the ads i'd even marvel at their production quality. i’ve signed up for the premium package now so i don’t see the ads anymore. 21. ‘marrying or wanting to buy their own house.’ i currently live alone and i have no interest in decking out my house. at first, i didn’t think like that but a month later my interest dissipated. i’m lazy. it’s not like my house is for others to see, i’m fine with the incomplete feeling for now. 22. and finally ‘they avoid investing in financial companies.’ i don’t do that. my parents manage that, if there’s a good tip i’ll just let them know.  23. hiphop musicians tend to express their success through music. as an idol musician how have you been using the wealth you accumulated all these years? i invest in food instead of saving up (laughs). honestly, i don’t spend much. i don’t have anything i want. though i do spend on others a lot. 24. what kind of household did you grow up in? what gifts did you inherit from your family as a musician? i inherited my body type. all of my cousins have model-like physiques, they’re taller and slimmer than me. my mother sings well. my father plays instruments as a hobby. oh, and my paternal aunt used to be a ballerina. so perhaps i inherited such genes? 25. you’ve been doing the same thing for more than 10 years. what is the purpose behind creating music and showcasing it? in the past, i would think i should do well, i need to be number one, these days i’ve become ambitious for other aspects. i take pride in the fact that my work supplies others with positive energy. i feel a sense of accomplishment when fans like my music, i want to make them as happy as i am. everyone’s profession is different but i hope this synergy gained from mutual dependence leaves a good impression. 26. are you still composing songs? i used to but now i only participate in lyric writing. it differs with each song, at times the lyrics are emotional or talk about abstract love. it seems like my next solo album will include a song i wrote the lyrics to. sometimes songs composed by overseas composers might prove too difficult for the general public to understand. so i participate a lot in the arrangement or mixing phase. i point out the parts that should be added to the composition and those that are unneeded. teacher lee soo man does give advice but it often feels like i do the producing of my own solo album. 27. taemin’s originality is the clearest when he promotes as a solo artist. which song has best represented your identity? i worked hard on all of them but there was a turning point. at first there was ‘danger’ then ‘press your number’ was a conceptual performance, the transition to ‘move’ turned out well. i wanted to break out from the typical choreography routine and create my own identity, the resulting performances were ‘move’ and ‘want.’ my next solo album is again different. i’ve been making a lot of changes these days. 28. you seem to have high standards when it comes to composing music. was there ever an occasion where you absolutely refused to compromise and gave others a hard time? everyone is used to it (laughs). it’s something i learned from the head manager hyung who’s been with me since debut. the belief that ‘there is nothing that can’t be done. there is no such thing as impossible.’ another team manager hyung would tell me ‘you remind me of our head’ (laughs). honestly, the staff around me work beyond their given roles and with affection. normally work timings are from 9 to 7, they stay back till 10-11 pm for me. they don’t hold it against me, and when things do well, they too feel a sense of fulfillment together with me. 29. the new unreleased song must be quite different from the original then.  there are already 12 versions of the song. when i thought we were somewhat done, we recently started arranging it again (laughs). 30. you hold your body to specific standards for the best performance outcome. i don’t ‘bulk up.’ previously, i used to work out when i ate a lot but my body would feel weighed down, it wasn’t what i wanted. if i gain a lot of muscles or become thick, it hampers my dancing form. that’s why i don’t put on weight. i train my stamina and strength and avoid bulking up my shoulders and arms. 31. by the way, do you do neck exercises as well? i was touched looking at your long neck in the vogue photoshoot. i had been noticing this too, now i know the reason! i think it’s because i dance. a lot of resistance goes into the neck when you dance. our head is the heaviest and it’s the neck that supports it. it goes away when i rest for a few days. we’re shooting amidst the superm tour maybe that’s why it looks thicker now.  32. an editor who has been watching you closely for a long time said that you’ve become extroverted. could it be that experience and relationships have made you comfortable and secure? i’ve lowered my guard. i couldn’t reveal my current self to others before. as a child i used to be so introverted that i’d hide behind my mother when strangers would get into the elevator. i changed with time.  33. is your ever-present smile a product of your personality or just business decorum? i’m always smiling. i even laugh at things other people don’t find funny (laughs). 34. shinee members are currently serving in the army. when they’re on break what kind of advice or nagging do they subject you to? i wish they would do that. we have a group chat on kakaotalk and i always revive it by asking “what’s up” “happy new year.” but as soon as the conversation picks up they only talk about the army. when i inform them about an issue at the company they say “really?” then it’s military talk again. when i feel left out and tell them to stop, they reply with “you’ll understand when you get here.” 35. in your career as a musician, when do you feel the best? when it’s time to reveal all that i’ve been preparing for so long! it feels different from finishing it. the first stage after debuting, shinee’s first concert, performing at tokyo dome, receiving the award... these are the moments that come to mind. 36. watching taemin grow for the past decade has been a huge source of strength. what are your dreams now? there are many. first of all, once shinee comes back again, i want the entire group to give off a feeling of revival. usually after getting discharged, it’s hard to keep up with the next generation, i want to avoid that. i’ve imagined it all when the shinee members return. second, i want to perform a lot on various stages as a solo artist. superm topped the billboard 200 album chart, it’d be nice to enter the top 10 on the hot 100 digital chart as well.  37. you are really talented at setting goals. i’ve gotten greedier. it’s just not for myself but i want to do it for the fans and members, even the staff. they become my driving force. i really am lucky. everybody works hard but i even get the recognition for it. come to think of it, i was given many opportunities and i worked hard to make the most of them, i’m really happy my efforts paid off in the end. i’m surrounded by good people. shinee, superm, many people fill in the gaps for me that i can’t solve on my own. 38. superm’s concert title is ‘we are the future.’ when you hear the word ‘future’ what are you reminded of? first, it’s h.o.t. (laughs). future-oriented things come to mind like artificial intelligence, drones, 3d hologram concerts. then again, in the future, though people might be able to watch concerts through holograms, i think humans will not give up on the tasks they themselves can do. my work will still be the same in the future. 39. the reason you don’t write anything on instagram. i don’t have anything to say yet (laughs). i don’t know if i should make my instagram cool or approachable. when fretting between writing a caption or using an emoticon, i just end up leaving it blank. actually i signed up after my manager hyung suggested that instagram would be good. so i’ve made one but i still don’t know what to upload. i get teased by the people around me for putting up selfies. i even took lots of pictures especially for instagram but... 40. did you not post the pictures? the point of instagram is real-time communication. is that so! i didn’t know (laughs).

translated by romanceboys — take out with full credit (source)

[scarlettroubles]

HPHM fanfic WIPs

I’ve actually been writing some fanfics for Eileen’s story as well as some Ryder Family lore for a while now but because of school I haven’t been able to get around to finishing any of them so I thought it would be cool to show you all some sneak peaks so enjoy!

In the Face of Fear chapter 2: of Faceless Strangers and Empty Halls

(The continuation to this fic)

She does not remember how long she has stood in this queue. Hell, she doesn't even remember what she's in line for anyway, not really. Logically she knows it's to get some important documents approved of before carting it off to the next sorry sod who was stupid enough to land themselves in this God forsaken place too. But she honestly couldn't bring herself to care. Politics, desk jobs, rules? She never cared for them really. Not even once.

She hated office work. Tulip had always found it dreadfully boring and the people who actually bothered with the crap even more so. So why did she take one?

The red head found herself racking her brain for answers as she waited oh so painstakingly for the queue to move and for her to be done with all this boring crap and lock herself in her boring little cubicle and bury her head under a shit ton of useless paperwork that, if she were lucky enough would hopefully suffocate her before this job did. But one look ahead of the line was enough for her to discern that it wouldn't be budging any time soon.

Why did she take this job? She hated the Ministry. Hated how suffocating rules and laws were. Sure, some were needed but that did not change the fact that Tulip Karasu did not like being restrained. So why the hell was she here? Working a dreadful job that was sucking the life out of her. Working for dreadful people who knew not the meaning of fun and only the meaning of responsibility, paperwork, and order and snuffing out the flame of good ol' fun chaos before it could really take spark. In a dreadful queue that was far too long to be normal with people and coworkers whose faces she always seemed to forget.

So why? Why here? She saw what this job did to people. How strict it made her parents. How high their expectations of her were and how they wouldn't accept anything less than perfect from their daughter. Despite most of the fog that clouded her tired mind she could still remember it so clearly... The promise she had made to herself so long ago. She had promised herself that she would never work here and would never be like her parents. Not if she could help it.

Did she finally resign to their wishes? Bowed like some obedient little servant and catered to their every whim? Had her fear of what she would do once she left Hogwarts finally override her logic?

Why did schools even do that? Why did the world do that? Telling students to make up their minds on what career to choose from such an early age? Tulip has seen what happened to the people that were unlucky enough to land themselves in a job that sucked the life out of them. She remembers how sometimes the most brilliant of students ended up having their spark extinguished as soon as they left school. Left to reminisce on their glory days and what could have been. The very thought of it made her tighten her hold on the documents in her hands.

Because everybody needs to know what they want to be at an early age. Everybody needs to know their place. They just have to have a place...

 It was one of Tulip's greatest fears.

 Ending up in a job that gave her zero satisfaction. A job that would end up isolating herself from everyone and everything because nobody wants to be friends with a traitor. A no good friend that turns on the other for their own gain. That's why Merula left-

Tulip was snapped out of her thoughts when she suddenly felt the sharp edges of the stack of documents she was carrying dig annoyingly into her side and moved to adjust them. Checking each one carefully to see if they've been ruined in any shape or form.

The last time she had presented a stack of reports that were ever so slightly crumpled and not properly organized to fit the pencil haired bastards ridiculously high standards she had been given such a withering gaze by her superior that she had felt herself visibly shrink just the tiniest bit. But the want to smack the arrogant sod and prank him mercilessly was stronger. 

How she wished she could pull out a heap of dungbombs or any other joke shop product and just reign full chaos upon this hellhole.

She looked up and, to her relief the line had actually moved significantly. In fact, She was only three heads away from being in the front of the line. Huh, that was...Weird.

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Regrets of a Useless Man

(Context: A story told from Edward Ryder’s perspective and explores how he grew up mentored by his father, to becoming an Auror and meeting Julianna and to the tragedy that caused the Ryder Family to spiral down a path of grief and neglect).  

Useless.

Edward remembers how often that word was hissed at him with such venom in his youth. How hard it would make him physically recoil, and if it wasn't the venom behind the words that stung, it was the pain and shock from the slap that would often follow next.

He remembers so clearly the sound of hand meeting cheek echoing so loudly within the Hunter's room of the Ryder Family Manor that day, and how the shadows in the dark room, the dancing fire in the hearth and the countless portraits of long dead ancestors were the only things to lay witness to it.

The day had started off simple enough. His father had brought him to the library for his afternoon studies on magical combat and magic theory. Edmund had forced the studies onto him when he was just 7, and Edward was now 12. Today though, Edward found it difficult to focus on reading the ink written words on the paper before him, he instead thought of the words his father said to him the day he had first started bringing him into this room every afternoon to ready him for what he claimed to the then 7-year-old, was his destiny.

"Your mother may think I'm being too harsh on you boy, but a child must learn sooner or later if he is to make his way in life. And you, Edward, my son…You will bring this family to glory. You will take back what once was mine... You will make me proud."

His father had made it his goal to have Edward become the next Head Hunter of the Hunters of Artemis. The group of bounty hunters and other unsavory individuals who were tasked in hunting down those The Ministry could not. Members were either recruited by the group's leader or were sentenced into joining it by The Ministry if they deemed the criminal guilty but useful elsewhere other than filling the empty cells up in Azkaban.

The title of headhunter used to be his father's. Back when Ryder was up against Ryder during the Wolves Rebellion. Edward remembers bits and pieces of the bloodshed. Their family's civil war had only recently ended after all. And although Edward was still young when the war was at its peak, he was there to see the ending of it. 

His father had lost a duel to the death for the title of headhunter against his own uncle and just when he was about to be killed, he was saved by his younger brother, Octavius Ryder, who would later become the next headhunter and finally put an end to their Family's civil war. While Octavius was hailed a hero by his family, Edmund Ryder was left crippled and was left to depend on a cane for the rest of his life. 

"Edmund's leg wasn't the only thing that was left crippled, his pride and soul got crippled too."

 His uncle Octavius had once told him that. And he knew it was true. Edward had seen the photos of his father back when he was younger. Before the Wolves Rebellion and before being damned to rely on a cane for the rest of his life. Edmund Ryder was a fierce and strong man. A man whose tall stature and commanding presence left his enemies either fleeing from the sight of him or hesitating to raise their wands. Knowing the moment they did, they would probably end up dead. But now though? Now Edmund Ryder was just a bitter old man who resorted to chasing his glory days and what he thought was rightfully his through his eldest son.

It was rather pathetic of him, to be honest.

"Get your head out of whatever childish fantasy you've ludicrously conjured, boy!" His father's sharp voice cut in. Snapping Edward out from his thoughts. He met his father's heated stare and could only sheepishly duck his head in apology. Silently hoping his father would let it go, just this once. He was a child after all, he could be allowed to be one every now and then couldn't he? But in Edmund's eyes, being a child meant close to nothing. He was just another soldier to train.

Edmund looked hard and long at his eldest son before letting out a huff and stood up from his seat. grabbing for his cane, he motioned for his eldest son to follow him. Edward looked at the door and calculated in his still youthful mind if making a mad dash for the door and hiding ‘til his mother came back from whatever social gathering his father had set up for her would be worth it. He knew it would not though. The first time he tried to escape his studies and sneak off to play with his siblings it hadn't ended well for either of them. 

And so, the child silently got up and dutifully followed his father out of the room and into the halls. He could feel the eyes of the animated portraits his family had kept for centuries dig into the back of his skull and Edward so very badly wanted to shrink and hide away. 

"You need to be reminded of what is at stake here, Edward." His father said as the steady clank of his cane meeting the floor echoed within the Manor with every step he took forward before taking a sharp left. And with that left, Edward knew exactly where his father was taking him to.

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Expanded Ryder Lore: The Wolves Rebellion

(Sometimes, all it takes is a few words for a family to turn against one another. 

When the Ryder family finds themselves being requested an audience with a man named Gellert Grindelwald, Esteban Ryder and his brother, Orion Ryder decide to entertain the man and accept his request, not knowing that by doing so, a fight for the title of head hunter would soon take place. A fight where each family member would find themselves asking if they’d rather be a dragon or they’d rather be a wolf).

The Wolves Rebellion refers to a civil war that happened within the Ryder Family during the 1920s and lasted until the 1940s. It is regarded as one of the most bloody civil wars that happened within the Ryder family and nearly led to the House’s extinction. 

The fighting came about because of a speech. Not just any speech but one given by none other than Gellert Grindelwald, regarded to be one of the most feared and most powerful dark lords of his time. Grindelwald was just coming into power and was seeking out allies and followers all over the world in order to rally an army large enough for war. He had already managed to sway a majority of the influential pure-blood families in Europe to join his side, and was now looking for new allies in the British Isles. 

He had the Malfoy's, the Black's, and the Parkinson's families in his palm in an instant. As the dark lord was mulling over what family to sway to his side next, one name had managed to pique his interest, The Ryder Family.

The Ryder's were a feared and well-respected family known for their ferocity in battle and for their loyalty. Grindelwald had heard stories of the Ryder's toppling down many dangerous adversaries and mighty beasts, one of them being the very beast they had as their house crest, a dragon. But that wasn't what really got the dark lords attention, no. What got it were the rumors. Rumors of the family having a unique short of magic which came in the form of instinct. Instincts so strong they knew when to block a spell from an enemy before it was even shot, instinct that helped warn them of danger before it even took place, and as a seer, an ability that granted the man the ability to see visions of the future, Grindelwald was all too eager to see if the rumors were true and to see just how useful and alike his ability was with theirs. 

And so Grindelwald sent a letter to the Ryder family, requesting to have an audience with them. The Ryder's were definitely ticked off by such arrogance, but the head of the family at that time, Esteban Ryder and Head Hunter,  Esteban’s younger brother, Orion Ryder, had been hearing of this man for months now and decided to entertain him and accepted his request if not to just satisfy their own curiosity about this strange wizard from Germany.

The dark lord was welcomed into the Ryder Family's home in a show of good faith however Esteban, surrounded by his hounds and seated with his wife and 4 children by his side, demanded that the man get straight to the point about what he wanted. Grindelwald obliged to the man's demand and told them. And told him they did for not even a minute later did the Ryder's find themselves entranced by the man's honeyed words. 

As the man spoke of his vision and dream for a world where wizards and witches could be free and didn’t have to hide in the shadows, Esteban took a look across the room and let his eyes take in the faces of the rest of his family members, he felt a wave of unease wash over him and settle at the bottom of his heart as he saw the hunger that swam in their eyes that only grew larger with every pretty word and lie that left the dark lord’s mouth. 

For when the Ryder’s fled to the British Isles following Adrian Ryder and his family’s betrayal back in the 17th century, The family of hunters suddenly found themselves being hunted. The Ministry had been informed by the new fledgling American wizarding government, MACUSA of the Ryder family’s possible involvement with scourers and of their bloody history of hunting down mercenaries and dragons, and so The Ministry did what they did best. They killed those who they feared and nearly had the entire family exterminated like rodents. It was only when the Minister of Magic realized that the Ryder’s would be more useful to him alive than dead did he decide to spare them and cease the bloodshed. The Minister had the Ryder’s and their hunters swear loyalty to The Ministry and the once proud family of dragons found themselves reduced to loyal hunting dogs. 

Grindelwald knew damn well about the Ryder’s being reduced to such a sorry state and having their freedom stripped away from them so fucking easily. And cleverly used it to get them on his side. He told them, “why should you all be muzzled and treated like dogs when you are something so much mightier than that? You are dragons, and dragons do not cower in front of anyone.”

Grindelwald thanked Esteban and Orion Ryder for their time and bid them farewell, and as the dark lord left the family to contemplate on his words, he  also left with them a seed. A seed of doubt and malice that would soon sprout and dig it’s vile roots within the Ryder family that would cause them to have a power struggle that would leave body after body in its wake.

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

Two Lesbians and a Baby

(Context: A short story that takes place in the AU Eileen and Merula end up together during the Second Wizarding War).

“I thought you said not to get attached to the baby.”

Merula jumped in surprise from the voice behind her, causing her to jostle the baby cradled in her arms. She took a quick look down to make sure it was still sleeping and not getting ready to scream itself hoarse for having its nap interrupted and was relieved to find the little thing not making a fuss like it normally had these past few weeks of taking care of the insufferable thing.

The cursebreaker let out a sigh of relief. Glad that she didn’t have to deal with the nasty bugger before turning her attention to her wife and giving her her best withering glare. The kind that made most of her pathetic coworkers back at Gringotts cower beneath the powerful witch’s gaze. But Eileen, who had been married to Merula for 2 years and had known the Slytherin for far longer merely chuckled into her hand, completely unaffected by the threats and death glares her wife sent her at this point which was something Merula wasn't all too happy about.

“Have you gone mad Ryder? Of course I haven’t gotten attached to this pathetic, smelly little hell spawn!” Merula huffed as she straightened her posture and looked up at her dearly detested bastard of a spouse.

Eileen merely gave the shorter woman an amused look as she stared up and down at the way the Slytherin was unconsciously angling her body to better shield the baby from any potential danger. Her eyes softened as they landed onto the still sleeping bundle in her wife’s arms which only caused Merula to feel annoyance start to claw up her throat.

“If there’s anyone who’s getting attached to this thing it’s you! You’ve been acting all soft and dopey eyed these entire two weeks of caring for this brat! Honestly, the way this thing has gotten you wrapped around it’s tiny little finger is pathetic even for you, Ryder.’ Merula spat out venomously.

"Oh, and you haven't? I've seen the way you look at the little fella when you cradle him in your arms, or the way you give him one of your rare gentle smiles the few times you managed to wrangle a giggle out of him. Or how when he wakes up in the middle of the night and it's your turn to take care of him, you grumble about it but sing him back to sleep anyway. You may deny it but you secretly love caring for this little bundle of joy that you lovingly call a 'hell spawn'. 

“Face it Merl, you're completely enamoured with this little guy."

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Black Tie.”

I hope you guys like this. Writing has been weirdly difficult for me these past few days, so I sort of hope it isn’t showing lol

This is a little peak into the way that humans try to subtly one up each other in social situations, so Karma is fun :) 

Krill was mildly uncomfortable, and so was Sunny. They had all been invited to what the humans described as a “black tie” event on mars mostly for political delegations, rich sponsors, a couple of famous people, and the occasional member of the UNSC or the GA. Most of the GA reps were Rundi since they tended to like this political sort of thing. There was at least one Tesraki, who had made the executive decision to come since he saw financial opportunity in getting to know some rich humans.

Sunny had been invited to stand in for the Drev counselor, who could not attend due to some issues back on Anum. Dr Krill and Dr. Katie had been invited to attend the event in case medical personnel were required for any reason.

Adam was the only one who had been invited for himself.

The black tie event had been sent by way of a physical letter which Adam had called, “Excessively pretentious.” in a day and age where everything was sent electronically. The fact they had managed to get a letter to him out in the middle of space in the first place was pretty impressive.

Sunny hadn’t really known or cared what all of this meant, but Adam had been nervous and very serious about the dress code. Despite thinking the entire thing was pretentious, that didn't stop him from immediately sending away for his mother’s help.

Sunny was, of course, encouraged to wear ceremonial formal armor to the event.

Krill was keeping very close track of this odd human behavior constantly asking questions as Adam was preparing himself.

“Why don’t you just wear a regular suit?”

“Because that would be a social faux pas.”

“A what?”

He sighed, “I don't know, it's french or something. I think it’s a ballet term. IT just means it would be a social screw up and people would totally judge me for it.”

“They would judge you for wearing the wrong thing?” Krill wondered curiously.

Adam nodded, “That is the point of these parties, and has been for the last two and a half thousand years. These parties are honestly just the biggest pissing contests where people try to out dress each other in subtle ways, and the old people who know what they are doing make fun of the new people for having no idea how to do it properly.” 

Krill looked interested, “how fascinating. So it is a way to show your status subtly.”

“Oh yes. Status is a big deal. It started to go out of style for a while, but this whole adherence to dress code has come back with a vengeance in the last few years. The fashion world has seen an upheaval in pretentiousness, and celebrities have been laughed out of parties for trying to be avant-garde.”

“To be what?”

“Sorry, pretty sure that’s also french too. It means new, interesting, or out of the ordinary usually to make a statement.”

Sunny leaned in a little, “And they expect an air force commander to know how to properly dress for black tie?”

“They don’t, which is why they invited me. I am supposed to make others look good by looking bad. Of course I also make them look good by being invited in the first place. Of course joke's on them because i have a secret weapon on my side…” He patted the front of his shirt, “Thank you mother.” 

“I am now confused.”

Adam waved a hand, “Yeah, I know, It’s pretty stupid 

“I thought you recently decided that you like dressing up.” The human turned in place a couple of times in front of the mirror trying to get a better view of himself, “Correction, I have always enjoyed dressing up -- got that from my mom -- what I don’t enjoy is the pissing contest that comes along with it.

“What is that?”

“Bow tie.”

“You look like someone’s Christmas present.”

He adjusted the bow tie, “Well than someone is getting a sexy as fuck Christmas present now aren’t they.”

He buttoned up the front of the ‘waistcoat’ and pulled on the jacket.

When he was done, the two aliens had to admit that he really did stand out, all in black black pants black tuxedo jacket, cuff links, black tie, black waistcoat, and a purple/blue carnation threaded through the buttonhole on the lapel.

His shoes were almost as reflective as the mirror behind him.

“How do I look?”

“Like a goofy idiot, but the suit wasn’t going to change that.” He lifted a finger to flip Sunny off.

“Not very dapper of you.” Katie said from the doorway.

They looked up to see Katie, who had also commissioned a dress from Martha, and honestly made Adam look a little plain.

“Ready to go.”

“As I will ever be.”

***

Krill kept a shrewd eye on all the strange human protocols. As far as dressing up went Krill could immediately see who the in-crowd included. Ost of those people understood the rules Adam had laid out for him wearing the proper evening attire, where those not in the-in wore clothing that approximated the rules but missed them on several occasions. 

The way the evening was set up was a little bit more like a ‘ball’ as Adam described being announced as they were walked in, and then ordered to mingle with the crowd. Adam and Katie got a few glances from the in-group who seemed surprised that a simple ship captain would known anything about formal evening attire.

Sunny just found the entire thing hilarious. All of this subtle dressing up to impress each other.

If Drev held balls, instead of dancing they would probably just beat each other to death.

But here, there were a lot of subtle clues and hints that went right over her and the Doctor’s heads, while Adam seemed to know what he was doing.

As they walked in waiters offered Adam an alcoholic drink, while Krill received water, and sunny a rather strange tincture that was generally just water with plant flavoring. It was pretty good though so she didn’t complain.

They were met on arriving by the event coordinator whose eyes opened wide when she saw Adam pausing and holding out a hand.

Due to the conflated and rather twisted nature of black tie events in the future, Adam took the hand, and bowed a bit lowering his head, a strange area between the less formal handshake and the more formal kiss on the hand, which was also not a thing in societies post WWIII

“Commander, I… you look…” She trailed off 

Even to sunny it was clear the woman hadn’t expected him to know anything.

He smiled icily at her.

Krill leaned in in fascination.

This was one of the most intriguing parts of humanity. The polite way in which they were totally rude to each other, “Well than you. My mother has a Ph.D  in the information age and a masters in historical fashion.”

That shut the woman up and she politely dismissed herself walking away straight back.

Adam smirked, “Her dress isn’t the right length for an evening event.”

“I thought she coordinated the event.” Sunny muttered

“She couldn’t coordinate herself out of a paper bag.” He winked at Sunny and Krill, “You can’t out-dress the son of a historical fashion expert. Simply not possible, she even used the correct materials.” He tugged lightly at his jacket.

Dr. Katie had disappeared on entry leaving the three of them to wander about the room as Adam pointed out the other important people.

There were a few military commanders, rundi, and the aforementioned Tesraki. There were at least five major political leaders, and even larger handful of actors who had their hands in charities or political causes related to the event.

Adam was only halfway through his first drink when he was waylaid by one of the younger actors. Even Sunny could tell straight off that he was not dressed appropriately.  He had clearly tried very hard, but his efforts were in vain. While everything looked alright from a distance, up close something was wrong about everything. The material of his jacket, the style of his shirt, the type of pants, the lapels on the coat, and even the patterned pocket square which should have been a solid color but wasn’t.

He was joined by another group of men who then began some pretentious conversation about noticing how Adam was new to these sort of events. The way they spoke made it pretty clear they had no idea who he was or what the proper dress code was either.

Adam smiled and didn’t say anything.

“And what do you do for a living?” One of them asked

“Simply a UNSC representative.”

“Ah that explains a lot.” They glanced down at him with pointed looks 

The conversation continued. Sunn wondered why Adam didn’t just shut them all up by telling them exactly who he was, but Krill had a theory that Adam was just playing with them as a human way to build up the moment so that he could socially crush them.

As humans do, their conversation wandered until it eventually moved around to the UNSC and other related topics. 

One of the men nodded knowingly, “I am somewhat knowledgeable on the subject myself.” Adam raised an eyebrow.

“Are you?”

“Well yes, I have a brother in law who flies shuttles and planes for the UNSC. Tell me, what is your opinion on the D-4 class engine on a F-90 darkfire. I honestly think they are rather overpowered for what is being asked of them.”

Adam frowned, “The darkfire doesn't have a D-4 engine. That is a warp classification which-”

The man raised a hand, “No no. I heard my brother in law talking about it. Personally I think they should have just kept the jet engines they would have been plenty enough power to make it into orbit.

The Commander’s face scrunched in confusion as he shook his head, “No, it's a fusion engine, and the jet engine can’t fly in the upper atmosphere because there is no lift-”

“Look, Adam, was that your name. I generally tend to know what I am talking about. The darkfire jet engines would have plenty of power to make it into atmosphere,”

“But its a jet engine which implies it is for a plane and not for a rocket-” 

The guy cut him off again and continued to ramble onward about how he took some engineering classes in college and would know what he was talking about. Since Adam Joined the UNSC and didn’t go to college, that he probably didn’t know anything at all, or at least that is what they said in not so many words.

Sunny was getting a bit annoyed and would like to have squished the guy, but Adam just shook his head at her.

She stayed silent and grumpy as the other men continued to correct Adam on knowledge of his own favorite aircraft.

“My brother owns a spaceship with a class E warp core one of them boasted.” 

Adam rolled his eyes, “There is no such thing-”

“My brother owns the craft, I am pretty sure I know what I am talking about. It’s one of the most powerful cores in the galaxy.”

“Um, I don’t think.”

“Yes the E is more powerful than the A. A ship like the Harbinger or the Enterprise would only make it part of the way across the galaxy but the-” He kept going. 

Adam looked like he was dying but why didn’t he say anything.

It was just then that someone appeared from the crowd. Sunny recognized a political figure they had met at GA summits on occasion.

He raised his glass and stepped into the group, “Ah commander! I am glad to see you could make it.”

The group of men glanced at each other in confusion.

Adam nodded, “It’s good to see you two counselor.” He motioned to the group we were just having a fascinating discussion on warp engines.”

“Oh yes.” He turned to look at the men, “Than I am sure the commander has told you about his escapades as a darkfire pilot.”

The satisfaction Sunny got from watching their faces was priceless, almost orgasmic. She could tell from the look on Adam’s face that he was feeling similarly, “Well no we had not made it to the subject, “I was just going to explain to them how the duel E 20 engine has both a jet engine and a fusion engine. The jet engine for flying in atmosphere and the Fusion engine for moving out of atmosphere considering that the jet engine is not powerful enough to lift the craft without air buoyancy.”

Sunny was laughing on the inside.

“Ah yes. I seem to recall a discussion along those lines. Tell me commander, what about the Harbinger’s engine is it a class A-1.”

Adam nodded, “Could potentially get you to the other side of the universe if you asked her. The classification system is A-D 1-4 on each, so my ship has one of the most powerful engines mankind has ever bothered to build.”

He glanced out of the corner of his eye and the other men who were beginning to slink away.

Sunny chirped in pleasure.

The rep nodded as they left, “I heard the futility of your conversation from the other side of the room.”

“Thanks for the help. I was dying inside.”

The two men laughed and took their drinks.

Krill was very pleased with his examination on how humans subtly tried to one up each other with their dress and understanding of certain topics, though it seemed odd to him that someone would claim to be an expert when it was, in fact, their brother or brother in law who knew about the subject and not them.

But he supposed that was the social nature of humanity. 

[fmdminhee]

headcanon 001. lily’s title tracks & minhee’s opinions. word count: 1,422.

notes: this is all new writing! song titles are not included in the word count. 

into the new world

nearly ten years on, minhee still insists that into the new world was an iconic debut song. she was only in her mid teens when lily debuted, and was full of hope, so ready to start a life free of her mother’s clutches. with all that in mind, there probably isn’t a better song in the world she could’ve debuted with. in the years since, so many girl groups have performed it, almost like a rite of passage, and they’ve rearranged it into a ballad version. if either of those come up, minhee will cry. she’s an ugly crier. it’s pretty embarrassing.

gee 

gee gee gee gee baby baby - hwang minhee (minnie), 2013. she wants the lyrics of gee engraved on her tombstone, if possible. it’s still one of her favourites, and not just because it was a career maker. to be honest, if they hadn’t managed to at least match it with hits going forward, she’d probably dislike it by now. but, as it stands, she loves how unabashedly cute it is. 10/10, would perform all the time if she didn’t know her members’ heads would probably explode.

nonono

nonono is super fun and super catchy, and minhee really enjoyed promoting it. nowadays it’s not one that she’d pull out immediately, preferring the comeback preceding it and the three directly after, but she likes the song. it feels very classic lily, and listening back to it, and the corresponding mini-album, makes her feel sentimental as hell.

tell me

one of minhee’s top three, i think! do not hold me or her to that. all of lily’s title tracks are bangers and ranking depends on mood. but tell me definitely consistently stays in the top five. it might not be technically as good as some of their other releases from around the same era, but it’s tied with gee and oh! for number one song that makes her hyper as fuck. it’s just too much fun, she can’t take it. she got to be wonder woman for the music video too, which was cool. everything about tell me scratches minhee’s silly little brain just right.

mr. chu

though not quite on the same level as tell me and oh!, which 100% turn minhee’s brain up to 2x speed, mr. chu still gets minhee hyped up. something about the chorus and choreography and concept just all fit correctly. she’d like to say they invented the weirdly popular girl groups on tennis courts concept, but she should probably cite her sources somewhere. it’s sort of like a more her nonono.

oh!

oh! came out around the same time that minhee was coming of age, and actually wanting to try something a little different to lily’s typical concepts, and oh!’s styling allowed her to do that -- she liked it a lot, she felt like she was the cool girl in an american high school movie. not only that, but she loves the dance and the addictive chorus too. she has about as much fun with it as she does with gee and tell me.

run devil run

when minhee said she wanted to do something different, she didn’t mean it like this. in all seriousness, run devil run is a fun song, but she appreciates it much more today than she did when they released it. the image reversal on stage was really difficult for her. still, if they were going to go down a sexy route, she hoped it wouldn’t feature so much tight leather in the future. short shorts >>>.

nobody

a very cool song, one that minhee thinks did better at showing off her versatility than run devil run, alongside showing the public lily’s more grown up and sexier sides, without going as far as run devil run did either. she got to be expressive in her face, and really had a lot of fun playing it up for the cameras. fun fact! it’s her dad’s favourite lily title track. 

genie (tell me your wish)

genie minhee’s beloved <3 truly one of their best. it’s the perfect blend of original and the at the time emerging new lily. refreshing and upbeat, flirty and fun. it’s an unbeatable combination of all the things that make lily great. she has absolutely no qualms about calling it a modern classic.

hoot

BOP. has a lot of the same positives for minhee as nobody and genie. she loves the whole old school thing from this era of lily’s title tracks. one of her personal top favourites (a contender for a slot in the ever rotating top three and five), not least thanks to the choreography in the chorus. she thinks hoot is iconic, and though yes, people would agree, she thinks it deserves to be even more of a widespread opinion. 

i got a boy

minhee’s tiny attention span loves i got a boy. she really loves it, like seriously. it’s one of lily’s most active choreographies, and she doesn’t think any other group could pull off a song like i got a boy. who else could get away with it?? she loves how youthful it feels too, and how it managed to be so without it feeling like they’d gone too far back after the mature-ish retro concepts before it. 

the boys

for minhee, the boys is kind of like run devil run’s better younger sister. run devil run was a test run, then they took the formula and made it ten times better with the boys. maybe it’s a confidence thing though. her self esteem was never low, per se, but she was definitely better equipped for a concept like this in 2017 than she was in 2015.

be my baby

retro lily best lily! minhee adores be my baby for its return to one of her favourite styles of lily song --  the kind she can really get expressive during. she could be cute and pouty up on stage again, while still acting her age. she had so much fun performing be my baby, and it’s another contender for the top five title tracks in her opinion. 

only one

only one is a nice song, for sure, but it’s pretty close to the bottom of minhee’s list. it’s like an unremarkable return to classic lily ... except it’s not fun or cute enough to satisfy minhee’s standards. weirdly, it makes her feel old. as if bc is putting an odd, grainy filter on an otherwise modern song and concept because they doubted whether or not the girls could still pull off the likes of mr. chu or nonono.

luv

luv is uncharacteristically somber when compared to pretty much all of their other title tracks, but minhee, surprisingly, likes it a lot. it’s catchy, both in its music and its choreography, and it’s a good blend of the old school drama type of vibe she gets from something like nobody or be my baby with the sweetness and sincerity of into the new world. a dark horse in minhee’s rankings.

five

five, in minhee’s opinion, is a much better attempt at whatever bc was trying to do with only one. it feels much more like proper original vibes lily, noticeably lacking the inexpiable bad vibes she got off the whole production of only one. everything about five came naturally to her.

remember

remember is a really unique song in lily’s discography in terms of its concept. the nautical summery themes also sort of reminded minhee of nonono and the sailor outfits they wore all the way back then. in the grand scheme of things, it lands squarely towards the end of minhee’s list in terms of preference, but above only one.

mr. mr.

ULTRA BOP. minhee loves mr. mr. so much. it’s got all of the retro influences that she adores, topped with a modern electronic dance flair. she’s conceited, so if you ask her, she’ll tell you that lily were the trendsetters behind retro coming back, citing mr. mr. and, like, half of their earlier title tracks for good measure. again, she’s come a long way since run devil run, and is much more comfortable being cool as well as cute now.

i’m so sick

i’m so sick is retro leaning, has a fun dance, and the styling makes minhee feel like a sad princess in a fantasy version of modern day. it’s perfect. she doesn’t love it as much as a lot of their previous releases, but she thinks it’s a really good concept for them to run with in 2021. she’d admittedly been sort of doubting bc and her decision to renew her contract because of her gripes with only one and remember, but thanks to 2021′s releases, minhee feels pretty satisfied with her choice.

[casually-inlove]

Hello. In one of your responses, you wrote: "I also have things that I don't necessarily agree with." Can you tell us about it? I am very interested in your representation of this manhua. What do you think is written well in the story, and what is not? What would you add or remove? What is missing and what is too much in history? I would very much like to know your TianShan headcanon. I have too many "wants". I'm sorry if I was rude.

Dear anon, this was not rude at all. Indeed, you have many questions, so much as I try to be concise in my posts, this one is going to be very lengthy. Let me start with a little disclaimer. Everything below is entirely subjective. It is in no way meant to undermine anyone's enjoyment of the series, nor is it supposed to be an attack against the author. I value the comic's episodic nature and light-heartedness myself, otherwise, I would not have stuck around. It is also true that for the past half a year my interest in it waxes and wanes. Besides, I am well aware that certain groups of fans grow dissatisfied with the manhua direction. That said, I must state once again, OX has every right to write the story as they please, while the fans, no matter how displeased they may be, do not have the room to make demands of the author. So then, without further ado, some of my quibblings follow below. Beware of the wall-of-text.

1) The plot and characters get stagnant at times — these two go hand in hand. I suppose it is a prevalent gripe with 19 Days, and I am sure everyone has experienced it at least once. Some of it stems from the very way the story is told: the manhua timeline moves slowly in comparison with the readers' timeline. It works for depicting slow-burn relationships and subtle changes in the characters' outlooks. The problem is, more often than not, the latest chapters are inconsequential to either plot or character growth. They do not have the substance or the conflict to them. When OX had introduced the characters, while undoubtedly charming and loveable, they were practically walking tropes. Jian Yi, the bubbly airhead. ZZX, the stoic childhood friend. HT, Mr Popular. As time passed, OX did the clever (and the right) thing — they have subverted these stereotypes, by showing us that the characters are not who they appear to be. Thus, we learned that Jian Yi is a lonesome, affection deprived kid who on occasion dreads going back home because it's empty; his bright grin is there to hide his sadness.  We also learned that HT had a dysfunctional family and had been exposed to violence since a tender age; we also learned that he used to lead an empty life devoid of close interpersonal connections and passions, etc. I am not going to write about Mo because it is obvious and self-explanatory.

That sudden change in the perspective is what made those characters fascinating. A few of these developments co-occur with the addition of the “darker” mafia/gangster subplot. Indeed, the introduction of the criminal legacy theme (which is true for Jian Yi, He Tian, and Mo to an extent) allowed to show the wounds and troubles these characters had to face. It also dangled the prospect of an intriguing plot direction — a mafia-related story that is disguised as a school-themed slice-of-life. It was the underlying gangster plot-line that hooked me up; I kept asking myself: Are they connected (the Jian family, the He family)? Were they responsible for what happened with the Mo family restaurant? Will their backgrounds converge at some point? How does Jia Yi's kidnapping fit into all this? That sort of stuff. Alas, right now that subplot seems to be put on a backburner, which is a shame because this is the plot-line that leads to future events, such as Jian Yi's disappearance. The kidnapping is still going to happen and the threat looming over Jian Yi is still real, yet OX does very little to explain anything about it. Naturally, revealing everything at once is out of the question, but if it were me, I would have opted for unveiling bits and pieces now and then. To start with, it would have propelled the plot forward. Apart from that, it would have given the readers some food for thought and kept the intrigue fresh — they would have been cracking their heads to piece the puzzle. Finally, the characters' darker backgrounds provide the opportunity to give them development. For instance, how would Mo's view of He Tian change, if he learned that the latter had to face his warped father to save Mo (ch. 245 and further on)? Or how would Mo react, if he learned that He Tian lost his mother (presumably) due to his family shady dealings? Would it make him understand the other boy, relate to him on some level? Etc. 

The comedy and fun, light moments are precious, but I miss those moments when the manhua challenged my impression of the characters. Right now, the plot stagnates in the sense that we know that someone is threatening Jian Yi, but we aren't being given any clues or updates on the matter, as if the whole thing wasn't important. So, in response to your question “what would I have removed”, I would say that I would probably drop quite a few school-centric chapters in favour of “criminal” subplot. Just a bit: maybe show Mr Jian's messages, or Jian Yi's mother discussing the situation with him, or He Cheng receiving some reports on the situation.  

The character recent portrayal also disappoints me on occasion. They started as stereotypical manga characters, then they were given some depth, and now they are close to becoming yet another set of stereotypes. Yeah, I get that Mo is a tsundere and enamoured He Tian is an idiot in love — OX has been depicting them as such for the past year. It would be cool to take a look at other facets of their personalities now and then too. While it’s understandable that only a few weeks have passed since the beginning of the story, OX should remember that years have passed for the readers; keeping the audience engaged should be among their priorities.

I suppose I do have a bias here because as an adult I have little interest in all things school-related, and in general, I am not too fond of slice-of-life (I typically avoid reading it).19 Days attracted me because it had some universal themes, like dealing with past and legacy, finding your path, healing from the old scars, learning to handle difficult relationships within a family, and of course its low-key “mafia” subplot. It could be that OX truly doesn't have a meticulously chapter-to-chapter thought-out plot, hence why the manhua meanders at times, or it could have something to do with Mosspaca's internal agenda. Perhaps, it is the latter and the company somehow insists its artists stick with simplistic plots for the sake of keeping their target audience. Even so, there's a catch here, which was brought to the attention by @agapaic: the original reader audience has aged up already so to keep them hooked it would be wise of OX to “mature up” the comic as well. Not in the sense of 18+ content, but in the sense of introducing more mature subjects alongside the comedy and slice of life. Perhaps, they are not looking to keep the fans but to attract the new, younger ones. Who knows.

2) Drama and comedy imbalance. It is a pet peeve of mine which I consider to be one of the prominent manhua flaws: there is lots of slapstick comedy which ends up being out of place on occasion. I do realize the comic is humorous, however, there is no denying that OX introduced themes and topics that are no laughing matters. Jian Yi's and He Tian's loneliness, bullying and ostracizing, extortion racket, absentee parents, youth gangs and violence — just to name a few. There is a lot more, but you get the picture.

It is also obvious that three out of four main characters carry the remnants of childhood trauma with them, which directly affects their present selves. All the same, these topics practically fizzle out as soon as they get introduced, or get swept under the rug with comedy. Considering the humorous nature of the comic, it is given that dispersing some grimmer topics with playfulness will be used now and then. To my mind, however, OX relies on that abrupt drama-to-comedy switch too heavily, which makes the transition steep and often out of place. At times, it creates an impression that the author does not take these issues seriously. There have been numerous episodes when emotional moments were subverted and then dropped, without gaining climax and closure. For instance, the moment that sticks out to me the most is when He Tian attempted to tell Mo why he liked him. The visuals made it clear that it wasn't easy for He Tian to say out loud, yet OX never gave the intense moment the needed closure.

Mo brushed He Tian off and the latter just rolled with it, as if it never took him any courage to say those words, and then everything was swiftly engulfed by slapstick humour (the ball-slapping scene). A panel showing a glimpse of He Tian's face sinking to indicate he was somewhat let down by Mo's nonchalant response would have been appropriate — in fact, it would be natural for someone to get hurt when their confession is taken lightly. Likewise, I half-expected OX to show a bit more of He Tian's reaction towards Mo's story about his meeting with She Li. We got to see his expression darkening when he learned that She Li gave Mo the ear piercings, yet this time — mind you, when Mo suggested that She Li might have murdered someone — we never see He Tian react much. For the record, it was He Tian who asked She Li a rhetorical question about being able to take responsibility for taking a life.

Furthermore, I believe that someone romantically invested in another human being would have naturally shown more inquisitiveness upon hearing a story like that. Sure enough, some would say that Mo would not have liked talking about a traumatizing event, and that is fine as well — just show it. A single panel of He Tian being concerned and trying to inquire further and Mo refusing to talk would have been a very neat detail that could have potentially smoothed the transition into humour, while keeping our heroes in character.

3) Sometimes there is too much focus on the couples. The manhua has introduced several reoccurring supporting characters which are directly linked to our main quartet. For example, Mo had bonds before meeting our boys: his henchmen, the Buzzcut. Likewise, He Cheng was the one to raise He Tian; he shaped the boy's outlook on life.  These characters all played important roles in making our boys the people they are today, and yet we know so little of their bonds. Maybe the Buzzcut is unimportant in the larger scheme of things, He Cheng, however, is not only linked to He Tian, but he also plays a part in the underlying mafia/gangster subplot. It would have made sense if he was the one to shed some light on the situation with Jian Yi and He Tian's traumatic past. I would have loved to see our boys interact with other people as well — it would have served to show the variety of relationships out there: friendships, familial bonds, mutual respect between the leader and underlings, etc.

Anyway, I am going to stop now. I could name a few more, but this text is already more than 2000 words long. I have made some posts with my nitpicking before, so if you wish you can read them here.  

link & link 

Once again, this is all entirely subjective and it is not meant to be perceived as me saying that the manhua is poorly written and no one should enjoy it. Writing and creating compelling plots is a tough job, especially when it comes to long pieces. It also goes without saying that the author should keep their target audience and marketing goals in mind. 19 Days appeals to a great number of people of all ages and that means that OX succeeded in creating something compelling. Their writing is indeed flawed at times, but there is no way around it. It is impossible to excel both at being a great artist and a good writer. While there may be things that each of us would want to change (when comes to characters or the plot), it is still important to remember that it is not our creation. We can only decide whether to keep reading and enjoy what we get or move along. There is no point in attacking the author or generating constant pessimism.

[dismas-dumbass]

Mom says that a house is like a body. And every house has eyes and bones and skin. A face. This room is like the heart of the house. No, not a heart, a stomach.

-The Haunting of Hill House

Hackett Siblings wanted for some absolutely chaotic drama!

CW: suicide, ptsd, mental trauma, death, substance abuse

henlo, welcome to the ad where i lose my shit cause i’ve lost control of my life. anyway! i have the idea for a rather messed up group of siblings slightly based off the Haunting of Hill House show. The basics are that there’s a large house, there’s a large family, something reaaaallyy rreeaally bad happens to the family when the kids are young that have fucked them up for the rest of their lives, fun stuff like that! obviously the situation is more subtle/personal rather than what goes on in the show [i’ll try to be vague due to spoilers] but i think it’s still something that can be rather creepy~ pretty much 95% of the info presented in this version of the ad is rather flexible and flimsy and i definitely don’t mind working with y’all to make it something amazing!! also, no knowledge of the show is needed whatsoever but just be a tiny bit careful if you do wanna see it/don’t like being spoiled mostly just due to the fact that with the themes that will be in the ad the show will probably be discussed as well!

a loooootttt of the details aren’t set in stone btw! i’m pretty much outlining my thoughts and the general concept but things may/will change and things will be added/subtracted as more people contribute to the idea!

if you have any questions or even if this strikes your fancy you can contact me on discord [mine’s dismas#9766]! if there’s more than one of ya then we can get a group chat going so that way we can see what ideas we all have for this! i can’t wait to write with y’all! <3

Backstory

alright, so the gist is that the Hackett family used to live in a rather big and fancy house. why they were there is up in the air so here’s a few suggestions: A. like the show, their parents were fixing it up. now, whether that means they’re going to sell it right after or live in it is open since both angles are rather interesting! B. they inherited it. from who? who knows! could be a relative that one of the parents knew, could have been random. it’s just a harmless house right? it might be good for the family! C. they just moved there. weird house for a good price? why not! it might be fun! 

whatever the reason, the siblings were in the house for some time. whether they’re natives to Dyrne or outsiders is open since all of the concepts can cover those possibilities easily! there’s no strict timeline yet as to how old they were when they were in that house but more than likely the youngest [twin] siblings were no younger than 6 so make of that what you will with the age ranges~ i would say that they were in that house for about a year or so? technically not too long in their lives but enough to cause lifelong damage?

their parents were good people. they had their flaws obviously and raising literally seven kids was an undertaking but they managed fine enough. mostly through the power of having the older siblings taking care of the younger. but even then they were loving parents. their father was a bit of a mess but well-meaning [think: one of the little siblings learned a swear word from an older one and their father tries to track them down, shouting throughout the house ‘get your ass in here now or else you’re grounded!’] and their mother was more organized yet didn’t hesitate to create a tiny bit of harmless chaos every once in a while. they loved each other, they loved their kids.

now, obviously, there’s the subject of the house itself. what’s the history behind it? that’s definitely left open due to the very reason why they’re there. but there’s probably something wrong with the house. physically? spiritually? mentally? whoever walks those halls won’t exactly be coming back out the same, that’s for sure. And that’s sort of what happened. the official story was that the Hackett family lived in the house for year, doing whatever, and then a fire broke out which caused the death of their mother. the rest of the family was able to escape and the father gave the testimony that it was an electrical fire -when investigated, he was proven innocent of any wrongdoing.

so what’s the actual story? It’s a bit of a mish mash of weird memories, mostly. it’s not really known whether the house is actually alive alive or if its history is just a horrible set of coincidences of bad stuff happening to people. the actual night was a blur to the siblings, all of them being ushered out of the house by their frantic father and herded into the car. when they asked where their mother was their father didn’t answer so they were just left crying after their missing mother. they didn’t even know that there was a fire even though maybe one of them said that they smelled smoke. they didn’t find out until one of the officers at the scene talked about it. for whatever reason, each and every one of them were silent on why they were brought out of the house by their father.

it’s still something they don’t know about.

to be fair, it was almost a partial relief to be out of the house. as i mentioned with the family they were held together well enough and were loving but things started to change when they moved to that house. slowly, surely, they started to encounter strange happenings, feel strange things, and started to view each other differently. what exactly happened to each family member is left open since they mostly don’t speak of their experiences except for the youngest. even their father, who may have experienced quite a lot, was tight-lipped about what happened to him, especially on the night of the fire. the experiences changed them, messed with them, and caused them to splinter and falter and break. after the death of their mother there was obviously quite a few years before everyone split up but they eventually did, going off to do their own things with their own scars hidden beneath their lies. some moved away, some stayed, but they still stayed in touch in some fashion. just not enough to be considered personal anymore.

what brought them all back together was the death of their father not too long ago. The poor man must have been consumed by guilt of some sort and took his own life, leaving his children behind to deal with the aftermath. they still never got any secrets from him nor any answers so all that’s there are feelings of confusion and loss. where the story begins is the revealed news that all the siblings are going to be living under one roof -in that house. the youngest daughter, for whatever reason, decided to purchase their childhood home back and has been in the process of restoring it. the reason why each sibling decides to go along with this is up in the air but the end result is the same: all seven siblings, plus any other family they may have, are now living in that house again.

Siblings

all the siblings except the one i’ll be playing are not set in stone! i’m going for a redheaded family sort of feel so the face claims i’ve put for each of them are something that i prefer but! tbh i’m super flexible and and at the end of the day it’s not a dealbreaker to choose someone else~ since i don’t wanna restrict folk’s fun over a fc choice! overall the sibling's interactions between each other are not that amicable -some may try to cooperate but old wounds come up and oftentimes a fight arises. they still have their weird traditions such as drawing straws if they need to do something and nobody wants to or they all fall silent at the same time [not often, obv., since they're mostly shouting over each other] that cause people on the outside to look at them strangely. at the end of the day, they can't escape the fact that they are siblings and are from the same disturbed family.

beliefs as well are varied and open! none say that they believe their youngest brother whenever he tries to convince them of what happened at the house though whether or not they believe that inside their heads is another matter entirely~

also! don’t feel as though you have to base your characters off any from the show! it’s just a nice start-off point and if you’re inspired but it’s definitely not a requirement whatsoever!

tbh a lot of the siblings aren’t fleshed out a lot & what happened to them in the house is also open so feel free to go wild!! i mean it; you can add as much as you want so that you can create a character that you’ll love to write for!

Eldest Son- 51. Toby Stephens.

being the eldest, he was the one to usually look after the younger children if their parents needed to do something. he built up a sort of protector complex where he has to make sure that he knows where all the other siblings are at all times. he fails constantly, of course, since he can’t even manage to have one of them listen to him. still, he feels responsible for all of his other siblings and takes it personally when he can’t get something done for them. he has his flaws, obviously, in that he tries to say that his way is the right way and can be as stubborn as an ox so despite his best intentions he clashes with some of the other siblings. this may be why none of them tend to listen to him.

Second Son- 50. Tony Curran.

He is one of the quieter siblings, preferring to be by himself when not needed. It isn’t that he dislikes his siblings; he just likes to be alone rather than among them. he’s kind and thoughtful so whenever one of the others needs help he’ll try to be there but besides that don’t count on him being somewhere on his own. Actually, it may be difficult to count on him in general because he loses track of time often and before he knows it he’s two hours late to moving some furniture for someone. this is probably the reason why he tends to be by himself -he doesn’t seem to grasp the passage of time as others have.

Eldest Daughter- 47. Sarah Rafferty.

she’s cruel. not absolutely cruel but cruel enough. she likes to poke and prod her siblings and see what sets them off. she thinks it’s funny and likes to observe the aftermath of her machinations. she likes to claim that she’s just bored but in reality she’s absolutely insecure herself and wants to bring others down to feel better about herself. don’t tell this to her face because she will absolutely try to turn it back on you and make you out to be the bad guy while she is the victim. also, don’t try to get revenge -she’ll just be more inclined to do something worse to you.

Second Daughter- 46. Amy Adams.

she’s neutral towards, well, everything. she kind of just exists and she doesn’t like that. not a lot of passion, not a lot of purpose. maybe she tries something daring once in a while to feel something but comes up short. it’s difficult for her to emotionally connect with others in a deep way and oftentimes she finds herself alone. she doesn’t like being alone, though, since being alone means she’ll be alone with her thoughts and she hates that. If she can even feel that properly, anyway. she’s not emotionless in the sense that she is sociopathic but her difficulty feeling things has caused her to have a sarcastic and thorny exterior towards anyone she meets, fueling her involuntary self-isolation.

Third Daughter- 43. Jessica Chastain. Reserved for spooky spice

she's the face of the family. the most energetic. the most chaotic. the one to threaten to break someone's kneecaps if they dare harm her siblings. she'll give a show-stopping smile and then tell you to eat shit afterwards. due to the minimal age difference she always had to watch the twins and therefore she is close to them, especially Thomas. some joke that she's actually Thomas' twin -she can sort of just sense whenever the youngest Hackett is in trouble. she's not happy about anything seeming messy, of course, so she spares no second to chastise anyone [including Thomas] about what they have done wrong. her status among stardom cannot afford any blemishes so catch her changing the subject whenever an interviewer brings up the fact that her younger brother is a drug addict. trust her, she knows. she knows all too well. and maybe her motivation for buying up the Hackett siblings' childhood house was to try to get Thomas some actual help after he failed out of rehab for the umpteenth time. their father's suicide may have just reinforced her decision to go forward with this.

Twin One- 42. Michael Fassbender.

maybe he’s one of the most normal. maybe’s he’s the most normal. maybe he has to be -his twin is an absolute trainwreck of a human being and his family is an equal amount of mess. maybe he’s just good at saving face and hiding the damage caused by the house [and maybe by his siblings]. some days, he sort of forgets that he’s a twin and that said twin is a drug addict. when they were young they were close though he would often play kind of cruel tricks on his younger twin such as locking the door to the basement after daring Thomas to go down the stairs, leaving him in a room alone with the lights off, and things like that. he grew out of it, matured, and tries to ignore the fact that he may or may not have been part of the reason why Thomas is the way he is now. he's too focused on being a professor at the college to fully see the cries of help his younger twin is showing.

Twin Two Thomas Hackett- 42. Michael Fassbender. Taken by Dismas.

so you’re asking me if i have a problem. i probably do. the youngest of the Hackett family; he’s probably one of the most heavily affected by the events at the house. for those familiar with the show think a combination of inspiration between Luke and Eleanor Crain, but also with even more issues maybe as well as none of the siblings being on his side whatsoever on anything. he had quite a few strange encounters ranging anywhere from encountering something in the basement when he was locked in one time by his twin to being trapped in a room with so much noise that he passed out for hours. now, figure, he’s a young kid when all of this happened [probably around 6 or so, could be a tiny bit older] so he doesn’t know how to deal with any of this. this really fucks him up. on top of that, whenever he told his family, none of them ever believed, further fueling the feeling of being unwanted. he was probably the closest one to their mother, being the youngest and the most vulnerable of the children, so he was absolutely devastated when she perished in the fire that fateful night. he blamed his father, thinking that he did something to her and tried to hide it with said fire. he never stopped believing in that, nor in the experiences he had in the house, and it pretty much ate at his soul. not only that but nobody still believed him so he always felt useless. he developed a bitter and angry attitude to try to hide this but the wounds were never able to be covered for long and so he eventually turned to drugs to soothe his pain. obviously, it never fully did so he just fell deeper into the rabbit hole. he dropped out of high school and started to do all sorts of jobs and favors in order to get his next fix, oftentimes winding up being arrested for petty crimes. he earned a bad reputation around town and the only reason why he didn’t face too much jail time is due to one of his siblings always bailing him out. wash, rinse, and repeat.

nowadays he goes between being sort of okay and having his own place to being absolutely drugged out of his mind and having to crash at a sibling’s place if they’re local -mostly his twin or the youngest daughter of the family. he’s failed out of rehab recently which may have been one of the reasons why the youngest daughter decided to purchase and fix up their childhood home; so that he can have a stable over his head for once and maybe recover from his habits. little does she know, or maybe care, that the house was the reason for his down spiral in the first place so he is not thrilled whatsoever to be stuck in the same building with all the same people who did not believe him. he hates it here.

Other Ideas

this is pretty much going to be only the possible family of the siblings woops but with the house being rather large there’s a ton of room for more than just the siblings themselves and more than likely some of the other siblings are going to be in some sort of relationship unlike Thomas. now, of course, maybe not all of the spouses/partners/children live in the house after all but then again they might! i have a few small ideas:

the loyal partner- this partner is loyal to the sibling they’re married to/with, always making sure they’re alright and making sure the sibling is well taken care of. maybe even spoil/indulge a little too much the whims of the sibling. they may seem a little more oblivious to the chaotic dynamics of the siblings and the strangeness of the house. they just think that everyone needs to get along and everything will be okay! except it’s never that easy and they probably just look foolish for suggesting that.

the angry partner- they hate it in the house. all the fighting and the tension and the drama; they think it’s a bunch of bullshit. they especially think all the spooky~ stuff that apparently happened in the house is all bullshit too and won’t hesitate to call anyone out if the supernatural is even entertained. they just want to live their life in relative peace with the sibling they’re with 

the mediator partner- they may not necessarily believe in the unbelievable -in fact, their career hinges on finding out why people process stuff the way they do [ex. a therapist or psychologist]- but they still try to see all angles. they’re typically the one trying to quell the arguments between siblings and trying to see why the siblings feel the way they do about things (and about each other). they’re curious, however, about the house itself and may start poking around in the wrong places to try to discover the truth.

[one tiny suggestion! perhaps the mediator partner is married to Thomas’ twin brother and they have a kid with the face claim of Reece King? ;^; he has slightly similar facial features to Michael Fassbender + i think it’d be sweet if the partner tries to see why Thomas is fucked up the way he is and maybe even begins to sympathize/believe him after they start to figure stuff out?]

Plots

alright! so the obvious plots are going to be the interactions between siblings~ their personalities may give a hint to who they do or don’t get along with but in all honesty they all have bad enough blood with each other to have issues one way or another. so! drama! one of those ‘if you leave them in a room for long enough they’ll find something to fight about’ type of things! they do love each other -really, they do- but their experiences in the house changed them forever and there’s no gaining that back. they can only move forward.

they’re already living in the house for a short period of time [maaaybbe a month? a few weeks?] so they’re all settled in and dealing with the presence of each other and it’s not going exactly swimmingly for obvious reasons. maybe some try to cooperate with each other? others not so much. there’s plenty of fighting and slamming doors and shouting and leaving the area/the house to cool off. on more than one occasion Thomas has already stated that he’s leaving for good and going out on his own. he never follows through with the threat -he can’t. he’s as tied to the house as everyone else is and now he can’t escape. but you get the gist. it’s going to take a while for them to see eye to eye with each other. if they ever do, anyway.

future plots to explore are, of course, up in the air but they can deal with the siblings learning more about each other, learning more about their parents, and learning more about the house. and, of course, learning more about their town as well! Whether things start to get better or if they down spiral even further is going to be rather interesting to see~

for initial threads it could be fun [in a morbid sense] to do a past one where they’re attending their father’s funeral since that was kind of actually a shitshow. imagine all the siblings, with their awful traits, having to deal with the death of their parent and just in terrible pain. so, what else to do than to cause issues with each other and create quite a few commotions? obv. when the sibling’s personalities are solidified we can discuss this further! overall the first types of posts will be their interactions with the site plots, the town itself, and between them when they’re at the house so there’s plenty of room for drama!

[thepeakyfckingblinders]

Disturbing || Tommy Shelby x reader

⤠ MASTERLIST⤟

Anon requested/summary:  Can you write one about tommy and reader breaking up, then months later tommy sees her with people he doesn’t approve, of drinking ( drugs eg if your comfortable) so he try’s to get her back? Maybe with younger reader

Warnings: Younger reader (20-25 yrs old), anxiety, maybe angst, drug use, heavy drinking, swearing (but, c’mon, it’s the peaky fooking blinders we’re talking about)

Author’s notes: 

I’m sorry if the title sucks, I can’t think of anything better at the moment

This was my very first request and I was so tense while writing it, I guess I smoked a thousand cigarettes in the process! I’m praying that you’ll like it, let me know what you think and tell me if this is what you expected  ♡

I myself suffer form anxiety, in the first part I just tried to explain how my brain works in certain situations and that’s why it is so long, I hope you won’t get bored.

I’m Italian, English isn’t my first language, so I apologize for every possible mistake I made. Also please, help me improve my writing by telling me if there’s something wrong

ENJOY!

You had been trying to keep control of your mind, you truly had, but in the end that familiar sense of pure fear took over you, again. A heavy form of anxiety had been haunting you ever since you were a little girl, but, as the years went by, you had learnt to cope with it well and when you met Thomas, things only got better, the strong bond between the two of you constantly helping you handle that issue. 

Nevertheless, during the last month, things got definitely out of hand: Tommy was always caught up with business, rarely paying attention to you and your increasing fragility, he hadn’t spent a night home since ages and still, in those rare moments you were together, he was just so distant, totally lost in his own mind.

On the other hand, you never once blamed him for the way his life worked, after all you were perfectly aware of how hard it was for him to look after his whole empire, always trying to deal with countless problems without causing any harm to his loved ones, and that was surely not the easiest thing to do. But this time was different: you couldn’t prevent your brain from having obsessive thoughts about Thomas getting completely tired of having you in his way, you actually convinced yourself he was sleeping with other women in the nights he didn’t come home, and on those nights your eyes never shut, you spent hours alone in your king size bed, staring at the white ceiling with short breath and palpitations. That’s why you just couldn’t take it anymore, anxiety was once more sucking the life out of you and you absolutely needed to talk to your boyfriend about it, so, as soon as he entered the house that night, you practically run towards him, determined to calmly explain everything; too bad, your exhausted mind wasn’t working straight and your mouth immediately made it clear.

-Y-you have to tell me-  Tears already streaming down your face while the handsome man in front of you gave you a confused look, not having a clue of what was going on. You could tell he also was in a bad mood, indeed your sentence was at first totally ignored as he walked into his study and quickly lit a cigarette, before filling his glass with whisky.

-What the hell are you talking about, y/n?-

You were now facing him again, your hands shamelessly trembling against your chest while you hardly held back the crying. -If there’s another woman, i-if you want to get rid of me, you have to tell me now, ‘cause I’m l-losing my mind, Thomas-

You slightly jumped when his now empty glass was roughly shoved against the huge desk separating your figures, then you unconsciously stepped back, noticing absolute fury burning in his glacial eyes.

-Are you serious right now, eh? Have you any idea how fucking difficult it is to keep everything working these days, eh?- His voice was loud and raspy as he stood from his seat -And you fucking come and tell me about other bloody women, how idiotic of you!- Heavy sobs started coming out of your throat, Thomas instead took a deep breath in order to calm down and stop shouting in your face; once he had partially blown off steam, he sat back in his chair, looking up at you almost with disgust.

-You know what? My brothers were right for once, you’re just a silly kid unable to fit in our world. This whole thing was a mistake, I need a fucking grown woman by my side!- A disturbing silence filled the room right after he spat those bitter words and you swore you heard your heart stop along with your breathing in that very moment, your eyelids instinctively tightened for several seconds, yet, when your eyes flew back open, you realized it wasn’t only a bad dream. Tommy was still staring at you with a stern expression, probably waiting on your next move, so you just looked into his blue irises one last time, unable to speak a single syllable, before leaving.

                                                                                                       3 months later

Days went by fast after your break up with Thomas, since then you’d been trying to avoid him in every way possible, humiliation and pain being still too intense to let you face him without terrible consequences for your already vulnerable spirit. Indeed, everything around you was literally going to pieces right before your eyes and you couldn’t help it; even though you’d always been a strong girl, pretty capable of getting through life and its adversities, recent events had left you in a state of such deep sorrow, that the only thing you were able to do was seek any practicable form of anesthesia in order to escape from reality, even just for a brief moment. In fact, you’d been hanging out with a group of very low guys from East Birmingham, which led you to do drugs and bend your elbow more and more often, severely damaging your ability to think rationally, and the worst part was that you didn’t even care about what you were doing to yourself, as long as it allowed you to get along with your demons.

And then one night, your presumed new friends literally dragged you to the Garrison, despite your loud protests arising from the awareness of the fact that Thomas would’ve been there too. Luckily, long before the Shelby brothers made their usual entrance into their pub, you ended up being utterly intoxicated by alcohol and cocaine to the point that, when the moment finally came and Tommy showed up, you barely noticed him. Too bad for you, Tom’s eyes, on the other hand, never failed in spotting your silhouette among the crowd. At first, seeing you again after all those days brought pure relief to his soul, God only knew how much he had missed you, but soon after he remembered the reason why you were gone and his jaw clenched with regret and shame for the unforgivable way he had treated you.  Conscious of the fact that he had already caused you too much pain, Thomas was about to go away and leave you be, until he saw you diving in some random guy’s arms while heavy drinking directly from a bottle. It just wasn’t like you to act in such a way, therefore he immediately realized that something must have been wrong, so, before his mind had a chance to catch up with the rest of his body, Tommy found himself taking long strides in your direction, roughly elbowing anyone who was in his path. All of a sudden, you observed your friend’s face turn pale and his eyes go wide with fear for no apparently reason, Andrew kept staring at a precise point behind your shoulders and when you turned around in order to understand what was going on, Thomas Shelby was in front of you in all his glory. For a couple of seconds he just stood there, sending deadly glares at the poor boy next to you, blood boiling in his veins because of the violent rage that affected him, then his attention entirely moved to your trembling figure.

-I need a word with you- You felt your chest shrinking in pain as his calm and deep voice reached your ears, but you still tried to play it cool with a strength you didn’t know you had. -Fuck you already, Thomas- A resentful laugh erupted from your throat while, careful not to look in his mesmerizing eyes, you attempted to turn your back on him, yet a gentle grip on your forearm stopped your movements, forcing you to stay in your place.

-I’m begging you, y/n, we need to talk- This time his crystal blue gaze successfully entangled yours and your mind went totally black for a moment, preventing you to fight against him as he guided you out of the pub. Birmingham’s cold breeze immediately hit both of your bodies, but you were hardly able to sense it, due to the effects that drugs and alcohol had on your brain; once you were far enough from the chaos, Tommy stopped walking, his large hand still on your arm. -What are you doing?- His thumb made it to your beautiful face, softly wiping away from your nose the traces of that familiar white powder. -This is not you, y/n!-

His tone raised, displaying all of his concern, you simply gave him a forceful shove in attempt to push him away, but his toned chest didn’t move an inch. -Why do you even care, Tommy? After all I’m just a silly kid to you!- You started screaming, prey of your frustration, as soon as you felt hot tears forming in your eyes; the realization of how you still hopelessly loved him stabbed you right in the ribs.

-Please, just listen to me, okay?- He said while cupping your face with both his hands, probably to make sure you were looking at him, so you managed to childishly close your eyes in a last desperate demonstration of your hard feelings towards him. -I know I hurt you, I know the things I said to you were cruel and unfair, you didn’t deserve that, nothing of that was true- Thomas leaned his forehead against yours, even though you still had your eyes closed and your fists harshly pressed against his chest, his voice now sounding a lot closer. -I was going through a hard time and I was a fucking bastard for putting it all on you. But I swear to God, love, look at me- he slightly rocked you in order to get your attention -Look at me, I love you, y/n- Your eyelids flew open instantly, that being the very first time he clearly admitted his feelings for you, and suddenly you were no longer able to control all of your destructive emotions: your body was now racked with violent sobs as you finally let him hold you properly, crying out loud against his waistcoat and shirt. -Shh, shh- Tommy’s thumbs gradually wiped the tears away from your cheeks, while his lips briefly pecked yours multiple times. -It’s okay, we’ll be fine-  he mumbled in between kisses - let’s go home now-.

[bantan]

190622 CanCam - Member Interview

Raws by @takejun20522_ at Twitter

RM

“I get really nervous on large stages, but the feeling of “I have to do it” makes me that much stronger.”

When it comes to memories of America, it has to be the BBMAs. It was our first live performance with Halsey, so it really left an impression on me. I also met Drake, who I’ve always admired, and he said “You guys are the most famous in America right now”. I found it funny to have the person who I consider to be the best in America say that to us.

Being on an incredibly big stage makes me nervous, but when we’re in America my feelings of “I have to do this” grow even stronger to make up for the members. It can’t be helped, since the others can’t say that much. I think I’m cooler than usual when I’m in America. (laughs)

Speaking of cool, personally I find JK to be really cool recently. He’s pretty much always working out. I haven’t been able to exercise much lately, but JK is always building his muscles. There’s something mesmerising about his body, even from a man’s perspective. (laughs)

The other thing that left an impression in America was the second concert in LA, when I looked at the audience during the encore. There’s a performance where they illuminate us with their phone flashlights, and it was just so beautiful. The Japanese original song “Lights” this time is exactly that. In a dark space or dark time, look at that light and keep walking. In a way, it’s the light that ARMY have shown us, and also ARMY themselves… I made the song with those kinds of feelings. That’s why, when I close my eyes now, what comes to mind is… Huh? It’s V. Because I saw him sleeping over there just now. (laughs)

Q. Was your legendary Rose Bowl comment an adlib?

I prepared a comment for the encore, but the audience’s lights were so pretty they blew it all away. It was so beautiful, some words about the galaxy just came out.

Q. What’s your recommended point of the new song?

Boy with Luv’s dance that looks like hitchhiking. I want to try it for real, but I don’t think anyone would stop for me because I’m scary. (laughs)

Q. How do you refresh yourself lately?

I like looking at art. In terms of Japan, I like Senju Hiroshi’s “Taki”. I’ve heard Senju-sensei has an art gallery, so I’d like to visit one day.

Q. Do you have any plans to write a book in the future?

It was my dream to be an author when I was in primary school. But after meeting music and having my dreams fulfilled as BTS right now, I’d like to continue working hard with BTS. (laughs) Once I’m 40-50 years old, it’d be nice to write novels and essays.

JIN

“Even in the smallest moments of our daily lives, we show consideration for each other. That’s part of what makes us BTS.”

I’m the eldest of our team, but I’m the type to approach others with no regard for age hierarchies. I’ve never really been overly conscious about those things, but recently I’ve started to believe that “the culture of changing attitudes or the way you treat others based on an older or younger age isn’t good”, and it also makes the relationship seem lifeless. The fact that not only me, but the other members also think this way is part of what makes BTS BTS. Showing consideration for each other over everything, no matter how small, can be felt in the smallest moments of our daily lives. If there’s something that another member wouldn’t like, another member would speak up and say “You should probably stop that” first.

Apart from that, the members charms that only I know… I think ARMY would know better than me. Since I’m not watching the others that closely… (laughs) Ah, but it’s funny if you pay attention to RM during the American interviews. He’s fluent in English and leads the interviews with his answers, but he also makes sure to direct some questions to us. Whenever he does that, he makes sure to give us the chance to answer with one or two easy words instead of a difficult sentence, so that we’re able to answer them too. Like how RM excels in language, and the others excel in dance and singing… Our team’s strength is in how we each have our own speciality, which I think is very cool.

Q. What’s a “small happiness” you felt yesterday or today?

I’ve been into the TV show “Walking Dead” recently. There was a character I didn’t really like that I would have preferred to be gone. Then a zombie solved the issue for me. (laughs)

Q. What do you see when you close your eyes right now?

(While closing eyes) A zombie. (laughs) They keep appearing when I close my eyes.

Q. What’s something cute about the members?

When they meet celebrities they’ve always wanted to meet at Billboard, they get really happy.

Q. What choreography do you like from BTS songs?

The part where we hit the table in Dionysus.

Q. How do you refresh yourself lately?

…Zombies. (laughs) I’ve only talked about zombies today, is that okay?!

JUNGKOOK

“Personally I wish I had a single talent that I excelled in”

There’s a lyric in the new song “Lights” that goes like “Nobody’s perfect”. I really love this part. It’s like I’m being consoled that it’s fine not to be perfect. People often praise me saying that my dance and singing is perfect, but that’s not true at all. I wish I had a single talent that I excelled in. I’ve tried many things in search of that, but right now I’m focusing on doing my best in the things I need to do. While doing that, listening to this song makes me realise I don’t have to be perfect, which is comforting. Ah, I don’t have anything I’m particularly good at, but there is something that I’m bad at. Using my head! I’m really bad at that. (laughs) Speaking of new songs, Boy with Luv is also a really good song. After all, its choreography is rather simple out of all of BTS’ songs. That’s a happy point for me. (laughs)

It’s really difficult to completely recover your stamina while standing on the stage. Even I unconsciously try to squeeze out the last of my energy as the concert nears its end. There have been times where I’ve been unable to move from muscle pain the day after a concert. That’s why right now my top priority is to not get hurt. I want to be able to build myself up and manage my body more… Huh, what part of myself am I most confident in? Ah… (shy smile) Hmm, I wonder. I don’t know myself. I’ll do my best to build my body up more!

Q. What’s your honest opinion of the current world tour?

There’s a song called Mikrokosmos on our album, but it’s like seeing that for real. It’s so inspiring and makes my heart burn sharply. I really think of it as a happy moment to me.

Q. What do you see when you close your eyes right now?

Lots of things come to mind, but none are very clear. They’re all a vague blur… Like I can nearly see it, but can’t. (laughs)

Q. What part of the members do you think is adorable?

Jimin. You can tell he really loves the stage from the bottom of his heart. We really understand each other in that way.

Q. What’s a method of relaxing that you’re into?

Recently I went to Ariana Grande’s concert and had a lot of fun. I was encouraged as an artist and I was able to enjoy the music a lot, so it was great.

Q. What are the conditions for you to think that someone is wonderful?

Someone who has a lot to teach others, someone I can understand. And someone who is cool!

SUGA

“The nerves at Billboard, the choreography of a new song. I always enjoy doing new things.”

We barely have the chance to do these sorts of interviews anymore, so being able to send our words to the readers and ARMY like this makes me happy.

When we make original songs in Japanese, we take a lot of things into consideration when creating it. What I noticed in doing that is that there’s a certain sensitivity that can be found only in the original Japanese songs. Like with the song’s melody and style, the lyrics are just as sensitive. With all the emotional parts, I think the new song “Lights” has especially brought out those emotions well.

I’d also like you to pay attention to the choreography of Boy with Luv! There’s something new about it compared to our style until now. I always enjoy doing new things. Even at Billboard, that feeling of elation seeing our group name during the Top Duo/Group award. The feeling of tension entering the Rose Bowl like we’re participating in the finals of the World Cup... They’re all memories I’ll have forever, and it was all so much fun.

When I want to switch over from that exciting space and relax, I often listen to lo-fi hip-hop. It’s mentally comforting. My favourite is Nujabes. I’ve always liked him in the past, but I’ve been listening to him more again lately. As for recent changes, I’ve gotten into a game. I wasn’t a person who played games, but now I’m really into a certain game. As long as I have the chance, I’ll be playing it. I’m the type to continuously do something once I become obsessed with it—and not only with music. Everyone says I’ve become more talkative since I started playing games? That’s not true. They just feel that way because we’re together 24 hours a day, surely. (laughs)

Q. What’s a small happiness you felt yesterday/today?

Yesterday… I didn’t do anything… The time I spent lying in the hotel bed was my happiness. (laughs)

Q. What comes to mind when you close your eyes right now?

(Closes eyes) The feeling of being in the stadium and looking at roughly 70,000 people in the audience from the stage. It was really like looking at a galaxy of stars.

Q. Did you buy anything during this American tour?

Every time I come to America I buy another piece of music equipment. This time I bought a mic.

Q. What’s your recommended song for when you feel down?

Dionysus. It’s Latin, so it energises you.

Q. What kind of person do you think is “wonderful”?

Someone who can do their job well. No matter their employment or gender, people who do things properly are cool.

V

“ARMY’s cheers are my reward. It feels like everything paid off!”

We’re right in the middle of our world tour right now, but I really felt that the fans are a huge source of energy to us once more. Every time we have a concert and so many people send us their cheers, it feels like I’ve been rewarded for all my efforts until now. The scenery at America’s Rose Bowl was truly beautiful. When I saw that picturesque scenery, it felt like everything had paid off. At the same time, because every member individually stands out, the whole group can stand out. I really thought everyone looked so cool.

In the free time during our tour, I’ve been into visiting art galleries and finding new works of art. Recently I’ve really been liking the works of Fernando Botero and Edward Hopper. Of course there’s a charm with famous works, but there are lots of less famous works that are just as lovely. That’s why I’ve been having a lot of fun recently looking for works that aren’t really well known by other people but shine in my eyes when I look at them. As for other ways to relax… I feel happy when I look at clothes and furniture that I like. I can understand why clothes, but I’m not sure why I feel calm when I look at nice furniture. (laughs) Speaking of clothes, I splurged on a brand I love the other day! I bought a dress shirt and jacket and knitwear and T-shirts, and that made me really happy. As for other things I got excited about recently, the Korean catering just now was really good. I never imagined I’d be able to eat that in America, so I was really happy. <3

Q. What do you see when you close your eyes?

Birds. I don’t know if they’re beautiful or not, but they’re flying in a flock. (laughs)

Q. V seems to have a lot of friends, what are some tricks to making friends?

If I think someone matches me in personality, I’ll approach them as myself and talk to them. When I think we think the same way, I’ll often get closer to them myself.

Q. Which BTS song would you recommend to cheer someone up?

Mikrokosmos. I listen to this song a lot myself recently.

Q. What makes you think someone is wonderful?

Someone who has a clear mind and can express themselves clearly. Someone who makes you think “I want to follow this person” just by hearing them talk. Don’t you think that’s wonderful too? Someone exactly like RM.

J-HOPE

“I don’t need to worry about the other members when we’re on the stage anymore.”

The members have been together for such a long time, we understand each other as easily as breathing when we’re on the stage. After spending over 7-8 years with each other, we can tell what each other is thinking just by meeting eyes. Because we all know what our role is and what we need to do, we don’t need to worry as much about what the others are doing on the stage anymore--in a good way. But in our hearts, we’re constantly making sure no one gets hurt or sick. Since every member is a precious, irreplaceable piece of a whole.

In order to make the stage a better place, I personally endeavor in image training. I’m always thinking about how I can make the same concert contents into something fresh every time. As for things I do for my own sake... let’s see. Lately, I've been drinking onion juice (玉ねぎ汁) every morning. I also take a variety of healthy things, like herbal medicine and vitamins. (laughs) I believe that a healthy heart is not only connected to food and drink, but also to maintaining a clean state of mind. When I’m in a good mood, I think I naturally feel better, and smiling more also leads to having a better condition. The secret to my smiling face? Thank you for the praise! (laughs) This is how I am every day! When I live every moment in gratitude, I naturally end up expressing my feelings on my face. Even in this moment, when I think about how we’re appearing on the front cover of CanCam, I end up smiling out of gratitude.

Q. What was a small happiness you felt yesterday or today?

It really is a small thing, but breathing the air here in LA. Being able to work outside in locations like this both yesterday and today and feel the atmosphere of the area makes me happy.

Q. What comes to mind when you close your eyes right now?

I wonder what... “If only I could fall asleep like this”, I guess? I’m a little sleepy right now. (laughs)

Q. What part do you like from the new song?

I love my part in “Lights”. Though I’m sure everyone loves their own part! (laughs)

Q. What makes you think someone is wonderful?

Someone who does their work properly, a person who can clearly tell the difference between public and private, someone with high professional sense. And someone who smiles a lot! Yes, I’m talking about me! (laughs)

Q. What made your heart skip a beat recently?

When I bought something I liked. I did a lot of shopping in LA... like art and things.

JIMIN

“Seeing all the members’ sincere selves made me want to change too.”

I’ve been with the members every day for 8 years, so I really can’t find anything unexpected about them. Despite that, during the current world tour I felt once again that each and every member treats their job with a sincere sense of responsibility. In the rehearsal the day before the concert, each member checks every detail of their solo songs so it takes roughly 13 hours. It made me realise how much they treasured the stage. Even being beside them made me think about many things.

Since coming to America, I’ve started sleeping and waking up early. I’ve started to get up early and listen to songs, open my computer and click around with my mouse. (laughs) The fact I can wake up by myself instead of having a manager wake me up for the first time in a while makes me want to be praised. (laughs)

What I look for in a wonderful person? Let’s see, I’ve made a new friend recently, but when I see that person I think “How wonderful”. They’re responsible and treasure what they’re doing with gratitude. I think attitudes like that are cool. Also, people who know what makes them happy are cool too. A recent moment where I’ve felt gratitude and happiness is when we sang Mikrokosmos at the stadium. The audience all held their lights and illuminated us. That situation and the lyrics really resonated within my chest. By the way, the lyric was “It might even be that the expression of this night is again so beautiful” [lyric credit: wisha]. They’re the words that RM wrote for me. (laugh)

Q. What’s a small happiness you felt yesterday or today?

The scenery here (the studio of a house in LA) is very pretty, so just looking outside makes me happy.

Q. What moment comes to mind when you close your eyes?

(With eyes closed) Hmm... I haven’t eaten yet today. So I’m thinking of going to eat after this.

Q. What song do you recommend for when you’re feeling down?

Boy with Luv and Jamais Vu. Jamais Vu is a song between J-Hope, Jin, and Jungkook. It’s healing to me too.

Q. What made your heart skip a beat recently?

The biggest moment was when we received an award at Billboard! Also, my heart beats faster when I look at Cancam. (laughs)

Q. Is there anything you fuss over with hair care?

I’ve been struggling with hair care lately, so my hair’s getting shorter even if I don’t cut it. I wanted to be a little kinder to my hair, so I’m making it black for a while.

[ginnyzero]

A Reason Why I’m Indie

Traditional publishing isn’t for everybody. And I’ve seen attitudes that if you don’t conform to word counts and genre conventions and all the rules, then you’re never going to get anywhere in publishing/as a traditionally published author. So, I guess you should suck it up and do it. Then, I’m proudly never going to get anywhere.

Before we go any further, I want to make a disclaimer. Agents do hard jobs. They became agents (most of them) because they love books and reading and want to see authors succeed. They don’t get PAID unless an author succeeds. They are as invested in an author’s book as much as the author is. Or, at least, the good ones are. (Yes, there are a few bad apples that you must be aware of.)

BUT

Agents can’t sell your book if there is no one in their contacts/on their list that will buy it for reasons.

And these reasons may not have anything to do with your writing quality, your world building, your storytelling or your creativity. These reasons have everything to do with the publishing world and the little arbitrary writing rules that they impose on well, everything. I’m squeezing my hands together so hard right now my knuckles are turning white because these rules make me angry.

It takes a lot to make me angry. I get frustrated sometimes fairly easily. But angry?

Well, bullshit makes me angry.

I have spent time going through the querying process. I have helped and watched my best friend, writing bff, collaborator and editor go through her querying process. And I have comforted and I have encouraged and I was there for her last night when she figured out that her book was being rejected not because of writing quality and or bad story or because she had unicorns.

Instead, it was being rejected because someone in the last four years decided that the themes of the types of stories she tells belong and only belong to a certain age group category younger than what she writes. And if she wants to write the type of stories she wants to write, the type of stories that she loves and she needed at the YA age level, she would have to change essentially everything about her story that she adores to get it traditionally published.

Or self-publish.

And as we know, self-publishing closes a lot of doors.

All because, she isn’t writing the “correct” theme for the “correct” age group.

And this pisses me off. (My friend is devastated because the book series she’s lovingly crafted and all her other ideas now won’t supposedly work for traditional publishing all without her knowing because someone instituted new rules. She's been in limbo for months over this.)

Because these things aren’t written down anywhere. And if they are, they’re in weird little articles that aren’t being taught in schools because probably the teachers themselves don’t know them. Or, they were things decided in the last half a decade and no one decided to you know, spread the word in such a way that authors querying would hear it.

Or maybe, just maybe, restricting themes to a genre or an age level is such extreme limiting and inappropriate bullshit it needs to be burned in a fire.

-Takes a deep breathe- See. Angry.

There are certain themes and certain plot structures/character constructions that defined or launched each genre. Romance being the most heavily structured in the traditional publishing world (and a lot of indies following the same rules/structure.)

Science Fiction (as we know it) was born out of the Cold War and the space race and the feeling of alienation and how is having world destroying weapons going to guide us as a species. It was a lot of “humans versus alien invaders” ID4 type of storytelling. Shelley’s Frankenstein started it. And there were different views of it in the beginning, Asimov delved into the perils of robotics and space flight. Herbert talked about ecological scifi. Heinlein tended to go political and then time traveling sexual hijinks. Star Trek was Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE.

Fantasy, especially high and epic fantasy, was born of the retelling of old legends, myths and religions and the triumph of the goodness of mankind in the hero's journey. Star Wars and stories like it (Andre Norton, Anne McCaffery’s Pern) merged the two into science fantasy (my favorite.) Urban fantasy became Sherlock Holmes solves/fights crime with vampires, werewolves and the rest of the fantasy kitchen sink.

Just some examples here.

Much of the science fiction I’ve seen on the shelves still follows the formulas of Asimov and Heinlein and Orson Scott Card. The lone soldier against the terrible aliens must fight to save humanity. (In some instances, these are still the top authors hogging all the shelf space, add Herbert and Bova and Brian Sanderson the successor of Robert Jordan and LE Modesitt. And…….. yeah.)

And it’s boring. It’s tiresome. It’s time for a change. Our culture is changing and the media on our shelves isn’t. Tumblr is full of posts about how Earth is Space Australia and aliens that are simultaneously fascinated and accepting of the oddities of humans because their culture isn’t like that! We adopt strange little vacuum robots as easily as we bond to small furry creatures that OMG OMG it could KILL US. (And some not so furry creatures.) We have different types of friends. We do stupid shit for the fun of it. It’s funny. It’s heartwarming. It’s different.

People don’t want angry patriarchal werewolves anymore. They want more than dwarves that just love mining and speak in bad Scottish accents. (Best one I saw was Australian accents actually.) Readers are tired of gratuitous rape. They’re tired of abusive and bad relationships being portrayed as good. Toxic masculinity is getting old as is misogyny. Princesses no longer want to be rescued by dragons, they want to be protected by dragons from being forced into marriages they don’t want. Why must readers go through a sewer when they open a book to escape?

No. Not a lot of these new ideas have conflict or plot. But that’s not really up to the idea thinkers on Tumblr, that’s up to us the writers to see what the idea makers are looking for and come up with plots to fit those settings (if we like those ideas/settings.)

I doubt you’ll find it on bookshelves.

Fantasy has fallen into the grim dark crap sack worlds looking for the next GRRM. Storytelling that hasn’t advanced past trying to emulate Tolkien. Authors that emulate Lackey and McCaffery in the style of romantic fantasy being passed over for grim dark fantasy with assassins and the hot “urban fantasy.”

And understandably, Urban Fantasy is pretty new. LKH and Jim Butcher and other writers like Kim Harrison, Seanan Mcguire and Patty Briggs have been instrumental in making urban fantasy a ‘big deal.’ And I’ve read a lot of urban fantasy and finally I had to give up. I couldn’t take it anymore. Because it was all the same thing in different trappings. And I’m down for the same thing in different trappings to an extent. I really am. I’d just hope that at some point we can have more than Urban Fantasy mysteries. But no one is selling them on traditional shelves because publishers decided that Urban Fantasy people SOLVE CRIME is what the genre is.

This kills innovation coming to publishing houses. We see it in movies as well as books, new ideas, good ideas, are being passed over for the rehash of something from 20 to 30 years ago. (Think closer to 60 for some scifi, more for fantasy.) Because publishers have "genre rules" and are risk adverse because 'what if it doesn't sell?'

There are writers out there that are willing to turn themselves into pretzels to make their story fit a certain word count, a certain genre theme or follow these arbitrary rules to “get their foot in the door” and then they are told and believe that “once they are established” they can “break/bend the rules.”

It’s a lie. It’s a tasty lie. It’s so good of a lie you want to believe it. You want to delude yourself that “if I pretend I’m a man, get my book under 80,000 words, follow the exact conventions of my genre, that one day I’ll get big enough to break all of the rules and innovate my genre.”

That’s when you’ve sold your soul to the devil. You’ve stripped yourself of all your self-respect in order to chase that dream of the “traditional publishing deal.”

Indie is pushing back at traditional in good ways and in bad ways. Traditional with either adapt or continue its pushing back and rigidly holding onto the genre structures it has to its own downfall. The readers will decide on what they want to see/read. That, as an indie author is no longer my problem and completely out of my control.

My problem remains with the fact that traditional publishing houses, and agents aren’t being open and honest about their expectations for these genres that they’re pushing onto shelves. Get together. Form a consensus. Get that information out to authors by putting it on agent websites/blogs. Don’t expect newbies to just know it.

We’ve had enough dream crushing. Being rejected is difficult enough. There are enough gates to go through and hoops to jump. Don’t make lack of information that “everybody knows” yet another one. It's about doing the right thing. Anyone can write a fiction book. Anyone. There is no degree necessary. So, do the right thing, the moral thing and be clear about expectations for what you represent and the "rules" of the genre on your website where querying authors can find it.

(There is going to be writer blaming going on here. Writers/Authors aren't at fault. They can't know this if they aren't told it. You can't just "know things" out of thin air. If there is an expectation, then state the expectation clearly and where it's easily found. As agents, as publishers, putting the information out there that will get you the material you want to read and can sell to publishing houses to make it to stores is on you, not the writer. /soapbox)

Now, if you’re a lucky sod and not like me and does write in the box and naturally writes inside the box. Then, you know what, I’m happy for you. Honestly, my life as an author would be so much easier if I could write “X the werewolf solves crime and saves the world.”

I can’t. It’s not in me.

My job as a writer is to put out the best story that I believe in as a person. A story that is true to me, my feelings, my life journey and what I want to see on shelves/would want to read. If that story has too many genres mixed up, doesn’t follow genre conventions, is too long, isn’t the right “theme” or focuses on the wrong thing for the wrong age group, then, fine, it’s probably never going to be traditionally published. I can deal with that.

I’ll self-publish. I’ll continue to self-publish. I’ll be indie despite the reputation that comes with being indie. I’ll do the work to get my books out there to the world and appreciate the few readers I have and support my indie friends even if it's just with a "you can do it. Hang in there. I'm rooting for all of you." Because, it's all I can do and can control.

I still reserve the right to be mad. Cause that's my friend.

[vkstar-cornman]

Contexts

Lately I’m still feeling very reluctant about blogging and write reflections from time to time, especially the weather had made me quite ill and unproductive. The book art responding to 24/7 started off brightly, but now I am experiencing the phase I would had the same in every other project, which I start being very skeptical on whether if this is a good idea to keep developing on.

 So for clarity, for my own reference, I’ll try to explain what I will be doing to myself through inscription to boost my own confidence on this one.

 Basically, we all started from the same point, which is to go to 24/7 in Somerset House and see the works being curated together in there. ‘Sleep’ and ‘Surveillance’ were some of the strong concepts being emphasized throughout the exhibition, but I had enough of explaining what I’ve seen there because I’m pretty sure I have done it multiple times already. I will directly skip to the inspiration part. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s Synthetic Orchestration gave me an idea of doing a book with birds as the major appearance in book, her work displayed the restlessness from urban life had extended, and disrupted biosphere as well, causing birds to sing earlier and loud, a change in their communicating mechanisms.

 Birds are such fragile yet agile animals that we spot commonly in a lot of places. They have co-existed and dwell in the city with humans for long ages, and I do believe the 24/7 culture shapes their life different in many ways, emerging the traits from a sleepless routine into their nature. Besides light and sound pollution coming from either rapid industrialization or for the needs of working class, there are more physical environmental pollutions than we could imagine that are forcing birds and the other part of nature to adapt such an anxious living mode, which is almost incompatible to most of our natures, not just as human, but as a moral living creature.

 What I always found fascinating about birds, is how their life cycle works. Depending on larger or smaller breeds, there’s quite a range in life span, but what matter the most is the stages in life to them are pretty much the same. They go from eggs to hatchlings, nestlings to juvenile and lastly, subadult to fully mature. For smaller breeds, their dead bodies are usually hard to find, as instead of natural causes, they mainly died from predation due to their position in food chain. I don’t actually think there’s any part seems so magical about the life of birds, but I’m just genuinely interested in where do they go before and after at the stage where they still require parental care. Just like the type of things we face in our lives, I study it to try to find associations, because associations always makes good metaphors in communication.

  Cutting to the chase, so how is the contextualization working in this project? Some of the people look into how 24/7 culture and late capitalism keep infecting birds, or just genuinely urban wildlife in future, and the unpredictability of impact on the nature just remind me the fact that many people are yet to be delivered to this world, until the age of much more uncertainties comes. For some other family-related certain issues, I decide to dedicate this book art project to the next generation, the generation alpha, a generation fully immersed into the bestest technologies we are seeing nowadays. Some may argue that millennials and generation Zs were already those people of era that lacked the witness of how technology shifted rapidly. What separate us apart from generation alpha, is they will face contract to social media in a much younger age and also a larger extend then we did. It is good or bad? As always, for generally any topics, there are always the good side and the bad side, but only to find out which will outweigh which.

 For example, from a video I watched recently that explains a marketing strategy labelled as a creation under ‘late capitalism’, which companies like fast food chain restaurants would take their online presence onto a personification, creating a less formal and official link with netizens, which in contrast boosted their ‘relatability’ and proximity to the public, a friend-like approachable figure with certain unique personalities which could summon an entire ‘fandom’, instead of just a platform grouped with admins that give you really polite but autogenerated replies. The publication and use of hugely popularized substances in millennials and gen Zs like ‘memes’ are largely used to gather a fan base. The idea is no longer to make professional promotions and advertisements in order to attract customers, but to immerse some kind of virtual character into your life, an online presence that you actually think of as a mortal person or even an acquaintance you know from online, that marketers found best apply to the newer generations people.

 This kind of techniques start appearing in about mid 2010s, which is the age where generation alpha could either just born, already been born, or starting to explore the world and gotten exposed to internet. Saying this also mean that most of these kids will not be able to witness how these marketing strategies were used and a world before such things existed, and what happens is that it could be very difficult for them to be aware of not constantly getting instilled with such ideas and ‘advertisements’. It sounds like its merely, remotely related to how late capitalism brings 24/7 culture, sleeplessness, blablabla…. But the idea is, there will be people out there, trying to be your friend and mostly their only purpose is to make themselves hard to be gotten rid out of your heads. The world is spinning at hot speed, and each day there are people coming up with multiple ideas about advertisements or other idea-instilling mechanisms, that seems very harmless on surface, but also doesn’t make an antipathic psychological effect on general public. The true negative effects are very subconscious and unpredictable, and that’s what makes it scarier, it will probably make the next generation even less independent with a mobile device or social medias, even we together will bring more advancements in the foreseeable future.

 The questions I kept asking myself, is what will happen to them? How will they cope with many upcoming challenges? Will we altogether, be able to solve the problems together? With medical advancements, the latest two generations of people (0-20) are currently treated with the best medical welfare and medication, who are believed to potentially live until 22nd Century. With that being said, generation z and alpha’s timeline of life will be quite similar and will be sharing a lot of time working and collaborating together. What are the things we as a previous generation, a multitude of people who have slightly witnessed a bit more than the alphas do, can remind them of? What are the things generally everyone out there can advise these hatchlings who haven’t seen the world yet? Even though myself is still in an early stage of exploring how this world work under the current system, what are the things we need to fight against? What are they thing we should believe in or not?

 I guess these could be counted as my responses to the exhibition, not initially though. I will never be able to find the most fully-covered or precise answers to these questions, but I will try to explore them, and find the keys to the doors after another one. For the book, I focused mainly on the message and with my limitations on accurate measurements, I was a bit uncomfortable in trying to create a distinct format or an original prototype to the book itself. What I want to do, is illustrate the life of birds with multiple medias. What I have already done is screenprinting, drawings with unorthodox ways and digital amendments, the main idea is to create digitally configurated images with natural techniques (sunography in replacement of x-ray? Handdrawing instead of computer-generated image) . During the growing up process for the birds, they don’t face terrorisms or wars, but they face the terror of being exposed to technology and medias in an early age, which effects are quite inmost as I have mentioned.

[unofferable-fic]

The Flower & The Serpent (Arthur Morgan x OFC)

Chapter 1 - Orphans from the East

Summary: In the early 1890s, the Van der Linde Gang were truly at their finest. Experts at stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, they've made a name for themselves across the West. Two of their newest recruits, a pair of rebellious Irish siblings with an unknown past, slowly find their footing and settle into their new lives as outlaws. And yet, as they grow older, threats from all sides begin to appear. A strained relationship with Colm O'Driscoll spells disaster for the gang, and no matter how far they roam across America, the world continues to change around them. If they want to survive, difficult choices must be made. No one is as they seem and the impending arrival of law and order threatens to tear the siblings, and everything they hold dear, apart. Is it too late for anyone to find a happy ending?

Originally posted by loga-boga

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Pairing: Arthur Morgan x OFC

Warnings: Language, violence.

Word Count: 4,699

Next Chapter

Playlist: “Red Dead Redemption 2 Trailer Theme” — L’Orchestra Cinematique, “Blessed Are The Peacemakers” — Woody Jackson, “Old Dog” — The Scratch

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A/N: Also available on AO3. So I've been obsessing over the Red Dead series since December and decided to finally bite the bullet and write a fic about my favourite cowboys and gals. That being said, this bad boy is the result of smashing heads together with a friend of mine, who is also a writer and contributing just as much to the narrative and characters. So this is essentially a mutual creation of ours and we hope y'all enjoy some western shenanigans with some Irish patriotism sprinkled on top. This is my first attempt at anything Red Dead related, so hopefully it isn't a steaming pile of trash! Any thoughts at all, comments are always welcome.

“What the hell is this?”

Arthur Morgan had found himself in many sticky situations in his short life, but standing with his revolver pointed at a pair of kids was definitely a new one.

Well, they were pointing their own guns right back at him, so it wasn’t exactly a situation that required basic manners.

“Looks like they got to our take first,” Dutch replied in disbelief from his spot between the two parties. Their agitated mounts continuously shuffled on their hooves, neighing restlessly as each rider did their best to focus on the newest threat before them. “Hold on a minute there, son—”

“Who are you lot?” the young boy demanded, with his revolver currently pointed directly at Dutch. Behind him, a girl had just finished shoving the much sought after contents of the stagecoach lockbox into a large bag. In her other hand was a gun pointed directly between Arthur’s eyes.

“You best drop that gun, you little shit!” a very wound up John Marston ordered. “Before I put a bullet in your head!”

The girl swiftly pointed her gun towards John, the threat apparently cutting deep. Despite her slight frame and obvious youth, her voice sounded confident from beneath her bandana. “Try it, greasy! I’ll take great pleasure in riddlin’ your fuck-ugly face!”

Of course, John was never one for staying calm. “You ain’t in charge here, little missy!”

“Marston!” Arthur cut in, seeing things spiralling quickly if they didn’t do something.  His furrowed brow was already covered in sweat beneath his hat. “Shut your damn mouth and take it easy!”

“No one needs to die here,” Hosea added, his voice surprisingly calm despite their current predicament. “We all need to relax.”

Dutch agreed and tried to take control of the situation as he always did. “My good friend here is right. How about lowerin’ your guns, fellers, and we can talk this out.”

The boy’s eyes flared on his mostly hidden face. “How about you get your monkeys to lower theirs first!”

While the insult barely fazed Arthur, John was a little more sensitive. “Shut your damn mouth!”

Well Jesus, this couldn’t possibly end well…

* * *

8th June, 1890, outside Waukesha, Wisconsin

Today is the day. Dutch wants me and Marston to scout out the road before the stagecoach comes through later this evening. It’ll be the kid’s first real try at a robbery like this, so Dutch thinks getting familiar with the area might help settle his nerves a little… I was against it at first, but he said we need the extra man if we’re going to deal with the Pinkerton escort afterwards.

As long as he keeps a cool head he should be fine, but he’s still not one for taking orders very well, even if he’s been with us for five years. Still young, dumb as shit, and eager to prove himself. I’m hoping he learns to listen though — Lord knows I’d hate to see anything happen to him.

* * *

“Grub’s up, folks! Grub’s up!”

Arthur closed over his journal at Pearson’s call. Glancing up to see the cook placing a steaming pot of stew over the fire, he returned the book to its spot on his bedside table. Morning had swiftly arrived at the camp, and most of the inhabitants were up and about already, attending to the many chores that needed doing. It was a clear and sunny day, with only a few fluffy white clouds littering the blue sky. The heat was somewhat intense despite the early hour and brought a light sheen of sweat to his forehead. This camp had been their home for some weeks now, and Arthur really didn’t mind. He quite liked it out here — he always preferred the open plains to dense cities. The cosy field where they now resided was situated on the bank of a river outside a small city called Waukesha. The surrounding lowlands were flat, open, and easy to traverse, but the gang was safely hidden from the nearest trail by a thick group of green trees. Though the region was home to some of Wisconsin’s largest cities, most of it was made up of farmland, so it was relatively easy for them to remain here without being noticed. He really hoped they could stay in these vast fields for some time. He could get used to travelling across the stretching green pastures atop Boadicea, and the first breath of fresh air he inhaled every morning bought a genuine smile to his face.

Arthur’s eyes flitted over the lightly dancing trees on the camp’s outskirts before looking to what had originally grabbed his attention. Though Pearson’s food was in dire need of some seasoning, his stomach rumbled at the prospects of a hot meal. He got to his feet, wiping some of his unruly hair out of his eyes, and went to get his share.

“Mornin’, Mr Morgan,” Susan greeted him as she grabbed a cup of coffee.

“Miss Grimshaw,” he replied with a nod, helping himself to a large bowl of stew.  “Mornin’.”

She took a seat on one of the nearby tables and urged him to join her.

With a shrug, he took a seat and set his bowl down. “Coffee good?”

“As always,” she said. “As long as it calms my nerves it’ll do.”

“What do you have to be nervous about?” he asked before taking a mouthful of stew and ignoring the mild bland taste.

“I seem to be more concerned with this stagecoach than you are!”

“You concerned about the coach, or the fact Marston will be near the coach?”

“He can be a headstrong little brat at times, but I’d rather not see him with a hole in his head.”

Miss Grimshaw shook her head in exasperation, but the gesture only brought a smirk to Arthur’s lips. She could be quite a harsh woman, especially when people lounged around and didn’t do their part in keeping everything running smoothly. Despite being the current flame of the ever flirtatious Dutch van der Linde, Susan Grimshaw refused to sit idly by and act like the lady of the manor. She was very much involved in ensuring that the camp remained a functioning unit. She was perfect for the role, probably because she could be positively terrifying if you didn’t help out.

“I’ll admit,” Arthur began, swallowing some food. “I wasn’t exactly happy ’bout the idea at first, but Dutch has faith in the little brat. And besides, he’s got me, Dutch, and Hosea lookin’ out for him. He’ll be fine as long as he does what we say.”

Susan eyed him carefully, but nodded, seemingly happy with his words. “As long as you do look out for him, Mr Morgan. You know how he can be — he reminds me a lot of you at that age.”

“Hey now! Don’t go comparin’ me to that fool—”

Miss Grimshaw cut across him with ease. “It is the reason you two get on so well, what with bein’ such like-minded individuals…”

Arthur finished his breakfast while she reeled off the many reasons why he and John were one and the same. Sometimes it as best just to keep his mouth shut, and this seemed like one such moment. His saving grace came when Dutch called him over to his tent.

“Mornin’, Dutch.”

“And a fine morning it is, son,” he replied with gusto and set down the book he had been reading. He offered Arthur a cigarette before taking one for himself. He lit the two, then continued on. “Hosea and Bessie took young John into town to get some supplies for tonight.”

“How’s he seem?” Arthur asked and took a drag.

“John? Seems fine to me. Maybe a little… let’s say, eager, to get goin’.”

“Still got faith in him?”

“O’course,” Dutch said, his voice firm. “We all gotta start somewhere, Arthur, you know that. He’s seventeen now, so it ain’t a bad age to get goin’. Heck, you did it even younger.”

He knew Dutch was right — there was no point letting John fester around camp doing nothing. They definitely didn’t need a second Uncle around the place, and Marston seemed keen to please… Or maybe he was just passionate about shooting something, who knew? It seemed that Dutch did though, and if there was someone whose opinion mattered, it was Dutch.

Arthur kept busy around the camp doing numerous chores while he waited for the trio to return. Chopping firewood and helping Pearson prepare their dinner for later at least meant that time flew by for him. He was playing fetch with Copper when John finally returned with Hosea and Bessie in tow. While the older couple went to check in with Dutch, Arthur and John mounted their horses and, with Copper running along side them, headed out down the road to the spot where they intended to rob the stagecoach.

“Why are we robbin’ it at this spot exactly?” Marston asked, scanning his eyes over the strip of dirt road.

“It’s the best distance outside town where a robbery won’t attract any attention,” Arthur explained, gently patting Boadicea. “The stagecoach is carryin’ bank transfers into Milwaukee, so you can bet that robbin’ it close to town would bring a whole heap of law on us. See that turn there?” He pointed off in the distance, tipping the brim of his hat to keep the shimmering sunlight out of his eyes. “It’s gonna come down that road there and loop this way. We’ll be waitin’ on this here ridge and hidden in some of the trees so that they don’t spot us.”

“What about them?” the younger boy asked. “They got any guns?”

“Four in total, if Hosea’s intel is right. So we should be able to take ’em out with the four of us. They’ll have a backup escort comin’ in from there, though.” He pointed up the road in the opposite direction. “’The bank in Milwaukee will be sendin’ out some of their own guns to meet the stagecoach just a little ways up the road, considerin’ this lil strip is so deserted. So we’re expectin’ maybe four more guns to show, which is why Dutch wants you involved. Once we rob the coach and the extra men arrive, there’ll be enough of us to take ’em out if needs be.”

“Sounds dangerous,” John mused, hanging on his every word.

Arthur let out a chuckle and proceeded to light himself a cigarette. “What, you scared, boy?”

“No! I ain’t scared, just bein’ honest about things.”

“You’ll do just fine,” the older man reassured him and offered him a cigarette. “You just need’a keep a cool head, and do as Dutch says. That’s how we make sure things go smoothly.” He paused to take a drag. “You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about if you do that.”

John nodded and puffed away to calm his nerves. “Thanks. I’m just glad that you’ll have my back, brother.”

“That’s what family is for,” Arthur responded with a small grin. He watched Copper as the dog sniffed along the roadside. “You’ll be fine.”

The two of them remained there for a few moments more as Arthur went over their plan of action in more detail. Though he knew how John could be, he was glad to see that he was eager to get to work. He hoped this wouldn’t make him over excited when the time came, but he thought back on what Dutch had said — he needed to put faith in his brother to do the job right. Thankfully, Marston had yet to give him a reason to doubt him so aggressively.

They returned to camp and waited out the rest of the day going over their plan with Hosea and Dutch. They had everything planned perfectly — it had to be, otherwise they could find themselves in a sticky situation once the Pinkerton escort arrived. Regardless, spirits were high at dinner time when Arthur, Dutch, Hosea, and young John mounted up and headed out to rob the stagecoach. They road through the fields in the late evening sun, avoiding the main road so that they wouldn’t be spotted ahead of time. The familiar buzz that came with performing robberies and the like was already stirring within Arthur’s chest. It was always risky business, but a part of him loved the thrill and feeling of power that came with these takes. Knowing that the money would be given to those who needed it most also gave him a nice sense of self-worth — it was one of the only things in his life that made him feel that way. He wasn’t a good man by any means, but he still tried to do some small bit of good where he could.

“And here we are,” Dutch announced from atop his horse as the group arrived at the waiting spot. He glanced at his pocket watch and nodded. “Right on time. Does everyone remember the plan?”

“O’course,” Arthur confirmed.

“Good. Now, cover your faces; we won’t be waitin’ too long for the stage to swing by.”

Arthur quickly pulled his bandana up to cover his mouth and nose and double-checked that his guns were fully loaded and ready to be used if things took a turn.

“Remember, gentlemen,” Dutch continued on. “No killing unless absolutely necessary.”

“Best of luck, everyone,” Hosea added.

Then the group descended into silence and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Arthur’s fingers flexed on his reigns. He could see John beginning to get anxious. Something definitely wasn’t right.

The only noise they could hear was the light breeze on the leaves above their heads, and the persistent ticking of Dutch’s pocket watch as he checked the time again.

“Somethin’ ain’t right,” Hosea whispered, mimicking Arthur’s own concerns. “They should have come through here by now.”

“Maybe you got the times wrong?” John suggested. “Or the place?”

Arthur shook his head. “That ain’t it. We heard from multiple people and all of them said it would come through this road at this time.”

“So what do we do then?”

“Well,” Dutch sighed, somewhat vexed with the development. He pulled down his bandana and turned to the rest of them. “We can’t stay here and wait for it to possibly arrive. I suggest we head up road and see do we come across it. But we stay out of sight and appear as inconspicuous as we can until I say otherwise.”

Hosea nodded and uncovered his face. “I agree. It’s definitely a better idea than waitin’ here and hopin’ for the best.”

“In that case, follow me, gentlemen.”

Arthur followed as the group made their way through the fields adjacent to the strip of road. They kept an eye out, but met no one along the way, and their anxiety only grew with each passing second. This was some take according to the locals, so missing it would be a great loss to the gang.

“Up ahead!” Dutch suddenly announced in a hushed tone.

Arthur looked up to see a stagecoach in the distance, stationary on the road. “Why’s it stopped?”

“Because,” Dutch growled out. “It’s bein’ robbed.”

“It’s what?”

“Somebody beat us to it! C’mon!”

Right well, this certainly wasn’t an outcome for which the gang was prepared. Arthur  hastily followed Dutch’s lead as their horses galloped up to the precious stage. He strained his eyes to get a look at who had intercepted the take before they even had a chance. The closer he got, the more information became apparent to him — two figures crowded the rear of the coach, one of whom was emptying its contents into a bag. The other stood by guarding her every move. The drivers and guards were nowhere to be found. At first, Arthur just assumed that the figures were small because of their position in the distance, but the closer he got, the more he realised that this was no normal robbery.

“It’s a pair of kids!” John exclaimed, disgust evident in his tone. “We got beaten to it by some damn kids!”

“Kids?” Arthur repeated in disbelief.

With the noise of their arrival, the pair of young thieves looked up from their prize to see four men thundering towards them on horseback. They were clothed in dirty outfits with bandanas hiding their identities. A quick once over told Arthur that it was boy and a girl who had managed to rob an obscene amount of money from the stage. How in the hell had two kids manage that?

Perhaps riding directly to them hadn’t been the best idea, as the pair were quick to point their guns at the gang.

“Hold on there!” Dutch called, grinding his mount to a halt and holding up his hands. The trio behind him followed suit, but Arthur and John instead chose to aim a weapon at each of them just in case.

“What the hell is this?” Arthur asked, completely dumbfounded with the situation they found themselves in.

“Cé hiad na leaids sin?” the girl asked her companion.

“The fuck you say?” John demanded, already losing his temper.

“Who are you lot?” the boy demanded, his eyes very skeptical already and completely unfazed by this strange man’s apparent aggression.

And now here they were — facing off against a pair of kids on a quiet dirt road. Sometimes Arthur really got tired of this shit.

“How about you get your monkeys to lower theirs first!”

“Take it easy, son,” Dutch answered calmly with his hands still raised. “We mean you no harm.”

“Your friends with the guns there don’t give us much comfort,” the girl replied in a thick Irish accent. “Now do as he said and get them to lower their weapons!”

“If you give me your word that you won’t shoot ’em, I will.”

“Is that a good idea?” Arthur asked, not exactly enjoying pointing his gun at a kid, but also not liking the idea of being defenceless.

“Trust me, Arthur. You and John, put the guns away.”

Arthur released a heavy sigh, but listened to his mentor and returned his gun to its holster. “Goddammit…”

John obliged, though he was far more hesitant to listen. A stern look from Hosea got the point across.

“Now,” Dutch announced. “We did as you asked. How about you meet us halfway and lower yours?”

The pair exchanged a knowing look before slowly lowering their revolvers, but not putting them away. The boy called out to them again. “Now, as I was sayin’, who are you lot and what do you want?”

“No harm in bein’ honest. We were the ones plannin’ on gettin’ that coach, but it seems like you beat us to it.”

“Not our problem,” the girl replied. “We got to it first, so you’s aren’t gettin’ any of it.”

Dutch shook his head. “We ain’t gonna steal it from you. You two earned it, fair and square. I don’t quite know how you managed it, but I’d be lyin’ if I said I wasn’t impressed.”

“We’re used to bumping into rival gangs every now and then,” Hosea added with a goodnatured chuckle. “But not so used to seein’ kids out on jobs.”

“Yeah, well,” the girl grumbled. “You gotta get by somehow when you’ve nothin’ else.”

“Of course!” Dutch agreed. “We ain’t here to judge.”

As they spoke, Arthur briefly turned his head as the sound of horses grabbed his attention. He looked back down the road from where they came, and suddenly remembered an important detail of the plan. “Awh, shit. We got company!”

“Wait, what?” the boy asked, looking baffled. “What’s goin’ on?”

“The Pinkertons!” Hosea confirmed just as the escort appeared at the end of the trail. “How many we got, Arthur?”

“I see six comin’ in!” he confirmed, looking through his binoculars at the patrol heading down the road.

“That’s more than expected!” John commented in dismay.

“Pinkertons?” the young girl repeated. “What Pinkertons?”

“An escort sent to meet the stagecoach,” Dutch elaborated. “I assume by your confused expressions that you two didn’t know about that part.”

“Jaysus Christ,” the boy muttered and drew a carbine from his back. “No, we didn’t.”

“Well then I think your best odds are to come with us, or you can stay here and try to fight off six guns.”

The kids shared a look again before the girl spoke first in a language that Arthur didn’t understand. “Cad a dhéanfaimid anois?”

The boy shook his and gave her hand a squeeze. “Níl an dara rogha againn. Let’s get outta here.”

“You got horses?”

“No,” the girl explained. “We came on foot.”

“Well then, you hop up here with me, son, and your partner can jump on with my friend, Mr Morgan, there.”

The boy took Dutch’s outstretched hand and hauled himself on to the back of the horse, while Arthur offered the girl a hand and helped to pull her up behind him. “Hold on tight now, you hear?”

“I’ll be grand,” she replied, though he could hear the hint of fear in her voice. “Just move.”

Just as shouts and some shots rang out from the arriving escort, the gang sped off and through a nearby bunch of trees in an effort to lose their pursuers. Arthur felt the young girl hold on to his shoulders tightly as he pushed Boadicea as hard as she could go. The noise of the horses thundering along and jumping over bushes and fences was one that he knew well, and one that was always accompanied by a small amount of worry and excitement. He could hear John and Hosea urging their mounts forwards, realising how risky it was being out in the open like this. The head start thankfully gave them a decent advantage over the Pinkertons as they spend through the Wisconsin fields. Unfortunately, despite the distance between them and the men chasing them, the Pinkertons persisted and were hard to lose.

“They’re still on us,” the girl shouted from behind him. “You’s need to do somethin’!”

“I know,” Arthur answered, breathing in deep. “Just lemme think.”

“What about those trees?” William called, pointing to the outskirts of a bunch of greenery just in front of them.

Right on queue, bullets whizzed over their heads, some a mile off and others unnervingly close.

Arthur let out a huff and ducked his head down as one very nearly got him. “Keep your head down, girl! We’re sittin’ ducks out in the open like this!”

“We can lose them in there!” Dutch confirmed. “We just need to make it past the tree line.”

Behind them, the rate of gunfire began to increase the closer they got to the safety of the trees. The escort clearly knew that they’d lose them amidst the thick foliage. Thankfully, the trees drew closer and closer and their bullets managed to miss their targets as they shifted side to side to throw them off. Arthur breathed a sigh of relief as they breached the tree line and slowed to navigate between the brush. He felt the girl’s grip on his frame ease up a little with their new cover and he gave her a swift glance to see how she was holding up.

Dutch called out orders to once more grab their attention. “Everyone, veer left and follow me!”

They manoeuvred carefully between the tall trees and bushes, keeping a careful eye out behind them incase the escort appeared on their tail once more. Thankfully, as they weaved to and fro between the shrubbery, the Pinkertons weren’t seen again. When they finally broke through the edge of the forest and reappeared in an open field, the sun had just about set on the distance and the threat seemed to have been lost.

The horses were eased to a halt and Arthur placed a loving pat on trusty Boadicea’s neck. “You did good, girl.”

“Everyone alright?” Hosea asked the group. The responses he received were unanimously positive though out of breath.

“That certainly could’ve gone worse,” the boy mused as he jumped from The Count.  Seeing no danger around, he pulled his bandana back down to reveal his youthful face. Arthur was surprised to see just how young he was — he looked to be about the same age as he was when he first joined the gang. Despite this, he looked like he was sleeping rough, with a dirty face and a fresh red scar that ran over his right brow and down his cheek. “But at least nobody got shot.”

Arthur noticed the girl dismounting to join her companion and she too pulled off her mask. She seemed just as young as him and showed signs of dirt and older scars. Immediately she went to the boy’s side and gave him a once over. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he said with a small smile and let out a huff as he got his breath back. “I’m grand. Are you?”

“Yeah. Thankfully these lads are good riders.”

She wiped her brow and reached back to tie her messy brown hair out of her face as Dutch addressed them. “I thought you two did pretty good out there, considerin’ you managed that stage all on your own.”

“Yeah, bar the squad that we weren’t even remotely prepared for showin’ up,” the girl replied with a pained smile. She looked up at Dutch and gave him a thankful nod. “We definitely would’a been captured or worse if it wasn’t for you lot.”

“Outlaws gotta stick together in times like these,” he said calmly. “We’re livin’ in different times, and we’re just tryin’ to survive.”

The boy nodded in agreement and then shared a look with the girl. “We appreciate the help Mister, uh…”

“Van der Linde,” Dutch replied and reached out to shake their hands. “Dutch van der Linde. These are my friends, Hosea Matthews, Arthur Morgan, and young John Marston.”

“I’m Maebh Hennigan,” the girl replied. “And this is my brother, William.”

“A pleasure. Can I ask, is it just the two of you? No parents or family around?”

Maebh flinched slightly at the question. “Uh, yeah. Our parents died a while back and the rest of our family is back in Ireland. We have nothin’, so we have to rob sometimes to get by. But that doesn’t matter, we owe you’s a lot for this. I suppose it's only fair that we give you’s a bit of the money from the stage.”

Dutch grinned at her suggestion and Arthur recognised that look almost immediately. He could already see his leader’s mind coming up with his next plan of action. Based on everything that happened today, he thought he had an idea of what it might be. “That’s a very kind offer, Miss Hennigan, but I actually have an offer for you.”

Maebh and William met each others gaze before the latter sceptically asked. “You have an offer for us?”

“As I already said, outlaws have to stick together if we want to get by out here. It’s the best way to ensure that we survive, that we live.”

Dutch was descending into a classic rousing speech with which Arthur and the group were quite familiar. He had heard it many times himself when he needed a bit of self belief in what they were doing. The most notable time he heard it was when he first met Dutch and Hosea as an unruly fifteen year old with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Yes, this was certainly an encounter with which he had some personal experience.

Atop The Count, Dutch stretched out his arms in a welcoming gesture and grinned from ear to ear. “If we want to live like Americans, then we got to have each others backs, no matter how tough or worrisome things may be. You need a family, you need stability, you need to know that you are safe. But I think that today is a sign of what you both could have.” He paused and Maebh and William hung on every word. “My offer to you two, is how’d you like to join my gang?”