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heyheshi · 4 years

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Roommates...?

1.7k words

written and uploaded: July 30, 2020

🦋 - fluff

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Masterlist

Part 1

Part 3

_________

It has been almost a week since the last time you've seen Harry and you have to admit - he wasn't bad at all. You expected him to be like the other famous people who think that the world revolves around them but well he is the exact opposite.

He's so down to earth and open-minded about everything, you almost forgot that he's a celebrity during your meal! He was so eager to listen and learn about the town he's going to be staying in.

He's also a proper gentleman. It's common to have your door open up for you if you're on the passenger's seat but what surprises you was that after you parked the car outside of the resto, he went around the car to open up your door - the driver's door!

It didn't stop that, he opened the door of the resto for you and let you in first. Even pulled back your chair for you! The boyfriends of your other friends would be ashamed if they saw him.

Also, he made sure that you won't pay a cent and told you that you can only give the tip - which by the way was also generously given by him already.

You probably looked like a couple that day and you can't deny the fact that you found him interesting... and cute... and really handsome even though he didn't say much about himself and neither do you - just the basics. No one can know that you're infatuated by him, especially your cousin - who for sure is gonna rub the car's magic on you, plus you dropped him off his hotel after you ate.

But it didn't stop you from typing his name on your search engine and looking at his pictures. What can you say, he's an eye candy and you probably won't see him again since you live in the small village of your town and he would probably leave after a few days after all.

But how wrong could you be? Very, super, extremely, tremendously and all the adverb you can think of that have the same meaning as 'so so so wrong'.

You were carrying a tray of your best selling bagels when you saw a familiar head ordering on the counter from the glass on the door of the kitchen.

It's not like you didn't like seeing him - it's just that you're sure that you're going to be all blushy and shy in front of him after developing a crush on the guy.

"2 bagels and a classic tea!", the voice from intercom can be heard through the kitchen and that's when you know that you have to face heaven - oh you mean Harry, soon.

You made a beeline to the pastry display counter with your head hanging low hoping that he wouldn't see you but too late for that.

"Y/N! I didn't know you work here!", well there goes the prince charming, smiling brightly at you while you have to basically snap yourself out of your thoughts.

"Oh, she owns this bakery along with a few other branches.", one of your employees, Kayla, replied to him seeing as you won't be talking anytime soon, then she winked at you.

"Really?!", Harry walked in front of the display counter to talk to you as you finished displaying all the bagels out.

"Yeah, um well you know I own a bakery and this is my first shop, my main outlet.", you smiled a little trying so hard not to blurt anything embarrassing in front of him.

"You look nice.", Harry said but quickly corrected himself trying to play it cool, "what I meant was it was nice seeing you and this place looks cozily chic."

"Thank you. I try, really.", your brain is screaming to not overthink what he said but your cheeks and ear betrayed you, "why don't you take a seat, there's a cute table near the corner if you want some privacy."

"Will you join me? I mean you're the owner and well you're my only friend here in this town so far.", friend - oh well at least you two are friends... right? You really need to shut up now. This isn't how you were acting when you first met him!

"Of course! I'm done working anyway."

"Great! I'll be right there!", with that, he nods his head and strutted to the table on the far end of your shop.

You quickly removed your apron and insisted on bringing his order to him, not before stealing a muffin and a cookie from the kitchen, and getting your water bottle from your bag.

"So how are you liking it here?", you asked Harry while slowly placing his meal on the table for him.

"It's great! I quite like it here actually, my hotel was in the busier part of the town but I don't mind that much. I'm glad I discovered this little village to escape.", Harry explained, taking a bite on the bagel you just made, "mhmm, now I know why this is your best selling pastry."

You laughed at him while shrugging, "thank you, it was a family recipe and I don't let anyone make that bagel, they can make the other pastries but not that one - too sacred."

"I know exactly what you're talking about, it's like writing a song but not letting anyone hear it because it was your baby," H laughed at his own words, "oh, this tea reminds me of how my mum makes my tea, now I miss her.", his face now sporting an overly exaggerated pout after taking a sip of his tea and both of your laughs can be heard from a few tables down.

"Are you planning on going home?", you didn't mean to intrude, you're just curious.

"Oh, so you want me out now? Should've killed you that day!", he joked. If it was another guy, you would've left your seat and never look back but this was Harry we're talking about - and this is not a date.

"Wh- no! I was just asking! Plus we love having you here! You're welcome in our town!", if your mouth hasn't said anything then you wouldn't be blushing and Harry wouldn't be holding his stomach from laughing so hard.

"Oh, so now you love me, huh? That's not what you were saying before!", he was like a switch, before he was laughing so hard bit now his face is stoic without any trace of anything.

"No, what I me-"

"Just kidding! Should've seen your face, love!", now he's back on cackling and he looks adorable and cuddly - shut up Y/N!

"That's not funny...", you guilt-tripped him with your distressed and agitated face.

"I'm sorry!", H was still laughing while putting his hands in the air while you only crossed your arms in your chest.

You two made small talk while scarfing down your foods and asked him the question you didn't know if it should make you ecstatic or nervous about what's to come.

"Why did you said our village is your escape? I thought you already did that when you decided to stay here in our town?", you finished your cookie and drank your water.

"Dunno, this place is peaceful. The main town is great but a lot of fans have been waiting outside of the hotel and I feel like I'm not having the privacy I was looking for the first place, you know?"

"I'm sorry about that. I know this is not an excuse but no celebrity has ever stayed this long in our town that's why they're probably like that...", you looked at him with sympathy in your eyes.

"It's all good. I talked to my friend Jeff about it and he told me that if I'm planning on staying here longer then I should find a place - like a room or an apartment to stay and that's how I found this shop. I was strolling, I don't trust the internet ads, I'd like to look for one myself and that brought me to your neighborhood.", Harry explained and the only words that registered on your mind were "staying here longer".

"That's probably the best idea, not staying long in a hotel - I mean. How long do you think you're staying? Have you found a place?"

"For a few months most definitely. There are barely paps in here and I'm also planning on writing a few of my songs here... and sadly I haven't. Most apartments are on the commercial part of the town and I'm finding somewhere quiet. This kind of neighborhood perhaps.", he explained to you and you cannot stop your mouth from blurting out the next few words.

"I just bought a house a few blocks in this village and well I have an extra room...", well that was fast, your mind screams at you while you shut your eyes tightly.

"Are you offering me to be your roommate or housemate? I don't wanna seem desperate but you're pretty much the only person I know in here and I like this village so I'm not turning your offer down.", Harry eagerly replied to you but still keeping his cool intact.

"I think I am..."

"Really? Wow, thank you! Don't worry, I'm a good roommate - if the offer is still valid!", you and Harry both chuckled at that while standing in your seats.

"Well then, why don't I take you on a tour and show you the house? The village is full of families it's really peaceful here. And I'm not always home so you won't be bothered by me!", you joked at him as you went back to the shop's kitchen to get your things and say goodbye to your employees.

"Oh I know I'm the one who'll be bothering you a lot!", Harry opened the door for you as he joked.

"We'll see!", you just winked at him and walked in front of him while he jogged to catch up to you.

You introduced Harry to the village and showed him around your house. Hopefully, he'd like your home enough to be roommates with you.

_____

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amphtaminedreams · 4 years

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The Eras of Lana Del Rey: Lookbook no.9

Hi to anyone reading,

Hope you’re okay! AND that you didn’t end up here because you searched the Lana Del Rey tag so you could see people ranting about her-you’re about to be very disappointed. Sorry. This is not about to be some Question for the Culture discourse because the world is bleak enough right now and the last thing we all need is to be reminded of that saga.

Being a Lana Del Rey fan is easy, they said. She’s not a controversial artist, they said. And yet 2020 had to do what it does best and fuck everything up.

Whether people like her or not, it’s made me so angry reading all the abuse she’s been getting about her appearance for the last couple of weeks, because I really thought that if we could agree on anything it was that attacking individuals for the way they look because you dislike something they’ve done (with the exception of shit like racist tattoos and blackfishing) is, you know, awful and judgemental as fuck? Like you do realise when you treat the word fat as a pejorative that the fat people you don’t have a problem with understood that you meant it as an insult too? I think what all those people tweeting about Lana’s weight, and that includes some of her fans, are forgetting is that she was in her early 20s when she was thrust into the limelight. As much as there’s this conspiracy that her dad bought her a career in the music industry, she’d made the decision to go it alone and had lived in a trailer park as a struggling musician for years. On top of that, we have the unreleased tracks with lyrics seemingly referencing an eating disorder in her younger years. OF COURSE her body is going to look different. Why is it that we treat weight gain as an inherently bad thing without any insight into the other factors that constitute a person’s “health”? It’s fucking insane that so many feel they have the right to comment on other’s bodies in the first place and it breaks my heart that she might be reading these comments. This wasn’t intended to necessarily be a rant about how much I love this woman but all the shit I’ve read about her on the internet these past few months have pushed me to it. You'll respect your queen of alternative music or I shall stan twice as hard on your behalf. You can thank me later when you come to your senses xoxo

I’d love to say it was intentional that I finally finished this post the week Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass was released but that would imply I have my shit way more together than I actually do. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve only heard L.A Who am I to Love You so far 1). because I want to wait for the hard copy for the rest and that doesn’t turn up til September and 2). because I do not have my shit together, lol. That being said, there is no doubt in my mind that I am going to love it-one thing I have always loved about Lana’s lyrics is how well they paint a picture and this is something that poetry only more freely allows for the exploration of. That ability to create such a strong narrative voice and atmosphere is a talent that extends to her visuals and the production of her records too, and is something I really missed when it comes to the Norman Fucking Rockwell era. I’m just going to say it: a strong aesthetic is to NFR as memorable songs are to Lust for Life. Lacking. Am I allowed to say that as a fan? The collaborations don’t do it for me, okay, and as as NFR is concerned, aside from The Greatest/Fuck It I Love You video which went down the whole neon surfer girl route, it’s hard to identify a cohesive theme. It’s understandable that at this point, she would want to just focus purely on the music, and it goes without saying that NFR will stand the test of time in that regard but I don’t think we can deny that when people think of Lana in the future, it’s not gonna be a green windbreaker that comes into their heads.

^Illustration credit to Filip Kozak (https://filipkozaksart.tumblr.com/?fbclid=IwAR3vwLX2pNxoFNhTPD1ky14LllPqlLtL1GxGlD79xuHxdtzcHLw-6aNBZWo)

And here’s where this Filip Kozak illustration comes into it; after years of it sitting in my camera roll for years, it finally has a use. There’s really nothing better to illustrate how mundane life has become this year than the disproportionate level of excitement my photo-hoarding-self experienced realising it would fit perfectly into this post and is thus eligible for deletion. Up there with being able to fit a whole box of biscuits onto the shelf at work rather than having to individually take out as many as I can and then shove them on top of the existing box of biscuits one by one. Truly riveting content on this Tumblr page. Back to the point-by using this as my stimulus for the post rather than the Lana Del Rey albums as outfits tag that went round on Twitter, I can conveniently exclude NFR as an outfit inspiration category, and that saves me from having to buy a charity shop windbreaker with its price bumped up 150% by some upper middle class Depop e-girl or boy who uses the word peng as a descriptor like it’s a nervous tic. To make up for leaving out NFR, I’ve tried to branch out a bit and do the outfits not just based on the music videos or album covers but also from street style and stage looks and photoshoots from around the same period too. It was hard not to be influenced by the general “vibe” and sound of the albums either when I was planning outfits, whether it’s the grand, orchestral instrumentals of Born to Die or the 70s psychedelic rock inspired riffs of Ultraviolence and hopefully that’ll show as well! Enjoy:D

Born to Die (Release Date: 27th January 2012)

It’s been 8 years, and when you ask most people what they think of when they hear the name Lana Del Rey, they’ll probably dismiss her as the one who sings about being sad and doing coke and sleeping with older men. That’s the Born to Die impact. Say what you want but it’s one of only a handful of albums released by a female artist to have spent more than 300 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart and it really established the mythos of “Lana Del Rey” because before all this, before all the think pieces from other women claiming she’d set feminism back hundreds of years with her music, before she ousted grayscale Effy Stonem as the queen of angsty teen Tumblr (which as you can probably guess was a subsection of the internet I was very much engulfed by, lmao), she was just Lizzie Grant, a relatively normal aspiring singer songwriter in her early twenties. But as Lana Del Rey, she was someone else-some beautiful, mystical being that personified the sentiment of being born in the wrong era. Whilst every other singer’s record labels seemed to be trying desperately to thrust them into the future and keep them on top of all the musical and stylistic trends, it was refreshing to hear someone whose music and visuals captured all the most glamorous elements of the past. Part Priscilla Presley/Jackie O reincarnation (the National Anthem video really illustrated how Lana is just as much a storyteller as she is a musician), part high level mobster’s wayward wife à la Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, she was the good girl by day and the bad girl by night, and I think that’s a duality we can all relate to or would like to think we’re interesting enough to relate to deep down.

Her style from around this period was EVERYTHING. She had those grungy Tumblr girl elements, the camo jacket and the oversized pieces and the leather jackets, but she also heavily drew on the styles and silhouettes of the 50s and 60s with the beehives and the new look Dior inspired cinched waist dresses. Even now in 2020, I think this period is what most people would think if they were asked to describe Lana’s style. I made sure I got the grungy pieces in there with the chunky boots and the vinyl and the oversized leather but the foundation of her looks back then were usually these daintier throwback pieces like the white silk dress and the corset and the mint fur trimmed coat (House of Sunny’s Penny Pistachio coat).

Favourite lyrics from the album? “Now my life is sweet like cinnamon, like a fucking dream I'm living in” from Radio. Nobody asked but I’m gonna give it to you anyway.

Born to Die: The Paradise Edition (Release Date: 9th November 2012)

Lana’s Paradise EP contains probably my absolute favourite song of her’s, Ride, and with that, the beautiful opening monologue that will stay in my mind forever. This era was of course ushered in by Tropico, the short film that included the premiere of the songs Bel Air, Body Electric and Gods and Monsters, which established the ethereal tone of this period-it’s in the name, after all. Both the album and the videos were other-worldly and leaned heavily on religious symbolism which I’m sure pissed off many a middle-aged bible basher at the time. Most prominent in her lyrics were reflections on the freedom of the open road which corresponded with visuals of biker gangs and desert dwellers and modern interpretations of the Wild West, as was an attempt to capture the nature of the so-called “American spirit” which as Lana portrayed it shared more qualities with a kind of celestial, transient being than any kind of solid concept or identity. She played an emotionally detached stripper and a haunted saloon-style-bar singer (almost looking like a runaway bride) and Eve the “first woman” all in the same album and honestly, if that’s not iconic, I don’t know what is. We saw SO many incredible red carpet looks in this period too which built upon this idea of her as the fallen angel tempted by original sin that Tropico established; I feel like this era was all about laying bare the soul of the character she played, this broken, delicate but ultimately liberated being that was so dangerous to the idea of the strong, stable modern feminist ideal. She went about it in COMPLETELY the wrong way in a post that betrayed the ignorance of the privilege she has as a white female performer, but I think this is what she was getting at in it and Ultraviolence only went on to bolster her critics.

In response to the criticism she still receives about the choice to wear a Native American war bonnet in her Ride music video, I’d like to say that it really seems like she’s learnt from that-actions speak louder than words and so though it’s not my place to say whether this makes up for that error, the work she’s done with Native American reparations-focussed foundations since and the money she’s donated to the cause says a lot about her intentions. Again, I want to stress that it’s not my place to say! But it’s a detail that is often overlooked so I thought I’d mention it here.

“I was a singer, not a very popular one. I once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet. But upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky, that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken. But I didn’t really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.”

Ultraviolence (Release Date: 13th June 2014)

AH, Ultraviolence. My favourite of Lana’s albums and imo, a masterpiece. ONE skip. ONE. Sorry Guns and Roses. I got stoned in my back garden and listened to this (for research purposes ofc, heh) and ended up deciding that this is what I want to listen to when I die (also whilst stoned). It sounds dramatic but listening to this album in that state of mind is such a heavenly experience that I’d be too zen to notice myself slipping away into nothingness on the basis that if I didn’t as long as I could stay in that bubble of awe, nothingness forever wouldn’t be so scary after all. I know, I know, that sentence has big Jaden Smith’s old tweets energy. But if an album is what helps me get over an existential crisis, I beg you allow me the nonsensical ramblings about how I felt like I was ascending into the stars.

Though in terms of the lyrical content the public perception is probably correct, I think the reputation Ultraviolence has as Lana’s darkest, most gothic album (which is something I’ve in incorporated into the outfits I put together) is mistaken; instrumentally and visually it drew more on 70s psychedelic rock and the bohemian counter culture of the period than anything, and her stage looks are a clear reflection of that, and also the outfits I was most excited to channel. It seems counter-intuitive to the moody atmosphere I associate the tracklist with but it’s my go-to summer album; it’s raw (probably her most stripped back work along with NFR, lots of the songs are barely edited) and it’s gloomy but let’s be real, hot as fuck-don’t bother making a sex playlist, just put Ultraviolence on shuffle, and you’re good to go. This was the album where Lana debuted some of her most criticised lyrics and where the notion that she glamourises abuse comes from, one of the points she also seemed to be getting at in the Instagram post, but imo it’s fair to say that she sang truthfully about the initial allure of a dangerous relationship and the nature of the mindset that facilitates staying with somebody poisonous where you do feel like you’re nothing without them. Turning horrific experiences into romantic tragedies is how Lana has always made her music and yeah, out of context there are some fucked up lyrics on the album, but policing how a woman expresses her trauma and complaining that she glorifies weakness because she wrote honestly about the reality of a complicated partnership is hardly any more “feminist” than the lyrics themselves. I can only guess that the reason Lana felt the need to bring up this criticism in 2020 is because these darker themes are going to be revisited in her upcoming album and that in spite of the issues with the way she expressed herself, this time critics will be more accepting of how she chooses to address these themes.

On a lighter note “yeah my boyfriend's pretty cool, but he's not as cool as me” will always be a great line. Simple but effective. If my boyfriend ever is cooler than me it’ll be doing Lana a disservice.

Honeymoon (Release Date: 18th September 2015)

Considering that a lot of other Lana fans are of the opinion that this is her best album, I find it weird that I really don’t remember all that much about this period, other than High by the Beach being released and then hearing Salvatore and Freak for the first time. I guess because she didn’t do a Honeymoon specific tour and didn’t make that many public appearances in this period? It was definitely harder for me to find visual reference points beyond the HbtB music video and the cover art, so I mostly drew on the general vibe of the album, a cinematic accompaniment to a summer in Italy or the South of France, filled with exotic instrumentals and the sense of impending romantic doom that Lana does so well. I suppose if I associate the visuals of this era with anything it’s idyllic florals and warm tones, bygone country club pool days, a rich American’s vacation in Southern Europe, long walks on the beach (and as our Lord and Saviour Jujubee once said, big dicks and fried chicken). Apparently inspired by Lana’s relationship with Francesco Carrozini, it’s a hazy story of some ultra-feminine, submissive archetype becoming unhealthily enchanted by a mysterious “foreign man” who’s ultimately not all that good for her, which as the story goes turned out to be quite prophetic. Going against the grain, it’s my least favourite of her albums after Lust for Life, but in spite of that, I will always remember how obsessed I was with the sax riffs (I think? I don’t know my instruments all that well so forgive me, lol) on Freak and I definitely understand why it’s a firm favourite for so many.

“You could be a bad motherfucker, but that don’t make you a man.” was truly a cultural reset of a line.

-on an unrelated note, OMG, I never realised how I have my mouth open in literally every fucking photo I take, somebody tell me how to pose, please and thank you-

Lust for Life (Release Date: 21 July 2017)

Lust for Life is a controversial one. On the one hand, I appreciate that this album was the victory cry of a happier, more independent, politically-aware Lana in spite of it apparently being a far more optimistic sounding album than the one she wanted to release, but on the other there were way too many collaborations for me and this meant that the album lacked a sense of cohesion and the characteristic narrative thread that usually runs throughout her tracklist. Aside from Love, Cherry, Get Free and Tomorrow Never Came, most of the songs on the album aren’t hugely memorable and it’s a crying shame that a collaboration with STEVIE FUCKING NICKS of all people left so much to be desired. Coming from two witchy icons, I expected something absolutely magical so maybe I was setting myself up for failure, but come on. We could’ve had a real anthem there.

Aesthetically speaking however, this is one of my favourite eras for Lana, which is unsurprising when you consider the tracklist contains references to both Woodstock and Coachella. I’m not gonna lie, I think seeing Coachella fashion in my early teens was my style awakening-I remember seeing Vanessa Hudgens’ outfits and being like, wow, I want to be her (oh, what a fall from grace)-so the late 60s/early 70s flower power groupie style Lana adopted in this period really spoke to me. It was all long hair and dreamy pastels, and this era included some of the most head-to-toe coordinated looks we’ve ever seen from her. Of course I couldn’t completely abandon the grungy touches that I love, that I tend to associate with the early Lana street style days and the Paradise and Ultraviolence music videos rather than with this album, but I’m never gonna pass up an opportunity to whack out a good floral two piece and putting together Lust for Life inspired looks is the perfect excuse to do that.

So, that marks the end of this post! If you made it to the end, thank you so much for reading! I have a Yesstyle lookbook and review to edit but now that I’ve finished that, I’m trying to go down more of a style inspiration focussed route with my lookbooks rather than just putting together outfits from clothes I’ve just bought (though I might still do one every so often to bring in a new season-let’s just ignore the fact that they’re all blending into one bc climate change for now, one catastrophe at a time please universe). I find that if you have a specific idea in mind of what you want, it’s super easy to find something similar on Depop and Ebay and that way you avoid buying new things and also take old things off a person’s hands that might otherwise end up being thrown out by a charity shop and then dumped into a landfill from there. Something I’d LOVE to do before this year is out is put together a lookbook based on the most stylish TV shows of the last decade, but that probably won’t be for a while-even so, if you have any recommendations of series to watch which could fit into this category, let me know!

To finish, I need to go a little bit off-topic so forgive me, but I truly don’t know why this even needs to be said: WEAR A FUCKING MASK. IT IS NOT A POLITICAL ISSUE. IT IS A BASIC HYGIENIC PRACTICE THAT HELPS SPREAD THE STOP OF A HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS DISEASE! RUDIMENTAL SCIENCE! NOT A CHANCE TO PROVE HOW “EDGY” YOU ARE! SERIOUSLY, STOP MAKING A FUCKING PANDEMIC ABOUT YOURSELF! NOBODY ENJOYS WEARING THEM BUT THEY HELP PROTECT OTHERS! SO UNLESS YOU HAVE A VALID MEDICAL REASON NOT TO BE WEARING ONE, DON’T BE A SELFISH PRICK!

Sorry to sign off on a rant-y note with something that has nothing to do with Lana, lol, but all the stupidity has been grinding me gears lately and I had to let it out on behalf of all retail workers: if we can wear a mask for 9 hours at a time, YOU can tolerate the mild discomfort of wearing one for 10 minutes. I know this doesn’t apply to the majority of people but there’s always a couple of arseholes, isn’t there!?

Stay safe,

Lauren x

#ldr #lana #lana del rey #fashion #fashion blogger #style blogger #outfit inspo

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ewankoseyo · 5 years

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a chance || yugyeom imagine

A/N: A kind anon requested this last week and I finally got the time to sit down and finish it. Please enjoy! :)

“an imagine where yugyeom and y/n are shipped together by the media and while yugyeom is super shy about it cause he likes y/n, y/n plays along with the ship like promoting yugyeom’s dances, and talking about him in variety shows. yugyeom is super confused if she’s doing this for the boost it’s giving both their careers or bc if she likes him as well”

——

“Close your mouth already, you’ll catch flies.”

Jinyoung smirked over at Yugyeom, who had spent the last ten minutes scrolling through his phone with his jaw practically on the floor. Yugyeom stopped scrolling to glare at the older boy.

“This is all your guys’ fault!”

“Us?” Jinyoung feigned a shocked gasp, placing a hand over his chest. “Whatever do you mean?”

Yugyeom sighed and continued scrolling, still unable to process what he was seeing. “If it weren’t for you guys going on and on about me being the ‘biggest fan’ of the ‘nation’s newest songbird’ on that show yesterday, the whole internet wouldn’t be shipping me with her!” Yugyeom shoved his phone in Jinyoung’s hands. A pormanteau of your name and Yugyeom’s was currently the most trending hashtag on the internet. Clips from yesterday’s talk show of the boys making fun of Yugyeom for being a fan of you were shared countless times.

“I know you guys must be really busy with the recent comeback but in your downtime is there anyone you like to keep up with? Any new music you’re listening to or...?” The interviewer trailed off.

“I think you’re setting us up perfectly, because actually...” Jackson slung an arm around Yugyeom’s shoulders. Yugyeom inwardly groaned, bracing himself for the roasts that were going to come out of this interview. “We wanna talk about how our maknae here has grown very fond of a certain someone!”

“Yeah, you know that really popular cover of ‘You Are’ that everyone keeps talking about?” Bambam piped up.

“Ah, from the nation’s newest songbird? No one can get enough of her YouTube videos. It seems as if she blew up overnight. Didn’t she just join your label?”

Jinyoung cut Yugyeom off before he could get a word in. “That’s correct. But our Gyeomie has been watching her for a while.” Yugyeom attempted to fight off Jinyoung from pinching his cheek.

“He’s one of her many subscribers and has watched all of her covers,” Youngjae joined.

“Is that true Yugyeom?” The interviewer inquired with an eyebrow raised. “What do you like about her?”

“Yes, please tell us Gyeomie,” Jaebum teased. The boys sat on the talk show couch with their heads propped up by their hands, giving Yugyeom their full attention.

“It’s no big deal, I just, uh...” Yugyeom glanced around at all the expectant faces staring back at him, searching for an answer that would prevent any sort of broadcasting incident. “I just really expect her as an artist? She has a unique and powerful voice that puts a twist on her covers. Her original songs are good too...so yeah...”

The boys broke out in laughter from his weak explanation, taking turns in between to make fun of him.

“Aww...Yugyeom’s blushing! Wait until she watches this! We’re going to get this trending online to make sure she does!”

Jinyoung tossed Yugyeom back his phone. “You’re talking about this like it’s a bad thing. You do like her.”

“Yes, but I can’t let the whole world know that...I can’t let her know that.” Yugyeom groaned morosely. “What if she saw the interview?”

“I’m sure she has, but she hasn’t said anything about it yet though,” Jaebum added, coming out of his room to join Yugyeom and Jinyoung in the lounge. He took a seat next to Yugyeom, looking at him expectantly as he showed the younger boy what he was watching on his phone. “I’m surprised you weren’t watching this already, I thought you would have been one of her first few viewers.”

Jaebum and Jinyoung snickered when Yugyeom’s eyes nearly popped out of the sockets, realizing what he was watching. He grabbed Jaebum’s phone out of his hands, holding it closer to his face. You were doing an Instagram live to thousands of viewers, greeting all of those who commented asking you to say hi to them. Yugyeom couldn’t help the small smile forming on his lips as he watched you giggle from reading some of the comments. It was the same laugh he had fallen in love with thousands of times before.

“Oh, JB-sunbaenim is watching this. Hello!” You waved to the camera. “Thank you for watching this and thank you for all of the support from you and the other members. I’m so honored to be in the same company as you!”

The older members silently gave each other knowing looks and smirked as an almost-inaudible squeal unknowingly escaped the back of Yugyeom’s throat. Though your greeting was not directed necessarily to him, he found your just being entirely adorable. Just when he thought it was impossible for you to get cuter, you would manage to outdo yourself without even trying. The whole thing was killing the poor boy.

Yugyeom’s smile was growing by the second as you explained how you were in the dressing room getting ready for a variety show you were guest starring on, until he noticed the upcoming comments.

“JB-oppa is watching this? Maybe Yugyeom-oppa is watching this too!”

“Did you see what Yugyeom said about you yesterday?”

“Unnie, what do you think of Yugyeom?”

“I ship you with Yugyeom. Please make this happen!”

Seeing these comments, Yugyeom felt his soul leave his body. Jaebum and Jinyoung didn’t bother to hold back their laughter as Yugyeom threw Jaebum’s phone back in his lap. He buried his face in a couch pillow, muffling his distressed screams. “Why?! Just kill me already!”

Jaebum forced Yugyeom to sit back up, shoving the phone back in his face. “Wait, let’s just keep watching. It’s getting good.”

“What do I think of Yugyeom-sunbaenim?” Yugyeom’s ears perked up as you read a comment out loud. He grabbed the phone back, eagerly awaiting your answer. “He’s really nice! I’ve run into him a few times at the company and he was nothing but kind to me even if he was busy. He’s helped me to feel very welcome over there.”

“So when the time comes, you guys better have six kids and name them after all six of us,” Jinyoung joked. Yugyeom shushed Jinyoung without removing his eyes from the screen as you continued speaking.

“Hopefully one day I could collaborate with him and the rest of the group. I’ve been following them since day one. I just love Yugyeom-sunbaenim’s dancing! My favorite is from that one show...”

Yugyeom had just about turned into the heart-eyes emoji, staring at the screen with unabashed happiness as you went on and on about his dancing. You didn’t mention anything about watching his interview from yesterday, but maybe what you were saying meant that there was hope that you could possibly like him back? Yugyeom’s heart melted at the thought. How did he manage to fall so hard for you in such a short amount of time?

Yugyeom handed Jaebum’s phone back as you ended the live feed to finish preparing for the show. He moved to grab his coat off the rack and opened the front door.

“Where are you going all of a sudden?” Jaebum asked.

“I think I’ll go practice some dance moves,” Yugyeom replied with a smitten smile before heading out the door.

What happened the next few days should have made Yugyeom happy, but he grew suspicious instead.

Your variety show episode aired the next day. During a game where you had to quickly decide which you liked better between two choices, an image of Yugyeom kept coming up alongside images of other handsome celebrities. Though the show did this to you as a joke in response to recent events, you happily chose Yugyeom each time. When asked about this, you simply replied that you couldn’t betray your labelmate. Despite his heart racing from watching the episode (in the privacy of his own room so the other boys couldn’t make fun of him, of course,) he tried not to think too much of this.

But then after that, you kept talking about him on social media. You shared GOT7′s comeback videos online, but with captions only praising Yugyeom (“If I had Yugyeom-sunbaenim’s feet, I’d never stop dancing!”) You had commented on a fan’s picture of Yugyeom giving the camera a suggestive look at a recent concert with a heart-eyes emoji. When a fan tweeted you asking who you would date in GOT7 besides Yugyeom, you responded by saying you were unable to choose a member that wasn’t Yugyeom.

All of this didn’t go unnoticed by his fans, who would tag him to these posts, asking Yugyeom what he thought. Yugyeom kept quiet, never responding to the matter since it started, because truthfully, he didn’t know what to think anymore. He was (somewhat) fine when his little crush on you was exposed. He half-expected the fans to go crazy about it for a short while, then the buzz would die down if he or the other members never brought it up publicly again. Yugyeom would just live peacefully with his semi-private feelings (and the occasional teasing from the boys.)

But you were actively responding to the fans about the ship, though never directly addressing what Yugyeom had said on the show. You had never mentioned him publicly before, besides the times when you would talk about being a fan of his group. But you were talking about all of the members then. Now, it was almost as if you were encouraging the fans on with this ship. You never confirmed whether it was real, but you also didn’t shy away when people talked about you and Yugyeom. He should have been over the moon from the way you kept talking about him, but when he realized how many more thousands of followers and views on your videos you had gained in such a short amount of time, Yugyeom was beginning to feel, well...used.

Did you really have a thing for him or were you just saying all of that for the publicity?

“I don’t know what she’s thinking right now, but maybe it’s time you go out and do something about it, you know?” Mark suggested casually one day when Yugyeom voiced his concern with the older members. After an honest pep talk with them (“Just grow a pair and confront her already!”) Yugyeom decided he was going to have a word with you about the situation when he had the chance.

That chance turned out to be the following weekend where you were both attending a music awards show. When his manager told him he would be presenting an award with you, Yugyeom knew he had to act fast. As he was backstage mentally rehearsing his confrontation with you, Yugyeom felt a tap on his shoulder. When he turned around, whatever speech he had prepared for you completely left his head.

Yugyeom was at a loss for words. You stood there shyly with your hands behind your back, giving him a small smile. With the way your hair was pulled back elegantly, giving him a better view of your face, and the way your gown subtly accentuated your features to make you look like millions of dollars, Yugyeom nearly let himself fall for you all over again.

Nearly. Remembering what his older members told him and the mission at hand, Yugyeom shook those thoughts out of his head.

“Hi,” you greeted him softly with a small wave. “It’s great seeing you again. I was really happy to hear that we were going to be presenting together.”

Yugyeom balled his hands into fists down beside him for a final push of encouragement before donning an unamused expression.

“Are you though?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you really happy to be presenting with me?” Yugyeom pried, a hint of bitterness laced in his tone.

“Yes...? Why wouldn’t I be?” Your mouth shifted into a frown. You didn’t expect this interaction to play out like this. Yugyeom seemed...upset with you? But why?

Noticing your growing discomfort and hesitance with him, Yugyeom dialed back. Even though he was supposed to be confronting you, he didn’t want you to shy away from him. Yugyeom sighed as his hands fumbled nervously below him.

“Do you like me?”

Yugyeom mentally slapped himself. He didn’t mean to be so forward.

“Of course, that’s why I’m happy to be presenting with you,” you replied innocently.

“No, I mean do you actually like me?”

Yugyeom looked at you with wide eyes, holding his breath as he anticipated your answer.

“Yes...” Your answer almost came out as a whisper. You looked down, unable to look him in the eye as you felt your face growing warmer by the second. “Yes, I do like you.”

Hearing the sincerity amid the reservation in your voice, Yugyeom let out a sigh of relief. “But why?”

“Why?” Your eyes shot back up at him. Was that even a real question? “Because I think you’re so cool and you’re such a great singer and dancer and I look up to you. You’re passionate and funny and you care about your fans so much and you’re basically the nation’s most eligible bachelor,” you rambled. With every word that seemed to flow carelessly from your mouth, you wished the ground would just swallow you up whole to save you from embarrassment. “...I thought the whole world knew I felt this way already.”

Yugyeom’s mouth opened and closed in an attempt to find the words to say next. “But I thought—I didn’t know...please don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought you were just...using me...”

“What do you mean?”

He furiously shook his head, trying to diffuse any anger and misunderstanding that would arise from you. “I mean, you just joined the same label as me and started to get even more popular than you already were after that whole thing on that show I was on and then you were responding to all the fans about it...but you never mentioned it before that...so I just thought...”

“Sunbaenim,” You sighed, looking almost hurt. Yugyeom’s heart nearly broke at your crestfallen expression. “I’ve never talked about it before because I respected you so much. Then I joined the company and there was a higher chance of me seeing you more often than just in short passing, maybe even us working directly together, and so I kept quiet so I wouldn’t embarrass myself. But then you mentioned me on that show, and the fans kept talking about us, so I thought that maybe I had—”

“A chance?”

“Yes...” You looked down again. “So I kept talking about you online...in hopes that maybe you’d notice me again...”

It was quiet for a moment. You were sure you had blown it with Yugyeom and were ready to make a run for the bathroom to cry when you felt his hands gently take hold of your bare arms. Your head shot up only to be met with his sincere gaze.

“I really like you too, if you didn’t already know it,” Yugyeom whispered. Feeling his fingertips burn from the light touch, he abruptly dropped his hands behind back. Yugyeom mimicked the shy smile inching its way on your lips and looked down at his feet bashfully. “I’m really really really sorry about this whole misunderstanding. It’s just difficult to gauge someone’s true intentions when it comes to the work we do, you know? But that doesn’t excuse how much of a dick I’ve been acting to you just now. Do you think we could just start over and try again?” Yugyeom looked back at you hopefully.

You beamed at him, sending a wave of warmth rolling through his stomach. “Of course, Sunbaenim.”

“Good,” Yugyeom smiled back at you before taking one of your arms to loop it through his. “Now let’s go. I think we’ve got an award to present?” You blushed once again as he sent a playful smirk your way. “Also, we don’t need to be so formal with each other. You’re older than me, Noona.”

You hid your face in his arm, a soft and short bashful squeal escaping your lips as he walked you to the curtain behind the stage. “Okay Sun—I mean, Yugyeom.”

As you called him by his name, Yugyeom was sure he had fallen for you all over again.

And when the fans saw the way he looked at you as the two of you walked out on stage arm-in-arm, they were sure too.

——

#got7 #got7 imagines #got7 scenarios #got7 oneshot #kim yugyeom #im jaebum #mark tuan #jackson wang #park jinyoung #choi youngjae #bambam #got7 fic #got7 requests #kpop imagines #kpop scenarios #kpop oneshots #kpop fanfic #kpop fic

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spale-vosver · 5 years

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A Year In Review: 2018 Edition

I don’t normally make my own posts here, nor are they ever personal (I say as though I make posts at all), but since the year is very close to being over—in fact, as I’m writing this it’s 11:02 PM on December 31st—I wanted to look back at where I’ve been and where I still have to go; review the year, basically.

2018 was one hell of a bumpy year for me, though bumpy isn’t inherently bad. I met some amazing friends (you’ll all be mentioned later on) and at the same time lost and almost lost some amazing ones, whether it was to them moving away or my own mistakes. I got involved in so many new things I’d never done before: I got fully involved in theatre, I got kind of maybe in shape, I started caring about my health, I met so many new people both irl and online, I asked my (now ex but still best friend) girlfriend out for the first time it was honestly so new to me and coming out of my shell was an experience I needed.

As the year progressed and school wrapped up, though, I started to wane a bit. Anyone who knows me knows that summer wasn’t great mental health, especially since I was cooped up inside all day doing absolutely nothing but watching YouTube and playing way too much Crusader Kings, and everyone I interacted with felt the effects. I wasn’t nearly as accountable for my own health as I should have been, and I ended up hurting the same amazing people I’d met that year. Truth be told, I’ve still not fully recovered from those mistakes, and though I know no one holds it against me, they’re still some of my biggest regrets. Even now I’m still making them, but each time I make one, it’s less severe than the last time, and each time progressively less and less bad, so I’m improving, though not as fast as I want to, and unfortunately that speed won’t be achieved until I finally start CBT.

Speaking of that, this year wasn’t totally awful on the mental health front, though, considering I both went to a gender therapist to speak about advancements in my transition and was properly diagnosed with anxiety and depression and probably autism, and I can finally start treatment for them. When I do, my own efforts won’t be in vain, and I’ll hopefully have a leg up on whatever treatment I start. I just hope it comes soon, though, because seasonal depression can actually kiss my ass and no, Pennsylvania, 11 days is NOT a suitable amount of time for a break.

Anyways, now on to the real gushy stuff where I @ my friends and acquaintances and tell them how much I lurvvvv them. So, starting off with who I met first:

@thefunrepository/Camille/pash: When you let me join your discord server, I met some of the best people and best friends I’ve ever had, and for that, I’m eternally grateful. Even though you’ve now left that server, when you were there, you tolerated so much of my incessant rambling and @ing and my overall teenage boy-i-ness, but you never made me feel excluded, and I loved every second of it. Thank you so much for even tolerating me, because when I joined and was even just talking to you, that was what I needed most. (P.S.: here’s a New Years resolution for you: FINISH A WIP thanks bye I love you)

@xinnic: my fellow Irish Catholic fam, you’ve been nothing but supportive of me and my work from day one, and I can’t count how many nights over the pretty-shitty summer I spent cooling down by rambling to you about my gay trash kids and my gay trash WIP. Likewise, I’ve never gotten tired of your ramblings about your gay trash kids and your gay trash WIP, and your rambles have singlehandedly made me weak for Roísín in 1000 different ways. You’ve always been there when I needed to talk or reference something, and when you bring your meme game, it’s top tier. I remember almost crying when you started the binder squad, and though it’s no longer around, I still appreciate it. Thank you so much for caring and just being you.

@lilquill: man, oh man do we have a weird relationship. I honestly kind of thought you were annoying at first and no that’s not unique to you but I also warmed up to you really quickly. Your energy levels are unmatched and no matter how tired I am, your ability to somehow shout over text fixes that. You’ve spearheaded so many weird and memorable moments for the hell server, including the readings that led us to our voice reveals, to the ACOTRASH find and replace kerfuffle, and so many other things. Besides that, you’ve been a great friend, always pushing me to do better and be better and calling me out when necessary; I may not show it the best, but I appreciate all of it, and I probably wouldn’t be who I am right now without you. You’re also one of the bravest and most outspoken people I know, with the whole whiteblr deal only proving how willing you are to speak out against bullshit and bigotry. Thank you so much for your undying support of me and of everyone else, and I only hope to be as badass as you someday.

@gingerly-writing: ok please don’t be upset that yours is slightly shorter than everyone else’s but I wasn’t around you as much SO. You’re an insanely talented writer and memeing at you as well as sharing my writing has been so fun. I annoy you so much but you still manage to tolerate me and honestly that’s insanely commendable. I want to see you succeed in all of your projects this year and the next and the next and so on, as well as continue giving amazing advice; when you told me I was really good at characterisation, it was the first time I’d ever gotten proper writing advice, and I’ll cherish it always. Thank you for being a pal and dealing with mine (and someone else’s who we’ll mention later) shenanigans.

@olympusrox123: Sian, you fucking Aussie meme, I love you so much and you won’t get this until later because you’re on a goddamn plane but oh well. You’re insanely funny and smart, and you’ve made me laugh so many times I can’t keep count. When you took part in the name change shenanigans on discord, that was when I knew you were A Top Tier Meme and someone I could send only my freshest. Apart from that, you’re so sweet and have always been interested in what I have to say; plus, I love screaming at you about whatever and whenever and that time we read the Sherlock fic? Godly. Anyways, I just want to say that I heckin love you and that I hope you stay just as you are. Thank you for being you.

@ardentlythieving: oh man oh man oh man my ultimate meme buddy. My compadre. Second member of the three Memesketeers. The shit we’ve gotten up to together is amazing and I’ve loved every second of it. From the day we met we’ve been basically inseparable members, despite your penchant for backstabbing and betraying my meme plans due to your chaotic neutral nature, and every memey thing we’ve done together and every in joke we’ve made has been one of the most memorable meme moments of my life. You’ve always been there when I wanted or needed to just let loose my chaotic energy, and the fact that you just sort of adopted me into both your meme house and your internet family in general has made me so happy. I’ve loved playing SWTOR with you and talking about Thrawn with you and sending you the worst shit I can find, and I wouldn’t trade a second of it. Thank you for being your memey-ass self, and if I don’t get even better memes this year I’m flying to your hell-sheep-rock-land to fight you.

@thornheartcat: we’re waaaaay too fucking similar for our own good. To our taste in video games and anime (max weebage) to our experiences with ASD, I’ve found so many ways to relate to you, which has made talking to you so fun. And that’s another thing: you’re older than me by a lot, but you’ve never treated me any differently, which has meant so much to me. You’ve always put me on equal ground with you and the rest of your friends, and have tolerated my fuckery since day 1, even if you do have some questionable choices in media you enjoy. The long and short of it is, you’re hella rad and hella nerdy, and I love nerding out with you. Thank you for seeing past my age and treating me just like anyone else.

@catcatamelia: chaotic Aussie lesbian says what??? Amelia you’re fucking great and so talented and so creative, and you’re so much fun to be around. I love playing shitty and good video games with you, as well as just talking and memeing back and forth and watching you draw; you’re so amazingly multitalented and interesting that I never get bored around you. I wish that we could hang out via the interwebs more, but bullshit scheduling is bullshit scheduling and whatcha gonna do. You’ve also always been there to comfort me because, like so many of my amazing friends, we share so many issues and commonalities that you always know just what to say. Thank you for never being afraid to open up and just be your wild self. Please never change.

@sea-reader: I left you for last because I have the most to say to you. Our relationship has been up and down in the almost one year we’ve known each other, and it’s mostly due to me. Since we started talking on discord, I’ve always loved listening to you talk about whatever; you always bring your own energy and passion to it, and even if it’s about stuff I don’t know a whole ton about, I’m never bored listening to you talk about it. You’re funny, and smart, and talented, and I’m so glad to have met you in the first place. You were a major factor in helping me out of my shell; there wasn’t a day that went by in the first half of this year where I didn’t mention you in some capacity to someone I knew because you’d said something hilarious or really smart or had brought some new idea I’d never thought of to the table or just done something. Was it the most healthy thing in the world? No, and looking back on it we started getting unhealthy even before The Thing That I’m Not Going To Mention In Public, but we’re continuing to grow and improve even to this day, and for that I’m forever thankful. You could have easily shut me out after that incident, but you didn’t; you gave me a second chance that I’ve rarely ever gotten, and I’m so, so glad. I know we likely won’t ever be as close as we once were, nor will we be able to talk like we once did, but that’s okay, because it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be us, and it has to be healthy, and that’s enough for me. I love you more than I can say, just like everyone else, and I can only hope 2019 brings the best for the both of us. Thank you for being a friend, Lori, because our relationship, the good and the bad, was part of what I needed and got from all of the people I interacted with and met this year. Happy New Year, you dork.

If I missed anyone, please forgive me; it’s now 7 minutes to 2019, and I’m rushing. Tl;dr; Happy New Years, everyone. Be a little better, because you can be, even if you don’t think so.

-Geoff.

#new years 2019 #new year 2019 #new year reflection #reflection #personal tag #personal #my own posts

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rosenfey · 6 years

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oc interview

tagged by @sephiratales, thank you soo much! this was such fun, I always love talking about my babies! 😭👌💖

tagging [only if they want to]: @fantasmagoriam, @ciriofcintras, @ladyinthebluebox, @joz-stankovich, @falkreathh, @kadaaras, @emerius and everyone else who wants to do this! 🌹🌹🌹

going with my precious pure far cry 5 dorter Deborah Fawkes for this one:

What is your name?

It’s Deborah, but you can call me Debbie!

What is your real name?

*sighs, avoiding the gaze of the interviewer* It’s Deborah Fawkes-Seed, to be precise.

Do you know why you were called that?

*shrugs* My mom had a thing for old biblical names I guess.

Are you single or taken?

There were times when I would say I’m happily single, but now I get to admit I’m married to my best friend and I’ve never been happier.

Have any abilities or powers?

I... *blushes* I get super awkward at avoiding some questions at times.

Stop being a Mary Sue.

*blinks surprisingly* I said my name is Debbie, what is this person you are talking about?

What’s your eye colour?

Blue.

How about your hair colour?

Ginger!

Have you any family members?

I’m still in contact with my mom. I miss my grandparents a lot too. Father is just... haven’t seen him since I won the court proceedings he led against me, and it’s safe to say I’m not sorry.

Oh? What about pets?

*her eyes brighten up, revealing that this might be her favorite question of all time* Oh! I have a cat! Three cats actually, but Balthasar was the first. He’s a black maine coon, and he’s very fluffy! A bit of a jerk, but a real good-hearted boy on the inside. *she giggles* He even managed to warm the cold-hearted soul of my husband’s older brother, and the man really hates cats. *she remembers herself suddenly, and brightens up even more, moving hands energetically as she speaks* Speaking about that, my husband keeps bringing home stray cats all the time! We’ve got Gucci and Prada already, and he wants to name the next one Versace. Don’t... don’t ask about the names, he’s just... he likes pointing out his cats are indeed designer. *rolls her eyes, but a small smile escapes her lips*

That’s cool I guess, now tell me about something you don’t like.

*her eyes grow serious out of a sudden* Ketchup on pizza. Should be cathegorized as the eight sin, if you ask me.

Do you have any hobbies/activities you like doing?

Oh yeah! Let’s see... *she pretends to think hard for a moment* I love talking about cats, taking photos of cats... petting cats... writing songs about cats, painting pictures of cats... *let’s out a dorky laugh, then catches herself, growing all red out of a sudden.* That’s to say... I love painting. Went into an art school too. I also play the guitar and, if I may be so bold, know how to sing. Wrote a few songs too!

Ever hurt anyone before?

*looks away* Unfortunately. Such things can’t be avoided sometimes.

Ever… killed anyone before?

*gasps* Yeah I know I’m a cop, but what even is this question? Such a thing is only acceptable in self defense, or... *avoids the gaze of the interviewer, clearly thinking about something way too painful* If there’s nothing else left to be done, such as civilian lives being in danger. But then, who’s worthy enough to be a judge of that?

What kind of animal are you?

A cat! *purrs*

Name your worst habits.

*she bites her lips* How much time do you have?

Do you look up to anyone at all?

I try to be my own inspiration. To prove to myself that I can do this. Whatever ‘this’ is at the moment. *gestures vaguely* It’s not easy at all though, but hey... it’s the thought that counts!

Gay, straight, or bisexual?

Bi and proud!

Do you go to school?

I graduated in law enforcement and I successfully finished art college as well. *a proud smile flashes on her face, before she catches herself and a blush covers her cheeks* That’s... not to brag, I’m just happy I managed to do that. Didn’t expect it at all when I started.

Do you ever want to marry and have kids one day?

I’m already married, and loving it so far. *a far-away smile crosses her face, and her cheeks redden for a moment, thinking about her significant other* About the kids? Let’s just say... my partner would love some, I’m just... *her smile falters, and she looks down* Not sure if I would make a good mother. But having a little girl some day sounds lovely sometimes!

Do you have any fanboys/fangirls?

Oh no! Not in the creepy way. There are a few people who appreciate my work though, and I’m forever grateful for those. There’s nothing better than having your art being recognized by others. I also heard my music helped some folks too, as I usually write soothing or cheerful gospel / country songs, and that warms my heart like nothing else.

What are you most 😨 of?

*looks ashamed for a second* Deep water. Never learned how to swim.

What do you usually wear?

... Clothes?

Do you 💛 someone?

*she smiles fondly* I love a lot of people!

When was the last time you wet yourself?

*grows seriously horrified* The last time I did what?! This is a joke, right? The interview is over, right?

Well, it’s not over yet!

Oh! Well... isn’t that the greatest news. *she laughs forcefully and looks for her cup of water to drink in an awkward silence*

What class are you? (High class, middle class, low class)

Middle? Upper? I moved up a little bit. Not that it matters at all, really.

How many friends do you have?

*pretends to count for a while, but stops very quickly, possibly hinting at the low number of friends she might have* You know? The numbers don’t really matter, as long as the friends are genuine.

What are your thoughts on pie?

*she tries to control it, but a mischievous grin escapes her lips* There’s a pie?

Favourite drink?

Tea! Or is it coffee? No, it’s tea... or coffee. *looks helpless for a second* I can’t really decide, I love both!

What’s your favourite place?

*a wishful smile crosses her face* My bed.

Are you interested in someone?

Yeah... well, I would like to know who comes up with these questions.

What’s your bra cup size and/or how big is your willy?

*blinks incredulously*

Would you rather swim in the lake or the ocean?

The lake. If it was dried up and I could cross it on foot. I said I can’t swim, why do you have to do this to me. *she looks pained* Why are you using my deepest secret against me I’m such a nice person I don’t deserve this.

What’s your type?

I don’t know, everyone is so beautiful!

Any fetishes?

... Having interviews end is such a strong kink of mine.

Seme or uke? Top or Bottom? Dominant or Submissive?

I... *she flushes, looking away* I... don’t have any clever response for this. I like to smash my keyboard as a reaction to posts on the internet if that... *she is crimson red at this point* ...tells you anything.

Camping or indoors?

Indoors, thank you very much. I can’t sleep on the ground!

Are you wanting the interview to end?!

Me? Oh no! It’s fine, I’m enjoying it! Please, don’t make me feel like I’m disrespecting you. *she is still blushing, but her eyes betray her, she’s screaming on the inside*

Now it’s over!

Oh, thank the Lord! I meant... what a shame!

#oc: deborah seed #ambie got tagged #hhhhh this was fun #you know the husband she keeps talking about is john seed because of the cat names he chooses #prada versace gucci #the holy trinity

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fictionerd · 6 years

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GOOD. TO. SEE. YOU. FRIENDS!!!

Here we are! The first post of Summer Season 2018 and we’ll be covering Planet With. This series is released on Sundays and can be watched on Crunchyroll.

Okay, so let’s cover what we learn from the first two episodes of Planet With.

In episode one we’re introduced to Souya, a young amnesiac who dreams of horrifying giant draconic creature attacking a city and some one flying off to confront it. See it’s shit like this that causes dragons to have a bad reputation. Seriously I can’t believe these assholes who go around burning whatever the hell they want just because they can breath fire. If it weren’t for them dimensional travel wouldn’t be such a daunting prospect for me. I never know when some one is going to have a traumatic flashback and attack me all because some scaley clown got it into their head to “burninate” something.

Sorry, I’m digressing again. After waking up from his ptsdream Souya prepares to have a normal breakfast with his perfectly normal housemates of a large cat-person and green-haired maid.

Oh wait... My bad. See I’m used to hanging out with a Teddy-Bear whisperer with the ability to access the life’s memory of a version of herself in any given universe, an elf who ONLY exists in the metaverse of the Akashic Record, and most recently a shadow-monster who spent three months pretending to be Swole-Bear. There was also that time I tried to hang out with a copy of a video game character, but we’re not considering that canon anymore. At least not entirely for legal reasons. Oh! There’s also the British man who tears holes in dimensions to fight against “unfair fates” who I’m apparently hosting a podcast with now? My point being that to me the above image is perfectly normal. To most anyone else this is probably at least a three on the Sir Memery WTF chart.

After finishing his veggie breakfast Souya sets off for school complaining about wanting to eat some meat where he bumps into his class rep whose name he has forgotten. You’d think this is just an excuse to set up Tsundere vibes with her, but no it’s far FAR worse than that. See her name is: Kagaratamaha? [wrong buzzer] Hakatamagara? [wrong buzzer] Ta-ka-ma-ga-ha-ra? [Correct Tone]

So Nickname Pending is worried about Souya and how he doesn’t make friends at his new school. This is because she knows what it’s like to be the new kid, and has apparently never watched an anime in her life so she doesn’t quite grasp the concept of “Leave the mysterious blue-haired transfer alone”.

Side Note: This character’s introduction marks the first time I’ve ever gotten a Japanese pun without some one explaining it to me. So allow me to ruin it for you all by explaining it. She offers Souya some of her Hamburger Steak to which he replies with tears of join “Megane-sama” which she mishears as “Megami-sama” and sheepishly replies that she doesn’t think she’s a goddess before immediately realizing what he’d actually said. This leads into the reveal of her actual name which I refuse to ever use the entirety of again because I honestly don’t think the joke is that funny.

Later that day Souya’s shounen receptors begin to tingle as he picks up on the impending conflict of the story. A UFO is sighted offshore headed towards the city. When the air-force is deployed to deal with the object (Picture in header) they find themselves the victim of some strange joyous delusion and leave the object alone. it’s only when seven strange people, apparently psychics of some kind, utilize their powers to confront it is it stopped. We see one of these people enter the object through a “Weak Point” and have his own delusion.

See, his mother was killed in a fire when he was a little boy causing him to become a firefighter. The UFO hits his brain with a delusion of child him being held back from the blaze by a firefighter only for that firefighter to turn out to be adult him. Adult Firefighter Psychic dude runs into the fire, saves his mom, and the two of them walk through the cherry blossoms as he sorts through all the pent up regrets he has about not being able to save her when he was a kid. Only after we’ve conveniently gotten to know this character’s defining trauma does his squad get through to him and break the delusion, then he uses his Psychic Golem Powers to wreck the hell out of the UFO causing it and copies of it that had appeared around the world to disappear all at once. The same can be said for the Psychics who all blast off to separate places to avoid the fate of E.T. one presumes

While all this was going on Souya got a call from Ginko (That’s green-haired maid lady for those not following the series who also don’t care about spoilers). She tells Souya that he has to defeat “it”, but contrary to what everyone in the audience thinks it turns out that “it” refers to one of the Psychics and not the UFO thing. After Ex-Firefighter current world-saver exits the bushes onto a highway he encounters Souya the cat-man and Ginko. Souya is sporting a mask and being basically lead by the nose at the behest of Catman and Ginko. Now hold onto your seats because this is where shit gets REALLY weird.

Catman swallows Souya turning into a mech in the process that Souya is now piloting. They get into a fight with Firefighter dude who summons up his psychic golem thing. After fumbling around at Ginko’s direction Souya manages to pilot the Catmech to victory over Psychic Fireman and retrieves a vial of star-shaped dust that is the “source of his power”. At which point I’m lead to believe that Souya recovered his memories because he shouts at Firefighter to tell his friends that Souya is going to kick their collective asses. This is presumably because he believes them to be behind his ptsdream.

After the credits roll we see a scene where a guy I can only describe a scruffy Alder from Pokemon Gen 5 says ominously that Firefighter dude had been taken out.

So, before even watching episode two I can already hands-down predict that this guy is the Draconic asshole from Souya’s ptsdream. Not sure how everything fits together but my working theory is that Souya’s from another planet that Earth governments or some shadowy organization somehow invaded and stole something from. Souya is a sleeper agent and the “Peas” balloon things are meant to lure out those in possession of the Stolen Macguffin or whatever.

There we have Episode One. Please excuse me now while I go watch Episode Two. Well... I mean you can just keep reading by the time this goes up but... BRB!

[Approximately 30min later]

Well my theory from about two paragraphs ago is up in smoke as soon as the opening scenes of this episode roll in and further dashed upon the rocks by Ginko later in the episode. All things in their proper order.

So Torai (That’s firefighter-guy’s name btw) makes his report to dragon-man about his encounter with Soya and company. The other six Psychic warriors all make jabs at him as though he died even when he’s sitting right there in an example of a gag that is legit funny unlike Tara’s name from last episode. While we’re talking about the exposition meeting may I just say that I feel BETRAYED!

See Dragon CEO guy is as nerdy as I AM! He’s the one who found out that the enemy force is called Nebula. He called the giant abominations “Nebula Weapons” gives Soya and Company the name Nebula Soldiers, and what does he call the Psychic Golems his crew uses to fight? Psychokinetic Mega-God Photon Armor. If I didn’t know better I’d think my pops made him from the same mold as me no less. Oh, and their little world-saving club? It’s the Citizens' Safety Center Special Defense Section: "Grand Paladin". I’m in tears, people, this is a Draconid after my own heart.

So, the “Grand Paladin” peeps implement the buddy system in case they run into Soya again. Meanwhile Soya’s having a sulk because apparently Ginko and “Sensei” dragged him to Earth to be their soldier. He goes out on a walk in Iron Clogs (I’m guessing this is a joke I’m not getting). On the run he meets up with Torai who just happens to have purchased a bunch of meat buns from a convenience store. They have a conversation because Torai is a nice guy (that’s a legit nice guy not the version that’s been turned into a derogatory term by certain groups online). See Torai, while out looking for his attacker couldn’t help noticing what he thought was a middle-schooler sitting on a random bench crying and came over to see if there was anything he could do to help.

He gives Soya a bun they chat for a bit with Soya desperately trying both not to give away who he really is as well as to eat the bun because dammit he just wants some MEAT for once! All of a sudden the evacuation alarm is sounded because this wonderful abomination has appeared off shore.

Nebula really needs to consult a different artist about their designs. I personally recommend @dashfox1artwork.

Robin: Shamelessly plugging your internet friends are we dragon-boy?

Fic: If you’re not going to show up and fight keep your mouth shut Shadow-bear. I’m just doing my part to show that not all Dragons are assholes. Robin: Whatever you say.

So, the six remaining Psycho-God pilots attack the Ugly Bacon Idol and the pink-haired girl of the team, Miu, is the one to enter the core. The hallucination she sees is of her beating her friend Harumi (Pilot of the Bear-armor) at apparently a Judo competition. We find out that Miu has always just wanted to be strong, and we also learn that she IS strong being able to break through the illusion of the Nebula Weapon with relative ease and destroy the thing. It’s at this point that I should mention that a message has flashed before each of the characters who take one of these things out. In Miu’s case the message was “It’s okay to be weak”. For Torai in episode one the message was “I forgive you” presumably preying on his regrets about his mom.

After Piggy McHideous is dispatched the group separates into its pairs and as we expected Soya and Co target the pair with a member who just fought a battle, but let’s back up for a second because there’s some exposition from Ginko during the fight with the Baconator that needs addressing.

She reveals to Soya that Nebula is indeed the name of the group they work for, but there are multiple faction. Ginko and “Sensei” are with the “Pacifist Faction” whereas the Monuments to terrible design sense that have been popping up in the harbor belong to the “Sealing Faction”. Basically think of this as political parties. One wants to prevent humanity from rising up against them one day by brutally suppressing their ability to advance and keep them in a state of complacency, while the other just wants to take away any dangerous toys that humanity might come up with and hope that they can “guide” humanity onto the path of “Love” rather than “Power”.

Hmmm one group bent on maintaining their personal status quo at the cost of anyone else and another that wants to control precisely what power the general populace has access to in order to “guide” them on the “right path”? I wonder where I’ve heard that one before?

Sorry about that. The Writer is coming through me a little strongly there. Point is that Ginko is using Soya to enact social and ideological control... I MEAN to take away the magical stardust that allows the Psycho-God Pilots to do their thing... yeah. Back to the proper progress of the episode: Soya once again pilots his cat-mecha-sensei to fight against Miu and Harumi. It is a pretty fun fight, but all things must go as has been foretold. So after being on the ropes for most of the conflict Soya turns everything around at the last second with a miracle uppercut against the Bunny-god armor. As Miu is falling back to Earth Ginko appears and grabs the stardust vial away from her. Apparently Ginko can just Mary Poppins herself to wherever she pleases? They all land and Ginko’s like “That’s all for today”, but Soya’s having none of it. He’s ready to take the fight to Bear-mech too when all the other Psycho-Pilots show up including CEO Dragonface to say “Checkmate”, and that’s where our story concludes for now.

Y’know I’m coming more and more around to the opinion that we should be routing for “Grand Paladin” here rather than the lady influencing Soya or the massive, faceless organization that wants to turn us all into Proles from 1984. I mean, yeah, they do have the snake-eyed dude. They meet in what appears to be some sort of board room, and the writing seems to indicate that they’re the “Antagonists” if not the villains, but so far they don’t seem to be anything but a collection of well-intentioned if somewhat zany people. Even the big CEO-type with the intimidating presence, as was discussed earlier, is a lovable and hammy goofball.

I love any series that makes its antagonists human. Granted cartoonish villainy and even edgelordiness has its place in stories, but when you can make your antagonists and especially your villains feel human and relatable it just rings home that nobody is the villain in their own story. Everyone has reasons for what they do. They may not have excuses or justifications, but they all have reasons.

For instance, I have a reason for breaking my own rules here by reading my political views into the story.

[pauses for dramatic effect]

Yes, yes I’m sure you’re all very shocked at this revelation. I mean I was so subtle about it (/s). My reason is that when I went back and really thought about what the “Sealing” and “Pacifist” factions of Nebula stood for I (and this is really the nerd behind The Nerd speaking) couldn’t help but see parallels to some of the more distasteful extremes of Conservative and Liberal politics at work. Both sides seek to impose their morality upon others. While one does so by attempting to keep people complacent with the status quo, the other does it by appealing to the rebellious nature inherent in people and channeling it into “causes”.They use guilt and peer pressure to convince people that their way of thinking is correct and I absolutely cannot stand seeing it happen. Especially when they prey upon others using causes that need legitimate champions!

The goals of the “Pacifist” faction are arguably “good”. They are part of a group that has watched humanity evolve and they only want the best for us. They “keep their involvement to a minimum”, but at the end of the day they’re doing the same thing that the “Sealing” faction is doing. They’re enforcing their own will on humanity by taking away humanity’s means to fight against them, or anyone for that matter.

In the anime this is likely because the “Pacifist” faction is short-sighted and hasn’t stopped to consider what will happen to humanity when they take away the only weapon they have against the “Sealing” faction, but in reality? In reality groups like the “Pacifist” Faction either are themselves or contain an element that wants the people they’re disarming to become reliant upon them for what they need. They take away that person’s own weapons and replace them with their own. They dictate the rules of battle and push you to come to them for aid and defense. They accrue personal power and influence at the cost of their followers’ freedom of thought.

These are important things to think about and be on the lookout for, and it’s an issue that is very prevalent in my own life and dealings online. So those are my reasons for why I read political allegory into the factions of Planet With. Now am I justified for doing this when I so often decry others for “reading shit that isn’t there into stories”? No, of course I’m not. Or rather I’m not justified using that argument against people who dropped a show as a result of what they read into it.

I’m not going to lie. I’m inexperienced with expressing views on creative work online, and am overly sensitive to certain things. I’m just as flawed as anybody else. It’s hard for me to understand when people see “bullshit” in something that I didn’t see. It’s hard for me to accept some one calling a show (particularly one I like) “Garbage” when really it’s just not clicking with them. I know that I’ve been guilty of calling a show “Garbage” in my time, but it’s a term I hope to avoid moving forward. I want to live up to my professed belief that there is good to be found in all fiction, even the “bad” fiction. Part of that is accepting the responsibility I tell others they need to accept. To practice what I preach.

If I’m determined that the Audience has just as important a role in creating art as the Authors then I need to learn to accept the interpretations of my fellow audience members, and to feel free to express my own interpretations of things.

[stops to take a break and slide back into character]

Wow... That ended up being a lot heavier than I imagined. What a way to kick off the summer season! There’s more to come but for now I need a break, and the writer could probably use a nap.

Until next post keep talking fiction, friends! I’ll see you soon

#Anime #Planet With #Episode 1 #Episode 2 #Fictionerd #Let's Talk Anime #LTA #Robin

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evdarcy · 3 years

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An Unusual Hero C2S1

Okay, as I was late with this, I’ll post the scenes from Chapter 2 as well.

Please remember, this is unedited and unfinished, but will hopefully fill in the holes that were left and answer some questions without leaving too many others. HOWEVER I will answer all and any questions if you want to leave me a comment.

The private jet smoothly taxied off the runway as Elizabeth Sarah Whiston, the world’s best kept secret, stared in abject horror at her two handlers.

Commander Jack Cowley, top operative of MI6 and ex-head of the British SAS, stared back at her. As always, his dark eyes were scrutinising her every move as she turned her chair to face him and his American counter-part, Special Agent David Burton—it had never been discussed which agency he actually worked for.

‘Why are fuck are we in Las Vegas?’ she demanded loudly. If they were betraying her, she wasn’t going to go down quietly.

Her fingers twitched, wanting to reach for the gun at the small of her back… What she would do with it against two highly trained special forces officers, she had no idea. But if they were dirty, she was going to make it as difficult as she possibly could; make it impossible for anyone investigating—and there would be an investigation—to deduce anything other than the truth of what’d happened on the little aeroplane.

‘Hey, Sarah, relax,’ David said trying to reach out to her, but she snatched her hand back as she glared at him. ‘It’s not what you think. Tell her, Jack.’

The commander grunted before turning to look out the window, but Sarah knew his attention was still one hundred percent on her.

‘If you’ve sold me out…’ she whispered to the usually quiet MI6 operative.

The British man’s face hardened, his jaw clenching at the accusation, but it only made Sarah’s stomach sink further. Jack never showed emotion, no matter what she said—and she’d thrown some pretty horrid things at the man over the last year—what she did, or how badly she did it. His face was always impassive, always stoic. Even when she’d broken down and told him everything she’d witnessed that violent day last year, he’d been as emotional as a brick wall, which was exactly what she’d needed.

‘Sarah, if that wasn’t so funny, I’d be highly offended.’ David’s voice was soft, comforting, the kind he used when they lay together of a night after they’d screwed like rabbits and he wanted her to ask him to stay, just that once, even though he knew it was a futile desire.

Jack was her brick wall, David her stress ball. She didn’t care how awful that sounded to anyone else, it had worked well over the last year to keep her sane. To stop her running across the live-firing range or jumping from a cliff edge without an abseiling rope.

‘Look,’ David sighed. ‘What happens in Vegas at roughly this time every year? What have you dreamt of attending these last few years, but were never able to do?’

Sarah’s eyes went wide at that. Every year, after the cast and crew had finished the current season of Destiny, they attended the biggest TV convention in the world, Desti-Nation. Thousands of fans went to the event, clinging to their autograph books, posters, and DVDs in the hope of meeting their favourite stars of the TV show that had swept over the world and claiming their signatures.

Every year, Sarah watched the official convention website like a hawk, waiting for the date to be set and every year she was disappointed when it didn’t fall in the only time she had away from her job—the school holidays.

‘You’re not serious,’ she said, scoffing. There was no way he could be. ‘Desti-Nation starts on a Friday and finishes on the Monday, which is today. Any fan of the show knows that!’

And anyone not attending it was stuck to their internet feeds for the whole four days as she usually was. God, Jimmy had been so patient with her as she ignored him for that long weekend ever year, holed up in her tiny office watching the feeds, scouring Twitter, Tumblr, and her Facebook groups for news, updates, and photographs… The man was a saint bringing her food and drinks and—

Sarah quickly shook her head of the thoughts of her former fiancé.

‘Well, after what your sisters did last year’—Sarah narrowed her eyes at him daring him to disparage them—‘we couldn’t take you for the full weekend, but I was able to pull a few strings. I made a couple of calls last week set it all up.’

Jack shifted at David’s words, catching her attention again, making the knot in her chest tighten further. She glanced towards him, but his face was back to being as impassive as ever. He wasn’t happy about something, he was being forced to do this, and if Jack didn’t like something, she didn’t like it.

‘Set what up?’ she asked slowly as she turned back to face David. He sat there with a smug grin plastered to his face that Sarah was going to slap off if he didn’t spit it out. The bastard knew she hadn’t liked surprises before she’d found herself in the world’s most protective custody. Any thrust upon her now were likely to result in her death, and she was hoping to avoid that at all costs.

‘I managed to get you a private one-to-one with… Luc Truman!’ The man sat back in his seat, his hand tapping the table as he said the words. The smug smirk turned into a shit eating grin as Sarah’s mouth fell open and her eyes grew as wide.

‘No,’ Sarah said in disbelief. She knew she was gaping, knew her eyes were blinking far more then was needed, but she was having difficulties processing what he’d just said.

‘No way.’ She looked at Jack—who still refused to meet her gaze—and then back to David. The American nodded at her, his eyes wide and earnest, filled with amusement at her reaction.

It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t a set up. He’d actually organised for her to meet her number one celebrity. The man she’d drooled over for more than ten years.

‘No fucking way!’

‘Yes fucking way!’ David laughed as she threw herself at him, her arms wrapped around his neck as she hugged him, sharing his laughter.

‘I’m meeting Luc Truman!’ she squealed before she kissed him happily.

Jack cleared his throat and Sarah broke the kiss, turning to gaze at the dour man. This was why he wasn’t happy. He felt the whole thing an unnecessary risk, and while she always backed Jack’s decisions, always chose his side over David—despite their intimate relationship—right now she was one-hundred percent on the American’s side.

Her cheek was pressed against David’s and she could feel his smile as the two of them stared at their silent companion who’d never approved of their sort-of-relationship. Not that she was supposed to know that.

While she hadn’t meant to, she had overheard them arguing about it plenty of times over the past year. As a result she kept their trysts behind closed doors and never allowed David to stay with her overnight. But no matter how hard she tried to hide their screwing, Jack always found out. However, right now she didn’t care.

Twelve months she’d been kept hidden away from the world. For a year she’d had no contact with anyone, hadn’t even had the chance to watch television. She’d missed the last season of Destiny and hadn’t even been allowed on a computer connected to the internet, so she had no clue what the hell had happened in her favourite show.

‘Yes, well,’ the British commander said gruffly to the grinning duo. ‘Let’s get it over with so we can get back on schedule.’

‘Thank you, Jack,’ she said with a laugh as she let go of David and leaned across the table to grab the British man’s hands. ‘Thank you for this. This means the world to me.’

The commander looked uncomfortable, his eyes shifted to his American counterpart before looking back at her. ‘Wasn’t my idea,’ he dismissed brushing off her hand before standing up and heading towards the cockpit. Sarah could hear him talking with the pilots, but she was too giddy to pay attention.

She slumped back into her seat, staring at nothing in wonder as she whispered, ‘Luc Truman?’

‘Just don’t run off with him,’ David laughed and Sarah batted at the man playfully with her foot across the aisle.

‘Oh, if only I had the chance…’

‘Would you take it?’ The seriousness of his words, a direct contrast to his tone two seconds ago immediately snapped Sarah back to attention. Her gaze met David’s and she was surprised by the earnest look in his brown eyes. ‘If you had the chance to run away from this with him, would you do it?’

Oh, the man had no idea what he was asking. Escape with Luc Truman? Hell, yeah she would! She’d grab the guy’s hand, run with all she had, and never look back.

While she’d dated, screwed around, and even settled down with other men, the only man she’d ever really fantasied about was the Destiny star. She found other men attractive, David was certainly handsome—and he knew what to do in the bedroom department—but there was just something about the celebrity that pushed her buttons the way no one else could. It had been that way since his breakout role back when she was barely twenty. He’d awakened something she’d never felt before—sexual desire.

Since then the man had starred in pretty much every sexual encounter she’d had—hell, she’d even lost her virginity with him in her mind! She had no idea what it was about the star, but he just drove her wild with want and need. Just the thought of him being close, having the chance to touch him, smell him… God!

If she had the chance to run away with him…

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, snapping out of the familiar fantasy of the star finding her so attractive that he declared his marriage over and ran off with her. She saw David frown slightly, and so she added, ‘I am one-hundred percent in this. I want justice for what that bastard did.’

David smiled at her, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Remember, any questions, please leave them in the comments!

#fangirl #AUH #destiny #luc's story #unedited #Unpublished

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meandmyechoes · 3 years

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So I think I’ve done more Chinese writing than I’ve had in the past five years during last month. It was... exhausting, but I also enjoy spinning it a little rewriting the novel in a different language.

Now I’m actually writing a full length prose, one can finally see the trauma left by my middle school teacher. There’s like, at least 30% idioms in my chapters. I just, I’ve been conditioned into stuffing as much idioms as I can UNDER JUST A YEAR, and there’s no turning back. I mean, yes, idioms are excellent to convey ideas concisely, but they could be pretentious if overflown; especially when you write in a language that leans towards colloquialism as Cantonese. I just know a lot of idioms and sometimes it’s difficult not to use these minimalist words? I know where the line lies though. It’d be good to sum up an event, but re-consider if they are superfluous adjectives.

Well, getting into this mess did inspired me to write two poems and a drawing, so I guess it has some benefits in the end?

Onward, I do miss writing English fiction so bad. I wrote a few essays in the meantime, but the last time I wrote a story was what? last summer? I should just sit down and write it like I’m doing now. I’ve been watching a ton of panels & interviews stuff, digging up the gems of Star Wars weekends. It’s hilarious and I want to make a non-show TCW resources masterpost later on. But just combing through that comics list is quite a work, and I have to sort out the download links. yeah.

But like, I meant to talk a little about lunar new year in the diary post. And I actually have something never fully plumbed in my draft regarding some... rumour that I’ve now forgotten. Well, I want to say that it’s been a hectic month. I barely know what I did since the year started. Life’s still shit, but it’s very oblivious, you know. I don’t need to go into details here, it won’t change anything overnight. Just so if anyone’s reading, I’m of sound health, just moody.

Let’s talk about something I haven’t even discussed inside my own head. So the past month, we’ve basically been helping my gramps move and renovating our own house as well. Very often we worked very late and it completely drained me. But I know Mom is working a lot harder than I am and I want to do my best to lessen her worries. In principle, I would gladly help out but it’s this, tcwaw, the translation, and the deadline of making a cny outfit, and mom breathing down my neck to exercise with the fam, plus having my hair cut in three years rather unwillingly, on top of my terrible self-maintenance (and that ever-lasting shadow of my college). phew, it’s a lot. and I got really, really depressed because I couldn’t finish tcwaw. I feel like, I’m betraying a pact or something okay. I know I took this too seriously and well, any day is tcw appreciation day here. but I tried really hard to make something and I really wanted to complete the challenge, to do this together. So at least, I’m letting myself down. and then there’s the fact that the first post didn’t garner as much notes as I wanted... but all of them are quality responses so thank you... (brb crying again)

Next, I’ve bitched about this many, many times but the negativity of the Forum! Like, pal and i are trying very hard to sway it back into some positive discussion and actual content with the translation, but these men are even bitchier than i am when it’s about the sequels. Like, I don’t expect a comment, it’d be a blessing if someone even clicked readmore. I’m doing it more out of my own interest but damn those manbabies! I understand the internal misogyny in Cantonese swears. Yet, it is the user that chose to aim that tool at a very public platform to express their anger. I just, expect, humans to be better-versed? The worst one of them is a father to a little girl! I’m not saying you can’t complain, I’m saying make it count.

THE (COMPLETE LACK OF) READING COMPREHENSION ON THAT SITE. okay, let’s go all out bitch. Like, I would expect my partner to be a little better at this, like he reads, right? but no. not only did he misinterpret a singular question on the forum that effectively brought my intention to raise discussion to a full stop, he often mistranslate lines, and just, he’s just a stereotypical straight guy with a stereotypical view on “women + star wars”. It’s wearing me out and I don’t really find anything to learn from that guy. But I also pity him and it’s just bad practice for me to ghost people and cut off another unnecessary backdoor. It’s like he doesn’t really have anyone to talk to about Star Wars, and his contribution to the local fanbase is objectively admirable. This guy still thinks I’m a fellow dudebro, who might be a little obsessed. He has stepped on my toes before (and our circadian rhythm is just, opposite) and well, I learnt to be patient and ask for clarification before giving the other person a lecture. So I guess I could milk some benefits out of this relationship. It will fade eventually anyway. (For the record, I do not think this is deception. My gender is simply unnecessary professionally.)

And you know what’s really funny, to this day, I haven’t revealed I am a girl either on the forum or privately. But I’ve implied so before. I said, young girls like action figures too but unfortunately *I* personally don’t find them pretty-looking enough to buy as a child. I didn’t want to give it out then and still don’t now, but I thought that was quite easy a hint to read? (Because if I’m not a girl, my personal experience carries no weight, and so the only logical conclusion for the relevance and necessary inclusion of that example, is that I’m a girl) (and this is discounting all the Gina mess before. They are quite reasonable with that. but wonder why no one ever brought up her transphobia?)

I don’t know, sometimes just reading them joke about how women don’t understand star wars, do i laugh or shake my head? Like, of course they won’t talk to you if you don’t contribute to the fandom. Why would anyone choose a whining fanboy over a creative writer? Like, do I charge in and say haha fool’s on you, I’ve been a girl all along and you guys are liking my meta posts like leeches. That’s ridiculous. Like, I wouldn’t mind influencing and slipping awareness on feminist issues in Star Wars, but also what am i to condition these strangers on the Internet? I know I have a saviour complex but I should hold them to the same standard as myself, as a responsible adult, right? I just wanna charge in and write about what it really means to read Star Wars through a feminist lens, and how the “representation” they thought was doing right and where it’s not enough, but I know it will fall on deaf ears. and I just wanna swing a bat and ask them to celebrate Star Wars instead. Otherwise the rational action is leaving that space for good, I’m just too busy. alas, alas.

update: [22/2/21]

last weekend they’ve come to talk/joke about how they’ve never meet a female star wars fan. Given, I haven’t in real life either. It was already a less-than popular hobby than most. But it’s the tone they talk about, without ever realizing there is/could be an ”undercover” agent. It’s an unnecessary complicated way of thinking, but I’m amused, laughing at their oblivious shamelessness. When I wrote this I didn’t know the discussion would turn that way, and what a coincidence. I couldn’t keep it much longer and dm mr. partner. we briefly talked about my concern but the topic was quickly changed into a general grievance about the lack of intelligent communication across local forum boards. I felt better after this, but I wonder if I should still strive to bring content towards it. It’s going to be a wasteful investment, but I do want to write some Ahsoka metas possibly, even if it’s just fact files on her inspiration and how tcw came to be. But I’ll have to evaluate if it’s that important I’ll be dropping off every other WIP for. (It’s not, but no sow no reap)

#echoesdiary

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cat-the-dragon · 6 years

Text

This Last Thing I Could Do For You

I guess most of my followers already read Even Now We Feel The Shape Of Your Absence, that I’d posted partly because of @camsthisky, and partly because of the @nanowrimo.

This time, I’m blaming @chibinightowl for inspiring me to write this prequel (still meant to be read after the other one), both her and @comicroute beta-ed for me, so thanks to them

Read on Ao3

-The opening of the Will is scheduled at 19:00 this Monday in the Batcave.-

Jason stared at the message. The Will. Whose will? In the Batcave, a will was being read.

It had been sent by Barbie's Oracle number, so the probability of a prank was in negative percentages.

One of the Bats had died, and Jason hadn't been told. He’s always the last one to hear about these things.

Oh, god, what if it was Alfred?

Hands just barely not trembling, Jason typed his reply. -Who died- No question mark, somehow, it seemed more disrespectful than sending a message without proper punctuation.

-Red Robin- Came back ten seconds later.

Jason stared at the two words. He'd expected relief if it wasn't Alfred, but learning it was the kid he still held a grudge against without a proper reason was actually worse.

Jason arrived at the Cave at 7 pm sharp on Monday. He was there for the Will, not to socialize.

He'd had the time to look up what had happened.

It had been surprisingly easy.

Red Robin Death and Red Robin Suicide were all over the internet. There was a shaky cell-phone video of the hero hurling to the ground and going splat that had gone viral enough that even the Bats couldn't seem to get rid of it, and then dozen of witness declarations on diverse discussion boards.

The report he'd hacked on the Batcomputer said that Red Robin's gear had been in perfect working order, he didn't seem to have suffered any head injury before the fall, and his blood tox screening came back perfectly clear.

So.

Suicide.

Somehow Jason felt bad.

He wondered if he'd had anything to do with Repla- Tim's decision.

Dickster had told him, "Tim was your greatest fan. I saw him talking to your Memorial Case in the cave, Jay."

He wondered. Would things be different if he'd actually apologized for beating the kid up on top of Titan’s Tower and shooting him that time?

Jason knew how much having a role-model betray you hurt, and he'd been the one who did that to Tim, hadn't he? Would he have gone suicidal if Bruce systematically went after him with the intention to cause maximum harm instead of just reactively hurting him?

Who was he kidding, Jason was already a bit opportunistically suicidal even with just the status-quo at hand.

He didn't have the time to dwell more, because the big screen flickered with a video as soon as Bruce saw him arrive. (He was the last one, good.)

"Hey," the costumed and masked Red Robin on the screen started. "Seeing the probability of me dying, on or off the field, I figured I should make a vigilante version of my will. That way I can get into the type of questions that definitely couldn't be stated or explained on the civilian one that I left with the lawyer."

The Tim on the screen (not the one resting under a sheet in a refrigerated dome in the medbay that Jason had only glimpsed so far) turned a bit more somber. "I gave this video to Oracle. I figured a video would be the easier to confirm as genuine and not forced. The instructions were to get everyone possible to open it, but do it within two days at most, even if some were missing. That way you have a forewarning of my preferences before you start sorting my civilian death."

"Good bye everyone. B, if you are watching this alone because you couldn't wait for the others, or got nosy and I'm still alive while you see this, I'm very disappointed in you, close this video immediately!" Red Robin made a stern frowny face, and despite the solemn atmosphere in the cave, a ripple of amusement ran through the assembled heroes.

Jason for his part stomped down on his matching laugh to shoot Bruce a suspicious look. Did he tense? Had he actually tried it?

"So, I guess first off are my cases... I pre-made an override command in all my digital systems that will transfer everything to my old Robin session in the Batcomputer. I tend to use informatics a lot, so there should be everything you need on it to finish whatever I am doing at the moment of my death. It might be time sensitive, so I hid the transfer key in the Batcave, you'll find it under the detachable R emblem of my first Robin design in the display cave. It's a microchip, you might need a couple of minutes to find it, then connect under my old session and launch the program that pops up, it'll do everything on it's own. DO NOT fiddle with the code or launch it from anything but my old session on the Batcomputer, it'll destroy all my data. That's a very safeguarded override."

"Even then, some things are password protected. I put the list of encrypted passwords and corresponding files under the passenger side floor-mat of the Batmobile. Red Hood's Batmobile." Probably the one he boosted the tires from what feels like a lifetime ago. Good concealment of information in case an enemy got the Will on Tim's part, that.

"The encryption key is written on a post it note in Nightwing's favorite book from when he was still wearing the disco suit." Jason shot a look at Dick, who had a pensive expression on, trying to remember, surely.

"Legacy comes next, I guess? Red Robin was Hood's so if he wants to take it back now that I'm dead he can, I'd rather you didn't give it to D-Robin or any youngster after me, though. It’s not been around long enough to absolutely need to get passed down, and frankly, if I die in it, it would be a pretty unlucky omen for the next one.”

And that doused the little bit of levity that seeing a sassy Red Robin had introduced. Jason couldn’t help but sneak a glance at the sheet covered exam table.

Talk about unlucky.

One thing was sure, Jason would not be donning Red Robin again, thank you.

“The map of all my personal safe houses should be in the download with my cases, feel free to help yourselves to them or my gear. I mean all of you, no one gets to claim everything for themselves without asking the others if they want it.”

“Now my other Will also says this, but I wish to be cremated. And if possible not have all the ashes at the same place. I know it is tempting to forego it and wish for another miraculous resurrection like for J. But considering the interest Ra’s has been paying me, I really, really prefer not to run any risk of him ever getting his hands on my corpse.”

Tim looked at the camera fixedly. “I know what you’re thinking, B. You’re thinking you could protect my grave. Don’t. You’re not immortal, Ra’s is. What about fifty years from now? Will you still be able to protect my grave then? I prefer not to run the risk, so please respect my wishes on this.”

Bruce got up abruptly and stormed off.

Jason shot a venomous glare at his back.

He couldn’t even handle that? Tim had definitely been low balling that one because Bruce’s ability to protect graves? BULLSHIT. He hadn’t even noticed him vacating his.

Tim spoke for a couple more minutes. Minor things about who could have what, and his wish not to get a memorial case in the Batcave, and what to give to the Titans. There were instructions about keeping an eye on his teammates, especially Superboy, right after his death. He offset that by saying he made a will for the Titans too and that they would know what he wanted them to do after he died.

There weren’t person by person messages for the Bats, Tim apparently treated them as a single entity, or he’d made a series of personal messages independently from the general one.

Jason wasn’t paying much attention by the time the screen went black, because his mind had gotten stuck on Tim’s demand for a cremation. He understood that all too well. And more importantly, Bruce’s reaction to it.

Was he getting paranoid?

This suspicion, that Bruce storming off might be because he wanted to falsify the civilian will, stuck with him though.

Would Bruce be that much of an asshole?

What a question.

Yes, yes he would. When Bruce thought he knew best, he steamrolled everyone to force his version of ‘the best thing to do’, disregarding everyone’s logical reasons or emotions. Jason actually wondered if he was even aware people other than him routinely had feelings.

He looked around himself at the other Bats in the cave. Bruce wasn’t hiding anywhere he could see, but everyone else lingered, making clusters, crying, or noticeably being in the process of not-crying.

Damian was standing stock still, staring at the screen vacantly, obviously still deep in shock or denial.

Everyone else was mixed bags. They had seen death so often that they skipped entire stages of grief all the time, though for that one, Jason did foresee everyone getting bogged down on guilt floor for ages. He knew he would.

Suicides had the tendency to do that to surviving families after all.

Resigned to the idea of having to be the bad guy, Jason stalked past Blondie crying in the arm of a very stiff Cassandra and stopped in front of Barbara.

She extracted her blotchy face from Dick’s abs and sniffed. “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

“Where is B?”

Dick snarled, jumping over the wheelchair to put himself between Barbara and Jason. “Now is not the time to be petty. Tim is dead! He... He’s dead, he’s not coming back, he’s dead!”

So he was the bad guy. He was okay with it but as the one who’d gotten royally fucked by a Lazarus Pit, he’d given himself the mission to ensure Red Robin was burned the way he asked to. Being the good guy or the bad guy was not important. Keeping Bruce from disrespecting his third Robin’s wishes was.

So he said the bad guy’s thing. “Yes, he’s dead. And he wanted to stay that way and not become a Lazarus puppet like me, so I really hope I am wrong in my suspicions, but I need to know where Bruce is to be sure of that.”

Barbara stared at him around Dick, wide eyed. “He wouldn’t.”

“Right. And he wouldn’t label my memorial with ‘a good soldier’ either, then?” Jason spat back.

“This isn’t about you!” Dick yelled.

“No, it isn’t!” Jason bellowed back, agry to be accused of making Red Robin’s death about him. “It’s about Tim wanting to be cremated and Bruce going missing after the unofficial Will stated part of the content of the official one that’s with a lawyer. A part Bruce doesn’t like. How well can a law office hold up to the Batman?”

“How dare you suggest… You hateful!” Dick was losing steam. And the whole cave was deathly silent except for the unhappy rustle of disturbed bats on the ceiling. Everyone was staring at them. “...Spiteful… You!”

“Prove me wrong, then.” Jason gestured to the computer. “Tell me where Bruce is.”

Barbara blew out a loud breath. “I so hope you are wrong.” She wheeled herself to the console, letting Dick try to protect empty air.

“So do I.” Jason stood tall, arms crossed next to Barbara as she chillingly narrated her finds. No missing cars or bikes. Jason pointed that Bruce had gone up the stairs in his Batman costume. She gritted her teeth and looked for him on the video surveillance.

Dick was staring at him like he was a monster. And frankly, he would give his right hand to be wrong, but someone had to doubt the Bat, and if no one else would, Jason would be that person. He infinitely prefered being wrong and looking like the a heartless monster at Tim’s will reading, than be right but not speaking up and seeing Bruce prove himself to be the inconsiderate asshole once more.

“No,” Barbara whispered. “No.”

Jason squeezed his eyes shut. Shit. The pinpoint that represented Bruce was heading straight for Gotham. Which wasn’t that bad per-se. Maybe he was planning to beat some poor schmucks up to make himself feel better, but as far as disproving his fears went, it wasn’t great. (The fact that he had gone out in full Batman from the Manor’s entrance and apparently decided to go by foot wasn’t saying great things about his state of mind either.)

He stood still and silent, watching Bruce move on the map. Waves of murmurs floated around as some of the Bats left for their patrol and others watched along with Dick, Barbara and Jason.

When Bruce made it to the block of Tim’s lawyer, Jason decided to fuck the benefit of the doubt and stop dawdling.

His plan was already forming as he turned away from the computer screen and jogged up the cave’s stairs.

First, he went to the garage.

Slashing every single tire might have been a little overdone, but Bruce was filthy rich, he’d get over it.

Second were the supplies.

He didn’t have a precise idea of exactly what would be needed, but he figured he could always buy what he needed as he went. The most important tools for the first phase was cooling stuff.

He pilfered a big comforter from a guest room and filled it with as many ice cube packs as he could find in the upstairs freezer, then he trudged back down the cave’s stairs with his loot.

Barbara, Alfred and Damian were the only ones still in the cave when Jason came back down. He figured Dick must have led the few stragglers on a mission to go talk some sense into the big dumb Bat.

Jason didn’t like to put his trust in that. If he wanted stuff done, he might as well do it himself.

The trio stared at him and his comforter bag. He ignored them.

He did the same with all the cooling packs in the medbay freezer as he had upstairs.

He also pilfered half the emergency liquid Batfunds from their hiding place.

Third was the Batgarage.

He almost expected to be stopped, to have to fight his way through, but instead he was met with watchful silence when he stalked to one of the Batmobiles, opened the trunk, collapsed the back seats and spread his catch on the floor.

Then Jason methodically moved on the hangar for the fliers and plastic-ed up every single landing gear. Barbara put a hand on Damian’s shoulder and asked him to push her to the elevator because she wanted a snack.

Damian must have been pretty out of it not to see through the transparent excuse. Or maybe he was experiencing disconnect. He blinked at the systematic destruction Jason was wreaking upon their vehicles, then at Barbie, and obeyed without a word.

The Bat-tires were all a lot sturdier than the civilian ones, so slashing wouldn’t work that well.

Instead, with a lingering look at Alfred to see if he’d try to stop that much, Jason took out the Bat-impact-wrench and went to work removing every single wheel and kicking them over the edge of the precipice into the man-made lake Batman kept his marine float in.

Once only his chosen Batmobile was standing on all its wheels, he went for part four.

Fourth was Tim.

He strolled up to Tim’s body, opened the refrigerating dome, and lifted the sheet covered lifeless body up in his arms. He noticed Alfred bustling around. Still, he didn’t move to stop him when he went back to the trunk and deposited Tim in it.

Considering how the body had been kept very cool since his death (probably to make it easier to disguise his civilian death to a later date) rigor mortis had barely set in and it was fairly easy to maneuver him into lying on his side so he would fit inside the limited space.

Jason folded the blanket back up over Tim and closed the trunk. This was when he noticed Alfred in much more practical clothes than he ever thought he’d see the old man in, holding a backpack and opening the passenger door.

He stared at the old man, but when he was only met with a very flat stare, he shrugged, climbed into the driver seat and drove off. It was nice to see someone else understood about respecting final wishes and all that.

Fifth was distraction.

In the morning, once he estimated himself far enough from Gotham, Jason bought a replacement minivan with tinted windows at a shady second hand shop. Alfred helped him transfer the contents of the Batmobile, and then they left with their new vehicle.

Jason left the Batmobile in a well frequented parking lot with the keys taped to a side mirror for any daring youth to take it on a joyride whenever they found it. Alfred didn’t look thrilled by his choice, but didn’t protest either.

When Alfred asked him what he planned on doing, Jason started considering his options besides ‘steal the body and run’. Speaking the possibilities out loud helped him think them through too.

Breaking into a funeral house and commandeering the crematorium, although easier, would leave an obvious trail. If not on the security surveillance, at least in the fuel gauge. There was no way it wouldn’t be reported and investigated, and even if nothing came up from it, it would make Tim’s civilian death with a missing body much more suspicious than it needed to be.

Tim was so loyal to the Bats and their secret, that even the fleeting possibility that Jason might be too careless and accidentally harm his successor's cover made him sick to his stomach.

Alfred nodded at Jason’s exposed doubts. “Well,” he mused. “I guess humans have been building funeral pyres since the Roman empire, and they didn’t have gasoline then. I suspect young master Tim would have appreciated such a send-off.”

Jason swallowed. “Would he?” he asked, suddenly desperate to learn more about the person he’d just gone against Batman to cremate.

Alfred smiled sadly. “Yes, I believe so. He forced Master Bruce to watch the original Star Wars trilogy once.” Jason smiled, wondering how he’d even managed that feat, but didn’t ask, not wanting to interrupt the tale. “Master Tim was so emotional at the funeral for Anakin Skywalker. I could see the awkwardness radiating out of Master Bruce. It was clear he didn’t quite know what to do.”

In the following day of driving, they had to make a few pit stops to buy more ice-cubes and dump the old ones so the body they were transporting didn’t start to warm up and putrefy.

Jason guessed the result would be the same either way, but he really prefered to be able to give Tim as much dignity in his funeral as he could. And as far as he was concerned, it included not letting him start to smell like a pile of garbage.

They picked a deserted beach at the foot of a ragged cliff, hoping the relief would hide their fire from the watchful eyes of fire departments, and waited for the evening to start moving their newly bought supplies and Tim.

There was quite a bit of wood, charcoal, and acetone bottles to move over a pretty long way, but Jason was strong and had quite a bit of endurance, so he took care of it while Alfred built the pyre.

When all the supplies were moved, and once the night was well fallen, Jason finally brought Tim. He was still fairly cold, and didn’t actually smell.

Feeling like this had all gotten much more real, Jason carefully wrapped Tim in the comforter, letting a tuft of hair poke out to make the human shape look more like a voluntary blanket burrito than a carpet wrapped corpse.

He reviewed his excuse: Yes, my brother fell asleep during the car ride. He never sleeps so I didn’t feel like waking him. I couldn’t let him in the car though. It’s okay, he barely weighs anything.

Jason didn’t see anyone, but the cover story had already started to make him shift his way of seeing things. Brothers…He shook himself off and hurried over to Alfred.

Now that Tim was out, they had to make haste. Getting caught with a corpse was absolutely not desirable.

“I know it’s stupidly romantic, but I can’t help thinking we should burn him with his weapon,” Jason said, sighing while dousing the comforter in acetone. (They should probably douse Tim too, but that was something neither of them could bring themselves to do, pouring acetone on a family member.)

Alfred smiled faintly and opened his backpack to pull a small cylinder out. Jason reached for it and unfolded it.

They quickly put Tim in position on top of the fire accelerant doused pyre. (Jason spared a moment to be thankful Tim had already been cut out of his fire retardant nomex uniform and dressed in cotton civilian clothes. He didn’t voice it, though, because he was fairly sure Alfred had been the one to do it and it must have been incredibly harrowing for him.)

Alfred took out a camcorder and a tripod and started recording the funeral pyre. It wasn’t meant as an archive, too risky, but as an inclusion, so the rest of the family would be able to see it at least once if they chose to.

Jason stared at Tim’s too pale dead face.

He had been suppressing his knowledge that Tim’s ‘body’ was actually Tim’s corpse. He’d been compartmentalising, and he knew it, thinking like Tim was in some sort of coma instead of dead. Even when he’d been browsing the barbecue section of the mall for the pyre’s material, he’d still been treating it like he was doing Tim a simple favor, rather than organizing a funeral.

Because he needed to be functional, because he couldn’t break down.

At last, Alfred and Jason folded the acetone doused comforter over Tim’s body and threw ropes over the pyre to anchor it down. (Apparently, Roman pyres sometimes ejected the person placed on top of it because of the abrupt heat, and they prefered to avoid this risk.)

Finally, they lit a couple of torches and touched them to the pile, lighting it up.

The pyre went up in flame with a wroof.

Jason retreated out of the camera’s recording field and huddled down.

That was it.

No more Tim.

Alfred, bless him, noticed his somber mood and gently rubbed his back as they watched the initial acetone fueled fury recede down to a more reasonable wood and coal fueled one.

“You should cry,” Jason rumbled.

“So should you, young man,” Alfred hummed back.

“Somehow I can’t,” he admitted, staring at the brazier. “But the kid deserves to have someone cry at his funeral. You knew him, you should do it.”

Jason felt numb. The heat of the fire was drying his lips and stinging his cheeks and forehead, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, let alone move away. Not with the burnt flesh smell and occasional explosion as the heat started to pulverise bones.

Even as tears started sliding down Alfred’s weathered old cheeks, the disconnect wouldn’t go.

He was still thinking about what if someone came. What if the fire department came by and noticed they were illegally getting rid of a body.

Thankfully, no one came by for the four hours it took for the fire to burn itself down to embers.

Somehow, Alfred had fallen asleep in the sand, dried tear tracks marring his face. It had been a very long 36 hours, after all, and Jason had no idea how long the man had been awake before he came in the cave to hear Tim’s will.

Jason didn’t wake him and raked the coals closer together with a long branch, looking out for any long bone or unburnt flesh that would need to be pushed closer to the embers.

There were some bone fragments, but thankfully no flesh, and once Jason had managed to push everything closer together, he took the last bottle of fire accelerant, poured it in a long handled steel pan and carefully dumped it on, then jumped out of the way of the new tongue of fire.

One hour later, Alfred still fast asleep, he carefully scooped the top layer of ashes into the big glass jar they had bought for them.

Once it got impossible to catch the ashes without taking sand with it, Jason took out the garbage bags and started scooping all the mixed sand and ashes he could into them.

Only then did he shake Alfred awake.

They silently took everything back to the van, drove a few miles to a wild looking patch of forest and buried the ashy sand.

“So. What now?” Alfred asked, looking at the Jar.

“Now,” Jason said with a sigh, “I drop you off at a train station so you can go back home to Gotham, and I get to burying these ashes in different locations.”

Alfred smiled sadly. “It’s probably for the best. It’ll give you boys the opportunity to spend some time together. Take him somewhere nice, hear me? I always thought the boy needed to go on vacations more.”

Jason swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Promise. Only the best places for little Red.”

Alfred looked equally choked up.

They climbed back in the van.

“Take care, young Master Jason,” Alfred whispered along with a rare hug in the deserted train station. “No matter the circumstances, it was good seeing you again.” Then he looked down at the Jar. “I’m counting on you to keep that one out of trouble, young man.”

And… Here were the tears again, Jason shuffled awkwardly while Alfred dabbed at his eyes.

He ran away as soon as the train came in the station, rather than stay for a last tearful goodbye.

“Well,” Jason told the Jar when he turned the key in the ignition. “Ready for a last adventure, Timbo?”

There wasn’t, Jason thought as he sieved the ashes into a mixing bowl to catch the chunky bits of charred bone, anything that could drive the reality of someone’s death in more deeply than having to crush their bones to a dust using seemingly innocent kitchen ustensils...

It took him a couple of hours to get the bones into fine enough a powder as to be totally inconspicuous in the granite mortar he’d bought especially for this purpose. He was so glad he’d managed to hide the chunks from Alfred, it wasn’t something he wanted the old butler to even have to think about.

“So? Do you like it here?” Jason asked Tim’s Jar.

He was aware that Tim was dead and talking to his ashes looked an awful lot like madness, but to be fair, next to the Pit madness, any other form of it was an improvement.

“I like it. It’s nice. I think you’ll be happy here.” With a small smile, Jason reached for his shovel and started digging.

Once the hole was a couple of feet deep, Jason knelt by it and dumped a handful of ashes in.

Well, ashes and some sand. Most air travel companies didn’t let funeral urns travel in the passenger cabin. Jason had used colorful sands to make Tim’s Jar look more like a souvenir decorative sand bocal than a jar of human ashes. He was sure Tim didn’t mind going undercover, he’d been trained to it, after all.

When he was done shovelling soil back in the hole, Jason sprawled next to it, basking in the beauty of the spot he’d chosen to be yet another of Tim’s graves.

“So, where to next?” he asked his deceased brother. When, predictably, no answer came, he smiled. “I think you’d like Tibet. Let’s go to Tibet. Maybe I can find somewhere you like in the Himalayas.”

Jason stared at the hole. The last one he’d have to dig after what seemed like a hundred of them (it really wasn’t though).

The scenery was pretty perfect, blue sky over a lush green mountain, not too high, and still pretty wild. It went well with the rest of his string of small graves.

With a grimace, he tipped the small glass bocal (he’d switched the Jar out for smaller containers as he went) over the hole.

A part of him was saying to only dump half of the ashes down, to keep going for a bit more.

Finally, tears welled up.

He knew he hadn’t actually needed to divide the ashes half as much as he had. It had been an excuse, to be able to hold onto his little brother for a bit more time. Not that he’d ever been much of a brother to him, except for this one last time when it mattered most.

The same part of him asked again if they did have to bury all the ashes. He could keep an ounce of them after all, keep a bit of it, for memory.

Jason shook the bocal to dislodge the last of the dusts in it and scooped a handful of soil over the ashes immediately afterward before he could lose his nerve.

It was time he said goodbye.

It was time to let Tim go.

Jason finally started to sob, crying over the too young hero. Over the little brother he never actually managed to bond with. Over the Robin, dead, just like him, and the fact that it was what it had taken for Jason to finally pay attention to him.

He cried, long and hard.

Then he took his shovel and filled this last hole back up.

“Wherever you are now, I hope you are more happy than you were when you left us,” he murmured. “I can’t remember being dead, so I can only hope.”

He looked around. “This has been fun, kinda. I hope you liked our little adventure as much as I did. I just. I. I’m just sad and sorry we couldn’t do that while you were alive.”

He sniffed, rubbing at his eyes. “Farewell, Tim.”

Breathing deeply, he placed the bocal next to the upturned soil and stepped back, taking his cellphone out. He walked far enough away that he could get the mini-grave in the camera’s frame along with a good chunk of the scenery.

He hadn’t documented any other locations, but seeing the quantity of different places he’d scattered Tim’s ashes across, just one picture wouldn’t hurt too much.

-Coming back to Gotham now- He included with the picture to Alfred.

It was, after all, time to move on. Jason definitely should try and talk to Damian so he didn’t have to mourn another stranger of a little brother ever again. (The thought hit him suddenly, that it was exactly what Dick had said to explain his much more developed relationship to Tim as it had been to him.)

His phone chimed with a reply.

-I am looking forward to your return-

#character death #cremation #relativelly graphic depiction of a cremation #funeral #pyre #Jason Todd #Tim Drake #alfred pennyworth #bruce wayne #dick grayson #Damian Wayne #I made both my betas and myself cry so be warned

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littlebigmouse · 7 years

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1. Always post the rules.

2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you.

3. Write 11 questions on your own.

4. Tag 11 people.

Was tagged by @maisstories, this is gonna be fun.

1. If you had to choose a theme song for you, what would it be? This is a really hard decision between a couple of muse songs, the roy mustang rap (a friend and I have been singing it so often, I now know people who’ve never seen fma and know it by heart) and like, half the undertale soundtrack, because Undyne and Papyrus are everything I aspire to be, but ultimately I’m going with Palabra mi amor by Shaka Ponk. I found the amv by DN@ when it came out and have the song set as my alarm, and it’s a mess, honestly. I connect to this song on a personal level, because it’s in french and I actually don’t understand a word of what they’re saying, and if that doesn’t say it all.

2. Is there any childhood dream you refuse to let go of? Travel the world. One day, people. One day.

3. What are your least favorite tropes/generalized ideas about your favorite character?

Oh, you’ve cracked open a barrel with this one. Fullmetal Alchemist: I kind of, don’t like how people portray the relationship between Ed and Roy in most fanfics? They’re either madly in love or Ed seems to really, really hate Roy. Roy also gets a lot of fics where he just sits around angsting in a corner somewhere and they bond over that, but it’s just... I think, while they do tease each other a lot, there’s also this mutual respect seen very early on in the series, which in fics kinda never just stays as... respect. It’s either love or hate and there are no in-betweens. (And Mustang is like, 50% pettiness and 50% indignant yelling, anyone who has him angsting somewhere in the corner has watched too much 03). The thing is, Roy spends too much time brooding in 03 and Ed’s weird overly long rants about his height also appear, so I see where people are coming from, but it gets flanderized to hell and back in fanfic. It’s not meant to be an attack, just something I noticed in the fics. Oh, and when heavy royai shippers go: “They’ve been secretly fucking troughout canon!” and I go “they wouldn’t risk their goals like that, they’re both too traumatized to be in a stable relationship like that for long, their dynamic is so much more... dynamic than just being in love, Roy basically betrayed Riza by going to war as an alchemist, then there’s the entire tattoo thing and they would never allow themselves to be actually together because they can’t forgive themselves and that makes all their little glances and gestures just all the more meaningfull and why do you take that away from them ;;

4. Favorite book? The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy because I love EVERYTHING about that writing style. The plot lost a lot of appeal with books 4 and 5, but gracious, the WRITING. A+ comedy.

5. A book you haven’t managed to finish reading and why? Shades of Gray. I tried to for the sake of argument, but it just gets so... sick and wrong. And ugh. And I don’t mean the BDSM parts in and on itself. I actually researched it to see if thats realistic and well, it isn’t. At all. The book is so sexist and such a blatant disregard for consent I just, couldn’t. Worst Horror Story I ever read. Also Hiob. But I actually finished it, because we had to read it in german lit class. I lost so much nerve over this thing. But I fucking made it. I also never finished the third part of the Hunger Games because Katniss whining was just too much. The Bible. I started to prove a point but gave up pretty quickly. That one generic fantasy book who’s name I forgot that after almost 100 pages was still going nowhere but threated me to a 5 page gratitious eye ball operation. Why tho.

6. Is there a movie you always cry when you watch it? Which one? I... can’t think of one. I have favourite movies, but they make me happy, not cry. So, idk.

7. Do you have any guilty pleasure pairings and why do you ship them? Why would you be guilty over shipping something? You’re already in the shipping fandom and probably part of the Shipping is serious business squad. If that doesn’t faze you, I don’t see why, say, a skeleton and a plant bothers you more than a skeleton and a goat.

8. What are five of your favorite songs? Barring Palabra mi amor (see question 1), and with the “one song per band” rule in place, I’ve got: Uprising - Muse Human - Of Monsters and Men House of Wolves - My Chemical Romance Don’t Stop Me Now - Queen On Top of the World - Tim McMorris

9. A question you’re sick of being asked but can’t get people to stop asking it? “So what do you want to do for a living/what are you gonna study?” Do I look like a person with a plan? And, my all time favourite, “Are you two DATING?” whenever I am seen with someone of the opposite sex or mention a name around my family.

10. Favorite and least favorite season of the year and why? Favourite: Spring. Best time to ride a bike. Sure, the weather’s a bit whacky, but at least you don’t keep slipping on wet leafs or ice everywhere. The days gradually get longer and warmer, but not to unbearable levels. I don’t have a least favourite season as of now. That might change over the course of the summer tho because I now live on the highest floor in the house in a badly insulated building.

11. What was your first ship? I build paper-ships with my sister and let them swim in our own ship lock. That rocked. (I guess Varrick and Zhu Li, because they’re a super fun power duo I’d love to see more of.) My Questions: 1. Did you ever run into a door? If so, what’s the story behind it? 2. If you had a superpower, what would it be? 3. You have 50Euro/Dollars/whichever, a mode of transportation and one hour to do anything you want without any consequences, what do you do? 4. Papyrus, what’s your favourite food? 5. Without naming names, if there is a person you don’t like, why do you not like them? 6. Who is your idol and why? 7. Favourite joke? 8. Favourite theme song and why? 9. What is the funniest video on the internet you ever saw? (Add a link, please) 10. The next thing you draw will come to life, what do you draw and why? 11. If you could travel through time once, when do you go and why? I tag: @neverland-in-space, @lethotep, @kuroitsubasa4, @polyglotplatypus, @polyglotplatypus, @phantomrose96, @handsdownrad, @nicixkanon, @inkedinserendipity, @suitablyskippy, @clamp-box

#tag 11 people #questions #tag people #hashtag

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ber39james · 6 years

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5 Helpful Tips on How to Write Emails from Your Phone

Today, 80 percent of Internet users own a smartphone. It’s been predicted that, by this year, eight in ten email users will access their email accounts exclusively from their mobile devices. We’re reading and writing more emails on mobile than ever, so getting it right has never been more important. Getting communication right (in email or otherwise) is the driving force behind Grammarly’s recent launch of a mobile keyboard for iOS and Android. But, although Grammarly will help you write mistake-free messages, it’s combining that polish with style and substance that will inevitably make your written communication effective.

Five Tips for Writing Emails From Your Phone

We’ve all seen the ubiquitous “Sent from my iPhone” email signatures, or sigs along the lines of, “Please excuse the brevity. This was sent from my phone.” These signatures, in part, are meant to excuse the sender from typos, autocorrect slips, and all those other times our thumbs betray us when we communicate via mobile devices.

But just because you wield your thumbs instead of ten phalanges carefully placed on the home row doesn’t mean everything you send from your phone has to look as though it was transcribed by a typing chimpanzee. There’s hope! This article will guide you towards writing clear, concise emails from your mobile device with panache.

1 Put important information first.

Nearly half of mobile readers spend three seconds or less reading an individual email. That is, of course, if you can get them to open your email at all. But let’s assume you send emails that people want to read. Your challenge is to keep those emails brief or risk losing your reader to a very short digital attention span.

That means it’s essential to optimize. Before you put your thumbs to work tapping out your email opus, take a few minutes to figure out the key point you want to get across in your message. Ask yourself If I could have my recipient take just one thing away from this email, what would it be? Use the answer to that question to front-load your email so that the most critical information comes first. If you don’t, your recipient might miss the point of your email entirely, or breeze past it in her haste to move on to her next email to-do.

Hi Jane,

Yesterday, I was talking to Jim and he suggested you would have some good ideas about the upcoming Windy City Widgets marketing campaign. As you know, Windy City is an important client and this marketing campaign is pivotal to our success here at XYZ Advertising Associates. I’m going to be downtown tomorrow afternoon, so I thought we might have lunch at JB’s Sammiches to unpack what the client has told us about their ad needs and deadlines. JB’s is close to your office, so I thought it would be convenient. Does 12:30 p.m. work for you? All the best, Richard

Oy! That email comes in at around a hundred words, and most of them aren’t necessary. Let’s consider all the things this message conveys that it doesn’t have to.

For starters, it’s not necessary to state that Jim suggested talking to Jane. Especially not up front. If Jim’s referral would be helpful in sealing the lunch appointment, go ahead and use it, but consider saving it for later in the email.

It’s also not necessary to reiterate that a client is important. Any time you start a sentence with As you know, you’re probably telling the reader something they actually do already know. Driving home the point with an as you know statement can translate as passive-aggressive. It’s as if you’re saying, “You should know this, but I’ll reiterate just in case you’re not good at your job.” Make sure you don’t come across as talking down to your colleagues.

While it’s nice to consider a lunch location that’s convenient for your colleague, it’s not necessary to point out how nice you’re being. That extraneous information adds words, not impact.

Let’s front-load this email with important information and leave out any unnecessary details.

Hi Jane,

Are you available to meet me for lunch tomorrow at JB’s Sammiches at 12:30 p.m.? I’d like to unpack some of the info Windy City Widgets gave us about their needs and deadlines for the upcoming campaign. Let me know if that would be convenient for you. All the best, Richard

Much better! The message body comes in at a sleek forty-nine words and the all-important ask is straight up front rather than buried in a bunch of unimportant details. We can almost taste those sammiches now!

2 Clean up your wordy writing.

Can you imagine how long it would’ve taken Tolstoy to compose War and Peace on a smartphone? If you want to really feel like a slacker, consider that one novelist wrote a significant portion of his novel on his smartphone while commuting on the subway. (And he did it nearly a decade ago.) When you’re using two thumbs and staring at a small screen to craft your messages (let alone a novel), it pays to know how to keep your writing lean and mean.

First, avoid common filler words and phrases. We already talked about As you know. Now, strike useless phrases like As a matter of fact, For the most part, each and every, and at this point in time from your lexicon. Your readers will appreciate your clear, concise language and you’ll convey your points much better without all the clutter.

While you’re at it, dump most adverbs. These words, which often end in -ly, are unnecessary unless removing them drastically changes the meaning of your sentence. So, don’t bother thumb-typing words like basically, very, usually, extremely, probably, and absolutely.

3 Practice perfect email etiquette.

Your signature may say that your email was sent from your phone, but that doesn’t mean you should bypass the rules of polite email discourse.

When you send email to multiple recipients at the same time, respect everyone’s privacy by masking their email addresses with BCC. Similarly, don’t use Reply All and accidentally share an email with all members of an email chain when your reply was meant only to go to one person. And don’t automatically assume that email is private and confidential. Avoid saying things in an email that you wouldn’t say publicly. Otherwise, that email could come back to haunt you.

Here’s a tip: Don’t email when you’re angry. If you must tap out a strongly worded letter, hold off on hitting the Send button until you’ve had a chance to let it simmer. If you can wait, leave that letter on the back burner and come back to it twenty-four hours later. Were you more hostile than you meant to be in the heat of the moment? Could you have been more diplomatic and gotten your point across just as well? Edit!

4 Dictate it.

Some years back, my friend and I tried having a Messenger conversation by using our phones’ voice-to-text feature, and then sending whatever our smartphone interpreted. The result was hilariously bad. But voice-to-text has come a long way since then.

Most mobile keyboards have voice-to-text functionality. On the Grammarly keyboard, simply long-press the comma key to activate your phone’s voice capabilities and dictate your message. Once dictated, you can quickly edit or correct any misheard words.

Here’s a tip: Speak your punctuation so you don’t have to add it after the fact. Dave, did you remember to file your report? would be spoken as, “Dave comma did you remember to file your report question mark.”

5 Proofread.

You want to make a good impression. Proofreading is one way to ensure you will. We often write hasty notes when we use mobile technology, figuring that others will forgive us because, well, writing on a mobile device has its challenges. But proofreading before you hit send isn’t that complicated. And, if you’re using the Grammarly mobile keyboard, you can simply press the Grammarly button once you’ve finished writing to check your text and make sure your grammar, spelling, and punctuation is pristine. No more excuses just because you sent it from your iPhone!

The post 5 Helpful Tips on How to Write Emails from Your Phone appeared first on Grammarly Blog.

from Grammarly Blog https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-emails-from-mobile/

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