#no one has actually asked me that directly? so it was strange formatting an answer

[ploppythespaceship]

The New Prime Timeline - A Star Trek Theory

This week's episode of Strange New Worlds, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," did something that I cannot stop thinking about. This episode changed the date of the Eugenics Wars -- and not accidentally. It was clearly done very deliberately, with the writers directly referencing the original date to make it clear that they knew what they were doing. After another rewatch, I just kept asking myself -- why? Why would the writers change this?

And after much pondering and a bit of research into the franchise's history, I think I have an answer. Something that explains not only why the writers would do this, but why it's actually a smart decision -- and some of the interesting implications. It's also led me to a theory about the new batch of Trek shows, which is probably reading too far into it, but is fun to think about regardless.

TL;DR -- most of the modern Trek shows are actually set in a very slightly alternate timeline from the rest of the franchise, created by Romulans interfering with Earth's history, which follows the same general course of events but has subtle alterations.

(After poking around in the tags a bit, it seems I am not the only person who came to a similar conclusion, but I spent several hours on this post and want to share it anyway.)

Join me under the cut for far too deep of a dive into fictional history.

Defining the Events

First, I have to define what events we're even talking about.

The Eugenics Wars were a series of conflicts on Earth after a group of genetically engineered Augments seized power -- the most famous of these being Khan Noonien Singh. The Augments were eventually overthrown, with Khan and his followers escaping to the sleeper ship Botany Bay. The result of these wars was a deep-seated fear and distrust of all genetic engineering within the Federation, leading to the practice being outlawed.

World War III, comparatively, we don't know as much about. It was a devastating worldwide conflict that killed hundreds of millions, and it's intrinsically connected to the Eugenics Wars.

First Contact happened in the aftermath of World War III. When Zefram Cochrane constructed Earth's first warp-capable ship, a passing Vulcan ship caught it on their sensors and chose to make contact with the planet. This ushered in a new age for humanity, leading to world peace and the formation of Earth's socialist utopia. It was a pivotal step towards the ultimate foundation of the Federation.

Dating the Events

So when did these events take place? For the most part, this is fairly easy to pin down.

The Eugenics Wars are consistently dated to the 1990s -- specifically 1992 to 1996. This is established in the TOS episode "Space Seed" and later confirmed by the ENT episode "Borderland."

(The DS9 episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?" seems to contradict this, with Bashir stating that the Eugenics Wars were two centuries prior -- placing them in the 22nd century. However, writer Ronald D. Moore has said this was an error on his part -- he borrowed the line from "Space Seed" without accounting for the setting difference. Therefore, I feel pretty comfortable ignoring this one discrepancy outright.)

World War III is dated to the mid 21st century, with the rough dates of 2026 to 2053. The 2026 date comes from a production resource image used in the ENT episode "In a Mirror, Darkly" -- though I do think it should be taken with a grain of salt, considering it gets the First Contact date wrong. The 2053 date, on the other hand, is more certain -- both First Contact and the ENT episode "Terra Prime" state that First Contact occurred ten years after the end of the war, and First Contact has a definitive date of April 5, 2063.

The Problem

So those are the established dates -- Eugenics Wars in the 90s, World War III in the mid 21st century, and First Contact in 2063. However, a few episodes from the 90s and 2000s seem to clash with these dates.

First, we have the VOY episode "Future's End," a time-travel two-parter set in 1996. This would put it either during or directly after the Eugenics Wars, but the episode has absolutely no mention of this. This was intentional -- producer Jeri Taylor stated, "I think those of us who entered into the Nineties realize that the Eugenics Wars simply aren't happening and we chose not to falsify our present, which is a very weird thing to do and be true to it." They also didn't want to alienate casual viewers by having to explain the Eugenics Wars to them.

Second, we have the ENT episode "Carpenter Street," another time-travel episode, this time set in 2004. This is still close enough to the Eugenics Wars to expect seeing some of the fallout, yet there is none visible.

These two are easy enough to shrug off, however. It's possible that the wars just weren't relevant to the story, as humanity was trying to get back to normal. It's also possible that America wasn't involved in the Eugenics Wars -- Khan ruled over Asia and the Middle East, after all, while these episodes take place in San Francisco and Detroit, respectively.

(The DS9 episode "Past Tense" may also come to mind, as it's another time travel story, but I think it actually fits in pretty well. It's set in 2024, and shows the United States on the brink of a massive sociopolitical conflict -- it isn't hard to imagine that they're just a few years away from a worldwide war.)

The thing is, these episodes are running into the same problem -- the dates for these events were settled on decades ago, by writers who never conceived that the franchise would continue for this long. What was once a hypothetical future is now an alternate present. Writers are looking to tell stories that reference and relate to and even directly show our modern day, but they can't do that when they're beholden to these events. And they're put in an awkward spot. Do they lean into these established events, and keep showing modern day Earth as a battleground, and risk losing that direct relatability by not showing the world as we know it?

The answer for a lot of these writers is clearly no. These older shows all managed to just dance around the issue. But it seems like the writers of the current Trek shows have a different strategy in mind.

The Theory

Prior to "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," there are two moments in modern (post-Discovery) Trek that contradict the established dates for these events pretty hard. Ironically, both episodes were released on the same day.

In the PIC season 2 finale, "Farewell," Adam Soong pulls out a file folder labeled Project Khan -- this is happening in the year 2024, which is obviously not right. Khan would have been created prior to the 90s. However, in a vacuum this could be excused -- the folder doesn't necessarily mean that Khan has yet to be created. Soong could just be looking at an older file. But it is an odd moment.

Then, in the SNW premiere, "Strange New Worlds," Pike is showing images of Earth's history to the people of Kiley 279, while stating, "This is Earth in our 21st century. Before everything went wrong. [...] Our conflict also started with a fight for freedoms. We called it the Second Civil War, then the Eugenics Wars, and finally just World War III." This statement contradicts the dating of the Eugenics Wars in the 90s, and it heavily implies that the Eugenics Wars and World War III are simply different names for the same conflict.

Which finally brings us back to "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," which tackles this entire mess head-on. La'an and an alternate universe Kirk are sent back in time, to around the year 2022, knowing that they must prevent a change to the timeline. They learn that Romulans from the future have been manipulating Earth's history to slow its progress -- but this isn't what's causing the timeline change they must prevent. The actual change is the death of Khan, who is now still a child in the 2020s due to the Romulan meddling.

As Sera, the undercover Romulan, explains, "It's almost as if time itself is pushing back, and events reinsert themselves. And all this was supposed to happen back in 1992." It sounds as though minor timeline changes don't matter to the overall trajectory of history -- details may change, but as long as the big picture remains more or less the same, the outcome will be the same. Only a massive change, like the absolute prevention of the Eugenics War, causes enough of a ripple to fundamentally alter Federation history. Which is of course what Sera plans to do, and what La'an ultimately prevents, preserving the timeline.

The thing is, the timeline she preserved... I still don't think it's the original timeline. The Romulans have still slowed Earth's progress, and delayed the Eugenics Wars -- if Khan is a child in the 2020s, then the wars likely wouldn't happen til perhaps the 2040s or 50s. This would cause them to run into World War III, and likely alter that conflict as well. It might even delay First Contact -- who knows? I think these changes are enough to cause a slightly altered timeline. The Federation still exists, the same characters still inhabit the same roles, and so on, but it's now a world with a slightly different history. And I think that a lot of the newer Trek shows -- Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and really any others that they want to include -- are intended to take place in this timeline. This would explain Pike's speech to Kiley 279, as well as the Project Khan folder -- Khan really hadn't been created yet.

More importantly, this slightly altered timeline officially undoes the problem that Trek writers have been running into with time travel stories for decades. The hypothetical future of the Eugenics Wars and World War III is once again a hypothetical future -- it doesn't need to interfere with any stories set in or referencing our modern day.

And if you lean even further into this alternate timeline idea -- which I will call the New Prime Timeline -- things start to make even more sense. For one thing, it could explain why the technology of the new shows looks so different when compared to the older shows it's meant to be similar to. Out-of-universe, this was done because sticking to the 1960s designs would seem cheesy and dated to a modern audience, who have a quite different view of the future -- updating the design just makes sense. But this could offer an in-universe solution, as well. If Romulans were affecting Earth history, and these massive wars that devastated the planet happened decades later, then the development of Earth's technology would be quite different. Future technology would then have a more modern look and feel.

It could even explain minor mismatches between The Original Series and its modern prequels, Discovery and Strange New Worlds. Whenever a character isn't quite acting like themselves, or an event doesn't quite line up, it could simply be a result of this New Prime Timeline.

Now, I honestly don't think the writers would ever go that far with it. I think they fully intend for their shows to be in the same universe and timeline as the older ones. But I also think they intend to stick to this altered Eugenics Wars date going forward, and the ripple effects of that decision are really interesting to think about.

[zombiesun]

☕️ cartoon suns and also your spirituality

I was making a post about how I wanted red liberty spikes and as I was typing that post I realized if you added orange and yellow in an ombre then it would look like a cartoon sun and it just revolutionized me. I don't have that hairstyle (yet) but I thought the turn of phrase "cartoon sun" was cute and then I started feeling an affinity for cartoon suns and have kind of phased them into my aesthetic. I also inherited my sister's sun shaped wall hanging "Charlie" so it feels fated. I also identify heavily with the idea of a "sun" person I love warmth, love, and lazy days napping in the grass. It's everything I want to personify as an individual. 

*** 

My spirituality and my personal definition of it has changed a lot this year so I hope this answer comes across concisely. I think to fully explain it though, I have to mention that my religious background is a very toxic evangelical cult. I never identified as a Christian (I had very early dreams of hell/separation from g-d which I/my family took to mean that I was spiritually fucked but eventually was revealed that I just would be working for a very different patron) My mother is  Jewish but had to convert to Christianity before my father would marry her and even though she does find her faith fulfilling I was never able to experience my heritage. I felt like religion and the g-d had personally wronged me and I was a very "if you ever see me and g-d at a Denny's parking lot I'm ripping his throat out and making him watch" for years.

I experimented with Judaism and was considering joining a synagogue as a way with reconnecting with my roots but everything changed when I started going to therapy. I was healing emotional wounds and a lot of my limiting beliefs/trauma dissolving showed me parts of me that I hadn't explored. I know "empath" isn't a credible term right now but one of my earliest, defining spiritual moments was when I was around 8-9 and my mother informed me that I had the gift of “insight” and would be able to feel people’s emotions/speak into people’s souls in a way that would never be reciprocated/leave me feeling resentful in every intimate relationship. She was right and a lot of my childhood/teenager years was spent in abusive/co-dependent relationships that drained me of my energy and left me feeling resentful and profoundly unloved because I knew things about other people but no one seemed capable of putting that same energy into me. 

As I was unpacking this in therapy, I started reclaiming that part of me in a way that I hadn’t been able to before.  I started getting into tarot and the spiritual community and the fact that you could ask for signs/items to prove the universe's interest in you. I asked for a deck of tarot cards because I didn't want to buy my own and soon after we had a deck donated to the thrift store I was working at that I bought for three bucks. I started asking for more things, a new place to rent, an altar (I found mine within a tree struck down by lightning) weed (I cannot stress how much weed I have manifested during this pandemic) food, people returning into my life, etc. After a few of those things worked/I started seeing daily synchronicities in my life I started studying more and experimenting with craft. I went from being someone who hoped for oblivion at best to believing that everything is connected, everything is cyclical, nothing is coincidence, and we hold the pulse of our own lives.

 I don't really have a label for these beliefs, and I'm still developing my path and direction in regards to who I want to work with and what I want to work toward. It That being said, it is the only faith in my life that has consistently given me proof and examples of its existence. I think as of now my core beliefs would be something like: this is not my first time living, everything in my life is meant to be, and if I will it then it will be.

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Chapter 44)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: The usual.

A/N: Hi, hope you like this! Ik I still have a winter blurb request to get to, I’ll probably post it sometime during the week. Thank you!

Btw, ‘mḗtēr’ is Ancient Greek for mother, and barley is a symbol of Demeter. :)

You are sitting on your bed, already dressed for the night, when Ivar comes into your bedroom.

You lift your gaze from your failed attempts at embroidery patterns that Thora makes look so damn easy, and watch Ivar walk closer, his free hand reaching to tug off the cloak over his shoulders.

You don’t miss the angry way he takes it off, or the stronger-than-needed stabs of his crutch against the ground.

He sits down before you on the bed, and you do not hesitate to move close, your legs on either side of him as you rest your brow between his shoulder blades, enjoying the familiar movements of his back as he starts to work on the braces of his legs.

Your arm wrapped around his torso, you let your hand travel up and down his stomach, smiling when he reaches back to put a heavy hand on your leg.

“Will you tell me what is wrong?” You prompt.

“Jarl Olavson was defeated.” He tells you curtly. Your hand stills, and so does your breath.

“Defeated?”

“Yes, defeated,” Ivar bites out, a movement of his head as his shoulders rise and fall with an angry breath. “Considering how we met, you should be very familiar with defeat.”

“Hey,” You chastise, tugging on his hair as reprimand. After a moment, he breathes out through his nose, and his hand tightens on your leg. You take it as an apology, certain none will actually leave his lips. “By whom?

Ivar doesn’t answer.

He should know by now that he says as much with his silences as he does with his words.

If it were King Alfred’s army, he would tell you. If it were any other Vikings that were somehow stupid enough to battle Ivar’s lieutenant in York and lucky enough to defeat him, he would tell you.

He wouldn’t tell you if it were the man he admitted to having in chains and on a moment of irrational impulsiveness, he let go free.

“How did he win? I would think he didn’t have the numbers after Strepshire.”

“He didn’t, not then,” He accepts, finishing taking off the braces of his legs. “But he does now.”

“Do you think his King aids him now?”

“No, it wasn’t Alfred’s army. We would have known if it were.”

You swallow down the pit of worry in your stomach, and move back on the bed, settling under the covers and waiting for your husband to join you.

He does soon after, discarding his shirt without a care for the cold that still bites, and -for reasons beyond the obvious ones- you keep your eyes on him.

You watch as he grabs a fistful of the pants’ fabric to move his legs, and you cannot help but notice the furrow between his brows, you watch his wrist expertly trapped in the chains that dangle above the bed as he settles for bed and you cannot help but linger on the tension that strains his shoulders.

If Stithulf managed to grow in power in such a way during the winter, enough to defeat the commander of York’s forces, most likely forcing him to retreat to the formerly Saxon city, then…even if neither of you would like to admit it, it is Ivar’s fault, and maybe yours.

Ivar let Stithulf go because of the deal you have made, because he wanted more time. Before he left you had to bite your tongue to keep yourself from requesting that of him, and you didn’t bite it when it came time to ask the Gods for the same thing.

And now, warm under the covers and laying on your side as your Ivar lays by your side on his back, pale eyes searching the nothingness of the space above him, you feel the tinge of worry, of regret.

You ran from Fate once, when you decided to go to Eleusis even while aware that the Gods -your own or others, you aren’t yet sure which- summoned you to Scandinavia; and you burned for it. You fought, and you lost, and you died.

You dread to think maybe you ran, maybe Ivar ran.

“Their movements, their…formations,” He stops himself, a twitch of irritation in his nose as he debates with himself whether to speak or not. “They don’t fight like Saxons.”

“They never did,” You offer, quietly. “And if you are right, and most of the Arabs survived…”

He shakes his head, sitting up on the bed once again. You take a moment to watch the outline of him bathed in the low and warm light of the dim fires, before you sit up as well, shuffling closer and bending your legs underneath you.

“It is more than that, it isn’t just the foreigners,” His words die with a frustrated sigh, his left hand closing into a fist before it releases when it doesn’t find the familiar handle of the crutch he can grab tightly onto. Past the clear tell of gritted teeth, he admits, “When we sail back to England, we will be going in blind.”

“You still have time.” You say, but it seems it goes unheard.

“How can I prepare if I can’t…predict him?” He asks, and it isn’t really a question you think he wants an answer to. If he did, all you could offer would be that he would have to fight like the others do, the ones that don’t have his mind that seems to let him get ahead of his enemy’s moves, his eyes that seem to let him foresee his enemy’s plans. But, you don’t say anything, instead resting your chin on his shoulder and letting one of your hands trail down his back. Ivar grits his teeth, and stays silent for a long time. After a while, he turns his head slightly to you, “What would you do?”

“You’re asking me?”

A shrug of the shoulder you’re not resting on, and Ivar offers simply, “Why not?”

“I have never led an army.”

“Your commander did, and he obeyed you.”

You lift your eyebrows, and insist, “He died because of it.”

“I am not planning on doing that,” He clarifies, the beginning of a smile on his lips, “Obeying you, or dying.”

Your eyes narrow at his taunt, and you retort, “Why are you asking me, then?”

“I’m curious.”

“I don’t have any answers. I am not…” You take a breath, and mull over your words before you start again, “One of the things I admired Narses the most far was how he…” A small smile curves at your lips, and you look at the nothingness ahead, somehow able to see clearly in your mind’s eye the cocky smile of the young Strategus as he hooked the spear under his arm and bowed mockingly at you. “He was never caught off guard. He was foolish, and he refused to stick to a plan most of the time, but…with the passing of time I started to think he counted on that, on the lack of a plan. Back in Greece, the battles we won were because of his adaptability, as much as any strategy I could…suggest to him. I insisted on a plan, and he was smart enough to not defy me, s-…”

“I wouldn’t say smart.”

Your lips curve into a smile, and you lift your head off his shoulder to meet his gaze directly. Ivar leans back, falling back on the bed, and you follow, leaning over him as your hand travels up and down his chest.

“What would you say then, love?” You ask, a challenge and something else. You bring yourself closer, “Would you say bewitched?”

You remember being in that small hut in Aneridge, able and willing to forget either of you had names and stories, and daring ask him, are you one to believe Stithulf’s tales that I can bewitch men to their deaths? Blind them and have them follow my every whim?

And, more importantly than that, you remember the way his eyes remained on you, a slow blink as he considered his answer. You remember the tone of his voice that made a shiver run down his spine when he replied, not through magic.

His smile is challenging, mocking, but Ivar shakes his head instead of answering.

“You were speaking of how you won, back in your homeland.”

“He…adapted, a lot. Too often for my liking,” You furrow your nose, and your husband chuckles, his hand warm as it travels up and down the arm you’ve draped over his chest. “My pride kept me from accepting we had to change our tactics, I will admit that. Maybe that arrogance was my downfall.”

Your eyes fall from his, and you almost want to ask, order, don’t let your arrogance be yours.

The words are at the tip of your tongue when the voice of one of Ivar’s guards on the other side of the door startles you.

“Someone is requesting the…the Queen to, uh, meet with them.”

“Is it Rúna’s husband? Is it the baby?” You ask, already scrambling to get out of bed at the mere thought that she is to give birth now. It has been a difficult pregnancy for her, and you’ve given stern orders to her husband to come to you when the time comes for her to deliver.

“No, uh…your mother, my Queen.”

The air is knocked out of you with those words, and you stand unmoving for a few breaths too long. You feel the cold of the floor seeping into your very bones through your bare feet, but you feel rooted to the ground.

A quiet call of your name, and you turn wide eyes to Ivar. He searches your gaze, a strange sort of hesitation in his expression that is probably born out of whatever he sees in yours, and he says your name again.

You blink, swallowing hard.

“Go to her.”

You nod your head, but don’t move for a couple of heartbeats, until you have the cold startle you into movement. Wrapping the robe over your nightdress, you slip into your shoes and step out.

Letting the two guards lead the way to one of the back rooms of the -now deserted- longhouse, you try deciphering if what runs through your veins right now is thrill or dread.

Sieghild stands tall by one of the stone pit fires near that are lined up near the walls, surrounded by seats; her shield not at her back but, as always, close to her. At the sound of your steps, she turns around, the same almost-crooked smile on her face, the familiar face with traces of ink in the shape of the roots of Yggdrasil, the same green eyes of your childhood.

You stumble over your own feet as you run to her, and never before have you felt as time disappeared and you were suddenly a child again as you do then.

“Mḗtēr!”

Sieghild embraces you tightly, with the desperation of having thought you lost forever, the relief at having you back, the anger at your disappearance; strong arms wrapped around you and lifting you a bit off the ground. You breathe a relieved laugh that sounds like a sob, your own arms wrapped as strongly as you can around your mother.

“Little one, you are alright, you are alright.” She whispers, and even if she talks to her own fears and not you, you still nod against her shoulder.

“I thought you were-…”

“I am here, child. The Gods wouldn’t call me to Valhalla while you still need me.”

You look into familiar green eyes and offer a helpless shrug, “I’ll always need you.”

“Then I shall always be here.” She promises, pressing a kiss against your forehead like she did when you were a child.

But you weren’t, your heart bitterly wants to say, words you keep at bay by biting your own tongue.

For now, you close your eyes at the rough touch of Sieghild’s battle-worn hands on the sides of your face, you let her brow press against yours and the familiar scent of iron and the always underlying scent of those fields of barley you would run through with her as a child.

When you step back, you feel the months-old anger come back, you feel the uncertainty and resentment settle over you like a warm cloak, and you meet Sieghild’s eyes, unwavering.

“I would like a word with my mother.” You state, keeping your gaze on her. You watch as our mother watches the people leave the room, watching out of the corner of her eye as the last of the men closes the door behind him.

She turns to you with a smile that is in part mocking and in part proud.

“I always did say you were Fated to rule, did I not?”

Many times she told you that, usually angrily, when what she stubbornly calls your ‘Athenian nobility’ shines through.

Galla spares you a glance out of the corner of her eye, the faintest quirk of a smile on her lips, her words a tease and something else as she quips, “Born with a crown on her head, this one.”

Many others have implied the same, sometimes in praise and often in reprimand.

Ivar meets your eyes, an unwavering edge to his madness, a darkness to the curve of his smile, as he promises, “Don’t lie to me, Priestess. You were made to rule, to command. Don’t pretend otherwise with me.”

You shake your head, “Fate has nothing to do with it.”

“Doesn’t it?” She retorts, but it isn’t a question she expects an answer to. Instead, the shieldmaiden strides to the seats by the dimmest hearth in the room. She always has done that, ever since Eleusis, making sure you aren’t near open flames that make your skin crawl.

You walk to her, hands folded in front of you, and take a seat before her.

“You gave me up. You arranged for me to marry Ivar, and you never told me.”

A deep breath, like she was expecting this, and Sieghild leans back, a hard nod of her head.

“I did,” She offers no other explanation for a few moments, before adding, “I had my reasons.”

“Which are?”

Her eyes narrow as she looks you over, a quirk in her mouth that speaks not of a smile but of something wilder, and Sieghild’s voice is icy when she asks,

“Who do you think you are, to demand anything from me?”

Your answer is unwavering, and you don’t even think twice about the words that are to leave your lips, “Your daughter.”

Sieghild holds your gaze for a few breaths, before looking away with a grunt and the clear tell of gritted teeth. She was expecting something else out of your answer, the years alongside her let you see that in that small gesture.

A twitch in her nose, furrowed for only a moment, and Sieghild offers, voice unusually quiet,

“I told you since you were a child about the path the Gods, yours or maybe mine, had woven for you,” Green eyes pierce into yours, and for a moment you are saying goodbye again, in the outskirts of Aneridge and by the gates of Eleusis. She swallows, and continues, “You ran once, and I lost you, I had to leave you behind and let those damned Christians burn you alive. I couldn’t let you run again.”

“That is why you asked me,” You state, not even a question. The night she left you behind on the edge of that forest plays behind your closed lids with striking vibrance. “You took me there and told me we were at a crossroads, the…the world between worlds. I chose to stay.”

“It was Fate you did so.” She retorts with a sigh.

And that word grates at your ears. It always has, ever since you have had memory.

Your eyes fall shut, and you take a deep breath to remain calm.

“You know, with time passing I had forgotten how much I hate that word leaving your lips,” You grumble, mostly to yourself. Sieghild still chuckles, but it is dimmer than usual. The errant thought that maybe you don’t know what the usual is for your mother anymore crosses your head, but you dismiss it easily enough. Finding your strength, your anger, you meet her gaze and with your head held high you insist, “You cannot hide behind Fate, mother.”

For all the times she has accused you of your own fair share of arrogance, few times she has admitted you take after her in that regard. Now, more than any other time, her own arrogance, her own pride, are apparent in the way she bristles at your words, suddenly sitting straighter.

“I don’t hide, little one. You know that.”

You shake your head, at her resolve, at her unwavering certainties, at her abandonment. Your eyes wide, you lift a hand and point a finger at her, too late realizing that is a gesture you have seen often in the man you married.

“Fate didn’t chain me to Ivar’s side until you made a deal with him!” Your voice thunders at the same time it breaks and you do not care. Your lip curls into a snarl, or maybe something more fragile, something more broken. “You fulfilled what you were told was Fate, because you believed it was inescapable.”

“And you stayed behind to die in Eleusis because you wanted to fight Fate,” She retorts, green eyes blazing. “How is that any different?”

“It was my choice.”

“And it was my choice to send you to Kattegat.”

You hate the way your lower lip trembles, the way sorrow wants to overpower pride, and succeeds.

You furrow your lips, raising your chin as you insist, “You abandoned me.”

“I did what I should have when you were younger. I saved you.”

Your nails dig into your palms, and you stand up. The chair makes a horrible sound against the wooden floor, and you pace away from the table, shaking your head to yourself.

Your mother follows you with a challenge shining in her green gaze.

“You didn’t save me.”

“You are alive, you are safe. I wouldn’t ask for anything more.” She crosses broad arms over her chest, head titled to the side.

You feel your lip curling into a snarl, your hands trembling at your sides as the anger that burns in your blood demands you do something.

Voice thundering, you demand, “I would have!”

“And you would have died for it!” Sieghild barks back, voice rising as well. “You think you would have survived Stithulf if it weren’t for that boy, huh? You think that damn Christian would have kept you alive for much longer?”

You shake your head, feeling like a chastised child under her burning green gaze.

“Ivar isn’t the reason I survived.”

“He kept you safer than I ever could, even if he didn’t realize it, even if you don’t like accepting it, little one,” She retorts, standing and walking closer. “You are arrogant, but you are also smart. You know it is true.”

You shake your head, stepping back.

“You didn’t tell me, you just left me behind in that place, and I-I was alone, and…” Your eyes fall shut and you find yourself almost compulsively twirling your wedding ring as you try finding resolve again. Without opening your eyes, you take a deep breath and ask, “Why come back now?”

“I told you to survive until spring came, I knew we’d be together again after the winter,” She tells you, quietly, almost mournfully. “Even if you hated me, even if you hate me now…what I did, I did for you. To keep you alive, to let you have a future.”

“All my life, I-…” You furrow your lips, consider your words and start again, “You more than anyone knows how important it is for me to be…free. Free to choose, free to…be. You took that from me, you let Ivar take that from me.”

But Sieghild doesn’t falter, even if her eyes give away more than she would like to admit.

“It is a privilege to be able to live life in the way you have, little one. To never have your beating heart be the only thing that you can count on, that you can call your own. The truth is that there is no reason for freedom without life, not the other way around,” Strong arms crossed over her chest, your mother insists, “Between seeing you in chains and seeing you on a grave, I know which I prefer.”

“Does it matter which I prefer?”

Her silence is enough of an answer, and you sit back down on your chair, twirling your wedding ring on your finger. You notice the way your mother’s eyes travel to the movement, but if she has anything to say about it, she keeps it to herself for now.

“When you love someone, someone that you know will go where you cannot follow once death touches them…” She starts, slowly, deliberately. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do to keep them alive? Keep them with you?”

“I never tried keeping you, or anyone, from your dear Valhalla.”

A quirk of her mouth, humorless and challenging, as she sits back down as well, “I taught you to lie, don’t try it with me.”

“I’m not-…”

“Four years ago, on the outskirts of Circe, you did what you had promised you wouldn’t do. Do you remember, little one?”

You bite your lip to keep it from trembling, as you take in your mother’s pale features, “You could have died.”

“And what glorious death it would have been,” Sieghild retorts, not missing a beat. Her smile is wry, tired, but still irrevocably hers. “Better than whatever awaits me in this bed, that’s for sure.”

“You won’t die here either.”

“I better not,” She warns, closing her eyes. You are worried about the sunken look on her face. Your leg bobs up and down anxiously and you feel your fingers fidgeting as you itch to get to work on making something, anything, that will make it better. “To be robbed of a chance to enter Valhalla because my child is too stubborn t-…”

“Valhalla cannot have you yet!” You snap, blinking past the burning in your eyes when Sieghild opens her eyes to meet your gaze. “Your Gods cannot have you yet, I-I need you with me.”

“Of course I remember.” You retort, gritting your teeth. She has always had this infuriating way of hers of deliberately and obviously guiding you with questions to say what she wants you to, to admit what you refuse to.

“What I did was no different. You dragged me from the battlefield and insisted on delaying the inevitable by tending to my wounds, because you didn’t want to lose me. Even if it cost me what I live and fight for, you want-…”

“You Varangians and your glorious deaths,” You groan, rolling your eyes, “You lived. You lived to fight in another battle and die another day.”

“And you lived to see yourself free once more.”

“It is not the same.”

“Explain why, then.”

That gesture, it is the same as the life that once was all you had known, of her routinely throwing a stick your way, smoothing the ground with her boot and demanding an explanation for the newest battle you had witnessed, or the latest historical one that you had been drawn to.

You sigh, tired beyond what you think you could express with words, “Mother.”

Sieghild considers you for a moment, gaze travelling over your features, taking you in as if a stranger. Maybe you are, in some ways.

She softens after a breath, shoulders lowering as she takes a deep breath.

“I…I had a dream, the Gods showed me that when the ground was softened, when the earth thawed, you’d be returned to me. So, I was certain I would find you once spring came.”

There’s a part of you that tries thinking of it all and tries making all the pieces make something that makes sense, and that part whispers that the Gods let Sieghild see that spring would see you returned to her because it was when spring came that you would make your choice, that you would be free to leave Ivar. That part of you has a heart that beats along the cadence of all the prophecies and half-coherent visions that have plagued you and others, that part of you feels like blind eyes looking directly into yours and bloodstained lips whispering you will not find your belonging amongst flowers.

But that part of you is trying to accept a world where somehow what has happened, what you have lost and what you have suffered, has a reason. It cannot have a reason, it cannot be inevitable.

So, you search your mother’s gaze and ask,

“Why spring?”

“We can set sail away from here now that the season allows it,” She replies easily, and you lean back in your seat, irrationally stunned. Sieghild raises her brows, “Have you already forgotten all that was keeping you here was the harshness of winter?” Your eyes lower from hers, and Sieghild takes a breath, “Ah, but it isn’t the season what keeps you here now.”

You shrug, reaching for the bread and picking out a piece with your fingers as you mumble, “You were the one to tell me all my life that my Fate lied in Kattegat.”

“Many would say your Fate is to fight for Greece.”

You lift your gaze to hers, head tilted to the side.

“My Fate would be to rule over it,” You correct her, and the lines on your mother’s face deepen when she smiles. “But I have no interest in doing so.”

Sieghild looks you over, green eyes shining with something you could swear looks like pride. Eventually she leans back, an arm stretched over the back of her seat and her head tilted to the side.

“You will be staying in Kattegat then?”

You bring the piece of bread to your mouth, offering another shrug, “It is my home.”

“Kattegat is?” She drawls out the words, lifting her brows. Your eyes narrow as you are put on the spot, and there is no hiding the bite in your tone when you ask,

“Why do you ask questions you know the answer to?”

Your mother shrugs, “It entertains me.”

There’s a sigh making its way past your lips before you can stop it, an exasperated but fond one. In the look you and Sieghild share there are more words than either of you would ever dare to say aloud, and you lean back in your seat, picking another piece of the bread.

“Where were you all this time?”

“With King Angantyr of the Black Danes, mostly,” She chuckles to herself, “All the way in England they speak of Ivar the Boneless’ witch, you know.”

“As long as men have tongues to speak, they will speak lies,” You offer around a shrug, words that were of someone you met along the Silk Roads, and though you do not remember their face, you remember their wisdom, and you know your mother does too. Still, she narrows her eyes, almost suspicious, and you clarify, “I am no witch, mother.”

“But you are his.” She sentences.

“Only because he is mine as well.”

Her eyes shine with a glint you haven’t seen in years when she smiles, and you find yourself smiling back, heart lighter.

After a breath, your mother leans forward and quietly asks, “Do you trust him?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Of course I do.”

The shieldmaiden nods once, and takes a deep breath, “We have matters of war to discuss then, you and I. Your husband too.”

You frown, and when she stands up you do the same. Your mother simply starts walking, long strides towards the front of the longhouse. You scramble to catch up, asking questions as you go,

“What? Why?”

“I had a plan, you see. I didn’t come to Kattegat now on a whim.”

“You are hiding something.”

“Not for long. I had counted on using this…information to our advantage if you were to decide to leave, but…” She looks at you out of the corner of her eye, “Plans change, little one.”

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading, hope you liked it!

I have a lot of fun writing Sieghild, she’s like the Priestess without the snobbiness lol. Main example of how much fun I have writing her being the length of this chapter lol, sorry. But yeah, they had (have) a lot of things to work through, though they are, much like the Reader and Freydis, on very different world perceptions when it comes to the issues they’ve discussed, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927​ @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​ @itsmysticalmystery​ @revolution-starter​ @the-a-word-2214​  @fae-sedai​  @crazybunnyladysworld​    @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​ @aprilivar​ @msrawog  

[dainty-fingertips]

hail 2 u! ||polnareff x fem! reader

HEY HI so im just kinda dumping stuff from google docs onto here to kind of establish myself so anyway heres my french bb wjhged;; also minor spoilers if you haven’t finished stardust crusaders!!

word count: 2449

summary: you and polnareff were teamed by dio himself and saved by jotaro in hong kong. polnareff is hit with a wave of guilt as you and the crusaders reach what joseph has said to be avdol’s father’s island. you follow him out onto the beach to try and comfort him, and while it seems to work, the enemy stand hiding nearby inside an old middle-eastern kerosene lamp has no intention of giving you both time alone. that is, until the frenchman makes a certain wish.

trigger warnings: none :)

||

          He sat down on the chopped stump of a palm tree, his head in the palm of his hand. She had followed after him when he walked away, she knew he wouldn’t stop blaming himself for the death of Avdol. She approached him from behind with a worried look on her face. “Polnareff…” She said, softly. He turned around. “Oh, [y,n].” He said. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with Mr Joestar and the others?” She stayed silent. She calmly walked toward the Frenchman and rested on a large rock to his right. “I couldn’t just let you go on your own.” She muttered, her face growing warm. “You know what happens when you’re left by yourself, anyway.” She smiled somberly, trying to lighten the mood.

          He chuckled dryly. “Yeah, yeah.” He turned toward her a bit. Thankfully her weak attempt at humor had worked, as his expression seemed less dull. The wind picked up a bit, causing the afternoon sun to beam down a bit more harshly on the beach. He turned his head, and she followed suit. He squinted his eyes. “Hey, is that…?” She tilted her head. “It looks like…” He stood up and approached the shiny object, a dull gold hue peppering through a barnacle clad shell. She raised herself off of the rock and took a few steps forward, glancing around his side. “It’s pretty.” He said, his eyebrows raised.

          He picked it up and examined it. “I wonder if it came from a shipwreck. Look at all of those barnacles.” She added, moving around and picking at it with her fingernails. “Hey, hey! Careful! You might scratch the gold underneath!” He said, holding it above his head and significantly out of her reach. “H-Hey! No fair, Pol!” She cried with furrowed eyebrows. He laughed at her futile attempts. “Yeah, right!” The two of them went through a solid minute of teasing, insulting, jumping, and punching (Three of those four were brought upon by [y,n], that is), it seemed that the strange object had been rubbing around in his hand quite a bit.

          A sudden burst of blinding light beamed out through what was left of the barnacles and caused Polnareff and [y,n] both to panic, and him to drop it. They both stepped back, [y,n] opposite to him. An odd smoke rose out of the tip of what was now seen to be a kerosene lamp of sorts; similar to the one from Aladdin. Though, the smoke disappeared just as quickly as it had come, causing the two of them to look around confused. The light and smoke both were gone, but the lamp remained. Polnareff sighed after a moment. “Man! That was weird. Must’ve been pressurized air from inside.” He said, a hand on his forehead. [y,n] nodded looking to the left. “Would’ve been cooler if there were a genie, but, you’re right. Probably just gas.”

          When she looked back, however, she panicked and pointed behind him. “P-Polnareff, look out! A Stand!” He jumped, his eyes widening. He took long strides toward her and whipped his head around. “What the hell?!” A peculiar looking Stand, one which appeared to be more industrial than some of the previous that the group had encountered. “Three wishes!” The Stand called, holding up an arm-like appendage; though it had only three fingers on each hand. “I will grant you three wishes! Whatever you wish is my command, master!” The Stand was gigantic, standing a solid 10 feet tall. “My name is Cameo. Thank you for letting me out of my lamp.” [y,n] glanced around, sweat sliding down her cheek. “Uhh, n-no problem.”

          Though, it didn’t seem that Polnareff was ready to initiate conversation with the entity. “Another Stand user! [y,n], back me up!” She looked at him and nodded her head. Blossom Samurai and Silver Chariot, both sword wielding Stands, got into a sort of formation, with Samurai behind Chariot. They battered Cameo with their swords, but they barely did any damage. Chariots rapier was too weak, and Blossom’s attacks were only a mere second too slow causing Cameo to dodge with ease. “Son of a…” Breathed them both in unison. “You’re pretty strong!” Said Polnareff. “Your user must be close. Where is he?” Cameo crossed its arms. “Again, I’m here only to grant wishes. Do you want your first wish to be a lame one like that?” He groaned.

          Polnareff granted. “Yeah, yeah, what is it with you and wishes, huh? Are you saying you can make me rich right now?” Cameo’s voice was unwavering. “Is that your first wish?” Polnareff relaxed a small bit, but was still on edge. “You know what? Sure, dumbo. Let’s see you put your money where your mouth is.” Cameo’s arms uncrossed. [y,n] squinted. “Fine, then. Your wish shall be granted.” The two of them raised their eyebrows. “Huh?” Mumbled [y,n]. Cameo put its arms in an odd position, like a puppeteer would do, and raised its voice. “Hail 2 U!” 

          It immediately disappeared, causing them to blink a few times and watch the leftover smoke dissipate. Polnareff reached down and pulled the half buried lamp from the sand. Night had nearly fallen by now, but it was still visible. “What was all that about?” Polnareff asked in a confused tone. He sighed. “So…” she muttered. “What was that thing? Was it a Stand, or wasn’t it?” He shrugged. “If it is, what a weird Stand to send after someone.” He noted with a chuckle. She nodded her head. Damn these Stand users; she just wanted a chance to be with Polnareff. She excused the thought from her head with a bite of her lip. “Do you think maybe it’s got something to do with Avdol’s dad?” He shrugged his shoulders, the sunlight caressing his face in a way that would make anyone melt. 

          Her face got hot again. This stupid Frenchman has no idea what he’s doing, sending soft gazes her way. Every time he laughed, she felt like melting butter. She couldn’t help but look away from him with a coy grin. Polnareff chuckled. “Hey, what’s that look for? Come on, you don’t have to force yourself to look away. I know you think I’m hot.” He teased nonchalantly. She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Hah! As if, stupid.” She sent him a playful grin and stuck her tongue out. She was really hoping he didn’t actually know.

          It was then in that moment, both of them smiling goofily at each other, that a noise was heard. “Hey, what was that?” He asked, turning around. “Sounded like metal.” She said, walking in the direction of the noise. It was near; maybe just in the grass 6 feet away. Polnareff followed suit, and lo and behold. “W-Whoa!” She cried, leaning in. “No way!” He yelled afterward. The two of them crowded around what appeared to be a half buried chest of doubloons, jewelry, and bejeweled goldware. “T-That’s real buried treasure!” He called, scooping a few coins out. “But how?” She asked, tuning her fingers through it. “Hell if I know! But this is all mine!” He laughed chaotically. 

          “You little—! I helped you find this, I get half! 50/50!” He snorted. “As if, stupid!” He retorted, mocking her previous statement. “Ooooh, I’m gonna kick your--!” Directly before she went for his money, Cameo’s booming voice echoed from above. “Now, what is your second wish? I shall grant it.” The two of them shot their gazes up to the Stand. Polnareff freaked and dropped the coins, to which [y,n] then picked up and stuffed in her pocket. “Y-You! Why are you doing this?! Whatever you have up your sleeve, I’m not falling for it!” He yelled up at the genie, perched in a palm tree. “I am keeping the gold though.” He added shortly after.

          Cameo stayed silent for a moment. The only sound that could be heard was the wind blowing and the ocean rocking. “Is the answer to that question your second wish? As thanks for my freedom, I’ll give you anything,  including such a stupid answer.” [y,n] huffed and nudged Polnareff. He looked down at her and his expression softened. “F-Fine, then.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I want to be a comic artist!” He exclaimed. The answer threw [y,n] for a loop completely. A comic artist? She had never known he was interested in art. In fact, the only interest he’d shown was when he’d watch her draw.

          “I’ve always wanted to be one! And not just some starving artist, either! I want to be more popular than Walt Disney!” She furrowed her eyebrows with a stunned expression. “Huh?” She whispered. “Pol, I don’t think—“ he cut her off. “I want to create Polnareff Land!” He stood with his arms out in a comically dramatic stance, [y,n] in a stunned (and slightly embarrassed) silence at his side. “... Is this your wish?” Polnareff lowered his arms. “Actually, no, wait,” Oh thank God. She wiped metaphorical sweat from her forehead. Maybe he’d think of something more rational.

          “I want a girlfriend!”

          The phrase made her freeze in place. Her eyes were wide and her throat closed. He wanted a girlfriend, did he? He really must have just thought of her as a friend, then. She kept her mouth shut and kept her eyes on Cameo. What was she supposed to say to that? The words echoed in her mind. She wanted to love him like that so badly, but Polnareff seemed to feel otherwise. “Love is better than money or fame.” He said with a grin. At least he was sincere about that, she could tell. “She’s got to be really cute. I want a girl who’s my perfect match! Our pinkies entwined with the red string of love!” He held up his right pinkie finger for emphasis. 

          Polnareff had never made her feel so conflicted before. Her insecurities began to softly gnaw at her. Was she not cute enough? She felt like they were perfect for each other. She’d liked him since Hong Kong. Was this really happening? She simply kept her gaze on Cameo. She stared at it. What was it going to do? She thought genies couldn’t make people fall in love. “You want me to find the perfect match for you?” It asked him. “Yeah! Try that, bastard!” Cameo sat still for a moment. As she was staring, she noticed it turn its head slightly in her direction. It was looking at her.

          She inhaled sharply. What was it doing? Cameo was completely silent for several seconds until it finally decided to pipe up. “Very well.” It turned its head back to Polnareff slowly. “Hail 2 U!” The Stand once again dissolved into smoke. Polnareff looked at his finger expectantly, and sure enough, there it was. She saw it too. The red string of fate. He grinned. “Oh, wow! I finally get to have my perfect girl!” He beamed. She stayed silent. He looked down at her curiously. “Hey, you okay? You’d usually have made fun of me or something by now.” She looked ahead and nodded. “Yeah! Yeah, I’m good. I’m happy for you, man.” Though she never once looked at him. Polnareff sighed. “Thanks, I’m glad too! Let’s see, where does it lead?” He held the string and noticed it went to his right. He looked in growing surprise to see [y,n] standing there, staring into the ocean with the most flat look he’d seen her sport, and a growing lump in her throat. Was she about to cry?

          He wasn’t really sure what prompted him to do it. What made him want to look down first before pressing her on how she felt. Though he was sure glad he did; in fact, it was arguably the best decision he made during that 50 day trip. If he hadn’t taken a mere half second to glance down below her waist, Polnareff wouldn’t have caught the crimson string tied around her finger until a much later, possibly much more awkward time during their interaction. He felt his heart swell inside of his chest, sheer ecstasy causing blood to rush to his cheeks and make his face burn as if he himself were a bonfire of sheer emotion.

          “H-Hey…” he began, reaching out with a shaky left hand. “Hm?” She looked over. She hoped the darkness of night would hide the tear that had dropped from her right eye and down her cheek. “[y,n], you, uh… your hand.” She slowly held up her left hand and stared in shock at the string around her pinkie. “That’s— that’s the-“ she quickly turned to look at his hand. Sure enough, the two were bound. Polnareff soon grew a stupid grin. “Well, well. Look at that.” The utter euphoria she experienced in that moment went unmatched with anything else she’d ever felt. “We-“ she choked back another sob as more tears fell. She covered her mouth and shut her eyes. 

          Polnareff freaked out. “H-Hey!! You okay? [y,n], c’mon! I’m not that bad!” He joked. “You idiot!” She called, throwing her arms around him. “You scared me!” She heaved into his shoulder. “I thought- I thought you didn’t—“ she shakily said. He chuckled. “Hey, hey! Calm down! If you’re wondering if I didn’t like you, you’re not just wrong. You’re stupid.” He grinned softly. She giggled like a little kid on Christmas. “I was so afraid when you said you wanted a girlfriend.” She said, pulling away. Polnareff put his arms around her waist. 

          “I thought I wasn’t good enough.” She laughed awkwardly. “I only said it because I thought you didn’t like me.” She noticed a glimmer in Polnareff’s eye; he was crying too. “O-Oh, Pol, you-“ before she could say another word he pressed his full lips against hers in a brief kiss. “Shut up.” He laughed, tears smeared on her face. She snorted and wiped his cheek. “I’ve liked you for so long. Ever since Hong Kong.” He scoffed playfully. “Ever since Dio paired us, you little snail. Did you just ignore all my little attempts to go on dates with you?” She giggled. “I didn’t wanna take it the wrong way. You never actually asked, idiot.” 

“Well, how about this.” He cleared his throat and laughed again. “Do you want to go on a date with me?” She nodded with a dumb grin. “Yes, yes, of course, dumbass.” She leaned up for a kiss and he returned the gesture. “Let’s beat the hell outta this guy and regroup, okay?” He smiled. “My pleasure.”

[viastro]

snow flower | hur hyunjun

ミ★ synopsis: in which hyunjun finds himself falling in love with you over a span of six months. [part of the 12 months i loved you collab]

ミ★ genre: strangers to lovers!au, fluff, humor, minor angst

ミ★ warnings: none !

ミ★ word count: 5,147

ミ★ parings: hyunjun x gender neutral reader

ミ★ notes: hi guys ! this is my first ever oneshot for the boyz i’m literally gonna go into cardiac arrest uh BAKGBSRH i finally decided to start writing for them, but it most likely won’t be as often as i post for seventeen. however, i will try my best ! i love the boyz so much, and i love hyunjun a lot. so make sure to check out the rest of the works that will appear for the 12 months i loved you collab that was created by @sunlightwoo​ !!

12 months i loved you masterlist 

It started out with the sparkle he saw when the two of you first locked eyes.

“You’re insane, Kevin.”

“Just a bit.” 

You tilt your head to the side in concern when your best friend sends a wink in your direction, before going back to attempting to slingshot a water balloon at his unsuspecting victim friend, Kim Sunwoo. Letting out a sigh, you glance back down at your phone, knowing that Kevin is literally going to get murdered when Sunwoo gets splashed.

“You want Formation to play when they bring your casket into the funeral home?” You ask Kevin, and he nods his head quietly. You look up to find Sunwoo still talking animatedly to a guy you haven’t seen before, but then again, you can only see the back of his head.

“Kevin, what if you accidentally hit the guy Sunwoo is talking to?” Kevin turns to you, and simply places a finger over his mouth as a means to tell you to be quiet. Your concerned expression turns into one of annoyance as you squint your eyes at him, and he gives you a grin. “I won’t hit Hyunjun, it’s fine.” 

“Hyunjun?” Kevin nods his head, turning back towards Sunwoo and preparing the slingshot once again. 

“Sunwoo introduced him and I on our first day at uni because he thought we looked really similar.” You purse your lips, leaning over slightly on the bench to try and get a better look at the man. Now curious of what this Hyunjun may look like, you open your mouth to ask Kevin if the man has an Instagram, only for your eyes to widen when you watch the water balloon fly in the air. 

“Oh Neptune.” 

Kevin lets out a cheer when the water balloon lands right smack on the top of Sunwoo’s head, now drenching the man in water. You watch as your friend looks around angrily, only to stop when his eyes land on you and Kevin. 

“KEVIN MOON!” 

You let out a loud laugh, covering your mouth as you watch Kevin begin sprinting away from Sunwoo. Your eyes land on the man Sunwoo was speaking to, and you feel your laughter slowly die down when you find him staring directly at you as well. 

His black hair is in soft waves over his forehead, catlike eyes staring at you in interest as he nonchalantly wipes away some of the remnants of water from his fancy clothes.

Damn you Kevin…

You raise your hand up to wave at the pretty boy, only to stop when Kevin and Sunwoo run past you, with Kevin screaming bloody murder and there being nothing but murderous intent behind Sunwoo’s gaze as he tries to capture the man. 

You let out a bright smile, turning back to find Hyunjun’s features slowly lifting up into a beautiful smile as well. He raises his hand up and waves at you, and you wave back, warmth flooding your face from the simple interaction.

Hyunjun always thought it was bullshit when people said that they can see sparkles in someone’s eyes, thinking that it just depended on what type of lighting they were in. However, as the warm summer sun rests over you, he knows that it’s just you. 

The sparkle in your eyes is from you, nothing else. 

Then he noticed the strange feeling he’d get when he’d hear your laughter.

You and Hyunjun watch with amused smiles on your faces as Juyeon, Kevin, and Changmin attempt to play Just Dance in your small dorm room. 

“Ow! Changmin, your elbows are sharp.” Kevin whines when he accidentally gets elbowed in the side from Changmin’s aggressive dancing. The blonde ignores the black haired beauty, continuing to focus on winning the game.

“Juyeon is taking this very seriously.” You mutter, having noticed the red head’s silence as he sharply hits the dance moves displayed on your tiny TV. Hyunjun nods his head, letting out a small chuckle at the furrow to Juyeon’s brows. He nudges you with his shoulder, causing you to turn to glance at him. “Imagine if Sunwoo and Eric were playing too.” 

You let out a smile at the thought of it, making Hyunjun’s heart flip tenfold within his chest. You shake your head, imagining the absolute chaos it would be if Sunwoo and Eric were also in your dorm, knowing their insanely competitive nature. However, Sunwoo has a lab today and Eric has a math lecture, so they were unable to join in on the besties activities. 

It’s been a couple months since you and Hyunjun met, having gotten close rather quickly. You later met Juyeon, Changmin, and Eric as summer was coming to an end. Now the six of you hangout more often than not even though Autumn quarter has begun, and your dorm room became the unofficial official meeting spot even though the other five have much larger dorms/apartments. 

“I WON!” Kevin shouts, regaining you and Hyunjun’s attention as he jumps up and down in excitement. Hyunjun bites back a laugh at the shock on Juyeon and Changmin’s faces, as Kevin was simply just moving the switch controller whenever it was required, and the two dancers were actually busting their ass off.

“I feel like I just got swindled.” Changmin breathes out, wiping away the accumulated sweat that formed on his forehead. Juyeon runs a hand through his hair, before squinting at the celebrating Kevin. 

“Do we murder him?” Kevin turns towards them with wide eyes after hearing the absurd question. 

“Heh?”

Changmin and Juyeon exchange a glance in silence, before turning back towards Kevin, who is now staring at the two in fear. 

“Yeah.”

“WHAT!” 

You let out a burst of laughter as the three begin to chase each other around your dorm. Hyunjun turns to look at you with a smile on his face, the screaming of his friends slowly becoming background noise when the sound of your laughter is all he can hear. 

Hyunjun gulps when he feels his heart thump against his chest, noticing how pretty you look when you���re happy. He bites the inside of his cheek, a thought coming to his mind that makes him turn away to try and focus on his three friends fighting each other, promptly ignoring the overwhelming feeling in his chest.

And then you experienced heartbreak.

Hyunjun lets out a groan when his phone rings beside him, glancing at the time to see that it’s 2 in the morning. He rolls over and picks up the cool metal, squinting at the screen when he sees your name shining brightly back at him. Immediately he answers the call and places the phone next to his ear, 

“Yn?”

“H-Hyunjun..” 

The black haired beauty sits up at the sound of your sniffles, eyes wide open in concern. He climbs out of bed, already walking towards his closet to put on a sweatshirt. “What’s wrong? Where are you?” 

“Can you come get me, please? I’m outside of Donghyun’s building.” You mutter quietly, watching your breath crystalize in the cold November air. Hyunjun bites the inside of his cheek at the mention of your boyfriend’s name, already having an idea of what may have occurred. 

It’s happened quite a few times with the different guys you’ve dated over the last few months.

“I’ll be there in five minutes, don’t hang up the phone, mm?” Hyunjun says, and you nod your head quietly in response, “Okay.” 

Within 5 minutes you notice Hyunjun’s tall figure walking towards you, and his heart breaks when he sees the tears immediately fall from your eyes. You quickly walk over to him, wrapping your arms around his middle and hiding your face in the crook of his neck. 

Hyunjun freezes at the contact, cursing to himself at the way his heart practically palpitates in his chest from the warmth you bring him. His arms slowly wrap around you, hand cradling your head as you cry quietly, no words needing to be exchanged for him to know that you and Donghyun didn’t work out. 

“Do you want me to beat his ass?” Hyunjun asks quietly, and you let out a wet laugh, shaking your head and holding your best friend tighter. “No, we were only together for a month anyways. Can we just go to your apartment?” 

Hyunjun nods his head, and you pull away from his embrace. His heart falls at the sight of your swollen eyes, and he instinctively reaches out and cups your face with his warm hands. You look up at him with watery eyes, and Hyunjun wonders how you’re still the most ethereal being he’s ever seen. 

“When will you realize that you deserve so much more than gross Tinder men?” Hyunjun asks you with a teasing smile on his face, completely ignoring the way his heart is beating crazily within his chest at the close contact between you two. You pout up at him, punching Hyunjun’s shoulder lightly even though you know he’s right. Softly, you mutter, “I just want to find someone who loves me.” 

Hyunjun bites the inside of his cheek at your confession, before wiping away the leftover tears on your cheeks and letting his hands fall to his sides. He quickly wraps an arm around your shoulders and steers you in the direction towards his building. 

“You’ll find someone, yn.” He mutters quietly, and you let out a breath, before leaning your head onto the black haired beauty as the two of you walk in silence.

Hyunjun glances up at the stars in the sky, feeling his own heart break within his chest. He bites back a sad laugh, now understanding what it is he’s been feeling over the last few months of knowing you. 

Love. It was love.

And here we are now, the 31st of December. With Hyunjun laying on Kevin’s floor, screaming and punching the air.

“Hyunjun, please. My neighbors actually like me, you screaming is gonna ruin their view of me.” Kevin tells Hyunjun from his desk, not sparing him a glance as he just hears the sounds of his existential crisis going on behind him.

Hyunjun lets out another garbled scream, and Kevin lets out a tired sigh in return. He finally turns around in his seat to see his friend staring at his white ceiling with a blank expression on his face. Raising an eyebrow in concern, but also in fear for his life, he simply grabs a pencil, and reaches out and pokes Hyunjun’s foot. 

“Bestie… you good?” 

Hyunjun punches the air as his response, and Kevin furrows his brows. He climbs off his chair and walks over to where Hyunjun lays, moving and sitting down beside him. Kevin watches as Hyunjun just stares at the ceiling in silence once again, and he rubs the back of his neck. “I need words, Hyunjun.”

The black haired beauty lets out a breath, before closing his eyes in frustration. Resting his hands over his face he mutters, 

“I wanna kiss yn when the clock hits midnight.” 

Kevin nods his head, turning away and looking back towards his laptop. Only to pause when the words register in his mind, and he immediately turns back towards Hyunjun in complete shock at what he just uttered.

“You wanna WHAT?!” 

Hyunjun groans, sitting up from the floor and glancing at Kevin with a frustrated expression on his face. He runs a hand through his hair, feeling his heartbeat wildly within his chest at the fact that he finally confessed his feelings for you out loud. 

“I want to kiss them.” Hyunjun repeats, and Kevin continues to stare at him in shock.

“Like, their forehead?” 

“No.”

“Their hand?”

“No..”

“Their booboo?”

“I wanna kiss them on the lips, Kevin.” Hyunjun deadpans, causing the latter to slowly close his mouth and nod his head, turning back to look down at the floor. After a moment of silence passes between them, Kevin glances back at Hyunjun.

“Like, platonically?” 

Hyunjun stares at Kevin, before resting his head onto his knees in absolute disappointment and embarrassment. Kevin runs a hand through his hair, quietly asking the universe how he managed to be such a good friend that he’s now stuck in the middle of a situation that he did not ask to be in whatsoever. 

“How long have you felt this way about yn?” Kevin asks, and Hyunjun purses his lips when the memory of the first time he saw the way your eyes sparkled comes to mind. He lets out a sigh, letting his head fall back as he says, “Since June.”

Kevin’s eyes visibly widen once again as he raises his hands up towards his face to count how many months it’s been on his fingers. His mouth drops when he counts six months on his hands, and he looks back towards Hyunjun. 

“Six months?!” 

“Is it really that shocking that I have feelings for yn?” Hyunjun asks, and Kevin shakes his head, shutting his mouth to stop himself from mentioning a piece of information that could possibly make Hyunjun shit himself.

He’s sitting on a bad boy piece of information right now.

“So, do you have a plan on how you’re gonna kiss them tonight?” Hyunjun looks up towards the ceiling and shrugs his shoulders. He turns towards his friend, giving him a small smile.

“We’ll see how I feel tonight.”

Hyunjun is fucking wasted. 

If it makes anything better, Sunwoo, Eric, and Changmin aren’t doing very well either. As the three are currently in a drunken argument over who gets to have the last cookie before the clock strikes midnight. They’re incredibly loud, making it a bit hard to listen to the New Year’s Eve special on the TV.

“I get to have the cookie because I’m the oldest out of the three of us!” Changmin declares, wobbling slightly as he points a finger towards the younger two. Eric rolls his eyes, reaching out to grab the cookie again, only for Sunwoo to shove him to the floor. 

“Age doesn’t mean shit.”

“You’re a fuckin whorebag, Sunwoo.”

However, amidst all the chaos in the middle of his apartment, his eyes remain on you from across the room. You’re playing a game of UNO with Kevin and Juyeon on the floor, watching as you let out a gorgeous laugh when the two scream at your +4 card. 

Sensing a pair of eyes on you, you turn your head to find Hyunjun staring at you with those sharp, catlike eyes of his. Biting back a smile, you place your last card down on the table, shooting finger guns at the boys after winning for the third time in a row, and walk over to where Hyunjun is sitting.

Oh God, Hyunjun thinks to himself as you get closer. The purple LED lights on his ceiling cast an iridescent glow over your features, making him drunkenly wonder how you could manage to get more ethereal as the days go by. 

“Hey, stooges! There’s more cookies in the kitchen, so stop arguing.” You shout out towards your three drunk friends, and they all turn towards you with shocked expressions on their faces. They quickly scramble over into the kitchen, slipping and falling a few times as their coordination is no longer intact. 

Noticing that they left the single cookie on the coffee table, you let out a giggle, picking it up and turning back towards Hyunjun. You tilt your head to the side at his serious expression on his face, holding out the chocolate chip cookie in his direction. 

“Want it?” You ask with a grin, and Hyunjun feels his legs turn to mush. 

How am I supposed to kiss them? He wonders, watching silently as you move closer so that your faces are a few inches apart. Without another word, you place the cookie in his mouth, before plopping down on the couch beside him. 

Hyunjun quietly chews the cookie, distracted for a moment over how delicious it is, before turning back to look at you. Only to freeze when he finds that your eyes are already on him, tilting your head to the side as he catches your gaze.

“My Hyunjun is such a quiet drunk~” You mutter softly, but Hyunjun feels his heart flip within his chest at the possessiveness of your statement. You reach out and pat down a few flyaways of his black hair, and he wonders if you feel as nervous as he does when the two of you are this close to each other. 

“Oh shit! 30 seconds until midnight!” Kevin announces, making the two of you turn back to the TV. Hyunjun watches as you scramble to grab the noise makers (not Sunwoo, Eric, and Changmin, but a close second). 

“HAHAHAH! Eric passed out on the floor!” Hyunjun hears Juyeon laugh from the kitchen, watching with blurry vision as Sunwoo and Changmin giggle at the sight of Juyeon carrying out a very drunk Eric into the living room. 

“Hyunjun, stand up!” You say happily, and his eyes slowly fall on you, letting you pull him up without a second thought. 

“10!” Kevin begins the countdown. Hyunjun stares at you as you squeal excitedly with Kevin, obviously elated to start the new year with your best friends. 

“9!”

“8!” Changmin and Sunwoo shout out belatedly, drunkenly eating the cookies as they count down along with the rest of you guys. 

“7!”

“6!” You turn your head when the feeling of someone burning holes into your cheek becomes more apparent. You find Hyunjun just staring at you with a dazed expression on his face, and you raise an eyebrow in amusement over how drunk he is. 

“5!” 

“4!” Hyunjun bites the inside of his cheek once his peripheral vision turns blurry as his focus on you heightens. He slowly leans forward so that your faces are close to one another, and you hear your heartbeat crazily against your chest even with all the ruckus going on around you.

“3!”

“Hyunjun? Are you okay?” You ask, but your voice is barely above a whisper as you somehow lost all control over your vocal chords. He stays quiet, as he continues to stare into your bright eyes as if they hold all the stars in the sky. To him, they do.

“2!” 

“Hyunjunie?”

“1!” 

“Can I kiss you, yn?” Hyunjun asks in a soft voice, and your eyes widen at the question. 

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Kevin, Juyeon, Changmin, and Sunwoo cheer as they start blowing into the noise makers. You and Hyunjun continue to stare into each other's eyes in silence, with you gauging the question he just asked, and Hyunjun wondering why his vision is beginning to spin. 

“What did you say-” You’re cut off when Hyunjun collapses onto you, making you topple backwards onto the floor. Kevin’s eyes widen at the sight of a passed out Hyunjun laying on top of you, knowing that the latter is going to eat his own ass when the memory comes back in the morning. 

While you, you’re left with a warm face and hundreds of questions swarming around your brain as to whether or not you heard him correctly. 

“Ugh.” Hyunjun mutters, raising his hands up to his face once the raging migraine hits him. He rolls over in the bed, tightly squeezing his eyes shut as if it’ll make the pain stop. “Why’d I drink so much?” 

“Cause you’re stupid.” He groans at the sound of Kevin’s voice, choosing to not snap back as he just doesn’t have the energy at the moment. He listens to Kevin’s footsteps shuffle along his floor, before hearing the sound of plastic rest on his bedside table. 

“That’s acetaminophen and water. There’s also a piece of toast for you to eat as you shouldn’t take medicine on an empty stomach.” Hyunjun peeks through his hands to see Kevin standing beside him, and he raises an eyebrow at the man. “You know I don’t care about that.” 

Kevin nods his head, running a hand through his hair as he gives Hyunjun a small grin. “Yeah, but yn’s orders.” 

Hyunjun squints at his friend, before his eyes widen once he remembers his original plan from the night before. He immediately sits up in bed, only to regret it when the pounding in his head becomes a lot stronger. Kevin hands Hyunjun the toast, and the hungover man quietly chews on it with his eyes closed as he tries to remember what happened the night before. 

“Did I kiss yn?” Hyunjun asks Kevin after he finishes the toast, reaching over to take the pills and water. Kevin purses his lips, before shaking his head ‘no’. Hyunjun bites the inside of his cheek, wondering what he could’ve done as he throws back the pills and swallows it down with a large gulp of water. 

“Are they still here?” Hyunjun asks, running a hand through his black hair as he takes a glance towards his bedroom door. He only hears the sounds of Sunwoo and Changmin playing games in his living room, but nothing from you. “Nah, they left after preparing breakfast for us.” 

“Did I… try to kiss yn?” Kevin only stares at Hyunjun, before shrugging his shoulders and turning to walk out of the bedroom. Hyunjun frowns at his friend, “Kevin!” 

“Why don’t you ask them yourself?” Kevin suggests with a wink, before stepping out of Hyunjun’s room, closing the door behind him. Leaving the black haired beauty sitting there, alone with his thoughts. 

“Nah, I wouldn’t have kissed yn. I care too much about our friendship, that’s why I decided not to go through with the plan after we ate dinner.” Hyunjun mutters, tilting his head as he still tries to remember what happened the night before. He reaches over and grabs his phone, only to immediately hiss at how bright his screen is. “Why did I think it was a good idea to have my lockscreen be so bright?”

hyunjunie: where are you?

you: i wanted to go to the seoul christmas festival >:D

hyunjunie: it’s not dark enough for you to see the lights yet 

you: bleh bleh, it’s the last day

hyunjunie: wait until 6, i’ll come take you

you: mmm, okay

are you sure you’re not too hungover for that?

hyunjunie: nah, i had toast before my medicine today. 

i’m 100% cured

you: okay king

hyunjunie: i’ll see you later yn

you: mmhmm

Hyunjun let’s out a smile after your guys exchange, placing his phone beside him as he lays back down, staring up at the ceiling. He sighs, the thought of what he could’ve done the night before still lingering in his head. 

“Why did you wait until January 1st to go to this event?” Hyunjun asks as the two of you walk around, just to watch you excitedly walk up to the bright lights without a response. He tilts his head in amusement, only for his heart to go crazy within his chest when you turn around to look at him with a big smile on your face. 

“Come here! Let’s take a photo!” You say happily, eyes sparkling underneath the beautiful Christmas lights. Biting the inside of his cheek, he walks up to you and stands close beside you as you take numerous selfies of you both. 

“Do you guys want me to take a photo for you?” You glance up at the voice, seeing a mom and her child smiling at the two of you. You look at Hyunjun to see his reaction, only to find him already nodding his head and handing her his phone. 

“Can I kiss you, yn?” You stare at him as the memory pops back into your mind, and he looks back down at you.

“You gonna smile at the camera or just oggle me?” Hyunjun teases, making you look away with a scoff. He giggles at your reaction, but it’s a sound of relief as he wasn’t sure how much longer he could take of your intense gaze. 

“I’ll take a lot of photos!” She tells the two of you, and you give her a thumbs up. You tentatively wrap your arms around Hyunjun’s arm, before smiling brightly at the camera. He stiffens slightly in your hold, but tries not to let it show as he rests his head over your own, smiling into the camera as well. 

“What other pose should we do?” You ask Hyunjun as the two of you pull away, and he glances down at you, shrugging his shoulders. “Anything you want.” 

Pursing your lips, you think to yourself for a moment. An image pops up into your mind, causing you to grin evilly as you suggest, “What about one where you’re bowing down to me?” 

“Are you crazy?” 

You let out a bright laugh at Hyunjun’s immediate answer, and he finds himself automatically smiling back down at you just from the sight itself. He reaches out and fondly pats your head without a second thought, making warmth rush up to your face at the touch. 

It’s something Hyunjun’s always done, but the memory of last night is still fresh in your mind. Making you wonder whether all these things he’s done for you have been platonic, or romantic. 

His eyes search yours as your laughter dies down, finding you to be deep in thought as the two of you stare at each other. His hand rests on your shoulder, and he doesn’t feel the urge to pull away. 

What have I done in my past life to deserve such a beautiful sight like this? Hyunjun thinks to himself as he looks into your sparkling eyes, feeling nothing but warmth as he does so.

“I think the photos are cute! I hope you guys like them.” The mom says, causing the two of you to break out of your trance. She gives the both of you a grin, “I think you guys are a cute couple.” 

You immediately sputter, about to deny it in fear of making Hyunjun uncomfortable, only to freeze when you hear him say, 

“Thank you.” 

You turn your head to glance at him as he waves bye to the mom and her child, before he opens up his phone and scrolls through the numerous photos she took of you and him. He giggles at a few photos, a soft smile on his face as he does so. 

“They turned out cute, I’ll make sure to airdrop them to you later.” Hyunjun tells you, and you nod your head without another thought. He gives you a close lipped smile, before gesturing over towards the other christmas lights. 

“Let’s keep going so that we can get food, it’s cold.” He begins to walk forward, only to pause when he realizes you’re not beside him. Hyunjun turns back to glance at you, finding you still standing in the same spot. He tilts his head to the side, “Are you coming-”

“Did you really mean it when you asked if you could kiss me last night, Hyunjun?” You ask, and Hyunjun feels his blood run cold at the question. The memory of last night that he couldn’t remember suddenly floods into his brain all at once, and he internally panics at the fact that he actually tried to make a move. 

“Did you?” You ask again, tightly squeezing your fist at your side as you await his answer. Hyunjun bites the inside of his cheek, realizing that it’s all or nothing as he answers, 

“And what if I did?” 

The two of you stare at each other in silence for a moment, the bright christmas lights hanging around you both. His eyes search your face, still finding you to be the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. Ever since that warm summer day, it’s always been you. 

You take note of Hyunjun’s gorgeous features, having always known how attractive he was from the moment the two of you met. However, as you both grew closer as friends, as well as your feelings, you knew you had to push it down. Kevin’s the only one who knew of your feelings after a drunken occurrence where you cried on his lap, but the next day you told your best friend to ignore everything you said the night before. You didn’t want any false hope, as there’s always only two possibilities of catching feelings for your best friend. 

Friendship ends as the other doesn’t feel the same.

Friendship turns into relationship but this only happens in fanfiction.

You didn’t stand a chance for Hyunjun, but as you stare into his eyes right now on this cold, winter night, you realize you were wrong. The warmth to his gaze has always only been for you, and you were the biggest chance Hyunjun’s ever wanted to take. And so, you finally say, 

“I wouldn’t mind.” 

Hyunjun stares at you, and you gauge his reaction to your answer. He takes a few steps forward until there’s only a few inches left between your faces. “Please tell me you’re not kidding, yn.” 

You let out a soft smile, the sound of your heartbeat in your ears as you stare up at your best friend’s face. “Why would I joke about this?” 

Hyunjun’s hands slowly trail up until they’re cupping your face. His thumb draws circles on your cheek, and he breathes out nervously, glancing back up into your eyes to double check. You nod your head, and Hyunjun bites the inside of his cheek, before finally leaning in and capturing your lips in a sweet kiss. 

Heat floods your features as your hands reach up and grip at his shirt, the brisk night air being a stark contrast to the love and warmth you feel from Hyunjun alone. 

Hyunjun feels dizzy, his heart bursting within his chest after the moment he’s only dreamed of for the last six months is now happening right at this moment. Your lips taste sweet, similar to that of strawberries, and he decides that your strawberry flavored chapstick is truly godsend. He pulls away and rests his forehead on yours after a moment, warmth flooding his features as he stares into your eyes.

“I love you.” Hyunjun confesses, and he watches as the brightest smile he’s ever seen forms on your face. You reach up and cup his face with your own hands as well, pressing a quick kiss to his lips, before pulling away to say,

“I love you too, Hyunjun.” 

The two of you let out giggles after a moment, before Hyunjun pulls you into his chest, holding you tightly as he realizes that you’re finally his. He closes his eyes, smiling to himself at the overwhelming feeling of love flooding his chest. 

To Hyunjun, love was warm. They had sparkles in their eyes, and had the brightest smile he’s ever seen. 

To Hyunjun, love was you.

Love was you.

[katyatalks]

Mob Psycho 100 Interview Translation - Character Designer Kameda Yoshimichi - Otome Visual 2017

Summary-style translation for Character Designer Yoshimichi Kameda’s 4 page interview from Otome Visual 2017, regarding elements in the creation of Mob Psycho 100 such as: what inspired this cover art, the influence of fan art in the anime’s creation, Tsubomi’s design, the process behind the package art for the DVDs, and more. Includes some genga. Under read more;

[TN: The reason why I elected to summarise this interview rather than do a full write up is because a lot of the information given gets covered in December 2016′s Animestyle010, in “The Making of Mob Psycho 100.” I typed that one out in full over on twitter but that’s a long interview, and I don’t have the time or energy to reformat it for Tumblr, but if you’re interested in a very in-depth look into how Mob Psycho 100′s anime came to be I’d really recommend checking it out. Direct quotes are given in “” here. Enjoy!]

---

*~The genga illustration for Otome Visual’s cover~*

“With the recent popularity that Skating Anime has had, what’s this - a Shouwa idol collab?! It’s all in the little details in their clothing - their wrinkled shirts, white trousers, black belts - both around their waists and arms.”

*~Kameda’s comments~*

“Can you heaaaar me!! I am currently speaking directly into your braaaain!!! What I’m grateful for with this commission is I was able to design the cover in any way I’d like!! A cover is a reflection of current times, so, of course, I went for ice skating! You wouldn’t be able to find this kind of amazing content in any time period other than now! That’s what I first thought! Like, Mob Psycho 100!! If there’s not a certain Mob Psycho 100-ness present in the art then what’d be the point, so, the characters are being very serious but they’re also pretty laughable. I tried to create a piece of art from which you could hear their voices!!! What’s with it being Shouwa-esque?? Being lame is incredibly cool!!! Huh? Does that describe Mob Psycho 100?? Can’t answer that if you ask!!!! Please feel the amazing Paradise Ginga x Mob Psycho 100-ness here!!!!!!”

---

Kameda describes how he wasn’t sure how best to adapt the manga into an anime format at first, since from the art he was shown he immediately knew it to be very unique - the idea of using Flash to animate the show was raised but quickly shot down

Originally, upon being asked about the show, he based his thoughts on what a web image search for Mob Psycho 100 gave him rather than having the actual manga in hand. “For the most part, the results that came back would be fanart (laughs). It’s a bit strange -  at that time, it was difficult to find art uploaded from the manga. If you could find anything, it’d just be art from the covers. So for the most part, an image search of Mob Psycho 100 would just bring you back fanart. A lot of that fanart would be… a shounen in a cool pose wearing a school uniform with smooth bobbed hair & sharp cat-like eyes, sort of like Hiei’s eyes (from Yu Yu Hakusho). Very different from the manga’s art. But when I looked at that art, I thought; this could work. Fanart is, fundamentally, ‘fans drawing what they like’, so I thought, ‘the anime having this kind of art would make the fans happy.’ Well, it didn’t work out that way, obviously. I was told the anime’s art should resemble that of the manga. (Laughs)”

He hadn’t read the manga so all he had for reference was art from volume 1 and the fanart he found online. “But I like things like spirits and urban legends, so seeing Dimple - a floating supernatural fiery ball - and being told the manga touches on the occult caused my interest to soar.”

Says that Teru is the easiest character for him to draw. “He’s overflowing with confidence, so it’s easy to put him into some cool poses. Mob and Ritsu in comparison, not so much. [...] With Reigen, he has a lot of poses that are like, he’s trying to look good. He takes a solid stance. I suppose Spirits & Such has such a shady air to it, and you have to hide that somehow, right? So, Reigen injects confidence into how he presents himself. A model-like stance.”

“The anime is faithful to the manga… ah, actually, Tsubomi-chan was changed with a ‘let’s make her more like a heroine’ conversation. So, I did so, but reading recent events in the manga I can’t picture her in her anime form (laughs). The manga’s Tsubomi isn’t much like a heroine, so I’ve found myself wondering, if we animate up until this part… just how will we approach it? The anime’s Tsubomi is so bright and sparkly, so she wouldn’t have snot hanging from her nose (vol.13 of manga), would she…? (Laughs). Perhaps we went a little too far with making her a heroine. Maybe, if we do season 2, we’ll turn her back into a normal girl (laughs). Well, Tachikawa-san is clever; I think he’ll find a way to make do with her current design.”

---

Picture text: "This is Mezato's first appearance, so I decided to make her cute!! Thank you in advance!!"

Picture text: "That girl was telling me such a stupid story this morning... aidzuchi* isn't easy, you know... I'll just ignore her tomorrow..." [* sounds made to indicate that you're listening to someone speak]

---

Asked about his favourite characters; “I love Mezato Ichi from the Newspaper Club. When I drew her in her character sheet in that pose where she’s holding her camera, I came to see her as being quite cute. So now I focus on her a lot; in fact, when I draw genga I sneakily choose the cuts that have her in them (laughs).”

“I also love Mob. Reigen stands out the most so your eyes naturally jump to him, but I love the balance that Mob has. His heads tall ratio... or rather, his face, and the way his body is proportioned? It makes him lovely. Ritsu is around the same height as Mob, but, how can I put this - the cuteness that Mob has, is lacking in Ritsu… due to the latter being quite standoffish, I suppose (laughs).”

Ritsu’s hair changing through the first season is discussed, and how it is purposefully shortened during the latter half. “I paid attention to making sure his hair was long especially while he was being possessed by Dimple. So it’d resemble thorns.”

“I feel Teru-kun is the most ‘yang’ of all the characters. The rest are more ‘yin’ in nature. Because of this, it’s easy to play around with his expressions - he’s fun to draw. Speaking in terms of Dragonball, he’s kind of like Mob Psycho 100’s Vegeta (laughs).”

“In episode 9, Dimple possesses one of Claw’s security guards, right? I don’t really understand why that security guard is so popular.” Q: What do you mean? “Because he’s just some middle-aged dude (laughs). He doesn’t even appear for long…”

After discussing the huge amount of SG!Dimple commissions received: “Unlike SG!Dimple, I don’t really get asked to draw Shou-kun. With this commission I thought to myself, I /have/ to include him here, and so I added him in. The initial brief excluded him.”

Asked about moments that stuck with him; “When Teru chokes Mob in episode 5. [...] Mob’s pained expression as he’s being choked is good, but Teru-kun’s face shows us… envy, jealousy, distress, anxiety.”

“Also, the ‘super real Reigen’ sequence from episode 12. The tension between Reigen and Sakurai is funny, but the art itself has had me laughing since production. It’s funny no matter how many times I look at it!”

Kameda’s idea to have the characters make number shapes for the volume art came from him watching ‘Tonneruzu no Minasan no Okage deshita’, specifically the ‘Mojimoji-kun’ segment of the show (where they try to make numbers from their bodies)

Volume 6’s cover art was first planned to have a whole ensemble of characters, but Kameda changed his mind on this - “if we do a second season, we can leave that for volume 12 (laughs).”

Volume 4's cover was originally planned to feature only Onigawara and Gouda, but Kameda found himself wanting to include the rest of the body improvement club

Regarding the pose we see on vol 6’s package art, “My original thoughts for that cover were to have Reigen and Mob in a ‘hell wheel’ pose, like, Mob pulling Reigen’s legs and arms… but that wouldn’t be very fitting for the final volume.”

His message to the readers; “Thank you for your support! With sales, the ‘this is popular!’ message gets conveyed, and the more support you give us, then there’s no doubt we’ll be able to produce season 2 and season 3!! Season 2 relies on your support. It’s in your hands - thank you!!”

---

Crossposted on twitter here.

[ryanberga]

tbh i’d love to see ur paragraphs abt ryan & i’m sure other people would too,,,,,,post it?👀

ok *deep breath*

we all always joke about ryan being this dumb himbo jock archetype to shane’s academically-inclined strange man archetype which is funny as hell those jokes are funny and all in good fun but!! let’s not forget that ryan is actually not dumb at all!

let’s talk about ryan & shane’s dynamic and the whole boogara vs. shaniac thing. there’s a decent amount of people who see ryan saying “i believe in ghosts & demons & the supernatural & funny little conspiracy theories,” and then they see shane saying “all that is bullshit, i’m a skeptic & i believe in science,” and they jump to the conclusion that therefore, shane is smart and ryan is dumb, or shane is smarter than ryan, and that’s simply not true!! ryan’s belief system is inherently different from shane’s, but that does not mean he is stupid for it! shane is very outwardly and vocally interested in things like history and science, and i think that’s another reason people tend to fall into the belief that shane is smart and ryan is dumb, but, again: simply not true! just because ryan isn’t as interested in typical academic pursuits doesn’t mean he’s dumb, and i think it’s actually a very problematic mindset to equate someone’s intelligence with like the core subjects you learn in school.

ok, now let’s talk about bfu. let’s talk about how bfu was entirely ryan’s brain baby and how groundbreaking the format of it was. let’s talk about how no other supernatural or true crime shows presented its information the way that bfu does. let’s talk about how when bfu started, ryan did 100% of the work for it. he did the research, the writing, the editing, etc etc all on his own. let’s talk about how much work he put into it and how passionate he was about it. let’s talk about how the format is so smartly done & unique & original. let’s also talk about how no matter how much evidence shane presents that directly contrasts ryan’s theories, ryan stays true to himself and believes in what he believes in and refuses to be swayed. let’s talk about how even when shane blatantly dismisses ryan’s beliefs or insults him or teases him for his beliefs, ryan doesn’t budge. i also think it’s so impressive that ryan remains genuinely curious about these things and continues to believe in these things even when someone (who he cares about & respects!) is consistently telling him his beliefs are bullshit.

ok, now let’s talk about watcher. i’m not going to talk about how much courage it must have taken to leave buzzfeed to create a completely original company because that goes without saying, and it’s been talked about enough before. instead, i’m going to talk about spooky small talk specifically for a second. the fact that both steven and shane have said that spooky small talk is the biggest undertaking that any of them pursued for any of their shows is! pretty impressive! the amount of work that had to have gone into that show is really mindblowing to think about, to have to deal with the scare actors and all the noises and getting through the maze while asking questions and staying engaged with the interviewee. it’s a lot to deal with, and ryan does it fantastically, and he makes it look so effortless, as if it was the easiest thing in the world to create.

and then there’s here’s what you do, which i think is a good example of ryan showing that he’s very smart when it comes to emotions and self-care. very often in hwyd, he talks about emotions and self-care in ways that surprise me with how succinctly he’s able to put sort of complex thoughts into words. personally, i also think he gives some of the best and most thoughtful answers (when they’re actually giving serious answers and not talking about piss & shit, that is).

and just a couple more things about ryan i want to point out before i finish this off: no matter what ryan does, in everything he pursues, he seems to me to remain completely genuine to who he was at the start of this all, way back when he was still making videos with brent. he never changes his belief system, no matter what shane or anyone else says to him. he remains compassionate and unashamedly himself in all his pursuits. everything he does is imbued with so much fun. he wants to have fun, and he wants his audience to have fun along with him, and i think it‘s very evident that this is the case.

also, if you listen to ryan speak, like, in watcher weeklys or hwyd or whatever? it seems to me like he says everything with intention, and it seems like most things he says are pretty well thought out (again, when he’s not being purposefully silly). also! he has a great vocabulary! as an english major myself, i am often surprised by some of the words he throws out very casually in conversation!

and one last point, bringing it back to my first paragraph: just because he’s not as into things like history and science, he is still very well-versed in a lot of other things that speak to an inherent intelligence. first of all, it’s been established that he knows tons about true crime and conspiracies and supernatural stuff. he’s also very well-versed in pop culture, and more than just movies & tv shows! he’s spoken lots about books, and music, and podcasts, and video games! (and also don’t forget that he’s mentioned multiple times how he maintained i believe a 3.9 gpa throughout all of high school & college while also involving himself in sports & extracurriculars & a fraternity! gpa is bullshit, but that’s still pretty impressive if you ask me!) 

(edit: also!! the fact that both shane and steven said ryan was the one who was the most prepared in terms of banging out content should something like a pandemic occur before covid was even a thing!! let’s not sleep on that fact, wow!)

((edit pt. 2: also! my total bad for not appreciating his sense of humor! he’s such a funny guy! and so quick-witted! i think his sense of humor on its own is enough to demonstrate how very obviously Not Dumb he is!))

tl;dr: does ryan lean into the dumb jock archetype? sometimes, yes, i think he does. i think he thinks it’s funny to play dumb (and it is!). but is ryan actually dumb? no fuckin way! ryan is smart & talented & very hard-working & passionate & just an all-around great guy. put some respect on his name

[hiswhiteknight]

Unbelievably Outlandish– Part 1

Summary:  Before starting down a new crossroads, the Reader goes onto an adventure of literary traveling. Suddenly tossed into an unbelievable story that has swept the world, The Outlander Series itself. How will a twenty first century woman survive?

Note: I own no characters, except reader, clearly this is based off the lovely book series Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and tv show. This follows more the tv show, but it’s far from accurate. I’m going to try to get better with using less proper English, but who knows maybe I’ll get into Scottish slang.

Pairing: Jamie Fraser x Female Reader

Words: 1900

Warning: Angst, playfulness, cursing, slow start

It has been a long time coming, you haven’t been on a real vacation since you graduated high school. You joined the Marines immediately, went into training and university. With you, it was always work, work, work. For you, it made sense since your brother was a Navy Seal and you both didn’t really have family. And you didn’t stay anywhere long enough to make super close friends to vacation with. But this trip, this was for you and only you.

               You got your degrees in psychology, battle strategies, and world cultures, but your true love was literature. You made it this far living a pretty isolated life because of your brother and your books. You generally just loved to read, so after leaving the Marines, before you started to find your new pathway you said you were going to take this vacation around Europe stopping in different places described or lived in by some of your favorite authors. Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Sir Doyle, Thomas Malory, etc. And it’s been amazing seeing all these places that inspired your idols, imagining how your favorite fictional characters lived.

               And here, alas you were in Scotland. Not necessarily because one of your favorite fictional characters lived here or your favorite author grew up near here, but because of your brother.  He wanted you to explore where you both came from, he felt it would help understand life before you both lost your parents. Plus, he was a huge history buff – it was his hobby outside the Seals.

               He told you all about the battles and culture amongst the decades before us. He told you about our Irish and Scottish ancestors. He’d tell you, you can’t have a name like Y/N O’Mulligain and not think of the Irish.

               There was this nearby village you were passing through. An author named Diana Gabaldon wrote a romance novel based on this rock formation. Your old college roommate wrote a thesis paper about historically accurate romance novels and pop culture. You thought, what the hell, since your here minus well check it out.

               It was strange at first, wondering through this supposed magical place. People clearly flocked here for Outlander’s popularity. You more enjoyed watching the people. You sat against a tree, pulled out a sandwich from your bag, and watched the middle age woman touch these rocks like they were the rock hard abs of a character from Outlander. It was quite amusing. You liked to think your mother would be doing the same thing if she were still alive.

               “You must not be a fan, girly,” you look up to an older woman, clearly Scottish from her accent.

               Shaking your head, standing up to shake her hand, “Is it that obvious,” you laugh, “I’m Y/N. Just a tourist, watching other tourist. That obvious hugh?”

               “Mary, deary,” she grinned answering you with her name while look up at you. You were about five three, but this woman had to be four feet something tall because she was tiny, “Just by the way you’re gazing all around, a girl looking for her own adventure, not through someone else’s eyes or story, but of your own.”

               “You get all that from just looking at me,” you laughed, looking at her curiously. You loved people like this, authentic and wily – it was usually the case with old people.

               “It’s the glimmer in your eye,” she gripped your chin softly, shaking it.

               You laughed, smiling down at her, “May I ask you a question? Do you believe the tales of this place? I know the Scottish culture has a lot of tall tales and superstitions, but a story like that?”

               “Aaa,” she nodded her head, “A skeptic,” she nodded, “These people wandering about, they don’t really believe in the tale. But I believe in the magic of this place, it just doesn’t work from anyone. It’s for the special.”

               Watching her with amusement and skepticism, you laugh nodding your head, “I hope I didn’t offend you with my question.”

               “No, of course not dear – though I believe in the magic of this place. I mostly come to watch these woman fawning over these rocks. I like to bet on which woman will kiss one of those moldy old things.” You laughed so loud, she grinned up at you, “I am about to go home to my hunny Wallace, but you stay here for me? Those three woman over there,” you looked in the direction she was pointing, “I believe they are each going to lick one of these things.”

               Laughing again, you nodded, “I’ll keep a close eye on them. It was an absolute pleasure, ma’am,” she gripped your hand tightly for a second before releasing.

               You sat back, glancing at those women laughing, “And dear,” you look back up to her, “Most people will be leaving to their beds or finding a pub, but you should stay. While the sun is setting – this place will give you the most magical sights.”

               She truly intrigued you, “Of course ma’am, thank you again.”

               “Enjoy your adventure lass,” she grinned once more, walking off down the path.

                 She was right, people started to trickle out. Husbands getting annoyed or bored, ladies feeling exhausted, or people just fearsome of loss of light – they just left group by group. You were left alone eventually, starring at the sun sinking into the horizon. She was right again, Scotland was magical with sights. You took a mental picture of this moment – the smooth silence, the color the sky made, and just being one with this experience. Your life was never slow, silent, or peaceful. You had always lived in the rush of things. But here, you sat taking in this moment. You felt like you could stay in this moment forever.

               The sun eventually went down and you were met with near darkness – which exception of the full moon. You collected your things and got ready to leave. And it dawned on you – you came all this way and have never even touched these rocks. The book aside, these rocks have had legends and tales for centuries. You should respect the stories and culture. With one touch, maybe you’ll feel the stories, tales, and people that touched it before you.

               It felt odd to reach out and touch the stone. It was cool and surprising smooth. You laughed at the thought of all the tongues that touched this exact spot. And with a single breathe, everything grew black and all the air punched out of you.

               Next thing you felt was the slam of the ground and your oxygen returning to your lungs. The sun from the tree burned your eyes. And you heard it, gun shots. You thought you were having another Post-Traumatic Stress attack, but the second bang brought you to reality. And you started to run, your bag still on your back, darting through the trees. You heard shouts, but you were not taking the chance. Being in the military, you didn’t stand still to figure it out.

               Someone gripped your arm as you ran past them, pointing a sword right in your face, “Are you for real,” I yell at them.  

He had a musket pointing directly in your face. You stopped breathing; he was dressed like a 18th century soldier. Thoughts sped in your mind, could this be a reenactment? Could this be a sick joke? The bullet sounds shook you out of your thoughts, the man was about to speak. You grabbed his musket, yanking it towards your body. The gun went off as his head smashed into yours. He groaned, tripping backwards, and smashing against a tree. The light from the headbutt blasted on in your head.

The light started to blind through, and the forest became vivid again. The sound of bullet fire caused you jump out of it and look at the man unconscious before you. You had to be dreaming, everything was so real. The sound, the smell, the world around you. Where and when were you exactly? You got drug out of your thoughts as a bullet graved your arm. You gasped in pain and your body took flight again. On the run again, you slide down an embankment, meeting eye to eye with another redcoat.

               You gasped, “Holy hell,” you whispered looking at the man, “Forgive me,” you said out loud, as the man watched you, straightening up. You saw his insignia, “Captain?”

               “Jonathan Randall, Esquire – Eighth Dragoon of your majesty’s army, mistress,” he answered.

               Something inside you reminisced, that name was familiar. Watching him closely, as he made his micromovements - he was also watching you, like some predator to prey, “I seem to be in the wrong time, wrong place,” you awkwardly laughed.

               “It does seem that,” he paused to see if you’d introduce yourself.

               “I had someone taking me to some distant family and they tried to attack and rob me,” you tried to play the damsel in distress, “My brother always told me I was too trusting.”

               “Yes mistress, women are naïve sheep,” he tiptoed towards you, his hand resting on his sword, “Your accent,” he nodded towards you. You slowly started taking steps back, “I’m unfamiliar with it.”

               He didn’t believe you, clearly you were off your game. Maybe it’s because the blast you took a few minutes ago getting you to this point. It could be the fact that this was surreal, “I’m grew up in the colonies,” you shrugged it off, you could only imagine how far away your accent was to actually existing, “But my brother sent me to our parent’s home country after their passing.”

               You forgot the first rule of lying, keep it short with no unneeded details. His uniform was familiar, the military and your brother trained you well. You had inclined the year and it was clear the woods of Scotland were not safe with the Redcoats. This man was an enemy, not a gentleman of the era you’ve heard and learned so much about. You had to get away, find safety, and figure out what exactly is going on.

               You knew self-defense, hell you were trained well at the art of combat, but this man had weapons and the only thing you had was a backpack and no adequate footwear for a run in the woods, “You don’t dress like a lady,” he motioned towards your clothes. You stop breathing at this, “In fact, only traitorous women wear clothes such as this,” your back was against the hill behind you. His breath was on you. He gripped your neck tightly, “There is only one way to deal with a woman like yourself,” he went for his buckle.

               Your brother drilled into you about protection during moments like this. He trained you on what to do, it was natural. Headbutt to the nose, hike up of the knee, a tool – in your case a rock – to the head. And soon you were breathing heavily and looking at the Captain unconscious on the ground.

               The sound of the Redcoats was not far off, “Druid,” you heard. You were surprised that someone could sneak so close and not make any noise. This Scottish looking fellow reached out his hands, “Come now,” he said. Your only instinct was to take it for now. This man pulled you behind a tree.

               “What year is it,” you whispered to him.

               “1743,” he mumbled, trying to shush me, taking the time to give you a questionable look.

               “Pinch me,” you were hoping this to be a dream. It was a final test of your predicament. He looked at you strangely before helping with your request. He did, and you felt it and suddenly everything went black.

PART 2

[angst-fairygodmother]

Dancing the Night Away (Nathan Young x Reader)

A/N: so, dear readers, this first foray into Misfits is based on something I did while studying abroad in Ireland and spending a weekend touring Belfast and surrounding areas. Except reality ended less romantically... Also, I am writing this on the train and know exactly 0 things about mobile formatting, nor do I have a spell check and a word count, so I'm gonna try, but if I fuck it up, I'll fix that stuff Sunday night or Monday. Word Count: 993 Content Warnings: references to alcohol/drinking heavily, swearing

Nathan watched Y/N as she sashayed clumsily down the street, her arms thrown over an equally drunk Kelly and Alisha. (Even in their inebriation, both girls were careful to make sure Y/N's flannel - suspiciously identical to Nathan's missing one - stayed pulled down and Alisha's collar was turned up.)

"A night like this, man," he muttered, smiling fondly, "shame it has to end."

Curtis gave him a funny look and Simon flashed him an awkward smile but nodded in agreement, and Nathan realized he had spoken out loud. Before he could play it off properly, something caught Y/N's attention and she gasped, tilting her head to listen more carefully.

"Ooh, do you hear that?" She squealed, a wide grin splitting across her face and her eyes sparkling with delight.

"Wot?" Kelly asked, face scrunching in confusion.

"Someone's playing their music too loud," Alisha drawled. "So what?"

"That is not just any music, oh prettiest friend," Y/N countered, words matter-of-fact despite the slur in her voice, pointing a finger in Alisha's face. "That is music that it is actually illegal not to sing and dance to. And since we just got done with it all, we don't want to break the law again do we?"

She punctuated the question with a dramatic twirl, starting to shimmy to the beat, which was now loud enough and close enough that they could all hear it clearly. Nathan found himself transfixed by the sway of her hips, mouth falling slightly open as he imagined them moving that way while pressed against him.

"Just one look and I can hear a bell ring, one more look and I forget everything," Y/N belted out, gesturing dramatically as she continued to twirl. "Woah-oh-oh!"

Nathan reached out instinctively as if he could stop her from crashing into the bin that sat directly in her path, despite the fact that he and the other guys had been walking several paces behind the girls and Y/N had pulled even further ahead in her enthusiasm. He braced himself for the carnage. Instead, he watched, stunned and impressed as she turned the collision into an elaborate shuffling shimmy.

"Oh come on guys," she whined, finally noticing that she was the only one dancing or singing. "How are you all just walking along? Where is your rhythm, your spark, your jive?"

"The fook are you on about, Y/N?" Kelly snapped.

"Doesn't this music just mooove you?" She asked, more excited (and drunk) than they had ever seen her.

"No," Alisha said with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head. "This is old people music."

"Party poopers." Y/N turned to the noticeably silent boys. "What about you lot?"

"I don't dance," Curtis said bluntly.

Y/N stuck her tongue out at him petulantly.

"Are you okay, Y/N?" Simon asked nervously. "You're acting very strangely. I think you might have been drugged..."

"Oh sweet Simon," she laughed. "Always so concerned about all of us. I am high on the drug of life tonight!" She threw her hands into the air with a cheer.

"You're gonna get arrested for disturbin the peace and end up right back on community service," Kelly barked. "Keep your voice down."

Y/N flapped her hand dismissively at the blonde before planting her fists on her hips and turning to Nathan.

"I suppose you're going to have some excuse too?"

"Oh no," he drawled, eyes flickering over her form in the streetlight's glow, lingering where her hemline had ridden dangerously high from all her bouncing about. "I am feeling very moved."

He flashed her a dramatic wink and a smirk.

She giggled before wagging her finger at him playfully. "Don't you go getting any fresh ideas, Nathan Young."

"I am being nothing but a perfect gentleman. And I am hurt that you would even suggest otherwise."

The track changed, catching Y/N's attention once more as her face lit up, seemingly forgetting about him mid-flirtation, which left him feeling actually hurt, as she bopped and belted along.

Until suddenly she caught his hand and twirled herself into his arms, back pressed to his chest, nearly toppling them both as he startled. He found himself staring down at her as she gazed up at him, eyes wide and lips parted.

"Oh I wanna dance with somebody," the distant radio crooned, "with somebody who loves me..."

"Well hello there," he said, smiling.

"Hi," she answered breathlessly.

He chose to believe it was because of the way he was holding her close, arms wrapped snuggly around her waist and pressing her to him, and not because of the dancing. Just like he decided that the heated flush he could feel rising off her cheeks as he leaned in was on his account and not because of the ten - or was it twelve? - vodka-cranberries she'd had.

He forced his eyes away from hers to glance around, relieved to see that the others had gotten sick of the pair of them and kept walking.

Hungrily, he spun Y/N to face him and pressed his lips to hers, groaning as she detangled her fingers from his and buried them immediately in his hair instead. He ran his tongue over her lower lip, diving in greedily when she parted for him. A slow, teasing grind of his hips had her moaning and tugging on his curls to pull him closer.

"So love," he smirked, pulling away just enough to taunt her with the brush of his lips as he spoke. "Your place or mine?"

"They're the same place, you oaf," she laughed, making him pout.

"I was trying to be sexy."

"You are," she muttered, shaking her head ruefully. "The absolute sexiest."

"Oh really?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

"Shut up and take me home already." She rolled her eyes.

"As you command." He grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers back together, tugging her down the street eagerly, followed by the greatest hits of the 80s.

[xyzcekaden]

🚍 unsuspecting sunday afternoon 🚍

by me, xyzcekaden! a pokemon fanfic about when the one you hate to love is made for you

How capable is the human heart now?

fandom: pokemon, gen 3, advanced generation characters: ash, may, steven stone in a “supporting” role ship: advanceshipping genre: romance, angst themes: friendship, pre-relationship, slowburn, 6+1 if you squint setting: modern, hoenn, pokemon universe lite word count: 4.6k rating: T

read it below, on ffnet, or on ao3!

A/N (9.7.201): So this has been in my drafts since about April 2020 😅 Sure, I'm happy to finally share something new with the small yet strong advanceshipping fandom; but more than that, I'm relieved this document can no longer taunt me with its incompletion, hahaha. Do let me know what you think! Especially with this opening formatting; I'm trying something new. :)

Nothing sensitive in the fic, but the characters are all adults so it felt fitting to rate it T. Title taken from the song of the same name by the Backstreet Boys, and its lyrics/sentiments are interwoven throughout. The narrative is inspired and framed by monstaxnight's anonymous ask. If you recognise it, it doesn't belong to me. Thanks for reading!

~~~

fall for someone whose body would start fires

On a Saturday, May asked Ash to come over the next day. “I need a second opinion on something,” she had said. “It’ll be super quick.”

Of course, ‘super quick’ means Ash has enough time to set his switch up on May’s gigantic living room tv and play a few rounds of his favourite fighting video game while she gets ready for something or another in her room. He always acts like he has better things to do than help her with her sundry weekly ventures, but they both know he’d rather do ‘nothing’ with her than ‘something’ on his own somewhere else.

“Okay, Ash, are you ready?” May’s voice rings out. “Yeah,” he answers distractedly, strategically button smashing.

“So I kept the jeans from this last outfit, but this top I just got two weekends ago and haven’t had a chance to wear yet,” May narrates as she exits her room. “I had the, frankly, brilliant idea of using the jacket from Outfit 1 and pairing it with those heels you paid for for my birthday, et voila!”

The clacking of heels stops at the entrance of the hallway. “What do you think?’

Ash redirects his attention to May. His avatar dies on screen, just like his voice dies in his throat.

“You, um, you look great.”

In actuality, May looks smoking hot, but that’s not new for either of them. His best friend is supremely attractive, and he knew it and had no problem acknowledging it normally. This time, however, May doesn’t just look physically great, she also looks like she feels like she looks great. He doesn’t know how much sense that makes; but there is decidedly something different, and Ash feels a strange sense of dread in his chest.

May beams, taking the inarticulate response in stride. “Well that’s a winning endorsement if I ever heard one! Now let’s just hope Steven has as great of a reaction.” She turns to one of the many full-length mirrors stationed around her condo and reviews the outfit with a critical eye.

This brings Ash out from his stupor. “‘Steven’?” he repeats as he sits up on the couch. “You’re going on a date?”

“It’s not a date,” May replies in a tone that clearly conveys that she would not be opposed to it turning into a date. “My dad is having dinner with an old business partner, and the guy’s bringing his son along, so me and Max were invited, too. We were kinda friends back when we were young, but it’s not like we’ve kept in touch or anything. I just figured I should make a good second first-impression… You know, for my dad’s sake.”

Ash can tell the last bit was just something she’s telling herself to rationalise why she’s trying so hard, and it doesn’t sit right with him. He slinks back down on the couch dejectedly and halfheartedly starts a new game.

He finds himself wondering how often they hung out and how much whatever-that-number-was-teenth impressions were worth. He hopes it’s a lot.

~~~

fall for someone who always runs from his kiss

“… And I was right! They were roommates!” May boisterously ends her story, almost losing her ice cream to physics as she wildly gesticulates.

They’re just strolling around the park that’s honestly nowhere near either of their apartments; but over the years, it became their park anyway. They didn’t even set plans to hang out today, but it kinda just happened―a recurring theme in their friendship, admittedly.

For his part, Ash hides a smirk with a lick to his own ice cream, not bothering to say or do anything to protect her treat. If she hasn’t learned by now, she never would. “Oh my god, they were roommates,” he deadpans instead.

May sends him an unimpressed smirk and lightly smacks Ash’s shoulder. He yelps. She yanks her hand back as soon as she realises, but the damage is done.

He blinks down at the cold, vanilla, rainbow-sprinkled stain before raising his gaze to meet May’s equally stunned one.

They stare in silence for a moment, then May cracks a conciliatory grin. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry?”

He shrugs it off easily. “I probably deserved it,” he says, making peace with the knowledge that his previous unwillingness to protect her ice cream from any accidents is the undoubted origin for his current poor luck. He nods toward the path. “Shall we?”

“We passed by a restroom a little bit ago. We can clean you up,” May disagrees, tugging on his arm in the opposite direction.

“‘S fine,” he argues as he tries to continue walking forward.

“Ash, it’ll stain!” She tugs harder.

“It’ll be an improvement!” He’s overpowering her, but not as easily as he’d like.

“Why are you being such a butthead about this!?” She’s pulling with all her strength now, this being a matter of pride to her at this point.

“Come on, May!” Ash heaves one last time.

They tumble head over feet onto the ground, but that’s not the reason Ash feels like his world has turned upside down.

May’s body weighs comfortably on his, his hands naturally settle on her waist with hers on his chest, and his brown eyes bore into her blues. Their ice cream has fallen… somewhere, but Ash doesn’t concern himself with that considering this is the closest they’ve been since they first met.

They’ve been toeing this line since then, too.

I’m gonna do it, he thinks to himself.

He closes his eyes.

He leans in.

May scrambles away.

Ash sits up and blinks at the sight of May’s confused, furious eyes. “Ash, what are you doing?” Her voice croaks like her throat is dry. It makes him clear his own before dumbly responding, “I was trying to kiss you.”

“Why??” she asks, her voice strangled. He pushes himself off the ground warily as he watches her hold herself, bite her lip, shake her head in a panic; and somehow in all of that, he understands.

“I thought it wasn’t a date.” Ash tries so hard not to sound accusatory, but her wince in response proves it didn’t work. It also proves his fear correct.

He turns, hiding as if the people walking by could discern his transgression and shame by the sight of his face alone. Besides, his mind can conjure up an image of her running away just fine on its own.

Ash notices the remnants of their impromptu outing splattered on the ground near his feet. He picks up what he can and stomps over to the nearest trash bin, throwing it in as hard as he can to let out some of his frustration.

He hopes he hasn’t gone and screwed everything up.

~~~

fall for someone whose lips belong to someone else

They don’t talk about it, and then it’s too late.

“Ash, this is Steven,” she tells him softly, as if it could make up for how it feels like the sight of her arms wrapped around the guy’s torso and his arm casually thrown over her shoulder assaults him every time he blinks.

“Steven Stone. It’s great to finally meet you. May speaks of you highly,” Steven introduces with a dignified air. Not pompous, no; he is just someone who was raised being told that he was going to do important things and who happened to believe it.

They shake hands, and Ash’s fingers feel cold, a marked contrast to how there’s something in his chest that’s burning.

Inside the restaurant, the waitress asks if a table is okay, and no one asks for a booth instead. In his seat, Ash is neither directly in between nor directly across from the newly-established couple, and he wonders if this is where all his luck went into.

Lunch goes better than expected.

Ash was prepared to hate the guy, but what is there to hate? Steven has a decent sense of humour, loves pokemon but loves rocks even more, and is COO of the biggest enterprise in Hoenn. He is a safe, sensible choice. This guy isn’t going to break May’s heart.

As the meal winds down, Steven offers to pay for everyone; but Ash still has his pride. In the end, he manages to negotiate paying for just his own plate and drink, knowing he has no right to battle for the privilege of paying for May’s.

He wouldn’t even do so on a typical occasion anyway; but as far as Ash is concerned, Steven’s presence throws all of the friends’ typical rules of engagement out the window.

They say goodbye and part ways in front of the restaurant.

A few steps later, Ash snaps his fingers as he recalls something. He turns around to remind May of their movie plans in a few days, and he is met with the sight of the couple sharing a sweet kiss on the corner while waiting for the light to change.

Steven could never break May’s heart, but he sure can break Ash’s.

Ash turns back and continues walking. He hopes May can remember on her own.

~~~

fall for someone whose touch is way too much

May insists that nothing has changed between them, but clearly something has because Ash doesn’t remember ever being so anxious about her proximity before.

He had always been aware of her, though. Always. When your first meeting is saving the other from getting run over by a tour bus, you quickly develop the habit of keeping track of where the person is at all times.

Between his athleticism and her natural proclivity towards tactileness, casual physical exchanges quickly became their norm: hugs and high fives, friendly elbows in the rib after a good joke and sharing a blanket as they watch a movie, (lingering touches on the shoulder and holding hands even after they’ve escaped a crowd… or did he make those up?).

They were controlled yet unmistakably affectionate markers of their relationship.

But now?

When she shifts one centimetre closer to him in line at the mall food court, he accidentally overpays by fifty pokeyen out of distraction. When she grabs his fork out of his hand to try a piece of his takoyaki, he jerks so hard at the contact that he spills his soft drink all over the table. When she pats him dry using flimsy food court napkins with a joke about ice cream in her voice and fondness in her eyes, he needs to claim a rapid-onset fever in order to give himself an excuse to cut their lunch short immediately.

These innocent touches have been an ever-present facet of their friendship since basically the beginning; and even when he realised he was in love, they hadn’t affected him like this.

Things are different now, despite what she says.

Well, maybe not things; maybe just him.

He had allowed himself to revel in their familiar touches when she was single because he could, because there was no one else that she was supposed to be able to make feel like this. Even if the feeling wasn’t meant for him, it wasn’t meant for anyone else either.

But now.

He can’t, in good conscience, allow his heart to rush and his smile to form and his hand to squeeze back. It wouldn’t be fair to May, not when she’s trusting him with her friendship and he’s taking more from her than that.

Even though he’d like nothing else than to keep that closeness, to go back to how it was between them before, this is the way it has to be now. He just hopes she can understand.

~~~

fall for someone he doesn’t want to feel for

On sleepless nights, he wonders when.

He knows the who, what, why, and how; but the when eludes him.

...

They were both breathing heavy, attention focused on the spot of the road where the girl would have flattened like a pancake if it weren’t for his quick reflexes and hero complex.

The clapping of a few passers-by snapped them out of their shock and into the realisation that he still had her protectively cradled to his chest.

They quickly broke apart, and he took the time to wave off the praise from the gathered crowd while she checked her purse to see if everything was inside.

“You got everything?” he asked after people’s attentions finally turned back towards their own lives.

“Yeah, I do,” the girl replied, and her voice was rather cheery considering the ordeal she just survived. (He would later learn that was her default.)

“Great,” he said, genuine yet awkward.

They continued staring at each other. The adrenaline from their brush with danger hadn’t worn off yet; his heart was still beating very fast.

“So, um, have a good day,” he bade after it was clear neither of them had anything more to say. He made to return to his errands, but a hand on his arm stopped him.

“You saved my life, and you’re just gonna walk away?” she asked incredulously.

He blinked at her. “I’ll be honest; I wasn’t aware there was an after-action protocol for this sort of situation.”

She was incredulous for only a second before she giggled at him. “The least I can do is buy you lunch to say ‘thank you.’”

“Well, I’ve never turned down a free meal,” he accepts with a grin.

She giggled again then stuck out her hand. “My name’s May.”

“Ash.”

...

No, it wasn’t then. Nor was it during the meal they shared, nor at the bar where they happened to see each other that weekend, nor while they were escaping from the bar fight that she accidentally instigated that night.

...

“Is this going to become a running gag? Will I have to constantly be saving you from trouble you unintentionally get yourself into?” Ash panted after he directed her to duck into a nearby alley.

“Hey, as far as I’m concerned, this automatically makes me the most interesting friend you’ve got,” May countered.

He took one extra second to check no one was following them then cut a glance at her. “I don’t know about you, but most of my friends have my number.”

She rolled her eyes with a smile. “Smooth.” They switched phones and exchanged numbers.

“Better memorize that by heart,” he jested as he handed her her phone back. “Don’t wanna waste your one phone call at the station just because you mixed up the last two digits by accident.”

“If the next time you hear from me is because I went and got myself arrested, just leave me to rot. I must have earned it,” she smirked.

...

Luckily, the next time one of them reached out to the other wasn’t to bail the former out of jail. May invited him to a pool party for her birthday, where he handily won a water balloon fight and impressed everyone by fixing the grill for their barbeque. Their friendship continued to progress naturally: movie nights that turned into impromptu sleepovers, brunches that turned into walks around town. Several shopping trips and video games and hikes later, they were each other’s best friends. It was basically inevitable.

So when? When would he have had the chance to fall in love with her?

...

“Hello?”

“Ash, you picked up!” she sounded surprised―happy, but surprised―and he winced. He knew he’d been blowing her off a little more often lately, but making her think he’d turn down her phone call?

“Heh, yeah, sorry about that,” he said, betting on the hope that she somehow implicitly understood everything he was apologising for. “Is everything okay?”

For an extended second, she was quiet, then she said, “I need to tell you something.”

His hackles rose, and he started grabbing his keys and putting on his shoes. Maybe she finally ended up in jail. “Where are you? I can be there in ten minutes, maybe twenty with traffic―”

She giggled, and he paused. That was her nervous giggle. “May?” he asked, still wary but not about to race out of his house with only his boxers on.

“No! No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just… Steven told me he loves me.”

His breath left his lungs.

“And I told him I love him back,” she continued.

All the adrenaline that had surged through his body only moments before completely left him at her words, and his limbs locked up instead. He felt cold.

“Hello?”

He didn’t even realise he had sunk to his knees until he meant to take a step back towards the couch. He just slumped onto his butt. “That’s―” He had to clear his throat. “That’s gotta be recent.”

He could slap himself. He sounded as dead as he felt. He tried again: “I mean, that’s great news, May! He’s a lucky guy. Yeah.”

She sighed with relief. Could Steven tell what her sighs meant over the phone? ”I’m the lucky one, I think,” she said happily, and that was his last straw.

“Heh, yeah, well,” he sputtered out, just to have something to say. “Listen, since you’re not in danger or anything, uh, you actually caught me at a bad time, so I gotta go. I’ll catch you later, yeah?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“Wait, Ash! Before you go!”

He held back a sigh. “What’s up, May?”

“It’s just… You’re right; it is recent. You’re actually the first person I told.”

“I’m honoured.” He couldn’t help the sarcasm that spilled out, but he backtracked quickly. “I mean it. Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course, Ash; I tell you everything. At this point, it’s like I have to; nothing would ever feel real otherwise.”

He shut his eyes. He really couldn’t take this anymore. “I know what you mean. Same here.”

She made a cute sound, a quiet little ‘hmm,’ and that was when the first tear spilled out. “Alright, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’ll text you later!!” she promised.

“Later,” he repeated, both an echo and a goodbye; and finally, blissfully, he ended the call.

...

When, when, when?!

That was supposed to be one of the sweetest moments of her young adult life, and she called on him―trusted him, even―to be happy for her. When did he get to the point where he couldn’t even do that? Instead, he recalls it now as he struggles to fall asleep, playing the memory at half-speed over and over again in his imagination, and all he does is hope.

He desperately hopes it’ll stop hurting so much.

~~~

fall for someone with the sweetest rebel heart

When he finds out he didn’t get the promotion he was vying for at work, there’s no one else’s comfort he sought but May’s.

“I’m sorry that happened, Ash,” May soothes as she rubs rhythmic circles into Ash’s back. They’re in her condo, noticeably nicer maintained than Ash’s flat, side by side on the sofa. It is the first time he’s let her touch him in weeks, and he really needs it. “At least now they know you’re interested? It might be your turn next time.”

Ash snorts but nods anyway. He’s usually the type to look at the bright side, but it would be an understatement to say that he is simply disappointed. After all the L’s he’s been taking in his personal life, he had been hoping at least something would go his way professionally.

May continues, “Just make sure not to let this setback actually set you back. Keep putting your best foot forward, and I know you’ll win those guys over… just like you did with me!” She ends with a wink, trying her hardest to inject some levity into the situation.

Just like that, Ash’s mood sours even more. “You can’t say that to me, May,” he angrily replies as he shuffles out of her hold.

“What are you talking about?” she pouts as she feebly tries to get him to lay back against the couch so that the cold air can’t get under the blanket they are sharing.

“I didn’t ‘win you over,’ clearly.” He shrugs off her touch and scoots away. He has spent so long trying to keep his bitterness inside, but he doesn’t have the emotional wherewithal to regulate himself right now. He’s tired of trying to get over things that make him upset.

May frowns, the furrow between her brow getting deeper as she sits up straight on the sofa. “Ash, why are you talking like that? I meant, like, how we became friends, obviously. I didn’t grow to love you by accident.”

Ash stands then, balling the blanket up and throwing it back on the couch. “I bet Steven wouldn’t be too happy to hear you say that.”

She follows suit, her voice elevating in volume as if to match. “I bet Steven wouldn’t appreciate being judged by someone who’s only met him once―despite my efforts otherwise, might I add.”

“I bet Steven would love to hear his girlfriend say she loves another guy.”

“I bet Steven isn’t dumb enough to think I can’t love you both.”

“You don’t love me, May!” Ash finally explodes.

He has never raised his voice like this, not to her, but he’s tired. He’s tired of loving someone he can’t have, he’s tired of hating himself for it, and he’s tired of the guilt when he takes it out on her despite all his attempts not to.

She looks like she’s torn between yelling right back or kicking him out; and before she could make up her mind, he collects himself enough so he could bring his voice down. He states simply, “Not the way you love Steven.” Not the way I love you.

He doesn’t say it, but he can tell she hears it anyway. He clears his throat and turns around, trying to hide without running away. “Hearts don’t work like that,” he murmurs into the room.

He makes to leave, but May’s hand on his shoulder stops him. She forcibly turns him back to face her, and Ash is shocked at the determined set to her face. Her eyes, bluer than a water stone and twice as powerful, hold him as captive as they always have. “You listen to me, Ash Ketchum.” Her tone brokers no argument. “If you thought for a second that I stopped loving you because I fell in love with Steven, you clearly underestimated what my heart is capable of.”

Her grip on him tightens, as if making sure he is still with her in the moment. “It’s big enough for the both of you; and if that’s not the way hearts are supposed to work, then I’ll just be the exception that proves the rule.”

She pulls him into a hug then, like locking that promise between them, and he dares let himself hope she means that.

~~~

fall for someone whose heart needs sewing up

Ash wasn’t expecting a knock on his door this late at night, and he definitely wasn’t expecting to see a beautifully made up May Maple standing in the hallway, mascara-tinged tears and runny nose notwithstanding.

"Steven is moving to Alola to support Devon Corp’s expansion," is all she said, but even that much is hard to make out through her watery voice.

The news sinks in, and Ash’s heart feels like someone moved it three centimetres to the left: still there, still functional, but not at all where he needs it to be.

"You’ve always talked about going to Alola," is the only way he could respond, thinking of all the times they’ve imagined taking a week off and vacationing in the tropical region. He won’t, can’t let himself think about anything else or else he’d break down.

In his heartbreak, he cannot recognise May's tears, which are too raw and too loud to be that of someone bearing regrettable news. These are the tears of a confused, broken heart.

"Ash, I'm not going," she sniffles, still stiffly standing outside his door. "He asked me not to."

Finally understanding that he misunderstood, Ash is even more disoriented than he was before. "Why would he do that?" he asks, obviously still trying to wrap his mind around what the hell was happening.

"I don’t know!" May yells while clenching her fists and stomping a high-heeled foot. It is the most movement she's made since he opened the door. "I demanded a reason, and he spewed nonsense at me! He said―" and she stops. Her whole body slumps back into stillness but without the stiffness of before. She continues quietly, "He said he didn’t want to see what I’d look like with my heart so far outside of my chest," like a guilty confession. Ash is at once reminded of their almost-fight a month ago, and he still isn’t sure what this all means.

He almost asks, Why wouldn’t he believe your heart was right where you were? or How capable is the human heart now? but he doesn’t.

Instead, he finally welcomes May inside. He sits her on the couch and helps her take off her heels before she wraps herself up in the blanket he keeps there―a blanket he only has, he remembers, because when she first visited his apartment, she insisted his couch needed one. She doesn’t just hold the blanket around her shoulders; she hides her entire frame within its folds. He merely sits on the couch next to the lump and places a solitary hand on top, unsure where it was resting yet hoping it is providing comfort nevertheless.

He wonders if May ever let Steven see her like this, the way she needs to shut out all stimuli as if to physically recreate her darkest moments. He wonders why he loves that she does that, even though it causes him so much selfish pain to be close enough to see her like this but shut out from her healing.

"I don’t think I have a boyfriend anymore," May says at length, voice dampened by the space and fabric between them.

It would have been the happiest news of Ash’s adult life if it weren’t for the extreme melancholy that laced her tone as she said it out loud.

He squeezes his hand into a fist on top of the blanket, his signal that he’d like to hug her if he could.

"I would have missed you if you left." Ash gives a nonsequitur-confession in response. May burrows deeper into the blankets and says nothing.

Instead, she reaches a hand out from a heretofore unseen opening in the fabric and holds on to his other hand tightly.

Ash stares at her slender knuckles, made paler from her firm grasp, and stops hoping.

He gently plies her fingers from his palm and tries not to feel guilty about the shocked, embarrassed way the hand pulls back into the blanket as he leaves her there.

The love of his life needs compassion right now. This is not his opportunity to sweep her off her feet; this is not his second chance.

He returns from the bedroom, settles back into his place on the couch, and forces May out of the blanket.

~~~

May jerks her head up, shocked and angry and still embarrassed from her rejected attempt to seek Ash’s comfort, but she is quickly mollified into confusion. The expected sight of Ash’s lit up form in his lit up living room ends up being no different from the blackness from which she thought she was rudely taken.

It is so dark under the extra, larger blanket that she can’t even see Ash’s nose even though she can sense his head is mere inches from hers.

His hands find hers in the darkness and squeeze. Relief flashes through her as she finally surrenders to the deep, thick slice of heartbreak.

May wants to see his face, but she settles for a hug.

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Hi I would love it if you wrote a fic on Harry and Benny finding out about the other’s relationship with Beth

All Hope and No Pawns

Rating: T Word Count: 1382

Summary: A missing scene from Benny's apartment after the phone call to Beth in Moscow.

“Go beat him,” Benny urges.

When he drops the receiver back into its cradle, he unconsciously continues to grip it. His adrenaline’s spiked, his head’s lowered—for all his corporeal clues, it might be him about to face Borgov. There’s even a chessboard before him, styled with the final permutation he and the boys teased out from Beth and Borgov’s positions at the time of adjournment. Only so many ways this can go now. Damn, he just wishes he could watch it happen.

With a final squeeze, he releases the phone and steps away, rubbing a hand thoughtfully across his chin. He’s still uncomfortable moving too far from the phone. Crazy, since it could be hours before the match is decided. As Benny emerges from the depths of his own thoughts, he can hear the others, talking lowly and pacing while the excitement of blurting strategy down the line to Beth burns through them. It won’t last; soon, they’ll be crashing while he makes himself yet another cup of coffee, determined to stay awake. Another of today’s senseless notions: that his ability to remain sharp will somehow help Beth do the same.

He returns. He resets the board and plays out one possibility, all the way through to the fallen king. It makes him feel better. To drown out a skeptical note in Matt’s voice behind him, Benny collects the pieces in his hand and rolls them around, listening to the wood knock. He puts them in formation and plays through another version, searching the arrangement for gaps and his brain for the memory of Beth’s instincts. During their time together, starting with training and turning into… well, she learned to beat him faster and more soundly, but he learned a thing or two as well. Although the way Beth plays is still opaque and elusive, Benny has a sort of feel for it. He studies the board and tries to grip that old conviction of his—she sees things the same way he does.

“Will she call herself, do you think?” Hilton asks, tone as buoyant as ever.

“No,” Benny sighs. He turns away from the board. “She’ll be swarmed when it’s over.”

He doesn’t specify an outcome. The fucking Soviet players make him superstitious.

“She’ll have that asshole from the State Department with her too,” Mike says. “He’ll keep her on a short leash.”

“He’ll try,” Benny counters, provoking chuckles.

“Well, maybe Townes’ll stay between them,” Matt theorizes. “He managed it this morning.”

“Maybe Mr. State Department thought they were doing something he would’ve blushed to interrupt,” Hilton says.

“Beth and Townes?” Benny asks scornfully.

There’s no chance. He and Townes spoke before Townes flew out there, when he agreed to smooth the way for Benny’s call to get through without interception by Beth’s official government handler. Townes didn’t try to pull any bullshit territoriality where Beth was concerned—and he didn’t flinch when Benny did. (He hadn’t meant to, but a whole string of things had left his mouth as he verbally worked through his tips and encouragements for Beth, immediately afterwards hoping that Townes wouldn’t pass any of it on.)

“Aren’t they… close?”

“We shouldn’t be talking about them like this,” Harry says firmly. “Especially Beth.”

“If either of them has feelings for the other, it’s Beth,” Mike says.

“It’s true,” Matt adds, backing his brother up. “We were there when they met, more or less. She had such a crush on him.”

Benny frowns.

“Guys,” Harry pleads.

“Nobody’s saying anything against either of them! But don’t you think Townes is her type?”

“No.” Benny and Harry speak the same adamant syllable at the same moment.

Benny’s never wanted attention less than he does in the seconds immediately following, when the others’ eyes bounce back and forth between him and Harry. He twitches his wrist so his bracelet slides around it.

“Early lunch?” Matt tactfully proposes.

The rest of them mumble their assent and file towards the door, grabbing hats and jackets, stomping feet into shoes. Even Harry takes a couple steps. Just a couple.

“Are you coming?” he asks.

“Absolutely not,” Benny tells him, holding his ground.

Harry turns and nods to Mike, relieving him of the task of holding the door open. It’s a strange jerk of the chin, almost mournful, like he’s signaling to someone to go on ahead to the funeral reception while he lingers by the grave as the diggers fill it in. Now, Benny doesn’t have any plans to put this guy six feet under, but the implications of Harry having such a ready opinion on the sort of man Beth goes for aren’t exactly the kind to make Benny leap joyfully around his apartment. He exhales steadily from his nose.

“I heard you were training her,” he begins when they’re alone.

Harry—to his credit—doesn’t cower. He straightens his back and faces Benny directly.

“For a little while. Of course, she’d eclipsed me before we ever began, but I’d read more books.” He laughs softly to himself. “Not many more. A few.”

“I told Beth she needed a more mature trainer to get her ready for Paris.” Benny cocks his head as his teeth grind together. “Obviously, your time with her was plenty mature.”

“That’s not any of your business.”

Where Benny would keep his gaze trained on his (he hesitates to use the word ‘rival’) guest as things teeter between polite and heated, Harry looks away. It’s unnerving, actually, how he glances calmly around the apartment like a prospective renter. Must be seeing the space they’ve all been sequestered in for hours with fresh eyes.

“She’s been here,” he concludes.

“After Ohio.”

“Ah. After she beat you. And when she got here, I’m sure she kept beating you.” He doesn’t seem to mean it maliciously, so Benny doesn’t interject. “She beat me a lot too. It made her frustrated with me. I got over that. Mostly.”

“I’m not even close. To getting over it,” Benny clarifies.

He meets the stare of Harry’s round eyes with his hands on his hips and wonders if he’s just put himself in a bad position, presented a vulnerability to be exploited. Harry could miss it, like he missed his chance to take the Lexington final back from Beth when she castled. But then, Harry could also be more sensitive to human interactions than he is to astute pawn placement.

“That makes sense,” Harry allows. “You two are much more evenly matched.”

So, he is aware that they’re not really talking about chess.

“What was your mistake?” Benny surprises himself by asking. Harry looks surprised too, but Benny shrugs.

“It was a… visualization problem. I never knew what was coming with her and gave my own plan away too early. Do you love her?”

Benny places a hand on the table to anchor himself against the blunt question. Jesus, Harry does have an issue with subtlety.

“Yeah,” he admits after a solid minute. “I might.”

“Does she love you?”

Blow after blow with this guy, trying to take him to the canvas like he’s Muhammad Ali! Best Benny can guess, it’s a petty hit from someone who knows he’s already lost. Harry doesn’t want Beth because he knows he’s not gonna get her, but his question has this insulting presupposition—there’s just something in his tone that assumes a certain answer. It’s a last wild swing at the man who could still have a shot at the happiness Harry wanted for himself. Though Benny watches him warily, there’s nothing he can do, no way to regain his mystery. They’ve circled each other and determined the major weaknesses.

Benny shakes his head.

“That’s the one thing I don’t know.”

Harry regards him too long, then shrugs his coat on. He climbs the stairs unhurriedly and goes out after Hilton and the other members of Beth’s emergency chess contingent. A group of fools who are probably deceiving themselves to think they’re providing her with anything she couldn’t figure out on her own. She’s exceptional. She’s beat them all before; that’s why it’s her over there in Moscow and not one of them. So many, many invariable miles and possible outcomes from here.

Benny makes a fresh pot of coffee and takes a seat by the phone.

[nellied-reviews]

Cigarette Candy Re-listen

Okay, it’s episode 5 of my epic Wolf 359 re-listen, and that can only mean one thing: 

Cigarette Candy

In which Eiffel is ill, Minkowski and Hera are out of the picture and I have way too many thoughts about how Hilbert is totally not making Eiffel sick. Nuh-uh.

Where do I even begin with this episode?

Maybe I'll start with the obvious: Cigarette Candy is a very different episode on a re-listen. It was a sinister, tense episode to begin with, sure. But knowing that Hilbert really has been making Eiffel sick adds a whole layer of uncertainty, for me at least.

Because what is the point? Largely, I think it's an episode about whether or not Hilbert can be trusted. We heard last episode, after all, that the good doctor was  willing to leave Eiffel to die in space. It's natural that we might now wonder where his loyalties lie. And so we get this, an episode that teases us with the idea that Hilbert might, in fact, be a bad guy. And of course, the answer we are left with, at the end of the episode, is that no, Hilbert’s creepy and weird and a million kinds of unethical, but ultimately he is one of the good guys.

It's a brilliant misdirect, and it relies entirely on us misunderstanding what an evil Hilbert would look like. We, like Eiffel, assume that Hilbert, if he were actually evil, would be the archetypical mad scientist. And mad scientists aren't generally subtle. They certainly don't do regular things like help Communications Officers overcome the flu. And so we assume, since Hilbert isn't cartoonish in his villainy, and does, ultimately, help Eiffel, that he mustn't be a villain at all. We're wrong, of course. The episode doesn't give that away, though. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Because as Cigarette Candy starts, it's not immediately clear that that's where this is all going. Instead, we tune in to a weirdly happy Eiffel, who claims he's trying a new, more optimistic approach to life. It's odd, and doesn't exactly bode well, especially with the occasional, gross coughing that Eiffel insists is no big deal. But it still feels like a light-hearted, comedy set-up. And hey, at least Hilbert seems to be doing something helpful, this time, right?

Of course, it's worth mentioning that Hilbert's "help" involves the titular cigarette candy, which are what Eiffel calls his nicotine lozenges. These, we quickly learn, are the reason for Eiffel's new, sunny outlook on life. They're sugary, they're soothing and - oh, yeah - they taste like "day-old ashtray". Which... eww!  But apparently Eiffel prefers that to the default cinnamon? Enough that he's consuming them in unwise quantities? I don't know, it certainly wouldn't be my choice. But you do you, Eiffel.

In any case, it leaves us in this weird situation where Hilbert is actually in Eiffel's good books, which is fun to listen to, until the doctor suddenly lets slip that hey, Eiffel, it's strange how you aren't experiencing any myalgia... yet.

It's super unsubtle, and part of me really wants to believe that Hilbert did it on purpose, just to troll Eiffel. "English such inelegant cudgel of a language", my ass. I see you there, Doc.

Funny as it is, though, it also marks the point at which the episode takes a sharp U-turn into psychological and medical horror, as Eiffel slowly begins to suspect that Hilbert has been poisoning him. Things only get worse when Eiffel faints and is taken to sickbay, and when Hilbert admits that he's not really a proper doctor, bound by all of those pesky ethics, it's downright chilling.

One phrase in particular, I think, tells us everything we need to know about Alexander Hilbert's motivations: "Always saw Hippocratic Oath as leaving one with a very limited scope. True science mustn't be so severely hindered." Hilbert, in the end, is all about the science, and he'll break the rules to get results, if needs be. It's a single-minded, pragmatic focus that we’ll see from the doctor over and over again as the show wears on. Here, then, although we don't know it yet, we're actually getting our first proper insight into what makes Dr. Hilbert tick. Pretty neat.

That said, on a first listen-through, before we learn about Decima, it just sounds like your standard mad scientist rant. It's followed up by some more mad scientist antics too, as Hilbert confines Eiffel to sickbay, ties him up and claims total authority over Eiffel's schedule, cutting him off completely from Hera and Minkowski. It's textbook nefarious, and so it sets Hilbert up perfectly as a properly sinister, if slightly cliché villain.

Of course, it's also just about plausible. We can just about see how confining Eiffel might help him get better soon, and we can just about see that he's not fit to be working, and we can just about see how a lack of distractions might be helpful. Add Eiffel's potential delusions into the mix, and we can see how the whole business could just be a misunderstanding, a product of Eiffel's fever and Hilbert’s lack of people skills. We can't 100% write the doctor off as a villain - and so the episode manages to maintain the tension, all the way through the back end of the episode. Is Hilbert really as evil as he seems? Or is Eiffel imagining it all? 

It's at this point that the first season's log format works in our favour, because if we're only hearing the personal logs of Douglas Eiffel, we're only getting the story from one very limited, potentially delusional point of view. We aren't getting Minkowski or Hera's more balanced perspectives, and so the suspense is preserved - is Hilbert trustworthy? We can't know. It's the sort of thing the show won't be able to do as easily in later seasons, at least not without finding a plot-related reason to side-line the other, more objective characters. Here, though, the nature of Eiffel's logs creates a more claustrophobic, tense bottle episode, where we can never quite be sure what's going on.

The absence of Hera and Minkowski is also ominous in and of itself. The pause after Eiffel calls out to Hera and she doesn't answer, in particular, is really eerie, at least for me. I don't know, I guess I'm just used to Hera being there?  It certainly cranks up the tension, especially when Hilbert foils Eiffel's attempt to contact Minkowski, and even more so when he reveals that he also knows that Eiffel hasn't been taking his drugs - that's why he's been giving him them intravenously.

And look, I know we've said that Hilbert isn't bound by the Hippocratic Oath. Being shady and unethical's kind of his thing. But can we just stop and appreciate just how messed up it is to drug Eiffel like this? It's not even like it's the first time this has happened, either. Remember the halothane gas? What we're seeing, in that light, looks more like an emerging pattern - a pattern of incidents where people are messed with, physically or psychologically, without their consent.

It's something we'll see again and again, throughout Wolf 359, and more often that not, it's linked less to individuals like Hilbert, and more to Goddard Futuristics, and their general ethos of dehumanising callousness. Hilbert is possibly evil, sure. But he's backed up by a whole, sucky-ass corporation, who have created an environment where consent - and all of the respect for human dignity and life that that implies - is not encouraged or valued. It's a gross, corporate attitude that is linked directly to moments like this, where Eiffel can be drugged and held captive against his will precisely because Hilbert knows there will be no official consequences for it. Goddard Futuristics do not care about human minds or bodies. They just care about the profits. It's not the same thing that drives Hilbert, as a character. But it aligns with his goals. Hilbert wants answers. Goddard wants money. Neither care much for actual humans.

That's actually one of the most frightening things about this episode - that, and the recording that Eiffel makes for Minkowski, urging her not to trust Hilbert once he's dead, which is funny, in a dark sort of way, until you think about Lovelace's old crew, and how Dr. Hilbert - sorry, Dr. Selberg - picked them off, one by one. That's essentially the exact same scenario that Eiffel's imagining here, when he worries about Hilbert going after Minkowski next, so perhaps he's not too far off the mark. Yikes.

Still, all is well in the end, as Hilbert reveals that Eiffel is cured! The knife was only for cutting Eiffel's restraints - way to not terrify your patient, doc! - and now Eiffel is cleared for duty, effective immediately. Phew!

It's a relief, for Eiffel and for us, and it's very easy to just see it as a heart-warming ending. The mad scientist turns out to be a good guy after all, Eiffel learns a lesson about judging people, and everyone goes back to their routine. Crisis averted. The episode asks, "Can Hilbert be trusted?" The ending tells us that he can. Case closed.

Only it's not that simple, is it? For one, Hilbert admits that Eiffel was infected with a tropical flu from his lab; knowing how much we now know, how likely is it that that "tropical flu" was actually Decima, or somehow Decima-related? In this respect, Hilbert's trustworthiness is actually far from established.

Secondly, though, and perhaps more interestingly, there's also the idea that Hilbert might have genuinely cured Eiffel, but might still be up to no good. A dead Eiffel, after all, means no more Decima research, and that would be a disaster for Hilbert. Keeping the crew alive and healthy is in Hilbert's best interests, and so, to a degree, he is actually trustworthy, or at least reliable. In fact, Hilbert is probably one of the most reliable characters in the series, if only because he can always be trusted to protect his own interests. Unlike the others, whose goals sometimes shift, and whose actions are often determined by their emotions or their underlying characters, Hilbert almost never acts in such a way as to compromise his goals and his work. His focus is single-minded, and it makes him very, very reliable - trustworthy, almost. But good? Ethical? Not so much. It's at best a parody of integrity, a twisted, brutal code that doesn’t care much for other people.

The story, I think, is more interesting for it. Instead of a story about how Hilbert secretly has a heart of gold, we get a more unsettling story about how Hilbert can be relied on, but only to a certain extent. Instead of a story about a good person being good, it's the story of a bad person doing good - and that is infinitely more compelling.

And of course, all this is only really obvious in hindsight. Listening to it blind, we get an episode that is funny, tense and just about the right kind of creepy. It's simultaneously the darkest thing the show has done so far, an excellent black-humour-filled bottle episode and (almost) a heart-warming tale. To have that and all the bonus, retrospective Hilbert characterisation?

*shakes my head*

This episode, man.

 Miscellaneous thoughts:

 I said already but cigarette candy sounds so gross!

Zach Valenti does such a good job of sounding properly, horribly ill throughout this whole episode

"Officer Eiffel, you look terrible." Aww, no need to sugar-coat it, doc!

"You're not making me sick, are you?" "What possible reason could there be for doing that?"  *whistles innocently*

Ugh when Hilbert says "Good night!" like that :O

Heh, the ticking clock in the background when Hilbert gets the kife out is a nice little touch

"Bedside manner is like anaesthetic. It just gets in way of what needs to be done."

[silverineontherun]

I don't know what you mean exactly when you say "Keith prompts" but I have always had a soft spot for royal Keith or knight Keith (*-*) Anyway, HB to this beautiful boy, so precious, must protect him at all costs ♡

As usual, I don’t provide enough info, sorry 😂 I intended to write small pieces for Keith if people asked for something specific! Now, for Knight Keith, I have a snippet of a discarded fic I wrote a while ago, Knight Lance x Knight Keith. This was the part that inspired the whole thing, actually, I hope you like it!

***

Snippet from “The Heart of the Lotus” (Klance, Medieval/Fantasy AU, discontinued)

Sir Lance remembers to shut his mouth on time, clearing his throat and commanding his men to descend from their horses and form in front of the first set of stairs that lead to the entrance, where a line of soldiers and courtiers dressed in solid black and red are already waiting for them.

He checks on his company and corroborates they are standing in clean formation just as instructed, to his utmost relief. Proud, he feels his chest swelling as Coran hurries back to the princess’ carriage to help her descend from it. Lance walks in front of his people instead, facing the Thayserians who look at them like hawks. They look like servants and guards, and Lance is glad they are not being received directly by the king himself, feeling uncomfortable under his sweaty clothes. The trip was long and the entire contingent needs to refresh before the anticipated meeting…

That’s when, suddenly, the local soldiers break their formation in two, leaving some space right in the middle. The servants hurry to the sides, keeping their heads low, and a figure appears from behind them and walks resolutely to Lance’s encounter. 

He is dressed in black from head to toe, from his shiny boots to his elegant silk robe, a garment Lance hasn’t seen before, decorated in soft grey patterns that surround his wide torso like a painted canvas. Just like the Palace itself, the only ornament that adds some color to his outfit is a long red scarf, crossing his chest and dangling behind him, secured to his shoulders by two silver pins with the shape of flowers — flowers whose name escapes him right now, but are part of Thayserix royal family’s crest. The ends of the silky scarf flutter like a weightless cape behind him as he walks.

This time it’s not that easy to keep his jaw from slacking. The closer the man gets, the more Lance can appreciate his gorgeous features while feeling absolutely struck by them. 

So... what had Coran said about King Shiro? 

Dark hair, sharp eyes, high cheekbones…

Check, check, and check. The man’s pale face is framed by rebellious black hair that falls to his shoulders and suits him disturbingly well, despite its unkempt state. The rigid line of his mouth is not amicable, but Lance can’t stop staring at it, his head momentarily empty with only Coran’s voice resonating inside. 

‘Beauty can be a lethal distraction…’

Indeed, thinks the Altean First Royal Guard sweating a bit because, in that regal attitude and the way the man’s eyes scan the whole contingent and then settle on him as if measuring him, he can testify that ‘lethal’ and ‘beauty’ can absolutely go together, and the king of Thayserix is the living proof of that.

But he isn’t one to be intimidated by looks, no sir. He will let nothing distract him from his duties, and this is the best moment to show that. Sweeping his hair back and then taking his fist to his chest — ignoring how his feet seem to need some convincing before moving again—, he walks until he meets the king in the middle of the esplanade, and before they can lock eyes, he bends the knee and lowers his head, wishing to appear humble and obliging.

“Your Majesty,” he says loudly so his people can hear him too. “It is truly an honor to make your acquaintance. I am Sir Lance of Altea, and I speak on behalf of Princess Allura of Altea, deeply grateful for your welcome, and in hopes of being of service to you, as you may see fit.”

Silence. Lance is satisfied with his words for around three seconds until he notices the unnatural silence around him. He frowns, not daring to raise his face yet, a bit taken aback by the fact he doesn’t even get an answer, until, finally, a manly voice answers him.

“Welcome. Our king has been eagerly awaiting your arrival.”

A pause. Lance, stunned, raises his eyes slowly, and he finds the man’s eyes not looking at him, but at the people and the carriages. From this close, Lance notices a scar that crosses his right cheek, and also the long sword hanging from his side, as well as his gloved hands. 

If he wasn’t so dazzled by that first impression, he could have noticed before that the man has no crown and probably never will. He confirms it when he finally has the delicacy of introducing himself.

“I am Keith, King Shiro’s Shield Guardian. I am to lead you to your new chambers…” The man makes a pause, and his eyes settle on Lance again. With a smirk, he murmurs: “Your Majesty.”

And that’s when Lance feels the weight of the entire world dropping right over his head. Unable to turn back to his people, with his cheeks burning, he watches how the Thayserians hurry to help the Alteans with their luggage and horses, while this Lord Keith turns around with the ghost of a smile lingering on his lips. Pinned to the floor and humiliated, Lance’s mind fills with gibberish until he reconnects his brain to his limbs, and then, furious, adrenaline propels him forward, deaf to Coran’s call coming from behind. 

“Wait a moment! Hey!”

Lord Keith stops and looks back, curious. Lance struggles a bit to find his words. He doesn’t remember ever being this mad in his entire life.

“You— How— You!!” 

“Excuse me?” asks Keith, looking unimpressed. This irritating attitude is like oil to Lance’s already burning rage.

“You... How could you let me bend the knee in front of you instead of your king? Have you no shame?!” he fumes.

Keith makes a pause, staring at him with cold eyes. And Lance adds another unwanted discovery to his list: the knight’s irises are colored in a strange shade of violet, regarding him with an intensity that makes him feel they can see through him. His heart beats faster at this against his will, and he notices the heat creeping up from his neck up to his cheeks once more. Worse, when Keith smirks again, his gaze inevitably drops to his full lips instead.

“It was funny,” he says, shrugging. He smirks wider at Lance’s outraged expression, and turning around, he adds, “Your men are really loyal to you. Laudable, though I honestly feel for them.”

He starts walking again and Lance stays there letting his arms dangle foolishly by his sides, confused, until he hears Coran’s voice calling him and he turns around to find the group of Alteans and Thayserians catching up to them. The Alteans look at the tall ceiling and the splendidly illuminated corridor with curiosity, but the warden, followed closely by Allura, stomps his way like a pissed off yalmor.

“What was that, Sir Lance?! Do you intend to shame us in front of our hosts since day one?!” he nags in muffled but furious whispers.

“I-I’m sorry. I honestly thought— I mean, did you see him? You said— Uh...” stutters Lance, ashamed.

“Don’t be so hard on Sir Lance, Coran. Besides, you saw how the guards reacted, didn’t you?” says Allura, amused. It’s the first time Lance sees her smile sincerely in weeks. Coran sighs, shaking his head.

“What did they do?” Lance asks eyeing his men, uneasy. The least he needs right now is sabotaging his own leadership among them in alien territory, yet there he goes, blowing everything for hurrying too much like he promised he would never do again.

However, at that moment he catches sight of Hunk, just when Coran grumbles:

“They also kneeled down. So you looked less foolish, and we looked way more well behaved than we really are. Truly, nothing short of a miracle.”

But the miracle has a name for sure, and when Hunk gives Lance two thumbs up, the knight seriously considers running his way and asking for his hand in marriage right there. He has done enough damage to their first impression as it is, though, so he has to be content with putting his hands together and murmuring a teary ‘thank you’ while making a mental note to get his friend the finest ale or similar treat these lands can offer. The rest of the men don’t look too worried about it, luckily. Maybe they think that was the right protocol. Maybe they just want to save face.

Or maybe the Thayserians maids are also very pretty and very distracting, which explains their dumbfounded looks, though Lance has trouble worrying about that with Lord Keith’s hateful smirk imprinted in his memory, filling his stomach with nothing but pure liquid rage and uneasy, unwelcome tension.

[cgmaddie]

The Blue Grass Ranch (nsfw)

part 2

Cariyana wakes up long before the morning sun creeps over the fields. She stays in her spot on the pile of hay and watches Kate who is sleeping next to her. Her face, which usually has a bright smile on it, is relaxed and her eyelashes are resting beautifull. It must be impossible for Kate to not look beautiful, Cariyana thinks.

Cariyana isn’t the insecure type but she finds herself comparing her looks to those of the girl sleeping next to her. She doesn’t have the slim body that Kate does. Her hair isn’t long enough to tie into the cute pigtails Kate wears. But surely there’s a reason that when she’s in public all the stares fall on her, or up and down her would probably explain the glances she gets. She hasn’t ever thought about how attractive she might be.

She’s found out by now that she doesn’t have much time to think about anything on a ranch. Especially a ranch like this, where she’s a cow and is still getting use to this strange place. She realizes she doesn’t actually know much about this place. But she figures she’ll find out soon and sure enough she’s right. The sound of heels clacking approaches and she sees madam holding the key to the pens.

Cariyana nudges her cow mates. “Kate,” she shakes her. “Olivia, Ginger.” She pokes them in their cheek.

They grunt and stretch. “What is it?” Olivia yawns. “Uh, morning already.”

Ginger is up and picking the straw out of olivias braids. “It’s early. Today must be check ins.” She notices Cariyana looks confused, which is usual. “That means we have to go to the barn to be… measured.”

Madam comes around to their pen and opens the gate. She stamps a number onto their skin, each of them are assigned their own number. “Looks like I’m A12,” Cariyana mummers looking down at her arm. She notices the others have a B which must be because they’ve been here two years.

When they leave their pens they’re sorted by letter. Cariyana was nervous to separate from Kate, but Kate gave her a kiss before she left so she feels a little bit better. But only a little bit. She’s in the group of first years which is most of the group. Kate, Ginger, and Olivia are with the other second years which is a little bit smaller than the group of first years.

Madam takes her group up to the barn first where they’re put into three separate lines. She goes through the barn where they clean off her ear and tag her ear. She winces at the impact but manages herself. Unlike some of the other people, the boy ahead of her almost fainted.

The barn is a lot bigger inside than what it looks like. Half of it is made up of stables that are in long rows. Each one of them has a number above it. Cariyana walks until she finds the stable that has a 12 above it. The stables offer a little privacy, but there’s not much of an effort to completely curtain them off from the other ones. The nurses are all dressed in white and measuring up the cows.

Cariyana’s nurse is a nice looking woman. Her skin is dark and she has a tight curls on her head that barely grazes her shoulders. Cariyana tries to not stare at her boobs, which are quite big, but after taking a glance at them she gives in and looks up and down at them. “Hello, dear,” she says motioning for Cariyana to come closer. “I’m just going to be sizing you up.” She measures Cariyana’s weight and height and tells her she’s very small, which makes Cariyana blush a little bit.

Then she pulls out a syringe. Cariyana is use to shots from being at the hospital but she still gets anxious when it pokes her arm. The nurse explains that it’s a hormone shot, which is what makes the other girls so fertile. Apparently, the shot is so effective it spends up pregnancy to only 5 weeks.

“Now, I’m going to ask you some questions.” The nurse gets a notepad ready. “Are you sexually active?”

“Well,” Cariyana starts. “I masturbate frequently. But, um, I’ve never had sex.”

“Ah,” she writes something down. “We’re just going to have to run some tests.” She gives Cariyana a glance as if she’s waiting on something. “I’ll just have you strip for me.”

This is embarrassing, of course. Getting naked in front of a beautiful woman you just met is nerve racking but Cariyana doesn’t argue. She starts with her top, her boobs look like bug bites compared to the nurses huge breasts. Her cheeks are red at this point. Nervously, she slides her pants off and then, before she can think long enough to chicken out, her panties.

She’s almost proud of herself but then she remembers that this nurse has probably seen tons of naked people. To her, this is not a big deal. But to Cariyana, it is—her first time showing her naked body off like this.

“Perfect, thank you dear.” The nurse slips on a pair of latex gloves. “I’m just going to see how your body reacts to stimulation so we know if you can handle our bulls.” She cups Cariyana’s boobs in both hands, softly groping them. Then she touches Cariyana’s nipples directly. She bites her lips to stop herself from moaning. The nurse fondles her boobs in different ways and stops to write on her note pad.

“You handled that amazing,” the nurse praises her.

“You too,” Cariyana replies. The nurse must have a lot of experience running these tests. Her hands worked on Cariyana’s boobs like she was made for fondling them.

“Now I’m going to do some vaginal tests.” She rubs some water based lube onto her gloved hand. “If you could turn around for me now, love.”

And Cariyana does. Though this is even more embarrassing than getting naked. Now, as she gets on her hands and knees on the barn floor, her ass is up in the air—ready for her tests. The nurse insets a finger rather slowly. Then, she moves it around methodically. She rubs it across Cariyana’s virgin walls and around her insides.

She’s shoved things up her pussy before but she’s never had anyone else do it. This probably doesn’t count as sex, being as it is just a check in. But it does make Cariyana impatient to lose her virginity. Maybe it’s the hormones they just pumped through her body, but Cariyana is feeling needy.

She feels the nurse pull out and she almost wants to beg for her to put it back in. But she knows the nurse has other patients so she tries to be polite. “You were great,” the nurse says. “We need to get the rest of your health in formation and then you’re free to go.”

Cariyana tells her all of her medical conditions, which completely bores her. The nurse takes notes as she explains her dwarfism and spine issues and her surgery history. And then finally she gives Cariyana a slip and she’s on her way.

She runs out of the barn, not sure where she’s headed but she knows one thing. She wants to have sex as soon as possible. The exit of the barn leads to an open meadow where there are cows who presumably just got done with their check in are grazing. Among the cows she spots Kate. Yes, Kate. That’s who she wants to have her first time with.

Kate notices her and waves her way. “Hiya, how did it go?”

“Great,” she answers, mostly avoiding taking about it. Where’s Ginger and Olivia?” She says, talking fast.

“They headed to the pen for the day. Our schedule is cleared besides check ins so the rest of the day is off.”

“Great!” This time she says it with excitement.

“Um, yeah I guess it’s great. Why do you ask though?”

“Listen,” she pulls Kate’s arm. “I don’t have time to explain let’s just go.” She somehow manages to find her way back to the pen where the other two girls are.

“Oh hey, you two. We’ve been waiting–”

“I WANNA HAVE SEX!” Cariyana half yells. The whole pen is looking at her with puzzled faces. “I wanna lose my virginity, okay? I’ve never been with someone and…” she blushes. “I um,” she tries to defend herself but cannot explain her craving.

Cariyana takes a moment to gather her thoughts then tries talking again. “This place is new, okay? I’ve never had sex, let alone had sex with a bull.”

Ginger gives her an understanding look. “It’s okay. We can help you,” she says for the rest of the girls. And none of them seem to disagree with her.

This time, Cariyana doesn’t need to be asked to take her clothes off. She practically rips them off and tosses them aside. The other girls start undressing too. Cariyana admires them as she watches them take their shirts off. She’s almost in paradise looking at all their boobs.

Kate is the first to touch her. She carrasses her thighs, almost roughly. Then, another pair of hands grabs her boobs. Soon enough, she feels like every inch of her body is being massaged with soft hands. She reaches out for who ever’s boobs are closest, which happens to be Ginger’s. She sucks on one of her boobs while the other three girls continue to grope, lick, and suck the rest of her body.

She feels her pussy starting to drip and then notices, in annoyance, that nobody is touching it yet. “Kate,” she begs. “Please.” She spreads her legs open to give Kate room. Kate obliges and puts her mouth on her privates. She licks at a slow, steady pace up her pussy. The sensation is so good, so warm on her that she sucks on Ginger’s boob harder so she doesn’t scream.

Olivia stops touching Cariyana’s boobs and pushes on Kate a little bit. “My turn.” Now she licks Cariyana’s pussy. Kate takes to Cariyana’s entrance. Cariyana’s pussy is so wet she doesn’t need to prep it. She puts in a finger and after giving Cariyana a minute to get use to it she moves it in and out.

The feeling of getting her pussy licked was already pleasurable. Now she has Kate inside of her. Plus Ginger’s soft breasts. If Cariyana didn’t believe in God she does now because the three girls are making her feel heavenly. She starts moaning through her mouthful of Ginger’s boobs.

Cariyana feels her stomach getting warm. Everything feels so good she knows she could cum any moment. She’s so overstimulated she cannot feel her orgasm building. Suddenly, her pussy is gushing and she can’t hold in her scream and she knows she must be climaxing. But then another wave hits her and she’s pulling hair it feels so good. “Fuck! Oh my god!” She can’t tell how many times she’s came by now. The orgasms go on for what could be hours.

By what must be her seventh orgasm, all four of them are exhausted and soaked in cum and spit. Cariyana’s head is so foggy from pleasure she cannot feel when they switch positions, only that whatever they’re doing to her feels amazing. Her pussy is sore from the beating it’s taking but it keeps feeling better and better after every slam into it. Cariyana cums one last time, squirting a heavy flood that the girls fight to swallow.

Cariyana came countless times and yet still, finds herself wanting just one more orgasm. She’s satisfied with her first time—more than satisfied, really. She could not thank them enough for fucking her so good. But still, the hormones boil inside her and she knows that none of the cows can give her what she needs.

There’s now another goal for Cariyana. She needs to get bred.

[safflowerseason]

The OC rewatch - 2x09, The Ex-Factor

To the lovely and insightful anon who sent in the ask regarding my take on Ryan and Marissa’s fight in 2x09 -

I answered the post and put half of my response under a “Keep Reading” cut because it basically turned into a mini-essay and I wanted to preserve everyone’s timelines. But because this website has the clunky design of a junkyard car, the formatting got all messed up when I added tags to the ask post (@Tumblr - why can you not tag an ask post directly?!) and moved the cut to just below the original ask, hiding the whole response, at which point I got so frustrated I deleted the whole thing. 

Anyway, Anon, you noted that this fight in 2x09 really encapsulates Ryan and Marissa’s baggage as a couple, and is also one of the few moments in the show they are genuinely open about their issues. As any Veep fans who read this blog know…I adore breaking down a good explosive fight (and I love writing them, too). One of my proudest accomplishments on this website is my close-reading of Dan and Amy’s fight in Ep. 5.03. So I analyzed the hell out of this fight for you, because you’re right—it is a very important fight for Ryan and Marissa. I also included the make-up conversation they have after the argument as well, because it seems to me that the two moments are linked. 

First, a few opening comments. 

Thematically, this episode calls back to Ep. 1.13, The Best Chrismukkah Ever, which is the last time we have really seen Ryan and Marissa confronting this idea that the way she deals with the challenges of her life—drinking and other reckless behavior—bring up very real shit for him, emotionally (even if he is also subconsciously attracted to her because of it). This dimension of their relationship kind of gets swept under the rug for the rest of S1, with the Oliver and Theresa drama. But it’s back on full display here, since Marissa is (theoretically) supposed to have spent most of the first third of S2 on a low-grade bender. Note that Ryan refers to the “Dawn Atwood special” earlier when he’s speaking to a drunk Lindsay. This is a familiar trauma, watching over a drunk woman, and it brings out the worst in him.

I also find this argument noteworthy because it shows Ryan in his worst light, but not necessarily Marissa. Yeah, she knowingly let Lindsay drink too much, which is a pretty passive-aggressive move, but she’s distinctly not Lindsay’s babysitter. And when a drunken Lindsay (somehow) makes her way back to the club, Marissa and Alex start looking after her. It’s Ryan who goes off on Marissa with very little provocation, and it’s clearly more about his own issues than hers. I just think it’s significant that this fight occurs on a night Marissa is pretty well behaved, all things considered. Not to wave away Marissa’s substance abuse issues, which are serious, but this fight at least demonstrates that Ryan’s explosions of violent overprotectiveness would not necessarily be solved if Marissa suddenly stopped drinking tomorrow. Their issues with one another are more complicated than that.

Anyway, so here we are, in the backroom of the The Bait Shop that is mysteriously run by an emancipated minor (Alex Kelly). Lindsay is passed out on the couch; Marissa and Alex are tending to her.

Marissa: I can do that. Ryan: I think you've done enough. Marissa: Oh, ok, so this is the part where you blame it all on me? Ryan: You’re right, it was Lindsay's idea to pound straight vodka and pass out…feel good to see someone else mess up for a change?

Out of all the teenagers on the show, I don’t think we ever see Ryan drink? He clearly views binge drinking as a moral failing. This is understandable given his upbringing, but alcoholism is much more than a question of good vs. bad. (Although just to be clear…I do not think binge drinking is a good thing, especially for teenagers.)

Marissa: It was her idea! And, ok, so it got a little outta control b- Ryan: It always does with you! You spent all last year trying to drag me down with you, and now her? You wanna make a mess outta your own life, fine! You’re doing a pretty good job of it if you ask me.

Ryan uses the word “mess” twice in this sequence of dialogue, which is very telling. Even more than S1, in S2 we’ve seen Ryan truly trying to capitalize on the opportunity his relationship with the Cohens has brought him. The line “drag me down with you” is extra significant. In S1, Ryan was pretty willing to throw himself into Marissa’s life and try to solve all her problems, which he views as Marissa “dragging him down.” (Lol, remember when he blew off his entrance exam for Harvard to help Marissa escape from the hospital?) But this year, Ryan has done the opposite. He’s thrown himself into things not involving Marissa, namely his schoolwork, and he clearly sees his relationship with Lindsay, studious and innocent, as part of that new direction. As a result, Marissa’s “mess” has become even more of a risk to his future.

But at the same time, Ryan is so afraid that Marissa is going to destroy her life in some way, and therefore his life. As you said, Anon, he’s conflicted about her place in his life because of the potential danger of her actions, even as he’s drawn to her beauty and vulnerability otherwise. So, he goes after her in a way that is pretty unjustified in this particular moment.

Alex: No one asked you! Ryan: (aggressively) What did you say?! Seth: Hey, Ryan, let’s…let’s go. Ryan: No, I'm not leaving her here. Alex: I’ll take care of her—you go.

As an episode that begins to set up Marissa’s relationship with Alex, this episode doesn’t do a bad job. Alex, as the one person in Marissa’s life who actually defends her, must come as an incredible relief.

And now we’re in Alex’s apartment, where Ryan has come to apologize.

Ryan: Look, I don't know…I…I guess I was hoping this could be easy...for you and me to stay friends…for you and Lindsay to be friends. Marissa: (skeptical) And have us all live happily ever after? Ryan: (sheepish) Yeah, something like that. Marissa: I know it seems like a million years ago we dated, but it wasn’t. Ryan: I know that. Marissa: And ok, maybe you're over it, maybe it doesn't mean anything to you anymore…maybe it never did...but it meant a lot to me. You meant a lot to me...still do.

I think Barton is actually decent in this scene. She doesn’t overplay Marissa’s confession. She’s very quiet and matter-of-fact, and it makes her words all the more devastating. Meanwhile, the camera cuts to Ryan’s face throughout this line, and Ben Mckenzie makes a series of expressions that make it pretty clear that Ryan has been pretty actively not thinking about his and Marissa’s relationship, because it’s just too much.

Ryan: ...it's not like that I...I don't know what it’s like… And…thinking you and Lindsay should be friends was a bad idea. Marissa: Why? I like her. And if you do the math, she's my step sister, so… Ryan: …I guess. (Mckenzie is unintentionally hilarious with this delivery.) (pause) Marissa: Look, clearly, it's gonna be strange for us for a while. Ryan: Yeah I know, you’re right. (pause, turns for the door) I’m sorry. That's what I came here to say. Marissa: I’m sorry too.

The way BM delivers that last line, genuinely heartfelt, the emphasis on the word “sorry”…it's really Ryan apologizing for his departure at the end of S1 and the manner of his return. He left abruptly, he came back abruptly, they never talked about any of it, and he and Marissa basically stopped speaking after the (contrived) DJ reveal. They never had a chance to clear the air, and it’s not like they broke up because they stopped having feelings for one other...all their joint pain over what happened has just been festering.

So, Anon, that’s my take on this great fight. Thanks so much for sending in the ask!

[fencesandfrogs]

an abridged history/explanation of warrior cats if you didn’t read them as a kid and have questions (a primer)

welcome. i’m going to keep things to the point, this is not a plot summary, just, well, its a pandemic and people are seeking items of childhood comfort and its come to my attention that a lot of people didn’t read these books as kids and then they come up in conversation and they act shocked so! i felt compelled to write this.

[2.5k words, 10min read. section headers, no pictures. not a ton of helpful formatting. i don’t want to say don’t read this because obviously i wrote it and think it’s worth reading, but i’ll be honest, this is a lot.]

section one: about me

i was an avid reader as a child, most of which fits solidly into “stories for another time,” and some of which would necessitate me adding tags onto this post that are, well, not necessary. so i will skip over that backstory but for those aware of lexile scores, i had one that was too high for literally any book that was appropriate to give me. so reading in school was torture and reading for fun was excellent.

now because i was a first-ish grader and my mom was trying to keep the fifth harry potter out of my hands, she looked desperately for something else to pass to me. her friend, who had a daughter a year or two older than me, was into these cat books, and my mom was like “here honey you like cats” without thinking too much about it.

which is good, because as i’ll get into, it was a really good fit for me. but like a dozen books later she asked me about the plot and well. i think at that moment she realized that it might have been better to just let me read harry potter.

but yeah i continued to read them long past the recommended reading ages and still as a Young Adult will return to them for nostalgia, and also as i will get into, some really good books. (see a list of books for “morbidly curious but i don’t want to spend 56 to 168 hours reading this”)

i’m not fully caught up on the series but this is not a plot summary so that should not impact my ability to discuss this

section two: content warnings

these books (not this post) includes the following:

discussion of castration (1.1 series 1, book 1, i’m not including this on every item/discussion because this is a complicated series but i want to demo how up front some of this is)

teenage romance/sex/pregnancy (1.1ish-1.3 or 4, continues throughout the series quite a lot, comes up again in 3.4/5, 4.4-5, and a bit in 5)

death from childbirth (1.can’t remember which book, many others)

unwanted pregnancy (se super edition, or a longer one off novel, discussed in 4&5)

sex/implied, discussed, and very very very heavily hinted but never directly said/shown (1.1-3ish, se, other)

murder (constantly, 1.1, 1.4, literally every book, 3.5, i’m just listing the ones i remember off the top of my head that were particularly graphic)

disability/illness, esp. the debilitating and/or deadly nature of it (1.3-5ish, 3.1, but all of 3, 3.4ish)

dementia (1.3-5, i’ve heard in some of the later series?)

abuse (7/8 this is reported i haven’t read these books but based on what i know it’s def there)

child abandonment (1.4-5, 3.4/5, it’s also all over the place but i think those are the only major character incidents of it)

treason (1.3-5, all over the place)

the horror/tragedy of war (background, but pretty constant)

disagreeing with an integral religion/tradition (3, based on the series title, 8, and generally scattered)

the corrupting influence of power (1.4/5, possibly 7/8, others)

racism (1, 3-5, possibly others)

sexism (se, background)

patriarchal societies (se, seems to be somewhat softened based on what i’ve heard but i’m not entirely sure about this)

and more! but it starts to get stranger and this is enough to prove my point

basically everything that could go wrong does

oh yeah! child abuse also child abuse that’s a very major theme in the first series as well as during other points. and elder abuse in the first series.

okay i’ve made my point.

section three: the appeal

look. so. i think we’re kind of pastel-ify children’s literature based on movies. see, parents have to watch children’s movies with their kids, so they can’t be gritty and intense because a lot of parents will say “not for my nine year old! they can’t deal with treason!” and that seems to be bleeding into children’s literature.

but warriors is not that. it’s intense, it borders on “too gruesome for children,” and it’s from a time where kids books got to be serious and heavy and dark because they were about animals. which was great because i couldn’t find books at my reading level that weren’t too thematically difficult, so i got to read something below my reading level, but thematically too hard, so it kind of balanced out.

and then well. so. the series grows with the audience, but the books don’t grow in terms of like difficulty so new readers start deep into it and it’s a complicated thing, the fandom history is complex, but.

the appeal is that parents don’t usually read the books their kids read and so they see a book about cats and assume it’s fluff, and kids who are starved of complex content get to read hamlet-for-kids.

section four: worldbuilding/lore

oh yeah also there’s some really deep lore to explore. so there’s two bits of appeal.

i’m not doing a full world/plot summary, but i’ll explain some common elements here.

thunder/shadow/wind/riverclan: harry potter houses for cats (gryffindor, slytherin, hufflepuff, ravenclaw, except this doesn’t work for the last two but that’s fine because no one cares about them despite riverclan being pretty important in most of the books)

-kit/-paw/-star: naming conventions. everyone has a two part name. (we’ll use cinder as an example because i like the two cinders we know, even tho neither of them get to be cinderstar.) babies are -kit (cinderkit), then when they’re apprentices, which is like being a student, you know, elementary through high school, you’re paw, so cinderpaw. then you get an Official Name from ur clan leader (cinderheart). if you become clan leader, you get to be -star (cinderstar). i know i haven’t explained clan leaders bear with me. this is kind of important because i have the names burned into my memory so i cannot simply always call firestar firestar if he was firepaw at the time of the events i’m describing. it won’t be ambiguous, cinderheart/cinderpelt are a special case. if this is tricky for you it’s fine just only read the first part of the name.

clan (leader, deputy, medicine cat, elder): roles with in the clan. leaders literally have nine lives. deputies are next in line and chosen by the leader. leaders usually go through several deputies, because deputies don’t have nine lives. medicine cats are doctors. they also have an apprentice. those are all one per clan. elders are just retired cats. they’re not a special category per say, but i wanted to mention them.

warrior: adult.

warrior code: laws.

star clan: dead cats. this ties into the religion which is pretty important to the books but for the most part if you understand that dead cats get to give guidance and send their approval, you have the gist of it.

section five: so um, what the fuck

so we start with a cat named rusty who runs into the woods to join thunderclan and then his name is firepaw and we all forget that he’s named rusty except for like that one time it comes up again. bluestar is a great leader with some corrupt deputies but fireheart eventually takes care of it and becomes clan leader which is a big deal.

then a bunch of other shit happens and suddenly ashfur is possessing brackenstar and being (more) abusive to squirrelflight (who is on the outs with brackenstar anyway for lying about their kits jayfeather, hollyleaf, and lionheart because they’re actually the children of firestar’s other daughter leafpool who had them with crowfeather after she fell in love with him but he’s from windclan and she’s a medicine cat so that’s double illegal and apparently hollyleaf is alive even though she yeeted herself into a pit and died because she killed ashfur when he threatened to reveal this but couldn’t live with being the product of an illegal meeting and then it was all pointless because leafpool stopped being a medicine cat out of guilt anyway and jayfeather is just an ornery bitch about everything but especially all of this)

i’m not explaining any of that.

section six: i repeat: so um, what the fuck

so the thing about these books is they’re soap operas and dramas about cats and that means they get just as strange and chaotic as anything else in the genre. i think a lot of people like me, who read them as children, regard the series we knew as a child (usually either the first three or the first five, plus super editions) as something good and warm and comforting (despite being dark and gruesome) because they made us feel good.

they were also a breeding ground for young fandom because of all the the drama that exists and the nature of the books providing that.

section seven: super editions

the simple answer to what a super edition is has already been given (it’s a novel length one-off about a single character, and its usually either a side character - bluestar, crowfeather - or a event/perspective we don’t get to see - firestar, skyclan, greystripe - and they’re generally more mature)

my favorite super edition is bluestar’s prophecy. i read it at like 16, slinking into the children’s library with a stack of other ya fiction and a “children’s book” which dealt with unwanted pregnancy, grief, forbidden love, and more. still not sure why that’s in the children’s section.

section eight: about the drama

so there’s been a lot of fandom drama about these books. i can’t tell you about the nuances, because i am an old fan, so i watched but didn’t partake. the highlights reel that i can recall goes as follows (please note i will refer to characters by name without explanation. it’s fine. the point of this section is to convey the pettiness of this drama):

tigerstar: did he do anything wrong? (the answer is holy shit yes, this isn’t discourse, it’s okay to like a villain)

scourge: did he do anything wrong, also what color is his collar? (also yes, doesn’t matter)

was the new prophecy (2)/omen of the stars (3)/etc good? (yes, eh, no, yes, no comment, no comment)

should jaypaw or hollypaw be medicine cat apprentice (neither of them, but jaypaw’s employment opportunities are limited because he’s blind, so its gotta b him)

uhh a massive tangle around this parentage drama between squirrelflight, leafpool, brackenfur, and crowfeather, which i used as the crux of humor for how batshit the plots can get, so i’m not even going to pretend i can make it funny, but just know that it’s batshit and the correct opinion is as follows: no one is right, but squirrelflight has done the least wrong, brackenfur is an asshole to her where it’s unwarrented, and hollyleaf is an idiot

and the current drama centers around brackenstar and ashfur and is tied directly to the point above, which is why i’ve kind of given up trying to make jokes about this because this is the culmination of like 35 novels.

section nine: i feel like i need to have some conclusive point to justify writing all of this

but i don’t have one, because this was really an excuse to ramble about an old passion for like half an hour. i mean i guess i can say, like, i think younger fans are sort of embroiled in this drama they don’t really have context for, because i’m not kidding, the current drama centers around the grandchildren of our original cast.

it’s kind of hard to know why, say, mistystar matters if you don’t know that she’s the child of bluefur and oakheart and if you don’t remember the drama that surrounded that when bluestar was dying and tigerstar and leopardstar were ruling a combined shadow/riverclan.

(i really hope that’s intelligible i tried to lay the groundwork for it. basically, there’s a biracial kid in a very segregated society who becomes the leader of one of the clans. which is obviously drama, especially considering that that clan was part of a weird supremacy movement a while back.)

& you know? i really hope one of the new series gets to be like, a soft reboot. just. end the current drama and pick up again with the latest generation. a) we’re starting to run out of names, and b) i think that it’s kind of tipped over the edge of sane.

the series also used to be very low fantasy. the cat societies are reasonably close to feral cat colonies (the biggest detail is that toms don’t all have their own territory, but there’s honestly in-universe discussion of this and it’s basically a culture thing), and while star clan/religion is a real and legitimate thing, there’s also a discussion of its abuse and most of the early books don’t really use star clan/related ideas as a physical force so much as a plot device, barring, like, when a new leader gets their nine lives.

honestly, i’ll always adore these books for serving the role they did, and a lot of the series is fantastically well written. but the fandom surrounding it can be, uh, not great because 9-14 year olds don’t really have good brains to understand this.

also, i’m very sad that i can’t find the flash game that was for the great prophecy. it was not very fun, but i enjoyed playing it, so if anyone knows the url so i can search the internet archive for it, please let me know.

section ten: i’m morbidly curious but there are 56 hours of books to read, assuming a very fast reading pace, so is there something i can start with to experience this without dedicating 4 days to it?

yes, there is.

it’s called bluestar’s prophecy. it’s standalone, and i should have given you enough of a background on the lore that you don’t need to know anything else. i’ve already given away the twist in series 1 that it would spoil, so you’re all good on that front.

if you want more, or want the original experience, the first series is self contained and quite good. i’ve given the broad outlines of the plot, but trust me, there’s a lot of surprises and all sorts of things i skipped over because while i like it, it’s not exactly fandom primer material

i also enjoy firestar’s quest and skyclan’s destiny for super editions, but you’ll need to read the first series to understand FQ and FQ to understand SD, so it’s not exactly a starting point. also, SD especially deals with a very different set of themes as the other books.

also, if you were to, say, search “readwarriorcats” (no spaces) on duckduckgo, and then click on one of the first links, you know, not the official site, the one hosted on one of those free website things, you know, not wix, not wordpress, the other one, you would only find lists of the books with hyperlinks.

;3