#not to list all the background commentaries. again. no need. it was all home. too close. too real. too painful.

[aprilblossomgirl]

I'm dead. This show is killing me inside.

[jjmaybanksbaby]

Where It Leads (Rafe Cameron)

Summer II

Part 03: Been A While

series masterlist | previous part

summary: Your second summer in the Outer Banks becomes a whole lot more complicated when you realize a year away from Rafe hasn't changed your feelings for him at all.

a/n: And we're back with summer two - the summer before sophomore year whoop whoop! Writing this gave me butterflies so I hope you have the same feeling reading it! I always love hearing y’all’s commentary so don't be shy to scream about your favorite parts back at me.

word count: 2.5k words

Your mom reached over and tapped you gently on the arm.

"Put your phone away please, y/n. You can text Evan when we land."

"We're not even moving yet." You replied.

As if on cue, the pilot's voice echoed over the intercom. "Good morning passengers. This is your captain speaking. Welcome onboard Flight 4B7 with service from Portland to the Outer Banks. We ask that you please fasten your seatbelts at this time and secure all baggage..."

You stashed your phone in the pocket of the seat in front of you and closed your eyes, hoping that by the time you woke up you would be landing.

After the way last summer had gone, you were surprised when your mom announced that you were spending the summer in the Outer Banks again.

Frankly, you weren't that happy to be headed to North Carolina. Alice and Kensie, your two best friends back home, had opted not to go to camp this summer so the three of you had planned to spend every day at Alice's pool, biking to the Dairy Queen a few blocks away or begging of your moms to drive you to the mall.

Plus, there was Evan. Your boyfriend of six months. You'd both been cast as the understudies for the leads in the fall musical. Because of some freak food-poisoning accident, both you and Evan had to go on as Cinderella and Prince Charming in the final show. When he kissed you under the bright stage lights, it had felt like more than just a stage kiss. He'd asked you out at the cast party later than night and you'd been dating ever since.

Evan was great. He really was. He was thoughtful and cared about you. But ever since your mom had bought the plane tickets to the Outer Banks back in March, every time you kissed Evan you could only think of Rafe Cameron.

☼☼☼

You trailed behind your mother on the way to baggage claim, bent over your phone responding to the texts Alice and Kensie had sent in the group chat while you'd been in the air. Apparently, they'd bumped into Kensie's crush and need to analyze every detail. A feeling of jealously you hadn't anticipated crept into your chest, weighing you down. Even indoors, the muggy heat of the Outer Banks made it clear how far from Oregan - and from your people - you were.

You looked around the airport, searching for the baggage claim with your flight number and noticed an incredibly familiar head of blonde head of hair standing nearby.

"Sarah Cameron?" You asked.

Sarah spun around a joyful smile on her face. "Oh my god! Y/n!" She ran over, wrapping you in a hug. "Are you back for the summer?"

You nodded your head which elicited another excited scream from her.

"What are you doing at the airport?" You asked her.

"You'll never guess! We're getting a house in the Bahamas!" She gushed.

"Sarah!" A deep voice called. You looked up to see another older-looking version of Rafe headed in your direction.

Your mom froze beside you. "Oh dear," she whispered.

The man's gaze didn't leave your mom. "Heather," he said.

"Ward," she responded.

Oh, you thought. So that's Rafe's dad.

"It's good to see you," your mom continued. "You look," she paused for moment, "good."

"You as well," Ward responded.

The carousel behind you started to move and luggage streamed out.

"That's us," your mom said, pointing over to the moving carousel. "We should go."

"I'll tell Rafe you're back," Sarah whispered to you. "He's gonna be so excited."

You smiled down at her knowing that you'd already made a vow to yourself to avoid him all summer. You refused to let Rafe ruin what you and Evan had and the only way you could guarantee that was making sure you didn't see him at all.

☼☼☼

Sarah bounded in the front door of the Cameron's house. "We're home" she called out, her sing-songy voice echoing through the big house. Ward entered after her, carrying their luggage.

"Welcome home," Rose said, greeting Ward at the door with a kiss.

Sarah rolled her eyes at the exchange. It wasn't that she actively hated her step-mom, she would just have rather her dad not married her. Though he was buying her a house in the Bahamas as an anniversary present so maybe she wasn't all bad.

"Is Rafe upstairs?" Sarah asked.

"I think so," Rose replied.

Sarah ran up the stairs, skipping every other one, the way Ward always told her not to do. She came to a sudden stop in front of Rafe's closed door.

"Rafeeeeee," she yelled, knocking rapidly until his voice bellowed back at her through the wall.

"What do you want Sarah? Go away!" He yelled.

"Fine," Sarah said. "I guess you don't care that y/n is back in town then?"

The door swung open just a few seconds later. “What did you say?” Rafe asked.

“Y/n was at the airport. She’s back in the Outer Banks for the summer.” Sarah turned on her heel and sashayed her way to her own bedroom leaving Rafe in his doorway to process the information.

Maybe this summer will be a whole less boring, Rafe thought.

☼☼☼

The summer was going exactly how you'd expected. It was surprisingly nice to have your younger brother to keep you company and more importantly, keep you busy. You spend your days either on the beach, tanning, watching your brother splash in the waves, and making your way through the reading list of the Honors English class you had opted to take next year or at the Club's pool, eating chicken tenders for lunch and washing them down with the thick chocolate milkshakes.

Rafe's friends frequently made an appearance at the Club. You watched them sneak vodka from flaskes into cups of spirit from being your shaded sunglasses. So far, Rafe had yet to join them.

Currently, Phoebe was flirting hardcore with Sawyer, begging him to put sunscreen on her back so she wouldn't burn. It was all too predictable.

You turned your attention back to Nick Carraway and his descriptions of Gatsby's grand parties momentarily.

You heard Sarah's voice before she appeared next to you and plopped down on the chair your brother had been occupying before he decided he needed more ketchup for his fries and had ran off.

"Y/n," she started with the same youthful energy she always talked with, "has Rafe invited you to our Fourth of July party yet?"

"Umm," you hesitated. "No, he hasn't said anything about it."

"Ugh," Sarah threw her head back in a dramatic motion. "I told him to text you about it. He's useless. Anyway, we throw a huge party for the Fourth every year and you have to come. There are fireworks and everything..."

Sarah's monologue faded to the background as you looked up and noticed Rafe standing at the top of the steps that lead down the pool. Your stomach flopped in the same way it always did when you saw him.

Rafe started walking down the steps and a small panic set in. His own eyes wandered across the pool deck and it was only time before he recognized you. You shifted your body slightly, trying to use Sarah to block yourself from his view.

You turned your attention back to his younger sister, afraid that you'd accidentally make eye contact with Rafe.

Crap, crap crap, you repeated in your head. Rafe was for sure heading in your direction. Even as you forced yourself to focus on Sarah, you couldn't stop yourself from watching Rafe out of the corner of your eye and he was walking straight toward you. Your 'avoid-Rafe-all-summer' plan was going to be impossible now. With every step he took, you could feel your heart beating faster. It felt just like last summer.

Rafe stopped in front of the chair Sarah was sitting in and you couldn't stop yourself from looking up at him, a smile threaten to slide onto your face. The same warm but dangerous feeling you only got when Rafe was around took ahold of you.

"Sarah," he said, cutting her off mid-sentence. "Ward's looking for you."

She jumped up with a sudden spurt of energy, "Okay, I'll go find him!" She leaned down engulfing you in another hug. "See you around y/n." She said before running off.

"Bye Sarah." You replied.

"You know, you're like my sister's favorite person," Rafe said, still standing above you. "She mentioned you were in-town for the summer..." He let his sentence trail off.

But I hadn't seen you around. You finished for him in your head.

"Yeah, we got in about a week ago." You said. The tension that hung in the air between the two of you was exactly the reason you were trying to avoid him. The last time you had seen him he'd kissed you in a way you hadn't been able to get out your head for months afterward. It was a dangerous game. Nonetheless, here he was standing in front of you and you were barely holding it together.

Your phone began to ring and the photo of Evan kissing your check from homecoming popped up with the caller id. Rafe's eyes glanced over it and an unreadable expression crossed his face.

Right, it was 4 o'clock on Wednesday. The time and day you and Evan had decided you would call each other every week.

"Uhh, I gotta get this." You said to Rafe, reaching over and picking up the phone.

"Yeah, okay. See you later y/n." He replied before walking away from you and to his friends.

Your eyes followed him all the way even as you clicked answered and Evan's voice filled your ear.

☼☼☼

A feeling of nervousness set in as you approached the Cameron's, the absurd number of cars parked outside confirming you were at the right place. You glanced over each of your shoulders worried that your mom would pull up any second to drag you back home after you lied about where you were spending your evening. You felt decently bad about saying you were going to the Club to watch fireworks and coming to the Cameron's instead but you knew your family's stance on Rafe and his dad.

It seemed like the entire population of the Outer Banks was spread across the Cameron's backyard. Adults sipped festive cocktails as little kids, hyped-up onto much sugar, weaved in between their legs, chasing one another around. You looked around hesitantly, thankful when Sarah emerged from the crowd, frosting smeared across her face.

"You made it! I'm so happy you're here!" She screamed.

"Sarah," you laughed. "You have blue frosting all over you." You used your finger to wipe it from her cheek.

"Rose ordered the most delicious cake you've ever had. You have to try it. I can get you some. Do you want some?" She asked eagerly.

"I'm okay right now. Thank you though. Have you seen Rafe?" You asked. You were at his party, after all, it wasn't like there was any point in avoiding him now.

Sarah turned and pointed to the dock where Rafe and his group of friends were standing. "He's over there."

"Great. Okay! I'm going to go say hi."

"Have fun!" Sarah replied with a smile before running off in the same direction she's appeared in.

You made your way through the crowd to the dock, the groups' attention turning to you as you approached.

"Hey," you said, shyly.

Cleo and Riley jumped up from where they had been sitting with their legs dangling in the water.

"Y/n, right?" Cleo asked before leaning in for a hug.

"Yeah. Hi! It's good to see you guys again." You replied.

"You too! Rafe said you were back in town and I was wondering when you'd finally make an appearance." Cleo said.

You look over at Rafe to find him already watching you. He pushed through Cole and Milo and was suddenly in front of you

"Um, y/n and I need to get the fireworks." He said to the group. You watched Riley shoot Cleo a confused look but Cleo just shrugged it off.

Rafe grabbed your hand and pulled you along, leaving you no choice but to follow him. You walked in silence, other than the sound of your heart beating rapidly.

Rafe stopped at a small brick shed on the side of the house. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, pulling you in after. There were kayaks and paddleboards hanging on the walls and some old lifejackets littered the floor.

"Rafe-" you tried to start but he cut you off.

"Y/n, I seriously can't go one more minute without kissing you again."

Rafe looped his arm around your waist, cupped the back of your neck with his hand, and landed his lips on yours.

For a moment, you tilted your face upwards and leaned your body into his before your senses came rushing back to you and you shoved him backwards off of you. Surprise registered on his face.

"Rafe. No. I can't do this." Your voice broke, panic coursed through your whole body. "God, I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't have come here today or followed you here."

"Y/n." Rafe said but held your hand up warning him to say quiet.

"I have to go. I have to go," you repeated. "Tell Sarah I'm sorry I missed the fireworks. I know she'll be disappointed. I have to go."

You turned to leave but Rafe grabbed your wrist and his eyes locked with yours, his expression begging you to stay.

"I have a boyfriend." You blurted out. The weight of those four words settled on Rafe's face and you jerked your arm out of his grasp. You spun on your heel and walked out the shed and putting distance between you and the boy making your life so complicated.

You crossed the Cameron's yard, trying to gather yourself and slow your chaotic, unsteady breathing. You hurried down the long driveway, making it to the road without any tears slipping out of your eyes.

Rafe had tried to kiss you. He hadn't tried, he had kissed you. And you sorta kissed him back. No, not sorta. You kissed him back. But then you stopped. You pushed him away. You realized it was wrong. You didn't want to hurt Evan. You weren't gonna hurt Evan.

The fireworks began to explode behind you, large booms thundered across the sky, their big colors illuminating the night. You didn't dare turn around watch them. They reminded you too much of Rafe: the boy pulling your head and your heart in two different directions.

taglist! @oreoenthusiast13 [drop a ☀️ in my inbox or messages if you want to be added]

[felassan]

Dragon Age Library Edition Volume 1 annotations & additional pages/art compilation

Dragon Age Library Edition Volume 1 is a hardcover collection of some pre-existing Dragon Age comics that was released in 2014. It comprises of all issues of The Silent Grove, Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep. In places, it includes additional annotations/commentaries by the illustrators and authors, as well as a few additional pages with additional art. iirc these additional annotations and pages/art aren’t featured or available anywhere else (in the franchise I mean; other people have probably put them online at some point I’m sure).

From what I can see at least, Library Edition Volume 1 is no longer in print, and as such listings for it on resale sites etc are.. price-inflated & prohibitively expensive (~£100+, which I’m sure we can all agree is just not reasonable or accessible to most people). Due to this, I’ve compiled the additional annotations and pages here in this post. Thank you and credit to @artevalentinapaz, who kindly shared the material with me. This post has been made with their permission. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

These commentaries are in the context of The Silent Grove, Those Who Speak and Until We Sleep. If you notice any errors or annotations missing, or need anything clarified, just let me know. I think the annotations are in chronological order. In places I elaborated in square brackets to help explain which part of the comics an annotation is referring to. A note before you proceed further: some of the topics referenced in the annotations/additional pages are heavy or uncomfortable. The quotes here are word-for-word transcriptions of dev/creator commentaries, not my personal opinions or phrasings.

(Also, I do recommend always supporting comic creators by purchasing their comics legitimately. I own each issue of these comics having bought other editions of them all legitimately. The reason I put this post together is because this specific Library Edition volume has been discontinued and the consequently-inflated cost is so high, rendering the additional material inaccessible to most.)

-----

The Silent Grove annotations

Illustrator Chad Hardin: “I used to be an environmental artist for video games, so I built a 3-D model of Antiva City using the program Silo. Many of the buildings are simple cubes, but a few are more detailed. Overall, I spent the better part of a day building it, but I used it again and again throughout The Silent Grove to maintain continuity in the backgrounds.”

Script Writer Alexander Freed: “Even working with David Gaider, it took me several drafts to find Alistair’s voice. His narrative had to convey his humor and self-doubt from Dragon Age: Origins while suggesting a newfound weariness earned during his years on the throne. For readers familiar with the character, he needed to seem like a changed Alistair - but Alistair nonetheless.”

Chad Hardin: “If you read a lot of comics, you might wonder why the majority of the heroes wear skin-tight suits. Well, I can tell you: they are easy and quick to draw. In video games, you build the model once and then animate it, so details don’t slow you down. In comics, everything has to be rendered by hand. Varric and Alistair’s outfits were quite detailed. It took me a long time to get used to them, and even longer to memorize the designs until drawing them was second nature - Varric’s knee armor in particular! Oy vey!”

David Gaider: “One of my favorite scenes in the entire series [when Varric and Isabela are disarming traps and picking locks together while Alistair looks on]. Isabela and Varric, doing what rogues do. I had a suggestion for how to put it together, but Alex managed to make it fit and did a great job with it.”

Chad Hardin: “I never used to keep any of the artwork I created for comics. I would just hand the pages over to my agent to sell. This page [when Alistair, Varric and Isabela are in a tavern together, with hookah in the foreground] I kept for myself. I love the hookah-smoking elves in the second panel and Isabela’s face in the last panel. I rendered the first four chapters of The Silent Grove in grayscale using ink washes, gouache and Copie markers.”

David Gaider: “For a little while, Varric [in these comic stories] was supposed to be Zevran from Dragon Age: Origins, which would have made sense, Zevran being Antivan and all. I know that some fans would have loved to see him, but the dynamics of the group just didn’t work as well. Then a planned cameo later had to be cut for space. Ah well, Zev, another time.”

Alexander Freed: “Isabela at her most dangerous [climbing up the side of the cliff]. This scene - featuring a scantily clad, dripping-wet woman who tends to flaunt her sexuality - could easily have come across as exploitative, but Chad did a lovely drop portraying Isabela as purely focused and deadly.”

Chad Hardin: “Isabela rising out of the water and scaling the cliff with the knife in her mouth is one of my favorite parts of The Silent Grove. It is one of those moments where the writing really inspired the art. Hats off to Alex and David. This is another page I kept for myself.”

Colorist Michael Atiyeh: “This is one of my favorite Dragon Age pages. Chad is such an amazing artist; I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with him.”

Chad Hardin: “I love that this page [when a guard spots Varric and shouts ‘Intruder!’] made it in uncensored. So many times in comics, I draw something and some stuffy lawyers come out of the woodwork and tell me to tone it down. Dark Horse and BioWare always let me have fun, and this turned out to be one of my favorite pages with Varric and Bianca. Any guesses to which word he is mouthing in the second panel?”

Alexander Freed: “Note the simple decency of Alistair as he gives his cloak, without comment, to Isabela. For all his flaws, he’s genuinely kind at heart - a rare enough trait in Isabela’s world that I think it’s much of what she values in him.”

Chad Hardin: “I love the opening panel to this chapter [the opening panels to Chapter 3, when the team are on a ship at sea]. It’s the image I use on the homepage of my website. This page was a gift to my cousin Wendy, who loves pirates. Seascapes with sailing ships might be clichéd in fine art, but for me it was a first.”

David Gaider: “I wanted to have this story center on the group travelling to a Witch of the Wilds other than Flemeth, and originally I had set it somewhere else - until I remembered a Codex entry from Dragon: Age Origins that offhandedly mentioned a witch in the Tellari Swamps. Brilliant! It’d look like I planned it all along. I didn’t.”

Michael Atiyeh: “I love opportunities where I can show a change in the time of day as you move from panel to panel [when the ship heads towards and the team arrive in the Tellari Swamps]. I feel the palette of each panel is very distinct and beautiful.”

Alexander Freed: “Why did Alistair choose two people he barely knows to be his companions on this quest? We never make this explicit, but of course Varric is on the right track. Alistair wants to surround himself with people who don’t know him and won’t judge him, yet it’s Alistair’s idealism that Isabela and Varric work to preserve.”

Chad Hardin: “Another page where the writing inspired the art [when the group suddenly encounter a dragon]. I love the dragon bursting onto the scene and Isabela’s stare. Some writers will try to cram six or seven panels on a page like this and the pacing just doesn’t allow the artist to give each moment the right punch. Can you imagine if the first panel was crammed into a single square inch?”

Chad Hardin: “Yavana was one of the only characters that we did no preliminary sketches for. I don’t know how that happened, but thankfully it worked out.”

David Gaider: “I love how Yavana looks like a cross between Flemeth and Morrigan. Flemmigan? She’s totally Chad’s design, and it’s great. Typical for these witches, she never says things straight. In my mind, this Alistair is the one who did the Dark Ritual in Dragon Age: Origins - and I was half-tempted to have him lose his cool in this first scene [opening panels of Chapter 4] with her. Too early, though.”

Alexander Freed: “Through this whole sequence [the page when Varric aims Bianca at Yavana], Yavana is dropping cryptic hints and Alistair is refusing to play along. He’s met Flemeth and Morrigan - he knows Yavana won’t give him a straight answer, and he won’t give her the satisfaction of asking needlessly.”

Michael Atiyeh: “Sometimes it’s the little things on a page that spark my interest. Here [when the team navigate vines and mud to get to the temple], the sunset panel came out great and the mud looks really thick and gooey. It’s fun to focus on these details and make them stand out.”

Chad Hardin: “I hated drawing this scene [when Isabela gets kicked] where Isabela gets the boot to the face. Call me old fashioned, but I was raised to believe that only a coward would ever hit a woman (even a battle-hardened pirate adventurer). I draw at home, and my girls often watch me work in my studio. This was a page I didn’t want them watching me draw. I do like, though, that Isabela gets up, yanks the arrow out, and then soldiers on (and later extracts brutal revenge).”

Michael Atiyeh: “Poor Isabela. It seems I gave her more bruises and black eyes than any of the other characters. [when Isabela is yanking the arrow out]”

Chad Hardin: “It’s always interesting to go back and look at artwork because it reminds me of what was going on in my life at the time. I inked this page [opening panels of Chapter 5] at a ‘draw night’ session at an anime convention in St. George, Utah. I was one of the special guests, but I missed the first day because I was at my grandfather’s funeral in Las Vegas, Nevada. Seeing this page brought back those memories.”

David Gaider: “‘Bianca says hello.’ [quoting the panels being referenced] I adore Varric. I was tempted to have him narrate the entire series [in reference to these three comics], but then again I liked the idea of having each series center on one of the trio’s viewpoints. This book belongs to Alistair, but that doesn’t stop Varric from getting all the best lines.”

Alexander Freed: “Claudio, of course, is not a terribly sympathetic figure. But I wanted to emphasize that he takes this fight as personally as Isabela - he sincerely loved Luis and blames Isabela for the man’s death. I think it’s important to give every character, even the most loathsome, some dignity. [when Isabela and Claudio are fighting]”

Chad Hardin: “Payback! Here is where Isabela extracts her revenge on Claudio [when Isabela stabs Claudio]. I never enjoyed killing off a character so much. I particularly enjoyed putting the look of shock in his eyes. He had it coming. There is something satisfying about killing a ‘made man’.”

Chad Hardin: “Every now and then when drawing comics, I wish I could animate some panels and watch them as a cartoon. It would be great to see this sequence [when Yavana catches Claudio’s soul] in full motion as Yavana snatches Claudio’s soul, makes it reenter his corpse and then extracts information from him until he bursts into flame. It was a very Hellboy-ish moment. I enjoyed the movie that played in my mind while drawing this scene. Hope everyone liked the result.”

Chad Hardin: “As I mentioned on page 17, I rendered the first four chapters in grayscale, which made the black-and-white art look great, but had a neutralizing effect when it came to colors. By the time I drew chapter 4, I had seen the effect it was having and decided to stop using the grayscale so the colors would pop. When I saw this page [when Alistair says to Yavana ‘And we helped you find it’] in print, it confirmed to me that I made the right decision. I honestly feel this art was the best of The Silent Grove.”

Chad Hardin: “I practically painted these pages [when Yavana says ‘It is permitted. Tonight and only tonight’] in thumbnails hoping it would help me choose how to render them in ink. It is so hard trying to figure out how to get a full range of value out of just black and white. There are some artists and inkers that make this look easy. Mark Schultz comes to mind. Michael saved my bacon. Colorists really do so much work when it comes to rendering; this page came out awesome because of him.”

David Gaider: “Here we reveal the existence of Great Dragons (as opposed to High Dragons), and also that Yavana was the source of the return of dragons to Thedas after their departure for so many centuries. But why? There’s the rub, and not even Alistair can trust that she’s telling him the truth.”

David Gaider: “Here’s the controversial scene [Alistair killing Yavana]. I think some fans don’t like that Alistair did this, and have said they consider it out of character. I don’t. From his perspective, Flemeth and her daughters have been toying with the world for reasons that can’t be trusted. They dragged Maric away from his family, from him. One might think his judgement foolish, but considering what Alistair was capable of deciding even back in Dragon Age: Origins, it’s certainly not out of character.”

Chad Hardin: “[same scene as above] This was a controversial page, and there were a lot of people who thought it was out of character for Alistair to kill Yavana (I didn’t see it coming - I mean, you just don’t kill a Witch of the Wild), but here is the thing: this page is Alistair acting as a king. Yavana has been manipulating him, trying to play him like a pawn, and he just can’t allow that. There’s too much at stake, for himself and for his subjects.”

Alexander Freed: “The end? An end, at least [the trio walking off into the distance]. The series needed a note of closure while leading into Those Who Speak (which wouldn’t arrive until many months later). David tweaked the ending in the outline several times, and I did my best to balance resolving Alistair’s emotional journey without resolving the quest. It’s not as clean as I’d have liked, but fortunately, now it’s all in one volume...”

Those Who Speak annotations

Alexander Freed: “Capturing Isabela’s narrative voice was much easier for me than capturing Alistair’s - partly because I’d already written The Silent Grove, and partly because of my own writing proclivities. Rereading now, I wonder if I laid on the (mild) profanity a bit too thick. I’ll leave you to judge.”

David Gaider: “I like the additional detail Alex and Chad put in, letting us see more of Qarinus and more of Isabela’s crew. Alex wanted to give her crew more of a presence, and let her first mate have some face time, so they weren’t just parts of the scenery. Good call on his part.”

David Gaider: “I’m really fond of the formal getups Chad made for the party. Isabela’s actually comes from a concept we didn’t use from the cancelled Dragon Age 2 expansion, if I remember right. And Maevaris came from me asking for ‘someone who looks like Mae West’ - with the wonderful outfit all Chad’s doing.

Chad Hardin: “Maevaris. I love Mae. When David and Dragon Age art director Matthew Goldman spoke to me about designing Mae, they wanted her to be fully female with the exception of her biology. They told me to think ‘Mae West’. Well, when I think of Mae West, I think of her... womanly shape. So, drawing Maevaris was always walking a fine line between portraying Mae’s identity and her biology. The process endeared her to me.”

Michael Atiyeh: “Just like in The Silent Grove, we are introduced to another gentleman from Isabela’s past [when the team meet Lord Devon and Isabela threatens him]. As was the case with Claudio, he will meet his fate at her hands.”

Chad Hardin: “When I was drawing Titus, my kids asked me why I was drawing ‘angry Jesus’ or ‘evil Jesus’. I can’t remember which term they used exactly, but it made me chuckle. I was going for a mix of Rapustin and Joe Stalin, but ‘evil Jesus’ would do.”

David Gaider: “I’m not sure it’s apparent here [when Alistair says ‘I’d really rather not’], but Alistair was supposed to be using one of his Templar powers on Titus (that’s why Titus recognizes what he is on the next page) and disrupting his magic.”

Alexander Freed: “Isabela is witty and charming enough that it can be easy to forget that she’s not, in fact, a nice person. Even after finishing the outline, David was concerned about making her too unsympathetic - but I loved his approach in this series. The dark deeds Isabela commits - this murder included [Isabela killing Lord Devon] - are what make her guilt tangible and no easy matter to overcome.”

Alexander Freed: “I thought the notions of Isabela’s pride in her captaincy and dedication to her crew were some of the most interesting aspects of her character in David’s story. In scenes here [when Isabela is on her ship saying ‘Keep them focused and keep them sober’] and elsewhere, I did my best to emphasize their place at the core of Isabela’s world.”

Chad Hardin: “Most of the time I draw from imagination, but because of the complexity of this page [Qunari trying to board Isabela’s ship] I decided it would work better if I had photo reference. On this page are my nephews Jared (Varric) and Adam, my niece Melissa, my kids Erica, Tasey Michaela (Isabela) and Chad (Alistair), my friend’s daughter Amy, my wife Joy, and the neighborhood kids as Isabela’s pirate crew. (The crew member mooning the Qunari is out of my ol’ noodle.) I paid their modelling fee in pizza and root beer. Also, I had originally drawn cannons on Isabela’s ship, so if there are parts of it that look slightly wonky, chances are there was a cannon there.”

David Gaider: “Ever since the BioWare artists finally did a concept for female Qunari, I’ve been itching to include one in the game. It’s always slipped through my fingers, so I was going to be damned if I’d have a Qunari plot in a comic - without the same technical limitations - and not have one present.

Chad Hardin: “I had no idea this was the first time anyone outside of BioWare had seen a female Qunari.”

Michael Atiyeh: “I really like the lighting in this sequence [Isabela in her cell thinking ‘I haven’t eaten in days’], especially the strong white light and the characters in shadow.”

David Gaider: “The entire sequence of Rasaan interrogating Isabela was something I plotted out in detail when this series began. Here they discuss names - something treated in a manner peculiar to the Qunari, considering how much importance they apply to what things are called (and not called), because it forms the core of their identity. Isabela brushes it off, but as we find out later it’s also at the core of her identity. I liked that parallel.”

Alexander Freed: “To balance out the relatively static talking pages elsewhere in the issue, I hoped to make the interrogation and flashback sequences beautiful and full of information. I proposed an approach to Chad, and he wisely reshaped it into what you see here [the page with the scene where Isabela says ‘I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes’]. Anything that succeeds on these pages should be credited to him; anything that fails is my fault.”

Chad Hardin: “Probably the most challenging spread I have ever done. My friend Stacie Pitt was the model for Isabela on this page, and my wife Joy was Rasaan. I saved these pages [around the scene when Rasaan says ‘Mistakes can be corrected’] for myself.”

David Gaider: “Sten from Dragon Age: Origins becoming the new Arishok of the Qunari was something we'd planned even during Dragon Age 2. This was a great opportunity to show that, and also to show that Sten didn’t acquire horns even despite the makeover the Qunari received in DA2. Hornless Qunari are considered special, and Sten is no exception.”

Michael Atiyeh: “I think that David, Alex and Chad handled Isabela’s flashback [to when she was sold by her mother] in an interesting way, and it created a nice flow to the story.”

David Gaider: “This was a controversial scene [what happened to the slaves Isabela was transporting], the end result of a lot of discussions between me and Isabela’s original writer on the team, and it went through a lot of revisions over that time. It needed to fit with the story Isabela told the player in DA2, but fill in the blanks of what she didn’t tell. We didn’t want Isabela to be someone who became who she is because she was ‘broken’ but instead as a result of her own actions - yet also not be completely beyond redemption.”

Chad Hardin: “These were hard pages [as above] to draw. It was difficult knowing that events such as this are part of human history, such as the Zong massacre in 1781, where the British courts ordered the insurers to reimburse the crew of the Zong for financial losses caused by throwing slaves overboard when faced with a lack of water. Horrifying beyond words.”

Michael Atiyeh: “Here, Isabela visits here crew, and I wanted to play up that she was in the light and they were in a dark cell. The light streaming through the bars gave me the opportunity to highlight Brand, who also had dialogue in the scene.”

Alexander Freed: “I struggled to find a way for Varric to contribute to victory without distracting from Alistair and Sten’s big fight. I’m happy with the solution: a brazen lie seemed appropriate to the character without taking away from the main show.”

David Gaider: “I believe my original plan had Isabela’s and Alistair’s fight scenes happening separately, but I like how Alex intertwined them in the script and I especially like how this ends up highlighting the differences between their characters when their fights are resolved. Isabela is defiant, revealing her name not because Rasaan demands it but because it’s her choice. In both cases, mercy is strength.”

Michael Atiyeh: “The brush I created for the clouds really gave them a nice watercolor effect here [on the deck of the ship, Sten calling Alistair ‘kadan’]. That brush has become a staple in my toolbox.”

Alexander Freed: “With the strong theme of names running through these issues, I liked the notion that Isabela had outgrown being, well, ‘Isabela’. When her name comes up in Until We Sleep, it’s largely played with ambiguity.”

Until We Sleep annotations

Alexander Freed: “The story of ‘Arthur’ is one of my favorite minor sequences [Varric infiltrating and fighting his way into the fortress]. It tells us something about Varric and it delivers plot information - and it’s also a reminder that our heroes kill an awful lot of people during these series and cope with it in their own ways. In general, writing Varric let me skirt the edge of metacommentary, which I greatly enjoyed.”

David Gaider: “Varric, as always, is my ‘voice of the narrator’. Here he’s expressing some of my own amusement at Alistair’s growing list of peculiarities [‘Your majesty is quite the special snowflake’]. To think, back at the beginning of Dragon Age: Origins he was just the player’s goofy sidekick who grew up in a barn.”

Michael Atiyeh: “By the third series, Until We Sleep, I really started to have a complete feel for what I wanted the final art to look like. As an artist, it’s important to continue to evolve and grow. The close-up of Sten’s face [same page as above] is a perfect example of how I wanted the rendering on the characters to look.”

Alexander Freed: “David’s outline called for a short, somber reveal of the Calenhad story by Sten. Fueled by my desire to avoid ‘talking heads’ sequences, I scripted it as a full-on storytelling flashback. David made sure the history worked (at least from the Qunari point of view), and Chad did a beautiful job handling it in a mere two pages.”

David Gaider: “Blood is important in Dragon Age, as a theme. Here we tie in the dragon blood that was mentioned all the way back in The Silent Grove and explain what it means at last. I was a bit hesitant to tarnish the legend of Calenhad the Great in this way, but I comfort myself with the knowledge this tale is but a viewpoint and not necessarily the entire truth.”

Michael Atiyeh: “Titus melting the attacker is a great example of classic comicbook storytelling and exactly what made me fall in love with the medium.”

David Gaider: “I was really happy with how Chad handled the reveal of Mae as transgender [the scene with Mae in the cell]. My worry was that Varric finding her disrobed might be potentially titillating, but I think he handled it nicely. I only wish there was more time to have Mae properly respond to being exposed in this manner, even to a friend.”

Chad Hardin: “I originally drew Mae as female [same scene as above], then changed her anatomy, so the psychological violation and humiliation she felt would be the focus. Hope that came across.”

Chad Hardin: “When in doubt, have Bianca shoot it [Varric shooting the artifact].”

David Gaider: “This scene [Varric and Bianca the dwarf] with Varric was one I wanted to do for a very long time. We’ve hinted that Varric’s crossbow was named after a real person, someone he never wants to talk about. Now I finally had the chance to show why.”

Chad Hardin: “Of all my Dragon Age pages, this scene was hands down my favorite, because Varric is my favorite. It was awesome to get to draw Bianca in her dwarven form. These scenes give you a glimpse of the love Varric and Bianca shared. It doesn’t tell you the whole story, but you can assume plenty from what is shown. You get to see Varric mostly naked (you’re welcome), but most of all you witness Varric’s heartbreak. I felt privileged to draw it. I got so obsessed with drawing this page I did an entire watercolor painting based on the last panel [Varric gets up to leave, ‘This isn’t right’ - ? or perhaps the scene where he opens the door to leave].”

Alexander Freed: “Unreliable narrators are always tricky - done wrong, they can just confuse the reader. But I’m fairly happy with Varric’s lies throughout this series, most of which are used to downplay the emotional cost of events rather than whitewash the events themselves.”

Michael Atiyeh: “This palette worked perfectly [Varric standing in front of the doorway/portal in the Fade proper], but I can’t take all the credit because BioWare provided reference for the Fade. I added the hot orange energy for the doorway, which looks great with the sickly green sky.”

David Gaider: “This scene [Isabela’s Fade nightmare] was actually inspired by a fan named Allegra who did a cosplay as a Qunari version of Isabela. I knew I wanted something like this for Isabela’s Fade section of the comic, but it didn’t really solidify until I saw the cosplay.”

Chad Hardin: “Isabela is more affected by her encounter with Rasaan than we were led to believe. A portent of things to come?”

Michael Atiyeh: “I love this shot of Mae in the fourth panel [on the page where Isabela is affected by vines]. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention what a great character she is in the series, and Chad captures her beautifully in this shot.”

Alexander Freed: “I saw this issue as a sort of downbeat victory lap. Over the course of the previous series, our protagonists largely came to terms with the inner demons the Fade confronts them with here. The fact they’ve come so far lets them win this last battle... but they still have scars that will never completely disappear.”

David Gaider: “Maric was in the first two novels I wrote for Dragon Age. Seeing Chad’s rendering of him as a regal, grown-up version of Alistair made me incredibly nostalgic. Some characters you just never let go of.”

Alexander Freed: “I feel Varric’s lines (‘tell yourself the stories you need to tell’ but ‘never live your own lies’) are the natural endpoint of all the exchanges he’s had with Alistair, starting from the end of Chapter 1 of The Silent Grove. And of course it plays off the story of ‘Arthur’, as well.’’

Chad Hardin: “I’m happy with the way Titus came off in these pages [Titus attacking and saying ‘The last magisters of Tevinter were so close’]. He looks threatening and powerful when fighting Alistair, Isabela and Varric, but genuinely confused by his inability to defeat Maric. Bye-bye, evil Jesus.”

Alexander Freed: “I can’t help but feel for Titus. He was unthinkably corrupt, but I see him as genuinely motivated by Tevinter’s glory. (The fact Alistair reads zealous ideology as a lust for power says a lot about both characters.)”

Michael Atiyeh: “I love the seamless transition of color from Titus’ magic to the dragon breath and then back into the orange remnants of his magic in the smoke. This was a really fun panel to color [Titus saying ‘Die by what wrought you’].”

David Gaider: “‘You are not the dreamer here. I am.’ I always have a scene or a line that’s in my head when I begin a tale, and this line of Maric’s was one I wanted all the way back when I started working on The Silent Grove.”

Chad Hardin: “I love this page [Maric and Alistair clasping hands]; Mike’s colors are spot on. We get to see all our heroes in an ideal state for the last time. This is the last Dragon Age page I saved for myself.”

David Gaider: “This scene kills me [Alistair destroying the Magrallen]. I knew it needed to happen; I knew I wanted it to happen even back when I began the story. Alistair lets Maric remain in the Fade rather than dragging him back to a world which has moved on. Alistair’s ready to move on, but forcing him to give up that hope... it makes me feel like a bad person.”

Chad Hardin: “Heartbreak for Alistair as he realizes that once again, as a king, he must kill: this time, his own father (granted, the Magrallen did most of the work). I really like how Maric crumbles away in the end. This was my last page, and the emotions on the page and in my studio were very final. Altogether, this was a year of my life in the making. On my last page, I wrote a thank you to everyone involved, the crew at Dark Horse and the crew at BioWare. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them again. It was a thrill. Finally, a huge thank-you to the Dragon Age fan community, whose support was overwhelmingly awesome.”

Michael Atiyeh: “As the story came to an end, I knew I was going to miss these characters. Writing these annotations reinforces the fact that I hope to work with this great creative team again one day. Many thanks to Dark Horse and BioWare for the opportunity to work on Dragon Age.”

Alexander Freed: “The tension between the art and the narration on this page [the one with Alistair sitting on his throne while nobles argue] is something you can only pull off in comics. Neither tells the full, bittersweet story alone. Similarly, these issues wouldn’t have been possible without everyone on the team; thanks to David, Chad, Michael, and everyone I lack space to list!”

Additional pages / art

Library Edition Volume 1 also came with some additional pages, with additional art and commentary. These are as follows (I’m including them for the sake of completion, click the links to see):

1. Alistair and dragon concepts

2. Rasaan and Maevaris concepts

3. Sten, Titus and Yavana concepts

4. A series of cover pages 1

5. A series of cover pages 2

In case anyone has trouble reading the notes that accompany these images, I’ve transcribed them below:

1. Dragon Age Sketch Book

Alistair Concept 

Dragon Age / Dark Horse

Chad Hardin: “The headshot of Alistair is from a finished sketch with a rejected armor design. In order to save time, the redrawing was completed on the computer, where tweaks and changes are quick and easy, if somewhat less glorious.”

[Dragon] Head #1 / Head #2

Chad Hardin: “Everyone liked this dragon sketch so much that Dark Horse printed it for signings at conventions. You can see I did multiple proposals for the dragon’s head. It was more effective than drawing the body over and over.”

-

2. [arrow pointing to Mae’s sleeve] concealed [I think that’s what it says anyway] daggers / shurikens?

Chad Hardin: “When designing Rasaan and Maevaris, I wasn’t exactly sure how their roles would play out in the series. Maevaris’ outfit was inspired by brothel madams of the Wild West. I thought it would be cool to have some weapons concealed in the formal wear. These never came into play in the series, but they were there in my mind.”

-

3. Chad Hardin: “Although we only see Titus in his battle garb in one issue, I really liked the design of his armor. The sketch of Yavana was done on the fly and served as both a rough preliminary sketch and as a panel layout. You have to work hard and smart in comics to keep up with the deadlines.”

-

4. Cover Artist Anthony Palumbo: “This was my first assignment for Dark Horse, and I was both excited and nervous. I drew pencil sketches of the main characters, scanned them and played with different arrangements, poses and color schemes in Photoshop.”

-

5. Anthony Palumbo: “Fellow illustrator Winona Nelson helped me by sitting for photo reference. I created the mock-jewelry with gold-painted Sculpey. That’s a quick photo of my own gaping maw, to help with the image of Varric.”

[tossawary]

Chapter 24: “Seeing is Believing” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines and commentary. Not a full list or full commentary, but longer commentary than usual to talk about quest construction. 

-

AN: This was... a weird chapter to write. When I started outlining, I had... the conversation with Shen Qingqiu planned... the conversation with Shen Yuan planned... the fact that SQH, SY, LQG, and LFL was the quest party... and the fact that they get the Eye at the end of it. That was everything. 

The entire rest of this chapter came together FRIDAY LAST WEEK. 

Huan Hua Palace wasn’t going to be there. The Weeper didn’t exist. The Eye or its previous owner wasn’t at all connected to the Garden Master. The Shadow Cave Wolf Spiders didn’t exist. The murder plant didn’t exist. The mysterious monster showing up at the end wasn’t originally planned either. 

I mean, I had a lot of pre-existing plot threads to tie in and weave with, but ohhh boy! Picture someone lying facedown on a floor like, “I forgot to plan the contents of the super important quest...” 

I was originally going to have the Eye quest a lot simpler, but given the weight “Death of the Author” had when I finally reached this part of the story, that wasn’t really going to do! It had to be bigger than that! It needed oomph! This also felt like a good opportunity to really establish the new SQH-SY dynamic. To explore SY fumbling to find a place in this world without strict character role, especially in relation to settled and well-supported SQH. 

- 

“One attempts to remain dignified,” Shen Qingqiu agrees. “As there is little point in kicking and screaming about how such ignobility isn’t fair.”

“Ha! Is there ever?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely not cute when I do it,” Shang Qinghua jokes.

Shen Qingqiu’s lips actually twitch at that.

Success?!

- 

AN: I wasn’t going into this fic with the intention of writing any Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu almost friendship! But it started developing and it seemed a shame not to explore Shang Qinghua developing a real relationship with Shen Qingqiu (though not a particularly close one) when the man is suppose to be the scum villain (and the readers know that the man might get replaced by Shen Yuan). 

I can see myself writing more Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu content in the future. Someone dropped a particularly nice prompt for them in my inbox that I’m looking forward to exploring at some point. 

(I mean, not to say that Shang Qinghua has a type, but Shang Qinghua has a type and it’s handsome, deadly, intimidating, frosty men with a villainous character design and trust/abandonment and communication issues. I could make it work.)

- 

“Ah, well, two ‘ideal’ situations come to mind: severing the personal relationship for good… or, ah, talking about how to do better and trying that. You don’t have to forget or even forgive if you don’t want to! But, ah… there’s got to be a difference between totally swallowing your anger and cutting ties forever, right?” Shang Qinghua says awkwardly. “If there’s… ever going to be anything good afterwards…”

Shen Qingqiu stares at him for a sweat-inducing length of time.

 “Ah, fuck,” Shang Qinghua thinks.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ahhh, I’m just… thinking about something someone told me… in… in regards to some of my own problems. Never mind! Never mind!”

- 

AN: Luo Jiahui really is out here making Moshang and Qijiu get their fucking act together just by setting a better example. 

- 

“Shizun, my apologies for the interruption, but I came to ask Shizun if he would be willing to join our music lesson today? The disciples have missed his playing and are eager to present their improvements.”

“...Very well, unless anyone here would disagree…?” Shen Qingqiu looks directly at the Qian Cao Peak cultivator, as though daring her to object and die.

“It’s an excellent suggestion!” the Qian Cao Peak cultivator says quickly.

The young woman smiles. “And perhaps Shizun could sit in on the calligraphy lesson afterwards? In order to offer his opinion on my progress as a teacher?”

“Fishing for compliments is unbecoming,” Shen Qingqiu says dryly.

“Wait, what?” Shang Qinghua thinks.

- 

AN: So, this has all been happening in the background, but Shen Qingqiu accepted this House of Rejuvenation woman onto his Peak about... 6-ish years ago now? This is kind of meant to parallel Shang Qinghua’s once-secret relationship with Luo Jiahui. 

Shang Qinghua was out here trying to be a better person and Shen Qingqiu noticed; now Shen Qingqiu has his own positive (platonic) relationship with a nameless background character who was meant to die for plot reasons. What a thing, huh? If the story was saved because Shang Qinghua started a domino effect of saving random people who went on to change things? 

- 

After all, as Shang Qinghua said to the kid, besides Peerless Cucumber’s apparent talent for cultivation, he knows that his fellow transmigrator has three very important skills that will serve him well on An Ding Peak! 1) An encyclopedia knowledge for even seemingly pointless bullshit (which is kind of flattering, honestly). 2) The willingness to fight total strangers over seemingly pointless bullshit. And 3) a sharp enough tongue to win.

Peerless Cucumber didn’t find these points as funny as Shang Qinghua did.

- 

AN: Shen Yuan was always going to end up on An Ding Peak. I thought about sending him to Qing Jing or Qian Cao or Qiong Ding... or any other Peak... but that would take him too far away from Shang Qinghua to really explore their relationship and to move him around conveniently in the story. And SY sticking to An Ding seemed to best illustrate the fact that SY is lost and doesn’t know what to do except cling to SQH. 

- 

“It’s not much, sure, but it’s yours,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “You’ll be joining the talisman classes soon, so don’t try anything from a book and then need to request some home repairs.”

Peerless Cucumber nods and puts his stack of manuals down on the table.

“How’s your tutorial mission going?”

“Fine,” the kid says shortly. “Have you found anything for the other one yet?”

“Ah, not yet.”

- 

AN: “Are you winning, son?” meme energy here. 

- 

Ah, now Shang Qinghua recognizes his fellow transmigrator’s expression! That’s the same stunned expression one of his Huan Hua not-disciples, Yu Chaonan, made upon meeting the Bai Zhan Peak War God for the first time. Shang Qinghua assumes that Peerless Cucumber was expecting a man who looked more like a musclebound giant and less like a pop idol (if one with amazingly muscular arms), which is a super common and never-not-funny misconception people have about Liu Qingge.  

“Brother of one of the most beautiful women in this world, bro,” Shang Qinghua reminds his fellow transmigrator, amused. Aha! Now Peerless Cucumber’s vehement disinterest in the harem stuff is making even more sense than before!

Shang Qinghua’s assumption gets 100% confirmed when it comes time for Peerless Cucumber to fly with Liu Qingge for the next leg of the journey. The other transmigrator is so embarrassed and awkward about it that Shang Qinghua’s super direct brother-in-law asks if the young man is alright.

- 

AN: This was so fun to write. Shang Qinghua really can use the Liu siblings to gauge people’s sexual/romantic orientation. 

- 

The map (or rather, the copy Shang Qinghua made of the delicate original map) takes them to a green and grey landscape of leafy trees crawling over a wide network of tall cliffs and deep gorges. Gurgling rivers cut through twisting rock formations. Shang Qinghua can’t see any of these rivers on the map. Or these deathly drop ravines. From the outside, the whole thing looks like a natural maze (holy shit, there could be so many monsters and death-traps in there!), and Shang Qinghua would know those golden robes flying low over the hanging trees anywhere.

“Huan Hua,” Liu Qingge mutters.

“Do you think they’re looking for what we’re looking for?” Luo Fanli asks.

“That’s usually how it goes,” Peerless Cucumber says, before Shang Qinghua can.

- 

AN: I came up with the skeleton idea first. Then I was like... “I should give it three eyes.” And then I was like... “But who IS this dead author? A god? A spirit? What grander implications am I spinning here?” 

And THEN I remembered that I had some ambiguous powerful being force the Garden Master into exile due to a flood. This was because, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the immortal man Gilgamesh meets in the abyss is the survivor of a great flood. So I was like, “Reduce! Re-use! Recycle! There’s my skeleton!” 

So I wanted to relate the skeleton to water because of the flood angle. Water as a symbol of cleansing/reincarnation is a big thing throughout many cultures. I can’t remember exactly how the crying aspect came up, but I knew there was going to be water in the temple now, so at some point my brain like was, “Bro, this skeleton should totally be crying because mythology vibes.” 

So I built the surrounding land off the idea that there was water flowing from or around this temple. At this point, I had decided that Huan Hua Palace should also be looking for this artifact, so I had to come up with a way to hide the temple, yet have a way for SQH’s party to track it down. 

- 

The damage to the doors is worse: someone once upon a time collapsed a part of the cliff face around the entrance, essentially leaving only the top fourth of the utterly smashed stone doors visible. It’s a wall now and has been for ages. It looks like it would take days to dig through the rubble. Someone has even super helpfully carved, “These doors will never open again,” just above the wreck.

“Guess we’ll have to go in as intruders rather than guests!” Luo Fanli says.

“What would be welcoming us inside a lost temple exactly?” Shang Qinghua asks vaguely, inwardly cursing the fact that explosive mining techniques will definitely attract the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators’ attention and also probably collapse the whole cliff on them.

“We only have to clear a passage for us, not the whole door,” Peerless Cucumber says optimistically. “Is there a special technique for this kind of thing?”

“Aha, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we just keep following the water?” Luo Fanli says.

“...How so?” Shang Qinghua asks.

“Some of those waterfalls could be passages inside,” Liu Qingge explains, because he and the little sister-in-law apparently share the same brain. He’s already eyeing the waterfall wearing down the giant statue on the left.

- 

AN: Temples in quests need to have traps and obstacles and monsters! Well, not ALL of the did, but this one did. I based the obstacles they faced as much as I could around the whole “Death of the Author” theme, while using this whole quest to explore Shen Yuan, Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua, Shang Qinghua and Liu Qingge and Luo Fanli, and so on. 

The idea here with the door is that the “author” is not going to let them inside the temple to take the interpretation of the narrative (the Eye) for themselves. The story is over (the temple is closed for business)! The author is dead! If they want to get inside, they have to break inside or slip inside as intruders. 

This also creates a convenient obstacle to hold up the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators so that our party can be nearly caught later! And shows off Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, and Luo Fanli’s twisty lines of thinking. 

- 

Luo Fanli is holding the light and Shang Qinghua passes the other transmigrator to her, while accepting Liu Qingge’s hand for help getting out of the water.

“Ahhh, that was fun,” Shang Qinghua mutters.

Then he notices that Liu Qingge has the Cheng Luan sword out and ready. Shang Qinghua looks through the surrounding darkness, but all he can see are columns and water. For a moment, he thinks he sees something, a prowling shadow at the other end of the cavernous room, but he wipes the water out of his eyes and it’s gone.

- 

AN: The water in Shang Qinghua’s eyes briefly lets him see a flash of the invisible monsters who show up later! It helps up the tension. 

- 

Another low growl rips through the darkness and Peerless Cucumber shuffles a little closer to Shang Qinghua. Because that sounded really fucking close and yet Shang Qinghua still can’t see the thing that’s making that sound.

He doesn’t see Liu Qingge lunge at him either. He only feels his brother-in-law shove him into Peerless Cucumber, knocking them into the water, out of the way of something that howls when Liu Qingge slashes at it with his sword. Shang Qinghua rolls off Peerless Cucumber and looks up just in time to see dark blood splatter across the watery floor. Liu Qingge pursues the attacker with a second slash, but only seems to meet thin air this time.

“It’s invisible!” Luo Fanli cries. “Fuck!”

“Behind you!” Liu Qingge snaps, and spins to slash at the thin air beside him. Dark droplets of blood hit the water again and something hisses at him.

Luo Fanli whirls and slashes, searching for an opponent.

“They’re reflected in the water!” Liu Qingge yells at her, standing guard over Shang Qinghua as he gets to his feet again. “Listen for their footsteps and vocalizations! Feel the demonic energy and air displacement!”

- 

AN: I got this from a list of Dungeons and Dragons puzzles. The idea is that there’s some puzzle that must be solved, but the truth of the room can only be seen in the reflection of the nearby water (or mirror or whatever). 

Which felt fitting for a “Death of the Author” quest! Whatever an author’s intentions, the story is what they actually wrote, so the audience interprets a text without the context of the author’s insight. The truth (of the story) is in the reflection (audience interpretation)! It felt like a fun idea. 

It also allows Shen Yuan to actually contribute to the quest via monster lore and bring up his impaired vision problem. And to confront Shen Yuan with the reality of this world. And to show off Luo Fanli’s fighting skills. And to show off LIU QINGGE’S legendary fighting skills, instincts as a warrior who fights many dangerous beasts, and the fact that he’s clever and observant! 

Liu Qingge is good at what he does! And this is what he does! 

- 

Someone has… angrily… or desperately… carved a lopsided message into the wall.

 “‘If I go blind, so does the world,’” Peerless Cucumber reads.

“...That’s probably not good,” Shang Qinghua says.

“Nooo…” Fanli agrees.

The messages continue as they climb, carved into the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Most of it is illegible. Some of it is just nonsense. Some of it looks like the same kind of historical records carved into the broken tablets. Some of it looks like someone attacked the walls after reading what was written there. There are deep gouges in the walls and cracked marks that would match a giant’s hands.

 “‘The water cleans the lies,’” Peerless Cucumber reads. “‘I am the only one who can see.’ ‘Lies everywhere, lies everywhere, lies everywhere.’ ‘The water cleans the evil.’ ‘I do not have enough tears.’ ‘Everything is nothing now. Everything in vain.’”

“You really don’t need to read them!” Shang Qinghua tells the kid. “It’s fine. It's totally fine.”

- 

AN: This is mostly here to up the tension, but it’s also here to try and give insight into this being and relate them more to the “Death of the Author” and the “Seeing is Believing” themes. 

I also saw the phrase “If I go blind, so does the world” while I was browsing a list of riddles for D&D campaigns and I was like, “THAT’S SICK, I’M USING THAT.” Really brings the “an eye for an eye” and vengeance vibes. (The riddle was longer than that one phrase, but the answer was “the sun”.) 

- 

The top of the temple reveals one massive room that looks like someone was alternatively scratching their insanity into the walls and tearing chunks out of the interior design with their bare hands. Overtop of the rubble is that eerie overgrowth. There’s a fine layer of water over the floor. At the center of it all is an incredibly enormous desk, cracked in half, with a robed skeleton sitting behind it, slumped over the top. It’s a little too large to be an ordinary human.

Plus, its skull is a little too long, probably to accommodate the third eye socket in the forehead. There’s something gleaming softly yellow in the third eye socket.

“Is… there water dripping from its eyes?” Luo Fanli whispers.

“It looks like it…” Peerless Cucumber whispers back. “Like it's crying…?”

“Still…? Is it dead or not?”

 “Holy shit,” Shang Qinghua thinks, slightly nauseated. “System, bro, the worst bro I’ve ever known, tell me that we have not been swimming in a three-eyed skeleton’s magical undead tears or something this whole time.”

The shitty, no-good System stays unsurprisingly silent. 

- 

AN: Okay, so the idea here is that this being was someone who recorded history and shared their knowledge freely. This being had the ability to discern the truth of a person - they were extremely perceptive. (The Weeper is either female or doesn’t have a gender, by the way.) 

The Weeper met the Garden Master at some point. The Garden Master was an asshole, a liar, arrogant, etc.. The Weeper and the Garden Master clashed badly, until the Weeper sent the cleansing flood that nearly destroyed the sect and the Garden Master essentially had to flee to a personal abyss. 

The Garden Master sent the plant as a final “fuck you” to the Weeper. The plant caused the Weeper to slowly go mad. The smashed tablets and destroyed temple are the Weeper’s work. The Weeper (not in a great state of mind) had the temple closed themselves once they realized they and their work had been corrupted. This was a “you destroy my (embellished) reputation, I destroy yours (and your entire life)” plot by the Garden Master. 

The idea behind the tears is the whole “water is cleansing” thing. The Weeper tried to clean away the madness using their magical water-related abilities... and it actually worked for a long time. But eventually the madness began to overpower the effects of the magical water. The Weeper’s tears are from frustration and helplessness at losing control. 

The water inside the temple combats the plant’s physical effects. Also stabbing the root killed the plant and essentially broke its mental/spiritual powers. 

- 

Unfortunately, to get the fuck out of here, they have to go back through the temple. But hey! That’s still a lot better than an extended hike through an underground, haunted desert in darkness! The battle with the now-dead plant caused its growth to writhe around the temple. The vines need to be hacked through sometimes as they travel down through the rooms of broken shelves and shattered tablets.

“So much history lost…” Peerless Cucumber murmurs.

 “He still thinks of himself as a reader - an observer, a visitor, separate from the flow of fate.”

- 

AN: This is... absolutely based on the Heart from the Dishonored franchise. But this sort of item didn’t originate with Dishonored and I need it! It’s a surprise/mystery tool that will help us later! 

The Eye isn’t exactly a mind-reading object. I mean, it kind of is, but it works in a very specific way that I’m looking forward to getting into. 

- 

From there, their path back out of the natural maze is even more careful and stressful than before, now that the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators are actively looking for them rather than the temple. It’s slow-going and stressful and silent, except for when the Weeper’s Eye presses too close against his chest.

 “He is afraid that if he starts screaming, he will never stop,” it tells him, when he’s looking at a pale-faced Peerless Cucumber, as they fly over a particularly deathly-looking drop.

 “Oh, me too, bro!” Shang Qinghua thinks. “Seriously! Tell me something I don’t know!”

- 

AN: Having Shang Qinghua be totally unimpressed by an object like this was very funny to me. He’s the author! He’s a transmigrator! He knows these people well! He already has insight into their situations. 

- 

Shang Qinghua groans, but supposes that Peerless Cucumber would have at least been disguising Liu Qingge from the back. “You tell them that you were tracking thieves who stole something from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,” he says quickly. “Rule of embarrassment! Admitting something that makes us look bad to a rival makes it sound true. Don’t tell them what was stolen and act really offended if they try to poke into Cang Qiong business. I’ll come back as soon as I get these two out!”

Liu Qingge nods and launches forward into the fight.

“We’re just leaving him?” Peerless Cucumber says, as they do exactly that.

“I’ll get changed and come back ‘looking for him for urgent sect business’ as soon as I’ve dropped you two off in the last town,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’m really good at acting stressed and confused, and at desperately needing an unstoppable wandering Liu Qingge back at Cang Qiong Mountain Sect immediately. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Mission isn’t over yet!”

- 

AN: Shang Qinghua is, at heart, a liar. I love him. 

[bytheangell]

Take Me With You

(For my @shadowhunterbingo square: Traveling | Jimon, Rated Teen, referenced alcohol but no archive warnings/other warnings) (Read on AO3) “I don’t need a bodyguard,” Simon insists. “It was one stupid letter.”

“The letter wasn’t stupid,” Jace says, already regretting his appointment to this job. “It was a death threat, by someone who’s sent multiple things to your unlisted apartment.”

“Well, no one knows where I live on the road, which is where I’ll be for the next three months,” Simon points out.

“Oh, yes, the total inability to track you from a list of cities you’re going to and the dates and times you’ll be there. You’re right, no one will ever find you that way,” Jace says, his tone dripping with sarcasm and more than a little condescending. Simon isn’t a no-name, but he isn’t famous-famous either, and Jace hoped that’d make him a little less awful to put up with than Jace’s usual high-profile assignments. So far it’s the opposite - Simon isn’t taking this seriously at all, which is somehow more frustrating than too much importance being put on minor perceived threats.

Simon sighs. “Fine.” It certainly doesn’t sound like he’s fine with it, but Jace isn’t here to argue. He’s here to do a job.

“Great,” Jace says. “You won’t even know I’m here.”

---

That ends up being a complete lie. Of course, when Jace first imagined blending into the background of Simon’s tour life he hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that Simon drove his own van, which would just be the two of them for extended periods of time.

Jace can tell that he’s putting a damper in the way Simon normally functions during his tours, mostly because he’s quiet while they drive. Then he’ll say something, start to ramble, catch himself rambling, and fall abruptly silent again in a repeating pattern.

“Sorry if I’m cramping your style,” Jace says after one of these repetitions, speaking loud enough to be heard over the music playing in the background.

“You’re not,” Simon insists.

Jace is dubious. “What would you be doing if you were alone?” Jace asks.

Simon doesn’t even hesitate before answering, “Scream-singing at the top of my lungs with the windows down. It’s like, my tried-and-true road trip routine.”

“...so do it. Don’t let me stop you,” Jace says.

“My manager hates it because he’s convinced one of these days I’ll end up losing my voice before a show. It’s probably for the best I’m not,” Simon says before falling silent again.

Jace doesn’t push it, nor does he comment when Simon starts to sing to a song that comes on about half an hour later, his voice growing louder and louder until all the windows are down and he’s shouting lyrics into the cool night air.

Jace has to fight the urge to join him. Normally he doesn’t have an issue staying focused on a job but Simon has this disarming way of making Jace want to relax around him. Somehow what he thought would be his easiest job to date continues to throw surprising complications his way.

Still, he keeps his mouth shut and enjoys Simon’s singing as they continue driving into the night.

---

Watching Simon with his fans is nerve-wracking. There’s no telling who might be a threat, not when everyone seems so down-to-earth, much like Simon himself. There aren’t any obviously obsessive fangirls and normal tells like knowing too many personal details is just the norm, with multiple people casually asking Simon about how his Bubbie Helen is doing or about the cat he left at home with Clary during his tour, or the most recent book he’s been reading and chatting about online. It’s difficult to pick out a potential stalker when everyone knows what Jace would typically consider more personal details than usual about Simon.

Jace watches these pre- and post-show encounters with a feeling more like he’s observing conversations between old friends rather than a musician and his fans, signatures and photo ops aside. Simon knows some of them by name, remembers birthdays mentioned over social media or live chats, and even recalls previous conversations. It’s impressive.

Dressed in plain clothes so he blends in with the crowd, Jace grows increasingly impressed with Simon the more time he spends with him. Plenty of people claim to be humble, but few often are in practice. Not Simon. Simon is everything he told Jace when they first met. He’s the same way with his fans that he is in private with Jace, which is the same way he is with his family and friends - Simon’s just, well, Simon, honestly and earnestly and unapologetically.

It’s refreshing. It’s also just another thing for Jace to push to the back of his mind, because he doesn’t need to like the guy - he just needs to protect him. Simon looks up from the table he’s signing CDs at and shoots Jace a beaming smile, and Jace has to actively force himself not to smile back and simply nod his head in acknowledgment instead.

“It’s an assignment, Herondale. Get your shit together,” Jace mutters to himself from the corner of the room. It’s a reminder he repeats more often over the upcoming weeks than he’s comfortable admitting.

---

“Please,” Jace begs after the first two weeks of shows. “I will pay for a better hotel. Let me pay for a better hotel.”

Simon is shaking his head in response before Jace finishes the request.

“Why?!” Jace glances critically around the room. “Do you want to get murdered in a shady motel? Just because I can keep you alive doesn’t mean we have to actively test it every night when we could have a door that doesn’t look like my 11-year-old brother could kick it in.”

“You have a brother?” Simon asks, ignoring everything else Jace said as he tosses his duffel bag (because Simon doesn’t even have a proper suitcase) onto a bed Jace feels the instinctive need to run a blacklight over.

Jace hesitates to answer because this is a job and he isn’t meant to share personal information about himself with his assignment. It’s strange because normally the people he’s tasked to protect are such self-absorbed assholes they barely spare Jace a second glance, let alone casual conversation.

He’s aware that the pause he takes after what should be a simple question is way too long when Simon frowns, brows pinching together.

“Two brothers, actually. One older, one younger, and a sister,” Jace finally decides to share. It’s all he intends on saying, not wanting to be rude and not answer at all, but when Simon brings up his own sister and keeps talking, keeps asking curious, harmless questions, Jace finds himself answering without thinking.

Simon is easy to talk to - maybe a little too easy to talk to, because the next thing they know it’s 1am and they need to be up and back on the road at 6.

“Get some sleep, Lewis,” Jace says finally, taking a few extra minutes to secure the door before doing one last perimeter sweep. When he gets back he pretends he doesn’t notice Simon, still awake, hastily close his eyes and pretend to sleep the second Jace gets back in the room.

---

After the third week, Jace insists that staying at nicer hotels is a matter of security and finally convinces Simon to pull into the parking lot of a proper hotel. One with room service instead of vending machines, plus a gym and a pool. Jace tells himself it’s a matter of security as well, and not a reaction to Simon complaining about having several nights of terrible sleep and some back and neck pain from the old, cheap mattresses.

Jace certainly doesn’t correct Simon’s assumption that this is covered in the contract when in reality Jace is fronting the extra cost himself. After all, this is as much for his own benefit as it is for Simon’s, right?

That’s what he tells himself as he opens up more around Simon as well, sharing a drink or two when Simon insists (never anything enough to impair his judgment, and only ever when they’re back in a room for the remainder of the night), telling a few more personal stories, and… flirting?

Jace isn’t sure, but occasionally when Simon impulsively runs into an ice cream shop in a new city and gets a cone for each of them, or points out a storefront display with a leather jacket he thinks Jace might like, or leans his shoulder into Jace while laughing at something sarcastic Jace says… yeah, sometimes Jace gets the feeling that Simon might actually like him.

Then Jace just as quickly tells himself that it’s just Simon being nice, because Simon is nice, and because of course Simon’s going to be on good terms with the guy he’s stuck with 24/7 for two months. Jace is working for Simon, and their relationship is strictly professional, however pleasant it may also be.

It’s that hard line Jace knows they won’t cross that allows him to continue to open up more, because Simon’s safe. He’ll never see the guy again when all of this is over.

“You’re a good person, Jace,” Simon says one night after a lengthy conversation.

“...what?” Jace isn’t expecting that.

“You know that, right?” Simon’s tone is just shy of insistent, and certainly not rhetorical.

“Why do you say that?” Jace asks instead of agreeing, because… well, because he doesn’t know that. He tries, but he’s made some shitty decisions in his past, and hurt a lot of people, intentionally or not. And Simon doesn’t even know him, so Jace really doesn’t know where this is coming from.

“Just… the way you talk about yourself sometimes. Like you always have something to prove, or make up for... or like you have to justify everything you say. Sometimes I get the feeling you don’t think very highly of yourself even when you’re acting like God’s gift to mankind,” Simon adds with more accurate insight than Jace is comfortable with.

And now Jace really doesn’t know what to do with that.

“What are you, a philosopher now?” Jace mutters, still avoiding any sort of direct commentary on Simon’s way-too-close-to-home observation. “Go to sleep, Simon. I don’t need you too tired to focus on the road tomorrow.”

Simon looks like he’s going to argue but doesn’t in the end, leaving Jace alone with his thoughts in the newly settling silence of the hotel room.

It feels surprisingly pleasant to hear those affirmations from Simon, and Jace considers for the briefest moment what it’d be like to just be friends with Simon outside of their circumstances, to have these discussions and delve deeper into both of their pasts, humoring more of Simon’s personal questions and--

--and everything he can’t let this turn into over the next few weeks. Fuck.

Maybe there’s some harm in opening up after all.

---

They’re a little over halfway through the three-month tour when Jace realizes that perhaps his harmless crush on Simon is stronger than he realized. Jace watches from his usual spot in the corner as Simon signs CDs and sells band t-shirts and poses for photos, which is what he always does. But with every flirtatious laugh and every arm Simon drapes over someone’s shoulder or wraps around someone’s waist, Jace feels the desire to pull Simon away... and it isn’t because he’s in danger. It’s because Jace is jealous.

Jace grows sullen at the realization, arms crossed in front of him as he forces himself to watch Simon with his fans, because this is his job. The more he watches the more he doesn’t even think Simon realizes he’s doing it. Jace knows what active, intentional flirting looks like, but this is just Simon being his natural charming self, and Jace isn’t sure if that makes the whole thing better or worse.

Because it starts to dawn on him with a bit more meaning now that the way Simon’s been with him is the way Simon is with everyone. Jace just gets to experience it more often than everyone else right now. That doesn’t make their conversations special. It doesn’t make Jace anything special to Simon. And hell, maybe it’s just been a while since Jace spent this much time with someone else, too. Maybe he should work on writing off his own motivations as easily as he’s writing off Simon’s because his feelings are far from professional right now.

When the crowd disperses and Jace goes to help Simon wrap up his gear and load it back into the van (something that’s become routine for them, though not strictly in Jace’s list of expected duties) Jace is quieter than usual.

“Everything alright?” Simon asks, catching the shift in mood.

“Yeah. Fine,” Jace says curtly.

Simon doesn’t look like he believes him but doesn’t press the topic as they toss the last of the equipment into the van and head out.

---

The nicer Simon is toward him, the more closed-off Jace gets. He’s quiet during dinners Simon insists on paying for, stops sharing so much about himself when they do talk, and when Simon gives Jace a guitar pick he fashioned into a necklace for him Jace pockets it with a muttered ‘thanks’ without putting it on. He doesn’t have the heart to totally push Simon away, but he can’t keep growing closer to him knowing it’s all going to end in three weeks.

Jace wears the necklace every day but he keeps it tucked underneath his shirts where Simon can’t see.

Simon eventually stops trying to talk to him entirely, and they spend more and more time in uncomfortable silences. Sometimes Simon insists he needs privacy to work on his music and Jace sits at the end of the hallway of their hotel room listening to the faded sounds of Simon’s strumming.

There are three weeks left in Jace’s assignment when he gets the call that the police managed to track the letters to a girl back in New York: she’s in custody and getting a restraining order put against her, and Jace can come back as soon as he arranges transportation.

Jace hangs up the phone feeling surprisingly upset. This is great news for Simon, and he should be happy for him if nothing else, but that means this is the last night he’ll have to spend with Simon.

The last night he’ll get to spend with Simon.

“Hey Simon, good news. I just got a call from Luke and they tracked down your mystery stalker. You’ll get all the details once you’re back home but they’re already putting the restraining order into place, so you’re good to go.”

“What? That’s amazing!” Simon grins automatically, but it falls back into a frown just as quickly. “Does that mean you…?” his words trail off in question.

“I’ll be able to leave in the morning,” Jace confirms.

“Guess you’ll be happy to get out of here,” Simon says, his smile entirely gone.

“I do miss New York,” Jace carefully avoids the answer he knows Simon’s fishing for. The lie he should give, but can’t bring himself to.

Simon looks Jace up and down, his gaze finally resting on Jace’s face for a long couple of seconds, searching for something there before turning away without another word.

---

Jace knows he shouldn’t go to the show, but he does. He hangs in the back, a real drink in hand now that he’s no longer on duty, and listens to Simon sing the songs Jace knows by heart now. Jace knows from experience standing by the side of the stage that there’s no way Simon can make out any faces where Jace currently sits back by the bar. He plans on leaving before the end, before the lights come on and Simon knows he was there.

He’s a few drinks in when he hears Simon break his usual format.

“How does everyone feel about me trying out a new song I’ve been working on?” Simon asks. The crowd claps and cheers, and Jace shifts in his seat to fully face the stage. “This is a song about feeling a connection with someone, and not knowing when things went wrong, only that they did. And wondering if maybe it was all in your head the whole time...”

Jace feels his throat tighten at those words. He doesn’t have to be a genius to piece together the lyrics Simon starts to sing, fitting them to their lives the past few months, the hope of getting to know someone you’re starting to like, the confusion of being shut out, the uncertainty of wondering if they ever felt the same way you did or if they were just humoring you.

Jace knows Simon well enough to know that this isn’t a coincidence. It can’t be.

Against his better judgment, Jace stays. He stays until the set is over and the lights come on and Simon looks out around the crowd and makes direct eye contact with him.

Because fuck it. He’s leaving in the morning, and if this is all for nothing then he’ll never see Simon again and it won’t matter. But if he’s right…

Jace hangs back, watching Simon smile and laugh and sign CDs and take photos, acutely aware of every time the musician’s eyes wander over to where Jace lingers by the bar. Outside of the fading buzz from the alcohol it almost feels normal: hanging back after the show, watching Simon and waiting for him to make his way over once the crowd disperses. Hell, even the butterflies in Jace’s stomach aren’t new.

“You’re here,” Simon says when he finally makes his way over. “I didn’t think you’d come, since… I mean…”

“I heard your new song,” Jace forces the words out before he can change his mind. “I’d say I liked it, but that seems like the wrong response from the guy who made you think you did something wrong.”

“Not everything is about you,” Simon argues, but the intent falls flat beneath the nervous tremor the words are spoken with.

“No,” Jace agrees easily. “But that song is.”

Simon hesitates, then sighs. “It is.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize for not liking me, Jace. You were doing your job, that’s-”

“No. I’m sorry I was going to leave without telling you that I like you. I thought I’d leave and you’d never see me again, that it’d be pointless to get attached. I thought you were just… being nice. Because you’re a good person.” The words spill out of Jace before he can overthink them.

“You like me,” Simon repeats incredulously. “That totally makes sense with, you know, the way you completely stopped talking to me.”

Jace can hear the anger in Simon’s voice and winces slightly. Just because it’s entirely deserved doesn’t make it easier to hear.

“I figured it’d be easier to walk away once this was all over if we weren’t as friendly.” It’s still a shitty thing to have done, and Jace wouldn’t blame Simon for holding it against him. But after hearing that song he couldn’t walk away with Simon thinking it was over anything he did wrong. No matter the cost to Jace’s pride, Simon deserves that much. “And… maybe I was a little afraid that if I got much closer I’d want to cross a line I knew I couldn’t.”

“So you felt it too?” Simon’s words and expression are full of so much hope that Jace almost panics again. What if he isn’t half the person Simon thinks he is after getting to know him in this little bubble of theirs from the past few months? What if he messes this up?

...what if he doesn’t?

“I did,” Jace finally admits. “I still do. And I know I probably ruined any chance I had before, but if I haven’t fucked things up too badly, maybe once you’re back in New York we could meet up for coffee?”

Simon smiles, brighter than the house lights that fill the small venue now.

“Or… or you could stay with me for the last few shows? I wasn’t just being nice for the sake of being nice - I like you, Jace. I changed my hotel routine for you! I wouldn’t do that for just anyone. I don’t know if you have to go back right away for work, or something, but if you don’t I definitely wouldn’t mind the company. Your company.”

Jace considers it for a few long moments, then nods. It’s fitting, he thinks, to drop the formalities and the professional distance in the same setting he started to fall for Simon in. The same setting in which Simon started to fall for him, despite Jace’s best efforts to dissuade him, only this time with no excuses to hold him back. And if Simon’s willing to give him an actual shot after everything, he’d be a fool not to take it.

“Well, I can’t very well leave you to lug all your equipment around by yourself, can I?” Jace says, smiling. “Let me check back in with the office tomorrow morning but I don’t have anything scheduled. It shouldn’t be an issue.”

There’s a pause then, the air between them filled with an almost electric buzz of anticipation. Simon takes the first step closer, bridging the gap between them. There’s no questioning what Simon’s thinking when his eyes dart down to Jace’s lips and back up to meet his gaze again before speaking.

“Can I-”

Before Simon can finish, Jace’s lips are already on his in response. It’s slow and tentative, with each of them feeling the other out, but it’s nice. It’s really nice. When they pull away after a few moments Simon can’t keep the smile off his face. “That was even better than I imagined.”

Jace quirks an eyebrow, smirking fully now. “You imagined us kissing?”

“Shut up and help me load the van.”

The familiar banter and Simon’s easy smile are such an immediate comfort for Jace that he can’t help the light laugh he gives in response. As Simon looks back at Jace it’s with an expression so soft and full of kindness that Jace knows now isn’t the same look he reserves for everyone else.

Jace knows it’s a look reserved only for him this time - and with any luck, for many more times to come.

[365days365movies]

April 8, 2021: Swiss Army Man (2016) (Recap: Part One)

Don’t think about the Boy who Lived.

Daniel Radcliffe is a talented actor with a wider range than he’s given credit for. He’s been working since childhood, and has picked up quite a lot over time. While most famous for...a certain role that will go unnamed...he famously started his stage career in 2007 with the musical Equus, and that later progressed to How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and Endgame.

Meanwhile, he also made appearances of television in varied roles, live-action and animated. He started his career in an adaptation of David Copperfield in 1999, voiced a character on The Simpsons three separate times, hosted Saturday Night Live in 2012, and also currently has an excellent role in the anthology series Miracle Workers.

And MEANWHILE, he also had quite the robust film career, especially after...the role which shall not be named. There were a few films made during that time period, like December Boys and The Woman in Black, but most of his time was understandably taken up, as was his public image. That, of course, ends in 2011. The first time I saw him in a role outside he who shall not be named was in the film Kill Your Darlings, about the collegiate career and romance in the life of famous gay poet Allen Ginsburg. It was very good!

The same year, 2013, he starred in Horns, a unique fantasy film that I considered watching for Fantasy March. His film career would be full of ups (The F Word, Trainwreck, Lost in London) and downs (Victor Frankenstein, Now You See Me 2, Playmobil: the Movie oh God REALLY JESUS). And right in the middle of those came one of his most famous weird roles. And that’s today’s focus. And I’ve been wanting to watch it for YEARS. And while we’re talking about him, let’s talk about this film’s other star: Paul Dano.

Dano’s career also began young, and in the opposite way to Radcliffe’s: in theatre first. After a stint on Broadway at the age of 12 (GODDAMN) in Inherit the Wind, as well as several other productions, he transitioned to film in 2000, around the same time that Radcliffe started as well. Eventually, he gained acclaim with his role in Little Miss Sunshine, and then...anybody else in the mood for a milkshake right about now?

Yeah, I haven’t seen that movie, but I really should this year. Consider it on my list...at some point. I’ll figure it out. Anyway, Dano’s role in There Will Be Blood only increased his acclaim, and found him acting in a number of indie films. Dano’s definitely not a blockbuster guy, but that’s not to say that he completely avoids them either. He’s been in Knight and Day, Cowboys and Aliens, and Looper, which all fall under that category. And except for the last one...they aren’t especially good, either. 

But again, he was also in 12 Years a Slave, Okja, Wildlife, Where the Wild Things Are, and Meek’s Cutoff, and all of those were critically acclaimed, and some almost reached blockbuster status themselves. So I don’t really know how to feel about his upcoming role as...the Riddler.

Yeah, we’ll see, but I’m holding my breath. Dano’s great, and I love the Riddler, but...I dunno. Like I said, we’ll see. But in the meantime, that’s enough navel-gazing. Let’s watch Swiss Army Man! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

We begin at sea. If you have thalassophobia, this is already terrifying for you. After seeing many plastics floating on the ocean, covered in written messages, we make our way to a deserted island, where Hank Thompson (Paul Dano) is committing suicide after being stranded there for so long.

However, as he does, he spies someone lying on the beach. The rope snaps, and Hank runs over to greet the body, hoping that he isn’t dead. Unfortunately, after a very loud burst of flatulence, it’s pretty damn clear that this is a dead body. And yes, this is Daniel Radcliffe, but I’ll introduce him formerly when the time comes.

Hank’s sad that the guy isn’t alive, but still speaks to him about his hopes and dreams in the past. He’d always wanted a life of parties and friends and love, and imagined that he’d see that kind of life in a flash before he died. Instead, he only saw the body, who responds with yet another fart. But with that, Hank goes back to trying to hang himself. 

And as he does...the body keeps interrupting with its INSANE gas. Like, it’s so bad that the body keeps shaking as if it were alive. The body washes into the sea, and its flatulence begins to propel it away from the shore. Hank sees this, and he uses the humming he was doing to make the Intro Song, which is strangely mesmerizing? Like, literally soundtrack-worthy, I’m not kidding. He also grabs a piece of his noose, uses it to grab onto the body, and rides it as the farts propel them both far away from the beach. It’s absolutely absurd...and kind of great. And then the titles play.

Hank wakes up on the short of a different island, or possible a larger land mass, and is overjoyed by the change in scenery. He shouts his name to the world, and credits the body with his rescue. No longer stranded in the Pacific, as far as we know, he tries to use his phone, to no avail. He decides to head out and look for help, grabbing a bag of Cheetos that washed up alongside them, bids the body farewell...and then comes back for it.

Carrying the farting body on his back (and kind of treating him as if he’s alive), he wanders through the forest to find help. He wonders if the gas is the result of decomposition (likely, if excessive), or if its the body’s soul leaving it. Either way, the trudge forward. They settle in a cave for the night, as it rains heavily outside. As Hank is want to do, he hums to himself, and shares more of his personal life with the body, as he sings to it. And yeah, I’ve been linking to these songs, because the soundtrack is genuinely fascinating to me.

Morning comes, and Hank awakes to a raccoon prying at the body, which he subsequently chases for food. In his desperation for food and water, he’s once again about to leave the body in the cave, but notices it leaking copious amounts of water from its mouth, which it had collected from the cave walls overnight. And yes...he drinks it. Which is absolutely disgusting when you think about it, which I now choose NOT to.

In the process, Hank squeezes the body for more water, and air escapes his mouth in such a way that it sounds like it’s speaking a name: Manny (Daniel Radcliffe). From that, Hank gets the body to speak his name and a simple greeting, but grows frustrated from the inability of the body to speak properly. This leads to him being a bit abusive towards him, reminding him unfavorably of his own father. Ooh, character revelations, me like.

Anyway, he apologizes to Manny for treating him that way...and Manny responds. Which FREAKS HANK THE FUCK OUT, understandably, and he punches Manny and flees the cave. As he comes back, Manny is indeed speaking outright, which is either a miracle or Hank just straight-up hallucinating. Either way, Hank asks Manny to try and remember his past life, but all he can get is the vague recollection of the Jurassic Park theme song. But Manny can’t remember the movie itself, which is when Hank says the most correct line ever said in all of film.

You’re goddamn right. Anyway, from, there, Hank tries to teach Manny about the ways of the world, and the nature of life and death. And the resulting conversation is absolutely fuckin’ ridiculous, and I love it all. Through the process, Manny learns about the world, and Hank asks him to help get home.

In the process, Manny inadvertently insults Hank, causing to walk off and once again look for help, only to eat poison berries and throw up for a sec. The two reunite, and their conversation turns to the topic of sex. See, there are some magazines in the cave that they’re in, which prompts some questions about women, sex, and love. To both of their surprise, this conversation causes Manny’s heart to beat! Spurred on, Hank continues, and Manny’s heart appears to reawaken...as does his penis. That’s a link to the soundtrack, I promise.

Hank and Manny both freak out, as his little Manny seems to have a mind (and motility) of its own. But in the ever absurd nature of this movie’s premise, this too has a secondary function: it’s a compass. Yup. And that prompts the next step of their journey, which is full of a conversation about fetishes and masturbation. Yeah, Hank’s surprised about that, too.

This leads to a conversation about his parents, as well as somewhat traumatic parts of his childhood, including his mother’s premature death. This makes Hank upset, and he lashes out at Manny, who briefly returns to being dead until Hank apologizes. As they go on, however, they encounter another denizen of the forest: a bear. This causes the two to fall off a cliff, and causes Hank’s phone to fall out of his pocket and turn on, allowing Manny to see the picture of a girl on his background.

Manny’s enraptured by the picture, and constantly asks to see her again, as Hank continues to struggle for food. The problem is that Hank needs to conserve the power on the phone, but Manny asks if Hank can dress up as the girl in order to help him remember, and bring him back to life to help save them both. He does so reluctantly, but Manny calls him beautiful, to which Hank reacts positively. This not only helps Manny come to life a little more, but also leads Hank to shave to look more convincing for Manny...and possibly for Hank, too.

As these two engage on a fake date and create a fake bus (while Manny listens to a fake self-sung cover of Cotton Eye Joe that I’m putting on my playlist), this is a good time to mention the one thing I know about this movie...maybe. I don’t quite remember where I heard this, but I have heard that this film is possibly a commentary on the transgender experience, or at the very least that Hank is transgender, but hasn’t come to terms with that as of yet. Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I have heard that, and I’m definitely interested to see if that’s the direction this goes. This scene definitely seems to somewhat confirm this theory. Also, I will say (as I have said before when watching The Danish Girl), I’m a straight dude of the cissexual sort, so this is in NO WAY in my wheelhouse, but I still figured I’d mention it.

We’re also at the halfway point now, so this would seem like a good time to pause for Part 2! See you there!

[phcking-detective]

Not Alone

Nines decides if he gets put on hold one more time, he's violating the Geneva Convention.

"Hello, are you still there?"

"Yes."

The PACU nurse audibly sighs in disappointment. "I spoke with our Chief of Staff, and he has given me permission to reiterate to you that a work partner does not count as family. Our policy is—"

Nines involuntarily reviews the Post Anesthesia Care Unit's visitation policy for the sixty-seventh time.

Visitation in the PACU is at the discretion of the nurse and physician caring for you and varies depending upon your procedure. Once the nurse taking care of you is happy with your vital signs and other post surgical requirements, they will contact the waiting area and will let your family member see you. Our policy at this time is legal family members only.

Which is a currently-still-legal method of barring androids.

Never mind that this policy also has significant human collateral damage: adoptees, divorcees, mixed race families …

The end result is that Nines cannot produce a marriage certificate and he obviously is not related by blood, so no one will be there to greet Gavin when he wakes up from his surgery.

And that is unacceptable. The detective has enough abandonment issues already.

Connor cannot hear the internal phone call Nines is engaged in, but he has a social module and must somehow be reading the results from his body language or facial expression.

"Hank could pretend to be his dad," he offers.

The PACU nurse is still reading the visitation policy in full. She's clearly determined to make this as difficult as possible, and showing up with a random human male with pale skin and fair hair who shares nothing in common with Gavin's olive skin tone, dark hair, or facial features is not going to cut it.

Nines searches through every single scan and PDF of paperwork Detective Gavin Reed has ever submitted to the DPD. Finally, all the way back to carry-over paperwork from the police academy he attended, Nines discovers a phone number he's never seen before listed as Gavin's emergency contact.

And it says brother.

Nines uses the phone at Gavin's desk to call this number without mentally disconnecting from the PACU nurse. Normally, he would be more than capable of processing infinite phone calls, but he does not have a social module and his stress levels are climbing into the high eightieth percentile.

"Gav, you better be dying because otherwise—"

"Is that Elijah Kamski?" Connor blurts out in the middle of the precinct.

"—just fucking text me, bro."

"Well shit," Hank says. "Talk about can I speak to a manager. You think he'd be willing to fix—"

Nines holds up a hand. He does not have a social module and cannot possibly process three conversations at once.

"You are listed as Detective Reed's emergency contact," he says into the phone.

"Is he hurt or dead?" Kamski immediately asks.

Nines cannot reply for nearly a full second. He spent three seconds thinking his partner was dead. It was not enough for Detective Gavin Alexander Reed to merely get shot, no. He also had to fall off the roof of a building, and the impact from the landing was enough to briefly stop his heart, which registered to Nines's scanners that—

"Hurt. Surgery." That is all he can say at first. "Successful. He is out of intensive care and has been transferred to the PACU."

In the background, Nines can still hear the others in the bullpen gossiping. He did not mean to make Gavin's familial relationship public. He assumed the phone number for one "Eli Reed" would simply be a regular, non-famous human of no particular importance except to get someone into the hospital to reassure Gavin he is not alone.

"What does he need now?" Kamski asks. "Will he be released soon and need a ride or in-home monitoring?"

Those are [logical] questions. Nines supposes he should not have expected anything less from the man who is technically his creator. Even if he only wrote the code and was not personally involved in the android's construction or testing phase.

"I have already made those arrangements during his surgery," Nines reports. "His apartment is prepped for his return, and my lieutenant has put together a … care package."

"Is that the old guy, husky, beard? With that Connor I liked?"

Across the bullpen, Connor's advanced hearing picks that up, and he visibly preens. Nines practices making a facial expression by sneering and rolling his eyes at him.

"Yes."

"OK, cool," Kamski says. "So, do you need me to cover the cost of surgery or is he asking for me …?"

"I have been unable to contact Detective Reed," Nines admits. "The hospital's visitation policy specifies 'legal' family members only as a method of anti-android discrimination. You are the only family member I have been able to locate."

If you do not visit him, he will be alone.

Nines cannot say this dialogue option. He cannot—refuses to—preconstruct how [bad] it will be if Gavin wakes up alone. His human has a deep, psychological fear of being abandoned, and even if Nines is able to see him immediately upon release and explain the situation, the emotional damage will have already been done.

"Yeah, our parents are dicks, and he doesn't want any famous media bullshit, so we keep the half-brothers thing on the downlow," Kamski says. "Do you need me to be your way in?"

"Yes," Nines says, almost before he finishes offering.

"I'm just kind of assuming here that you're his partner, and he'll want to see you, right?"

"As I am assuming that he accepts you as his brother, and he will want to see you."

Kamski snorts. "I told them stripping out your social module wouldn't stop the deviant problem—or make you any less sassy. That's an inherent RK feature."

"Should I meet you at the hospital," Nines asks.

As much as he may be [curious] about his creator in another situation, this is not another situation. And the situation at hand requires getting to his partner's location immediately.

"Yeah, just send me the address and let me do the talking. See you there."

As soon as he hangs up, Nines is bombarded with [questions] from Connor, Miller, and Collins. Thankfully, Hank stands up and makes a pushing-hands motion to signal to them to be quiet.

"I know we're all real fucking shooketh about this," he says, like the millennial dinosaur he is. "But we can save all the questions and gossip for after Reed gets out of the hospital, all right?"

The humans both grumble, but they let it go. Even Connor stops and sits back down at his own desk.

Hank turns back to Nines. "I'll text Tina and let her know what's up. You just go get your man, kid."

Connor visibly restrains himself from commenting on what an apt descriptor "man-kid" is for Gavin. At least, that's what Nines assumes, considering it is the commentary he himself would normally make.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," he says instead.

He turns and leaves before the "goodbyes" can take any longer. Either whatever Kamski plans will work or … Well. He is the most advanced military android model ever created.

Nothing will keep him from his partner.

***

By the time Nines arrives at the hospital, Kamski is already utilizing his social module. And billions of dollars. The Chief of Staff [Thomas Carrado, unmarried, no arrest record] would wouldn't deign to speak to Nines over the phone is now vigorously shaking Kamski's hand while thanking him for his "generous donation."

"—also, I'm sure you'll want to see your brother too."

"Yes, and—" Kamski turns and [smiles] at Nines. "Ah, my assistant is here. What room should we go to?"

Carrado's own smile freezes on his face when he sees Nines. Even without the LED, there couldn't be any mistaking the android for what he is.

Kamski keeps smiling as well, the sort Connor does when he's about to verbally destroy someone.

"Right this way, Mr. Kamski," Carrado says.

The Chief of Staff turns on his heel without any acknowledgement that Nines follows them. In turn, Nines also does not acknowledge the glances Kamski keeps making at him. His vision is just as accurate in his "peripherals" as it is directly in front of him, so he has no need to turn his head or rotate his optical units to observe the human in turn.

Gavin's [brother].

"—in the nation, but with your esteemed patronage, I'm sure we can rise to first. And of course Mr. Reed will—"

"Detective," Nines corrects.

"—receive the best—"

"Detective."

"—care possible here—"

"Detective."

"—while—"

"Detective."

Carrado stops and whirls around. "Is your … assistant … experiencing a malfunction, Mr. Kamski?"

"No," Nines answers for himself. "You will refer to Detective Reed by his title."

"Oh, is he still pissy about that?" Kamski asks before Carrado can respond. "I swear, every single family dinner for a fucking decade, we had to call him Officer, Detective—he'll be insufferable when he finally makes Captain."

Bold of him to assume Gavin isn't insufferable now.

But Nines does not know the state of Gavin's relationship with his brother, and if the lack of contact is due to mistreatment. He will not risk "making fun of" his partner to a toxic family member.

"Will you be staying long?" Carrado asks Kamski.

"Nines, what does my schedule look like today?"

Nines may not have a social module, but Gavin has forced him to sit through watching enough daytime television to be able to parrot simple lines commonly said by ST300s.

"I have rescheduled your meetings and cleared the remainder of your afternoon and evening, Mr. Kamski."

As Gavin would say, [Like hell] he's going to call the billionaire "sir."

"Excellent." Kamski reaches out to shake hands again, and Carrado is forced to reciprocate. "Thank you so much for your assistance, Dr. Carrado. Now, I promise not to take up any more of your valuable time."

"Well, I'm not—"

Kamski gestures down the hallway, still smiling mildly as if he isn't "politely" telling the good Chief of Staff to [fuck off]. He maintains eye contact with the other human until Carrado slinks away.

It seems Gavin and Kamksi share more than just genetics and a similar facial structure then. Although Gavin would have squeezed the other man's hand hard enough to induce pain, and likely told him literally to fuck off as well.

"Well." Kamski claps his hands together once Carrado is gone. "Let's go see my baby brother!"

***

Gavin is dying. He's alone and he's dying. He's dying and he's alooone.

"Detective."

Person? People??

Hands touch him and it's the best thing ever. There's a person here, he has a person, he's not alone. He's not going to die alone because everyone hates him and it's all his fault for being a huge asshole in the first place.

"Please lie down, Detective."

Gavin stops struggling to sit up when he realizes the person is his person. His favorite person. He collapses back down in the bed, which hurts a lot more than it should. Probably because he fell off a fucking building and messed up the whole left side of his body and—oh yeah, also got shot too. That sucks.

It doesn't stop him from whining and making grabby hands—hand? his left arm and leg are both in casts, boo—until Nines bends over at the waist, and Gavin can drag his face close enough for kisses.

"Wooow." His brother says. "This is blackmail material forever, I hope you know that, Gav."

Wait, his brother? Eli??

"I will remove you from the premises," Nines tells him.

Eli scoffs. "My donation got you in here. Nines."

"And there is nothing on this earth that can remove me."

God, his partner is so hot and mean and cool. And he has a mouth! Gavin has a mouth too. They should … look into that. You know. Investigate.

"Hmm, and here I thought you didn't like my 'stupid toys,' bro."

Gavin stops trying to wrestle his mouth against his partner's mouth and looks at his brother, who is also in the same room as his partner, at the same time.

"Oh, shit," he says.

"Uh huh, uh huh." Eli nods and waves his hand in a sideways-circle. "Keep going. Either with an apology, or you can keep it up about how only a loser needs to build an android to have a girlfriend."

"This is different," Gavin says, very seriously while still leaning to the side to keep as much contact between his back and Nines's chest as possible.

Eli scoffs and gestures at the two of them.

"I don't keep him in my basement," Gavin argues.

"I didn't lock Chloe in mine either," Eli snaps back. "She's free to go where she pleases."

"Her and all her clones?"

"Oh, please. If I never invented her, you wouldn't have—"

"—lab is in your basement though, and that's—"

"Gavin," Nines says, voice right next to his ear. "Is your lack of contact with your brother due to this level of typical sibling fighting—"

"We're not fighting," Gavin says. "We're just talking and he's losing."

"You're the one dumb enough to get shot," Eli adds.

Nines straightens up. "Do not mock Detective Reed for being injured in the line of—"

"Whoa, whoa, hey." Gavin pats behind himself with his good hand as much as he's able. "Easy, babe. No combat protocols, OK? He's my brother."

"Hmm," Nines says.

"So he's like, super fucking annoying and all, but no one beats his face in except me." Gavin doesn't even pause before he turns back to Eli, who's already opening his mouth to bring up— "And you only got lucky with the water hose that one time, I can still kick your ass in any other fight."

Eli scowls, but he looks away instead of bringing it up. He still feels guilty about it. Goddamn genius, and he "didn't know" smacking Gavin in the face with the metal end of a water hose would bust his nose open like that.

Dipshit.

"You said you received your facial scar in a bar fight," Nines says.

Eli blinks, looks back over, then bursts out laughing.

"Shut up," Gavin groans. "You weren't supposed to meet like this, it's not fair!"

"How exactly did you plan on us meeting, Detective?" Nines asks.

Gavin keeps his right hand covering as much of his face as it can and doesn't answer. He hadn't really thought about it beyond how much Elijah was going to fucking gloat when he found out. And as much as he loves his partner, Nines is android-brothers with Connor, and they do android-mind-linking, and Connor is a horrible gossip, and Gavin does not need the entire precinct and/or world to know his brother is possibly the most famous man alive, thanks.

They have a whole arrangement about it. Maybe if he wasn't still feeling the effects of so much morphine, he'd be able to articulate that, and how he wants to be absolutely certain his career really advances on his own merit, and maybe even some other stuff about Eli getting way more attention than him and growing up in the shadow of his cooler, smarter, more popular half-brother …

Ugh.

"Ughhh," Gavin groans again.

"And when were you planning on finally texting me, huh?" Eli asks.

Gavin looks up so he can scoff. "You fucking text me, asshole."

Eli inspects his probably-already-perfect nails. "I've been busy."

"So have I!"

"Getting shot?"

Nines interrupts. "That reminds me." He leans down to growl close in Gavin's ear, "You will never do this again."

Gavin swallows back a moan. "Babe, please don't make me horny while my brother is in the room."

Nines rolls his eyes. "There is no other recourse for me to leave then."

He knows his partner is joking. He knows that. But between the morphine and the exhaustion and now the pain in his side slowly seeping back into his body—Gavin grabs onto Nines and clings to him.

Nines immediately bends back down and wraps his arms around him as best he's able. "Shhh. I will not. I am here, and I have you secure. Shhh."

He makes the shushing noises more like a stern librarian than a comforting boyfriend, but it's ironically comforting after all because Gavin knows no one else would literally say "shhh" like it's a word. So this must be his Nines, his boyfriend, his partner.

"Wow, this is really touching."

Gavin lets go just to flip Eli off.

"Can I get in on this snuggle fest? I haven't seen you in what, a fucking year now, and you get your dumbass shot."

Gavin grumbles about it, but he holds out his good arm for Elijah. The dumb asshole comes over and gives him a one-armed hug, careful not to wrap around too far and touch his side. Or his broken left arm. Broken left leg. Goddamn, he really did it this time, huh?

Once they've hugged it out, he pulls back and says, "Since I built your Nines, when he uses his combat protocols to kick your ass for this, that's basically like me kicking your ass."

"No way," Gavin immediately replies. "You haven't been able to kick my ass since we were ten, and don't—god. Don't phcking, say it like he's you about my ass. That's weird, bro."

Eli grins at him. "Oh, so you two are already doing butt stuff, huh? That's pretty serious, like third base."

"Anal is only second," Gavin tells him.

On his other side, Nines blinks red. "Then what … do you consider first?"

"Uh, a blowjob, duh."

"Wait, what's a handjob?" Eli asks.

"Nothing, between friends."

Nines blinks. "Then thank god Tina is not here."

Gavin looks back down at the bed. "I guess she's busy, huh?"

"No," Nines says as if that's reassuring. But he continues, "She is not allowed to see you. The hospital's visitation policy allows for 'legal' family visitors only."

Gavin looks back up at him. "Then how'd you get in?"

Nines scowls. It's one of the few facial expressions he's mastered. "I searched through every form you have ever submitted to the Detroit Police Department, found an emergency contact number listed for your brother from nearly fifteen years ago, called it, spoke to Elijah Kamski, and then pretended to be his assistant."

"But hey," Eli says. "After the amount of money I just donated, I could wheel in a giant birthday cake filled with Traci strippers, so I'm sure I can get Tina in whenever you're ready."

Gavin smiles weakly, but now he's thinking …

"Is that why you weren't there when I woke up?" he asks Nines quietly.

"It is the only reason," Nines assures him. "My next option after calling your emergency contact was to simply walk inside and see what they thought they could do to remove me."

He looks absolutely serious about it too. Gavin's smile breaks out into a grin, just imagining some poor fucking GS200 security guard nervously asking the most advanced military model ever made to p-p-please leave … sir? Wh-whenever you're ready though, no rush!

He gets the giggles, but then that really makes his side hurt. Nines helps him lie back down before he even realizes he's too tired to sit up anymore. He also gets petted through his hair and that's nice, that's sooo nice.

"I'm … love you," he mumbles.

"I know." Nines smooths his hair back one last time and kisses his forehead. "Rest now. You can talk to your brother more when you wake up. We'll both be here."

Gavin still clutches at him though. "And Tina?"

"Yes," Nines says. "And Tina. Hank too, although he will likely bring Connor."

"Ugh, Connor."

"Yes."

A yawn catches him before he can complain any more about that, and having a nap does sound really good right now.

"Eli, tell me what you're working on," he says, blinking repeatedly to try to keep his eyes open. "S'boring."

Elijah takes a seat next to the bed. "You mispronounced boyfriend, but OK."

"He's boring too," Gavin says, but like, in a loving way. "He filed my ta-a-haaaxes."

After that last yawn, he loses the blinking battle. Eli starts explaining something about a new form of titanium, and Nines keeps one hand resting solidly on the center of his chest, so Gavin knows he's there.

They're both right here.

***

***

this was a commission! my rates are $10 for 1k / $25 for 3k / or $40 for 5k, and you can also check out my patreon for my main reed900 series here ^^

[skyluni]

Hi! I heard you're into the Oh Hellos, and the Crane Wives. I very much love the Oh Hellos but am just getting into the Crane Wives. Any suggestions for songs of theirs that go particularly hard?

Oh my. Thank you SO MUCH for asking me, I’ll now proceed to throw a lot of The Crane Wives-related stuff at you, even though only some of it is what you asked for. This is. A lot of songs, but there are pretty much no songs by The Crane Wives I don’t like. I would also like to apologize for how long this took and how long it is.

If you wanted a short answer, I picked five songs out of this list. These are not the ones that I think go the hardest, necessarily (I could never choose and I’m sure there are songs I didn’t put on here that I will rue forgetting), but they’re all from different albums and as such provide a nice variety. They’re also, very intentionally, not the most popular songs off of those albums, simply because the other songs need love too. 

Take Me To War, I Ain’t Done, Strangler Fig, Sleeping Giants, Down The River.

Under the cut, a long list of songs, with brief explanations of why they’re good. Thank you again for asking me this question; I had a lot of fun writing this.

Take Me To War. Overall, it has very powerful vibes. Emilee Petersmark growls a lot in it and I think it might be possible to die from her voice.

Volta. “I’m tired of feeling like a shadow in my life”. Enough said.

Hollow Moon. Creepy but extraordinarily powerful.

I Ain’t Done. Murder! Adultery! Banjo! What more could you want?

Safe Ship, Harbored, but especially this particular version, performed by both The Crane Wives and another awesome band, The Accidentals.

Counting Sheep. Metaphors, societal commentary, and the lyrics are pure poetry.

New Colors. It just has good vibes, okay.

October. Gay yearning! Oh, my love!

Strangler Fig. The whole song is very badass and there’s wordplay.

Steady, Steady. Killer instrumental, a very clear and engaging story, and raw power.

Shallow River. Angst! Lovely visuals! Also, this is kind-of-sort-of the title song for the album (contains the line ‘the fool in her wedding gown’).

Tongues & Teeth. “I am not a vessel for your good intent”. Damn.

Hard Sell. A song about how no one really has life figured out, and it also has awesome background instrumental, so what more could you want?Little Soldiers. Metaphors! Love and war! Right after “all of our words sent home in boxes”, they do this cool ‘ooh-ooh’ that I love with all my heart.

The Moon Will Sing. “I shine only with the light you give me”, “I could have been anyone, anyone”, and equally powerful lines.

Sleeping Giants. I don’t know what this song means but it’s a bop. 

Metaphor. “I keep my closet free of skeletons, cause I’m much better at digging graves.” Need I say more?

The Hand That Feeds. Anticapitalist and filled with wild and powerful energy. The Crane Wives said ‘eat the rich’. 

Turn Out The Lights. At the heart of it, it’s a song that tells you not to worry, but in less of a ‘chill out and be happy’ way and in more of an extraordinarily powerful, ‘nope this isn’t worth it’ way. I love it.

Curses. Probably the most well-known song of theirs, but hey, it’s awesome. The ending hits me very hard and I love it.

Pretty Little Things. You will cry. I cry every time.

Down the River. Drama and betrayal, set to a very catchy tune.

Know How. A song about how knowing what to do doesn’t mean you can actually do it. The tune is amazing and it gets stuck in my head for days.

The Garden. I cannot explain why I love it so much, but I do. The last section is especially good.

If you’re reading this, thank you for listening to my rant. I’ll be here all night.

[writingsoftheunderworld]

C. 5: AU- yes! Time Travel -no?

AO3 

Bonnie was on her way back home, power humming under her skin, feeling like a full day spent sunbathing, just this thin layer of vibration there, of warmth. It felt better than she had in much too long. Jeremy had requested to be dropped off at the Grill, so she was now carefully balancing her bag of food, a burger and fries, large both, and an extra large coke that she was already down half of in just the short drive back. She wished she could say she was excited to go home, hell, she should have been since it’s been equally long that she hasn’t had the time to waste time at home and only home. But she wasn’t. She had three projects, two papers and a ton of homework to get back on top of, that she’d neglected the past few months, since news of Klaus got out. And she still would be focusing on that threat if her dad hadn’t issued a much worse threat, grounded if she doesn’t get her grades up in a month. All in all, pretty fair of him she thought, but still, annoying.

She was only vaguely curious how Caroline and Elena were still getting Bs every so often in class, but Caroline could just write everything with super speed and if you were to be completely honest, Elena could just ask Stefan to compel her grades back up if she really needed to, and she also didn’t have that much to do with the threat of Klaus. Bonnie wasn’t being mean by thinking that, it was just the facts, Elena was certainly extremely worried because of him and, to be completely honest Katherine likely as well, but there was nearly nothing she needed or could do, not like Caroline who was a vampire with super speed and strength or Bonnie with her magic. And Bonnie certainly didn’t begrudge her friends the downtime, she just wished she could get some more herself if anything.

Bonnie hooked her leg around the door and pushed it shut behind her, the loud bang vibrating throughout the hallway and kitchen. She sighed, toed her shoes off, cursed as her bag fell off her shoulder and stuck on her wrist awkwardly and then dropped it to the small shoes’ rack, hung on a hook. She threw the jacked she had on onto the chair as she set the food on the table, drew a large slurp of her coke as she rose on her tiptoes to get one of the plates from the upper cabinet, before dropping both it and the plate onto the counter to rummage through the drawers for some utensils. She wondered if Caroline still did that weird thing of cutting through her burger even now, but only half-focused on that thought as she retrieved a fork and then  the sweet chilli she’d stored in the fridge from her last excursion to the Grill for food, probably months ago. She took her food, balancing rather precariously in her hands, and made her way to the TV. There had to be some shitty reality show or sitcom or something to watch at this hour right? Wasn’t that what normal people did when they got home after work and school?

She thumbed through the channels quickly, refusing to start eating until she had some entertainment running commentary on the background as well until she settled on some trivia quiz show thing she’d never heard of and probably never watch again, but it made for good distraction for now. She could still feel the waves of new power strumming in her body, filling her up with warmth and safety, like a nice summer morning. She thought back to the day’s events. The day that hadn’t even been that long yet more things happened than she’d have ever thought and her threshold for that had reached never-before seen heights about two years ago when Damon Salvatore crashed into her friends lives violently. That thought only sent her mind further down the rabbit hole that the elder Salvatore sibling usually did, which meant a confusing and conflicting barrage of both his worst deeds and the times he’d saved her or her loved ones. It was the strangest thing to her to look back on things now, after a day spent in his presence, his irritating voice narrating everything now, as though even outside of his general vicinity she still couldn’t escape the man. But he’d also surprised her a few times too, every so often, as though the mere idea that he could ever give anyone the mistaken impression that he could be decent was repulsive to him.

God, Damon drove her mad, so mad she genuinely worried she might actually cause a fire in the middle of town sometimes. She didn’t know what it was exactly, because while he was definitely annoying constantly and had done truly horrendous things to her and her loved ones, he still shouldn’t have caused her so much aggravation. There have been others that have done similar or worse things than him that she just put aside so quickly, but him? No, he was like a fungus, spreading and disgusting but also vaguely helpful for the environment. She guessed, she hadn’t been paying much attention in Biology lately. And he also, weirdly enough, made her feel... not safe, but some kind of confident perhaps, like she knew exactly where she stood with him and that he knew exactly how much she could take and wasn’t afraid to push her to those limits because he knew exactly where the breaking point was and when to stop. Which was just the stupidest thing she’d ever thought about really since he’d tried killing her before, several times. And used her for her magic constantly. Than again, so did everyone else.

When had her life become this thing that it now was? There were times where she couldn’t even remember what her Grams looked like at the end of the day because of what she’d had to do or how much of herself she had had to give, and Grams’ death had ripped part of her and kept it empty still. There was still a hole where her Grams should’ve been, but still, there was so much going on, so often, that Grams sometimes just… faded. She wasn’t gone, no, she was never gone from her thoughts, but sometimes, after having been kidnapped and drained of blood and magic, Grams got quiet in her mind. And other times she screamed, because Bonnie knew it wasn’t good to use up her power the way she was, it was too much, pushing too hard. She knew Grams would’ve put her foot down if she’d seen how Bonnie’s friends had taken to treating her lately, less of a person, more of a tool or weapon.

And Bonnie could see that too, and it hurt. It hurt so bad sometimes she just needed to get away from it all. But her friends could die if she didn’t do those things and she couldn’t bare to lose more people - sometimes she wondered whether she should send her dad away or come clean about all of it because he wasn’t safe, so one was safe. And then sometime Damon would say something stupid but so very neccessary that that it actually did make her feel some level of safe, because at least then she had confirmation that at least one other peron in their group of mismatched survivors was aware of how fucked up it all was and how some things needed to be done regardless. And she couldn’t help but give him some credit there. Even if she still preferred to see him writhing on the ground in pain.

¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬. ¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬. ¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬. ¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬. ¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.¬.

Rose woke up a few hours later. The house was eerily silent that for a second she forgot what had happened and wondered if her friends were playing pranks on her. It was highly disconcerting to wake up to a house you’ve known as home for almost a decade now and find it so quiet when usually there were too many people everywhere. But the bed she was laying on wasn’t her bed and the room she was in wasn’t her room and the whole house smelled different and felt different. She stood up, looked around then out the window, saw the sun was just setting, all orange and red shining through the blinds - The world is on fire, you see that Rosie-Posie? - and sighed. She missed her parents. She had barely gotten the chance to see them when she decided to go ahead and do something stupid. And god, was it ever stupid, it was so dumb it wasn’t just regular stupid, but, in Lizzy Saltzman’s words, stoopid , which apparently was a whole other level of idiocy that apparently her mom and Lizzy’s mom-not-mom had come up with when they were younger. She felt stoopid , now that she’d done this. She understood the difference.

She listened a bit, trying to see if she could hear anyone else in the house, but the Boarding House was too big and she wasn’t a vampire so she couldn’t hear any voice, but could hear every single creek and it was vaguely terrifying and she felt 11 again and sleeping here for the first time and scared about the big old house and the strange new people living with her in it. It was kind of eye-opening to be completely honest, to her. It reminded her of how good she had it now and how really, really bad it was that she’d done that spell in the first place. Another sigh and she was getting up, stretching as she went, bones popping and an odd crink in her neck from the bad position she’d slept in and a ghost pain in her elbow, likely from having hit in while sleeping as she sometimes did. A small snort at the memory of her mom’s comically horrified face when she saw her wake up bruised the first time had her startled and she snorted again at scaring herself like a baby.

Rose rubbed at her eyes, crusty from the sleep, finger-combed her hair out of her face and went to the bathroom. When she returned she flipped the lights on and sat on the edge of the bed, pulled out her phone and opened the notes. She had to get a plan done. She thought about everything she knew and made a list to get it all in order, then took that list and figured what she wanted to get out of this whole situation and how much she could actually do and ended up with at least an idea of what she should and shouldn’t do. Firstly she realised there was absolutely no way of preventing Klaus from becoming the hybrid, he was too paranoid, too determined and too dangerous to even consider that possibility at this point in time. The Klaus she knew in her world? A completely different story, but this one wasn’t that guy so in the words of the Klaus that had taken her to her first art show simply because she and Hope had asked him to she would just have to revise and adapt. She also couldn’t kill him. She didn’t have nearly enough power to pull any kind of binding spell from his bloodline to be able to not cause a genocide so that was equally off the board as well. Plus she actually kind of liked the guy he became in the future so she wanted to keep him alive to actually maybe become him. But she also didn’t want anyone to die. So she needed a plan to keep them alive or at least bring them back. Luckily her mom had been the Anchor to the Other Side for a while there and had learned a lot about how that worked and while they no longer had an Other Side themselves, it still very much existed here so that brought several very good and very real possibilities of preventing deaths. Score one Rose, zero this freaky universe.

She also kind of wanted to get her parents to at least not hate each other a bit quicker here. She’s heard them enough times talk about how if they’d actually gotten along earlier, things could’ve been prevented. She wasn’t entirely sure what those things were, because she was pretty sure they weren’t delusional enough to think that them getting together could actually prevent stuff like Silas or the Travellers that she’d heard them speak about, but she could definitely see how it would have helped. Her parents worked incredibly well together. Even when they disagreed on stuff constantly they still had this synchronisation to their planning and execution that no one could deny. So yeah, Rose wanted to play match-maker a bit. Not the main goal here, nor would she really push for anything since that wasn’t going to help at all, but if she saw any opportunity, sure, she’d try. Lizzy would be so proud of her when she got back, she always tried to get Rose to join her in her match-making escapades around school.

Mind made up, she smiled, pleased with herself and headed downstairs to try to get on top of everything. She needed help coming up with a feasible and best plan and she could hear Damon talking down the hall from the living room area. Actually, she paused and grinned, she could hear a lot of people, likely the whole gang. Perfect, this was going to be just great. So Rose rounded the corner and was about to open her mouth to get this show on the road when she heard a very familiar voice and saw a very familiar sight surrounded by complete shocked chaos about to unleash.

“Rose-Sheila Bennett-Salvatore, what on Earth were you thinking?”

The voice of Bonnie Bennett-Salvatore was calm, her stance relaxed as she stood in front of the fireplace. She didn’t seem to be angry, save for the words that she’d just uttered, if anything, Rose thought her mom was a bit too at ease and amused by the whole situation. Her dad though, well. Damon Salvatore-Bennett was not pleased, and she could tell because he had his hands on his hips and that disappointed look on his face, furrowed brow and tight jaw, shaking his head minutely, tense. No, her dad was not amused at all, if anything he seemed more likely to start her lecture early and publicly and ground her for the next year than anything else. So Rose was even more surprised to see her mom smile brightly and relieved and feel her dad rush to her and wrap his arms around her so tight and so warm she would've cried if she could breathe.

“Dad. Dad, I’m okay, I promise.” she reassured even as she squeezed him just as tightly and gave a shaky grin in response to her mom. “Sorry.” she mumbled next, right in the crook of her dad’s neck who says ‘it's ok Rosie-Posie’ so softly she choked up a bit, and knew her mom heard it or saw it because her smile tempered slightly and the worried she must have been keeping pushed to the surface. Bonnie walked over to them, her hand gently caressing Damon’s back to get him to ease up and he startled a bit, jumping and then disentangling himself from Rose only for her to find herself face to face with her mom and now she doesn’t know what to do because dad is easy, dad glares and rants and raves but it’s all because he worries and the second he realises nothing is wrong he instantly forgives, but mom either grounds her or lectures or of gives her some kind of punishment and that when she messes up with stuff that is easy to fix if still vaguely serious, but this is something else, this could’ve actually turned out much worse and so Rose braced for whatever her mom might say now that she’s seen Rose was alright.

So Rose was entirely unprepared for her mom to cup her cheeks and brush her still dishevelled hair out of her eyes and kiss her forehead and now Rose was definitely going to cry, but that was ok because mom also wraped her arms around her and she could burrow now in her neck as well and mom smells of home in an entirely different way that dad did, but he also smelled of home too and it’s a bit too much for her so she could feel a few stray tears escaping, but that was ok too because she could just hide them in the material of her mom blouse and under the shade of her dad’s hand caressing her hair softly. When she drew back, she was alright again, only she realised that the other ones, the people from this universe w ere still there and looking both vaguely confused, but a lot angrier and a lot more shocked and oh god this will still kill her, won’t it?

Hopefully you guys don’t mind I brought future Bamon to the past, but this kinda drama just speaks to me, hahaha! Sorry, not sorry! Lemme know what you guys think. I don’t think this will be much longer now - but then again I didn’t think this would be multi chaptered in the first place so what do I know really?

Stay safe out there guys! Bye

DM

[maknaesdancersrappers]

Attempt #11: Movie Marathon

<< the tenth attempt

wc: 2.5k

warning/s: male masturbation

When Jaehyun came back from your apartment, he locked himself in his bathroom and stared at his reflection. His ears are still red from what he had witnessed, he almost felt bad for dragging out his stay.

He thought you weren’t home. He remembered overhearing you saying you would go out with Yebin to check out a new cafe or something, so he left his flower shop job early that day to surprise you with flowers and the cupcakes you liked. He felt bad for using the emergency keys your mom entrusted him with to do this, but it would only be for this one time.

The lights were closed and if you were home, you would have had music playing to fill in the silence. He puts the flowers and cupcakes down on the coffee table to grab an unused vase and filled it up with water, trying to recall what the ladies at the flower shop told him to do to make sure the gardenias won’t wilt. As he sets them down, he thinks he hears something coming from the hallway. 

Jaehyun quietly makes his way over, not thinking much of it. Maybe you left the window open and the wind knocked something over. The door is ajar, too, so he puts a hand on the pane to push it until he hears:

“Oh my god.”

He freezes, recognizing your voice. For a split second, he thought you were in pain from the way you whimpered, but then you moaned over and over again. He’s not stupid, he knows what you were doing and it’s taking everything in him not to sneak a peek like a horny teenage boy (that he technically is) but he steps away instead until he’s back in the living room.

He stares at the flowers — that ironically symbolizes innocence, too — a little embarrassed for catching you in a very private and personal… moment. He’s heading for the front door, trying not to dwell on it. He’s shamefully jacked off to the thought of you, t— 

Jaehyun pauses with his hand on the door. Were you thinking of him?

He scolds himself; he shouldn’t care about who you were thinking of at this moment. But still he stubbornly turns around and clears his throat.

“[Y/N]?” He hates himself already for disrupting you, “Are you home?”

And then you come stumbling out of your room, flustered and panting with a light sheen of sweat all over your skin. You looked like you were glowing and it sent reactions to his dick. When he took your hand, he tries to convince himself you weren’t using the same hand to pleasure yourself before he interrupted. On the way to the living room to show you the reason why he was in your home in the first place, he hears a buzzing sound — thinking a bee came in, but it didn’t sound like one. In fact, he can definitely pinpoint when and where he heard something similar. As the buzzing continued while he explained why he was there and your expressions were forced, it dawned on him; you had a vibrator in you.

It was a miracle a boner didn’t pop out of him *immediately* and he pretends to be oblivious to it all. He hadn’t intended to hug you, but it was out of character for him not to do so after you just told him you had a “nightmare.” When your hands grasped onto his shirt and your body lightly shook in his hold, he knew you were cumming so he held you against him until you recovered.

He wanted to tease you so badly, but he bit his tongue and left after pretending Mingyu’s text was from his parents. If you only knew he wanted to get out just as much as you wanted to take care of the growing problem in his own pants. 

So now he’s in his bathroom, sticking his hand down his pants and wincing at how hard he was. He holds up his shirt to his chest and pushed his bottoms down enough until his cock is free, bobbing up and down.

Jaehyun backs up until he’s pressed up against the wall, a fist around his length and squeezing lightly. His eyes are shut as he remembers your expression; eyes blown out, and shy, bottom lip swollen and red, your cheeks flustered and glistening with sweat. Your dress was haphazardly fixed, leaving a very generous amount of cleavage he could have ogled a little longer. When he was about to leave, he saw your essence dripping between your legs and he wondered how you tasted. It was a crude thought to think about his best friend, but he could add it to the list of other obscene things he’s thought of doing with you (and it guilts him everyday.)

He could hear your moans again, how delicate they were. He’s always found porn annoying because of the exaggerated moaning that he had to turn it halfway down and put some music on when he did watch them. He wants to hear you moan again; hell, he wants to watch you. But he knows it’ll be a long time before that could happen — it probably never will.

“Fuck.” He hisses, arm straining as he chases his high. Letting go of his shirt, he brings his hand under to gently knead his balls with his palm. He could imagine your soft hands on him, working them over his length. The brief image of you on your knees in front of him with your mouth agape is what finishes him. He comes with a choked groan, shooting his load onto the floor. 

Jaehyun catches sight of his reflection in the mirror, disappointed in himself yet again. He’s not the pure, golden boy everyone — including you — cuts him out to be. Maybe people can expect him to jack off to porn, but no one would ever think he’d get off to the thought of you.

Despite the whole heated fiasco the two of you dealt with individually the day prior, you and Jaehyun still sat by each other in your living room like nothing had happened and continued on with the movie marathon you planned. After you cooked dinner for the both of you, you let him choose the movie and he picks the first one recommended in the landing.

Neither of you have seen it, but have heard about it. With your respective movie snacks and drinks laid out on the table, you and Jaehyun sat on the couch with too many pillows and a blanket each. As the movie plays, like always, you both made commentary about it; disagreeing with the character’s views on opposite sex friendships.

“He should take a look at us.” You huff, tossing a few pieces of popcorn into your mouth.

“17 years and counting.” He adds with a little laugh.

When the scene turned a little steamy, you both involuntarily leaned away from each other and focused on eating your snacks. You’re feeling your cheeks heat up at the reminder of yesterday’s events, pulling your legs up to your chest and pretending to be cold from the air conditioning. 

Jaehyun is quiet until the movie finishes, even when you started sniffing at the little clips of old real life couples sharing their love stories. If there’s one thing you’re both certain of wanting, it’s growing old together. He wants to pull you into a hug, but he hesitates and watches you skip the credits.

You chose Descendants of all movie choices and when he makes a face at you, you playfully threaten him, “Shut up, I like the songs. We’re watching all three.”

“Fine. But we’re watching all three HSM movies after.”

You don’t have a problem with that, you liked their soundtrack, too. After agreeing to his conditions, you leaned back down and ripped open a new party pack of chips. Jaehyun sticks his hand in after you, humming when the taste of honey butter hits his tongue.

You space out for a minute, genuinely enjoying this moment with him. Movie marathons were a monthly occurrence for the two of you until SATs happened and your friends wanted to hang out more because it might not happen as frequently after everyone graduates.

“Why are you staring?”

It hadn’t occurred to you that you were, but there’s no point in denying it. “Because we haven’t done these in a long time… we haven’t done a lot of things we used to do before senior year and honestly, I don’t think we’ll be able to do them when we’re in college.”

Jaehyun purses his lips, “Well, I can take up Child Education with you.”

“What? Why?” The movie is just background noise at this point, “That was just a suggestion.”

“But I love kids, you know I do. And I get why you want to be a teacher because I want to be around kids, too, and help them learn and grow. I don’t know what other options I have aside from going pro.”

In the back of your mind, you don’t think it sounds so bad if you two both took Child Education and had the same schedule. But you start thinking about Jangmi or other potential, future girlfriends he could have. You would have to deal with them and although you’re hoping you wouldn’t care at that point, you’re a little reluctant to push him. “What’s Jangmi’s plans for college?”

He looks surprised that you asked. Jangmi had specifically told him not to talk about her or even mention her name or any other girl’s name when he was with you, but you had asked and it would be rude to ignore it. “Uh, Zoology, I think?”

“Oh!” You perked up, “Taeyong is taking up Veterinary Medicine.”

His face slightly falls, “Really?”

“Mhm. He loves animals so much, like, think of us with kids, but with him it’s animals. He told me he’d take me to the animal sanctuary he wants to work in next week.”

“Next week?”

“Yeah, for that… auctioned off date. I can’t wait, actually, he keeps talking about it.”

Jaehyun nods, looking back at the ignored movie. “Well, if it’s great, then you should take me there.”

“We should all go!”

That’s not what he meant, and he had every intention of correcting you, but then “If Only” starts and you gasp, “Wait, I need to sing along.”

His somber mood is uplifted immediately, laughing as you exaggerated your actions as you sang along with Mal. From then, you both watch animatedly, singing along whether or not you know the lyrics. After the Descendants franchise and you’re on the last movie of HSM, Jaehyun couldn’t help himself and said after singing along, “We have a garden like that in school.”

You glance at him, “We do?”

“Yeah, Jangmi—” He pauses, “Uhm, when we had those Japanese exchange students, as a bonding activity, they had the students plant and arrange flowers. Jangmi hangs out there sometimes; it’s nice and cool. She accidentally skipped a class once because she fell asleep there.”

You always, always had the butterflies in your stomach after watching the scene for “Can I have this dance?” but it felt like you got punched right in the gut as he tells you this.

“I can take you there during our break.”

“What? But that’s Jangmi’s place.”

Jaehyun frowns, “She doesn’t own it. She actually told me that we can hang out there with her some time. Come on, it’ll be a nice change.”

“Alright.” You relent, taking an extra pillow and hugging it to your chest.

While you still feel uneasy about invading Jangmi’s special place in the school, Jaehyun is excited. He remembered Jangmi dragging him there after school and suggested he’d confess there; it was quiet, secluded, filled with flowers, and overall, romantic.

You put on a horror movie next, thinking you can handle it, but the jumpscares had you grabbing onto Jaehyun that made him tease you for choosing it in the first place. Eventually, you had settled yourself onto him, cheek pressed over his chest while his arm came over you for extra warmth. It had initially bothered you, thinking this seemed too intimate, but it’s past midnight and you’ve wasted all your energy from screaming at the horror movie.

The last movie you remembered watching was Love, Rosie. It felt a little odd for him to choose it, but you were nearly drifting off to sleep to even contest his movie choice. As it goes on, you found yourself almost in Rosie’s shoes: pining for her best friend while he was with someone else.

Jaehyun, on the other hand, dreaded this film when searched up movies about friends to lovers; this one was the embodiment of his fears. Sure they ended up together, but if they had cleared it up in the beginning then they would have been together from the start. The last thing he wanted was for anybody else to come in between you and him because he’s already having a hard time from both yours and his actions interfering with his attempts at confessing. He must have been imagining it, but he hears you sniffing again, probably crying at the scene playing, and he instinctively rubs your arm. 

“Just wait until tomorrow, [Y/N].” He thinks, leaning closer until his chin is grazing the top of your head. 

You woke up startled when you hear a bang, almost panicking if you hadn’t opened your eyes to an action scene playing on the television. You must have fallen asleep. Glancing up, you see Jaehyun’s head tilted away from you with his mouth just barely parted as he softly snored.

You would have moved away or woken him up, but when else would you be able to be like this with him? The clock on the wall tells you that you have 5 hours left before you should start preparing for school, so you encircle your arms around Jaehyun’s waist and nuzzled his chest.

“Jaehyun?” You whispered, softly and barely audible. He continues to snore and you hum, “Jaehyun…”

His heartbeat is nice and slow, like a lullaby coaxing you back to sleep. As it thumbs against your ear, you let out a sigh.

“I love you.”

He doesn’t move and his breathing remains the same, so you continue.

“More than just a friend… but if you’re in love with someone else, it’s okay. As long as we stay best friends, it’s okay.” Your bottom lip quivers and your eyes start to sting, so you shut them as tightly as you can, “I just don’t want to lose you.”

Before you know it, your silent tears are soaking his shirt. You can always say you had a bad dream from the horror movie you watched, you’ve been using that as an excuse lately, because it is — losing Jaehyun would be an absolute nightmare.

the twelfth attempt >>

[welllpthisishappening]

singersdd

replied to your video

“washingtonburakovsky: i love how tylers shamelessly watching the caps...”

It's Killian and Peggy while she's home with a cold & happy at the moment.

Listen, I am only human. Albeit a human who really is very concerned about how much hummus I’m going to consume while social-distancing. But the point remains. And when I see solid ideas, I feel compelled to write about them. We’re going to go the teething route, though. So, sorry other anon, that Blue Line masterlist has another thing on it now. Here’s like 1.5 K of total fluff. 

-----

They had tried everything. 

Anything. All of it. And then some. 

They were bordering on desperate now, a growing frustration over the last few days that had not happened when Matt was this age. Nothing helped. 

Peggy twisted and turned and tossed and whined, which didn’t follow the alliterative rule that Killian had apparently come up wth, but he was more than willing to blame that on his absolute and complete exhaustion. 

Sleeping, it seemed, was a luxury neither he nor Emma could afford anymore. 

Not when they were so busy reading lists and searching for some kind of an answer, typing word combinations that Killian wasn’t even aware existed in the English language until some time in the realm of four that morning. That was after the pacing. But before the bobbing — moving through a variety of rooms in their apartment because some website on the third page of the Google results promised it would work. 

It didn’t. 

He hadn’t expected it to. 

Nothing good ever came from the third page of Google. 

“Ah, no, no, nah—c’mon,” Killian mumbled, reaching out a hand that he didn’t think should feel quite that heavy in an attempt to tug Peggy’s fingers away from her mouth. 

Every inch of him ached, and that might have also been a byproduct of the only-recent end to the season, an admittedly not great end either, a second-round loss that would probably grate on his nerves even more than Peggy’s tooth-related screeching, but none of those words were particularly positive to begin with. 

So. 

He wasn’t sure he’d ever had so many opinions on words. 

Matt was going to stay with the Vankalds for the rest of the weekend. 

“We’re not doing that,” Killian continued. Peggy made a noise. Not words. Figured. She was a baby. “I know it hurts, but you can’t start sticking your fingers in your mouth. Did the medicine wear off?”

Still no response. 

It really had not been this bad for Matt. 

That seemed unfair. 

For all parties involved. 

“Alright, we’ll get the ring thing and that’ll probably help and you won’t mention how that rhymed, right?”

That got him a gurgle and a wobbling lower lip. 

Killian’s head dropped — whether from exhaustion or the overwhelming obstacle of a teething six-month-old, he wasn’t entirely sure. “We’ve just got to make sure the ring thing isn’t frozen, ok, Pegs? And then you can have that and maybe some more medicine. Where do you think Mom put the medicine box?” Killian swayed on the spot, trying to look in the kitchen without walking, rocking his head to a rhythm that didn’t exist when the TV was playing a game in the background. 

The Capitals and Penguins. 

In the Eastern Conference Finals. 

So, maybe Killian was just a masochist. 

It was the first time he’d watched a game since his ended. 

Peggy squirmed again, tears welling in the corner of her eyes while her unoccupied fingers curled forward to reach for something. There wasn’t a shirt there anymore — a product of lunch and mashed bananas were disgusting anyway, and Emma had postseason stuff to do at the Garden. 

Killian needed to pick his shirt off their bedroom floor at some point. 

“I know, I know, I know,” he chanted, leaning back like meeting his daughter’s gaze would help the situation. It did not. Version, four-hundred and sixty-two. 

He was admittedly less worried about numbers than words. 

The tears spilled over, and he honestly wasn’t sure where all the moisture on her face was coming from — her eyes or her mouth or a mixture of both and someone on the myriad of websites he and Emma had spent all night clicking on should have made it more obvious that parenting was like this. 

Difficult. Exhausting. 

Possibly impossible. 

Killian huffed, teeth digging into his lower lip. He kept moving, ignoring the state of his calves and the force Peggy got into her kicks when she flailed her legs into his ribs. 

“Ok, ok, ok,” he said. Apparently he could only repeat things in triplicate now. That was at least on brand for hockey and—

Killian let out another breath, ruffling the ends of Peggy’s barely-there hair. “Alright, we’re going to try something new.”

The medicine was on top of the refrigerator, which wasn’t the first place Killian thought to look, but it hadn't been at the bottom of his metaphorical list and he was going to take his victories where he could get them. 

Plus, the ring-thing, plastic monstrosity, whatever, was not frozen. 

“Only one more away from a parenting hat trick, huh?” he muttered, mostly into the top of Peggy’s head. She’d stopped crying eventually, more than a few hiccups and noises that ebbed as soon as Killian started drawing circles on her back. 

“That was actually really funny,” Killian added. “You’ll appreciate that eventually, I know it.” He dropped back into the corner of the couch, careful not to jostle the kid in his arms and it wasn’t the most comfortable he’d ever been, but it was certainly a step in the right direction. 

Where stepping wasn’t involved at all. 

More like, staring. Directly at the hockey game in front of them. 

Killian was fairly certain Peggy’s eyes didn’t actually widen, but he was willing to blame the exhaustion again and they definitely should have thought of this before. He’d admittedly been avoiding most things hockey-related though, and that was also a little childish. 

They only had room for so many children in that apartment. 

He let Peggy turn, her back to his chest and tiny legs stretched out in front of her. Her head rested just under his collarbone, those same few tufts of hair tickling his skin. 

Killian smiled. 

Even if it was the Capitals and the Penguins. 

And, so it went — for the next two periods, part medicine, part ring-thing, part analyzing the game, a running stream of commentary from Killian and baby-type sounds from Peggy and neither one of them tried to sleep, which might not have been the best decision, but he did get her to giggle several times and he assumed that was a wash. 

Maybe some kind of zamboni joke. Fresh start or clear ice or something. 

“See, that right winger on the Pens can’t get the puck in the zone,” Killian mumbled, almost halfway through the third period, and he’d stretched out at some point. 

His feet hung over the side of the couch, toes threatening to rest on the arm of the closest chair, with one arm twisted behind his head. He still hadn’t put his shirt back on, Peggy resting on his chest on hands and knees, making it only too easy to press absent-minded kisses to her chin and her cheek and the bridge of her nose when she started to babble again. 

“I know,” Killian nodded. “I don’t think he’s good either. You’re a genius, you know that?”

More babbling. A few da’s sprinkled in for good measure. 

Killian’s heart felt like it was going to burst. 

It was a much better feeling than that lingering ache in his calves. 

Someone on the TV smacked the puck into the boards, earning another noise from Peggy and a grin from Killian and he was almost genuinely disappointed that they missed the final few minutes of the game. 

Exhaustion appeared to be the winner anyway. 

His eyelids fluttered when he heard the lock in the door, soft footsteps and the telltale sounds of shoes kicked off, and Peggy didn’t move when Emma did. 

She scrunched her nose as soon as she stopped in front of the couch. 

“I probably should feel bad waking you up, huh?” she asked softly, a quick hiss when one her knees cracked. She’d crouched down. 

Killian clicked his tongue. “I’m sure it’s painfully adorable.” “Something like that, for sure. What worked?” “Who won the game?”

“Oh my God, did hockey do this?” “You could probably argue that hockey did all of this,” Killian said, doing his best not to laugh for fear of shifting Peggy too much. Emma rolled her eyes. “Go on, admit you’re into that.” “I’m delirious from sleep deprivation.” “I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before. Sounds of the rink as a lullaby.” “God,” Emma groaned, but it didn’t sound particularly frustrated. “If I go sleep in bed like a normal person, you going to be annoyed?” “Not at all.” “Do you also want to go sleep in bed?”

Emma lifted her eyebrows when she pressed her lips together and Killian got the very real impression she already knew the answer. “Nah,” he whispered. “I’m good here.” She nodded once, a kiss to the side of his mouth and the top of Peggy’s head and Killian fell asleep to the sounds of post-game press conferences and in-studio analysis. 

[kinsbin]

Like Father Like Daughter

Title: Like Father Like Daughter Ship: Dad!Will/Dad!Hannibal/Daughter!Xena [Platonic F/O stuff] Rating: T [minor talk of ptsd and violence]

Summary: Xena’s been avoiding Will and Will can’t figure out why. An urge from Hannibal to talk with their daughter results in a heart to heart that the both of them desperately needed. 

A/N: This has been sitting in my drafts for A YEAR and my bff and I have finally picked up watching Hannibal again and it inspired me to finish this!!! He’s featured in it too because we’re honorary kids together of these two SO. It’s a huge comfort thing to me and Will Graham, as a character, is someone I related strongly to... I just want him to tell me its ok.... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The kitchen in the Lecter home was busy, as it always was around lunch time. Hannibal contented himself with the preparations for the main course of lunch while Xena scurried somewhere in the other corner to make dessert. To be technical, he supposed they would both call it a tea snack. A light after-lunch aperitif to satisfy that sweet craving everyone seemed to get at the end of a good meal. Regardless of its vocabulary, watching his daughter happily hop around her corner of the kitchen brought the slightest hint of a smile to his face. They both worked to the tune of the operatic music he had chosen to be the background to their art, the need for conversation silent in the abyss of the granite castle they both found themselves happy within.

Xena was finishing up her tea cake, it smelled of lavender and lemon and he had to applaud her on the plating it was going through without a doubt, when Will came in. 

Hannibal gave a smile to his husband while Xena averted her gaze for a moment, focusing a little too hard on cleaning the plate that the sweet bread had been placed upon in hopes that it would make her not have to acknowledge the new presence in the room. Will stared at her for a moment when he was sure she wasn’t looking and Hannibal could feel the tension in the room between the two. He tried to disperse it with conversation.

“Good morning Will, or, should I say afternoon?”

“You’re getting on me about sleeping in, but, Ara’s still sleeping isn’t he?”

“He’s a growing boy. You are a grown man,” Hannibal’s voice is easy, teasing as he gestured towards the table, “Lunch will be ready soon.”

“He and Ara need to get better sleep,” Xena commented off handedly, “You’re both always up so late at night.”

If it wasn’t meant to be a jab, well, it still came out that way. Will felt the waves of emotion rolling off of her body as it still did not face him. He dared instigate, awkwardly peering over to her and looking at the cake she had made, impressed with the skills his daughter had in the field of cooking. Of course she spent all of her time with Hannibal. Of course she would be good at it.

“It looks delicious.”

Xena laughed, breathy and nervous, and nodded, “Thanks. I need to use the bathroom though, I’ll be right back. Don’t eat it before I get back.”

And she was suddenly out of the room. As quick as he had appeared, she had dissipated. A fog of smoke in the nothingness, leaving Will behind as he watched her trail go. He sighed, hands into fists as he returned to the kitchen table and all but flung himself down on it. Hannibal watched the tantrum from afar before adding his commentary.

“You should go talk to her.”

“I tried that,” Will gestured back towards the cake with a bitter chuff, “Clearly it went very well.”

“I mean,” Hannibal put down the knife he was holding, “You should go TALK to her, Will. There is a reason she avoids you.”

“Do you know it?”

“Of course,” Hannibal answered, “But I feel as though it is a reason you both should discover for yourselves. By talking it out.”

Will gazed at Hannibal for a long moment, the intensity between their determined faces causing a growing echo of electricity to thrum between them. With an exhale through his nose, Will felt himself pinch its bridge as he shook his head.

“She’s not a patient, Hannibal, she’s our daughter. Can’t you just...I don’t know. Give me a hint?”

“You’re the empath,” Hannibal answered cooly, “Tell me what you feel.”

“I feel...frustration. Worry. Nervousness,” Will listed the emotions he had seen radiating from the girl not moments before, “I felt...I felt fear, Hannibal. She’s-Is she afraid of me?”

“...No,” Hannibal relented at last, picking his knife up and returning to his preparations, “I believe she is afraid that she will become like you.”

Will paled at the suggestion. Hannibal continued to talk.

“Xena, for all of her pleasantries, has an equally impressive ability to feel the emotions of others around her. She’s demonstrated it to both of us on more than one occasion, as you are aware...I believe that, upon realizing just what she has in her control, she couldn’t help but think back to the things that happened to you. The things we told her and what you’ve gone through. Your...condition. The results of overusing it...She is afraid that-”

“That she’ll be like me if she interacts with it too much,” Will spoke as more of a realization to himself than to his husband, “Overstimulated. Overworked...To the point of accidentally hurting someone. Not being able to tell reality from dreams and...”

Another heavy silence as Will considered the consequences of the debate they had just gone over, the words swirling around in his head as he imagined the possibilities. He looked down, imagining his hands covered in blood as they once were. Imagining them as his daughter’s hands, trembling with terror. Looking up to see Hannibal’s face, calm and understanding. He knew one day she would do this. It would happen. And-

“She won’t become me.”

“Tell her this yourself, then,” Hannibal urged softly, “Aurelian may take after you, but it is Xena who truly relates to you. She needs your words, whether she is ready to hear them or not.”

The silence was heavier in the room after that, the echo of Hannibal chopping away at the remains of his meal preparation filled the room before Will exhaled the breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Hannibal was right. He knew he was right...

Why was it so hard, then?

Will stood up just as Aurelian entered the room, eyes bleary from sleep as his dogs trotted eagerly at his side. Will didn’t miss the opportunity to greet the two pups and give his son a light ruffle of his hair as he meandered his way to the dining table, leaning his chin into a palm of a hand as he watched Will exit the room with a quirk of his eyebrow.

“Where’s he going?” Ara curiously piped as Cairo curled at the base of his feet. Pyrrha had made it a point to greet Hannibal with a press of her wet nose to his hand before continuing to beg for the food on the table, making the older man shoo her away to her master’s side as he gazed off after his husband. Hannibal, in turn, only offered a shrug.

“Finding Xena, I suppose. Would you like any coffee this morning?”

“Oh, yes please!”

---

She wasn’t in the bathroom, which wasn’t too great of a surprise. Still, Will found it moderatley annoying to have to search for his daughter in the maze of their house. The rooms felt all too endless suddenly as he attempted to deduce just where she had went this time in her efforts to hide away from her father. Hide away from him... The thought hurt, but not as much as the determination to take Hannibal’s advice and see if he might work this out with her.

For their family’s sake.

Will eventually located Xena hidden in the spare television room, a book in her hand and a highlighter between her teeth as she stared down at it, busily reading through page after page and highlighting certain points with intense focus. He noticed only then that it was a cooking book, one that Hannibal had gotten her for one of her birthdays. A French literature, written in its national language so that she would have to learn. Have to take her time. She did, of course, her urge to cook and hyperfocus winning over her want to simply use google translate.

He had to remember to talk to Hannibal about discussing her coping mechanisms with her during manic episodes. That was for another time.

He knocked on the frame of the door he had stood in, nervously announcing his presence and startling the girl out of her focus as she whipped her head to face him. Her eyes widened ever so slightly and she bit her lip, signaling that, indeed, she had been avoiding him. Indeed there was no escape from the confrontation they were about to have. The sweat that formed too suddenly on her body proved her knowledge of this and her face, carefully reading his own emotions, burned somewhere in his heart as she put the book down at her side and closed it, using the highlighter to mark her page. 

“I was just...” Xena tried to defend her actions but went silent, unable to.

Will sighed and entered the room fully, sitting down on the couch she was on, only slightly further away.

“You were just avoiding me.” He spoke curtly to her, making her wince and fiddle with her fingers, picking aimlessly at the skin of her hand and avoiding eye contact. She wanted to protest but she could not. 

She knew it was true.

“I... Look,” Will took a deep breath, rubbing his face for a moment as he sighed, “Empathy is... a powerful thing. A scary thing to someone who doesn’t know just how to use it or-”

“You’re saying that,” Xena hoarsely spoke up with a furrow of her brow, “Like you know how to use it.”

“I do. You know I do. I used it to-”

“To solve murders. To fix people’s lives,” Xena huffed in return, facing him fully and frowning at his gaze, “For what, though? For your own PTSD to hit you fully and for your mind to break during all of its use? Yeah, lifelong hallucinations are a great example of using your empathy right, good advice.”

“I never said that I knew how to use it the right way.” Will returned her snap with one of his own, brows creasing as he stared at the surprised look on her face, “I just said I knew how to use it. There’s more than one way to use a tool, Xena.”

Xena curled into a ball then, taking a breath as she rested her head on her knees and thought for a long, quiet moment. She enjoyed quiet as much as he did sometimes. As much as the two of them rarely seemed to spend time in the house together, Will and Aurelian fishing and her and Hannibal cooking, they could always enjoy that point together. Sometimes they reveled in the endless quiet of a room that sat with them as they worked or read or did whatever together.

He understood why they had a lot of problem’s talking now, he supposed.

“I don’t want to use it,” Xena finally admitted as her voice broke slightly, “I don’t want to feel... I don’t want to feel EVERYTHING. I don’t want to have to use it in a right or wrong way! I never asked to FEEL this much. To know every aspect of someone’s emotions even when they don’t! To know the feeling of someone else and relate to it to the point where I can see their point of view. To touch the same thing they did and know what they wanted to do to it and-” 

She was crying now, eyes shut tight as she buried her face in her hands to hide the tears from him. Will felt her emotions from his spot as she likely felt his. Hers were overwhelming. Of fear and worry and disgusted regret. A series of emotions and traumas building up like dams inside of her hart that finally burst. Will gave off emotions of worry. Of concern and light pity as he watched the girl cry before him. Taking a breath, he moved closer to her. He wrapped an arm around her and brought her close to his form.

He hugged Xena like that for a long moment, thumb brushing along her shoulder as she tensed but allowed it, curling into a smaller ball in an effort to pull away from the world. In refusal to accept the statements she had put out for herself. Because she knew, deep down, that she couldn’t stop herself. Her feelings would always be there. Just like his were. Just like they were now.

“You don’t want to,” Will sighed, “But you do. We can’t... change our feelings inside of us anymore than we could change the ones we love. We just simply have to cope. I coped by trying to understand. By using it to my advantage and, well, it didn’t work well. But you? You can learn how to cope a thousand times better...”

“H-How do you figure?” Xena sniffled.

Will smiled at her.

“Because you have me. You have your brother. You have Hannibal. I was alone when I was handling this... You? You aren’t, Xena. We’re family and, no matter what you think or feel or do, we’ll always be there for you. That we can promise.”

It brought a new wave of tears to Xena’s eyes, followed by feelings of regret and profuse apologies spilling messily from her lips as she held Will close, burying her wet face into his chest. He sighed but allowed it, kissing the top of her head and petting the small of her back until her heavy sobs faded into weak whimpers and hiccups of nothing but the excess noises in her throat. Tears stopped soon and her body slumped, exhausted with its emotional outburst as she held her father close to her, curling into him. He held her in return, keeping her safe from the world. The world that hurt him how it did.

A new protectiveness overcame him. A need to make sure that she never let that world near her. That she would be safe from it.

“’M sorry I avoided you,” Xena shakily sighed, “I just... was scared if we were together it’d be too much a-and I’d... just end up being mean or snapping or... Lashing out for whatever r-reason and I didn’t... You don’t deserve that.”

“I understand,” Will sighed as he ruffled her short hair with a soft smile, “We can talk about these things now though, alright? It’ll be hard but...”

“We could schedule a therapy session,” Xena grinned slightly, “I heard we’re near to a renowned professional.”

Will laughed at this, poking at her side before standing up. Wiping his own face and composing himself, Will offered her his hand, which Xena took and stood up on shaky, exhausted legs as her final sigh indicated that she was done crying for now.

“Lunch should be finished,” He decided upon looking at the clock curiously, “What do you say we eat with the others?”

“O-Okay,” Xena smiled, holding her father’s hand and not letting go, not even as they meandered through the halls and back to Aurelian and Hannibal, “You’ll... Like my cake, I think. Father said he made it for you once and you liked it... So I hope you like mine.”

“I’m sure it’s edible.” Will retorted with a hum, making Xena roll her eyes as they re-entered the kitchen.

Seeing his husband and daughter hand in hand made Hannibal smile as he placed plates of food in front of Aurelian and himself. He gestured to the two plates prepared on the kitchen counter, complete with a garnish atop them still steaming as he hummed:

“Good of you two to finally join us, let’s eat together shall we?”

“I’m starving,” Xena bemoaned as she took her plate and sat herself comfortably next to Aurelian, who was already chewing thoughtfully on his own meal as he scrolled through his phone. 

Will smiled at his family one last time before picking up his own plate and joining them, the food warm and the scent of freshly baked cakes still permeating the air as the four of them discussed their day plans, words leaving with comforting familiarity from their lips. Will enjoyed the scene in slow motion for a moment. From Aurelian’s lips moving to ask about a trip to the vet for his girls to Hannibal thoughtfully considering making the appointment and Xena making some sort of joke that ended with both of them groaning, it was a beautiful sight.

Xena turned to Will and smiled, feeling that same emotion roll from her chest in waves of comfort that overwhelmed them both for only a moment before it returned to a steady, sweet cadence of comfort.

A feeling of family. 

[tossawary]

Some random favorite lines (with commentary) of Chapter 20: “The Other Shoe” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” because I’m doing a re-read. Not a full list or full commentary.

-

AN: I actually really like the title of this chapter. It’s a reference to the saying, “Waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Both in regards to the arrival of SVSSS’s other transmigrator and to the sudden, forced System World Update that happens because SQH’s been breaking the world too much.

-

 One of Mu Qingfang’s glowing hands is on the man’s bared stomach, while another rests on his chest, and Shen Qingqiu bares his teeth in agony. Mu Qingfang is speaking very quickly to the people around him - voice sharp with urgency and brow furrowed with intense concentration - giving instructions to his patient, his head disciple at his side, and his sect leader. 

 Yue Qingyuan is kneeling beside Shen Qingqiu, hunched and desperate and wild-eyed, letting the other man squeeze all life and feeling from his fingers, the both of them holding on for dear life. 

- 

AN: My feelings towards YQY, SQQ, and Qijiu have their ups and downs, but I’m always firmly convinced that they care. If they cared less, if they were both more vulnerable people, maybe they could actually talk about it. 

- 

 The young man has short hair -  short hair -  short enough that the tips only just cover the top of his ears. That’s one of the many haircuts Shang Qinghua thinks about wistfully every time the weather gets too fucking hot for fancy long hair. The kid turns to look at Shang Qinghua, clearly terrified, wide-eyed behind his glasses.  Glasses!  Semi-rimless glasses with bright blue frames! And to top it all off, the kid is barefoot and wearing  patterned pyjamas, with buttons and a breast pocket, and just the sight of them is nearly enough to knock Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky back on his ass. 

  Modern  hair.  Modern  glasses.  Modern clothing. 

- 

AN: Why give SY piercings? Idk, because it’s fun. That’s it. Here’s some young punk with a cool haircut and cool piercings and also glasses and button-down patterned pyjamas, who likes to read shitty stallion novels for the monsters and the emotional arcs and negative development of the sexy protagonist. 

- 

 Shang Qinghua launches forward and grabs the transmigrator - holy fucking shit, the  transmigrator  - by the arms. The transmigrator  wobbles  under Shang Qinghua’s hands, which makes Shang Qinghua’s skin crawl in sympathy and  “get me the fuck away from this thing” horror, but there’s something there - something mostly there - to hold. The kid struggles, but he’s not strong and not heavy, and Shang Qinghua is arguably a little bit more than human at this point. 

- 

AN: They are both... SO FAR from home. 

- 

 Flashy and attention-grabbing? Yes. Probably a crime against graphic design? Also yes. Ahhh, Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky probably thought it was cool! But it’s been… ehhh… a few decades in the world itself has given Shang Qinghua some opinions and different tastes. Super nostalgic! But, like, in a very bad, dread-inducing,  “a haunting image from another life”,  and  “someone just walked over my grave”  way. 

- 

AN: It is immensely funny to me to imagine someone being genuinely (and for good reason) haunted by some shitty web-novel banner. It’s like picturing a “Modern Character in Naruto” Self-Insert knee-deep in some extremely bloody ninja wars and then being confronted by the Naruto title design again. 

The dissonance of experiences! 

- 

“...You’re… you’re a transmigrator,” the kid says. 

 Being found out is definitely one of the Top Ten Worst Transmigration Crimes, so far as Shang Qinghua has been able to pierce them together from his System’s disapproval. But, ahhh, it looks like Shang Qinghua’s own System has just done that for him! What the fuck are rules or reality anymore? 

 “For my sins,” he answers. 

- 

AN: Says the Author God of this world, Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky. 

- 

 "So! You're a reader?" Shang Qinghua asks. "A fan?" 

 "I wouldn't say 'fan',” the kid grumbles, lifting his chin while still visibly trembling. “What's the other option? Someone who didn't waste hours of their life on a stallion novel written by someone with no taste and the writing skills of a grade-schooler? A ‘non-reader’?" The kid's eyes narrow. "The author?" 

 Shang Qinghua is both mildly hurt and reluctantly impressed. “Ah, wow, you’re sharp,” he says. “An anti-fan, then? Hey, that’s fine, it was kind of all the same to me, really.” 

 The kid blinks at him, apparently surprised to be right. “You’re… Airplane?” 

-

AN: SY can be a complacent guy sometimes, but he can also be sharp sometimes too. It’s a fun balance. 

- 

 He’s been here, alone, for decades. If there are more transmigrators, Shang Qinghua is going to scream. In fact, it’s really unfair that he’s not screaming now! He would really, really,  really  like to start panicking now! He’s having a day here! Except the kid currently has the  “allowed to panic”  ball right now. Dying (Shang Qinghua assumes), transmigration, almost becoming  Shen Qingqiu, and getting a broken transmigration instead? That’s a lot of bad news in very quick succession! Shang Qinghua doesn’t want to set the kid off or make an even worse first impression by having a much-deserved breakdown. 

 He’ll have his breakdown later in private, like a responsible adult. 

- 

AN: SQH has the “Responsible Adult” Override here. 

- 

“The time and place for your appearance wasn’t good,” Shang Qinghua admits. “But I can come up with something for a mysterious backstory. I have some pull here, you know. There are lots of teleportation plot-devices lying around. You’re an escapee from somewhere, fleeing… ah, something. Someone, maybe! Hey, you pretend to have amnesia about the whole thing and we call it a day! If we’re lucky, you get lost in the shuffle!” 

 “Amnesia,” the kid repeats, unimpressed. 

 “It’s cliché because it’s a classic, Cucumber-Bro.” 

 “I’ve always wanted to be a  Proud Immortal Demon Way  background character with potential for an interesting story, but who gets abandoned in favor of  papapa plotlines and fades away into non-existence!” 

-

AN: Cucumberplane banter is just fun. 

-

 “Hey, want to learn to cultivate? You can learn to cultivate!” 

 “With  your cultivation system?” the kid says, unimpressed and wary, but he’s totally considering it. Flying swords are pretty tempting! 

 Kids love the flying swords! 

- 

AN: SQH is definitely trying to pull a “hey, shiny thing!” tactic. 

- 

“...The System will look after you,” Shang Qinghua says. 

 The kid squints at him. “What?” 

 “I was lying before,” Shang Qinghua lies. “I just didn’t want to do the update. Yeah, it’s actually going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine, bro.” 

 Now the kid called Peerless Cucumber looks like he doesn’t know whether to be relieved or furious; he looks like he’s managing both at once pretty well. “You’re only looking out for yourself here, aren’t you?” he says icily. “It’s like you really are Shang Qinghua.” 

 “The one and only,” Shang Qinghua agrees. 

- 

AN: There’s a lot I like about this moment. Shang Qinghua lying to comfort Shen Yuan in the face of the unknown. Shen Yuan being prickly again and pulling out another insult. Airplane honestly being the only Shang Qinghua there’s ever been in this world. He really is Shang Qinghua now! This is his life! 

- 

 He needs to think that he has some control over the life he is living  right now and has been living for decades now. This is a life that he really doesn’t want to see actually become the shitty story he wrote. 

 Shang Qinghua grabs the kid by the arm and makes for th

- 

AN: This was mean, but it was also a lot of fun. I’ve had AO3 glitches before. Time to mimic them now in a serial storytelling format for tension!

[oddcoupler222]

Akskdkdk I’m not crying I just got some tww feelings in my eyes and to the rest of tww fans you’re welcome (I’m the biggest one of them all) let it be multi chapter 🤲🏻

did i take one person asking for something and turn it into a spinoff semi romance novel? i… may have.

Eliza -

Colleen -

(for funsies)

 Fall 2018

Eliza wouldn’t say she loved her work study job in the registrar’s office. But she had friends with various other jobs throughout campus, and she knew because of their tales that her job wasn’t the worst.

Would she love to trade with her new friend, Sara, and have the job in the printing lab in the library, where she would just have to un-jam the printer and restock it with paper, then sit on her laptop? Of course. But she was also nosy as fuck and she got a lot of insider info from her supervisor here. Plus, she got all of the registration codes early. So who was the real winner?

Still Sara.

“Hello? Hi. I’m sorry, are you busy? I’m - I’m not trying to be obnoxious, but I really really have to get into a class, and I have nowhere else to go to ask. I’ve tried the professor, I’ve tried her TA. I’ve asked all of the upperclassmen I know. And this is the final stop before I may very well have a breakdown.”

A frantic, pleading voice interrupted her IG scrolling. It was technically one of her two fifteen minute breaks that she got during her five hour shift. She intended to tell the interloper that she would have to wait until the other side of the office didn’t have a line, because where her desk was, was technically closed.

But Eliza had never seen an angel in real life before. And she was such a simple, simple lesbian.

Never in her life had she ever been struck like this, though. The tousled blonde hair that she could see was usually nice and orderly. The clothes that screamed an upper-middle class (at the very least) background, though trendy.

Blue eyes crystal clear but starting to brim with tears.

“I’m not busy. What can I do for you?”

“Thank the gods! In order to graduate on time with my major and both of my minors, I need to double up on some courses. Which means I have to take some courses before I’m technically supposed to. So, I got permission to take Ethnicity and Identity with Dr. Oakhart next semester, even though it’s a semester early. Because I need to take Cultures of Essos the semester after, and it’s a prereq. But it took forever to get permission to take Oakhart’s class early; I had to basically camp out in her office,” a little laugh fluttered out, anxiously. “And now? She gave me permission but told me she wouldn’t let me jump the waitlist. I just. I really need to get into that class. Can you even just tell me how long the waitlist is, maybe? Please?”

Someone was wound extremely tightly. It wasn’t usually something Eliza, as a laidback person, enjoyed. But she was already charmed.

“Let me check.”

She typed in her credentials into the system as she surreptitiously glanced up at the girl. Her cheeks were flushed and seven hells. She was cute.

“You really camped out in her office?”

“Huh?” A fleeting smile flashed over her face, and it warmed everything inside of her. “Oh. Well, I know it sounds crazy in retrospect. I can just sometimes get very focused.”

“I gotcha.” Eliza did not, in fact, relate. But her pretending to put this girl at ease.

She pulled up Oakhart’s Gender and Identity class for the spring – and yikes, there was a waitlist a mile long.

“That’s not a good face.”

“Ouch.” She kidded.

“Gods! No, your face isn’t -”

She stopped her before she could ramble anymore. Especially because she wasn’t sure she could handle some sort of mangled compliment from this gorgeous creature without stumbling over herself. “It’s cool. Uh, yeah, no the waitlist isn’t bad.” She lied through her teeth.

“It’s not?” The could-be model’s voice was as incredulous as it should be, as she tried to lean over the counter to see the computer. Like she had to see to believe.

And Eliza quickly turned the computer more toward herself, “Uh, you can’t - against policy-” once again, the lies.

“Sorry. That was probably crossing a line.” She blew out a deep breath and her shoulders deflated. “I guess, can you just put me on the bottom of the list?”

“Yeah,” she lied, fully intending on breaking the rules, as she clicked the top of the waitlist to flag her into the class. “I just need… your name.”

She very much wanted to learn her name.

“Colleen Durand. D-U-R-A-N-D,” she spelled it, and Eliza could very easily see that she’d spelled her name or heard it spelled just so in order to get places in life many times.

She typed her name into the first place on the wait list. “I imagine you will probably hear about this class sometime soon. Don’t fill this block on your class schedule.”

An all too brief, but brightly blazing smile stole her breath. “Thanks so much.” Colleen checked her wrist, a nice looking silver watch glinting in the light coming in from the window. “Gods, I have to go. All right. Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome!” She called after her.

Colleen Durand. She loved the registrar’s office.

Spring 2019

Approaches to Comparative Literature… was a joke.

Colleen rarely thought of classes like that, because all she had in her head was her mother’s voice, saying, “If I’m paying for you to go to a public institution“ - even though it wasn’t in the top 5 universities in the nation (god forbid she go to a public university, even if it was ranked as one of the top ten colleges in the country) - “You’d better be bringing back nothing short of straight A’s.”

She was a junior in college, was on track to graduate at the top of her class even with having two minors - she took 6 classes a semester, not counting the summer and winter semester courses she took. And she took all of them seriously - took color coded notes by hand, sat in the front of the class.

But this course… she just couldn’t. She tried for the first two weeks, learned that the professor left much of his job up to the TA, and then said TA had hit on her in an extremely slimy way and she - well, after that she started slipping into the back row. Just this one class wouldn’t hurt.

She was the only one in her row and sitting in the back gave her a whole new perspective.

It especially gave her a perspective on the girl she’d only known as Nice Girl at the registrar office who doesn’t think I’m crazy before now, and now she knew her name - Eliza.

Eliza, she’d learned from sitting in the front, types vigorously during every class on her laptop and occasionally makes very funny commentary.

It was only in switching her seat to sit behind Eliza that she realized she isn’t taking notes on her laptop, but was instead just being very active on various social medias. Mostly twitter.

@elizathesapphicSCREAMING my TA just announced that some of our earliest lgbt writers were great friends and roommates. i could teach this course better lmao

She wasn’t wrong.

@elizathesapphica limerick -there once was a TA from hellwhose hair is rock solid from gelhis voice is nasally and gratinghis ignorance is so fucking frustratinglet’s not forget he’s smarmy as well

Colleen had genuinely had to smother a laugh from that one. And, it turned out, from many others. The semester passed in a blur of moments - her twentieth birthday, an intense and stressful visit from her mom, juggling 6 courses and her first practicum - but Eliza stands out.

They don’t talk, because… well, what would they even talk about? They seem like really different people and Eliza is super lively, but she learns a lot about her.

If it wasn’t obvious from her twitter handle (obviously), she’s a lesbian. Who very much loves Margaery Tyrell - someone Colleen vaguely knows is a recently out politician - and Sansa Stark - who Colleen is very familiar with, because of the writings she’d done and the classes she’d taken that Sansa had TA’d for before she’d finished her master’s - and their very public relationship.

As well as many, many other lesbian celebrities and television shows that Colleen does not watch or follow, but is still entertained by because Eliza is entertaining.

At the end of the semester, she follows Eliza’s twitter on the account she never uses that is basically untraceable to her. It has her name on it, sure, but nothing else. No pictures. No retweets.

But Eliza’s twitter is good for a laugh and sometimes she needs that.

Fall 2019

“Ohhhh my godddd, Sara. Can you believe it’s her?” Eliza wrapped her arm around her best friend’s shoulders, pulling her close - as if they could shrink back against the wall behind them.

They were going home the following day for winter break and so it seemed like everyone who had an off campus apartment was throwing a party. Which was great because Eliza hadn’t gone out this semester much at all. There had been too much work and too much - uhhh well, being lazy and not wanting to leave her dorm when she could binge watch shows with Sara.

Sara elbowed her in the side accidentally as they fell back against the wall. “It’s who?”

She pointed across the large living area full of tipsy-to-drunk college students, to the front door. “Colleen! She - I don’t think she ever comes out? Why do you think she is right now?”

Sara’s eyes rolled before she jostled their shoulders. “Oh you mean your cruuuush. I don’t know, it’s the end of the semester. Everyone’s out. It’s not a big deal.”

Eliza ignored her and stared at Colleen as she and a friend Eliza recognized didn’t know the name of - she was a master social media creep but that didn’t help when someone didn’t have social medias - chatted and made their way across the room.

And her heart started racing. “Oh my gods. Oh. She’s coming over here. Do you think she -”

“We’re right next to the drinks, why do you think she’s coming over?” Sara’s retort quickly popped her rapidly inflating hopes, and she trained a critical eye on Colleen-Gorgeous-Durand. “That is dream crush girl?”

Eliza spun so quickly to face Sara that she nearly sloshed her vodka cranberry over the rim of her cup. “How can you say it like - like that? Look at her!”

“I mean. She is pretty. In a buttoned up way.” Sara turned to face her, having to tilt her head up just enough to quirk an eyebrow. “Is that your type? You haven’t dated much in our eight month friendship tenure.”

Eliza scoffed. “No! No. I don’t have a… type.” She started slapping Sara’s arm, “Ohhhh gods, she’s coming, she’s coming, she’s -”

Sara caught her hand and held it tight, hissing, “Calm down, you look insane.”

Colleen approached them with a nervous looking smile. “Hey. Can I ask where you got your drink?” She surveyed the table in front of her, dubiously, “I just don’t really see the mixer I want -”

It was like an automatic reaction. Eliza’s hand shot out and offered her cup, “Take it! Still full. Just made it. Made tons of them. See?” She held it up so the rim reflected the dim light. “I didn’t take a sip yet or anything. I can go make another cup.”

Those sky blue eyes were so brilliantly light and she gave the slightest twitch of an eyebrow as she accepted Eliza’s drink. “Um… thanks?”

“Yeah. No prob. Enjoy.” She grinned, knowing it was too bright for the moment, but whatever.

She felt triumphant, even when Sara collapsed against her in a fit of giggles as Colleen walked away. “Holy shit. I see now why you haven’t dated.”

“Um, what is that supposed to mean? She sought me out.” Now that she replayed the interaction, though, she could… sort of… see where she’d gone wrong.

Oh, fuck.

Sara only laughed harder, letting Eliza’s hand go and wrapping it around her waist in a hug. “Listen.” She tried to calm her laughter. “Listen. What I just witnessed means one of two things: your crush is an absolute idiot who took a drink from you, a weird ass stranger at a party. Or she actually somewhat recognizes you, too, and doesn’t think you’re a creepy stranger.”

“Oh, fuck. Now I need to find more cranberry juice.”

Spring 2020

“Who’s that girl over there? She keeps looking at us.” Colleen’s friend and flatmate, Natalia, commented. They were in the dining hall, which is a rarity since they hadn’t lived on campus since they were freshmen.

“What girl?”

“Pretty, dark hair, dark eyes. She has like 4 piercings up her ear. She has a rainbow pin on her backpack. Seems gay.”

Pretty with dark hair and eyes, the earrings, and the dead giveaway rainbow pin already tells her it’s most likely Eliza Harlow, even before she turns and looks. Colleen rolls her eyes. “How does she seem gay? Besides the rainbow pin,” she adds on, even though she knows - of course Eliza Harlow is gay.

Her still very active twitter is still hilarious and very, very full of lesbian pop culture. It’s gotten almost kind of frustrating, the fact that Eliza never really posts anything about herself on her twitter. Colleen definitely knows she is a lesbian more than anything - she posted something just last night about a pro soccer player and proclaimed that her lesbian heart wasn’t going to survive her coming out.

But she never posts anything about her own life. It’s not like Colleen cares? But she can’t help but be intrigued. It’s weird. But maybe that’s just the culture they live in these days.

She still turns and looks where Natalia is pointing, anyway. Sure enough, Eliza is sitting - backpack perched on the table next to her bagel, rainbow pin on display - with her ever present friend whose name Colleen knows is Sara (thanks, twitter). Pretty with her dark hair curling, as usual, over her shoulders.

And, Natalia was right. She’s throwing looks over at them.

Eliza had spoken to her for the first time, without having to do so for a class project, last week. She’d tossed her backpack over her shoulder super casually - Colleen had noticed out of the corner of her eye, as she’d packed up her own bag - and approached her.

“Can I borrow your notes?”

Colleen was always loathe to part with her notes. She took pride in them - even color coded them - and she doubted that strangers would take as much care with them as they deserved.

But Eliza… well, she didn’t really know her. But she didn’t feel like a stranger either. Especially with her eyes looking all hopeful and nervous. She wondered if Eliza had fallen behind in class with all of the work she was doing on her social medias. Or on her work for the internship she had at the Red Keep (thanks, twitter).

She’d handed over her notebook with a smile that was genuine.

“Whatever. The rainbow pin is why she seems gay, fine. But she’s coming over here.” Natalia brings her back to the moment, making a face at the meatloaf she’s eating before she pushes the tray away. 

Colleen sat up straighter, dropping her own fork. “That’s Eliza. We’re in Valyrian Lit class together.”

Eliza walked even closer, looking… apprehensive. Her big, expressive eyes were downcast, as she worried at her generous bottom lip. Which was weird because no, she didn’t know Eliza personally. But she kind of did know her personality. And she was not apprehensive.

It took a moment for Colleen to notice the notebook in her hands. And that it wasn’t the same green one - always green notebooks for lit classes - she’d given Eliza three days ago.

“Hey! Colleen! Hey. Uhhh. I have… your notebook.” Eliza held out the notebook toward her, shifting back and forth on her feet. “Your notes were - great. Such a help.”

“No problem, but…” Colleen eyed the notebook - a mint green as opposed to her hunter green. “That’s not mine.”

“No, it is! I - it is.” Eliza cleared her throat and slid it down onto the table. “It’s definitely yours, now. Um. The thing is. My obnoxious roommate  - I didn’t choose her? I was supposed to live with my friend, but then housing got all messed up and. It’s a whole thing,” she waved her hand, and Colleen, despite being so anal about what the fuck happened to her notebook, couldn’t help but be entertained. “The point is, she spilled her coffee all over your notebook.”

“What?!” All the gods, her notes. All her time and color coordination. And that had all of her handouts and - fuck. Dr. Lannister was not an easy professor to pass, his exams were notoriously difficult -

“Ohhhh, shit,” Natalia whispered.

Eliza quickly flipped the notebook open, frantically pointing at the pages. “No! Wait. I, I dried out your notebook and spent all last night re-writing your notes. I tried finding a matching notebook, but this was the only green one they had at the store. And I bought colored pens, because I figured out the color system, too. It’s all there. I swear. And I made copies of all of the handouts and put them in the back. Thanks. For the notes. I’ll never ask again, I swear.”

She hitched her backpack over her shoulder without another word and spun on her heel.

Colleen leaned over the table to peek at her notes and… wow. Eliza really did figure out her color coding system, even down to the obsessive tonal color changes for different types of literature. And. She skimmed her eyes quickly over the page - Eliza definitely left some insightful notes in here that Colleen herself had missed.

She turned her head to see if she could even call out her thanks to Eliza, but she was too far away. All she could see was the other girl slapping her palm against her forehead as she turned to leave the hall.

It made her smile.

Fall 2020

Professor Stark tapped her hands on her desk, “And as much as I know group projects aren’t everyone’s favorite thing, the sad reality is that we have to work with people in real life that we don’t get to choose. So, you will all individually document what you do in this project and then evaluate each other’s contributions at the end. You have your groups, the rubrik, and some examples to start with. Even though the project isn’t due for over a month, I would highly recommend starting it early.”

Eliza wouldn’t say she loved group work by any means, especially when the groups were assigned.

Colleen caught her eye and asked, “You want to come to my place this weekend to get started? I really don’t like to wait until the last minute for these kinds of things.”

Eliza was pretty sure she was going to write Sansa Stark a thank you letter.

[harryseyebrows]

Fine Line - Track-by-track rating

I’m in the mood to start shit. So here it is. My comprehensive album rating list. Rating subcategories should be self-explanatory, but I’m judging based on lyrics, how listen-able the song is overall, how interesting it is in terms of JUST sound, and crafting/production/my perceived idea of how well done the entire song is in terms of all the elements combined. Think about the effort that Liam put into his album vs. the effort Harry put into SOTT. What was written and created with intent and what was created maybe more for the sake of creating. Then, I did ACTUAL MATH and came up with an overall score out of ten. Read with caution and yell at me if you feel the need.

Golden:

Lyrics - 7/10 

“I know that you’re scared because I’m so open” is fantastic and it’s great to see him literally being more open with his songwriting, but he loses some points for the general repetitive nature and more common turns of phrase.  

General listen-ability - 10/10

It’s an easy song to listen to, whether you’re putting it on for background noise, listening while driving, or listening specifically with the intent of paying attention and enjoying.

Sonic intrigue - 8/10 

The slower beginning and then the slam into the guitars and drums is great. It flows nicely and has a good pace/rhythm.

Crafting - 9/10

Overall: 34/40 = 8.5/10

Watermelon Sugar: 

Lyrics - 6/10 

Nothing particularly thrilling. It’s a generally fun song with some lyrics that are suggestive but not overtly so. Good to know that he’s enthusiastic about oral, but again, it’s not his finest lyrical work. 

General listen-ability - 8/10

Another more easy listening track. Good for any time. A fun, sexy little bop.

Sonic intrigue - 7/10

The horns and bass line save this song from otherwise being a bit lackluster in terms of production, and make it interesting in a subtle, understated way that’s very enjoyable.

Crafting - 8/10

Overall: 29/40 = 7.3/10 

Adore You:

Lyrics - 7/10

Kinda cliche and corny; “I get so lost inside your eyes”. Otherwise, very fun and leans heavily into a more pop lens. Makes up for it with “You don’t have to say you love me / You don’t have to say nothing / You don’t have to say you’re mine” and the “Oh honey”s.

General listen-ability - 10/10

I want to listen to this song all day every day. There has to be something in the soundwaves that’s brainwashing me. Can’t stop won’t stop.

Sonic intrigue - 9/10

At first glance (listen) it’s a very basic sort of pop song. But the more you listen, you realize that it’s rooted in a more funk-style guitar lick and utilizes synths in a way that doesn’t come off as too manufactured or ‘fake’. It’s layered; you find more and more complexity with each spin.

Crafting - 9/10

Overall: 35/40 = 8.8/10

Lights Up:

Lyrics - 8/10

The lyrical structure, if you look at it on paper, could easily be read as some type of poetry. The song opens with a question: ‘What do you mean?’ and then proceeds to offer fragments of sentences that aren’t necessarily connected, but somehow offer a cohesive picture — a message that’s still a little unclear but offers multiple interpretations in meaning. 

General listen-ability - 9/10 

It’s fun and boppy but also surprisingly mellow. For me personally, the tempo and bass mean that it can be hit or miss in terms of how/when I want to listen to it, but for the most part, I don’t skip it. This might also have to do with it being the first song we heard from him since HS1, and I might have overkilled it a bit.

Sonic intrigue - 8/10 

It’s hard to not compare this song to his work on HS1, for the reasons above. HS1 was definitely more rock-oriented; more bare bones production and an ode to the more classic methods of music making ie singer, guitar, bass, and drums. Whereas with this song, it was essentially a complete 180 in style and production, with a little flair of R&B style music while maintaining his classic air of whimsy in both the lyrics and his less-frequently-used breathy head voice. Sometimes I still find it hard to believe that it’s a Harry Styles song.

Crafting - 8/10 

Overall: 33/40 = 8.3/10 

Cherry: 

Lyrics - 8/10

One of Harry’s many talents is his ability to project tone with the combination of how he sings/emotes with his voice with the lyrics he’s singing. This song is no exception. It’s a sadder, more melancholic song, where he’s expressing some less-than-pleasant feelings, and you’re not only getting that from the words he’s singing, but HOW he’s singing it. It allows the listening to feel and empathize. It’s something he’s very masterful at. (See: the opposite would be something like Adore You, which under the guise of a more upbeat song, the lyrics are actually kind of sad and grovel-y)

General listen-ability - 7/10 

I respect his artistic vision and the choice to include the voice note but as part of a general playlist, it can come off a little odd and out of place. Otherwise it’s very palatable. It just makes me sad, so I don’t often intentionally put it on to listen.

Sonic intrigue - 7/10 

I liken this to a FTDT style song. Very raw. More singer-songwriter than pop. Some very lovely guitar playing and it’s nice hearing him sing in a register that’s been essentially neglected up until this album. But for the most part, I don’t think it’s his most interesting work. Very typical singer-songwriter guitar type song. 

Crafting - 8/10 

Overall: 30/40 = 7.5/10 

Falling: 

Lyrics - 7/10 

I enjoy and appreciate his honesty, and perhaps there’s something to be said about the lack of flowery turns of phrase, but I just don’t feel like this is his most clever work. Again, great to see him being so honest, but it sounds like the extended version of If I Could Fly. 

General listen-ability - 6/10 

I can’t allow this to randomly come on shuffle without putting myself at risk of a depressive spiral. That’s where he loses points. 

Sonic intrigue - 7/10 

Every album has one, and this is it. The Basic Song. So widely palatable that it’s...boring. Shoot me, I know.

Crafting - 8/10 

Overall: 28/40 = 7/10

To Be So Lonely: 

Lyrics - 9/10 

Currently, with just HS1 and Fine Line under his belt, THIS song is his lyrical Magnum Opus. It’s honest. It showcases an intriguing narrative. It’s clever. It’s fun. It’s a little sad. This is Harry and his amalgamation of musical influences mixed up in a bowl, poured into a pan, and baked into a perfect cake with frosting flowers. 

General listen-ability - 8/10 

This is another one of those songs that you can have on in the background and it fits into whatever you’re doing, or you put it on specifically to scream ‘arrogant son of a bitch’ back at him. It’s versatile.

Sonic intrigue - 10/10 

The production on this song is clean but also a little rough around the edges, and I think it was done intentionally. You can hear the buzz of guitar and bass strings. There are peaks and troughs of volume. It has a sneaky little swinging beat that makes it impossible to not bop your head along with it. Again, it’s INTERESTING.

Crafting - 10/10 

Overall: 37/40 = 9.3/10 

She: 

Lyrics - 8/10 

I’m afraid to say anything negative about this song because I don’t want to be executed, but here goes. I think it offers a fun, interesting narrative on the first few listens. It’s a story; a little fantastical and sultry. But for me, it feels a bit like Woman 2.0

General listen-ability - 7/10

I have to be in the right mood to put it on specifically, so otherwise, it’s one that I won’t necessarily skip, but I prefer to have it on when I want to listen to slower music. Also kudos to Mitchell but the guitar wank at the end is just a little on the long side. 

Sonic intrigue - 8/10 

This is definitely a stylistic callback to the overall sound of HS1, and for that reason, I think it offers a nice bit of continuity. 

Crafting - 8/10 

Overall: 31/40 = 7.8/10 

Sunflower Vol. 6:

Lyrics - 9/10 

The story! The atmosphere! The pure, unbridled joy it offers! KISS IN THE KITCHEN LIKE IT’S A DANCEFLOOR!!!! I’m offended at how cute this song is. More men need to write songs like this.

General listen-ability - 9/10

This song instantly puts me in a happier mood. I don’t feel like a car ride is complete without listening to it at least once. It’s textural. I love it.

Sonic intrigue - 9/10 

The backwards audio in the beginning. The weird bass. The vocal layering. The nonsense ad libs at the end!!!! FUN!!!!

Crafting - 10/10

Overall: 37/40 = 9.3/10 

Canyon Moon: 

Lyrics - 8/10 

This song is deceptive — underneath the cheery, more jovial sound, it actually has some more echo-y melancholy notes — the ‘So hard to leave it / that’s what I always do’ and ‘I’m going home’s. It’s about reminiscing but still moving forward. Reflecting!! 

General listen-ability - 9/10 

Could easily fit in on a romcom soundtrack, and I mean that in the best way. 

Sonic intrigue - 7/10 

If I didn’t know that he specifically sought out Joni Mitchell’s dulcimers for this, it would feel just like any other upbeat guitar song, but I DO know his process behind it, so his score gets bumped a bit.

Crafting - 9/10

Overall: 33/40 = 8.3/10

Treat People With Kindness: 

Lyrics - 7/10 

Ohhh Harry Styles. He just wants people to be nice to each other! And maybe be a utopian society cult leader. It’s okay. We love him anyway. This song is full of idealisms; perhaps it’s a toe-dip into social commentary. Perhaps it’s a reflection of his own life, on dealing with friendships and loss and the overall nature of being a person. Who knows! It’s a batshit extravaganza in the best way.

General listen-ability - 8/10 

If you can listen to this song without wanting to dance...you have a problem. 

Sonic intrigue - 9/10 

This song is all over the place but in a very thoughtful, cohesive way. It would not be the same if he sang the chorus; half of what makes it so charming is that he doesn’t, and instead, he sounds like some sort of unhinged ring-leader at the end, demanding ‘one more time’ and screaming. UNHINGED BUT MAKE IT JOYFUL.

Crafting - 9/10

Overall: 33/40 = 8.3/10

Fine Line: 

Lyrics - 9/10 

This song doesn’t have many lines, but the ones that do exist, are all purposeful and pack an incredible punch. It would be a disservice to him to try and pick a ‘best’ one, but ‘Put a price on emotion / I’m looking for something to buy’ and ‘my hand’s at risk / I’ll fold’ are up there as two of my favorite things he’s ever written. The repetitiveness of ‘we’ll be a fine line’ can be a little grating, but I find that to be entirely dependent on my mood, and not any fault of his own. 

General listen-ability - 8/10 

I put this on when I want to disassociate. Not ideal for when I’m driving down the highway, but what can you do.

Sonic intrigue - 10/10

One of the most, if not THE most, beautiful pieces of music he’s ever put out. Nothing more or less can be said. 

Crafting - 10/10 

Overall: 37/40 = 9.3/10 

[pivitor]

My Top 10 Albums of 2019

2019 will go down, for me, as the year my beloved iPod died, and I finally bit the bullet and signed up for Spotify Premium. Thus, I listened to more new music in 2019 than I ever have before, and realized how much of it I found disposable. Bands I grew up loving put out mediocre efforts, new darlings grew in directions I wasn’t interested in following, but thank god, thank god there are still plenty of terrific musicians putting out work that resonates deep within my soul. Music is subjective, so I wouldn’t dare call this a “best of” list, but below are the ten new releases of 2019 that I listened to the most, vibed with the most, that just plain ol’ meant the most to me this year.

(PS: Don’t think too much about the exact order and ranking here. It changed multiple times even as I was writing this. What really matters is that all ten of these records rule)

10. Radar State -- Strays

Radar State are the Avengers of the early 2000s mid-west emo scene -- a band combining The Get Up Kids’ Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic, The Anniversary’s Josh Berwanger, and The Architects’ Adam Phillips into a single supergroup. Pryor has described the project as “just having fun with [his] friends,” and that dynamic shines through loud and clear in Strays. It’s like each member is pushing the next to just create the catchiest song they possibly can, and the competition leads to great results; Pryor favors fast and sloppy punk and Berwanger moody earworms that fuse themselves into your brain through sheer repetition, but it’s Suptic who fulfills that edict best with his shiny, addictive pop love songs. Radar State never quite hits the emotional highs of its members’ main projects, but that was never the point in the first place; Strays is just fun from front to back, and it’s an album I’ve returned to consistently throughout the entirety of 2019.

Highlights: Making Me Feel, Self-Hurt Guru, Artificial Love

9. The Early November -- Lilac

Lilac is an album about learning from your mistakes and making a conscious choice to be better, and it’s a theme, an ethos that truly defines this release on every level. The Early November originally planned to release Lilac back in 2018, but ended up scrapping the original recording and going back to the drawing board, knowing that they could do better, and funneling that ambition, all their lessons learned, into their most ambitious release outside of The Mother, The Maker, and the Path (“but less self-indulgent,” I say with love). Horns, piano, and a wide variety of tempos spice up the proceedings, and the lyrics are more raw and honest than ever, but Lilac’s greatest weapon is the vocals, which Ace Enders wields with virtuoso skill. He plays with different cadences and deliveries, giving every song a unique feel, moving from soft and pleasant (“Perfect Sphere [Bubble]”) to menacing (“My Weakness”), from the joy of “Ave Maria” to the cathartic, powerhouse vocal explosion of “Hit By A Car (Euphoria)” to the pure, crackling, barely contained emotional breakdown threatening to burst right out of the chorus of “Our Choice.” There’s no other vocalist out there quite like Ace Enders -- and no other record quite like Lilac.

Highlights: Hit By A Car (In Euphoria), Ave Maria, Comatose

8. Magazine Beach -- Sick Day (EP)

Most year-end lists probably overlooked this record, a debut four-song EP from a small DIY band released in mid-December, and man oh man are those critics missing out. Sick Day isn’t just the biggest and best musical surprise I received all year, but quite possibly the most fun I had listening to music in 2019. Seriously, I played this on loop probably two dozen times the day I discovered it, and spent that evening forcing friends to listen to it too. Magazine Beach’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics, gonzo riffs, and stunning background harmonies are combined with vocals whose flatter, sardonic tone initially masks, but soon reveals their perfect cadence and quick crackles of emotion; they’re as close to a perfect pop-punk package as I heard all year, with their quirky, relatable songs about flaky friends, overstuffed social calendars, and other mid-twenties challenges filling that gaping Modern-Baseball-You’re-Gonna-Miss-It-All-shaped hole in my heart. If this had released earlier in the year, and I’d had more time to see how long it truly stuck with me, it might have placed far, far higher on this list, but either way I look forward to carrying this album forward with me into 2020, and I look forward to following Magazine Beach’s future career closely. I think they could go places.

Highlight: Living Room

7. Masked Intruder -- III

It’s easy to look at Masked Intruder and think that they’re more of an act than a band, just because they’re so good at playing hardened-yet-harmless criminals on stage, at enchanting an audience with their antics and banter alone. Thankfully, they’re equally skilled as musicians as they are performers; III isn’t just quick content for their live shows, but an entertaining, addictive, artfully made pop-punk record in its own right. Okay, maybe pop-punk is a bit too restrictive a descripter -- between the doo-wop, call-and-response harmonies and the raging riffs and solos, III sometimes sounds like a modern spin on sixties rock and roll, which is something I did not know I needed but absolutely needed. The lyrics never break kayfabe, but there’s some real clever stuff going on beneath the surface of these silly crime-themed love songs; contrasting the creepiness of Blue’s romantic pursuits with the shenanigans of a typical radio love song shows how few differences there actually are between the two, how creepy the entire genre is when you stop to give it any thought. It’s thoughtful and subversive without ever being preachy, just one more spinning plate kept perfectly balanced in the act that is III.

Highlights: Not Fair, Maybe Even, I’m Free (At Last)

6. Martha -- Love Keeps Kicking

Martha’s secret weapon is the empathy and compassion their songs cultivate for their subjects. Love Keeps Kicking is an album largely about the way love can kick you when you’re down, yet throughout the album Martha never villainizes even the bad actors in relationships. “Into This” finds the narrator jerked around by a potential partner who just won’t clarify what they are to each other, but the song isn’t out to attack the partner, simply to get a solid answer. Likewise, “Love Keeps Kicking” lays out a myriad of detailed complaints about romance and relationships, not to insult, but simply to find a way to endure them. “Orange Juice” rues the way the narrator diluted their partner just by being with them, showing impressive (and heartbreaking) levels of self-awareness. That kind of emotional maturity and complexity makes the true love songs (“Sight For Sore Eyes,” “Wrestlemania VIII”) all the more joyous, and makes their social commentary (“Mini Was A Preteen Arsonist”) that much more effective. Martha are a wonderfully catchy, fun band filled with great harmonies and British twang, but it’s their earnest, compassionate storytelling that truly made me fall in love with them, and with Love Keeps Kicking.

Highlights: Wrestlemania VIII, Love Keeps Kicking, Orange Juice

5. Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties -- Routine Maintenance

Hot take (?) incoming: Dan Campbell is the best songwriter of our generation. I already sang his praises pretty thoroughly last year when discussing my favorite album of 2018, but Routine Maintenance is just further proof of this truth, almost Campbell flexing. The previous Aaron West record was a character study of the worst year of a man’s life, but Routine Maintenance expands Aaron’s world in terms of scope, characters, and themes, all to the project’s (and character’s) benefit. The record is a tale of redemption, taking Aaron from rock bottom to a new place of security, all through the power of friendship and community, the power of music, and the power of family, of fulfilling your responsibilities to them, of finding your role and your home wherever you are, with the people who care about you, with people you can make proud. They’re themes Campbell has been exploring throughout his entire career, but brought down to a more personal level, and somehow that makes them hit harder than ever, perhaps because it makes the way they can fit into any listener’s life that much clearer. I’ve cried listening to this album. I’ve cried hearing these songs live. There’s true, true catharsis on Routine Maintenance, and it’s because Campbell’s taken Aaron West on a real journey, and it’s one I feel blessed to have been able to follow.

Highlights: Runnin’ Toward the Light, Rosa & Reseda, Winter Coats

4. Pkew Pkew Pkew -- Optimal Lifestyles

Pkew Pkew Pkew’s 2016 self-titled debut was an album told solely in the present tense, not worried about the future, but simply about the drinks, pizza, skateboarding, and parties to be had right here, right now. It was a blisteringly fun, gang-vocals filled powerhouse of a record that solidified Pkew Pkew Pkew as one of my new favorite bands. Optimal Lifestyles, though, is an album that has started to look back, if only to question the present. Are they still content to be these same fun-loving, hard-drinking party guys? Ultimately, as proven by lyrics such as “Shred until you’re dead, or until you break your wrist again” and “We lead thirsty little lives, and all we want’s another,” the answer they come to is a resounding “yes,” but the journey they take to find that answer not only makes it feel earned, but opens Pkew Pkew Pkew to some exciting new songwriting avenues, be it the touching introspection of “Drinkin’ Days” or the surprisingly beautiful nostalgia of “Everything’s the Same” (or even the more raucous nostalgia of “Mt. Alb,” for that matter). Don’t let words like “introspection” and “beautiful” scare you, though -- The Boys still rock as hard as ever, as the wailing, chugging guitars and even a totally rockin’ saxophone solo fully attest to (though I do miss all the gang vocals). And I’d be remiss to not mention “I Wanna See A Wolf,” an absolute songwriting clinic. In only a minute and nineteen seconds, Pkew Pkew Pkew takes a simple statement -- “I wanna see a wolf” -- and unravels it until it reveals a song about longing for freedom from the careers that cage our lives, even when they’re our dream. I don’t know if Pkew Pkew Pkew could have written this song three years ago. Talk about growth.

Highlights: I Wanna See A Wolf, Point Break, Adult Party

3. The Get Up Kids -- Problems

After their most popular record -- 1999’s Something To Write Home About -- the Get Up Kids’ next three albums all went on to be incredibly divisive among their fans. While all three records showed significant creative growth, none really sounded like what came before (personally, I very much enjoyed two of those records -- sorry, There Are Rules -- but I guess I’m not most fans). Problems, though, sounds like the natural evolution of Something To Write Home About without ever feeling derivative of it -- it sounds more like “the Get Up Kids” than anything the Get Up Kids have released in over a decade, which is an incredibly exciting thing let me tell you. Yet, Problems still benefits from everything the band has learned in that time: there’s new introspection (“The Problem Is Me”), a wider storytelling scope (“Lou Barlow”), and a shift from wallowing in their own pain to examining the pain of others (“Satellite,” which Matt Pryor has said is based on one of his sons). Problems also manages to pack in absolute bangers like “Fairweather Friends,” sensitive, tender ballads like “The Advocate,” and mid-tempo jams like “Salina,” a guaranteed future Emo classic that threatens to dethrone the Kids’ own “Central Standard Time” as The Quintessential Emo Song. Problems is the synthesis of just about everything that has ever made the Get Up Kids special, and it not only makes for one of the year’s best albums, but one of the Get Up Kids’ best as well.

Highlights: Fairweather Friends, Lou Barlow, Salina

2. PUP -- Morbid Stuff

The A-Side of Morbid Stuff is perfect -- a legitimately flawless five song stretch of punk rock that continues to blow my mind almost ten months after its release. The unmistakable opening notes of “Morbid Stuff”; that irresistible background riff from the bridge returning in “Kids’” second chorus, combined with some of the most nihilisticly romantic lyrics I’ve ever heard; the raucous sing-along that is “Free At Last”; the purest, most undiluted diss-track of the year in “See You At Your Funeral”; and, finally, the best song of the year bar none, “Scorpion Hill,” a sonic journey through multiple musical genres, telling a story of uniquely American misery that legitimately moves me to tears. The B-Side doesn’t quite live up to these first five tracks -- there’s a couple stand-outs (“Bare Hands” needs to make it into a live set pronto), a couple songs more interesting in concept than execution (sorry, “Full Blown Meltdown”), and a few more perfectly fine, standard PUP tunes (and I swear I don’t mean that as an insult!) -- but, well, how could it ever really have anyway? All together, it still makes for an outrageously enjoyable album that reaches the upper echelons of what 2019’s new music had to offer. That PUP was not only such a terrific band right out of the gate, but has remained so this far into their career, makes me so, so happy.

Highlights: Scorpion Hill, Kids, Free At Last

1. The Menzingers -- Hello Exile

It took me a few listens -- and, truthfully, seeing it played live -- to truly crack this album. At first it was a bit too slow, the vocals a bit too filtered, but once it clicked, I lived and breathed Hello Exile and nothing else for months. The slightly slower pace gives the Menzingers a chance to play around with some new musical tricks, be it the back-and-forth opening or the fun background guitar melodies of “Strangers Forever” or the almost hypnotic vocal melodies in the choruses of “Portland” or “Hello Exile,” and they pay off with great effect. Lyrically the Menzingers are at the top of their game; tracks like “High School Friend” and “Strain Your Memory” are more adept than ever at painting stories that make you nostalgic for a life you never even lived, but absolutely feel like you have, and lines like “it only hurts til’ it doesn’t” hit your heart with sniper-like precision. “Anna” may be the quintessential Menzingers song, a tale of longing, love, and location that drove the entire scene into a frenzy that still hasn’t subsided. “Farewell Youth” is the best closing track the Menzingers have ever released, a song about grief in multiple forms that manages to find poignant takes on each and every one of them. I’m not yet sure whether Hello Exile is the beginning or the end of a chapter for the Menzingers, but either way, it’s clearly an essential and unmissable part of their story, and one I feel privileged to be able to experience.

Highlights: Anna, Strangers Forever, Farewell Youth