#realizing how little sense these actually make when you tailor them to a character but leave in the my teeth are straight & whtie shit dbfhs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jgroffdaily · 1 year

Text

Merrily We Roll Along reviews (part 2)

A review summary is at Broadway World and Playbill.

TheaterMania

Groff, Mendez, and Radcliffe are the other reason for the production's sterling success. Giving career-best performances, not only do they have palpable chemistry, but you actually buy them as friends (and I've seen this show plenty of times where you don't). You can sense the gut-punching disappointment when their relationships come crashing down, and the palpable joy they find in the successes that paved the way. They sing the absolute hell out of Sondheim's best score; "Old Friends,""Opening Doors," and "Our Time" have never sounded better.

On the page, Frank is a cipher, and you never really know what makes him tick. Groff grounds him in the reality of a man who watched all his dreams come true, and it's only after he reaches the height of his powers that he realizes it's not what he wants at all.

Vulture

A large part of that lies just in the casting. It is hard to hate anyone played by Jonathan Groff, who lends an innate sweetness to the character and has a silvery voice that lines both his songs and his dialogue with melancholy. We meet him in the midst of a big party for a movie that people say to his face they love and knock behind his back, and he’s playing the part of a wheeler-dealer while also communicating that this character is playacting too (Gilmour has Groff in a finely tailored white shirt and black pants, switching him into looser versions in the same colors as time reverses).

Friedman, whose version of Merrily originated in London, makes much of the contrast between both Groff’s and Radcliffe’s demeanor (one smooth, one nearly always vibrating with energy) and physical size (Groff lifts Radcliffe on his back twice). You can see her background as an actor in her direction, the way that she’s encouraged them to find as many telling gestures as possible within each individual scene or song. When the trio of Groff, Radcliffe, and Mendez jump into “Old Friends,” you feel as if you’re in a scene-study workshop with them, full of rambunctious energy that endears you to them en masse. They are never sweeter than when doing their little triple-pinky promise.

The Wrap

Groff in particular is a revelation as Franklin Shepard, a once-in-a-generation composing talent who morphs into a self-centered Hollywood producer barely clinging to his second marriage. The “Spring Awakening” and “Hamilton” alum is an irrepressible charmer, and it’s easy to see how he deploys his charisma and crystalline tenor to take the edge off his character’s inherent jerkiness. He’s a narcissist capable of flashes of regret.

New York Stage Review

Let me add, nine years later (although it seems like 20), that Friedman’s present mounting is even stronger.

This, in part, because of the concentration by this ‘actor’s director’ on the central players. Franklin Shepard, the anti-hero of the show’s triumvirate, is here played by Jonathan Groff (from Spring Awakening, in 2006, and more recently that mad King George in Hamilton). Frank is a study of success gone sour, with the idealistic young man turned soulless celebrity over the course of the action. In reverse, as it happens, as Merrily was conceived to roll along backwards, present-to-past.

Part of what sets this production off so powerfully is that Friedman and Groff are not afraid to present Frank as cold, cruel, and decidedly unlikable. That is in the writing, yes, but prior productions have tended to keep him more sympathetic than not. Groff is not afraid to be downright insufferable. It turns out that this jump-starts the action, in an odd way instantly matching the angry energy of the bravura overture which starts the evening. It is not until the trio “Old Friends,” when Groff throws in a bit of a goofy shuffle step, that we start to see what attracted the others to Frank in the first place.

New York Stage Review (2)

Spring Awakening and Hamilton star Groff—who previously played a composer in William Finn’s ode to “heart and music,” A New Brain—makes for a wonderfully sympathetic Franklin Shepard. That’s not to say he lacks a dark side. His Franklin is pretty pathetic when arguing with the scorned Gussie: “Do you really not see that I’m ashamed of all this? That I am as sick of myself as you are?” We can see the sting on his face after Charley’s TV confrontation (“You’re goddamn out of my life, Charley”). And we see the hardness peel away, layer by layer—he literally crumples to the ground during his divorce from first wife Beth (Katie Rose Clarke)—eventually revealing the starry-eyed piano-pounding visionary.

These three truly look like “Old Friends,” as the number goes; their breaking-through-as-artists sequence, “Opening Doors,” which Sondheim called the only autobiographical song he ever wrote, is irresistible.

The Hollywood Reporter

Franklin has always been an off-putting key character for a musical, a self-serving sellout whose personal loyalty seems easily disregarded. Casting the infinitely likeable Jonathan Groff allows us to see the regret in his choices and the yearning for the young dreamer he once was.

Groff has a wistful way of revealing that all the achievements, the comforts and the fashionable entourage of Franklin’s high life can’t match the vitality of his youth, when everything was about struggle and promise and hope. There’s a contained anguish in his performance that’s very moving. At the same time, he acknowledges his frustration with his friends’ reluctance to allow him to change and grow.

Chicago Tribune

Friedman’s production, which demands with every note to be back on Broadway, features four blisteringly emotional and deeply rooted performances from Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, Daniel Radcliffe, and Katie Rose Clarke. All dig deep trenches and the show is especially propelled by how richly Groff links his vocal excitement, energy and power to his character’s calcified well of emptiness.

New York Post

When Groff, who is sensational playing a famous composer named Franklin Shepard, stares out at the audience in this staging’s final image, he’s back again in middle age with his life in tatters. At that moment, you really believe that he’s changed and that these three formerly inseparable New York pals can make it work; that our experience watching the show has been Frank’s own all-important lightbulb moment. An infamously unfulfilling show suddenly satisfies.

But it’s not only a striking image that helps “Merrily” roll along, but a stunner of a trio. The old friends are fabulously played by Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez, who never overplay a millisecond of a story that can easily get caught up in showbiz cliches and 1970s kitsch. Here, everything is grounded and real.

Observer

Nearly decade on, Friedman’s elegant, emotionally searching revival is Off Broadway and it’s remarkably satisfying—and sold-out, thanks to ex-Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe (a talented comic crooner) as angsty Charley. One also must factor in cult adoration among musical-theater fans (of all ages), in addition to the inspired casting of super-charismatic Jonathan Groff as Franklin and iron-lunged Lindsay Mendez as Mary. Operating at their prime, these ace performers anchor the show and sing the daylights out of the scrumptious score. Don’t be surprised if a Broadway transfer is announced before the January 21 closing.

The Daily Beast

This Merrily finds Jonathan Groff in a career-shining role as Franklin Shepard, the rich, famous songwriter and film producer...

#jonathan groff #merrily we roll along #nytw #reviews

20 notes · View notes

sydmarch · 3 years

Text

Hi my name is Walter Patrick O’Brien and I have short curly black hair (that’s how I got my name) and dark brown eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Cabe Gallo (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Richard Elia but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a government contractor but my teeth are straight and white. I have the fourth highest IQ ever recorded. I’m also a genius, and I lead a team of geniuses called Scorpion in LA where I’m in our first year (I’m 32). I’m a genius (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly business casual. I love the internet and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a light blue button down shirt, a black tie, and black slacks. I was walking outside the garage. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of normals stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

#texticles #i have done one of these for EVERYTHING i've ever been interested in these so the fact that i didnt write this 5 years ago #was a travesty i had to correct immediately #cbs scorpion #scorpion #realizing how little sense these actually make when you tailor them to a character but leave in the my teeth are straight & whtie shit dbfhs #but authenticity. also idk how old walter actually is & i refuse to do more research for this after forgetting elia's name

12 notes · View notes

demonslayedher · 3 years

Note

any random trivial thoughts you have about the lives of the slayers? i like to think that nezuko keeps the acorns inosuke gave her in a jar as a collection and that inosuke is determined to fill the jar completely, hehe. also, do you think an official announcement of nezuko’s existence was made to the lower ranked demon slayers or did it travel through word of mouth. imagine oblivious demon slayers visiting the butterfly mansion, only to be greeted/encountered by nezuko

If I may add to that thought about Nezuko having a jar, Gotouge has stated that Nezuko is okay getting tossed around and bumping her head in the box because she heals from it immediately, but one of this days Tanjiro is going to open it and it will pour with acorns and glass shards, and she'll just be sitting there glaring with disappointment. (Hopefully Nezuko keeps the jar in a safe place at the Butterfly Mansion instead!)

As for telling the whole Corp that Nezuko got the OK from Oyakata-sama and the Pillars, I can see that being like a low-key announcement that spreads like a rumor, just kinda whenever the crows get around to that detail between missions. It makes sense that Oyakata-sama wanted to tell the Pillars first, and since the Pillar meeting was coming up pretty soon when Tanjiro passed the Final Selection, Oyakata-sama had probably planned as soon as he got Urokodaki's letter than he was going to have Tanjiro and Nezuko at that meeting. Even if we set the Pillars aside, though, there's wide-spread hatred against demons throughout the Corp. It probably helped to have the Pillars generally on board first. I can imagine the rest of the Corp being very curious (if cautious) about Nezuko, and although we see characters who get the pleasure of spending time with her getting to baby her, most Corp members who meet Tanjiro probably don't get to meet Nezuko face to face. Daytime is problematic, or Nezuko would otherwise be asleep a lot of the time even if Tanjiro is busy in settings when he'd meet other Corp members. Still, I think Tanjiro's reputation as a nice guy would spread even faster, so even people who were iffy about Nezuko would probably get to know Tanjiro and be like, "oh, she's probably fine."

But if we're going to get into trivial headcanons about the Slayers' everyday lives, you know who I think gets babied more than Nezuko?

Inosuke. Most of the Corp members are freaked out by him at first, but as it dawns on them that Inosuke grew up all alone, it may bring out a nurturing side in them, and it makes everyone happy to see him get better at fitting in among humankind. They get to feel proud of him as he picks up on limited amounts of etiquette and gets marginally better at picking up names, but most of them are still likely to make a quick exit when he starts getting too rambunctious.

Zenitsu, however, is someone who should know better and most people find him really annoying until they go through Pillar Training with him, as that's the strongest bonding experience most of the Corp members have ever shared, aside from the really close bonding that probably occurs a lot among members of the same Final Selection batches. However, the Corp members who have witnessed Zenitsu in action (and who were rescued by him) have nearly the same awe for him that they have for the Pillars, so they never say anything to him about how indebted they feel.

Since more of the Corp members have met Inosuke and Zenitsu than have met Nezuko, Tanjiro's saintly reputation mostly stems from how much of those two numbskulls' company he can stand, and how he can keep them in line (keeping a demon sister in line must be easy in comparison). Also, Tanjiro is not just good at tending the fire to make good rice, his sense of smell makes him a master at seasoning food perfectly, and many Corp members have cried thinking of how their own mothers never cooked so well. Tanjiro is also very good at tending to people when they fall ill.

The Pillars are so advanced in Breath technique that they don't generally catch colds unless they are recovering from serious injury or like, poisoning themselves. Normal Corp members catch minor illnesses all the time, though, and that's part of why they're so slow to advance. They tend to have to take time for lots of little things instead of just major injuries sustained in battle. They still train as much as possible to make sure they don't get rusty when it's time to take a mission again. These recovery periods are some of the only times when they can maintain a reasonable sleep schedule, many of the members who survive to old age feel long term effects of sleep deprivation in addition to lingering injuries. Since the Corp members can't very well engage in long-term goals, simple pastimes are encouraged in the daylight hours to help keep them in the moment. The Butterfly Mansion and most of the Wisteria houses are well stocked with board games like Sugoroku and card games like Karuta, as well as tools for shuttlecock and paper for origami.

While many of the Corp members try to be virtuous, and in indeed there are other circles that have their own sort of main-character like Tanjiro equivalent, there are still those who have less polished, or certainly far less positive character. The rougher members tend to spend their salary and free time on vices. Oyakata-sama understands his children are under a lot of stress and turns a blind eye to it (or two blind eyes, I guess).

Different Breaths tend to come with their own cultures, and overtime different Cultivators tend to get different reputations based on the members they send into the Corp. Like, "Oh, Yamada-sensei? Then you must be a stickler for the 10th form" or "Yamaguchi-sensei? Are you okay out there? I heard he's real half-assed on Breath technique." There is a certain amount of awe that students of former Pillars automatically get, and although some of that is due to pride and jealously, people who have been in the Corp long enough tend to get over these notions and just realize that everyone's doing their best. Since they're core Breath styles there may be other Thunder and Flame Breath users throughout the Corp from different Cultivators, but, pardon the pun, they can't hold a candle to the students of former Pillars (or the Rengoku clan in general) and it's highly, highly unlikely any of them would ever get close to the same level of mastery. There's plenty of Muratas in every Breath, basically.

Speaking of Murata, he and others like him probably had an easy time of settling down and getting married after retirement. Years of experience as swordsmen certainly gave them a mature edge over the average Joes they otherwise would be compared to, but they also have the advantage of not being freaks. Takeuchi remains life-long friends with Yushiro.

The young maidens of Wisteria houses get flirted with all the time. Many of the Corp members are starved of TLC, and while the maidens of the Wisteria houses are polite and have deep respect for the work the swordsmen do, they know they likely will not know most of them for long. However, when there is a true connection between a Corp member and a Wisteria House family member, they tend to make very solid matches. Girls make up a slim percentage of the swordsmen in the Corp, and this is why they tend to get sent on undercover missions a lot more. Demons tend to put their guards down more around women, as they'd more likely be on the look out for male swordsmen.

Girls make up a larger proportion of the Kakushi, and traditionally feminine skills are highly prized. Gotou is very proud of his sewing skills, even though he only does small repairs and has never been tasked with tailoring full uniforms. The Kakushi use a lot of code words and have a very insular work culture that is hard for outsiders to break into; even Oyakata-sama finds himself confused by a lot of it, but he appreciates that it makes them efficient and mostly leaves them be to organize themselves as they see fit (his orders are still absolute, though, so none of them are aware how much autonomy they effectively have.)

Hand signs like "don't breathe" and "don't listen" are unique to the Corp (yes, I have looked them up, consensus in the Japanese fandom is that they are unique to KnY), and taught by Cultivators. Inosuke didn't have a Cultivator to teach him so it took him a while to catch on the existence of hand signs. He makes up his own confusing hand signs to impress people with how flexible his joints are.

For many, Pillar Training was harder than undergoing Cultivation (but still less harrowing than the Final Selection). In Cultivation they tend to get specialized attention from someone who cares about them and actually knows a thing or two about how teaching works. Pillar Training does not fit this explanation at all, especially in the teaching department. As mentioned before, this is when a lot of Corp members who used to find Zenitsu insufferable come around and start to appreciate him more, for they survived different stages of training together, and every time he blew his top and complained, they were grateful he gave (loud) voice to what they were thinking but were too afraid to say. Instead of getting down and depressed, it riles them up enough to keep at it, however ridiculous the Pillar's demands are. Suffering under the Pillars also broke down perceived barriers between different ranks, building a more solid level of comradery among a lot of the Corp. However, this was also the most time most of the Corp members ever got to spend with the Pillars, who they always felt were untouchable and who they feared bothering. They feel very genuine affection for them by the time they all enter the final battle.

Once Inosuke figures out that Zenitsu can only bring out his full abilities in his sleep, he tries to goad Zenitsu into fighting him at full strength by insulting him in his sleep. He did throw a really good punch at him one time, but usually he only sleep-argues back. Other times Inosuke hits a sore spot and Zenitsu starts sleep-crying, in which case Inosuke gets bored and leaves. Once Tanjiro realizes this about Zenitsu (thanks to Inosuke having point-blank explained it to him), he puzzles over it and figures Zenitsu may not be aware of how powerful and helpful he is, and this hurts his confidence, but then again, how can he not know if he's so aware of his surroundings even in his sleep? As Zenitsu sleeps, Tanjiro has been puzzling over this a long time and how he might best be able to help Zenitsu reach his full confident potential, and by the time Zenitsu wakes up and drowsily looks over at Tanjiro, Tanjiro looks him in the eye and very seriously asks, "Zenitsu, what is your problem?" Naturally, Zenitsu interprets this as Tanjiro suddenly being very disappointed in him, and Tanjiro has unwittingly done more harm than good.

On the contrary, Tanjiro has unwittingly done a lot of simple good for most of the PTSD-suffering Corp members with his little throw-away positive comments, just like he did for Muichiro and Aoi. Most of the Corp members have never met Oyakata-sama, so Tanjiro is to many Corp members what Oyakata-sama is to the Pillars. It's like they all have an Oyakata-sama shaped hole in their hearts and Tanjiro just falls into it like a good proxy. After all is said and done and Tanjiro and Nezuko read all the kind wishes left for them in deceased Corp members' wills, Tanjiro is consumed with some guilt that he can't place faces to all the names, though he remembers the majority of them. While his memory is still fresh he works hard to recall the ones who escaped him, and then he makes sure to refresh his memory every year with annual visits to the graves.

#kny fandom theories and meta #or just general headcanons #but they have their basis in little fanbook details like favorite games and such #Kimetsu no Yaiba #Demon Slayer

82 notes · View notes

lady-elora · 3 years

Text

"It was love", or five reasons and five refutations of hatred for sylki

So, folks, I did it. I finally translated from Russian an amazing article about the romantic line in “Loki”. I agree with every word in it. Hope it’ll help all the sylki shipers to fend off the attacks of antis with a reasoned arguments.

Would you like to talk about our god Odin the most controversial Marvel franchise pairing which caused a storm of indignation and negative emotions on the part of fans?

We're talking about Loki/Sylvie from "Loki" (2021) mini-series, or sylki (lovie) as they were called by fans. Apparently a simple get-pairing consisting of a man and a woman (or bisexual gender fluids, if you prefer), but some people were shocked by such a relationship on the screen. Why? What for? How? That may be your questions. So we’ll discuss their claims and groundlessness of them in this article.

But before we start talking about it, I want to clarify what actually the concept of the "selfcest" is.

Usually we marked as a "selfcest" those works that describe the relationship of a character with himself. Most often, this warning implies a "doubling" of the character; alternatively – the same character is taken at different ages or falls for his/her absolutely identical copies.

Agreed?

Let's go then.

< < < 1 > > >

The first and main thing which follows from the definition above is: "Showing the selfcest on the screen is disgusting and immoral!"

It also follows from the definition above that the selfcest is the relationship of the same character with himself in the form of identical copies both in character and appearance. The highest form of narcissism, according to Mobius (which, in fact, is to some extent true). Horrors from a snuffbox, according to some impressionable audience. It hardly makes sense to rant about the fact that masturbation is also a form of selfcest (although the fact is rather amusing).

The bottom line is that if Loki once again created a copy of himself to deceive someone and fell in love with it, it would be a selfcest. Splitting himself into two people and building a relationship between them is a selfcest as well. Turning into a hermaphrodite and ... no, this is something completely perverted.

The basis of the selfcest is absolute identity. If we take a character who is so in love with him/herself that he/she sees relationships only with him/herself, then in such a case he/she can only build them with a perfect scanned copy of him/herself. It will be very easy for the person who knows him/herself inside and out to notice some inconsistencies in a partner, and then it makes no sense to build a relationship if he/she is not as perfect (as the "original" is), isn’t it? That’s how this logic works.

And now attention, please!

Is the romance of two Elvis Presley understudies a selfcest?

They look almost the same, both like Elvis... But no, right? These two people are different people, with different tempers and lives, who are similar only in appearance and pseudonyms. So this is a very ordinary relationship.

Now let's get back to our sheep. So we have two people from different worlds, with different stories, different tempers, different powers and different external signs who were born under the same name and later lived their lives with different ones. The only thing that is identical in them is the essence of the God of Mischief. So where is the ground for an egoistic selfcest? Nowhere.

Don't forget about identity. We can say that they are very similar, since initially they are both Lokis. But do you wanna say it's so hard to meet similar people in real life? No. Do you wanna say it's hard to meet similar people in two similar universes? No. I'll tell you a secret: writers often like to use the trope of intertwining almost identical tempers between characters to show their mental connection. And it's not a crime, but a common technique. And, again, a "similarity" doesn't fall under the criteria of selfcest.

And finally, if Sylvie were an exact copy of Loki, would there be people who love one but can't stand the other? It's the same character after all, so what's the problem? But the point is that Loki is Loki. And Sylvie is Sylvie. They exist separately from each other and are not the same due to the presence of distinctive features.

If you want to use Kang's words, remember that he admired these two.

< < < 2 > > >

The second and no less amusing is "Loki doesn't need a love interest at all!"

I'm sorry, but which Loki?

The one who appeared in all the films of the series "Thor" and "The Avengers"?

He's dead, guys.

And Loki from the series is a character torn out from the finale of the first "Avengers" and revamped by TVA with the help of an impromptu session of psychologist Mobius and viewing on-screen all of his promising deeds. This Loki was told head-on that he was created as a minor character in order to plot his machinations for the development of the protagonists and he was unnecessary to the whole world. This Loki has an advantage over the previously known version of himself just in knowing this fact. This Loki has recognized for everyone and for himself that he didn't want to harm the others. And this Loki, by definition, is already a different character, but for some reason people tailor him to a long-familiar one, ignoring the obvious things point-blank.

He is no stranger to simple human feelings, because every version of the God of Mischief is initially an offended and despised child grown up in the shadow of his own brother, a child who just wanted to be loved too and in the same way. Only the paths to this under-goal were different for all Lokis. One killed Thor in order to remain the only ruler (people always adore kings), another invented unthinkable feats (people love heroes), the third built a perfect world out of promises for everyone, the fourth tried to become a hero himself, but was too crushed to find mistakes in his plan, the fifth excluded himself from the equation so that everyone understood he didn't want to harm the others and to cause the pain.

Loki from the series is a version that knows everything about himself, but at the same time is not bound by the framework of the other variants' plot. He doesn't need to win back Asgard, to fight with Thanos, with the Avengers, with contempt and so on. He is free from borders. He is from the world where Frigga never died. He is the only Loki without the "glorious purpose". He is different.

So his attitude to other people is now different as well. It's stupid to perceive this version exactly as a long-known character.

After all he had seen, this Loki would hardly be able to live alone like any other. He is extremely naked and needs love (in any form), as the most reliable and not bringing destruction and suffering point of support.

< < < 3 > > >

The third and my favorite thing is: "Love in five minutes! Why did it come out at all?"

Why did Loki fall for Sylvie, and even in a couple of days?

OK, you can quite easily explain Sylvie's motivation: she found a person who had interest for her, who suddenly cared about her, protected her... Could he be an unworthy party in such a case? Moreover, before that, Sylvie, in principle, had no close people and she internally really lacked such an attitude to herself, banal love (parents, people, friends, romantic), which she hadn’t due to the lack of normal childhood and a stable life.

But Loki?..

But Loki is not a vain killing machine from The Avengers anymore, not a person for whom the self-affirmation is the only goal in life. Let's rewind a little, and remember that he was brainwashed in TVA and lowered from heaven to earth. Loki was always reasonable. Loki could always be courteous and friendly. Loki was always a gentleman. And finally he realized that there's no sense in all this aggression and hyperbolized narcissism, and he pushed his one-actor theater aside in order to at least normally rethink the concept of time and reality.

And here comes Sylvie.

Unpredictable, dangerous, painfully similar to him, but at the same time completely different. Loki never had good intentions in his conquests; only the ways were sometimes good. Sylvie went to the good liberation of people and the return of their right to choose their lives, but through blood. In fact, she is his mirror image.

She intrigued. A wild person who swung at the destruction of the time control organization alone and coped well with it.

However, the countdown started from the moment when they both got on the train. The moment when Loki began to understand what the real essence of Sylvie was. Grown up in fear, distrustful, broken Sylvie, who was desperately trying to make TVA pay for everything. For everyone. And it was amazing for him.

Here, as for me, the Moffat's quote about his BBC Sherlock fits very well: ..when he saw her, he thought: "Maybe there can be someone like me?" – but with a slight nuance that Loki himself would like to be someone like that. Like a fighter in spite of and for the good, causing admiration. With some corrections in the form of the absence of a painful childhood, despair and anger.

Then the spring of "Loki's MeUs" begins to unwind, and the essence of it is that he understands her and her feelings, because, although they are different people, they are internally similar. Loki looks at her as if she is a person he has known for a very long time, but not completely. It's like if you met an old childhood friend seven years later: it seems to be the same, but also it seems to be different. It seems that everything is elementary, but there's not enough of a certain number of details.

(He'll realize later that he was missing much more).

So we take the initial interest, add the conditional knowledge of a person, and we get a very specific variation of the trope "from friends to lovers".

This may seem far-fetched, but we have two factors on our hands that are fundamental for this trope. Keep them in your head, but for now, let's applaud the fact that Marvel for the first time figured out how to derive formulas for the logical development of relationships in the shortest possible time. In what way? In the most elementary way: through psychology.

There's such a thing as the stages of the formation of relationships, which includes:

- Falling in love (interest, flirting, rethinking)

- Trust (challenge, joint activity, mutual assistance)

- A sense of kinship (empathy, responsibility, confidence)

- A sense of unity

- Love

In our case, only the first three points are considered, but the third one is with a chip in the form of a final. I should also focus attention on the fact we are not considering love. We are considering a serious crush, which can develop into love, since the latter one is a slightly longer process that still has to go through to the end. And we consider them in extreme (+accelerated by our two fundamental factors) conditions, where our heroes are forced to work together and trust each other in order to survive.

After reviewing the aspects of the three points we have chosen, we can easily draw analogies with the events that happened with Loki and Sylvie.

They are interested in each other, they think that they know each other, they develop in relationships with each other in a completely healthy way. A little faster than in the series for a hundred episodes maybe, but it is conditioned.

Needless to say, this is impossible and illogical: we have the clearest example of love from nowhere in the form of a couple of Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne, who had absolutely no prerequisites to it, but at the same time kissed at the end of the first film. Nothing personal, it's just a fact.

The relations of our "defendants" aren't based on carnal attraction, they didn't immediately break out ready-made due to a rush of adrenaline, they are not one-sided and not abusive. Loki and Sylvie carry about each other, support each other (if it doesn't seem so, then we'll also talk about Sylvie a little later, everything in its own time), plus sympathy and love based on the fact that a person is ready to fight with you and trust you, sounds very appropriate, doesn't it?

And yes, there are similar examples of "love in five minutes" in life, which I've also seen. This is real.

< < < 4 > > >

The fourth thing which also makes me roll my eyes is "Sylvie didn't need relationships at all and she didn't care about Loki."

So let's make a small lyrical digression and think about who Sylvie is.

The Goddess of Mischief? Yep, but far from Loki, which means there's no sense to adjust her to the same classic image. As a child, Sylvie was dragged out of her own world. As a child, Sylvie fled across the time with fear and horror from TVA. Sylvie hid all her conscious life and saw people dying around her over and over again. Sylvie knew that outside of the apocalypses millions are simply dying from the hands of TVA too. She was alone all the time, during all her life she developed anger and hatred for this organization, until revenge for herself and for others became the only meaning of her life.

And here comes Loki.

Another version of the God of Mischief, which forces her to rebuild the plan on the go, in order to still bring it to the end. Frivolous, broken, stucked up Loki. He lazily, automatically puts sticks in her wheels. And then, on Lamentis, he suddenly decides to fight with her and help. After that, he completely trusts her with his life and cares about her own. And it seems to her like some kind of nonsense, like another trick, an invention for personal gain. Sylvie understands the essence of Loki, but she can't perceive him the way he perceives her. She sees in him what she could have become without the intervention of TVA.

But after that rush through the city, after realizing the hopelessness of the situation, when he says he is sorry and he thinks she is amazing, something clicks in her head. No one has ever cared about her (in this regard, she is not like Loki, who had at least Frigga), and now Loki, who knows her only from the archives and her meager life-story, who dragged her into the apocalypse, but also tried his best to help her to get out, just says that he is fascinated.

Sylvie grew up with her own concept of truth and lies: for her, there's only her truth and the eternal deception from the others. And then she thinks: may it be that..?

The thoughts that no one on the entire Timeline needs her, and that she should have recognized the lie, are marinating in her head to the end. Loki is not like the people she has spent her whole life with (he looks more like her, understands more or tries to understand at least; he believes), Loki behaves strangely and worries about her. Sylvie can't believe it (her past affects her completely), but subconsciously she wants someone to really care about her.

And she starts taking care of Loki in return. She comes closer and closer, but at the same time she is ready to turn around and rush back at any moment. Because she's scared. Sophia Di Martino says that for Sylvie, feelings are something new, unknown, and such things always cause fear in people. She tries to deny it, to be ironic, she's waiting for a trick, but doesn't move away.

She's just thinking: "Come on. Betray me. Betray me so that I'll be right again and trust no one anymore."

But Loki doesn't betray her. On the contrary: he recognizes that he cares of her, he tries to protect her with all his might. And that's the moment when Sylvie finally falls in love. That's why she pushes him through the portal to TVA which – the Multiverse is being formed, yay – is the safest place at the time.

Why didn't she give up on killing Kang? Because that was her glorious purpose. Sylvie lived with the revenge and the dream of saving everyone from the dictator and she just couldn't give up all this after the horrors that she experienced in her life. Blood, death and fear – that's what she saw during all these years. But Loki didn't see that so he couldn't understand. That's why Sylvie didn't listen to him.

And if she didn't care about Loki, if she didn't feel anything at all, Sylvie would have killed him the moment her sword was at his neck. She'd killed before – it wouldn't be a problem. But she does care of Loki.

< < < 5 > > >

The fifth and final thing is "These relationships hinder the development of both characters!"

And that's the funniest claim from those who watched the series with their eyes closed.

During the series, Sylvie and Loki are revealed from new sides thanks to their feelings. Caring for others, compassion, responsibility, the very fact of showing love for another person – all this develops them both. The friendship was shown through Mobius. The family has always been represented by Thor, Odin and Frigga. But showrunners wanted to reveal Loki from all sides, decompose him into components and show what he is from the inside in all aspects. And they did it.

Loki, who doesn't care about the fate of the Universe, and who only wants to regain world domination again, turns into a hero who wants to save the whole world. And one more person.

With Sylvie, it's a little more difficult, due to the fact that her life was also more difficult. Her case is more lost. However, in the end we see that such a long-awaited retribution doesn't bring her satisfaction. Because she understands the wrongness of this act, she regrets it and realizes that everything was wrong. But she realizes it too late.

If we had cut Loki out of her life, Sylvie would have killed the Keeper without any guilt, without feeling remorse, because she wouldn't have known that everything could be different, that she might choose another way.

This is what is called character development.

Sophia says both Loki and Sylvie feel the same, they grow together, but at different rates. And by the end of the series, Sylvie is approximately where Loki was after a psychotherapy session with Mobius. But not at the very beginning – that's what's important.

I hope this article has at least a little explained the whole essence of sylki pairing, because surely I'm not Tom and Sophia, who know their characters best. However, trying is something, isn't it?

Thanks for attention ;)

Source: «Это была любовь», или пять причин и пять опровержений ненависти к Sylki

#loki #sylvie #loki x sylvie #loki series #sylki #lovie #lovedaggers #fandom analytics #translation from russian

63 notes · View notes

whatwillyoudodifferently · 4 years

Text

Look, Louts! Lilies! - Yuri For A Hope-Flung Present and Hopeful Future

Look, I’ll be frank. I typically try to keep to a more formal tone when I write for this blog. I’m not in a formal mood. It is June October 2020, and I, like the rest of you, have been under quarantine for a little over three almost seven months now due to the Covid-19 virus. Throw in a eensy, teensy bit of massive political movements and change in response to police violence and racism, and an increase of police violence and racism in response to those movements, and I think it’s fair to say it’s been a tumultuous couple of months. Except, strangely, it also hasn’t been, because so much of this time has been characterized by ennui and isolation. Stressful, yet soul-numbing. In short, it’s been a very weird place to be in.

So, we’ve all found our different ways to cope. My sister’s way has been getting really into succulents(?), and my way has been buying digital manga and video games. I’ve finished stuff I’ve put off for literal years and bought stuff I had heard was good but wasn’t that hyped to get into. And somehow, the one thing I’ve really gotten into has been yuri?

Now, yuri has a very long and rich history, as well as its own sets of conventions and nuances, so it is with a great, great, GREAT deal of respect that I say that I’m going to simplify it for this essay as “Japanese media with a particular focus on romance between women” for brevity’s sake. If you want to know more, there’s actually quite a lot that’s been written about it in English, but I’m aiming this essay at English-speakers who have had at least a little experience with yuri and more than just passing knowledge.

Because you see, I’ve found that yuri fans have a lot of things to say about yuri! And a lot of those things really bug me!! “Yuri is only fetish quasi-porn written by men,” “yuri is only bland wholesome fluff,” “yuri is only high school drama,” so on, so on. It made me mad, but it also made me realize something: a lot of people simply must not know how big this field of lilies truly is! How else can we get people saying “yuri is oversexualized” and “yuri is sexless” as gospel truth? Something’s not adding up here, guys!

So, all that is to say I’m doing something different for this blog: I’m writing up a recommendation list of yuri. A large chunk of it will be stuff I’ve read and can officially give my seal of approval to, while some of them are just titles I’ve heard of that I think will interest others. All of them have been specifically chosen to counter common untrue things I’ve heard about yuri as a whole. I hope you can find at least a few things on this list that you will enjoy and help you keep your head as the encroaching darkness lurches yet a few inches closer!

1. “Yuri is all schoolgirl stuff! Where’s the sci-fi, the period pieces, the action, the fantasy?”

Otherside Picnic

What It Is: A light novel series written by Iori Miyazawa (illustrated by shirakaba). Ongoing, four volumes at time of writing. The story is being adapted into a manga by Eita Mizuno, and an anime adaptation directed by Takuya Satou will be airing in January 2021.

What It’s About: It was on her third trip to the Otherside that Sorawo Kamikoshi almost died, and it was on that same trip she was saved by an angel. Toriko Nishina is a beautiful and confident young woman who also happens to have intimate knowledge of the Otherside, a dangerous yet captivating world that Sorawo can’t help but being drawn to. Toriko convinces Sorawo to join her on her expeditions to the Otherside, fighting off bizarre creatures that have somehow been ripped out of Japanese urban legends and finding strange artifacts in order to make a little extra cash-- all the while keeping an eye out for someone dear to Toriko’s heart.

What I Think: Otherside Picnic is heavily inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and features several creatures and scenarios from ghost stories, net lore, and-- there’s no other way to put this-- creepypasta. On paper this sounds deeply unoriginal, so it’s pretty surprising that OP has an incredibly strong identity. The idea of fusing horror with a yuri love story excited me enough the moment I heard about it, so when I finally got to read it for myself, I was delighted to find that the horror elements and the romance elements are both quite strong.

I will say that thanks to the author’s commitment to following his sources of inspiration to the letter sometimes causes him to undercut his own writing (good example: in one arc there’s an ominous train that keeps being mentioned, causing the reader to dread its arrival with each passing page, but seeing what’s on the train will inevitably fall flat in comparison to the reader’s imagination), but those moments are made up by the more original moments-- the things that are left unseen and unexplained.

The place where the story truly shines is the relationship between the two leads. Sorawo and Toriko are great characters, both incredibly charming and deeply flawed, and they achieve a great chemistry with each other right off the bat. Sorawo is a very interesting protagonist, one who turns out to have a deeply tragic past that has made her into a reclusive, somewhat selfish young woman. What’s great is that Toriko, vivacious and confident, everything Sorawo isn’t, accepts this part of her, in a way. Toriko flat out admits she’s not looking for a particularly virtuous person to accompany her, but an “accomplice.” A big part of the appeal of OP is seeing these two “accomplices” bounce off each other, and eventually come to care about each other, all playing against a background of some genuinely spine-crawling horror. Otherside Picnic is a truly underrated series, and I deeply hope that the anime adaption next year will finally get it all the eyes it deserves (menacing phrasing very much intended).

Where To Get It: The light novels are published by J-Novel Club and can be found via various digital platforms and bookstores. The manga will be published by Square Enix Books starting May 2021. The anime will start airing on January 4th, 2021.

Goodbye My Rose Garden

What It Is: A manga by Dr. Pepperco. Three volumes, complete. It inspired a stage play that ran for a while in Japan, but not much information is available about it in English.

What It’s About: Hanako has two goals: to meet Victor Franks, the mysterious author who pens the books she adores, and to become a writer herself. Despite having the mettle to travel to England on her own to pursue her dreams, she soons finds that it’s difficult for a young, unwed Japanese woman to dream in 20th century London. However, her luck seems to turn around when she meets Alice Douglas, a noblewoman who offers her a job as her maid-- as well as a surprisingly warm friendship. Alice even offers Hanako a way to meet her idol… but at the price of a horrifying request.

What I Think: In the afterword of Volume 1, Dr. Pepperco openly admits that Goodbye, My Rose Garden was the result of them trying to marry all of their favorite tropes (“Victorian maids! Loads of frills! An English family manor!” are some standout items), and this is apparent in the best way possible. GMRG is a lush period piece that will likely appeal to fans of movies like The Handmaiden and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, with loving attention paid to details like clothes and settings.

The relationship between Alice and Hanako is quite charming, with Alice supporting Hanako as much as she can while still taking every available opportunity to tease her, while Hanako constantly surprises Alice each time she shows her moxie and strength. It’s an adorable, sweet dynamic, yet a dark, melancholy weight lurks in the background in the form of Alice’s request-- in short, it’s a relationship that feels tailor made for me. Still, I believe this “darkness” never threatens to overwhelm the story, only enhance it in such a way that the reader will soldier on, hoping for a happy ending for our two leads. With an engaging plot and gorgeous art, this is a great manga for both longtime yuri fans and newcomers looking for an introduction to the world of yuri.

Where To Get It: Seven Seas Entertainment has translated the first two volumes, with the final one coming to English soon all three volumes into English.

Seabed

What It Is: A visual novel by paleontology, a Japanese doujin circle.

What It’s About: Mizuno Sachiko is a designer who is haunted by visions of Takako, her vivacious childhood friend and former lover. Narasaki Hibiki is a psychiatrist who wants to help Sachiko make sense of these hallucinations. Takako is… confused, trying to figure out why she keeps losing her memory and why she and Sachiko drifted apart despite being so close. Seabed is a story that spans the pasts and presents of these three women as they attempt to find and understand the truth.

What I Think: At first glance, Seabed seems simple, but it’s a bit of a hard story to explain. In a way, there isn’t much to explain-- it’s a very slow, down-to-earth story that gets almost tedious at times. I think it would be a hard sell to someone who isn’t used to visual novels, but I could imagine it being challenging even for fans. All I’ll say is this: if you give Seabed a chance, it will draw you into a surreal, gentle, melancholy tale akin to slowly sinking beneath the water of a strange, yet not unfriendly sea. For its simplicity, it’s got quite a few surprises in its long, long runtime, and any attempt to explain further will just ruin an experience that’s meant to wash over the reader over time. The only thing I’ll say is the one thing I think everyone knows: the climax will make you cry.

Where To Get It: Seabed is published in English through Fruitbat Factory and is available on Steam, Itch.io, and Nintendo Switch.

SHWD

What It Is: A manga by Sono. Ongoing.

What It’s About: Sawada is one of the few women working for the Special Hazardous Waste Disposal, and the only one in her office. But that changes when the stunningly-strong yet staggeringly-sweet Koga is hired, and the two become close in no time. Sawada trains Koga and soon the two go on their first mission to dispose of the “hazardous waste” left after a recent war… the dangerous, organic anti-human weapons known as the Dynamis.

What I Think: SHWD opens with several close-ups of Sawada’s arm muscles as she works out. I have found that page alone is sometimes enough to convince someone to read SHWD, and if not, pictures of Sawada and-- especially-- Koga are often enough to do the job. In all seriousness, what I love about SHWD can be summarized by something Sono said in an interview about the manga:

‘The first motivating force was "I want to write a yuri manga featuring strong women." I was very drawn to strong female characters by watching "PERSON of INTEREST" and "Assassin's Creed Odyssey." However, I felt that I should differentiate myself by doing something other than a "strong woman" and "weak woman" dynamic. So, I thought about coupling women with different types of strength. This is why all of the SHWD main characters are "strong women."’

It’s a mindset I love a lot. Koga is remarkably strong in a physical sense, but her mental fortitude is fragile due to her past experiences with the Dynamis, and as such, it’s Sawada who uses her immense mental strength to support her. Indeed, every character in SHWD so far bears intense trauma born of the Dynamis in some way, and it’s hard to see how their pasts still hurt them in the present. But that just makes it satisfying to see these women come together to support one another. SHWD drew me in with a unique and often dark action-oriented story with horror elements, but it’s this idea of “strong women” who make up for each other’s weaknesses that really makes it dear to me.

Also, it can’t be stated enough that Sono is so so so so so (etc) good at drawing muscular women.

On a completely unrelated note, there’s a side story about Koga and Sawada playing sports together. This includes judo. I am saying this for no reason.

Where To Get It: The English translation of the manga is released in chapters by Lilyka Manga.

Sexiled: My Sexist Party Leader Kicked Me Out, So I Teamed Up With a Mythical Sorceress!

What It Is: A two volume light novel series by Ameko Kaeruda, illustrated by Kazutomo Miya. Possibly complete.

What It’s About: Tanya Artemiciov is an absurdly talented Mage. So why the hell was she kicked out of her adventuring party? Her leader and former friend sums it up in four words: “You’re a woman, Tanya.” In a fit of rage, Tanya channels her anger into a “venting” session that involves swearing her head of and casting a volley of Explosion spells into the wasteland… and accidentally releases a legendary sorceress! Luckily, Laplace is actually quite nice, and just as powerful as the legends say, so the two decide to team up so Tanya can have her revenge!

What I Think: So, this is a silly one, but after a couple of darker entries I think it’s a good palate cleanser. Sexiled is a loud, not-even-remotely subtle, unabashedly feminist take on the “power fantasy” light novel, especially the “revenge fantasy” subgenre-- and even if that sounds awesome on paper to you (ex. me), it will probably feel over-the-top at times to you (ex. me). But in a way, that’s actually kind of its charm.

I like that Kaeruda utterly refuses to let up on what she wants to tell you, especially because the story was inspired by a real case in Japan. One may be tempted to think “this story is ridiculous, no one would ever be this cartoonishly sexist!” and then you read a news article about how in a famous Japanese medical university was found rigging the test scores of women, and you realize, “oh, people are still this cartoonishly sexist.” So I’m fine with Kaeruda letting it all out in this story. At the same time, I think Sexiled is best when it’s focused not on Tanya’s revenge but on her kindness, and the way her compassion, her strength, and yes, her anger inspires the women and girls around her.

Sexiled is a fun and often very funny romp about assholes getting theirs, with some surprisingly deep and nuanced moments hiding in a very unsubtle story.

Where To Get It: The light novels are published by J-Novel Club and can be found via various digital platforms and bookstores.

BONUS: Other titles with sci-fi/fantasy/action elements that may interest you!

The Blank Of Describer: A one-shot manga by kkzt about a pair of two dream-builders. They’ve taken all kinds of commissions in the past, but one job they recieve throws them for a loop: a request for a shinigami that can predict and report death. And then comes the kicker: the customer asks the two of them to give it features that the both of them “adore the most…” (Published in English by Lilyka Manga)

A Lily Blooms In Another World: A light novel by Ameko Kaeruda (illustrated by Shio Sakura), author of Sexiled, about Miyako, a Japanese wage slave reincarnated into another world based on her favorite otome game. However, she’s not interested in her would-be love interest, but in Fuuka Hamilton-- the game’s villainess! After Miyako confesses her love, Fuuka decides to give her a challenge: if Miyako can make her say the words “I’m happy” in fourteen days, she’ll stay by her side! (Published in English through J-Novel Club, available on various platforms)

Superwomen In Love: An ongoing manga by sometime about the sentai villainess Honey Trap and her infatuation with the masked superheroine Rapid Rabbit. After being kicked out of her evil organization, Honey Trap decides to team up with her former nemesis to fight evil-- and hopefully, find romance! (To be published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, coming in April 2021)

2. “Yuri is all stories about teenagers! Where’s the stuff about adults?”

Take a look at the previous section: there’s the stuff about adults! Otherside Picnic, Goodbye My Rose Garden, Seabed, SHWD, Sexiled, The Blank of Describer, A Lily Blooms In Another World, and Superwomen In Love are all stories with adult-aged protagonists! But if you’re searching for a more down-to-earth romance, I’m happy to report there’s quite a bit of options to look into!

Still Sick

What It Is: A manga by Akashi. Three volumes, complete.

What It’s About: Makoto Shimizu is an office lady with a secret: she’s a yuri fan who draws doujinshi. She’s able to keep her two lives separate, all until the day she comes face-to-face with her co-worker at a convention! To Makoto’s horror, Akane Maekawa is amused by her nerdy secret, but Akane may have some secrets of her own...

What I Think: This one was a roller coaster for me: I loved the premise of the manga, but wasn’t sure about the dynamic between the leads… that is, until near the end of the first volume, where something happened and everything changed. Without giving too much away, I implore people to give Still Sick a chance-- it has a much deeper story than one might initially guess, as well as an interesting character dynamic between the two leads with some surprising turns.

Where To Get It: The first two volumes of Still Sick are published in English by Tokyopop, with the final one coming soon All three volumes have been published in English by Tokyopop.

After Hours

What It Is: A manga by Yuhta Nishio. Three volumes, complete.

What It’s About: After being ditched by her friend at a club, Emi Ashiana is ready to write the whole night off. All that changes when she meets Kei, a DJ who seems to be everything Emi is not-- cool, confident… employed.... But Kei and Emi hit it off and Emi’s life changes as Kei draws her into the world of Japan’s club scene!

What I Think: It’s hard to explain exactly why I like this manga, but I reeeeally like this manga.

There’s just something about the sleek art, the amazing atmosphere of the scenes set in nightclubs, the chemistry between Emi and Kei, the focus on more mature topics.... it’s a manga that’s remarkably magnetic for how down-to-earth it is. It’s also just interesting to read stories about subcultures that don’t normally get a spotlight in comics. To sum it up, After Hours is just a lovely manga that’s severely underrated that’s perfect for someone who’s looking for a story that’s both fun and mature.

Where To Get It: All three volumes are published in English by Viz Media.

How Do We Relationship?

What It Is: A manga by Tamifull. Ongoing, five volumes at time of writing.

What It’s About: Miwa and Saeko’s first meeting is… interesting. But despite that, and despite their clashing personalities, the two of them become fast friends. Well… actually, perhaps more than friends. You see, pretty soon the two of them learn that the other is into women. With that in mind, Saeko suggests they try dating each other-- might as well, right? “Might as well” seems like a strange place to begin a relationship, but perhaps even something like that could end in true love?

What I Think: “Why do romances always end when they decide to start dating?!” That’s the question Tamifull poses in the afterword of Volume 1. And it’s a great question! What makes How Do We Relationship? an interesting manga is how oddly realistic it is, highlighting things like the compromises people make in relationships, people who get into relationships for pragmatic reasons rather than love, the whole “thing” about sex… as well as highlighting the additional issues queer people have to deal with. That may sound like a heavy story, but it’s actually quite light-hearted, as well as very, very funny at times. With a cute art style and surprisingly deep premise, HDWR is a great manga for older yuri fans who are craving a more mature story.

Where To Get It: The first volume has been published in English by Viz Media, with more on the way.

BONUS: Other titles with adult protagonists that may interest you!

Even Though We’re Adults: A manga by Takako Shimura about two women in their thirties. Ayano and Akari meet each other in a bar and almost immediately feel a sense of chemistry between them. There’s just one problem: Ayano is married to someone else. (To be published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, coming in January 2021)

Doughnuts Under A Crescent Moon: A manga by Shio Usui. Uno Hinako wants nothing more than to be seen as a normal young woman, but she just can’t seem to make a “normal” romance work. But maybe Sato Asahi, a woman who works at the same company as her, can show her a new kind of normal? (To be published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, coming in February 2021)

Our Teachers Are Dating: A manga by Pikachi Ohi. Hayama Asuka is a gym teacher, Terano Saki is a biology teacher. One day, they come into work both looking suspiciously happy… because they’ve started dating! (Published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment)

I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up: A one-volume manga by Kodama Naoko. Morimoto is sick and tired about constantly being badgered about finding a man to marry, so her kouhai from her high school days offers a solution: marry each other to make her parents back off! (Published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment)

Now Loading…!: A one-volume manga by Mikan Uji. Takagi has just snagged her dream job at a games publisher, but being put in charge of a mobile game that’s barely pulling in any attention isn’t exactly what she was hoping for. What’s worse, she’s drawn the attention of her strict higher-up Sakurazuki Kaori… who also happened to design her most favorite game of all time?! (Published in English through Seven Seas Entertainment)

3. “Yuri is all schoolgirl stuff! Where’s- wait, didn’t we already do this one?”

Yes we did. And you know what? I’m making a stand! There’s a lot of really, really good yuri stories set in high schools, and I think more people need to give them a chance! Here are some high school titles that I think are worth a second look for one reason or another!

Bloom Into You

What It Is: A manga by Nakatani Nio. Eight volumes, complete. A twelve episode anime aired in 2018, covering about the first half of the series. A three volume spinoff light novel series written by Hitoma Iruma was also published.

What It’s About: Yuu Koito has long dreamed of the day she’d find That One, Storybook Romance that would make her feel like she was walking on air, but the day that a boy confesses to her, her feet remain firmly planted on the ground. When she meets Touko Nanami, a girl who seems to have the same strange, distant relationship to romance as she does, Yuu feels like she has found a comrade. But what will happen when the next person to confess to Yuu… is Touko?

What I Think: What can I say about Bloom Into You that hasn’t already been said? There’s a reason it’s basically considered a staple of yuri despite being only five years old. The art is beautiful and delicate, the story has a deft mastery of comedy, drama, and romance, and the characters are deeply loveable. Really, the only reason this one is here is to tell you to get to reading this manga (or watching the anime) if you haven’t already. So get to it!

Where To Get It: The entire series-- as well as the spinoff light novel series Regarding Saeki Sayaka-- has been published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment. The anime is currently streaming on HiDive.

Yuri Is My Job

What It Is: A manga by Miman. Ongoing, seven volumes at time of writing.

What It’s About: Hime wants nothing more than to be adored by everyone and to someday bag a rich husband. Of course, being loved by all takes a lot of work, and she prides herself in keeping her perfect, adorable facade so well-maintained. But of course, the one time she slips up, she ends up injuring the manager of a local cafe! Hime finds herself strong-armed into working for this cafe under their star employee, a kind, graceful girl named Mitsuki. But things aren’t quite so simple-- you see, this cafe has a gimmick in which all the employees are constantly acting out yuri-inspired scenes for the customers, so in a way, the employees also have their own facades. And under her facade, Mitsuki… hates Hime’s guts!

What I Think: Yuri Is My Job is an odd duck, but in a good way. It’s advertised and initially framed as a comedy, but it becomes a surprisingly thoughtful drama about the personas people adopt and why they do so (though, luckily, the comedy never truly goes away). There’s an interesting web of relationships between the girls, and having those interactions take place in a setting where they must act out a completely different sort of drama adds an extra level of drama and intrigue. The cute, polished artwork is just the icing on the cake. YIMJ is a good manga for those who are already familiar with yuri tropes and those who are interested in a drama that doesn’t get too heavy.

Where To Get It: Six volumes have been published in English by Kodansha comics, with the seventh on the way.

Riddle Story of Devil

What It Is: A manga written by Yun Kouga and illustrated by Sunao Minakata. Five volumes, complete. A 12 episode anime aired in 2014.

What It’s About: At Myojo Private School, an elite all-girl’s academy, Class Black has a secret. Twelve of the thirteen girls are actually assassins who have been offered a dark deal-- one wish will be granted to whoever manages to kill Haru Ichinose, the thirteenth student. But there’s still hope for Haru in the form of Tokaku Azuma, one of the assassins who has decided to defect to Haru’s side-- and defend her from the other girls at any cost.

What I Think: I’m not sure… if I can say Riddle Story of Devil is “good.” It’s definitely something. Although its premise is vaguely similar to Revolutionary Girl Utena, its tone and atmosphere remind me a lot more of the Dangan Ronpa series. It’s schlocky and ridiculous and often over-the-top and at times exploitative. It’s pure junk food, basically… and I believe that’s where the charm comes from. It’s my guiltiest of guilty pleasures. It may not exactly be good, but more often than not, it’s fun. It’s hard not to be immediately interested in a yuri battle series, you have to admit.

And if it does have one undeniably good element, it’s Tokaku and Haru’s relationship. They contrast each other nicely, and while one might expect Haru to be boring and helpless, she’s actually quite proactive at times, and some of the most interesting, engaging parts of the series come from seeing how the two work together to fend off the latest assassin. It’s a short read and if anything, it’s worth it to see how each girl ends up. I recommend it for older viewers who are okay with violence and ludicrous battle scenarios.

Where To Get It: All five volumes are available through Seven Seas Entertainment. The anime can be watched through Funimation.*

*Please don’t watch the anime.**

** At the very least, please don’t watch the anime unless you’ve read the entire manga. Riddle Story Of Devil was one of those unfortunate cases where the anime adaption was produced before the manga reached its conclusion, and as such it has a very strange, rushed ending that includes none of what I enjoyed about the actual ending. Several scenes were also changed, and if I recall correctly, fanservice was added in several places where there was none previously. All in all, I’d really only recommend it for big fans of the series.

Side By Side Dreamers

What It Is: A light novel by Iori Miyazawa, illustrated by Akane Malbeni. One volume, complete.

What It’s About: Saya Hokage has been suffering from insomnia, but one day finds relief in the form of Hitsuji Konparu, a strange girl who can put people to sleep. As it turns out, Hitsuji is a person who has the special ability to move freely in their dreams, known as a “Sleepwalker.” The Sleepwalkers have been battling beings that possess people through their dreams, and it turns out they want Saya to join them in the fight.

What I Think: Side By Side Dreamers is short and… well, dreamy. I really enjoyed the premise and I think it’s a good novel for people who think Otherside Picnic may be a little too much for them. I also enjoyed each dream sequence-- I tend to find that the writing in light novels is a little dry, so the use of figurative language to describe these scenes was really refreshing and interesting. SBSD is a fun oneshot that I think is especially ideal for newcomers to yuri.

Where To Get It: Side-by-Side Dreamers is published by J-Novel Club and can be found via various digital platforms and bookstores.

Cocoon Entwined

What It Is: A manga by Yuriko Hara. Three volumes, ongoing.

What It’s About: Hoshimiya Girls' Academy is a strange, almost otherworldly paradise with a peculiar tradition. For all three years, each girl grows out her hair to absurd, breathtaking lengths, in order for it to eventually be cut and weaved into uniforms for future students. Perhaps it is these strange uniforms that seem to whisper about the past that makes the school seem frozen in another time… picturesque, yet stagnant. But one day, a shocking incident shatters the quiet peace of the academy, and the tumultuous feelings that have long been hidden in the hearts of these girls come rushing into the light.

What I Think: Cocoon Entwined is, in a word, eerie. It’s not marketed as a horror story, and I don’t think it’s intended to be one, but I’ve seen some that say they get horror vibes from it. I definitely understand that-- there’s a deep sense of unease that permeates the entire story in a way that’s a bit hard to articulate. The running thread of uniforms made from human hair definitely doesn’t hurt (it does-- I’ve seen many people understandably turned off by this element), but it’s more than that. It’s the sense that everything at Hoshimiya feels frozen and fragile. It’s the sense that everyone is burying their true feelings under countless layers. It’s the fact that in one scene, Saeki reaches out in a dark room full of uniforms and feels her arm touched by countless hands made of hair.

Cocoon Entwined is a strange manga, and I feel it’s not for everyone-- besides the way many are put off by the central premise, the way that the story jumps around in time can be a bit confusing to follow. But in my opinion, I love it for these elements: the uniforms and their marriage between beauty and grotesque, the sense of frozen time, the delicate artwork that feels like it might be shattered by the weight of your gaze, the strange, airless atmosphere, the girls and their clear exhaustion of having to be ideal women. It’s a strange little series that I think should be given a shot, particularly if you want something a little more out there, or a darker take on Class S tropes.

Where To Get It: Yen Press has currently published two volumes in English.

BONUS: Other high school titles that may interest you!

A Tropical Fish Yearns For Snow: A manga by Makoto Hagino. Konatsu Amano has just moved to a new town by the sea, and must deal with her new school’s mandatory club policy. Luckily, she meets Koyuki Honami, an older girl who runs the Aquarium Club. Recognizing her loneliness, Konatsu decides to join her club. (Published in English by Viz Media)

Flowers: A four-part series of visual novels published by Innocent Grey. Flowers focuses on Saint Angraecum Academy, a private high school that prides itself on overseeing the growth of proper young ladies. One notable thing about the academy is the Amitié program, a system that pairs students together in order to foster friendships between the girls. But friendship isn’t the only thing blooming… (Available in English from Steam, J-List, and JAST USA)

Adachi And Shimamura: A series of light novels written by Hitoma Iruma and illustrated by Non that has recently received a manga adaptation and an anime adaption. Adachi and Shimamura are two girls who encounter each other one day while cutting class. Little by little, the two girls become a part of each other’s lives, and feelings begin to form. (The light novels are published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, the anime is licensed by Funimation)

And there we go! 24 different yuri titles. I didn’t even go into the series that I tried but personally didn’t like that still might interest other people. I primarily made this list to gush about yuri that I liked, but I also tried to include a fairly wide range of things so that, hopefully, any random person who read this whole list could find at least one new title that interests them. And I hope that includes you!

The yuri scene is quite large and wonderful if you know where to look, and it too often gets a bad rap. I hope that this list could give you a new perspective on what kinds of titles are available, and I hope it gives you something new to try. And remember: if you want something specific, try looking for it! There’s a good chance the story you’re craving is already out there, waiting to be discovered!

522 notes · View notes

fyeah-bangtan7 · 3 years

Text

j-hope: “I’m not the kind of person to settle for their life as it is”

j-hope himself hasn’t changed since the days before his debut. The way he treats others, the way he feels about BTS, his passion for dancing—they haven’t gone anywhere; only their breadth has changed, along with the breadth of his deeply-held beliefs, his will, and his dreams.

“Butter” has been a huge sensation in the United States. j-hope: I did work hard preparing for it, but whenever I try to embrace an unintended success, in my mind I’m always like … It’s like half happiness, half a feeling that makes me think seriously about what I accomplished. There’s a sense of responsibility that comes along with such an honorable achievement. ARMY’s done so much to keep us at number one, and I’m incredibly thankful for that. At the same time, I also realized that our names are becoming known to more people in the world of American pop music.

It seems like the bigger the success is, the more things you end up thinking about. j-hope: In the past I would just humbly accept it, and it was something I worked hard for so I was happy to accept it—and that was somewhat immature, I guess, but now it’s different. I’ve been working constantly for over eight years, and it hasn’t been easy to achieve so much in that time. So from now on I’m tacking a question mark onto how I should carry on and maintain things the way they are and what attitude and stance I should have right now. It’s homework I haven’t been able to figure out yet, basically.

What effect do such thoughts have on the way you express yourself as an artist? j-hope: I’m also a performer, and I don’t think I take any performance lightly. Ever since we did “Dynamite,” the number of times I go over my performances after they’re done has gone way up. I felt like I’m responsible for making the dances stand out, so I thought I have to try my very best for that aspect. You don’t want to underdeliver on a performance when that many people are sending out their love to you. Each and every one of the members thinks so, and I think we’ve created an atmosphere for our practices where we are able to see how important these things are. After all, even if we don’t show it to one another, we all know how important it is to practice our performances.

It seems like there must be an atmosphere of understanding in the practice studio. j-hope: We used to have to practice for a long time, again and again, to sync up with each other. We’d practice for around 10 hours, review our performances, take a break and then get right back into it, rest some more and do it again. That was then, but now, after all that experience, each member knows where they need to focus, so we coordinate our dispositions and make intense breakthroughs and do what we need to until it’s just right, and then we take a break we really take a break. Now we don’t even really have to think about it. So it’s like, All right, let’s do everything we have to do quickly so we can hurry up and get some rest. This part doesn’t seem right though? Let’s get through this quickly. That’s how we do it. We’re more efficient about work and practice now.

Did that have an effect on you individually as well? As you think more about your performances, the parts you concentrate on might change. j-hope: The dancing is important, but I think I came to realize just how important the visual aspect is. The reason I change my hairstyle or whatnot so often these days is because I want my appearance to blend naturally with the song. Since I’ve always been a dancer I just kept working hard at the things I could do best. But obviously it’s important not to go overboard with the visuals, so I kept an eye on it and adjusted it for each performance. That’s the most important part.

Your dancing in “Butter” is one thing, but it’s also a performance where you need to demonstrate your character. What were you hoping to show off? j-hope: I wanted to show how much I’ve grown in “Butter.” The style is bold and revolved around well-tailored suits and the whole thing felt sexy. I tried to get that across as much as I could. And I learned a lot from watching the members who are good at expressing that. I took all the different ways I thought of that I could try out and melted them all down together, smooth like butter. (laughs)

What’s going through your mind when you’re performing, especially when the spotlight’s on you? Like when you do that attention-grabbing dance break full of slow movements in “Butter,” or the solo disco dancing you did for the “Dynamite” dance break at MMA 2020. j-hope: My mindset doesn’t change. When the spotlight’s on me, that’s an opportunity for me, in a way. It’s a chance for me to shine among our team and its seven amazing members, so I’m always on the lookout to make good use of such opportunities by doing my best. I shouldn’t turn down what I’ve got coming to me, and show off everything I’ve got to show. ARMY and the general public will be the judges, and if they have something to say about it, I have to accept and correct it, I think. I want to say that I developed my own type of growth for myself by repeatedly correcting and practicing and correcting and practicing. I’ve been dancing a long time, but I always feel like I could be doing more, so I put in the effort and I take pleasure in when I make something that turns out really well.

But, if you look at your “Butter” fancam, you continuously react along with the other members dancing even when you’re not the focus of the main camera. j-hope: I’m not consciously doing it. But these days when I watch overseas awards ceremonies or pop artists’ performances that they’ve shot on video, I feel like they don’t really have any heavily edited parts or quick cuts. They capture the artists’ energy while showing the whole scene, so I’m always thinking about how I never know where or how I’m going to be captured on film. So even when the camera is mainly focusing on Jin, in some cases you can still see me in the back, and so I think setting the mood in the background in order not to interfere with his part is an extremely important part of a good performance.

I thought you were very consistent. When SUGA comes forward to rap toward the end of the song, you keep tossing out little shouts to boost up the mood. j-hope: It’s fun, you know? Doing that. (laughs)

That sounds like a good balance insofar as you can continue to express yourself individually while staying devoted to the group. j-hope: I agree. I think that’s something I always had in the back of my head. But as I’m performing within this big group structure, making sure not to interfere with that comes before anything else.

The “Permission to Dance” performance has a different flavor than “Butter” in that sense. While “Butter” gives each member their moment to shine, “Permission to Dance” seems to place importance on the overall mood of the entire group. I feel like it brings out your personal trait of being bright and hopeful. j-hope: When we got the song, it occurred to me that I could just be myself in this one. There’s no need to act; I can just use the real feeling I get when I’m on stage. That’s also the message the song is aiming for, so I think it came across naturally. Like I’m happy, but also on the verge of tears?

Your dance makes use of sign language. Although it is a dance, it also conveys language, so I imagine there were a lot of things to consider. j-hope: Yes, there were. We’re conveying language even though we don’t use a lot of sign language in our dance moves. So although the song is nice and light overall, even when we were practicing we were saying how we have to make sure the moves are perfectly accurate. We thought we should understand the importance behind sign language to properly convey its significance. So we thought we should do our best to do the moves correctly while at the same time trying to fill the song with enjoyment and positive emotions. We spent quite a lot of time integrating the moves into the dance routine, and so I think we were able to show off our attitude about the performance pretty naturally.

I think your vocals and facial expressions at the start of the second verse of “Permission to Dance” help people intuitively grasp what kind of song it is. It makes me think of what you said in the “ARMY Corner Store” video uploaded to YouTube for your 2021 FESTA celebration of the group’s eighth anniversary—that you’re the “vitamins” for the group. j-hope: And I am. I used that expression because I feel like I consistently, and unchangingly (laughs) give the team good energy. I don’t know if I’m actually the vitamins or not. Looking back, I’ve always tried to give them good energy and keep them in a good mood, and I think it’s safe to say now that I’m one of those people who try hard to keep their group’s energy up. I still get a little embarrassed, though. (laughs) I wouldn’t say that I don’t feel any pressure at all about the label. All seven of us have to act as one for BTS to work, and that’s always on my mind, so it forces me to be careful that I’m not standing out from the rest of them. Because the team functions well when everyone has their own role. And because I always keep that in mind whenever I think, I should do whatever I can do, I’m able to contribute to the team and I think I ended up feeling a little more confident about the things that I found difficult to express in the past.

Was there a push behind that change? j-hope: I felt, and realized, exactly what I needed to do with my own personal identity and energy right after I released my first mixtape. From that point on, I thought that I should express my musical views and things like my energy regularly, but not in any intense way. Before, as time went by and the group really blew up, I think I had let go of a lot of the pressure to express myself. Then I started to feel like I wanted to try expressing myself in my own way, even as the team did well.

When you revealed your depressive side directly in the time from when you put out “Dis-ease” during the pandemic period to “Blue Side” from your mixtape, was that a reflection of that influence as well? j-hope: People’s emotions change every day and so do their feelings and the things they can accept throughout their lives, right? So I think the changing emotions I felt and came to accept as the group grew in popularity is also expressed by the way my songs changed. It’s also something I always spend time thinking about, but I’m just another young person living his life on this planet. I’m not really different from anybody else, which means I can’t always be as bright as I was on Hope World. So that’s why I tried a different approach to the things I could express.

What did you find out after trying that? j-hope: I ended up thinking about the shadows inside me. I didn’t realize it when we were promoting, but with the whole world suddenly at a standstill, we have all this time where we can’t do anything and I can see all the shadows underneath—sitting spaced out in the studio, thinking about what kind of life I’ve lived, seeing BTS’s performances on TV, I think, That’s who I was. The amount of willpower I found during this time has been tremendous. I figured I’d better use all those feelings entirely and all at once, that those are emotions and songs that could probably only ever be written at this time anyway, so I put all those emotions down like a diary, and “Dis-ease” was born. With “Dis-ease” as a starting point, I thought I could include stuff like my inner darkness, and that’s why I was able to release “Blue Side.

”What did you see when you looked inward? j-hope: I ended up seeing a side to the real Jeong Hoseok’s life that I couldn’t perceive before. I kept thinking about what life would be best for j-hope while we were working, so I wondered what Jeong Hoseok’s life would look like as a whole. While that was happening I realized I’m not just some always-cheery person—I experience hardship, too. So I thought I could grow closer with listeners by sharing little parts of me that I had been hiding away, and that it would be interesting to show people a side of me that’s different from their idea of who j-hope is. Most importantly, I don’t feel any resistance about who I am right now. As a person who makes music and releases songs about his personal life, I think this is all part of the process.

There’s a line in “Blue Side” where you sing, “Now I just want to burn blue to death.” It seems here, too, something of your shadow was revealed. j-hope: If you’re burning to death, it’d be very hot. But the parts I called blue are a place I consciously escape to to avoid things. It’s a place I escape to that I could safely live in and be swallowed up by, but I don’t want to do that. So I think I tried to show that I want to stir up my passion for the things I wanted to do even if I’m burning blue to death. To be honest with you, I don’t know how I came up with those lyrics exactly. I wrote that part a really long time ago when we were on tour overseas. I’m not a big drinker, but those were the first lyrics I ever released that I wrote while drinking. (laughs) When I write lyrics when I’m drinking I often regret them when I see them in the morning, but when I take a look at them again after some time, I can tell they’re lyrics that I could only ever write with the feelings I get at that time. When I release that kind of song, I get some kind of feeling. And when I give myself feedback about my own music, a version of myself who’s different from the way I was before I made the music emerges.

Is there anything else you’ve learned about yourself lately? j-hope: Um … I’m—what should I say—not the kind of person to settle for their life as it is. I could just keep living like I am and do whatever I want with my life, but I don’t know, honestly. I’ve already had so many amazing things happen but I want to take things one step further, as an individual and as a member of BTS. A thought came to me one day: Have I been challenging myself at all lately? Outside of making songs or dancing? But the answer was no. So I decided I would challenge myself and give some things a try, one of which was studying English. It’s still hard and I have a long way to go, but I’m trying my best given our current schedule.

What are you getting out of studying English, do you think? j-hope: If I can speak in English then I can give and take directions with English-speaking artists myself when I’m working on music. My thinking is that this is one channel of communication I can open that will open up more possibilities in my life. But it could end up being hard to keep studying with our current schedule (laughs) so even though I say I’ll do it, I might not be able to. Your mind could change at any minute and you could come to different decisions any time, depending on how you want to live your life. Right now I’m trying to do music for music’s sake, challenge myself with performances for performance’s sake, and try hard personally for BTS. And I’m working hard to figure out what I need to do for my next steps.

What do you imagine your next step will be? j-hope: I think my next step personally is to grow our music globally. I’ve been doing some self-reflection lately and there’s plenty that I want to do. I have a lot of dreams, too. Making it this far with the group, seeing the other pop artists we’ve been vying with on the Billboard chart, really left an impression on me, and now I’m more serious about wanting to express something. So for example, I’m dreaming of growing our music globally since the environment to have good synergy with foreign artists has already been built.

You, and BTS too, have worked your way up step by step and now you’re able to dream up new steps. In the 2021 FESTA “ARMY Corner Store” video, you said the present is possible only because BTS followed the path that it did since its debut song, so you didn’t want to alter any of your past. (laughs) Still, is there anything you’d want to say to your past self if you could say just one thing? j-hope: As a joke, I’d say, Hey, listen to this melody: “smooth like butter”—write that. If you do that, you’ll be number one on Billboard. I could do it that way, right? (laughs) But for me, even the parts of my life that weren’t good became opportunities for growth. So rather than telling my past self to fix something, I’d just tell him to believe in himself and move on with his life however he feels like, and keep working hard, keeping things the way they are. Other than that, I’d have nothing to say to him.

So how do you feel about ARMY now that they’ve climbed all those steps with BTS? j-hope: ARMY is absolutely … I feel like they’ve become an icon themselves. I’m so proud of them. They’re amazing. ARMY is like an artist in itself now, too. Sort of like they’re one big symbol of the era? ARMY is as famous as BTS now. I think we give each other good energy, and helped each other to make something good. It might sound obvious coming from a member of BTS, but if I were ARMY, I’d never be ashamed to call myself a fan of BTS. Anyway, I’m seriously … I want them to always know I’m really, really grateful for them.

#bangtan #jhope #m:weverse magazine #210727

39 notes · View notes

solohux · 3 years

Text

happy 2021! i really hope we all have a better year this year but for now, here’s a list of my favourite kylo/hux fics that were published in 2020, ones that got me through days of lonliness and sadness to make me smile ✧

thank you fic writers of the kylux fandom! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

- keep in the dark (to stay out of the light) by howlingshame Modern AU. Smuggler Kylo Ren runs afoul of Armitage Hux, head of the First Order crime ring. Instead of killing him outright, Hux decides to keep him for his own instead. Kylo is none too thrilled with the situation, but Hux has plenty of patience. He wants Kylo to be his in every sense of the word, and they've got all the time in the world. [E, 247k words, warnings for violence, stockholm syndrome, sub kylo & dom hux]

- Please Remember I Love You by @bumblebae8 After murdering Snoke, Kylo Ren flees alongside Rey, returning to the Reistance and to his mother after ten years. They at once begin strategizing on how to take down the corrupt and evil First Order. [M, 65k words, no warnings, redeemed ben, skywalker family drama]

- Children of War by @starryartemis After a complicated diplomatic mission went awry, General Hux and Kylo Ren accidentally find themselves tasked with their most difficult mission: becoming parents. Despite their complex relationship, they both agree that raising an offspring will help bring glory to the First Order. Their original vision of a united family quickly falls apart as Hux and Ren cannot see eye to eye in what they want the future to hold. [E, 162k words, warnings for violence, kylux science babies, slow burn]

- I Should Live in Salt for Leaving You Behind by Asrael_Valtiri Of course, he’d betrayed Ren, to save the Order. To save himself and his people.To try to save Ren, in a way.Strange, Hux thought, closing his eyes against the glare of the overhead lighting. He pretended that the wetness escaping the corner of his eye was from the brightness. He failed.Stupid, he amended. Stupid, Armitage. [E, 65k words, no warnings, a TROS fix-it, kylo clones]

- Against All Odds by Kittens Kylo really doesn't care for people, but he'll always help an animal in need. When he sees a dog covered in mud on a cold, rainy day, he can't help but try to help. What he didn't expect was for the dog to be a fox and the fox to be a man. [E, 49k words, warnings for violence, modern au, fox hux]

- Hadopelagic by DustOnBothSides [WIP] After a life of staying pharmaceutically heat-free, Hux has to allow his body to go through at least one natural cycle, lest there be consequences. He takes a shore leave and travels to a former omegan retreat, abandoned and all but forgotten after the fall of Old Republic. Ren, not knowing of Hux's predicament, decides to follow, suspecting treason. He finds something else instead. [E, 33k words, omega hux & alpha kylo]

- Sup From My Mouth by @atlinmerrick [Kylux Adjacent] Dolly Oblonskaya never precisely introduces her old friend to her children’s new tutor, no. She does put one lonely man in a room with the other again and again and again...and to her delight Konstantin Levin and Francisco Garupe take care of the rest. Or, this is the story of how an idealistic young Russian aristocrat helps heal a mourning young Jesuit priest, one very cold Moscow winter. [E, 58k words, no warnings, Fransisco Garupe/Konstantin Levin]

- Lighting the Fuse by hey_honey "What is going on?" Phasma asked when Hux returned from his meeting with Leia looking pale. He stared at her. "The Queen's son agreed to marry a First Order official on one condition," he said. "And?" Phasma encouraged. "That official has to be me," he said. [E, 30k words, no warnings, omega ben & alpha armitage, mpreg, ben is ruler of naboo]

- Across the Stars, I am Home by @venetumdrabbler [WIP] Before leaving to go undercover in the First Order, Armitage Hux had made promises. Keep an eye and report when able to the republic, and later the resistance. Keep tabs on the dark force user Snoke. And most important of all: Bring Ben Solo home. So far Hux had managed, or was managing, 2 out 3. Then there is an awakening. [M, 42k words, no warnings, jedi armitage au, slow burn]

- Pro Nobis Solum by CarelessHux (AraSigyrn) Kylo Ren wakes after Starkiller. Alone. [M, 8k words, no warnings, post tfa au, established relationship]

- sisyphus rolls his boulder to the top by yogurtgun While trying to convince Rey to turn to the Dark on the Steadfast, Kylo feels Hux's presence in the Force disappear. [T, 6.7k words, warnings for violence, tros fix-it, temporary character death]

- i can make your dreams come by claquesous It feels like the small hours of the morning, the blurry in-between Hux calls early and Kylo calls late. “Can’t even make it through the night without a pillow to hump, can you?” Hux sneers. [E, 3k words, no warnings, somnophilia, sub kylo & dom hux]

- Knot Finished by Ki_Ken_Tai_Ichi Kylo learns a bit more about Arkanis physiology through practical demonstrations. [E, 2k words, no warnings, hux is alien, top hux & bottom kylo]

- 90 Day Fiancé by @bostarsky & @sunnywritesstuff “Maybe that means you’ll be more inclined to choose me,” Hux hints, glancing over at a drone buzzing by with a sneaky look on his face. Perfect, he’ll create as much support for himself with the public as possible. "What I choose doesn’t matter,” he croons, making it sound as romantic as he possibly can to hide the true meaning of the words. [E, 38.5k words, no warnings, alpha hux & omega kylo, kylo amidala, creepy snoke]

- What if We Tried Again? by @penpenhooray Perhaps, but did Pryde bother to check if he was actually dead?Armitage Hux may be many things, but a fool was not one of them. So rather than stay with the First Order and watch it burn, Hux decides that faking his death would be preferable, leaving him free to tie up his one loose end. His ex-husband, Kylo Ren. But what happens when Ren...isn't quite Ren anymore, but just as "dead" as Hux? What happens if they face their feelings surrounding their failed marriage? What if they dared to try again? [T, 2.7k words, no warnings, tros fix-it, mpreg & miscarriage]

- Where Do You Go When You're Lonely? by @vadianna Fresh off a grueling undercover mission on an unpleasant Outer Rim planet, Kylo Ren wants to eat, drink, and sleep. Unfortunately, Hux is sitting at the only bar in the area. Thinking that Hux is there to brief him, Kylo soon realizes that Hux is off-duty, and has also never seen him without his helmet on. Things escalate, and the two wind up finishing Kylo's mission together as they both get to know each other. [E, 29.3k words, no warnings, false identity, bottom kylo & top hux]

- Team Hux or Team Ren? by AdamJensens General Hux overhears a conversation between stormtroopers that opens his eyes to a competition between the troops of the First Order. He discovers his subordinates are not only loyal and devoted but also obsessed – Hux has fans. So does Kylo Ren, and there's a kind of war going on between the two groups calling themselves Team Hux and Team Ren. What Hux doesn't know yet is that there's a third group solely focused on shipping the two co–commanders. There's fanfiction, fanart and all kinds of crazy theories. Shipping, as Hux will soon discover, is a serious business. [E, 11.5k words, no warnings, crack treated seriously, mutual pining]

- Under Covers of Darkness by Camellia Cook (thekurosakiconundrum) Alpha twins Ben and Kylo have a somewhat unusual arrangement with their mate Hux: they're together, all three of them, and it's not strictly a Hux-in-the-middle situation. [E, 3.3k words, no warnings, threesome, sibling incest alpha ben & alpha kylo & omega hux]

- Share the Load by @emperorsvornskr Hux runs into Kylo while dealing with his unique Arkanan biology- and Kylo is dealing with some self confidence issues. It's a match tailor made for the both of them. [E, 6.1k words, no warnings, alien armitage hux, trans kylo, eggs]

- Safety in his arms by @redcole Kylo knows it's time to bond with Hux, he just wants to make sure that his intentions are clear. After all, it isn't often that an omega courts an alpha. [M, 3.2k words, no warnings, omega kylo & alpha hux, mpreg]

- Horny Hearts by @rattlesnake777 [Kylux Adjacent] Techie has a new flatmate called Matt and all he can really think about is doing it with him... [E, 18.3k words, no warnings, Clan Techie/Matt The Radar Tech, modern au, misunderstandings]

- Collars and Kisses by koi_boi Kylo loves his little fox and has missed him dearly after a long mission away. Hux, not so much, or so Kylo thinks. Then he actually thinks for once and comes to A Realization™. They fuck, they cuddle, then they get soft and tender. Disgusting. [E, 3.4k, no warnings, fox hux, fluff & smut, dom kylo & sub hux]

- the chancellor's gift by @thethespacecoyote Supreme Leader Kylo Ren goes on a mission to retrieve something invaluable for his lightsaber-obsessed chancellor. However, his plans for presenting the treasure to Hux are unfortunately derailed when a group of insurgents kidnap the chancellor and hold him hostage, threatening both Hux's life, and the life of their unborn pup. It seems, even years into their reign, that there are still enemies foolish enough to try to take from Kylo what's his. [M, 5.3k words, warnings for violence, alpha kylo & omega hux, mpreg, protective kylo]

- Entrapped by @kyluxtrashpit While searching for a mysterious Force artifact for Snoke, a squadron of Stormtroopers goes missing. Kylo insists on going out alone then, certain he can find and face down whatever might have killed them and succeed in getting the artifact. The creature responsible, however, has other plans for him. [E, 3.4k words, rape/noncon, tentacle sex, protective hux]

- Your Chain Around My Neck by @bastila-s After the council meeting about the Sith fleet, Kylo asks Hux to stay behind and "prove" he isn't a spy. [E, 3.6k words, no warnings but dubcon tag, power dynamics, smut, dom kylo & sub hux]

- Regret by @abraxas-drake Kylo tries to get Hux to relax under the guise of a work discussion. When things go terribly wrong, Hux must rely on the new Supreme Leader to save his life. [E, 3.8k words, warnings for violence and threats of noncon, alpha kylo & omega hux, protective kylo, forced into heat]

- Invasion by sigo Hux was seated at the long durasteel table in the Steadfast’s largest conference room, Enric Pryde on his left and Mitaka presenting his findings to the group standing on his right, when he felt it: Ren’s hands on his chest, running hot down his skin below his uniform. [E, 2.9k words, no warnings, pwp, bottom hux & top kylo, force sex, semi-public sex]

- In His Grasp by @cosleia Kylo Ren doesn't understand why General Hux is shirking his duty over a simple injury. When he tries to find out, though, he learns more than he bargained for...about the general, and about himself. [M, 4.1k words, post-tlj, pining, hand-feeding]

- Heat Sink by @sparrows-trashcan Kylo Ren is an omega but so is General Hux. While Hux doesn't mind everyone knowing that his preference is limited to male omegas Kylo Ren is shamed to feel the same. Everything changes after the Starkiller incident: Kylo Ren is in heat and there is only one person on the Finalizer who could possibly help him... [E, 4.2k words, no warnings, omega hux & omega kylo, smut]

- Distraction by @kyluxtrashpit Kylo needs a distraction from his hopeless pining over his co-commander, who he's sure he can never have. So he turns to the Knights of Ren to keep his mind - and body - busy. When Hux walks in on the events, however, Kylo learns that perhaps his feelings aren't a lost cause after all. [E, 3.6k words, no warnings, kylo/knights of ren, group sex]

- Between the Stars by Kittens The Finalizer's medical team does not want to deal with Kylo Ren. When he ends up injured during a mission, it's up to Hux to take care of him. It's not exactly what Hux is good at, but for Kylo it means everything. [T, 3.9k words, no warnings, hurt/comfort, bathing]

- Switch Up, Love Eternal by @onewhositswiththeturtles When Ren damages consoles aboard the Finalizer during a tantrum, Hux summons him for some much-deserved discipline. Perhaps there would be some hope for Ren learning the error of his ways if he wasn't such a whore for punishment. [E, 3.4k words, no warnings, dom/sub switching, smut]

- Across the Stars (To Find You) by Lady_Faulkner While on a mission for Snoke, Kylo Ren gets kidnapped by pirates and it's up to General Hux to track him down and rescue him before he's sold on the black market. Along the way, Hux discovers that his feelings of hatred for Kylo Ren have been masking another emotion altogether. [E, 10.9k, no warnings, kidnapping, hurt kylo]

- Doom's Desire by @nerdherderette Hux never expected to find a jewel worthy of the Empire's crown in an Outer Rim desert wasteland. [E, 10.3k words, no warnings, canon au, gladiator fighter kylo, emperor hux]

- Empire Day Miracle by coldashes Kylo just wants to relax, to be surrounded by people is to be surrounded by the Force. Except this is the First Order's Empire Day officer party and things never go as well as one would hope. [E, 4.4k words, no warnings, pwp, identity mistakes, pre-tfa]

- Reptile Husbandry by koi_boi Hux is an accomplished researcher who's having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time in the field. He stumbles into a cave filled with secrets and one very large, very curious snake. Hux gets fucked in more ways than one. [E, 13.4k words, no warnings, modern/fantasy au, naga kylo & researcher hux, smut]

- Utapaun Christening by @mcducklet-blog Kylo Ren is determined to ensure that his children are the strongest creatures in the galaxy. Armitage Hux is willing to go along with it.Neither of them is ready for what that entails. [T, 6.6k words, no warnings, mpreg, knights of ren, peril]

- so it goes by @msbyjckals [WIP] Hux wakes to feel a pair of warm, calloused hands covering his. He doesn’t remember much, just the mission brief, the landing, and the cold. [M, 2.9k words, no warnings, starkiller rescue]

- Rumor Mill by @theweddingofthefoxes Everybody has their own suspicions about what Kylo Ren and General Hux get up to in private, but the truth is far more tender than anyone would guess. [G, 1.2k words, no warnings, fluff, cuddling]

- The One with the Eggs by sigo Hux turned on his heel, but hardly made it two steps before running straight into Kylo Ren. He knew his face betrayed his dismay. He didn’t have time for this. “I apologize, Ren, but I must be on my way.” Hux stepped to the side and Ren stepped in front of him again. Hux shivered as he felt another dropping sensation inside himself. This time the ‘drop’ completed its path — the inside of his pants was wet, cold gel trickling at a glacial pace down his thighs. Of course, that was nothing compared to what lay ahead. “Ren,” He said sharply. His voice was higher, raising in pitch the way it always did when he was panicked. “I am ill. Let me through.” Ren spoke through his ridiculous helmet, voice distorted. “We have a meeting.” [E, 4.8k, no warnings, alien hux, eggs, bottom kylo & top hux]

- Shadow Of Your Heart by @pangolinpirate & @redcole & @starkillersbae [WIP] After the fall of the empire Luke Skywalker fought a rising evil in the outer rim, a villain named Snoke who tormented his young nephew. With Snoke defeated, Leia sent her son to be trained as part of the new order of jedi, in the hopes that it would keep him safe. [E, 22.7k words, no warnings, omega kylo & alpha kylo, mpreg]

- Clear From Far Away by @pizzzazlut “But most of all, curse Kylo bloody Ren for having a chest that sparked pure, unadulterated arousal that has Hux humping his pillow like a fucking virgin.” Or the one where Hux is just trying to get off but his Supreme Leader just won't leave him alone. [E, 1.8k words, no warnings but dubcon, pillow humping]

- Tripped Over A Mouse Droid by @milarca & @ranebowstitches Hux gets injured while working, and Kylo finds him in the medbay. Who knew mouse droids could be so dangerous? [G, 3k words, no warnings, hurt/comfort, alpha kylo & omega hux]

- with you by @msbyjckals “You know I love you, right?” Ren said. “Of course I know that, I’ve always had you; you’ve always been mine.” [T, 1k words, no warnings, sleepy cuddles, soft domestic fluff]

- Unexpected Avenues by @sinceyouaskedmeforataleof [WIP, Mitaka/Hux] No one wanted to take this particularly grisly task, but Dopheld is glad it fell to him when he realises that all is not as it seems. Can he make a new life on the run with his ex, now that everything he thought he knew has been turned upside down? [E, 84k words, omega hux & alpha kylo & alpha mitaka, mpreg, post-tros]

- Who Needs The Galaxy When There's You? by Mesmeret Kylo is a simple, lonely smuggler with no one since his accident a decade ago. Or so he thought before his twelve year old daughter retrieves him to help out his long forgotten husband with a bothersome heat. [E, 7.7k words, no warnings, alpha kylo & omega hux, amnesia, smuggler kylo & mandalorian hux]

- By the Will of the Gods by @darktenshi17 Armitage is chosen to be a sacrifice to his gods in return for his village's protection. It's not the gods who find him out in the woods. [E, 1.9k words, no warnings but dubcon, fantasy/medieval au,

- The Fall of Yesterday by @sinceyouaskedmeforataleof [WIP] Seven years after Exegol, a nameless sailor works a thankless job onboard an Arkanis pearl harvester and fails to forget all the things he has lost. When the ship arrives at a new port all he wants to do is find a place to sleep through his shore leave. He might find more than that. [E, 10k words, no warnings, tros fix-it, alpha kylo & omega hux]

- Special Delivery by DaisyChainz Hux orders a toy that's supposed to be 'discreetly packaged', but when his hot mailman brings it directly to his front door, he finds out it is definitely not. [E, 3.3k words, no warnings, modern au, smut]

- Most Wanted by @pizzzazlut When the most prolific serial killer the city of Arkanis has ever seen is finally arrested and awaiting trial, it takes two of the cities most respected lawyers to represent the culprit and the victims. The only problem is that Kylo Ren and Armitage Hux haven't interacted since law school and will now have to work against each other to win the career-building case of a lifetime. Or The one where Kylo and Hux are rival lawyers with too much history but an equal amount of hate for Snoke. [E, 12.6k words, warnings for violence, modern au, murders and blood]

- Devotion by @kyluxtrashpit The Emperor loves to hear about his devoted hound's successful missions, ideally in as much detail as possible. Kylo does not disappoint. [E, 1.9k, no warnings, smut, emperor hux & hound kylo]

- three's a crowd by @thethespacecoyote Ren Prime catches Ben sneaking a First Order cadet onboard, and decides an unorthodox kind of punishment is in order. [E, 1.4k words, no warnings, ren prime, smut, voyeurism]

- If we have each other (the world is ours to conquer) by thereisnocowboyemoji “You think, what, that I have feelings for her?” “Please, Ren, do not dare try to insult my intelligence.” [G, 1.3k, no warnings, married kylux, mpreg, jealousy]

- In the Vents by @kyluxtrashpit Hux returns from his shift to find the bottom half of Kylo sticking out of the heating vent. Kylo is stuck and Hux isn't one to let opportunities pass him by. [E, 2k words, no warnings, pwp]

- the monster in your bed by @thethespacecoyote In the dead of night, something terrifying and lascivious comes to a sleeping General Hux. [E, 2k words, no warnings, consensual noncon roleplay, sub hux & dom kylo]

- Old Hornington Rides Again by oorsprong “Don’t be vulgar.” Of course he remembered. The embarrassing nickname had somehow become part of the whole taboo. Sex in the conference room in the early hours; Hux naked but for his boots and his hat and taunting Kylo with dirty talk. Kylo worshiped his cock in those days, treated it with reverence. “I could do it again.” [E, 1.3k words, no warnings, smut, old married kylux]

- His Purpose by partialresonance When Hux hears Snoke's voice in his mind, he thinks it's a caffeine hallucination. Until the voice plants an insidious purpose that Hux has no choice but to fulfill. Thankfully, Kylo is there to save him. Little does he know that the sinister presence was targeting him all along. [M, 5.6k words, no warnings, suicide attempt, mind manipulation, love confessions]

- Mariner’s Hollo by Eirean Whilst on a diplomatic mission, Kylo is invited to take part in the planet’s ancient ritual, and demands that the Grand Marshall accompany him. Said Grand Marshall is deeply unimpressed by the whole thing. [E, 9.7k words, no warnings, enemies to lovers, smut]

- Let It Happen by @pizzzazlut Armitage Hux re-analyzed all his life choices up to this point and could not come up with anything as careless as this. Or the one where Ren joins Kylo and Hux in bed because he doesn't like being left out. [E, 2k words, ren prime, threesome]

- Come On And Slam by @thediktatortot Hux and Kylo invite Ren Prime into their chambers and get more than they bargain for. [E, 1.9k words, no warnings, ren prime, threesome]

- A Passing Madness by moreless “It’s a gift,” says Ren simply, folding his large hands behind his back. His gaze moves between the lightsaber and Hux. “It used to belong to the Jedi traitor Mace Windu. It reminded me of you.” Two steps forward, one step back. Another step back. That's how their relationship works. Even now. [T, 1.9k words, no warnings, duel of the fates au, power dynamics]

- Our Impeccable Leadership by roseofgalaxies The Supreme Leader and his treacherous General have begun to collaborate with unexpected success. There's only one problem: Ren's stopped wearing a shirt. [E, 4.8k words, no warnings, lego holiday special, body worship]

- Giving In by Kyram (BrokenApril) Hux has a mission. Millions of lives are on the line, yet Ren's presence teases him. He's desperate to give in even if his job will become all the harder. [T, 2.2k words, no warnings, touch starvation, force sensitive hux]

- to lay your armor down by surrenderer Once in a while, the Supreme Leader likes to wear his Chancellor’s greatcoat around the Capitol building. [M, 661 words, no warnings, role reversal, force sensitive hux & force null kylo]

- Benefits of Force Sensitivity by Kittens After the surprising change in his relationship with Ren, Hux has a lot to think about. But they also have a mission to complete and that may have unintended consequences. [M, 4.3k words, no warnings, force sensitive hux, cuddling]

#kylux #benarmie #fic rec #i looked for people's tumblr names but i couldnt find most of them!! sorry <3 #and i'm sure i will have left some out #my dad is still in hospital and this was a good distraction from the worry #i hope you find something in here that you haven't read before! <3

135 notes · View notes

snuggetfish · 3 years

Note

I love your thoughts on Majima so much! He’s such a fun and interesting character to analyze and I’d like to ask what your general headcanons of him are? Like, just about any headcanon that comes to mind

Aaah thanks so much anon, it makes me fuzzy inside to know people like reading these sometimes really rambly replies! 💙 Headcanon-wise, ohhh, I’ve got a good few, but below are the first ones that come to mind. I’ve split them up roughly by topic, hopefully they’re easier to read this way!

Outfit

It always seemed to me that Majima’s environmentalism was a bit at odds with his signature look. Leather pants, leather gloves, snakeskin jacket, that’s a hell of an animal cruelty combo right there... so I think they’d actually all be fake. Majima may be flashy, but he’s not a hypocrite and with how many clothes he ruins by getting into fights, I don’t think he’d want to continuously sink cash into the leather industry.

Though, that’s not to say his fashion would look or feel cheap! Whoever his tailor is, I bet they’re being paid well to source high quality, realistic looking leather and snake imitations.

Diet

While we’re on this topic, I’d like to think Majima had a phase where he tried going vegetarian, after reading up on the ecological effects of animal farming. But here, he finds he can’t be as principled as with clothing, because the beef bowl cravings get too strong sometimes and the boys are noticeably crankier without their usual family barbecues... So he’d give up on the idea eventually. He's not a saint, he’s gotta have some indulgences.

Love life

Other things yakuza are known to indulge in: the sex trade (or “water trade” in Japan I suppose). I mean, they run a good amount of these businesses, makes sense that they’d visit them too, right? But I think, for Majima, hostess clubs would hold too many bittersweet memories and, generally, he wouldn’t enjoy being buttered up. Simulated love and empty words for a price... a hostess won’t be nearly as sincere with him—an obviously loaded customer—as the Sunshine girls were with their manager, so why bother? If it’s just gonna be two clowns putting on a show for each other...

Frustration and distracting thoughts might push him to go to a soapland or brothel, but those visits are about as frequent as his one-night stands, which is to say: rare. His body has needs, but they mostly serve to remind him of the needs of his heart, which are so much harder to fill...

Pastimes

So how does Maijma spend his spare moments then? Batting cages, of course, but also watching TV in his apartment, playing zombie shooters or just about any game that can help pass the time. When he’s alone, I think a lot of his habits are carried over from his days in Sotenbori, whether he realizes it or not. Thus...

Smoking

He’s likely got an ashtray in every room, since his addiction manifests all the worse when he’s at home. He usually remembers to open the window first, but on particularly bad nights, he’d be no stranger to smoking in bed or on the bathroom floor.

I think he didn’t use to smoke much as a young adult (19-20), but after his days in the Hole, it’s a way to cope with trauma and mounting stress. The habit only really ramped up when 23-year-old Majima realized that the more cigarettes he burns through, the less hungry he feels and the more money he can save for Sagawa’s monthly payment.... Grooming

His apartment is sparsely furnished and looks barely lived in, probably because it is. You also won’t find him in lounge clothes too often, even the eye patch stays on almost 24/7. It’s so much a part of him now, that he occasionally forgets to take it off in the shower. But let me just say this: he’s no slob. Majima has had more than his fair share of living in squalor, while he was still in the Hole... People joke about him being greasy, but I really don’t think he could stand the feeling of being dirty. Though speaking of, I think he’d prefer showers over baths. Less idle time for the painful thoughts to creep in. The only way he’d start warming up to the idea of a nice soak every night is... if he maybe had a partner who’d gently wash his hair and back, to ease the day’s tension... or if there was a little munchkin all too eager to have him play sea monster to their fleet of rubber duckies. Would at least one of the duckies have a little eye patch scribbled on it in sharpie? Well, who’s to say... 😌

Just like his apartment, I think he would himself smell of cigarettes, but always mixed with something almost... citrus-y. Muted and a little bitter, like bergamot, from the cologne he wears on days where he needs to dress presentably. Though if you also happen to catch a note of vanilla on him... well, that’s likely a hint that Goromi’s been out on the town. (´~ ω •`)

Skills

Last but not least, a slightly unrelated headcanon: Majima’s surprisingly good with numbers and equations. Not because he’s received a great education (though he is definitely the kind of guy who succeeds in almost anything he applies himself to, it’s just that he rarely does) but because being in charge of The Grand’s bookkeeping, night after night for two years, has taught him skills that are not so easily forgotten. However, it’s not something he brags about, so the first few times it’ll definitely come as a shock to his subordinates. He’ll be given a balance sheet or a contract to sign and Nishida assumes his eye will just glaze over and he’ll throw the papers back at his face, but instead Majima spots a calculation error within a minute of looking at it. Then he gives Nishida an earful about paying more attention to these things... then he throws the papers back, yeah.

And because I can’t help myself on the Majidad headcanons: of course this means he’s on duty for helping his kid with their math homework.

Whew, this ended up as a big wall of text, sorry! Guess you can tell Majima occupies my thoughts a lot more than he probably should hah... It’s fun to share these though! Thank you so much for the ask! 💙💙💙

#majima goro #goro maijma #yakuza headcanons #anon asks #answered #you ask for Maji headcanons brain go brrrr

96 notes · View notes

dramaqueeenamby · 3 years

Text

𝐑𝐞𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬 ♦︎ 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔

Summary: He’d searched for centuries to find the sun summoner. What he never expected was for someone to uncover the sun within him. In which the darkling finds himself on a journey with a powerful Grisha who may just uncover the humanity trapped within.

A/N: So, prior to this, I hadn't written anything in literally two or so months. Consequently, this is rough. Like, hella. However, binging S&B on Netflix has reawakened my love of Ben Barnes and uncovered a love of the Darkling. He's an asshole, yes, but Amby loves her psychologically disturbed characters. Sue me.

I started just writing a few lines last week, and that has turned into over 15,000 words and 50 plus pages of content lagging up my google docs. It's pretty massive, and I've been working on ordering things so the timeline makes sense but honestly, truly, I'm writing this for me, to feed my latest fixation. I don't really expect anyone to read this, hence the lack of tags.

Also, I have never actually read the Shadow and Bone series (book 1 should arrive soon!), so my characterization of characters is based on my research and, largely, the series. Also, a lot of creative liberties. I apologize, again, in advance.

If for some strange reason, anyone would like to be tagged, just let me know, friends. Last thing, it's pronounced Muh-Lay-Nah. I didn't realize until I was like 3K in that the name sounds way too similar to Alina. I know. I'm trash.

Words: 2.2K // Pairings: The Darkling x OC // Warnings: None, yet.

Rewrite The Stars

Protocol is simple.

One either does or does not do something. It’s black or white. No shades of gray to cause confusion.

Typically.

That’s how it should be, at least, and for many, that is the case. Specifically, when dealing with the Darkling.

Never make eye contact, unless spoken to. Speak only when asked a question. Stand at attention at all times. And, of course, never raise your voice. That last one is critical.

Such are just a few of the rules when in the presence of the most powerful grisha to ever live. Countless additional rules are created naturally, but the underlying theme for all is constant: don’t upset him.

Some have dared. Very few have lived.

One might even be considered a repeat offender.

Milena Belarus.

Her name is one known across the lands, but in Ravka, she’s synonymous with one thing: power.

A Grisha with the ability to manipulate fire, inferni, wind, squaller, and perhaps the most dangerous of them all, the heart, heartrender. Never in recent times has a grisha been able to balance multiple gifts, but Milena was no normal Grisha. She was also immortal, having lived over a hundred years, while still appearing as though she was in her mid twenties.

Milena was also known by another name to others: Lieutenant Belarus, second in command of the second army.

It was a role she prided herself on, as she should. It was one of the highest positions a Grisha could attain and an enormous privilege to work directly with the General.

The Darkling.

And thus, where the shades of gray developed.

A few things called many to question, though never aloud, just what exactly the relationship between the Lieutenant and General’s constituted. The first question was raised when Milena first arrived at the Little Palace. A traumatic childhood that constituted loss, hiding her abilities, and forever moving around to avoid persecution caused her to start late in her training.

But when she did, when it was discovered that she was different from the others, the General took her training upon himself, teaching her one on one. She would still train with the other grisha at times, but the private lessons were strange.

The General never trained anyone.

Though, it was argued that Milena was no average Grisha, she was powerful, more so than the others, and that caught the General’s eye.

Then the Keftas. One day, Milena arrived to a Grisha dinner in a black kefta.

No one, aside from the Darkling, had ever worn black.

It was always implied law that the color was reserved for him. Up until that point, at least. Again, though, it was argued that Milena’s power granted her privilege. A lot of privilege.

The most notable one, however, was based upon daily interactions between the general and his lieutenant. She would never outwardly challenge him, but Milena would also never refrain from holding her tongue, especially if she did not agree with his decision.

And that had happened on a couple of occasions.

“Do you really think this the best course of action?”

Her question caused all eyes to land on her, including his, not that she paid that any mind. Her only concern was the wellbeing of her brethren.

She matched his gaze, eyes never leaving his. Stillness overtook the room, no one dared say anything. “You disagree.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’s dangerous.”

“We are in war, lieutenant. Everything is dangerous.”

“But not everything needs to result in casualty.” She took it upon herself to move around the war table, adjusting the pawns used to represent their army. “No matter which way we go, we face ambush, but it is the timing of the ambush that makes the difference. The Fjerdans travel in the evening to restock supplies, ammunition. The path will not be as heavily guarded--”

“Yet still dangerous.”

She smiled at him, mischief dancing in her eyes. “We are in war, General. Everything is dangerous.”

The meeting was dismissed shortly after.

Rarely did Milena openly disagree with the General, but the frequency wasn’t what mattered, it was that it happened at all that surprised most.

How could one so easily risk facing the wrath of the Darkling?

And yet, no one had ever witnessed such a thing. No one even knew if it happened, if the General had ever even penalized her for such insolence. It was doubtful, though. One need not be chastised more than once to know not to upset the Darkling.

There were also whispers, rumors even, of Milena seen entering the General’s chambers and not leaving till morning.

And vice versa.

Though for all the thoughts and speculation, neither the General or Lieutenant ever confirmed or denied anything. And most were inclined to believe the leniency granted to Milena was solely based upon respect of her power, her leadership, and her role among the grisha.

She was special and necessary.

In more ways than most realized.

-------

“Me?” Milena was dumbfounded. “He wants to meet me?” Even saying it aloud felt strange. “Why?”

Genya stopped in the middle of digging in her kit, turning to offer an exasperated expression. “Must you really ask that?”

Milena rolled her eyes and stood up from her seat. This was no time to be sitting. “Grisha come here all the time, do they not? What makes me so different?”

“I don’t know, perhaps the fact that you possess the abilities of an inferni, squaller, and a heartrender?” It was sarcastic, no need for a response. “Until now, no one thought that possible. General Kirigan included.”

Milena quieted, focusing her questions toward herself rather than the Tailor sent to prepare her for her meeting with the Black General. She knew that getting out of the meeting was not an option, but that didn’t stop her from thinking about it. She’d heard rumors about the leader of the Grisha, none of them necessarily bad, especially if you were a Grisha, but almost all of them gave her pause. She always had a difficult time holding her tongue, something that often got her in trouble. Would this meeting also bring her trouble?

She knew, very much so, that that depended on her.

“There.”

Milena was so consumed by anxiety and teetering panic that she hadn’t even realized Genya had directed her back to her chair and finished her work. She looked into the mirror and sighed. As of recent, she was finding it harder and harder to recognize her own reflection.

Whoever that was, anyway.

Picking which color Kefta she donned also proved harder than what it should have been. For most Grisha, it was a no brainer, their color was determined by their gift. Milena, though, had options. She eventually decided on the Kefta of the Heartrenders, as it was the ability she’d relied on the most in order to survive.

Every day, Milena seemed to discover new sections of the Little Palace, it’s size even more massive upon exploring the internal, despite the grandiose magnanimity seen from the outside. Today, she discovered the wing of the palace belonging to the Black General.

Whether intentional or not, she couldn’t help but notice the darkening of the decor and dreary coloring the closer they got to his chambers. Once they were outside of his door, she noticed the guards that escorted her stepped back immediately after offering a single knock.

Silence.

She looked from side to side and spoke without thinking. “Are you sure he heard you?”

Seconds later, the door opened and Milena stilled, her spine naturally straightening while her gaze dropped to the floor, though she could feel his eyes burning into her. “He did.” She contemplated looking up but decided against it, for once, keeping her mouth shut. “Leave us.”

A small sense of panic rose as she looked to watch the guards turn and walk in the direction they’d came, leaving her alone.

“Come,” he spoke so calmly, yet she could detect the demanding undertones, leaving no room for argument. “Please.” It was a forced pleasantry, for sure.

Eyes still downward, she waited for him to move to the side, and even then she hesitated but realized she was only delaying the inevitable.

Upon entering, Milena lifted her head, taking in the massive room, the dark decor and equally dark color schemes even more prominent than the path leading to his chambers.

“What is your name?” She swallowed, hearing his footsteps grow closer. He was directly behind her.

“Milena.” Milena’s fingers straightened over the soft material of her Kefta. “Milena Belarus.” Her heartbeat quickened again when he brushed past her, moving from behind her to in front of her. Against her better judgment, she allowed herself to look up.

Saints.

Out of all of the rumors, whispers, and stories that she’d heard, none of them included that the Black General was, well, handsome. Sharp and dark features, raven black hair neatly slicked back, and eyes as dark as the abyss his powers commanded. His entire aura and presence emanated power and authority. She could see why his name alone struck fear throughout the lands.

Milena realized she was staring when his brow lifted, though she got the feeling it wasn't because he was upset with her. Rather, intrigued.

“And just what are you, Ms. Belarus?”

She was quiet. Such a short question with infinite possibilities. Up until a few weeks ago, she was nobody, a Grisha hiding among the mass to avoid persecution. Now, she trained and dwelled in a palace with luxuries she never knew existed. Her own reflection seemed like a stranger these days. Did that seem like someone who was in tune with their identity?

So, she answered honestly.

“I don’t know.”

If her answer surprised him, he didn’t show it. He simply moved so he was leaning back against his desk, eyes focused keenly on her. “Are you not Grisha?”

“Well, yes, but--”

“But, what?” Milena looked up again. She recognized the mockery in his tone, and it irked her. She was being honest, and he was being condescending. It was all so unnecessary.

Still, she maintained composure. “I’m not like most Grisha.”

“So, I’ve heard.” The irritation dissipated. Slightly. “Show me.”

She wasn’t expecting that. “Sir?”

“Show me.” He repeated his command, slower, firmer. There was no room for argument.

Despite her garment and in contrast to her preferred method of assault, she realized directing an attack on the leader of the Second Army was far from wise. So, she searched the room and noticed a cracked window on the opposite side. Shutting her eyes and lifting her hands, she focused and directed the wind in that direction, forcing both completely open.

He nodded, unimpressed. “And?” She looked at him, protocol damned. He’d invited her. Surely, he did not expect her gaze to remain on the floor the entire time. “Is that all?”

Irritated, she easily transferred that anger into a sizable ball of flames dancing in her hand. He looked semi impressed, walking up to her, merely inches away. She collapsed the flames. “And finally?”

At that, she hesitated. As a Heartrender, she could do many things, but the most common was an attack of a deadly nature. Of course, she could stop before it reached the level of fatality, but truly, who wanted to risk that with the Darkling?

Milena then looked back at him and stilled. He was smirking, amusement twinkling in his eyes. “You think you can hurt me.” It was an accusation, one she was prepared to defend when he spoke again. “I assure you, you can’t.”

This time, her eyes narrowed. He certainly was living up to his vile reputation. What an arrogant prick. Focusing, she moved her arms, straightened in his direction, her hand landing on his chest. She didn’t realize just how close he was. Opening her eyes, she realized his eyes were shut, evident discomfort in his face. He was feeling the effects of her speeding up his heart. However, Milena noticed the room was gradually darkening, shadows creeping up the walls, swallowing the light shining from the window.

She quickly lowered her arms and backed away, breathing suddenly uneven.

His eyes fell on her again, displeasure evident. “Why did you stop?”

She frowned. “Why would I not?”

“You have power. Great power.” He stepped forward, Milena naturally inching back. She’d upset him. “And yet, you hold back.”

Milena tried. She truly had. She’d fought so hard to hold her tongue but between the taunts and the gaslighting, she’d had about enough. “I didn’t realize you wanted me to kill you. Perhaps you should have made that more clear.”

Surprisingly, he was unfazed by her flippancy. “I want you to stop being afraid.”

“I’m not afraid of anything.” He said nothing, Milena realizing she’d stepped toward him this time, eyes flaming with determination. “Or anyone.”

Had she been looking instead of diverting her gaze to avoid his judgment, she would have seen the faintest hint of a smile playing upon his face. “We shall see, Ms. Belarus. We shall see.”

#the darkling #the darkling x oc #the darkling fanfiction #general kirigan #aleksander morovoza #grishaverse #the darkling fanfic

48 notes · View notes

littlewalken · 3 years

Text

TZN Exclusive Interview: Andy Robinson

On Garak, "Star Trek", "Dirty Harry" & Sci-Fi Idealism

TrekZone Network sat down with Andrew Robinson, who played the Cardassian Garak in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", in Hamburg prior to the "Evening with Andrew Robinson", organized by FKM Events. We talked about Garak's past and future, Robinson's current projects and the idealism of science fiction fans.

TrekZone Network: Is this the first time you are in Hamburg?

Andrew Robinson: No, I was here 12 years ago for a convention with another organizer. So this is my first time back in 12 years, I believe.

Andy Robinson at the FKM Evening in Hamburg

TZN: Long time.

Robinson: It has been a long time. And as they say, a lot of water under the bridge...

TZN: You have been to Germany in the meantime?

Robinson: Yeah, I've been here several times. For one reason or another and in several different places. I have come here for a whole bunch of reasons. Even just as a tourist. But I have never made a film here or anything.

TZN: Your first stint as Garak was in the third episode of "Deep Space Nine". When you first got that role, did you anticipate or did you know that it was going to be a recurring role?

Robinson: No, not at all. Originally, the role of Odo, that Rene Auberjonois played, came down to three of us. Myself, another actor and obviously Rene. Then Rene got the role. Then they asked me to come in a few weeks later to read for this other role, which I thought was just going to be one episode. But it turned out that they were looking for a way to get the character of Doctor Bashir more involved with the show and so they, they were testing a storyline for Doctor Bashir and obviously the storyline was: he meets this older Cardassian, presumably tailor. Is he a spy? Who is he? This very mysterious person, the last Cardassian left on the station.

They wanted to see if there was any chemistry between Siddig and myself as actors. And of course we hit it off immediately. We had a great time with each other. And so it was based on that when they saw that episode, I think it was "Past Prologue", and they saw that we were working well together then they decided to add more episodes of Garak. Which I am eternally grateful for.

TZN: Do you regret that you were not cast as Odo?

Robinson: No, no, no, no. Not at all. As an actor, and an actor of a certain age, after a while you become very philosophical about these things. And genuinely so. Whoever gets the role, that was their role, you cannot feel remorse or try to second-guess or be bitter. And it always is the right actor as far as I am concerned and certainly with Rene it was the right actor. He was wonderful as Odo.

TZN: The part as Garak turned out to be rather substantial as well, of course.

Robinson: O, Garak was one of the best characters, I mean this, he was one of the most enjoyable, fully satisfying characters I have ever played in my life. And the fact that it is the only time in my life, too, as an actor, that I was able to develop a character over a seven-year period, and not be overused. By that I mean often if you are a regular on a series, they run out of things for a character to say and to do, and so the character just ends up repeating himself/herself, and the actions and the plotlines and after a while it becomes what they call the law of diminishing returns. The character becomes reduced. With Garak, because I was not a regular character, I appeared occasionally, I think I was in 39 episodes, and when I appeared, it was for a reason. Almost always it was for a reason, There are a few episodes when I wondered what I was doing there... But that always happens and at least they paid me, so that was fine.

TZN: Is there anything you would have liked to do as Garak on screen? Or any aspect of his character, his personality, that you would have liked to develop?

Robinson as Cardassian Elim Garak

Robinson: They did start this love story. But then they could not find the right actress. And so they had this one actress playing Ziyal and they did not like her, so they had another actress playing Ziyal who looked like my granddaughter, so that made me feel a little perverse. Then they just decided to forget about it. But it would have been wonderful to have had a bittersweet love story, someone who breaks Garak's heart, who tries to unlock the mystery romantically and cannot do it.

It is one of the reasons I wrote the book, to explore that part of Garak, Garak's heart. Because as an actor, you fall in love, well you do not always fall in love with your characters but the ones that you do fall in love with, it is a very deep relationship that you have with the character, and the character does take on a life on its own. Because as an actor, that is what you try to do. You try to transform yourself into this character's life. Obviously, I am not Garak, I am not Hamlet, but you find those places within yourself that can make that transformation.

I was not a "Star Trek" fan when they hired me. I had no idea what the "Star Trek" universe was, who Cardassians were, who Klingons, Romulans, I had no idea about any of that.

TZN: You had never seen anything, never heard about it?

Robinson: I had heard about it but never saw a thing. And a Cardassian? I had no idea what that was.

TZN: Then the makeup was applied...

Robinson: Yeah, right. But they did show me the episode, in "Next Generation", I think David Warner was the first Cardassian or was Marc Alaimo the first?

TZN: Marc Alaimo.

Robinson: Yeah, but it was that two-parter where David Warner's Cardassian character is torturing Picard and I thought, well, that is a really interesting-looking guy. That was the first episodes that peaked my interest. I thought, they deal with substantial things. And the acting was wonderful. Of course, David Warner has always been one of my favorite actors.

So I started writing a diary. As if Garak had a diary and I would write things, and I would make up things about him. And it is what you do, it is what an actor does sometimes for any character. You try to create a story, a life for this character. And when the series was over, I realized there were still things I would have loved to say about Garak and that is why I wrote the book "A Stitch in Time".

TZN: Did you start with the diary when you recognized that Garak would not be a one- or two-episode thing but a recurring role?

Robinson: Yeah, exactly, I think I started in the second year. I also started it when I started being invited to conventions and I realized, after two or three conventions, there were four or five questions people who would always ask me. How long does it take, your makeup... But I thought, would it not be interesting if I if at the conventions did something different. And so what I would do is that I would get up and I would read excerpts from these diaries. It became enormously popular, and that in a sense spawned a lot of things, then as actors we all started saying, well, maybe there is something that we can do rather than just get up and talk about our makeup and so forth. And that unleashed a whole bunch of stuff. Even Siddig and I wrote a play together that we did at several conventions and it was really a rather challenging play, dealing with string theory...

TZN: What was it about? I read just before this interview that you had this play...

Andy Robinson in Hamburg in June 2008 (Photo credit: Klaus Wittmack)

Robinson: Well, basically Garak and Bashir meet up in this place and it is like, nobody knows, but it looks like a convention with "Star Trek" fans there. And so they had to conduct this very tricky business in front of these people sitting at tables and sitting in chairs watching them. It was very, very, very postmodern. (laughs)

And there was a time when we were working on the play in front of an audience, too. Towards the end, when we finally got it written and got it right, that was when it was at its best but while we were experimenting with it, I think a lot of people fell asleep. (laughs)

Getting back to those diaries, [Michael Scott] co-wrote a book with Armin Shimerman ["The Merchant Prince"] and he said to me, "You should turn this into a book!" and that was when I did. And it was actually the first "Star Trek" book that was written without what they call a ghostwriter.

TZN: Are you thinking of writing another novel about Garak?

Robinson: No. I actually have said everything I could possibly say about Garak. I really have. Plus, if I did, I would then because of the corporate nature of Pocket Books, the Simon and Schuster division that does the "Star Trek" books, I would then have to follow all these other books that have been written about Garak and that does not interest me at all. Because the story I came up with was actually, oddly enough close my story, especially when Garak was a young man.

TZN: You did write another short story though, right? Set after the book.

Robinson: Right.

TZN: That was the last thing we have heard from Garak. In that story, he is not in a very positive state of mind and not in a good place.

Robinson: No.

TZN: So if we could jump forward in time, to a time and place after that, where would we find Garak?

Robinson: Dead. Honestly, because when I wrote that novella, first I was interested in putting - because I live part of the year in Paris -

I was interested in having Garak in Paris and see what that was like. Paris is like a museum now, and I thought that they would have really preserved it in 400 years and it would have become the museum of the world. But when I got Garak to Paris, it became very depressing. That is why I think he was not in a great state. I realized that if I had have written much more about Garak, he probably would have had to die. I do not want to go into why because it is all political and you are not here about politics. (laughs)

TZN: When did the producers tell you about who Garak's parents were?

Robinson: The big reveal was of course with Enabran Tain, who was the head of the Obsidian Order. I know that the mother appeared at one point when they were on Cardassia in that last series of episodes that I was in and that they ended up at Garak's mother's house, hiding. But the story of Garak and his parents really is what I myself put together, in terms of the relationships.

TZN: Did you have a hunch though that the storyline could develop into the direction of Enabran Tain being revealed as Garak's father?

Robinson: O, no! It was a big surprise to me. It was great!

TZN: Just like for the viewers.

Robinson: O, yeah, absolutely! But that is how I felt every time I would get a new script from the writers because the writers loved writing for Garak, that was the pleasure. It was evident that they liked writing for Garak because of the language, the dialogue that they would give him which was so delicious and so much fun and very ironic. One of the things you certainly know is that in America irony is not at the top of our list. As a people we do not really appreciate ironic humor. I think that one of the things that made Garak popular is the fact that he did have a sense of irony. That to everything he said there was a twist and there was always a subtext. And indeed probably he was lying but enjoying it and enjoying the fact that he was lying and seeing how far he could get away with it and who was gullible and who was smart.

Andy Robinson in Hamburg in June 2008 (Photo credit: Klaus Wittmack)

TZN: There was this one episode with the implant, "The Wire". That embodies everything you just said.

Robinson: Yeah, and that is by far my favorite episode.

TZN: We asked our readers to hand in some questions for you beforehand. One of them is: how long did it take to apply the makeup?

Robinson: At the beginning, it took about four hours, I would say. And then they got it down to about two hours. Towards the end they got more dexterous, thank God, because sitting in the chair for four hours meant that I would have to come in long before dawn and it was just excruciating, it was horrible. Even two hours was bad enough. It is the only thing about Garak that I do not miss at all.

TZN: Did the makeup inhibit you in the way you could express yourself?

Robinson: Well, that is the great, mysterious thing about working with a mask like that. For one thing the technology is very good, there were I think seven prosthetic pieces and they were all very flexible, very pliable and so you put it on and you think, my God, it is like this corpus, you're encased in it. But then you were fine, you could move. You were not, you were not limited the way Rene was limited with Odo because he could not eat, he lost a lot of weight. That is something I should have done!

But he had to take his lunch through a straw and so he could not move much at all because it was a mess. If he marled just a little bit, then he would have to sit in a chair and have to go through a whole process to get it back to that smoothness. That obviously was not my problem. My problem was the claustrophobia that I have, which I experienced actually last night. I went to a bar in Paris with some friends to watch the French lose to the Dutch. (laughter) Really lose. And deservedly so, I mean it. The French should get rid of that coach of theirs because he is awful.

I was at the bar and everybody was crowding in around me, I had to leave at the interval, go home and watch it on my own television. That was the thing about the Garak makeup. That was one thing but then this heavy wig that they put on top of me and then, because they wanted Cardassians to look big, they made the costumes out of the material that you make furniture pads, furniture textiles, and so all the costumes were very heavy and once you zipped them up it was like you were in a sauna, literally.

Actually that is where I lost a little weight, a lot of water weight anyway. When you get under the lights, underneath the makeup and the wig and the costume, there were rivers of sweat, I was soaked underneath. Not very glamorous (laughter) and I certainly did not smell like a flower.

TZN: I have got another reader question here, that touches a different subject. Did you know that there is speculation about Garak's sexuality?

Robinson: Oh, yeah. I started it.

TZN: Really? Then this might be interesting to this reader. He calls himself your gay fan Dominion and he asks a lot of questions like: Why haven't we seen a gay character in "Star Trek"? Have gays become extinct in the 24th century? Do you think there will ever be a gay character in "Star Trek"? Do gays not belong in "Star Trek's" future?

Robinson: O, yeah. There will be gay characters. Certainly now there will be, for one thing, America is still very puritan, we are very squeamish when it comes to sexuality. I remember when I very first played Garak, I played him gay! I thought this would be great! He sees this young man, this young, very attractive doctor on the station, he is lonely, he is the only Cardassian there, this doctor is curious about him, and if you remember, this was a great moment because Sid totally went with it! When he comes up and he puts his hand on his shoulder, Sid did this great thing, it was this sort of an electrical charge that went through him and so I played him totally gay in that episode.

Garak's First Scene

Of course the producers did not actually tell me not to play him gay but then they started writing him a little more macho and more like a Cardassian. But I said, "Listen, one of the great things about Garak is that he is not Gul Dukat, he is not one of those macho, militaristic guys, he is your finesse Cardassian." So we struck a compromise but I was always very clear. I did not get into it in the book. Quite frankly, I was going to go in that direction. I had written a whole thing about Garak's sexuality because I felt that Garak was sort of - talk about bisexual, I think that he was multisexual, essentially that anything that moves is fair game for Garak. He has a voracious sexual appetite.

But as I say, especially on American television you have the odd gay character now but it is all going to be just cosmetic. In terms of commercial television ever getting into real sexuality, that is not going to happen. "Star Trek" is very conservative, there is a conservatism about "Star Trek" that I think "Deep Space Nine" in a sense went against. It defied that conservatism. "Deep Space Nine" was not as black and white as the other "Star Trek" shows. It was different. It was not people in a rocket ship doing one-night stands on a planet to planet to planet, coming in and battling the evil aliens or some kind of monster or whatever. It was a community unto itself on the edge and this is what I loved about the show, every one of the characters on "Deep Space Nine" had a moral dimension about them. Each one of them was in touch with their dark side.

That episode "In the Pale Moonlight", when Garak introduces Captain Sisko to the concept of realpolitik, that okay, if you want to get rid of the Romulan threat, what you do is, you kill them. And you kill them in a not very nice way. So you just eliminate your enemy. Of course that is not fair play, that is not the American way. I was surprised, I loved that episode because it was very mature in that sense. It said you have to grow up, this is the world you live in now. And of course the world we live in now is very morally ambiguous to say the least.

I rambled, I am sorry. We went away from sexuality but I think there has to be more gay characters. I do not know what this movie is going to be like but this movie I believe is about Starfleet academy?

A gay Sulu? According to Robinson an interesting idea

TZN:It is a prequel. It is not entirely set on Starfleet academy but shows the young crew in their early years getting together.

Robinson: Right. For instance, I wonder, George Takei, who has come out, who is an openly gay man, and actually now I think he and his partner are going to get married since the California Supreme Court has now finally legalized gay marriage. But I wonder where they are going to go with his character in this prequel. It would be very interesting.

TZN: You did some work behind the camera as well. You directed I believe an episode of DS9. How was that for you, the experience to suddenly tell your colleagues what to do?

Robinson: Yes, right. It is funny, it was very different getting on the other side of the camera and not just working with the other actors, I mean they were fine. But it was the first episode I really had a lot of trouble with because it was my first episode ever directing something. And of course when you are directing "Star Trek" you have the added dimension, the added complication of the special effects. Although they have great special-effects people and you just get out of the way and let them do their work but still you are always trying to visualize what the picture looks like as a director.

But I must say that directing the "Star Trek" episodes really in a sense changed my life because it was the first time I started directing. From there I went on to a lot more directing, mainly theater because I have always been more of a theater person than a film person. And that really gave me the courage to continue in that direction as a director which I have and which has actually led to my current position. I am a fulltime teacher now. I run an acting program at the University of Southern California. And that all came out of directing.

TZN: You have been an actor, you have been a director, you have written a book, actually is there anything artistic you would still like to do? Singing maybe?

Robinson: No, I do not think so. Actually, it is true, it is interesting you should say that. I would actually love to do a musical. I really would love to do a musical, you are absolutely right. I would love to do one of these great musicals. But I still go back and forth. I am going to do a play this summer in San Francisco as an actor. I will continue to direct. I do not know how much longer I will run this program because I created this actor-training program and that was exciting.

I am going to be actually talking about that today. I work with young actors in terms of how does one train to be an actor, what is it that one does? I am being able to put some of my own ideas and thoughts about what actor training is into a coherent program that goes over three years, that trains professional actors. That has been very exciting. That is part of who I am but I think the territory of being an actor is that you do reinvent yourself from time to time. You have to reinvent yourself from time to time. Not to change, you really have to transform because that is the business.

TZN: In your career, you played many roles, and you guest starred in "Bonanza".

Robinson: No, you could not possibly remember! That is incredible. No, o my God, how could you... That is amazing. Yeah, that was the very last season of "Bonanza", too. And I think it was my first work in television.

TZN: How was it to play with such very famous actors like Lorne Greene?

Robinson: Well, see, it was very nice. They are household names but I had just come off from doing my first film with Clint Eastwood. So playing with Clint Eastwood was like playing with God. And then everyone else, they are wonderful actors, but still, my first film experience was the "Dirty Harry" film and that was extraordinary. I must say I enjoyed doing "Bonanza" because it was a show that had gone on forever. I helped kill it because that was the last season... Having the experience of doing "Dirty Harry" which was a feature film, that interested me a lot more than doing television.

Andy Robinson in "Dirty Harry"

TZN: You did very many TV series. The list of your guest appearances just goes on and on and on.

Robinson: Yeah, I did and most of the time I was the villain. That was courtesy of "Dirty Harry". After I did "Dirty Harry" nobody could see me as playing anything but the villain.

TZN: Is there any of these series that you would have liked to be on as one of the lead actors or main cast?

Robinson: In America, there is a series that just ended. I do not know if it is here, I do not know if it has come here. They did five years of it. HBO has these. I do not know if you know Home Box Office? It is a cable network in America. They had these series, "The Sopranos" was their flagship, their famous series. But they had another series called "The Wire". Have you ever heard of "The Wire"?

TZN: The title sounds familiar but that is all.

Robinson: It is interesting because you had me talking about that episode of "Deep Space Nine" that is called "The Wire", that was my favorite episode. Well, this series, "The Wire", is probably the best television series I have ever seen in my life. It was a brilliant series that took the city of Baltimore and it investigated the city of Baltimore in a dramatic series format on every level from drug dealers to police to schools to unions and it was an amazing series. I do not know how it got done because in America we are not big on socially-relevant thematic. We want our entertainment to be pure and uncluttered with things we have to think about. But this was a brilliant series and I, every time I watched the series, thought, o my God, I would love to be on that series! That was one of the few things I ever watched where I felt that way. I hope it comes here, I am sure it will come here. It has to. If it does, you must watch it because it is extraordinary.

TZN: I am afraid we have to wrap up already. One last question: Is there any question that you would really particularly badly like to answer but have never been asked?

Robinson: Wow. I have to say I think I have been asked every question that I can possibly imagine. Short of questions that I would prefer not to get into. No, I do not think that there is. I do not think that there is at all. I find that "Star Trek" fans for the most part, especially in Europe, are relatively sophisticated. I think that there is an idealism about following a series like "Star Trek", especially in this world.

Can we imagine ourselves projected into 24th or 25th century or wherever and still functioning. Obviously, it is weird. As you said earlier, here we are, four- five hundred years later and where have all the gay people gone? Where have all the people of color gone in a sense. That has always been something. What has indeed happened to poverty and what has happened to racism and fundamentalism and terrorism and all the things that bedevil us. I really do hope that science fiction continues to evolve and the way certain writers have challenged themselves to think about what happens to all of these social issues in the future and how we project solutions for them or perhaps not solutions but perhaps just accommodations, how do we learn to live with each other because in the end I think that that is what the "Star Trek" series perhaps offers its best insights about. Then I think that it is also great dramatic material which is the great question how do we learn how to live with each other without violence and without predatory behavior.

TZN: That ends this interview on a very thoughtful note, I think. Thank you very much.

Robinson: It was a pleasure, thank you, it has been great.

#garak #star trek deep space 9 #andrew j robinson

87 notes · View notes

shootybangbang · 3 years

Text

[Talking Bird] Ch 16: In which the plot finally makes an appearance

[Ao3 Link]

[Content Warning]: suicidal ideation, mild gore

[Note]: this fic has gone through some serious revisions — mostly expanded scenes/dialogue. The chapters most heavily affected are 1, 2, 3, and 7, but I’ve added a changelog to the end notes of each previous chapter detailing the edits that have been made. To save you some time though, here are the three main things to note:

The reader character does not have the bonds

The reader character refers to Arthur by his last name due to unfamiliarity

The horniness from last chapter has been moved to a future chapter. sorry!

This chapter is also pretty long in comparison to the others. From here on out, the chapters will probably be 2000+ words.

———

You look out into the plains, at the last pale band of light disappearing beneath a horizon of prairie grass and dark, looming buttes. The shadows of the scant trees stretch long and thin, their branches like a thousand spindly fingers grasping, searching. The landscape is dimmed to a tableau of reds and blacks, anything not illuminated by the fire slowly sinking into the featureless canvas of night. All of it blurred and indistinct behind a curtain of rain.

It’s a prettier sight by far than any you’ve had in St Denis. Or San Francisco. Or anywhere else you’ve lived, really.

And yet it hangs like featureless gauze behind the endless reel playing out over and over behind your eyes, spinning round like the printed images on a zoetrope.

The O’Driscoll’s hands wet with blood and mud. His eyes wide and uncomprehending. Trying to put himself back together the way one might a broken toy, sieving his viscera between his fingers and scooping it into the cavity of his chest. That initial, stunned bemusement giving way at last to the dawning horror of his own end.

And accompanying it, the numb realization that what bothered you more was the bare abstraction of the act. The burden of this sin weighing heavy with all the others, its addition tipping some moral scale, and —

“Hey.”

Morgan’s voice, jarringly brusque against the murmurings of your own private judge and jury, is almost mercifully irritating.

“What do you want?” you snap.

“Get up,” he says. “Start strippin’ the wet bark off the firewood.”

“For chrissakes, at least give me a second to catch my breath.”

“Why, so you can keep sittin’ there feeling sorry for yourself?” He leans one hand against the stone wall of the outcrop and drags himself back to his feet. The barest shadow of a grimace flits across his face as he straightens his back. “C’mon. Sooner we get set up proper, the sooner we can get back to ignorin’ each other. Then you can sulk all night in peace.”

The cottonwood branches are covered in cracked, ash brown bark that scrapes rough against your palms and fingers, rasping the skin raw as you hold the wood firm for carving. One of the downsides of living easy for so many years, you suppose — all the protective calluses atrophy to nothing, and what remains becomes susceptible to old and familiar hurts. But habits run deeper than skin, and what the mind forgets the body keeps.

As you work your way through the firewood, Boadicea nickers and paws impatiently at the dirt.

“I’m sorry girl,” you hear Morgan say. “Been a hard day for us both.”

You snort contemptuously. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he unhooks the horse’s bridle and lifts away the saddle, then starts grooming her with a battered looking brush, brushing with quick, circular motions, going against the grain and fluffing up her coat to dry out her fur with a solicitous measure of care that seems wholly unfitting of a man of his temperament and occupation.

Boadicea makes a low, rumbly noise in the back of her throat that sounds almost like a purr. She dips her head down and chomps at the yellowed prairie grass lining the floor of the outcrop, tearing up mouthfuls with a sedate contentedness that makes you sorely wish you could share in her circumstances.

A sense of fatigue more complete than any you’ve ever felt before settles over you like heavy snow. For the moment, you feel blank and washed out, stripped bare of all pretense.

“Morgan,” you admit. “I don’t have the bonds.”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I know.” He unpacks his canvas roll and yanks free from it the saddle blanket of coarse, undyed wool, then unfurls it over the horse’s back, pulling it over her flank and adjusting the fit. “Figured as much before we left Strawberry.”

“Oh.” At this point, you haven’t even the energy to be surprised. “Huh.”

For a long while, the only sound is that of the knife scraping against bark and the intensifying patter of rain, fat droplets coming down hard and fast.

In a small voice, you ask him, “You’re not really gonna sell me to a brothel, are you?”

He scoffs. “What makes y’think that ?”

“Thought you seemed too… too decent to do something like that.”

“Me? Decent?” Morgan lets out a low, disbelieving whistle. “Thought you’d know better by now.”

He turns partway to face you. In the dim light of the fire only half of him is lit bright enough to see, the rest tapering sharp into dark silhouette. For the lapse of a heartbeat it’s as if all the irreverence and bravado has been ripped away like a sheet of paper, and underneath a viciousness, a suppressed violence that you’ve been too blind to see.

This whole time you’ve been treating him like a dog, when the teeth at your throat are those of a wolf.

Your mouth goes dry and your fingers tighten around the knife in your hand. You stare up at him like a deer caught in his sights — blind panic rising up in your chest and throat like cold water. You swallow hard and try to force it down so you can maintain at least a semblance of control.

“Mr. Morgan…?”

“You ain’t been half as scared of me as you should be,” he says. “holed up with a wanted man, nobody around for miles. Some of the men I’ve run with, they…”

He lets the sentence trail off, the implications clear enough without him saying so. Then he shakes his head, and there is a weariness in him, a kind of cynical exhaustion that ages him far beyond his years. “Girl,” he says. “You keep at this line of work, I guarantee you’ll be dead in a year.”

Morgan slicks his fingers through his wet hair to keep rainwater from dripping into his eyes, and you can see that the hangdog look is back on his face, all his suggested cruelty vanished like smoke. He shifts his attention back to the saddlebags. “No, I ain’t decent,” he continues. He pulls out a tin cup and the individual components of what looks to be a collapsible grill. “But I ain’t so far gone that I’d hurt a woman. Or sell one.”

“But you’d ransom one.”

“Figured it out, did you?” he says. “Thought you might.”

He sits back beside the fire and pieces the grill together, twists its winch tight and positions it over the fire. Then he fills the tin cup with water from the canteen and sets it atop to heat.

“If you don’t hurt women,” you say slowly, your right hand still holding the knife tight as a vise. “Then what’re you going to do to me when you find out I’m not worth ransoming?”

“Doubt that’s gonna be a problem.”

“Why not?”

“Had a brand new Mauser on ya. You know how much those things cost?”

Mentally, you kick yourself. Looks like begging the gunsmith to lend you the best pistol he had in stock has come back to bite you in the ass.

“The gun’s not mine,” you say quickly. “It’s a loan.”

“Those bloomers in your room were real silk. You gonna tell me those were a loan too?”

“You — my bloomers?! Why were you going through my bloomers, you fucking degen—”

Of all the things you’ve accused him of today, somehow this is the one that actually rankles him. “You think I like rummaging through women’s underwear? Had to go through ‘em to get to your billfold.”

You flush hard enough that even the tips of your ears feel hot. “I… I saved up for those bloomers. Not that I’d expect you to understand the importance of—

“That shirt’s custom tailored, ain’t it? Those boots, too. And that’s good leather right there. Far too good for your typical drug mule. Either you come from money, or you got rich friends.”

There’s not much you can rebut here. All you can manage is a lame, “You don’t even know who I am .”

“Got a friend not too far from here who’s plenty familiar with St Denis. He’ll know.” Morgan holds his hand out towards you. “Gimme that knife a second.”

The knife is the only scrap of protection you’ve managed to grab hold of through this entire ordeal. You squeeze its handle tight.

He lets out a short, impatient sigh. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it by now. So c’mere and hand it over.”

You’ve known men who take a certain vicious pleasure in abusing women. Merchants with cringing wives. Clients with kind faces who’d leave working girls battered and bruised. There’s usually a certain mien about them that sets you on edge and that Morgan, brusque as he is, thoroughly lacks.

You brush the wood shavings off your lap and approach him. When you reach his place beside the fire, he tilts his head upwards to meet your eyes, the look on his face calm and expectant. A self-assured confidence that you’ve seen many times before, in the guises of many different men. It sends a familiar shiver of resentment down your spine.

You could cut out his eye right now. You could sink the blade into the thick cord of his neck. And he’d shoot you dead just for trying it — oh, you’ve no doubt of that — but it’d be quick and it’d be painless, and here comes that pathetic urge again, that little whisper coaxing you deeper, deeper towards the welcoming dark —

But equally pathetic is the nagging insistence that always stays your hand, that strident, desperate plea born from bodily instinct. The shared fear of all life from the inevitable. Cowardice — that’s what it is. A cowardice you’ve never been able to shake, a resentful, stubborn tether that you’ve bitten and clawed at over the years, but that still stays looped firm around your neck.

( And what about Mei? What about her son? )

You hand him the knife, and he receives it without incident.

The water in the tin cup is boiling. Morgan slips the point of the knife through the cup’s metal handle, and delicately removes it from the grate to cool. As you stand there, wet and cold and resentful, but not sure what else to do, he saws the top off a can of beans and sets it on the grill to warm, then pulls something out of his satchel and tosses it in your direction.

Somehow, you manage to not fumble the catch. It’s a can of peaches.

“Don’t eat ‘em yet,” he says. “I wanna take a look at your arm first. Roll up your sleeve for me.”

You grimace. One of the pros of tailored shirts is having sleeves that actually fit. “It doesn’t roll up that far.”

“Then I’ll cut it off for you,” he says, putting the knife to the shoulder seam.

“Like hell you will. This is my last decent shirt.”

Morgan shrugs. “No way around it, unless you wanna take it off.”

A shirt nice enough to present a veneer of respectability costs at least $4. Your usual tailor’s fee runs about $2, plus tip. That’s $6 total: the equivalent of two week’s worth of food for Mei and her son. Good food — white rice and cabbage, maybe even a bit of pork belly. Not the bits of offal scrounged from the butcher and wilted produce she’d resort to otherwise.

You hold out your hand and say, “Give me something to cover myself with.”

Your time spent reading Ovid in college would have probably been better served learning to dress like him, you think to yourself as you try and try again to wrap Morgan’s blanket around yourself like a toga.

“I said I’d give you a minute to yourself,” he says. “It’s been more than three now. I’m gonna turn around.”

“Just ten more seconds,” you respond, hastily tucking the corner of the blanket into the horizontal swathe pulled taut across your torso.

The sheer amount of irritation he manages to convey in the sigh he lets out is really quite impressive. In it, you can somehow hear him rolling his eyes.

When you finally let him know you’re ready, he takes one look at you and has to stifle a laugh. “You could’ve just wrapped it around your chest. Woulda been more practical.”

“Oh, excuse me for wanting to preserve what’s left of my dignity,” you snap, keeping one arm pressed against your chest to keep the whole improvised garment from falling apart.

“Alright Caesar, c’mere. Let me see.”

The cut looks like an angry red furrow ploughed through the field of your skin. Its edges are ragged and torn, separated like poorly cut cloth. In between, the wound itself gleams red and raw, with particles and fibers mixed in with blood and indeterminate tissue.

Earlier, when you’d gingerly untied the makeshift bandage and taken off your shirt, you’d taken a silent moment to survey the damage, wondering with horrified fascination if it was perhaps your own muscle you were glimpsing, that particular facet of your body surfacing through its dermal barrier for the first time.

“I’m gonna hold your arm,” Morgan says. “That ok with you?”

You nod, a little dumbfounded that he of all people would have the foresight to ask for permission.

He lifts your arm towards the firelight so he can better examine the wound, and in doing so handles you with more care than you can remember any lover ever giving you. You tell yourself that it’s a rebuke of your own terrible taste than an indication of any extraordinary kindness on his part, then forcibly dredge up the memory of his gun at your back for good measure.

“You’re gonna have a hell of a scar after this,” he says, running his thumb along the unbroken skin below the cut. “No inflammation, which is good. I’ll patch you up the best I can, but we’re still gonna want to check on it every couple hours to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

He gets up to rummage through his saddlebags and returns holding a roll of gauze and a bottle of clear liquid. “You’ll be wanting this,” he says, handing over the latter. “This’ll hurt.”

You take a swig and nearly choke on it. “What the hell is this?”

“Grain alcohol.”

Grimacing, you bring it to your lips again and take in two more mouthfuls of the stuff before handing it back, gulping it down quick to get the burn of it down your throat and off of your tongue.

Morgan hovers his hand over the tin cup to test its temperature. “This needs to cool down first. Gives you some time for that liquor to set in too.”

“I think it’s going to my head already,” you admit.

Heat is spreading from the warm pit of your stomach to your neck and face, branching through your veins as sure as blood. The thud of your heart, previously an imperceptible thing, now asserts itself like a metronome.

He glances over at you and whistles low. “Not much of a drinker, are you?”

“Not usually.” You press your palm against your cheek. “Am I turning red?”

“Gettin’ there.”

It’s strange, settling into this oddly comfortable limbo between cordiality and aggression. Your sustained caution of him is beginning to wane so steadily that you have to consciously remind yourself the only reason he hasn’t shot you dead or at least seriously injured you is due to the fact that you’re worth more intact than otherwise.

“So,” Morgan says. “What’s someone with silk bloomers doin’ all the way out here runnin’ opium to Strawberry?”

“It’s a very long and stupid story.”

“Then give me the short version.”

You stare at the ground as though it’ll offer you some way to condense the sordid affair of your life into a couple easy sentences. He’d asked the question with what sounded like genuine curiosity instead of interrogation, and for once you feel inclined to blurt out the whole of it, like a girl in confession.

You want to tell him about how small the missionaries had seemed when you’d waved at them through the train’s grime-smudged window, not knowing it’d be the last time. The tweed jacket tossed carelessly onto the floor, and the cool, smooth sheen of mahogany against your skin. Feng fishing you out from the dark water lapping at the docks. The money, the opium, the blood.

The sight of the Heartlands for the first time, its blue horizon impossibly vast.

“I owe someone a lot of money,” you say finally, fiddling with a piece of grass between your fingers, tearing into halves and halves and halves. “He said it was either this or the brothel.”

“And you chose this. Runnin’ dope to those poor bastards working the railroads.”

It’s not the first time you’ve heard this particular tone of voice. The kind that implies its speaker’s higher moral ground as it categorically condemns you. But coming from him makes its sting especially hard.

“I don’t force them to buy it,” you say hotly. “It’s not just me that’s at fault here.”

“You ever seen a dope addict? They ain’t got a goddamn choice —”

“Well, d’you know what the average lifespan of a Chinatown whore is?” You don’t bother waiting for a response before plummeting to the answer. “Two years. After that she’s either dead from syphilis or suicide. At least with the opium I’ll die out here in the open and not in some squalid closet of a room that smells like piss and men.”

The liquor is starting to hit hard , and a part of you is fiercely grateful for it. It’s been a long time since you’ve been given an excuse to scream out the inequities of your life to someone, and a man who’s holding you for ransom seems as good a target for your vitriol as any.

“You think that just ‘cause it’d be better for the greater good or some shit, they should get to fuck me over? Is that what you think?”

Morgan seems a little taken aback. “I didn’t say th—”

“I don’t give a shit about the addicts. I don’t give a shit who’s life I’m ruining, as long as it isn’t mine. I don’t… I don’t care about anyone else because I’m a terrible excuse for a human being. That’s what you want to hear me say, right?” At this point, you realize that you’ve transitioned into a hysterical rant, that you don’t properly mean half the things you’re saying, but saying it out loud feels good nonetheless, like sucking venom from a festering wound. “But people like you don’t get to tell me so. Because at least I don’t hold people at fucking gunpoint . I don’t rob banks or kidnap women or beat debtors. I’m not a fucking murderer like you—”

The last statement barely clears the air before the image of the dead O’Driscoll, sprawled across the ground with his belly torn open, flashes through your head. You immediately clap your hand over your mouth, as if doing so will let you swallow back your words.

“No,” Morgan says, “You ain’t a murderer. And that’s why you won’t last long.”

“Good,” you seethe. The hot sting of tears begins prickling again at the corners of your eyes. “I don’t want to.”

He raises his eyebrows and regards you with a vague, detached kind of pity that makes you almost wish he’d just outright condemn you instead, then touches his fingers to the tin cup. “Water’s cool enough now, I think.”

You feel like a petulant child who’s just thrown an ineffectual tantrum. Rendered self-conscious and obedient for the time being, you allow him to secure your elbow with his hand and begin irrigating the wound with warm water.

“Jesus fucking god,” you hiss. You reflexively try and jerk away, but he holds you still and tells you to stop squirming, his grip firm as iron.

It’s the worst pain you’ve felt in years. Like a lick of flame passing over your skin, echoing its progenitor again and again as he washes the cut with a series of short, measured trickles of water, flushing away the combined grime of dried blood, dust, and lint.

“You think this is bad,” he says, unscrewing the bottle of grain alcohol. “Wait’ll I sterilize it.”

If the water was flame, then the alcohol is a streak of molten lava, wet fire soaking through the wound in a rush of white-hot burning pain. You don’t scream — you let out a weak, choking sob so pathetic that you cover your mouth again in an attempt to stifle it.

But you’re a little drunk and your subconscious recognizes this as an excellent excuse to cry, and so it lets flood the tears you’ve kept stoppered up for hours now. You whimper, meet his eyes briefly, then start bawling.

Your crying before hadn’t seemed to bother him, but now he looks almost comically alarmed. He must think it’s the physical pain sending you into hysterics, because he starts trying to comfort you the same way he did Boadicea when he’d led her into the river.

“You’re doin’ good,” he says, cajoling you in a soft, affectionate voice. He sets the bottle of alcohol on the ground and pats you awkwardly on the shoulder. “Just a little more to go, and we’ll be done.”

Another agonizing, scorching splash of fire. He doesn’t chide you this time when you try to pull away.

“Shhhh… I know, I know. Hurts like a bitch, don’t it? I’m gonna give it one more rinse, and — yeah, there we go. You’re alright.”

Morgan wraps the bandage over your arm with deft, practiced fingers, and you wonder briefly how many times he’s had to do this for himself, with no one to soothe him. Though better that than the shoddy job you’d done on him six weeks ago, frantically patching him up with just the barest idea of what you were doing.

He ties off the bandage, then picks the can of peaches off the ground, pops open its metal lid with the tip of his knife and proffers it to you like a peace offering. “Here. You’re hungry, right?”

It’s very hard to cry and eat at the same time. You decide to concentrate on the latter.

After tapering your sobs down to a series of quiet, resentful sniffles, you begin gulping down mouthful after messy mouthful of sliced peach. It’s the first morsel of food you’ve had in over ten hours, and you wolf it down so quickly you hardly taste it. Just an impression of cloying sweetness mixed with something faintly aromatic (cinnamon, you think) lingering as an aftertaste.

The old instincts of hunger are hard to shake off. All decorum thoroughly discarded, you raise the can to your lips and drink down what syrup remains, tilting it nearly perpendicular to the ground to get at the last few drops.

“My god,” Morgan says. “I seen dogs with better manners.”

“If you’d fed me earlier, then I— what’re you doing.”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” he asks. He holds his bandolier in one hand. The other is working at his shirtcollar. “I’m gettin’ the hell outta these wet clothes.”

You clutch at the empty can of peaches as his union suit reveals itself in a revelation of blue. A blue which, you admit to yourself with an uncomfortable surge of appreciation, suits the shade of his eyes extremely well. But when he begins unbuckling his belt, you quickly avert your eyes. “Really?” you ask. The scandalization you probably ought to have felt from the very moment he’d begun undressing finally begins to surface. “Your pants, too?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m keepin’ the union suit on.”

“Are you usually this brazen with the women you kidnap?”

“D’you usually sit around half-naked with the men who kidnap you?” he asks, jabbing his thumb towards your own discarded shirt, which you’d spread out neatly beside the fire to dry.

“That’s different,” you hiss, knowing very well that it isn’t. “I had a medical reason.”

“Yeah, and so do I. I don’t wanna get pneumonia.”

He has a point. You look down at your own sodden trousers, which cling to your skin in a cold, wet embrace, and your internal scale of comfort versus propriety tips decidedly towards the former.

“Turn your back again,” you tell him.

“What for?”

“I’m gonna take my pants off too, and I don’t want you trying to sneak a peek at my bloomers.”

He laughs, then winces and gingerly splays his fingers across his ribs. It’s the first sign of real levity you’ve seen from him. “Oh, that is the last thing on my mind right now, girl.” There’s a tired grin on his face, and were it not for the events of the day, you might have almost found it endearing. “Besides, you ain’t hardly my type.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” you reply, a little offended. “Because I’m not interested in men with terrible taste.”

But he does as he’s told, and when you’re satisfied with the oblique angle of his range of sight, you let the borrowed blanket fall from your shoulders and pull the ribbon securing your braid free. You rake your fingers through your hair until it hangs loose, then gather the ends of it in one hand and twist it tight to wring out the rainwater. Only then do you pull the blanket back over your shoulders and begin to undress.

First, your boots. Then the knee-length woolen socks, which have left their cable-knit weave as an imprint on your skin. After glancing at him one more time to make sure his face is turned discreetly away, you unbuckle your belt and wriggle your way out of your trousers. It takes some maneuvering, and some thoroughly indecent posturing, to finally get them off. You leave your cotton bloomers on, figuring that the warmth of the fire will dry the thin material soon enough.

When you look back at Morgan, you find that he’s since turned back towards you. Not to gawk, but to get a better look at his own wounds in the firelight.

His union suit is half-unbuttoned. Most of his bare chest is visible, and along with it, the bruises from the ricocheted bullet. A mottle of blue and violet, like a spill of ink that radiates from the negative imprint of the flask that took the impact in his place. And right below it, a glimpse of your own handiwork.

When you’d first found him, the cut had spanned diagonal across his torso, trailing shallow from his chest and biting deep near the ridge of his hip. Most of it’s healed over since, but the edges are angry and inflamed still, and you can see the fading marks of your inexpert stitches laid like railroad tracks over the land of his skin.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t looked at you,” Morgan says. He probes gently at an indigo patch and inhales sharply. “Too busy lickin’ my own wounds.”

If you look closer, you can see the remnants of multiple scuffs and scratches. A history of violence storied across his body, told in the pale lettering of scars, many of them recent. An unwelcome pang of guilt settles itself low in your belly. It looks like he’s been on the road for a while, healing sporadically through long stretches of hard journeying. Hard journeying made worse, no doubt, by your theft of his bonds.

“You… uh. You want me to keep carving off wet bark?”

“Nah,” he says distractedly, still trying to determine the depth of the damage left behind. “Should be fine leavin’ the rest of it to dry out by the fire.”

You draw the blanket tighter around your shoulders, then root around your head for something, anything to talk about. Anything to get this burgeoning sympathy for Arthur Morgan out of your head.

“Your friend in St Denis,” you say finally. “He’s not gonna know much about me if he doesn’t speak Chinese.”

Morgan absentmindedly scratches his chin as he begins buttoning his union suit back up. “Wouldn’t put it past him. I know he’s had dealings with ‘em in the past.”

Something clicks in the back of your head. Long overdue recognition like puzzle pieces fitting together. “What’s his name?”

“Josiah,” he says.

“Josiah,” you echo. The spark of some fit of emotion is beginning to rise in your throat. “Josiah… Trelawney?”

His bewildered face is enough to confirm your suspicions. Relief, anger, confusion — all of them flood you at once with such intensity that you have to take a moment to squeeze your eyes shut. When you open them, you take a deep breath and swallow hard. “Josiah Trelawney’s the son of a bitch I sold your bonds to.”

———

Massive thanks to @reddeaddufus for editing not only this chapter, but the entirety of this fic. This whole thing would be a lot more disjointed if it weren't for her.

Definitely give her fic Red Dead Pursuit a look. The main character is extremely compelling, the plot is fast-paced, and the porn is A+. Her writing style is also a delight to read.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan/reader #arthur morgan/oc #fic #red dead redemption #rdr2 #my work #talking bird

11 notes · View notes

bonegender · 3 years

Text

Nighthawks

This is for the @countdowntotwinpeaks WONDERFULXSTRANGE Secret Exchange! This fic specifically was made for @cerealninjakat who asked for Dale Cooper and Laura Palmer having coffee together. They have a feeling they met before, or maybe they haven't. If you would like to see the original fic in its original color block formatting, there is a link to the doc HERE

CONTENT WARNINGS: CSA mention, Underage Sex mention, Main Character Death Implied, Timeline Divergence, Body Horror, Psychological Horror

The smell of coffee was pungent, and stinging. That acidic aroma which rose from an industrial maker practically took over the entire diner. As he stood in the breezeway, Cooper relished in the scent so familiar, so calming and inviting. He allowed himself to get lost in the way it mingled with the undercurrent of a greasy spoon breakfast. The rich, sharp scent of roasted beans mellowed out with the introduction of butter, eggs, toast and bacon. Beyond that was the wispy trails of cigarettes gone by that clung to the nostrils. It was utterly invigorating. This was the thing he looked forward to the most when waking up; a nice hot meal and hopefully, a good cup of coffee.

Dale Cooper returned to himself after his momentary journey on the Smell Express, and realized that he had been standing in the entrance of the diner for a little bit longer than he anticipated. He excused himself, pressing further on into the establishment, eager to find a seat. His stomach whined, just as eager to be filled with the sensory journey he had gotten lost in just moments ago. He knew how good it would feel to have a stomach full of America’s Finest, especially after a long night of work. He deserved it, he told himself. All he had to do was just find himself a seat.

Judging by the morning rush, that was a job easier said than done. All of the booths had been taken up, understandably, by families and couples. There were a few like himself that simply wanted some time alone; to distance themselves from the rest of the patrons. There were times, however, that he couldn’t help but feel guilty for taking a whole booth as a single occupant, but Cooper always had an excuse at the ready. No one could say he wasn’t waiting for someone. No one could say whether or not that someone never arrived, and therefore left him to enjoy his meal all alone. Regardless, there would be no reason for such excuses that morning, it seemed. He would just have to see if there was a seat at the bar.

Miraculously, there was. Sitting all by her lonesome was a girl - no, a young woman - of at most eight-teen years of age. She sat, cross-legged, painted nails tapping the surface of the diner bar-top as she mulled over the colorful menu full of delicious pictures of food. Her golden blonde hair curled around her face and shoulders, almost creating a makeshift halo around her head. Lost in her thoughts, she twirled her index finger in her locks only to tuck some of her strands of hair behind her right ear. She knew she wanted a cup of coffee since it was in the morning just before school, but she was having a hard time deciding what, and if, she actually wanted something to eat. The buzz from last night still clung to her insides, and the burn in her nose could be felt all the way to the back of her throat.

It was then that she noticed someone approaching her. Laura turned her head, bringing her torso with it as she looked at the oncoming presence. The motion caused her hair to sway, knocking it loose from the ear she had just pinned it back with. Her blue eyes locked onto the man and in an instant what hackles she was about to raise softened. This man wasn’t too bad to look at, and his smile could beat the sun out in a competition for the brightest thing that morning. She adjusted her posture, leaning back a little and offering her own smile in return.

“Good morning.” She said, voice slightly raspy from just having woken up not too long ago.

“Good morning to you, miss.” He said in return, voice smooth and dark like a hot cup of coffee.

“Laura.” She insisted, tucking her hair back behind her ear from where it had fallen out, “My name is Laura.”

“Dale Cooper.” He said, placing his hand on the empty bar stool beside her, “Laura, is it alright if I sit next to you?”

“Sure thing Mr. Cooper.” And with that, Dale Cooper sat next to Laura Palmer at the diner bar. Something about it felt strange, yet familiar. It was almost dreamlike the way their exchange had went. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but there was something disquieting about their meeting. Perhaps it was the shift in her body language, or the way she fidgeted with the hemline of her tweed skirt.

“It’s Agent Cooper, actually.” He spoke up, pulling his eyes away from her kneecaps. He reached inside of his comically large trenchcoat to pull out his official badge, “Special Agent Dale Cooper, at your service.”

It took everything in Laura’s body to keep her from letting out a laugh. Special Agent? Was this guy really part of the FBI? A very real look of ‘oh shit’ graced her eyebrows as he actually produced a badge and identification. He offered it to her, and as she took it in her hands to feel it over and look at the picture, Dale took the opportunity to sit down and make himself comfortable. Laura studied the photo and sure enough the overgrown boy scout was set right there next to her. Despite her best efforts, she did let out something of a breath of laughter as she handed back his badge.

“Very nice to meet you, Mr. Special Agent.” Cooper laughed. What a nice laugh it was, thought Laura. A laugh that made you want to put your walls down. A laugh that felt like a childhood friend.

The two patrons settled in together at the diner bartop. Cooper took off his oversized overcoat and folded it gently so he could tuck it onto his lap for safe keeping. He looked far more professional with that silly thing off, Laura mused to herself. The way his suit was tailored perfectly to his shape almost made him look like a cartoon depiction of an FBI agent. A true Man In Black, with slicked back hair and serious brows. Well, mostly serious. Agent Cooper’s brow was a bit furrowed as he stared at the menu, but otherwise this man didn’t look like he could hurt a fly.

That, or a very vulnerable teenage girl.

“What makes you so special, Special Agent?” Laura probed, placing her manicured hands flat on her menu.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Laura.” Cooper said rather matter-of-factly. He then flagged down a member of the waitstaff, ordering a coffee to buy himself more time with the menu, “But what I can tell you is that it’s very special.” A mischievous grin smoothed along his lips, and that alone was good enough for Laura. At least for now.

Beyond his smile however, the special agent felt that persistent air of uncertainty. Did he know her from somewhere? Was she a missing persons case? He tried to get a better look at her without pointedly staring, but that was a rather difficult feat when you were mere inches from another person. His dark brown eyes watched as Laura brought her gentle, delicate, and soft hands around the slightly yellowed ceramic coffee mug. He followed the movement from the bartop, watching almost in slow motion as the white touched the healthy pink of her lips, which was topped with a thin veneer of lip gloss.

The air is heavy with the must of ancient, blood-red curtains. It almost suffocates. Were it not for the grand expanse of zig-zag, black and white flooring, the room would for sure be practically inhabitable. He swallows. He grips the arms of a black velvet arm chair. He squints from the harsh, unyielding light that surrounds him. There is music in the air. A saxophone breaks out against the stifling aura in an attempt to rouse him. Where is he?

A woman sits across from him. Blonde. Beautiful. Bewildering. He knows her. She knows him. Like a ghost, she crosses the floor to embrace him. Her lips: red. Her touch: gentle and familiar. An old friend. She smells of a perfume older than her. He closes his eyes as their lips meet.

The two of them stared at each other, confused. Something had just happened that they had no control over. What was that just now? They asked each other the question with only their eyes. Was it real?

Whatever it was, Laura kind of liked it. Maybe they were just thinking the same thing? Maybe he wanted her just as much as she wanted him. Her cheeks flushed with color as she remembered the touch from just moments ago. This wouldn’t be the first time she had made a bad decision with an older man, and at least this one seemed much nicer than the others.

Cooper on the other hand turned away. He closed his eyes as he focused on the smell of coffee and the din of restaurant chatter. He gripped the fabric of his trousers, trying to remember the heavy air from that place so strange. Was it a vision? Why had Laura been there? What made them act that way? At this point he knew she was much too young for him to be sharing such intimate touches with her. He knew that she was thinking about this all in an inappropriate light. He had been there, in her shoes, when he was younger. Hot, young, eager to make stupid decisions just to feel something. Eager to mess with others' lives to take back some sense of control.

They were never really in control, were they?

“Hey, it’s okay.” Laura spoke, thus breaking the tension between them ever so slightly. Her smile took the spot of the brightest thing in the room, her eyes soft and understanding, “I get stared at by tons of guys. I’m kind of used to it by now.” It was true. Laura knew she was beautiful. She got compliments all the time on her looks, her hair, her smile. It was not a wonder how she became prom queen. Everyone in the town seemed to love her, or at the very least envy her. She wasn’t quite sure why anyone would envy her, but then again no one really knew who she was. No one in the town, save for those she dealt with, really knew what kind of girl she was.

Please, she thought, please like me. You’re one of the few people I want to like me.

Cooper dared to look at her once again, the shame of images from moments past still lingering on his mind and on his lips. His dark brows furrowed, mouth drawing to a stern line as he gingerly shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” He started, looking her square in the eye. “I don’t know what came over me. My behavior was inappropriate for someone your age, and someone my age should know better.” The agent looked around the diner, hoping that maybe there was another place he could move to. He knew what just happened between them was a faux pas, and perhaps the only way to make up for that was to put some distance between them. It wasn’t her fault, none of this was, but there was something awfully wrong about this whole interaction. He still couldn’t shake the feeling of the lingering premonition. Was it a premonition?

Laura’s stomach practically lurched. Had she done something wrong? There was no shame in looking at someone beautiful, right? Whatever happened moments ago was okay so long as she liked it, right? So long as she actually wanted it? As Cooper looked away, she bit her bottom lip with anxiety. He was going to leave her. She desperately wanted him to stay. For whatever reason, her heart ached at the very thought of having to sit by herself again. Fueled by the sinking feeling of rejection, the young woman reached out to the Special Agent. Her slender hand wrapped neatly around the wrist of his left hand and in an instant the diner disappeared.

The roles are reversed. His hand is around her wrist. Beneath her fingernail lies an important clue. She’s lying down on a table, naked and cold. The light above them flickers and Sheriff Harry Truman sits to her right. Where was she? Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she breathe? She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to be anywhere but here.

Suddenly, it’s very dark. She’s walking through the woods by herself, late at night. She’s crying, and alone. Was she crying from her vision before? Or was it something yet to come? All she knows is that she wants to go home. She wants to be in her bed, safe from the situation she found herself in. How was she supposed to know where anything was, let alone her home?

“We’re going home.” He says, his face full of determination. She doesn’t understand, but he must know. Cooper’s hand is outstretched, begging for her to take it. The tips of his fingers touch the inside of her palm.

Just as she is about to give up, she sees him. Special Agent Dale Cooper. What was he doing here? Why did he look so old? Why did she trust him?

She screams.

It took a few seconds for them to realize that they were both standing. Tears were streaming down Laura’s face as she finally came to her senses. Her hands instinctively flexed, curling and unfurling before taking her palms to wipe away the remaining tears from her cheeks. Her cheeks were now flushed with embarrassment as she knew they were making complete fools of themselves in front of so many people. What had gotten into her? Why was she acting like this? What were those visions? Tentatively, Laura dared to look around at the other people that shared the restaurant with them.

No one seemed to notice. Not a single other patron stopped to look, make a snide comment or step in to intervene. These people were a soulless audience, looking everywhere but at them. For a moment, she was awestruck. Surely they had heard her scream. Surely they were concerned for a pretty girl crying. Surely…

It was then that Laura began to understand.

Cooper had a sneaking suspicion that something was awry, but this for sure solidified it. He tried to remember some of the things Gordon and Jefferies had told him about situations like this. Shared visions weren’t unheard of, and perhaps that was what he had felt from her. Maybe she was a special case like he was? Did she dream like he did? The diner around him became nothing more than a backdrop as all of his attention shifted to making sure Laura stayed grounded.

“It’s okay Laura.” He spoke with certainty, “You’re not there anymore. You’re here, in this diner with me.” Cooper offered a reaffirming smile, but he was met with a look of soft incredulity. There were more tears budding in the corners of her uncertain blue eyes, and her brows furrowed in a way he couldn’t quite discern. He reached out for her, hoping to give her something solid to hold onto. Just as his hands made contact, a look of realization and acceptance flashed on Laura’s young face.

Once again they are in that room with the red curtains. Laura Palmer sits in the black velvet chair with Dale Cooper at her side. She understands. Everything has become illuminated as they stare into each other's eyes. Above them is an angel, dressed in white. Her face is serene.

Laughter fills the room. Tears fall onto a black dress.

“I have to go now.”

The words hit Dale like a bullet to the gut. He felt sadness, guilt, uncertainty, but most of all he felt panic. Something was ending. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it was a bitter end to something far beyond just their brief meeting here. He tried to say something, anything, but before any of the words could come out he felt the warm caress of her arms around him. Laura tucked her head against his shoulder, squeezing him with love and fear. He could feel her arms shaking, trying to hold on to him. He folded, blanketing her in the smell of aftershave and dry cleaning.

They wept.

“Please,” Cooper begged, his voice fragile and afraid, “Please, don’t go.” He tried to hold on to her but despite his best effort she slipped from his grasp. Laura, once such a young looking girl pretending to be grown, was now someone with knowledge beyond her years, beyond comprehension. Once again, she smiled at Cooper and he could feel his heart shatter like a mug against the floor.

“I’m going to be late.” She told him.

The sounds of the diner started to fade away. The clinking of plates, subtle conversations and echoing songs from the jukebox became nothing more than faint memories as Dale could do nothing but watch her go. Her golden blonde hair flowed behind her almost as if she were floating instead of walking. It was as if raindrops were falling onto sidewalk chalk, washing away the bright colors and erasing what they had created. Dale realized far too late that he was at the end of a dream. What questions he had now were given answers. A dream. The faceless patrons of the diner smiled at him as they continued to melt into his subconscious.

Dale took a final look back at where he and Laura had been seated. As expected, he saw both of their mugs sitting abandoned. Just as Cooper felt himself slip completely from the dream, a featureless waitress set down a plate of food he never ordered. Viscous, yellow, pallid and abhorrent, the image mocked him as he fell from the scene.

Special Agent Dale Cooper woke, staring at his dark ceiling. He stayed that way for several minutes, holding onto the slurry of emotions stirring in his gut. Laura. He repeated her name in his mind, eager not to forget it. She had to be important.

Instinctively, he reached over to his bedside table, fishing around for something he knew was there. The plastic felt comfortable in his hand. With a heavy sigh, he brought the tape recorder close to his face so that he could drearily recall his journey through the realm of sleep. With a simple click of a button, the mechanical whir of the tape touched his ears in the early morning silence.

“Diane," He croaked, voice peeling open the door to his tired mind, "It's early in the morning, February the 24th. I just had the strangest dream.”

#wonderfulxstrange #cerealninjakat #twin peaks #dale cooper #laura palmer #i wanted to do fancy color blocking but #apparently interacting between mobile and PC obliterates my formatting and moves shit around #SO #you get this instead.#the original google doc has color blocking for certain parts but whatever aslkdjlkfj

10 notes · View notes