#so we are back to only understanding the motion blur transition

[flimsy-spine]

Standing inbetween you, and anyone who thinks they can hurt you, is exactly where I wanna be standing.

[wmuquinnfabray]

BRING IT ON! 🏆

CHEERIO MANDATORY TRY OUTS @wmu-hub LOCATION: WMU Auditorium TIME: 8:00am

"Good morning Coach Sue. It's good to be here. I'll get right into it so I don't waist your time, I know you need to get through the rest of the team. If you'd like my reasoning for wanting to be on the Cheerios that's pretty simple. Sure the attentions nice, and I'd be lying if I said the uniform didn't look amazing on me. But at the end of the day those are only bonuses, and I could easily give those up if necessary. The real reason I want on this team is because I want to win. And not just at some local level, no I want to take this team to the National Championships. I want to dominate, to crush anyone in our way and watch our team stand miles above the competition because we're just that good."

"I was raised to be a winner Coach Sue. The Fabray's don't just do things because we feel like it, or because we think it looks fun. An exemplary work ethic was pounded into me from a young age, and the idea of being lazy isn't something I'm capable of. We understand the need to win, we have an inner ferocity and drive that comes ingrained in our competitive nature. We've got it in spades Coach Sue. I've got it in spades."

"I've been a cheerleader since my Freshman year of High School. I lead my High School team to victory four years in a row, earning State and National Championships back to back. Just last year I was on your winning team. So hearing I was cut was quite the shock, but understanding you as a Coach I know that there's a reason. You only want the best, you want a team who is eager and willing to do whatever it takes to stay on the team. That meant there was no time to get caught up in feelings. 30 second cry session not included. No I needed to strap in and get ready to prove myself. So I'm here to show you that I have what it takes."

Without a moments hesitation Quinn turned towards the wide floor of cheer matts. What would normally be blue roll mats were the schools iconic red color. As her stark white cheer shoes stepped onto the floor the upbeat music began to fill the auditorium with a heavy beat and an enthusiastic tempo. In an instant her body was moving, the motions like second nature to her as she began to perform an amalgamation of the previous years routine combined with some of her own choreography. The motions were sharp and clean, each movement seamless as she transitioned over the floor to her starting place in the corner for her tumbling pass.

She was determined to show Coach Sue her versatility and strengths when it came to all aspects of cheer. Taking a deep breathe to calm her nerves before taking off, her feet driving off the ground as she began her tumbling pass. A front handspring, step out, round of backhand spring, step out, round off front punch, back handspring, step out, punch front, layout to double full. Her movements carried her from one corner of the large competition floor to the opposite and back again. Each new addition to the pass made it harder and harder, her moment never slowing though as she used each pass to fuel the proceeding one until with a finality she landed in her starting position.

Turning her head to the side Quinn nods towards her stunt group who had been waiting for her que like the good soldiers she'd trained them to be. They moved in a tight clean across the floor before getting into position. Another blur of tumbling as she did a back handspring landing in a hand stand within the confines of her bases. From there they did a pop through to the top where she pulled a heel stretch. Leg extended high along her body, toe pointed to the sky before she was quickly popped switching legs and immediately transitioning into a Scorpion. With an added flourish of pulling the position even higher to emphasize her flexibility she gave a wink before being tossed into the air for a double down. Her bases catching her cleanly before popping her out right as the music came to an end.

Holding stock still for a beat longer she breathes steadily through her nose. Not making any move to relax until it's clear that she has finished her routine. Another beat passed and soon her bases have exited to the hallway to await their own auditions, meanwhile Quinn moved forward to approach the front of the floor to stand at attention for the Coach. She was just about ready to ask if there was anything else Coach Sue might like to see before a thought came to her. Before she could think better of it, she spoke up. "Oh and as for the Co-Head position, I'm ready to fight for that spot. So put me in the ring Coach. I'll take on anyone for that right, even my own Sister."

[deepseavibez]

Why So Serious? || MYG

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-> Picture Source - Pinterest

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Why So Serious? [Yoongi x Reader]

Prompt - @casnextdoor

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Genre - Fluff; Comfort; Dad!Yoongi; Mom!Y/n; Drabble;

Summary - Why is your babygirl crying? And what can Daddy Yoongi do to make it better.

🎶- People - Agust D

Warning - Crying; Bad feelings(implied); Confused parents (at first)

Word Count - 1.7k

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'No.' You looked up at the short answer. Four year old tempers were a thing, you understood that but your baby girl hadn't said no to picking up her toys before.

After playtime Mina usually cleaned up after herself, the task relatively easy for her, something like a game to put everything in its place in the shortest time she could.

You believed she got it from her father, because there was no way the trait came from you. You relished in your organized chaos, if it felt like it should be there it would stay there. You would go as far as capping your pens but they were never in their holders, just strewn about your desk, the closest color to your mood for the day.

Stretching your arms out along the island where you were chopping up pieces of apple for a midday snack you gave your toddler your full attention.

'But your LEGOs are all over Minnie, and you finished playing with them this morning,' you tried to sound as gentle as possible - an invitation for an explanation.

'I don't want to.' She shook her head back and forth, no playfulness present, mouth a stubborn line, as if that answer was good enough.

'Mina, those are your toys, you played with them, would it be fair for Mommy to clean up after you?'

Shaking her head in response she looked down and away from you, twiddling with the ears of the giraffe teddy in her hand.

You gave her a minute to move, to respond, each second of it hiking up your level of annoyance.

'I won't ask again, Mina.' Your voice was stern now, patience worn thin.

'No, Mommy, No!' She cried out, and ran out of the room toward Yoongi's study.

'Mina,' you dragged out, following swiftly after her.

You found Yoongi at his desk, phone at his ear, he looked at you and motioned with his eyes toward the tuft of hair peeking out from between his legs.

Leaning on the door you watched her cry, something in you tugging at your chest in frustration, because all you wanted was for her to listen, but you also didn’t want her to cry. She was never like this.

'-- I'll email them by tomorrow, yeah sure, just text me. We can set up a meeting to discuss the list.' Ending his call, Yoongi discarded his phone immediately and reached between his legs to settle his babygirl on his lap.

The transition would amuse you on any other day, the serious, intimidating Min Yoongi, softening his lips, his eyes, using gentle fingers against Mina's cheeks to wipe away her tears.

'What is my pretty girl crying about huh,' he asked, as he tried to make her face him.

Shaking her head in refusal to answer, he looked up at you, a camouflaged seriousness in his eyes, meant only for you.

'She refuses to pick up her LEGOs, told me no, and when I asked her again she ran out of the room crying.' Your voice sounded even but just by looking at you Yoongi could see, you were unnerved. The tantrum uncharted territory, especially for a task carried out so many times before.

'Daddy!' You had barely explained before she burst into tears again, falling into his chest, hiding her face from view.

Holding her close and patting her head tenderly he looked up at you in alarm, 'Why is she-, ' he mouthed at you.

'I don't know,' you mouthed back, shrugging your shoulders in emphasis, your expression bewildered.

Staring ahead for a few seconds, he contemplated before his eyebrows smoothed out, a realization crossed his face, as he decided to do something.

Interest piqued, you straightened up, and watched him, ready to jump in and follow his lead.

Your crying four year old still bawled her eyes out, hiccups coming from her chest, her throat would be ouchy later, you thought in concern.

‘Shh, baby, shh, you aren't in trouble, but you need to tell Daddy why you won’t clean up your toys.’ His voice was soft and coaxing as he gradually pulled her back to look at him. Grabbing tissues from the box he had near his desk for situations like sticky fingers and leaky noses, he wiped her tears and her small nose.

Yoongi, even now, in a situation like this had you in a pile of mush. He was not outwardly one for softness, especially with his blunt nature and his solid hands, but here he was gingerly running his fingers through Mina’s hair and setting it as he cooed at her to stop crying, to listen to Daddy.

Her voice hoarse from crying so hard she answered him, ‘I don't feel okay daddy.’

‘Are you hungry?’ Yoongi prompted, discarding the tissues in the wastebin, his hand now at her back and waist, holding her up, and lowering his head with a sulky expression to match hers.

With a shake of her head, she rubbed at her eye, he tilted his head to the side, and prompted again. ‘Are you tired? We could nap, you and I together, Mommy too.’

Another shake of her head, this time her frown prominent and lip quivering, as if ready to burst into another set of tears.

‘Did mommy do or say something bad to you,’ he asked in a whisper, talking her into telling him a secret.

Your eyes widened at the question, panicking internally in resistance. What was that supposed to mean? As if there were eyes at the back of his head, he held up his hand, a clear sign to wait.

Mina shook her head hard, now in a state, more confusion than ever clouding her features as she battled not to cry. ‘It feels bad, Daddy, I don’t like it and it won’t go away.’

‘Is it telling you to be mean to Mommy?’ Yoongi asked as she grabbed onto his shirt again, ready to hide away.

‘It just feels icky,’ she answered wetly, looking over at you her eyes widened momentarily ‘Mommy don't cry. Daddy I made Mommy cry,’ she cried out in desperation.

Your eyes blurred with unshed tears at your baby’s voice, holding a hand to your mouth you kept as quiet as possible. Yoongi had this.

Yoongi swallowed hard at his daughter's face, his protective instincts flaring, but this was one boogeyman he needed her to fight with him.

‘Baby,’ he used another tissue to wipe up the fresh tears. Moving the keyboard aside, he sat her up on his desk in front of him so she could lay her head on his shoulder and he could rub her back. ‘Sometimes Mina, we feel bad inside, and we don't know what to do about it.’ His voice was smooth as he explained, no indication that he had been affected. ‘It tells us to be mean, because we don't know what we’re really feeling and it's okay baby, because Mommy and Daddy feel it too, and we’re here for you. We love you.’’

‘Do you think it's okay to be mean to mommy.’ He was so patient about it as he asked her and it left you in awe as he made her understand.

‘No,’ the word muffled as half her face was squished on her father’s shoulder.

‘No it isn't, baby, and we can't help you if you don't tell us what's wrong.’ Pulling back he smiled softly, her cheeks puffed up and blotchy, eyes shiny but without tears. ‘If you told mummy you were feeling icky, she would have tried to help, right?’

She nodded enthusiastically at that. ‘Mommy always helps me.’

Your heart soared at the statement as you watched the energy come back to your Mina.

‘There's my girl,’ Yoongi smirked as he pinched her nose and she scrunched up her face, at the action. ‘So from now on, when you feel like this again, you can tell Mommy or Daddy and we can help you and take care of you.’ Holding out his pinky finger, she smiled as she curled her small pinky finger around his - she knew we took pinky promises very seriously.

‘Come on, let's go give mummy a hug and tell her you're sorry.’ She reached up her hands to be picked up as he stood from his office chair.

Mina reached out for you as Yoongi carried her towards you and you plucked her easily from him. Her hands immediately wrapped around your neck and she placed a wet kiss on your cheek.

‘I'm sorry for being meany mommy.’

‘It's okay baby,’ rocking her back and forth, you closed your eyes at the feel of your small human in your arms, a certain escape, as if everything in the world mattered a little less as long as she was okay. ‘Mommy feels bad too sometimes, and you know what daddy does?’ You prompted excitedly.

She leaned back to look at you, her cheeks puffy, lips pouting, as she listened to you.

‘Daddy gives me lots of cuddles and kisses me here and here and here and here,’ you placed kisses on her cheeks and forehead and nose, ‘and he gives me food, and chocolate and anything else I want.’

Giggling now, your chest ached at her happiness, a sweet ache, her importance beyond anything she could imagine.

‘Did you know Daddy got me Gloss when I felt really really bad.’

‘Big white gloss,’ she motioned with her hands, her eyes full of wonderment.

‘Yep,’ you popped the ‘p’. ‘Big white gloss,’ your own excitement palpable at the mention of the white teddy bear on your bed, his size slightly bigger than her form.

‘Mommy,’ she motioned you forward with her hand and you leaned closer to her, ‘Can daddy get me a gloss too?’ She told you in your ear.

Her very loud whisper had you turning your attention to the man who now leaned against the wall and watched the interaction.

He smiled his gummy smile as wrapped his arms around both of you and answered her softly, ‘Anything for you Minnie.’

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[bellygunnr]

Into a Parallel Mirror

Your name is Frederic Ellsworth. You live on the planet Ballast and have been an elementary school teacher for over twenty years. You have just finished the first week of the school year and find yourself in the grocery store, perusing the bakery section for a celebratory cake. It's not your own feats you're celebrating, however.

It's your daughter's. She's just turned eleven and handled the transition between summer and school flawlessly. It's the least you could do to make her feel seen-- sweets were a rarity in your home, as both you and your wife had difficulty processing them, but exceptions could always be made. You think about her favorite flavors. Chocolate or red velvet. Sometimes, she even liked carrot cake.

You ease yourself toward the glass display, overly conscious of the space you take up in relation to everything else. Your wheelchair of choice is kind of bulky, these aisles unfortunately uneven. You come to a rest just in front of the cakes. They range from simple to elaborate to exotic, threatening to overwhelm your senses with the sheer variety.

At the very least, you can see cakes that might be German chocolate or Black Forest cakes. The name tags are a blur from this angle. You stretch out of your wheelchair to ring the bell atop the counter. The second you spot movement in the back, you reach for the pen and notepad in your bag-- and come up empty.

You just manage to mask your frustration as the employee comes to assist you. They're young, probably a teenager. They look as exhausted as you feel, but are still focusing on you intently.

You mime writing with pencil and paper, then typing on a commpad when they draw a blank expression.

"I'm sorry, sir," they say, even as comprehension dawns in their eyes. "We don't have anything to write with for you..."

Whatever they were about to say next dies on their lips, their head turning toward something behind you. You frown in consternation as a looming figure takes up your periphery, and you turn your head, only to come face to face with someone's torso. You crane your neck just to see the largest person you've ever seen standing beside you. You don't even notice their companion sidling up on their opposite side.

For a long time, it's just you, and the tallest man alive, because the cashier also cannot stop looking between you two, desperate for some kind of explanation.

The man is tall and broad and musclebound. He seems to become conscious of the intense scrutiny and cowers, his teeth clicking together audibly.

(You're surely not meant to see it, but the man takes his companion's hand into his own and squeezes.)

You watch the man and baker exchange words you can't understand. You cross your arms and wait. It doesn't take you long to get fed up and wave them down, turning the movements into clear sign language.

Something in the tall man changes. He signs back.

"I have a commpad, but I can also translate for you," the man signs.

(He's looking everywhere but you. His hair is coal black with greying whorls. There's a mole on his nose, lost among the faded freckles.)

"Could you translate, please? Also, I can't hear, so if you could..."

"Yes," the man says.

There's a lull as they talk amongst themselves. Then,

"What are you looking for, sir?" The man inquires of you.

"I'd like to buy one of the German chocolate cakes. The small one, on the top," you say, pointing to said cake.

(The man's companion is staring at you.)

(It's unsettling.)

Words must have been said because when you key back in, there's a bagged cake waiting for you and a bill paid by the other man. You look up at him incredulously.

"You're far too generous," you say sharply.

"It's the least I could do. Trust me," the man practically snaps back.

(They repeat 'trust me' four or five times. They have big scarred hands.)

You share a look with the employee as the giant man departs. He carries himself stiffly, robotically, like a wind-up toy soldier.

For some reason, you feel like vomiting.

--

The air outside is… cold. Or maybe he’s just sweating and the hot air becomes cooled through that process. Maybe his heart is racing and his brain is running the entire course of his human existence, starting at Day One. Six years old. Surrounded by strangers. Confused, tired, lonely, wanting.

He had been certain that he had forgotten that day. Replaced it with another-- another stained with pain, with his body stretched out, his neck burning, eyes aching. But he was surrounded by friends and it was okay and there was John, always, and Kelly, Linda, Sam--

Back to Reach, to the caves, to the DIs in exoskeletons and the fireteams in all-black suits that they’d stolen. Back to Reach, cold and freezing and wandering the forest, clad in nothing but tracksuits, boots, and ripped shreds of map. 

Six years old. Eight years. Ten, twelve, fourteen.

Fifteen.

“Rebels. Insurrectionists. It was-- it was insurrectionists that told me-- did you know they ask us, sometimes? When the truth came out, about-- you remember? Maybe not, I wasn’t supposed to see it.”

Fred turns on his heel. There’s a wind rushing through the easy streets of the town, warm and airy. He makes a sweeping motion with his arm, sharp and controlled. Upon seeing Veta, he snaps his arm back to his side.

His expression is…

“I don’t-- know what you’re talking about,” Veta says. “Fred.”

Fred settles abruptly. His eyes, wild moments ago, dim, the color settling back on the murky green-blue, blue-green. His face falls and his posture loosen. He peers down at Veta blankly. 

“Right, sorry,” Fred says, enunciating his words clearly. “I lost it. I…”

“Fred,” Veta repeats. “Do you want to go hiking?”

His eyebrows furrow, caught off guard. He stays still as Veta reaches for his clenched fist, stays still as her fingers pry his knuckles away from his thigh, opens up his hand and slides their palms together. She squeezes once.

He squeezes back, twice.

“...Veta,” Fred says weakly. “I think I do want to go hiking.”

She pats him roughly on the upper arm, flashing a grin that’s braver than she feels. None too gently, she shoves him into moving. They fall into step together still fiercely entwined. Three years they’d made that code.

She’s glad he still remembers.

“Good. I’ve heard good things about the trails here, Fred,” Veta says with a smile.

[breathingwysteria]

Hyperbole & A Half; Illustrated Novels as Gateways to More Traditional Comics

Hyperbole and a Half, autobiographical webcomic blog, turned illustrated novel; One! Hundred! Demons!, autobiographical comic compilation of personal “demons;” both detail the funny, heartwarming, and often ugly parts of the human experience as they unfold for each author as an individual. Both are told in short story form, with an intra-homodiagetic narrator (the author serves as both narrator and active character), accompanied by illustrated panels that invoke a sense of physical and emotional movement that the reader can easily conceptualize. With so many major similarities, why does each work receive such different classifications? What makes a comic a comic and not an illustrated novel? How do these seemingly disparate definitions affect the way we read them? Can illustrated novels be considered gateway materials to comics? I think so. Before we jump into that exact why, let’s look at the defining characteristics of comics.

Text, images, and some semblance of sequential flow in time and space are the most major markers of comics, utilized throughout history, found in ancient work like Egyptian tomb paintings all the way up to modern comics and manga. Speech bubbles erupt from the mouths of static character images, narration is often delineated by straight-lined boxes and a change in tone, real movement through space and time happens in the empty “gutters” between panels. Although illustrated novels and comics are constructed differently, they are still processed in the brain in fundamentally the same way. Children’s literacy researcher, Evelyn Arizpe, notes that when reading illustrated stories, regardless of form (comics or traditional storybooks), “the eye moves between one part of the picture and another, piecing together the image like a puzzle.” If picture books and comics are processed in the brain in the same way, why are they considered different mediums? Linguist and cognitive scientist, Neil Cohn, applies his academic specialties to comics, attributing the difference to things like panel placement and what he calls “navigational structure,” the direction our eyes track when piecing images in a comic together to create a sense of coherence when reading.

Traditional storybooks, unlike comics, typically utilize one image per page to convey everything from character relationships to arrested motion; comics achieve a more fluid and nuanced version of this by using panels as snapshots or windows into character worlds. Where then does the illustrated novel fall between these two states, and where does Hyperbole and a Half land? Illustrated novels rely more heavily on the text narrative of the story and the readers imagination, associated images usually only serve to enhance the story world or solidify ideas and images that would otherwise be difficult to conceptualize or to emphasize an exciting or emotional moment in the narrative. Hyperbole and a Half leans more heavily toward the multiple-panel style of comics to help amplify the narrative. Perhaps this stems from the novel’s genesis as a blog-turned-book. In 2009, Hyperbole and a Half author, Allie Brosh began a blog of the same name, where she chronicled events from her personal life, like the adoption of one of her two dogs; illustrated pet peeves, like the internet usage of “alot,” a misspelling of “a lot,” personified as a shaggy, fang-toothed monster; or her fear of spiders, captured by an image of an oval with spindly appendages replete with strapped-on knives, guns, and a swastika tattooed above the eyes. Brosh’s book maintains the same familiar tone, regularly interspersing images meticulously drawn by the author herself. Her use of illustrated images that convey character motion, emotional state, and even dialogue exchanges are reminiscent of both regular comics and contemporary memes.

In Brosh’s chapter titled “Motivation,” she chronicles her own struggle with self-starting and follow-through. She illustrates a frequent conversation she has between the “her” who knows she must complete a task, and the “her” who continues to procrastinate for no conceivable reason. Instead of floating thought bubbles, she makes this conversation concrete by utilizing a kind of split screen effect,where both versions of herself take up space within the same panel, as does their dialogue.

Most of Brosh’s panels behave in the same way, providing the reader with concrete examples of often abstract concepts, like internal monologue and discussions with oneself.

One! Hundred! Demons!author, Lynda Barry, achieves this same concept by forcefully changing the reader’s perspective. As she reveals the story of her struggle with impostor syndrome as an author and her childhood tendency to let her imagination run away with the descriptions in the Classified section of the newspaper, the reader follows her through her childhood musings and is dropped into the middle of one of her fantastical plots.

Only when Barry transitions back to a narrative focused on her own more present-tense position as a narrator do we as readers get dragged back into the present-past-tense of her childhood self.

Brosh maintains a slightly smoother sense of temporal immediacy by clumping her panels in “Motivation” together, as one “Motivation Game.” Readers are taken along the same journey, into and back out of, the author’s imagination and altered psychological state, but Barry’s follows tactics familiar to comic readers, while Brosh blurs those lines a bit for readers unused to comics.

This difference in delivery of the protagonist’s inner-world carries over into the way dialogue is associated with each character as well. In the above examples, from One! Hundred! Demons!, Barry uses the classic speech bubbles historically associated with comics; Brosh, on the other hand, utilizes both classic speech bubbles as well as free-floating text that the reader infers to be audible speech through context clues.

In the chapter “The Helper Dog is an Asshole,” Brosh retells the story of her and her partner’s adoption of a second issue-riddled shelter dog. She uses both dialogue vehicles on one page, in succession, the traditional speech bubbles allow each character in the top panel to convey separate thoughts, while the speech in the middle panel is only spoken by Brosh’s caricature of herself, as she is the only character “facing” the audience.

Brosh utilizes a similarly comic-style tactic when expressing active motion or a change in mental or emotional state. In “The God of Cake,” she recounts a childhood obsession with conquering her mothers demands that she not decimate her grandfather’s homemade birthday cake with her youthful inability to control her own sugar intake. She masterfully illustrates this rapid descent into the kind of one-track-minded madness only children ever master with a four-page sequence of successively blurry panels.

No, that’s not a mistake of my scanner, it’s printed that way in the book; while a little difficult to read, I think it conveys an emotional whirlwind with an immediacy that helps the reader understand just how much untamed tenacity is bubbling beneath the surface for this child character through the remainder of this chapter.

Another tactic that Brosh employs, that seems like a holdover from her work’s origin as an online blog, is her use of a colored filter over a panel to illustrate distress or another intense emotion. In the same chapter retelling her story of the “helper dog,” Brosh lists the myriad and often confounding behavior issues the new dog frequently displays, like her visceral and adverse reaction to other dogs. Brosh posits that the new dog must simply be unable to comprehend or abide by the fundamental existence of other dogs in the world. To depict the abrupt and unpredictable change in this dog’s mental state, Brosh uses a red tinted filter, along with grumpy-looking smiley faces and hand-written text over her base illustration of her new dog lunging toward another dog in the distance, teeth bared.

You can almost hear the Kill Bill sirens going off in the background.

While Brosh’s artistic approach is reminiscent of internet memes, it also resembles the cartoon-y illustrated style of altered mental states in comics. In One! Hundred! Demons!, Barry juxtaposes alternating bright contrasting colors with radiating squiggly lines in a few of her panels to symbolize the acid trip she and her truncated crush are having on their roam through China Town and Skid Row.

Instead of giving the audience a sense of almost seeing through the perspective of her dog’s psyche, like Brosh does, Barry’s interpretation of her own childhood experience makes the reader feel a little like a sober friend along for the ride, understanding what’s happening, but not able to reach quite the same level of empathy.

Although comics are typically regarded as a reading material relegated to childhood hobbies, books that fall between the borders of comics and illustrated novels, like Hyperbole and a Half, prove their usefulness as a narrative medium, and for readers afraid of being seen reading a full-blown comic—or have never even attempted it, can consider them the shallow end of the comics pool, a lighter commitment than the image-heavy ocean of traditional comics.

Brosh, Allie. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened. Gallery Books, 2019.

ISBN: 978-1-4767-6459-7

[airiat]

Boy with the Sun Song (VI.)

iorveth/f!oc | m | friends to lovers, tooth-rotting fluff, hurt/comfort | no warnings apply

vesta aep maghenn knows iorveth (iorveth aep mirbrach, to her) in a way that no one else can claim: they grew up together in the blue mountains and have been the closest of friends ever since. when iorveth’s unit is wiped out in an ambush by a powerful but unknown  adversary, he seeks shelter with vesta until it’s safe for him to rebuild.

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six | part seven

[read on ao3]

VI.

The days passed slowly and lazily like fog that rolls down a mountainside. Iorveth seemed to struggle with the transition from his fast-paced, unpredictable rebel lifestyle to my calm, steady world of caretaking and creating. It was almost too hard for me to be around him, the way his energy buzzed frantically and restlessly, threatening to crumble the walls of my home. We were fortunate that the enchantment extended beyond the physical house to a line around my property, which meant he was able to spend most of his days outdoors. 

That time was spent fletching an absurd stockpile of arrows and shooting them with his bow at the trunks of poor, hapless trees in the vicinity. To me, this seemed like a futile endeavor, but every time he did it, I could feel his energy streamline and settle, honing in on that singular task. But it also became a vicious energy, one that thirsted to see death and destruction. I could begin to imagine the fear his victims felt when they found themselves at the other end of his arrow or with his blade cutting into their skin. This was a part of him I had always avoided thinking about, but to see it take shape before my eyes made the thought unavoidable.

There were two sides of the coin. When I heard the name Iorveth, I thought of my best friend and protector, someone who had, despite all his life has asked of him, managed to stay by my side for most of it. A man whose pride was both his greatest strength and his deepest wound. A man who loved summer sunshine and played sweet music so that the birds sang back to him. But when most others thought of Iorveth, dh’oine and nonhumans alike, their minds became clouded with hatred, with cold-blooded fear. 

He was a criminal, a terrorist, a bloodthirsty villain who ought to have hanged for his misdeeds long ago. I knew this, and yet, I still forgave him for all of it. Even if I wasn’t Aen Seidhe, even if I didn’t understand the reasons for why he did what he did, I would have still loved him.

What did that make me, then, if I could still love him in spite of what he’d done? Did it make me a monster the same as him? 

The loud squawk of a bird pulled me out of my thoughts from where I stood leaning against the doorframe watching him shoot. When I refocused, I was met with the sight of Iorveth holding up a shot pheasant by the neck.

“Dinner,” he announced, a triumphant look in his eye, like this bird had been his white whale, like he’d not faced and cut down bigger, more fearsome foes before.

When was the last time he killed somebody, I wondered. 

I smiled at him. “I have a soup recipe that’ll go really well with that.”

“Sounds good.”

I watched as he left for the side of the house where he hung the bird for one of us to clean later. But my eyes didn’t follow his actions, they settled on the bow slung across his back, on the quiver full of arrows hanging from his waist. How they might feel in my hands, what it would have been like to do what he does.

“Do you think you can teach me that?” I asked when he returned, pointing to his bow.

His face lit up as I’d never seen it before. “How to shoot?”

I nodded. “Well, I mean, re-teach me how to shoot.”

He graced me with one of his rare, hard-won smiles. “I’ve been waiting for this day for so long.”

I couldn’t help but return his smile--it warmed me from within like I was standing in a patch of sunlight. “Well, here it’s arrived.”

“About time,” he replied, reaching behind him and pulling his bow out of its holster.

Iorveth approached me and presented the bow balanced on the palms of his hands like a knight would to his queen--all that was missing was him getting down on one knee. I saw a sparkle in his eye at this performance, so I played along with it, taking the weapon into my hands with gentle reverence, as though it was made of the most fragile glass. 

How many had he killed with this bow?

Then, he unbuckled the quiver from around his waist and fastened it around mine. The two objects felt so foreign to me, so cumbersome and awkward on my body. The quiver was heavy and knocked against my hip, the bow large and unwieldy. I looked down at the state of myself, feeling much like a child playing dress-up in her parent’s clothes. The feeling of this shouldn’t have been unfamiliar to me, but it still was. How did anyone fight like that? Much less with the unearthly grace Aen Seidhe are meant to possess? 

“None of this is suitable for you,” Iorveth said when he saw the apprehension that was surely written on my face. “I’ll make sure you get all your own equipment, but in the meantime, we can start here.”

“Alright…” I said slowly. “What do I do now, then?”

“What is it you think you should do?” he countered, going to lean against a nearby tree.

“...nock an arrow?”

He inclined his head towards me. “So you do remember.”

I had, of course, been taught archery as a young Aen Seidhe--right alongside Iorveth, in fact--such a rite of passage it was. But it was never something that I latched on to, preferring instead the lessons in creative arts and literature. And so, while Iorveth flew ahead in his archer’s training, in anything pertaining to combat, actually, I laid down my weapons as soon as I was possibly allowed to. Thus, it had been many, many years since I had last gone through these motions.

I reached for an arrow, fumbling around with the bow in my sudden bout of nervousness under his assessing, waiting eye. Eventually, I managed to get one in my hand and held it up to him victoriously, but he hardly looked impressed. Rolling my eyes, I slid the arrow into place and raised the bow, one eye squinted closed and my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth. I spent so much time aligning myself with a tree trunk in the distance that the veins of the wood began to blur with the brush behind it. 

When I loosed the arrow, it missed spectacularly, going wide and sailing into the forest beyond.

Iorveth pushed himself off the tree with a shake of his head. 

“You must not overthink it, Vesta,” he chided. “It should be effortless, without any thought.”

I shook my head, furrowing my brow. “I’ve never been able to do that. It never worked for me.”

“Then that’s exactly what I’m going to teach you how to do,” he responded as he came to stand behind me.

Iorveth’s hands settled lightly on my waist in a way that was very distinctly unlike how I’d been taught as a child. There was a very brief flash in my mind of something heady, like candlelight and dark wine, but I pushed the thought away, startled by its appearance. He removed a hand to give me another arrow, and I nocked it, raising the bow back to the tree.

“Your enemy won’t stand there stock-still as you take your aim. There’s no time to think, only to feel and then to shoot.”

His last word came as a command and I obeyed instantly, without thought, but the arrow still swung wide, disappearing into the brush. I exhaled sharply, with frustration, and lowered the bow.

“It’s alright,” he murmured. “Try again.”

I did as he said, but fell short of my target once more.

“What am I doing wrong, Iorveth?” I asked.

Another arrow passed to me. I nocked it and took aim, drawing back the string.

“You’re not breathing,” he said softly, and when he returned his hand to me, it slid down my back, over my waist, settled on my hip. ”Your core is too tight.”

In my surprise over the heat of his words, in the boldness of his touch, my fingers released the string and the arrow flew forward in a blink, embedding itself firmly in the trunk of the tree. The tree was wide, and my arrow hit far, far off to the right of center, but it was still there as plain as day.

 Immediately, Iorveth took his hands off me and stepped back, but I remained standing there bewildered by what he had just done and what it had made me do.

“Look at you,” he said from behind me. “Just like a real Aen Seidhe.”

I turned around to face him. “But I missed my mark.”

“Between missing your mark and missing entirely in the heat of battle, which would you prefer?”

“...I suppose.”

“An arrow wound is still a wound no matter where it hits,” he said. “And believe me, that shit ploughing hurts.”

I pulled a face, imagining what exactly that must feel like. 

“We’ll end here for today,” he said. “Better if you didn’t overdo it on a bow that isn’t right for you.”

I nodded, almost relieved at this out. I didn’t know if I’d have been able to handle another maneuver like the one he’d just pulled. Iorveth took his bow and quiver back from me, and we walked to the house. 

I felt much lighter, better, without them in my possession. I realized then that I’d been feeling the death emanating from them. The strain hadn’t come entirely from the fact that they were too big for me.

“I’ll make the proper bow for you,” he said. “Then we can try again.”

“You know how to do that?”

“Of course I do,” he answered, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “I made mine.”

“You did?” I asked, glancing at the bow on his back. “It’s beautiful. I mean, it fucking reeks of death, but beautiful, nonetheless.”

He chuckled. “A lot of dh’oine blood on it.”

We arrived in the house and he pulled it off, leaning it against the wall near the door. 

Iorveth continued. “You’ve always been perceptive to things like that, haven’t you?”

I nodded. “The things I could say about the way your energy manifests.”

He looked at me curiously, but didn’t ask me to elaborate. “If that’s the case, surely you can feel the danger you’re in here. You’d honestly be safer in Vengerberg itself.”

“The enchantment protects me.”

He shook his head. “Magic is fallible. Very much so.”

“I’d know if it fell.”

“Maybe so, but then what? You’d be defenseless.”

I shrugged. “It hasn’t yet.”

Iorveth made a sound that sounded almost like a growl. “I’ll make you the bow, you’ll master that, and then we’ll move on to the blade.”

His angry panic rolled off of him in waves. I stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm. Instantly, he stilled and we stood there, me waiting, and him trying to calm himself down.

“If anything happened to you, I’d never forgive myself,” he said simply, in a low voice.

“You won’t need to. Nothing will happen.”

He let out a long, slow exhale. “Let me teach you how to protect yourself.”

“I will. Anything for you, remember?”

“It’s not for me, it’s for you.”

“I know, Iorveth. I hear you. Show me everything you know.”

“Thank you, beag’aine.”

Then, I released him and we set about the house, settling in for the evening. When I read him again, there was a different sort of feeling lingering in the fringes of his usual pain-anger-desperation. And when I took it inside myself, separated the layers, all I could think of was my writing, the purple-pink-wine red hues of an emotion I’d only ever known in fiction. I knew exactly what it was, but I didn't dare attach its name. Not now. Not yet.

[blogging-studentstyle]

Mandisa Nzuza

219014888

BLOG- WEEK 1

From theory into practice:

Your first week of fieldwork. How does treating make you feel?

Initially even before starting fieldwork, the transition from assessment to intervention seemed intimidating and which resulted in me being nervous on my first day. We arrived late on our first day due to transportation problems, when we got there, we all did not know where to go so we struggled with finding the place, but the securities helped. We were welcomed by our supervisor Helen and Zinhle, from there we had time to introduce ourselves and the supervisor. We were then orientated by the resident OT, Nadine who told us about the ins and out of the hospital, she informed us about the protocols, and what is expected from us as OT students, especially when handling the clients and about the no falls policy. We were also introduced to the other OT’s who welcomed us well. When we were left with our supervisor, her welcoming and calm nature helped calm us down as everyone was nervous of starting the block. We then had a tour around the hospital where we orientated to the different wards and the resources of the facility. After the orientation we were then given our client’s names which we will be working throughout our block. On the first day we were only able to introduce ourselves to the clients and do a mini interview as we did not have much time left. The second day was a bit better as we were then able to start with planning our intervention as we were able to do activities with the clients and some standardised assessments to assess residual function which will help when planning intervention.

During the second day we also had a donning and doffing tutorial where we were taught the correct ways of wearing PPE’s and what type of PPEs to wear when. This was very helpful as we are approaching the 3Rd wave of COVID 19.

The clients that I got were responsive during the interview and both were welcoming but the second client was holding back as it was as if he was not comfortable with sharing personal information and was very vague when talking to me. The first client Mr N who has left CVA, ‘Cerebrovascular accident (CVA) is the medical term for a stroke. A stroke is when blood flow to a part of your brain is stopped either by a blockage or the rupture of a blood vessel. There are important signs of a stroke that you should be aware of and watch out for.’ Mary Ellen Ellis.2018. Some of the signs that Mr N presented were blurred vison, right side weakness and dizziness. The assessments that I managed to do with Mr N are Upper limb Muscle strength and Range of Motion and we played cards which the first part of it was a card memory game and then we played crazy 8 where I was able to observe bilateral hand function, motor planning, sequencing, and hand eye co-ordination. Feedback from my session was very helpful as some of the things I would not have thought about. The supervisor gave me structuring feedback that I had room to improve the client’s trunk control and dynamic sitting balance by allowing the client to sit unsupported even in a wheelchair by providing cushions and maybe removing armrests. The feedback will help me in the future when planning intervention and also look out for grading opportunities that will still benefit the client and further facilitate an improvement in function.

My second client, Mr M is paraplegic, T3/4 Spinal cord injury and utilises a harness for support. Initially I was frightened with handling the client as this is the first time encountering someone who is paraplegic and was afraid of doing physical activities with the client. My supervisor helped orientate me firstly towards the diagnosis and what factors I should look at when handling client e.g looking at residual function, working with that and improving it. I was not able to do any formal assessments with the client as he was always busy with either the physio or the OT, this helped me as I was able to observe during session and I was then able to see the client’s abilities and limitations, he has adequate static sitting balance which is supported by the harness. Observing the client during activities was of great help as I got a better understanding of the client. ‘Spinal cord injury is the Damage to any part of the spinal cord or nerves at the end of the spinal canal. A traumatic spinal cord injury may happen because of a sudden blow or cut to the spine. A spinal cord injury often causes permanent loss of strength, sensation, and function below the site of the injury.’ ‘Paraplegia. This paralysis affects all or part of the trunk, legs, and pelvic organs.’ Science Saturday: Mayo Clinic research is a step toward hope for spinal cord injuries.

One thing my supervisor said that was mind-blowing and which helped calm me down and refocus on what I came here to do rather than trying to perfect everything in my learning stage. She said, ‘More than anything we are here to learn.’

[atcostmag]

Kllo - Maybe We Could (LP) - 2020 - Record of the Year Review

Maybe We Could (LP) Kllo Released: July 17th, 2020 / Good Manners  Words: Peter Quincy Ng

A record so grueling in its emotional labor that it nearly led the duo into dissolution, Kllo's resilient effort on "Maybe We Could"  is both a landmark and revelation in electronic music production. Composed of distant cousins, vocalist Chloe Kaul and producer Simon Lam, the Melbourne duo made a name for themselves combining coherent lyricism to upbeat dance tempos. After constant touring and hitting creative stagnation, Kllo went back to the drawing board creating what they termed, "music that doesn't exist but we want to hear". Moving away from rather their straightforward and visual storytelling from the last record, "Maybe We Could" is offers a more sophisticated evolution in sound. Eschewing the two-step garage formulations from previous full-length "Backwater", “Maybe We Could” takes a less linear route; visceral and even at times quite cryptic. Combining incongruent and even contradicting textures to stunning effect, in one feel swoop, Kllo's "Maybe We Could" edges between blissful euphoria and sudden despair. It's a sound thoughtfully carrying through its lyrics, melodies or even just the tiny inflections in Chloe's voice in that convey an ocean's depth in emotion. Resilience in the face of adversity, the fitting album is an easy first in the year 2020. An album whose emotional nuances become more substantial with each listen, "Maybe We Could” has its songs continually vying for your attention as the tracks slowly reveal their latent ethos. 

"Cursed"

"Takes a lot of love to lose the person you do Hope there's still a place for me like I have for you Silence, I'm ultraviolet, When you are out there, there's nothing like it."

Certainly understanding the concept of "first impressions", "Cursed" impacts with a heartbreaking emotion. A tearful serenade subdued by the blurring race of its muted percussion, "Cursed" echoes of its painful longing through its gentle submission and quiet surrender; a devastation that is undeniably beautiful in its undertaking.

"Still Here"

The lead single to their sophomore effort, "Still Here" gathers its momentum through the quickening gallop of its broken-beat, rave percussion. Finding clarity against the swift of its animated tempo, the track finds clarity in Chloe's guiding vocal calm. Alluding to kinship and compassion amidst abandonment, the metaphors to "Still Here" act as resilient motion of defiance through struggle and perseverance.

"Insomnia"

In what would be Kllo's second single, "Insomnia" draws from Simon's influences on his solo act "Nearly Oratorio". Combining a piano-driven production, the track refracts against its aqueous blur, as its cascading ripple of glowing melodies reflect the glimmering call of Chloe’s crystalline beckon.  

“My Gemini”

An infectious club thumper, the brilliance behind “My Gemini” lies in its masterful use of reverb. Coming off harder and more rigidly than the album’s others, the industrial potency of “My Gemini” stalks with a gauging distance, with the magnetic push and pull of its massive sound measured by its immersive soak of bassy textures. 

“Somehow”

A track that can be seen as analogous to works from Kllo’s debut album “Backwater”, “Somehow” glistens with its alliterating prose. Contrasting its anxious deliberations with a blissful presence, the track combs through its heavenly air in a quick swoop of percolating guitar and synth.  

“Maybe We Could”

“And push on, maybe we...”

Like all well-written productions whether it be film or music, direction is not just about inserting the flashiest and attention-grabbing elements. Simply put, Kllo had a series of hits namely “Potential” or “Back to You” which were likely cut  from the album due to pacing more than anything. Serving as the record’s namesake, the placement of “Maybe We Could” serves as not only interlude but reinforces the album’s topical narrative. Though slow and retiring, “Maybe We Could” is emphasized through the heart-rendering pain of Chloe Kaul’s voice. Mirrored by the quick blip of her intermittent words, the track’s sallying force though fragmented in its hazy thought, gathers strength through repetition serving as the album’s mantra. 

“Ironhand”

Slow and severe in its harsh defeatism, the gentle piano air of “Ironhand” is weighed down by Chloe’s sullen melancholy. Through its storytelling narratives, quiet moments of “sunshine on your shoulders and drinking soda and lime” seem rather ordinary at first, yet as the track transitions these banalities become ever-perninent. Noted by its distressing cry of piercing falsetto vocals, a longing for that better past is put on display in the most striking manner. 

“1 UP”

A pensive immersion measured by the gentle topography of meditative saturation, “1 UP” is quantified in the graduality of its kinetic sound. Alliterating wordplay and short anacruses, are reflected in the elastic force of the track as the dusky calm of the track is underlined by the staccato pulse of its percussion. Building on a slow, gradual crescendo, the track is most substantially noted by its ascendant prose, bridging to an apex of dream-weaving ethereality. 

"A Mirror” 

Holding itself more texturally, than lyrically “A Mirror” is carried by its gentle brush of breezy, harp-like textures and the reassuring calm Chloe’s vox. Pitched down vocal slows and techno percussion converge at a blissful precipice on this largely instrumental effort.

“Just Checking In”

Juxtaposing warm soca melodies that bind to Chloe’s cautious R&B prose, “Just Checking In” stands as Kllo’s obscurant album closer. Dark symphonies of stringed elements mesh with pitched-up vocals as the track walks through its crepuscular fade. Using vocals from Chloe’s ghostly avatar to pair up against the cold somber of Kaul’s words, “Just Checking In” is held in its paradoxical manner, distorting the reality of her lyrical certainty in this curious and most perplexing track. 

You can check out the album below on SoundCloud or through Spotify HERE:

Kllo · Maybe We Could

[atamascolily]

An Appointment in Sawarra, 6/?

Hyperspace travel offers some opportunity for reflection, like, What do long trips in an X-wing look like? Can you sleep through the entire Imperial era? Remember when Leia had her own ship called the Alderaan? What exactly is the relationship between Artoo and Luke’s X-wing’s computer?

(one two three four five)

Luke didn't need Artoo to fly the X-wing, but it was lonely without the astromech along to keep him company. To his dismay and chagrin, the ship's computer--which had grown more and more attached to the little droid over the years, to the point where Luke was starting to wonder if it would spontaneously develop sentience--thought so, too, and sulked all the way out of Coruscanti airspace until he could coax it back into its usual good humor. It was a relief to make the jump to hyperspace and turn over all controls to the ship while they were in transit.

"Keep this up, and you're going to be as bad as the <i>Falcon</i>," Luke muttered under his breath as the stars blurred into smears around them. He sent up a silent prayer of gratitude to whoever had designed the fighter so there was no voice/command interface, and thus no need to worry about the computer overhearing him.

It was three days and multiple jumps out of the Core to the far side of the Mid-Rim, which was cramped and awkward in a ship of the X-wing, which was a short-ranged fighter meant meant for long-haul transport. Luke had pushed the limits of both his ship and himself over the years, but three days in the cockpit with a catheter hookup was a bit much, even for him, especially now that he didn't fly so much.

Were it not for Jedi hibernation trances, Luke would have taken Leia up on her offer of the <i>Alderaan</i>. The sleek silver ship was his sister's secret pride and joy, a wedding present from Luke and Han after Han's first choice of gifts hadn't worked out. Fast, maneuverable, and registered to a non-existent person with no connections to the New Republic, the Jedi, or anything approaching official government business, the <i>Alderaan</i> was an excellent choice for someone flying under the radar, especially to an outlier like Sawarra.

"Come on, Luke," Leia had said, her voice low and cajoling. "The <i>Alderaan</i> isn't big, but it's got to be more comfortable than your X-wing--"

But Luke knew all too well what that ship meant to his sister: her escape from the regimented, regulated world of galactic politics and diplomacy. Even if she didn't manage to get out very often, its mere presence in the hangar was a comfort, secure in the knowledge that she <i>could</i> drop everything and walk away if she chose. He wasn't going to take that away from her, not when there was so little need.

Leia frowned when he said as much, though it eased when he reminded her about the Jedi hibernation trances he'd recently learned, and the excellent opportunity for practice en route. It disappeared entirely when Luke reminded her that she might need her ship in case of emergency, and she relented--disappointed, but also relieved. Her offer had been sincerely meant, but Luke could tell she was pleased not to lose her main outlet of <i>fun</i> in a life otherwise devoted to service.

His sister might chide him for his own recklessness, he thought, unable to hold back a smile, but she was just as much as speed demon as he was at heart.

Hibernation trances had their limits, but it was so much more enjoyable to sleep undisturbed through long jumps, arriving at his final destination refreshed and alert instead of sore and cramped. The crumbling texts he'd uncovered about the trances that had explained how to tune out unwanted stimuli, while allowing others to trigger an awakening, a useful trick when it came to interstellar travel.  

<i>I wonder if there are any Jedi out there who felt the same way about the Empire</i>, he thought, as he always did after emerging from hibernation. <i>There must have been some survivors who who decided to go dormant after the initial purge, determined to sleep until a better day came. If there are any Jedi like that still out there, how would they know when to wake up? And how will I find them if they do?</i>

He shook this head. Leia and Mara were right; it was better to take one thing at a time, instead of worrying about matters outside his control. Right now, that meant focusing on the task in front of him: arranging a meeting with Karrde's contact on Access Station to see if she could help with the uneti seeds.

The screen in front of him flickered, demanding his attention as the X-wing's computer brought the ship out of hyperspace and switched over to manual control. Even though he knew what to expect, Luke couldn't help a gasp of delight as the starlines dwindled back to pinpricks and they arrived in the Sawarran system at last.

At first glance, there was nothing of note in his viewports, only the usual scattered swirls of distant lights visible from almost every point in space. There were no ionized field of nebulae like the Transitory Mists of Hapes; no asteroid belts, no stellar streams; no planets and no moons of any sort. Only the egg-shaped orb of Access Station itself, flanked by handfuls of sleek ships of an unfamiliar design, was in any way noteworthy. True, there was a fairly dense star cluster ahead of him, but all of them were small and dull, barely registering in his vision.

The X-wing's computer, however, saw the whole scene quite differently. Alarms flashed and hooted as the ship duly noted the high levels of gamma radiation present, and began tracking the swirling interplay of electromagnetic waves rippling off the neutron stars in front of them. Shields flicked on to protect him from stray bursts of energy, automatically adjusting their activity to accommodate the rapidly changing levels emerging from the pulsars.

Luke had intended to formally announce his presence by hailing the station, but there was no point. A quick glance at his crackling comm made it clear there was too much interference right now for even that limited contact. He was going to have to fly in blind and hope nobody in authority took offense--or could do anything about it until he'd had a chance to explain in person.  

He closed his eyes and stretched out his awareness into void, taking it all in. For his first lesson in the Force, Ben Kenobi had pulled a blast helmet over his pupil's face, allowing him to block blaster bolts with his lightsaber for the first time. Luke had never forgotten that the eyes, for all their strengths, could deceive as well as guide. Sometimes it was easier to see clearly if he shut out as much external stimuli as possible, stripped away everything but that soft, quiet, focus, attuned to a living current that was far too easily drowned out by action and impulse. That was as true now as it had been at the Battle of Yavin, not so long ago.

<i>We are not separate,</i> the old uneti of Dagobah whispered in a distant corner of his mind, so faint it might have been his imagination. The ancient tree percieved both time and distance in ways that Luke could barely grasp, all beings merged and melded into one, while still maintaining their own existence. Despite glimpses here and there, including one memorable vision the day after Yoda's death, it was a higher-level mystery Luke had yet to fully understand. But he'd seen the Jedi reborn, spilling out across the stars in their brown robes and beatific smiles--and they brought the uneti with them.

<i>Difficult to say,</i> Yoda had said of prescience. <i>Always in motion is the future</i>... Luke had discovered to his sorrow and chagrin on Bespin that Yoda had been right. But he couldn't shake the feeling, deep down in his bones, that if he could figure out the trees, the Jedi would follow.

<i>We are not separate</i>.

He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and exhaled long and fully as he steered the X-wing towards Access Station. The computer made the passive-aggressive observation that this task would easier with an astromech assist, which Luke gritted his teeth and ignored as he brought the ship in for a landing.

[derireo]

jeralt - memory

ive been having a bit of a depressive episode for a while; getting up to write is a bit difficult at the moment, i apologize.

wanted to write something about papa jeralt since the game heavily lacks jeralt n byleth family tings. it's upsetting.

gloomy ruth hours boiz

slight sylvain x f!byleth & claude x f!byleth i love those two men a little too much

it was a quiet night at the monastery as knights, her former students, and professors alike decided to retire to their rooms quickly. even when the moon was illuminating the black sky so beautifully, no one seemed to want to admire it.

save for one person.

byleth was resting on her back at the end of the dock in her casual sleeping attire; a pair of baggy grey shorts and a slightly oversized sweatshirt to keep her warm.

above her, the stars were twinkling prettily, while the sound of water being disturbed by dirt caked feet did nothing to soothe the neverending ache in byleth's heart.

just another lonely night.

it's been years since the passing of jeralt (although it didn't feel like it), but byleth still continues to find herself in the exact same spot every night since she awakened to reminisce the distant memories she had made with her father when she was younger – memories she could only vaguely remember.

memories of running through fields, memories of hunting game, and memories of starry nights like these, where they would just lay on the ground with the rest of their mercenary band and stare in awe. happy, but vague memories that byleth wanted to cherish for the rest of her life.

byleth may be a favourite at the monastery, but the way her students and colleagues treat her – as if she were still someone they could never hold a candle to, completely isolated her from the rest of the garreg mach community.

it was lonely. rhea, who had disappeared, and seteth, who is too busy working in his office to spare any time for sweet, hardworking byleth.

a shame, really. she thought. the transition from having someone know what you're thinking without you needing to utter a word to having nobody understand at you all was gut wrenching. byleth didn't know how to cope with losing something important as that, and she wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to find another.

byleth loves her students. adores them, so much. but she can't bear to share the weight of her burdens amongst them; and even if they asked her to, she'd never be comfortable enough to truly open herself up to anyone.

quietly, she reached out towards the stars with one hand, her free arm cushioning the back of her head as she stared back at the moon that was watching over her. she made a grabbing motion, as if she was grabbing that light that kept the stars company when no one else would.

the gentle chirps of crickets and the occasional rustle of water kept byleth warm as she slowly opened her fist and twisted her hand, palm facing the sky as she splayed her fingers apart to peek through the cracks.

she eventually let her hand fall back against her chest when her arm began to numb, letting a wistful sigh escape her mouth as she swayed her feet in the water.

when byleth was still a young child, she'd look up at the sky as jeralt shared exciting fodlan folklore, his gravelly voice, full of adoration for his daughter, lulling her to sleep every night. and sometimes, byleth would pretend to fall asleep on nights like those, just to feel the comforting warmth her father had to offer as he'd hold her to his chest, bringing her back to the cot they shared.

byleth smiled at the memory.

she gasped.

a memory?

she quickly jolted into an upright position, her now clean feet kicking at the water and undoubtedly causing a slight ruckus for the people who were getting ready for bed.

"why now?" she whispered quietly to herself and held her own face in her hands, eyes staring owlishly at the ripples in the water through the spaces between her fingers, hair falling forward and over her shoulders.

the tears were spilling from her eyes without her even knowing it, and the warm droplets splattered onto chilly knees.

"dad..." her voice came out as a whimper, and the weak sobs that fell from her mouth was lost to the night breeze, carried away to the sky only for it to fall on an absent goddess' deaf ears.

her body shook as the emotions she held in had finally overwhelmed her while she tried to wipe away the stream of her tears in vain, her skin glistening under the moonlight that was so brightly shining.

she was crying so much, that, she didn't notice the two people who came to check up on her.

claude was the first one to notice. he was looking out the window that faced the dock because he loved watching the stars twinkle at night, and it was almost a daily part of his evening routine before going to sleep.

he was there to watch byleth reach for the stars, his smile fond as her feet swayed in the water. when she had suddenly sat upright, it startled claude, and when she held her face in her hands, a twist in his gut immediately alarmed him, and he strode towards the stairs as quickly as he could, catching the attention of a loitering sylvain who had followed him when he saw the alarmed look on claude's face.

for the two young men, it was easy to forget that five years for them, was merely a few weeks for byleth, and their beloved friend's cry for her long deceased father sent an emotionally uncomfortable chill down their spines.

sylvain made the move to reach out to byleth first. his hand, warm from always crossing those arms of his, brushed along byleth's shoulder. his graze was so slight that he didn't think he would be noticed, but claude had tried to hook his fingers into the neck of his shirt to pull him away. not fast enough it seems.

byleth's form had very visibly straightened in claude's eyes once sylvain was close enough, but his reaction to get sylvain out of the way wasn't as quick as he'd like it to be, the former mercenary's body becoming a blur. by the time both claude and sylvain knew it, the redhead was already being pinned to the wooden planks by her knee to his chest, and the handle of her dagger digging into the column of his throat, blade dangerously close to the cut of his jaw.

sylvain gulped, despite the breath that was mercilessly knocked from his lungs, at the sight of byleth's eyes; flooded with large, unshed tears, but with an eerie clarity, as she stared down at him with a piercing gaze, her other hand clenched in his hair to push his head back against the dock.

claude, quick-witted as he is, didn't know what else to do without setting byleth off, and restraining her or moving too fast could be a move that may leave sylvain as collateral damage.

"hey, by.." sylvain whispered quietly, keeping himself from wincing as her blade pressed against his skin when he spoke. the redhead was still wearing his casual outerwear, a teal button up and his everyday pants, and so his body involuntarily shivered as the cold seeped through the thin cotton and to his skin.

he could only sigh in relief when byleth blinked at the call of her name, her warm tears startling sylvain when they fell onto his face.

"sweet byleth.." claude murmured as the clink of her dagger falling to the ground gave indication that everyone was safe now, and he stepped around his two friends to carefully pry byleth off of sylvain's form, his arms warm and gentle around her waist.

the woman could only let herself be pulled away as her body fell limp against claude's chest, and sylvain tucked the dagger away in his back pocket while he got back up on his two feet, wiping away the now cold tears that chilled his face.

claude held her closer. "it's okay, sweetheart."

his reassurance was faint, but the comfort of his whisper nearly sent byleth into tears again, and a hiccup came in one after the other as her body began to tremble once more.

"i'll carry her back to her room." sylvain offered claude as he watched byleth with a twinge of sadness making his heart ache, the young woman seemed to fall into a second pit of tears. she was a blubbering mess, and her babyface did much to remind sylvain and claude of a small child; lost, and looking for their parent.

hesitantly, claude lifted byleth into sylvain's awaiting arms, and both men were (quite pleasantly) surprised to see her reach out for the redhead, her whimpers quiet and sniffles occasional while sylvain tucked her against his body. his arm secured itself around her waist while the other went to cradle the underside of her thighs.

claude's expression showed how curious he was as to how sylvain knew how to carry someone like this, and the man answered him with a reminiscent smile.

"when we were younger, i used to hold dimitri and felix whenever they cried. they were a little too big for me, so i couldn't hold them for very long. and, well– ingrid just refused to be held."

"ah. i always forget you're the oldest childhood friend." claude said, amused. the almyran prince quietly looked around after that, and picked up byleth's shoes when he spotted them, sylvain patiently waiting for him to lead the way to byleth's room once he picked up anything else that belonged to her.

sighing wistfully as byleth curled her arms around his neck and hid her face against his throat, sylvain could only press a quick and comforting kiss to her forehead, her mournful crying quieting down by a fraction. "i tend to forget as well. it gets a little boring now that they don't rely on me anymore, but i suppose having someone new to hold isn't so bad."

byleth whimpered as sylvain and claude walked up the steps that led them to her room. the redhead grimaced as a new trickle of warm tears dripped down his neck, and sylvain and claude decided to quicken their steps and cut the conversation short.

"pa.." byleth cried against his skin, and her salty tears began to flood her mouth as they continued to fall. "papa.." she choked out, whining sadly as she clutched onto sylvain a little tighter, who was rubbing her back to soothe her.

"hey, now.." sylvain hummed into her ear as claude opened the door to byleth's bedroom, that had the floor messy with unorganized books and papers. "we're here, it's okay." he cooed at her affectionately and lifted his arm from her waist to cradle the back of her head, claude clearing the footpath for him before removing more books from byleth's bed.

as sylvain began to lower byleth onto her bed, the girl squirmed uneasily when she felt the warmth of his arms escape her. she gasped in a shaky breath of air and refused to let him go, leaving claude and sylvain unsure of what to do.

sylvain's hands were stuck pressing into the mattress with byleth clinging onto his body while claude was frozen in the motion of pulling the duvet from it's surprisingly neat position.

"don't leave me," she whispered through her tears; and it seemed as if she were talking to someone else. "not again. please."

with steady, strong arms, sylvain immediately reaffirmed his presence to a weeping byleth, his mouth printing gentle kisses to the side of her head. "never. i would never." he reassured her and carefully climbed into her bed, his back against the headboard while byleth rested against his chest.

"go to sleep, sweetheart." claude crooned as he leaned over the edge of the bed to brush away light coloured hair from her heated nape, his smile soft as he brushed his fingertips over her already fluttering eyelids. "you will not be alone in the morning."

the sunlight filtering through the window roused byleth from her comfortable slumber, its warmth caressing her as if the sun decided to continue to give her the comfort the moon had so graciously blessed her with the night before.

eyes bleary and aching, byleth awoke to an uncomfortable stretch in her wrist, and a warm body enveloping her. she glanced around, and was pleasantly surprised to open her eyes to a slumbering sylvain, who still had her cradled to him; and claude, who was snoozing beside the two, the fingers of her left hand intertwined with his as the back of it was against his mouth in a kiss.

she rubbed her eye with the hand that was not occupied, and sighed in contentment, once again leaning into the solace of sylvain's chest as she squeezed claude's hand.

a happy memory had decided to grace byleth then, and it was the memory of jeralt holding her close when she was a child, in the darkness of their tent. he would whisper offerings of comfort to soothe the ache in her heart, and kiss her hair as he told her he loved her.

and that he would never leave her. he'd always be watching.

[dramaqueeenamby]

Waves [AU]

A/N: Well, you heartless bitches asked for this, so here it is. Part 1 of 2. Only tagging the few of you who expressed interest (that I can remember lol) as I don’t want to spoil anyone else’s perfect couple. 

Words: 3K

Warnings: Angst, over the top shit, etc. 

TAGS: @purple-apricots @sisterwifeudaku @idilly @honeyybey @letsshamelessqueen-m @certified-kneegrow

WAVES

Summer and Chris always had a playful type of relationship, one where insults would fling back and forth, but always with the understanding that it was all in jest.

Neither ever took anything that was said to heart.

Even when Summer told Christopher to "fuck off" and "go away," he never obliged because he knew that she didn’t really mean it.

They had an understanding. They could read each other better than anyone else in their lives could.

So, when Summer started to pull away, he noticed it immediately. As she was in the middle of filming Black Panther 2, across the globe, the physical distance put a strain on things. The twins missed their mom, and while Chris would never try to say that Summer didn’t miss the kids, something was different.

Typically, she tried to visit at least once or twice a month while being away, but this time, she said that it would just be "too hard." And, really, he understood that. Marvel’s schedules were grueling. However, he felt as though she was avoiding something.

Some…one.

On several occasions, he asked her if everything was okay, and each time, she’d smile and reassure him that she was just exhausted. At first, he believed her. Why wouldn’t he? She was his wife. He trusted her with his life, and vice versa.

Eventually, Facetime and phone calls were no longer enough for the kids. They needed to see their mother in person, and really, Chris missed her just as much.

So, he decided to surprise her, flying down with the kids to Atlanta, waiting for Summer in her rented condo. It was a wonderful surprise, Elysha and Emmett glued to their mother the whole evening, talking a hole in her head, filling her in on everything she’d missed while away.

Chris was pleased. The twins needed that. However, he also needed some alone time with his wife. So when the Hemsworth kids finally went to sleep, and he attempted to make love to her, he was most definitely surprised when she rejected his advances.

"I’m tired, baby. I had a long day on set. Maybe tomorrow." With a quick kiss on the lips, Summer brought the comforter up to her neck, turned on her side, and fell off to sleep.

That was another thing.

He couldn’t even remember the last time Summer didn’t fall asleep on his chest or nestled into his side.

Still, though….he ignored it. He believed her.

And then, the next day, Summer overslept. Rushing out of the house, she left her phone behind.

He was in the middle of fixing the twins breakfast when it lit up, notifying her that she had a new iMessage.

T’Challala 😜😜😜

He frowned.

Who….

"Chad?" He spoke to himself, ready to ignore it when it chimed again. Another text from Chad. Still, though, he tried to ignore it.

On the fifth chime though, he couldn’t help it. Grabbing it, he used his fingerprint to unlock it and opened up the thread with Chadwick.

Where are you?

Ryan is going to have your ass for being late.

I thought we were supposed to meet before filming began?

Chris’s frown deepened, but he tried to sway his suspicions. It wasn’t out of the norm for co-stars to rehearse together, especially considering the close relationship between Chad and Summer’s characters.

But then….Chris absentmindedly scrolled up to read earlier messages, and the more he read….the more upset he became. It started out harmless. However, it quickly transitioned into more inappropriate conversations. Flirting. They were flirting with each other. Heavily.

And then, he reached the explicit ones, the ones that referred to the actual acts. Sexual encounters between his wife and Chadwick, someone he thought to be a friend.

Everything that happened after that…it was really a blur. He called over a friend who lived in the area to stay with the twins before he hopped in the rental car and sped over to the set, breaking almost every traffic law.

Actually getting onto the set wasn’t a problem. He easily made his way through security and forced brief hello’s to the people he walked by. The closer he got, the more enraged he became. And when he finally reached them, saw them sitting next to each other, Chadwick whispering something in Summer’s ear, he lost all sense of self-control.

"Son of a bitch."

Summer’s head snapped in the direction of her husband as did Chadwick, but even the trained martial artist and his impressive reflexes weren’t fast enough for Chris. With one swift motion, Chadwick was yanked out of his chair as Chris’s fist connected with Chadwick’s jaw in a blow that sent him flying onto the ground.

"Christopher!" Summer stood in shock as Chris waited no time in jumping on top of Chadwick, continuing to rain his fist on top of a confused Black Panther. "What are you doing!"

"Did you think I wouldn’t find out!" Chris continued to shout as his fist repeatedly connected with Chadwick’s face. Chad made fruitless efforts to separate himself from the irate Australian, but it was no use. Chris’s size in conjunction with his rage were a recipe for disaster for the South Carolina native. "Answer me, you fucking bastard!"

"Baby, please!" Summer cried, trying to grab her husband by his forearm as security attempted to intervene, one of the guards trying to move Summer away only for her to push them away. "Christopher, you’ll kill him!"

"I don’t give a fuck!"

"Christopher, please," she plead, thankful as four guards finally pried him off her nearly unconscious costar.

"How long?"

Summer couldn’t breathe. She felt as though there was an insurgent of pressure being placed on her throat, making each breath she took that much painful. "Baby, please-"

She jumped back in fear as he kicked over the closest object, a filming camera."How long, Summer!"

At that point, she wasn’t even thinking about the crowd watching the scene unfold or the on-set parademics who were attending to a bleeding Chadwick. Her only concern, her only care, was for the distraught man in front of her, whose eyes were filled with the undeniable pain he was masking with pure rage.

"Answer me!"

Pressing her lips together, she dropped her head in shame, holding onto her stomach. "T-t-hree months."

Silence.

Summer felt like she was going to pass out.

"You bitch." Her heart throbbed from the ruthless tone of both his voice and his words. Never had he called her out of her name. Ever. "So what, you film for a few hours, go back to your hotel and call up me and the kids and pretend like give a fuck about us-"

"I love you," she croaked, wincing as he kicked another object.

"Bullshit!"

"Baby," she tried to grasp his face only for him to shove her away. "Baby, please-"

"How could you do this, Summer? To the kids?"

"Baby, can we discuss this somewhere priv-"

"Why? You don’t want everyone else to know you’ve been fucking your costar, your married costar?" Chris was purposely raising his voice as to attract as much attention to the situation as he could. He wanted to humiliate her, just as she’d done him. "Then again, you could clearly give two shits about wedding vows-"

Her jaw trembled. "That’s not true."

"Oh no?" His eyes widened in disbelief as he moved closer to her, staring down at her. "So then tell me why-how the fuck you could do this?"

"Baby," Summer reached out to touch his chest only for him to pull away from her.

"Don’t touch me, Summer," he whispered harshly. "You disgust me."

"I swear to you, Christopher, it meant nothing-"

"Then why the fuck has it been going on for all this time, Summer? Huh!" He shouted. She cried harder. "You’ve been fucking him all this time, and now you really want me to believe that it meant nothing?" His volume lowered, and while Summer thought she’d be grateful, she saw that it only lowered because of the emotion seeping through the anger. Never had he looked at her with such pain. Ever.

The fury that coursed through his body briefly broke. "I love you." The way his voice broke halfway though ‘love,’ the devastated betrayal in his normally vibrant blue eyes, the slump in his posture as he stared at her with a plethora of questions and emotions.

Summer had never so strongly desired for the earth to swallow her, to rip her from this nightmare that she called a reality. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. Deep down, she knew that she would be exposed.

"What’s done in the dark always comes to the light."

Grandma’s words never rang truer than in that very moment.

"There’s nothing, nothing, Summer, that I wouldn’t have done for you." Summer was no longer concerned with the audience even though most of the onlookers had dispersed as not to invade on a clearly private and intimate situation. However, what unnerved her was the way in which he was talking.

In past tense.

"You’re upset, and you have every right-"

"Don’t fucking patronize me, Summer."

"I’m not," she croaked, clasping her hands in front of her and closing her eyes. "I swear I’m not. I just-let’s talk-"

"For what? The kids are staying with me."

Her eyes shot open. "W-what?"

"The house is just as much yours as it’s mine, but I’m not uprooting the twins, so you can pack your shit-"

"W-w-wait." Breathing was becoming increasingly difficult for the Academy Award Winner, and her vision was all but a haze as her tears clouded her eyesight. "Wh-what are you saying?"

Chris stilled, turning his head to avoid the conflicting emotions that we’re making his communication that much more irrational. "What the fuck do you think I’m saying, Summer?" He forced himself to look at her, the woman he’d promised and given the world only for her to scoff and demand the universe instead. "It’s over. I want a divorce."

She scoffed, almost falling back. "N-n-no. You-you don’t mean that-" Summer laughed, delirium settling in as her preferred defense mechanism. "We-we can work through this.

"No, we can’t," he replied coldly as she dubbed over, breathing heavy and sporadically. "This-this is beyond repair."

"Don’t say that," she cried, shaking her head. "P-please don’t do this."

Chris scoffed, finally allowing the tears he’d been holding back to fall. "I didn’t." A beat. "You did."

——

Panting, sweating, eyes bloodshot and wide, he looked around the dark space, the only light emanating from the moon that dimly shone through the wall of windows on the other side of the room.

In a panic, he glanced down and to the side, shutting his eyes in silent relief. Summer laid there, turning on her side, most likely because his abrupt movement pushed her off his chest. As she shifted her body, trying to find a comfortable position, he both told himself to leave her be while reaching over to wake her up.

"Summer, he whispered, his large hand gently shaking her shoulder. When she moaned and failed to move, he increased his volume. "Summer, wake up."

She whined, moving her shoulder to shake his hand off, mumbling incoherent words.

He sighed, running his hand over his face. "Honey, it’s important."

Summer also sighed, turning on her back, eyes still closed. "Is it the kids?"

"No."

"Then fuck off, Christopher. My jaw is still sore."

He rolled his eyes and moved on to plan B. Kicking the blankets off, he reached over, lifting her up in his arms and throwing her over his shoulder.

"Christopher!" She groaned, hitting him on his back as he walked them over to the sitting area in the separate part of their large master bedroom. "I hate you."

As soon as he placed her down on the sofa, she was on her side, attempting to go back to sleep.

Chris pinched her calf, prompting her to kick him before he lifted her legs and sat down beside her, allowing her to rest her calves on his lap.

"Sweetheart, I just had the worst fucking dream."

"That I stabbed you in your eye for waking me up? Give it time. It just may become your reality."

"You cheated on me."

At that, Summer’s eyes shot open. Eyebrows furrowed, she sat up a little, supporting her weight on her elbows. "What?"

Chris kept his eyes forward while his fingers grazed her smooth legs. "With…Chadwick."

Her eyes doubled in size. "Wait a minute." Chris watched Summer sit up all the way, removing her legs from off his lap so that she could sit on them, placing her closer. "Run that by me again."

"You two had been having an affair for months. I showed up with the kids to surprise you while you were filming, and you left your phone, so I saw the texts….."

"Wait, Chadwick as in Boseman? As in married and just had a whole baby, Mr. Boseman?"

"I showed up at the set and kicked his ass-"

"Like on the actual set set?" The more she heard, the harder it was for her to believe. "Whew chile. The dream ghetto."

"You and I got into it, well, really, I was furious-" he stopped when he heard snickering. "What the hell, Summer?" She was laughing. Literally, genuinely, wholeheartedly laughing. Hand over her mouth, Summer was clearly humored by the whole scenario. "This shit isn’t funny."

"No, it’s fucking hilarious." She corrected, wiping at her teary eyes. "Can you imagine me messing around with Chad’s cranky ass? Love him to death, great guy, but he can be a bit boring-"

"What exactly do you love about him?"

"Chris." She rolled her eyes, clearing her throat to get back to the topic at hand. "Really?"

"It’s a legitimate question."

She pushed her lips together and tilted her head to the side. "Is it though?"

Chris’s eyes fell over to the nightstand on her side of the bed. "Would you let me see your phone?"

Summer paused and chuckled. "That’s funny." She waited for him to say something, to join in on the joke, but he never did. "Christopher…" The Australian gleaned from the way his wife pulled away from him, her shoulders dropped, and eyes wide with surprise, that he’d perhaps gone too far. "You…do you not trust me?"

He reached over and pulled her back into his side. "Of course, I do."

Summer pulled away and climbed off the sofa. "It doesn’t sound like it."

He sighed. The last thing he’d meant to do was hurt her, and it was painfully evident that that was exactly what he’d done.

Standing up, he looked to see her laying on her side, on the bed, back toward him.

"Summer…." She remained quiet. "Honey-"

"How could you even allow yourself to think that I would-that I even could cheat on you?" She finally spoke, leaning up on her elbows to look at him. Chris turned his head to keep him from seeing the tears glistening in her eyes.

"I didn’t mean it like that-"

"Then how the hell did you mean it?" She demanded, sniffling and wiping at her eyes. "Because it sure as hell sounded like that."

Gently grasping her by her arms, he pulled her into his chest, wrapping his arms and securing them under her chest. "Summer, listen to me." He pressed his lips into the back of her shoulder. "And I know that our schedules have been hectic the past few months-"

"So what, because I don’t see you for a little while, you think I’m just going to seek comfort in the arms of another man?" She murmured, Chris noticing the decreased hostility in her voice as a sign that she was calming down.

"I just-I want, fuck, I need you to know, to always know how much I love you, and that I never want to do anything to make you feel unloved or to push you away."

"You won’t, Christopher," she sighed, placing her hand over his. "Unless you wake me up again because of some crazy ass dream, then I’m leaving your long neck ass for the pool boy."

"We don’t have a pool boy, Summer."

She chewed on her bottom lip. "I didn’t tell you." She yelped as he flipped them over so that she was on her back, his body hovered over hers. "His name is-"

"I don’t give a shit," he abruptly cut her off, kissing along her jaw, his hand moving up the side of her thigh.

She pouted. "Very rude, Mr. Hemsworth."

"My apologies, Mrs. Hemsworth," he chuckled, ripping off her underwear in one swift swipe. "Allow me to make it up to you."

Chris went to pull her shirt over her head when she stopped him. He frowned as she brought her hand to his chin, forcing him to look at her. "Hey." Summer lifted her other hand to his face, pushing back the short strings of hair that slightly grazed his forehead. "It’s you." He gave her a faint smile. "Always you, baby."

He pecked the top of her breast. "I love you."

She smiled and licked her lips, allowing him to lift her shirt over her head. "I love you too, Son of Odin."

He groaned. "Summer."

"Sorry," she laughed, quickly switching positions so that she was on top of him. "Allow me to make it up to you."

And that was exactly what she did, all while managing to avoid Chris looking through her phone…..

[razieltwelve]

Test (Final Rose AU Snippet)

Note: This is set in the Tifa/Lightning/Fang/Summer AU. In this AU, Ruby is Summer and Lightning’s kid.

X     X     X

“Care for a match?”

Blake paused midway through one of her stretches. The sparring areas were perhaps the most popular parts of Beacons’ ample training facilities. There was very little the students enjoyed more than testing themselves against each other. She had arrived a short time ago in hopes of seeing just how she compared to some of her new classmates. However, she had not expected her first challenger to be someone quite so famous.

Then again Ruby had warned her to be on the lookout for her big sister. What had Ruby’s exact words been again? Ah yes. Apparently, her sister could occasionally be an overprotective psycho who just happened to have arguably the most brokenly powerful Semblance in the world.

Averi had, it seemed, already pummelled Yang in the past, so further pummelling was unnecessary, at least until Yang put the moves on Ruby, which, from the looks of things, might not be that far away. Weiss, though, was due for a pummelling, but the heiress had evidently taken Ruby’s warning to heart and had made herself temporarily scarce. That left only one legitimate target for Averia’s pummelling: Blake.

“Uh… sure.” Blake finished her stretch. She might as well get this over with. “Any rules?”

Averia walked calmly into the middle of the sparring field without bothering to acknowledge all of the attention they were already getting. “Until Aura depletion is acceptable.”

“Semblances?” Blake asked.

“By all means use yours,” Averia replied. “I’ve been warned to keep unnecessary property damage to a minimum, so any use of mine will be fairly light.”

Blake would almost have been comforted if Ruby hadn’t already explained to her that Saviour had levels and that even level one was basically instant murder mode. “Okay.” She moved into position opposite Averia. “Shall we start?”

Averia inclined her head and drew her weapon with a flick of her wrist. Based on the footage she’d seen, Blake knew she’d have to be wary. The pink-haired girl’s weapon could transform between a sword, a spear, a rifle, and a whip, which made it both extremely flexible and suitable for close quarters and long-range combat. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Blake normally liked to test her opponents with a few feints and tricks to see how quick their reflexes were or how good their fundamentals were. This was not a battle where she could afford to act so lightly. Her posture shifted as she moved into her fighting stance. Despite her desire to remain calm, her pulse quickened. She was one of the youngest members of Menagerie’s National Guard, one of her nation’s most elite fighting forces.

She shouldn't be nervous, but she was. All fighters exuded a sort of pressure. The better someone was at reading an opponent’s abilities, the easier it was to understand how they exerted that pressure. Some people had overwhelming amounts of Aura. Other people had extremely powerful weapons. 

Averia had something far more dangerous.

Against the most elite members of the National Guard, Blake had been forced to learn how to read and anticipate the movements of her opponents. It was perhaps the most valuable skill a warrior could possess, and the further ahead someone could read the flow of battle, the more dangerous they were. Blake was confident in her ability to read at least three or four steps ahead. That level of perception already made her far more skilled than almost anyone her age, and it put her in the top echelon of students even at Beacon.

Staring at Averia, she found herself frozen. It wasn’t fear. No. Blake had learned to conquer her fear years ago. Instead, it was understanding. Over the past several moments Blake had made dozens of minute changes to her posture as she considered different angles of attack and all the possible followups. Averia had subtly reacted to all of them in a way that let Blake know that not only had she seen them but she had also anticipated Blake’s followups as well.

How far could Averia read ahead? To her dismay, Blake realised she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that Averia could read much further ahead than she could. Was it five or six moves ahead? No. It was even further than that. She drew in a ragged breath. Had Averia already seen how the entire fight would go? Could she read so far ahead that the outcome had already been determined?

That was impossible. It had to be, right?

Unbidden, something else Ruby had said came to mind.

“Fighting my big sis is awful,” Ruby had grumbled after she trudged back from a sparring match against her sister. “It’s like fighting someone who can see the future.”

Blake’s brows furrowed. She’d dismissed the comment as sibling rivalry. Perhaps she’d been too hasty.

“If you won’t attack,” Averia murmured. “Then I hope you’re ready to defend yourself.”

There was a blur of motion, and Blake barely got Gambol Shroud up in time to block a downward slash from Averia’s weapon. The impact of the strike was almost enough to drive Blake to her knees, but there was no visible sign of effort from the other girl. Instead, the force of the blow was the result of perfect technique combined with effortless Aura reinforcement and control. As Blake shifted to push Averia’s weapon aside, Averia was already in motion.

The pink-haired girl skipped back as the sword became a spear that lanced toward Blake’s suddenly exposed side. The weapon transition was incredibly fast, and Blake jammed the sheath of her weapon down to parry the blow as she lunged forward to swipe at Averia’s side.

It was a mistake.

Averia let Blake divert her spear and used the momentum to lash out with a kick that struck the flat of Blake’s oncoming weapon. The kick knocked the blade out of Blake’s hands, and Averia’s spear became a sword again, the reduced length leaving Blake’s sheath swiping at empty air.

Blake’s eyes widened as Averia’s sword streaked toward her throat. She growled. She wasn’t about to be beaten that easily. She tugged on the ribbon attached to Gambol Shroud, and her blade jerked back toward Averia. To her disbelief, the other girl simply lifted one foot off the ground and kicked the weapon away again as her slash continued its trajectory.

Aura flashed, and Blake found herself tumbling back end over end until she skidded to a stop a dozen yards away. Once again, the sheer force behind the blow was stunning. Shaking her head to clear it, she tightened her hold on the sheath of her weapon as the other half clattered to the ground behind Averia. With a flick of her wrist, the pink-haired girl scooped the weapon off the ground with her sword and tossed it back to Blake.

The implication was obvious: she wanted to continue the match.

Blake’s jaw clenched. Fine. If that was how she wanted to do it, that’s what they’d do. She got back to her feet. She should have used her Semblance right from the start. Averia was too skilled to beat without it. The air beside Blake shimmered and a pair of clones appeared beside her.

Averia tilted her head to one side. “Tangible clones. Interesting.”

“How do you know they’re tangible?” Blake asked.

Averia pointed. “Look at the ground. Their feet are leaving indents in the grass. I also tagged your weapon with some of my Aura when I tossed it back to you. I can feel my Aura on those clones as well. An illusion would probably have been at least slightly disrupted by foreign Aura.”

Blake frowned faintly. Averia didn’t miss a thing, did she? “Well, let’s see how you do against three of me.”

The trio of Blakes launched themselves forward. Sure, her clones might not be as durable as she was, but they could still take a few hits, and their weapons were no joke either. Averia let them approach, seemingly unworried about the sudden increase in numbers.

Moving with seamless coordination, the two clones and the original launched into a whirlwind of blows. Strikes from their blades were intermingled with gunshots and ribbons as they sought to leverage their superior numbers. If they could slow Averia down - or even better entangle her - then they should be able to land a hit. 

They might as well have been trying to catch the wind.

Averia ducked and dove through the storm of blows, a flickering shadow of constant movement that seemed to know exactly what Blake was going to do before she could do it. A spear thrust dispelled one clone before the slash of a sword got rid of the other. Blake summoned two more, but they were dispelled almost as quickly as she could create them by the flowing movement of a whip. Running low on Aura, Blake tried to retreat to get some room to come up with a better plan, but Averia was on her before she could get more than a step or two away.

Blake somehow managed to block a cut aimed at her side before a swipe at her shoulder threatened to connect. Only a desperate duck got her safely out of harm’s way, but it was only temporary. A knee caught her in the chin and launched her into the air before a kick sent her tumbling back. Her Aura flickered, and she looked up in time to see Averia’s blade screech to a halt a few inches from her chest.

“That is the match, I think.” Averia paused for a moment, green eyes piercing into Blake’s before she extended one hand. “Good match.”

“Yeah,” Blake murmured quietly. “Good match.” Had Averia continued the last strike, she’d probably be dead.

Anything else Blake was thinking of saying was interrupted by an angry cry as a blur of red cannonballed into Averia.

“AHHHH!” Ruby swung her arms around like a windmill. “Stop picking on my teammate!”

Averia weathered the blows, making no effort to dodge. “Ruby, can you stop hitting me?”

“Only when you stop bullying my teammate.” Ruby continued to swing her arms at Averia while turning to look at Blake. “Are you okay, Blake? She didn’t spear you or anything?”

“Uh… I’m fine. My Aura is a little low, but that’s about it.”

Ruby stopped swinging her arms. “Hmm… so she wasn’t bullying you?”

“We were having a sparring match,” Blake said before adding with an impish smile, “Although I do think she was bullying me a bit too.”

“Gah!” Ruby jabbed one finger at Averia and then grabbed Blake. “No bullying my teammate, big sis!”

“Or what?” Averia drawled.

“I’ll… I’ll…” Ruby looked about furtively. “Or else.”

“…” Averia ruffled Ruby’s hair. “Think of a better threat next time.” Her gaze shifted to Blake. “You’re good, and you use your Semblance well.”

“You still won though.”

Averia shrugged. “I have some ideas about training that could help you. I can tell you’re used to fighting as part of a team.”

Blake’s brows furrowed. That was true. The National Guard typically deployed in small squads. It allowed them to hit harder and to cover each other’s weaknesses. “Yes, and I’m part of a team here too.”

“Being in a team is great, but you could benefit from some more individual combat practice. With your Semblance, any improvements you make could have a huge difference since your clones fight like you do.” Averia glanced at Ruby and then shifted her attention back to Blake. “I’ve been talking with some of the other teams. We’re going to set up a regular practice circuit, so we can all get more practice fighting against a variety of opponents. You guys should join.”

“Sure.” Blake could already see the benefits of that. “We’ll do that.”

Ruby’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I did, but you were in the middle of inhaling that box of cookies Summer Mom sent. You may not have actually realised what I was saying.”

“Hmm… yeah. That could be it.”

“Anyway,” Averia said. “Your weapon is technically a chain-scythe, right? Although you do use it as a sword and sheath as well.”

Blake nodded.

“Then you should ask our Aunt Vanille for some tips. The chain-scythe is one of the weapons favoured by the Dia. She might prefer the binding rod, but our aunt is very, very, very good with a chain-scythe, and I’m sure you could pick up some new techniques since your style seems to be based more along Mistral lines. The Dia have their own styles, and they’ve got centuries of practice using those against and alongside the Yun.”

“I don’t know the professor that well…” Blake hedged. In truth, Professor Oerba Dia Vanille’s last visit to Menagerie more than a decade ago had been a disaster, with people protesting the fact that she’d married a human instead of a Faunus. The professor undoubtedly knew who Blake was, so there was no telling how she’d react…

“Blake, you’re Ruby’s teammate. For that reason alone our aunt would help you.” Averia turned. “And she’s not the sort of person to hold other people’s mistakes against you.”

“And if that doesn’t work,” Ruby said, throwing one arm over Blake’s shoulder. “We’ll just get Diana to help us badger her until she agrees!”

X     X     X

Author’s Notes

Well, big sis makes her presence known. In all honesty, Blake did pretty well here. Averia is basically a living chainsaw, and the number of students who have any chance of beating her (even without Saviour) is very, very small. That Blake lasted that long is impressive. Of course, Averia’s challenge is two-fold. She wants to make an impression, but she also wants to help Blake since Blake is Ruby’s teammate. A stronger Blake means a safer and more successful Ruby.

You can find me on fanfiction.net, AO3, and Amazon.

[inkyleaf]

TG 155: Fusion (M2F + RC)

              Andrew and his friend Danny were visiting an Indian museum during their trip abroad for college. Neither of them had a particular interest in the culture, and they only took the trip for the résumé booster (and totally not because they thought it’d feel like a vacation). As if having to study abroad wasn’t boring enough, being forced to attend exhibits and museums during their would-be recreational time edged Andrew a little too far.

              “Hey, wanna go down there?” Andrew asked Danny, pointing toward a dark, grimy hallway in the museum. Danny winced at the thought, preferring to endure the boredom for the sake of following the rules. “Not really,” he replied. “But it has, like, ‘no access’ signs all around it! At least, I’m assuming from the images,” Andrew said, then started to tip-toe to the hallway’s direction. “It’s not worth it man. Let’s just finish this tour and go home,” Danny insisted, but he fell on deaf ears.

              “Mmm nah, I’m gonna check it out,” Andrew said, then continued: “You’ll be sorry when I find a bunch of ancient Indian treasure!” he laughed. Danny shrugged and followed his classmates, parting with Andrew, who had slipped into the dirty hallway without anyone noticing. The door at the end was locked, but Andrew was able to open the cheap doorknob with an unraveled paper clip. The inside was pitch-black, and Andrew would’ve fallen down a long set of wooden stairs if he hadn’t turned on his phone’s flashlight.

              “Pheeew, this stinks,” Andrew huffed, fanning the scent of the rotting wood away from his nose. He cautiously treaded down a seemingly endless flight of stairs that felt like they could give in at any moment. The damp walls around him narrowed as he finally reached the bottom, arriving at a long tunnel. Andrew could practically feel the darkness even through his flashlight. He thought about turning back, but the adrenaline of being in such a forbidden area kept him going.

              The ground was covered in a thin layer of water that echoed loudly with each step. Andrew almost ran into the metal door that suddenly appeared before him after three minutes of walking. “This had better be a jackpot,” he smirked, surprised that the door was unlocked.  Dim, automated lights flickered on as he entered the room, making Andrew flinch. The room he was in was no larger than an apartment’s bedroom, and it was stacked with rusted artifacts, jewelry, and coins, alongside many white bags that presumably had more of the same.

              “Holy crap,” Andrew breathed as a grin crept its way up his face. “There really is a jackpot down here!” He cautiously rummaged through the treasures, looking for the shiniest, most golden pieces. After a few glances around the room, he began to load his pockets with the smaller rings and coins. Eventually, he found a bright golden necklace with a ruby in its center that he just had to put on out of excitement. He didn’t notice the veins pressing against his collarbone as his treasure hunt continued, until his hand touched a seemingly hot piece of metal.

              “Ga-!” Andrew winced, thinking he had burned his fingers. His upper body began heating up. Looking down at his fingers, he realized that he hadn’t burned his hand – rather, his pale flesh was sizzling as dark, tan splotches were appearing and spreading like drops of water on paper. He opened and closed his fists a few times, watching his blocky fingers slim and elongate on fingers that look daintier every second. “O-oh crap,” Andrew mumbled, almost losing his balance as jolts of energy shot up his arms.

              Thinking he’d been cursed, Andrew started to empty his pockets of the would-be stolen goods, and he ripped the necklace off and threw it on the ground. Nothing changed, and he continued to squirm as smooth brown flesh enveloped his arms, shoulders, and neck. Grueling pops and snaps emitted from his joints as his tall frame diminished, enlarging the T-shirt around him. His eyes widened with a blank expression as skin crawled around a morphing skull. Dark brown and black pigments consumed his blue irises and blond hair while his face tanned.

              Through the peripheral of his eye, Andrew saw his girly little Indian hand writhe as his new flesh tightened around it. He nibbled at his bottom lip as it pouted out, starting to feel the feminine changes that continued to reshape his face. Andrew was surprisingly calm, and gently shook his head from side to side to guide his growing hair down his shoulders and back. His eyebrows felt like they were being painlessly waxed as they thinned and blackened to match his silky hair. Several minutes passed before he no longer felt himself changing. His arms, shoulders, neck, and head had all flawlessly transitioned into that of an Indian woman, but everything below and around his chest remained its regular white male self, albeit in a smaller size.

              “What is this?” Andrew whispered in a strange voice, brushing his fingertips along his petite arms. He could feel some indescribable power welling up within him just begging to set loose. His hands trembled as he kneeled down and moved them toward the murky ground. After a ripple of energy, the lights in the room became brighter. The dirty floor he was on began to suddenly grow a fluffy regal carpet. Andrew smirked, feeling in total control of the situation. The little amount of furniture in the room became sturdy and complete, while the dirty metal door turned into a shiny silver piece that looked newer than new. All of the jewelry and artifacts shone brighter than ever.

              “Look at all this…!” Andrew huffed, beginning to become conscious of his appearance as he glanced over more treasures. With a mere thought, he was able to grab one of the smaller artifacts and stretch it like clay before transforming it into a standard mirror encased in the original gold. “That’s me…” He did a double take at his reflection, softly pinching his beautiful face. He took his shirt off to see that his female Indian features ended just above his chest. Nonetheless, it wasn’t long before Andrew felt himself being turned on by his appearance. He cautiously cupped his cock in one hand, feeling his immense power erect it almost immediately. In a mere 20 seconds, the magical ecstasy shooting through his dick had him cumming longer and harder than he ever had before.

              “Aaoow! Ooh fuck! Fuuckkk! Awwhhh!” Andrew couldn’t stop himself from practically yelling as his legs buckled, bringing him to his knees as he orgasmed for almost a full minute. He lay on the fluffy floor in delight for a few moments before standing back up to look at his reflection. After contemplating his female face, he waved a hand over it, applying all sorts of makeup and lip gloss for maximum beauty. Despite his intuitive magical abilities, Andrew couldn’t fix the disparity between the upper and lower halves of his body. He needed more power, and luckily, he instinctively knew where to get it.

              “Come to the creepy hallway and walk all the way to the end of the tunnel at the bottom of the stairs. I’m in trouble and I need help but there’s a lot of cool shit down here.” Andrew texted Danny, knowing he’d come to Andrew’s ‘rescue.’ Andrew put his shirt back on and sat on the floor with his back to the door, awaiting the moment of Danny’s arrival.

              “Dammit Andrew, you serious?” Danny hissed to himself when he received the text, having no choice but to go pull his friend out of trouble. Danny reluctantly slipped away from his peers and crept down the shaky stairs, telling himself he’d make Andrew pay for this with every step. As he walked down the long tunnel, he barely convinced himself from turning around, wondering if he was going the right way. Finally, he arrived at a beautiful silver door and opened it, hoping to see his friend.

              “An…drew?” Danny whispered, walking into the luxurious room. He was unable to recognize Andrew through his long black hair. Andrew sat still enough to pass as a doll. Danny slowly crept up to the mysterious sitting figure that was his friend. Andrew suddenly turned toward Danny, looking up at him with the gorgeous face of an Indian woman.

             “Danny,” he began, “it’s me! It’s Andrew!” Stunned, Danny examined Andrew’s face before recognizing the clothes he wore, then Andrew’s skinny white legs. Amidst Danny’s silence, Andrew continued: “Look at what this place did to me!” he said, twirling her dark arms in front of Danny’s face. “There’s so much power within me…” he huffed, quickly lighting a flame on his fingertip for a few seconds before blowing it out. “I want to…continue my growth.”

              Through a tense throat, Danny squeaked: “What are you talking about? Y-you look like a girl…!” “So what?” Andrew retorted, “if you felt what kind of energy I had, you’d understand. Danny, do you w-want to be with me? Be me?” Danny began to back away at Andrew’s question, then Andrew leapt for Danny’s hand. “We can be… a goddess!” Andrew exclaimed. His left hand, holding Danny’s right hand, began to glow. Danny’s Caucasian fingers melded with Andrew’s dark fingers. Their flesh and bones mixed like two colors of paint until neither of their hands were recognizable. The conjoined hands became one inseparable unit – it wasn’t long before Andrew’s and Danny’s bodies were connected to each other through one long arm. Andrew’s Indian skin swiftly crawled up Danny’s side of the connection.

              “What the FUCK?!!” Danny screamed, frantically tugging the long arm to no avail. Andrew giggled, then stood on his tip-toes – in a blur of motion, he lip-locked Danny’s wide open mouth while gently fondling his friend’s crotch with his remaining hand. “You’re OK, baby. You’re OK,” Andrew would whisper between kisses, enjoying the feeling of his tongue reaching into Danny’s throat to silence him. The long, lanky arm was quick to shorten in length, soon bringing their bodies side by side. The left side of Andrew’s body merged with Danny’s right side like clay, including their legs. Their clothes evaporated off of their bodies with a mere thought from Andrew.  

              Andrew’s magical touch was bringing Danny close to the same orgasm he had previously experienced, distracting Danny from what their merged body currently looked like. “Fuck,” Danny puffed, “Oh my fucking…a-AaAH!” Danny’s remaining hand wrapped around Andrew’s to furiously yank his shaft up and down, spewing buckets of cum on the carpet. Danny was gasping for air as he and Andrew milked his testicles for every last drop of semen he could conceivably have. Both of their genitals, and the fused leg in the middle of their bodies, shriveled in seconds, withdrawing themselves into their body.

              The friends fell to the floor as they lost their balance, now having only one leg each on their conjoined self. Their individual bodies were close to being one whole. Feminine curves developed around their waist as Andrew’s dark skin finally began to spread around the entire body. The fat in their bellies churned as it gurgled and dropped to their lower body, popping many hip bones and joints in the process. Danny’s side of the body was almost out of white skin.

              “Andrew, w-what’s…” Danny mumbled, dazed. “Do you feel it?” Andrew asked in a thicker accent, “Do you feel that power?” Their heads had crawled closer together, making it easy for Andrew to kiss Danny again. His lips glowed as his tongue slipped into Danny’s mouth, excited to endow him with femininity. “I-I do,” Danny said with a voice crack. Andrew smiled, watching Danny’s lips plump and soften. “O-Oh God, Andrew, I’m-!” Danny gasped, feeling his skull crack under dark, rippling flesh. His short brown hair began to tumble down his head, framing his morphing face that was tweaking and tugging in every direction.

              With a smile, Andrew diverted his attention to their singular body. Pleasant THUDS echoed from their chest as it swelled. “Finally,” he huffed, tweaking all four of his and Danny’s nipples as they grew. Their combined chest was only a little wider than an average woman’s, yet four large breasts slowly developed across their body. As Andrew cupped and fondled his side, Danny slowly reached a hand to his, watching his large fingernails shrink and slim.

              “O-Oh my-An-Andr…” Danny began, trailing off. His voice came out in a similar fashion to Andrew’s feminine, accented voice. He couldn’t explain why he felt that calling their body’s other head “Andrew” felt incorrect. Danny began to understand the intuitive magical abilities that they possessed, calming the sudden anxiety he felt after getting a good look at their body. Andrew smiled at Danny’s female face. He could tell that his thoughts were beginning to reach him.

              “Do you feel it?” Andrew whispered, then continued: “Together, we are… a goddess.” Danny smiled sheepishly, feeling makeup begin to cake her beautiful Indian face. Andrew placed his hand at their flat, empty crotch after their long legs had finished feminizing. With a deep breath, the flesh rippled and buckled. Some of their skin in the area sunk inward while other parts fluffed out. Both Andrew and Danny hummed as Andrew’s hand molded and fondled their crotch into an unrealistically perfect pussy.

              Danny swept her hand back and forth along their many breasts, turning and twisting her head to suck and kiss Andrew’s neck. Both of them felt the same pleasure from Andrew’s hand pinching their hardening clit. “Will we be like this forever?” Danny asked in fluent Hindi, feeling addicted to their newfound femininity. “Of course,” Andrew also replied in Hindi, leaning her face toward Danny’s, “We are one. We are whole. We are forever.”

              The goddess borne from Andrew’s and Danny’s bodies grew in size as their heads kissed and slurped each other’s tongues. Danny’s thoughts donned them with jewelry and royal fabrics, while Andrew’s thoughts painted and manicured their nails, cleaned their hair, and moisturized their silky skin. Several sets of arms grew under their originals solely from the desire to touch themselves more. When the goddess was complete, she stood over nine feet tall and warped the room and tunnel around her to proudly strut back to the surface, eager to be worshipped.

A reward for Andrew! :) Thanks so much! This story was Patron-exclusive for 38 days. A new Patron-exclusive caption is coming very soon, too!

Patreon || DeviantArt

m2f = male to female. RC = race change.

[arcticmaggie]

Donut Shop (Pt. 2)

Y/N sees Harry and prays that he sees her as well.

Part 1

Word Count: 3.5k

Warnings: Just like, a BUNCH of tension leading up to a cliffhanger?? Idk I’m cruel and won’t let Y/N get her fairy tale (not yet, at least) 

A/N: Okay listen this was tough to write because there’s a lot of time lapses and idk how to write the transitions for em so like BARE WITH ME. Also I rlly don’t know how to calm down with the italics and the run on sentences but I feel like it adds to the tension and the ongoing stroke Y/N is having. THERE WILL BE ANOTHER ONE, POSSIBLY THE LAST PART BUT IDK DEPENDS ON IF I WANT THE ENDING TO BE AMBIGUOUS OR KEEP IT GOING INTO AN ACTUAL FULL FANFIC AHHH

-

She's shaking. Her hand is legitimately shaking.

It's been 10 hours since Y/N had almost died from shock of meeting Harry and squabbling with him and she is still having a bit of trouble trying to calm down. Of course, this is now because of a different reason.

She's going to see Harry live in concert in 2 hours! She's going to pretend like as if she hadn't just interacted with him for more than 10 seconds that same morning! She's not going to pull it off!

But really, she knows she can't actually say anything because A) how would she explain to Abby that the man up on stage before them had already touched her in ways that Abby would never have dreamed of being touched (sounds intense, but seriously, how often is it that the man of your dreams touches your shoulder?) and B) Harry had clearly been trying to steer away from gaining attention, so it would kinda be a dick move to go ahead and tell everyone about it.

But Y/N knows herself, so she knows it's going to take everything in her not to blabber about having Harry Styles pay for her ham and cheesy.

Maybe Abby won't react that bad? I mean, she's known Y/N since Midnight Memories came out and they gushed over their mutual love for One Direction online (and they met two years later). And Abby has already interacted with Harry on Twitter, with a reply and a follow. So maybe talking to him in real life won't be much of a scandal to her and she'll understand.

So yeah, Y/N decides with a deep breath and a swipe of her contour brush against her face that she'll tell her best friend about it as soon as she arrives at her house. Which would be in an hour and a half, so Y/N had plenty of time to hyperventilate until the time came.

-

She takes about an hour to finish her makeup after the mini pep talk, even though she was already halfway done. But that was because she spent half that time glaring at her hand to stop shaking. Really, you would think she'd be okay by now. She's a 20 year old girl with a job and her own apartment; this is supposed to mean she's really good at handling stressful situations.

But once she sprays her finishing spray on her face and combs her fingers through her hair, she begins to panic. Surely, she would be able to calm down once more in the 30 minutes she had left, but after 10 of them, she receives a text and she absolutely loses it.

Girlie I got out of work early so I’ll be there in 5 !!! ((:

Jesus Christ she's going to vomit.

She feels like she's about to tell her mom about the time she gave their next door neighbor head during their Easter barbecue in the bathroom.

But it's just Abby, it's just her best friend, and she hears a car pull up and shut off and she gasps for breath.

She doesn't feel her feet dragging her towards the front door, she doesn't feel her hand yank her door open as Abby walks up the path with a small jolt in her step with the sudden sound, and she definitely doesn't feel her mouth open as soon as she lays eyes on her.

“Harry Styles thinks I'm a proper knob.”

Abby immediately furrows her eyebrows together but a smile peeks out from her lips as she lazily pushes Y/N to the side so she can walk in and head straight towards the bedroom.

“How are you this delusional, 2 hours before the show? I would have thought you would start talking funny once we reached the building.” She sets her backpack down on the makeup vanity along with her bag of Jimmy Johns (she always gets hungry when she's doing her makeup for some reason) before turning back around to a silent Y/N who had wordlessly followed behind her.  

Which is weird, Abby thinks, because Y/N really never learns how to shut up unless it's something very important holding her back. So she stares at her while Y/N stares back with a very anxious face and she realizes that whether it's true or not, Y/N meant what she said. And that worries Abby, so she huffs out a breath as she plops down on the vanity bench and pulls out her makeup while munching on a fry.

“Okay, you have the time I use doing my makeup and the car ride to the venue to tell me everything, so please think everything through before telling me.”

And Y/N takes it to heart. She recollects her words for a solid 15 minutes as she's spread out on her bed like an eagle and once she's finished she looks up. She sees Abby already done with her food and applying her highlighter, so she takes 5 more minutes to reorganize everything in her head again for a shortened version.

And so she begins. She spends about 10 minutes debriefing her horrible morning beforehand until Abby packs up her stuff and motions for her to follow her to the car to start their drive over to the Forum, where she spends the remaining half hour (which is more time than the actual minutes spent at the donut shop, ironically) gushing over Harry and his eyes and his lips and his hair and his cocky attitude and his touch and his money and everything that she couldn't process properly during that morning.

Abby stays quiet the entire time, only nodding along when Y/N pauses to see if she's understanding. And she even stays quiet as she parks the car in the designated parking lot and lets Y/N finish her rambling about the “absolutely dirty smirk he had on his face when he asked if it was a threat.”

So when Y/N finally stops and takes a well needed deep breath, she tries her hardest to piece together her conclusion of this situation.

“So, you're telling me, that there is a possibility that you will make eye contact with Harry tonight, and he will recognize you, and he will interact with you?”

And Y/N inhales so sharply because holy fuck, there actually is a chance of that. Their seats are so close to the B-stage and he'll walk up there and he will let his fans touch his hand and he will look at them and he might actually see her.

-

This thought brings the next hour into a blur.

She doesn’t remember standing in the merch line for 20 minutes for the yellow kiwi sweatshirt or walking through the metal detectors or scanning her ticket or buying a hotdog and eating it with extra mustard and relish or walking into the venue and sitting down in her seat with Abby right behind her. She doesn’t even pay attention to Kacey Musgraves and her set, which she didn’t do intentionally (she’s listened to entire repertoire specifically so she could jam out to her music before Harry comes out) but sitting here, 5 feet away from the B-stage has kept her out of touch from the entire world.

Doesn’t even hear the screams of everyone around her when Kacey leaves the stage and the lights turn back on for the 20 minute break in between sets.

It takes Abby giving her a really harsh nudge which Y/N cowers from and winces but she had it coming since she didn’t respond the first two times Abby tried to get her attention.

“Jesus Christ, Y/N, you’ve already met him yet you’re acting worse than me! I’ve never even come close to being in such proximity as him yet you’re the one ready to have a stroke!” Y/N pouts at the scolding but it brings her back into her own body. She knows Abby’s right, she’s already had more of relationship with Harry than most people in this building and she’s worrying about something that surely won’t happen. He’ll be caught up in his singing and talking to the rest of the crowd and he doesn’t even know she’ll be in that vicinity so it’s not like he’ll go out of his own way to look for her. He’s not going to notice her and it’s okay. She’s been fine with this mindset for years now, she can put up with it for many more.

And with this, she lets all her anxiety go. Even when the lights turn down and the Rubik’s cube pops up on screen and the monitor slides down to hide Harry’s entrance, she only screams with excitement and joy. Should we just search romantic comedies on Netflix and then see what we’ll find? is heard before the beginning of Only Angel and Y/N goes wild along with the entire venue as the monitor slides right back up and reveals him and he starts singing and it’s the best moment of her life and she completely forgets about everything before and focuses on now.

Well, until Harry wraps up on Meet Me in the Hallway and heads for the B-stage. All of a sudden, he’s climbing up the stairs with the rest of the band behind him and he uses the short seconds he has to accept the flowers fans are offering and thank them, making full eye contact with each and every one. It would be so easy for Y/N to shout his name, to shout out, “Harry it’s me! Ham and cheese girl!” It’d be so weird and he’s probably already forgotten about what happened and who she is because he’s a busy man and he has more important stuff to remember but she’d at least have a chance of catching his eye again.

But she sees his soft smile as he accepts the bouquet of roses the girl in front gives him and he turns around and sets it down, ushering in the rest of the gang as they all prepare to perform Sweet Creature. And he’s so beautiful, she can’t believe she’s able to be here and see him do what he loves doing and she feels the absolute joy he’s radiating. His eyebrows are furrowed as he tries to concentrate on this next song and he looks so determined to give a great show and she loves it, she loves him. So she shuts her mouth and she watches him with kind eyes as the rest of the fans around him quiet down as well.

And so he sings. First Sweet Creature, then If I Could Fly (Y/N begins to tear up), and then the lovely surprise of Girl Crush (that’s when she starts bawling). He’s always facing her direction throughout all three songs, and he looks up at some points into the crowd, surely only seeing a bunch of phones recording him. Abby was guilty of it as well but Y/N keeps hers in her pocket, relishing in the spotlight hitting only half of his and casting shadows on the other. His eyes always graze too quickly over where she’s seated and it irks her and makes her heart ache because yes she’s calmed down from her fantasy but he gets so close to setting eyes on her yet he doesn’t and it sucks.

She’s suddenly become so hurt by the idea of being unnoticed by him even after all these years of teaching herself not to be. She guesses that’s what happens when you get a small taste of something you can’t ever have.

Girl Crush ends, Harry finally leaves the B-stage to go back to the main stage and finish the rest of the show, and Y/N feels a tug on her heartstrings. She feels that her cheeks are wet and she begins to dab her tears away with the back of her hand, turning to Abby who was still recording Harry but with the turn of Y/N, she whips her phone around to record her instead. Y/N lets out a disgusting yet comical sniff through her nose and whimpers out, “I saw Harry’s sad excuse for a moustache with my own eyes and now I’m crying.”

Abby lets out a snort as she stops recording and turns back to Harry as he swings out his guitar and begins to play Anna, letting Y/N compose herself so she can continue jamming out. And of course, she does, for the next three songs, before he leaves the stage for a quick minute or two just to come back out and play the last three songs of the night (she can never understand why every artist has this in their setlist, and she laughs as Harry explains to the crowd that he doesn’t either).

From the Dining Table is beautiful and sad and The Chain is hardcore and exhilarating and then Harry plays Kiwi and Y/N is crying again because it’s the last song of the show and the last show of the tour and it’s heartbreaking.

And he has the audacity to play it again.

And the audacity to run down to B-stage once more.

He’s completely losing it and the crowd along with him but he’s so exhausted from the run and it’s so obvious that Y/N can’t help but laugh as he pants for breath. He turns towards her area as he brings the mic up to his mouth to continue the next few lines. He sees her.

He locks eyes with her and her amused eyes, raised eyebrows, and cackling laugh and he breaks into the biggest grin. He struggles to begin singing as he laughs along with her, joining in on his hilarious physical state and he adds in the line, “And I’m exhausted, I’m exhausted,” before finally turning away and running back to the mainstage.

Y/N had to take a huge swig of her water bottle and close her eyes for a good moment to make sure she didn’t legitimately pass out.

He finally noticed her. For a mere 4 seconds, he looked at her and he smiled at her and they laughed together. She was okay now. It wasn’t a conversation like she hoped it would be but he still acknowledged her presence and even though he didn’t explicitly say “I know you,” the way his face lit up when they made eye contact was enough for her to believe that he recognized her and she meant something to him.

He finishes off the song and fakes the crowd out as he eggs them on for another take and she hates herself. She hates that for a few minutes that morning she actually got angry with the way he teased her and decided that he was an asshole.

Sure, she can see him stick his tongue out and walk around with a shit eating grin as he hears the crowd go wild for a third rendition of Kiwi, but it doesn’t make him an asshole like she presumed. Just a cocky son of a bitch.

One who begins to sing Kiwi once again with the most tired posture a 24 year old man can have. Yet he continues to rock his body to the music and at one point drops down to his goddamn knees and rocks out on the floor. Yeah, Y/N concludes to herself, he’s hot and he’s fully aware of it.  

The concert ends and Abby is crying (well, everyone in the arena is full of tears), both watching CHASM bow for the final time before exiting the stage. And with that, the lights turn back on and it’s time to leave.

Y/N’s ears are ringing and the loud chatter of the audience comes out muffled to her hearing, and it makes her happy. Concerts have always been the best for her, whether it was the Jonas Brothers back in 2008 or Coldplay back in 2016; they’ve always found a place in her heart. And now she can add this to her list, along with the most memorable ham and cheesy run she’s ever had.

-

They arrive back home after about an hour of driving, though it only took them half of one earlier that day to get to the venue. But I mean, it’s LA traffic, even if it’s just a 20 mile distance. Besides, it gives their ears time to pop and gives them time to destress and let out all their emotions. And it gives Abby time to look through all the videos she took to post the best ones online.

One of them is the video of Y/N and her ugly crying and although Y/N absolutely cringes and begs her not to post it on Twitter, she does so anyway, with the caption “Why is Y/N the biggest mood of the night @username #HarryStylesForum” and Y/N’s annoyed but she’s just finished washing her face and changing into her PJ’s so she falls asleep before she could protest anymore.

-

She stays asleep with no disturbances for a good 7 hours. She was even having a lovely dream about Thanksgiving back at her parents’ home in San Diego and the roasted duck she was having was delicious. But she’s cut off from the mash potatoes and gravy when Abby’s phone goes off for the millionth time and continues to go off about 20 times in a row after she wakes up. She lets out a soft groan with her face smushed into her pillow and she swings her arm around to feel for Abby to wake her up so she has to deal with it as well. She stops once she hears her friend groan and shuffle through the bed sheets and Y/N tries to get comfortable again, already drifting back to sleep. And she’s almost there.

But then a very loud gasp is heard and a hand is slapping her shoulder hard and continuously and Y/N is far from going back to sleep.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. He replied to my tweet. Oh my god, Y/N, he replied to my tweet.” Okay, yeah, she’s fully awake now.

Y/N sits up in her bed with wide eyes as she peers over Abby’s shoulder to then squint at the bright screen of her phone, watching notifications flood in as accounts follow her, DM her, retweet her, and reply to her. Abby has her original tweet with the video of Y/N open for her to see before she slowly scrolls down a few centimeters to see Harry Styles’ reply, “I’m proud of this moustache, thank you very much.” And now Y/N is having flashbacks.

This is the second time around that he’s called her out in the last 24 hours and she’s felt her stomach drop for the second time as well. Except this time he’s plastered it all over Twitter for everyone to see. Oh, she can just imagine how many death threats she’s going to receive from the worst of fans that are going to take this banter seriously.

With the thought of it, she glances over to her phone that’s perched on her makeup vanity, that was switched to silent as soon as she set her phone down on it earlier that night. She could see the notification light flicker with a green tint (she has a Samsung, not an iPhone, which she is not ashamed of, by the way) above the phone screen, which means that she does, in fact, have Twitter notifications.

She drops her head back in exasperation and lets out another small groan as she wordlessly gets up to retrieve it, planning to block every single account that gives just a hint of negative attitude towards her choice of words. And she begins to do so, opening up the app and scrolling through the 14 DMs she’s already received in the last 5 minutes. Half of them were what she expected and she quickly blocked and reported them for wasting her time. But the other half were amused and were congratulating her on provoking him enough to defend himself, so she took her time to reply back with kind words and a thanks.

This takes her a while, so she climbs back in bed (she knows Abby won’t be able to sleep much after this so she might as well join her) and lays back down with her phone held up above her head (she lives life on the edge). She’s having a cute conversation with a nice girl named Lily when her phone buzzes once, announcing that she just received another DM. So she finishes up her reply and hopes that the next DM will be nice as well as she taps the back button and gazes to the top of the DM list.

Harry Styles. @Harry_Styles:

Ham and cheese girl :D

Holy mother fuck.

[finn-nelson-for-the-win]

New Beginnings

Hello, my lovelies! So I got the idea to write this multi-chapter AU a few months ago but between work, Uni, personal life drama, and the writing I had been doing to fulfill fanfic prompt requests (as well as A LOT of writing for the other fandom I write for haha) I’m only getting the chance to get the ball rolling on this one now.

I didn’t tag anyone in this Intro chapter because I wanted you all to know what you were signing up for with this fic before committing to being tagged in subsequent chapters. With that being said, if you like this story and would like to be tagged in future chapters, feel free to let me know!

So without further ado…this is New Beginnings.

***

Rae sat in the back of the car, staring distractedly out the window as she saw the city that she had been born and raised in pass by in a blur.

Linda and Karim had tried to make conversation when they first started their nearly hour long drive, but the early morning hour and Rae’s unwillingness to respond with more than one word answers led to Linda and Karim chatting among themselves in the front while Rae was left alone with her thoughts.

The first twenty minutes of the drive, Rae had been overjoyed.

She had spent the summer months after college ended excitedly fussing over every detail of what her experience at Uni would be like and how good it would feel to be living on her own—well, technically in the dormitories on campus at her university, but that was a minor detail as far as Rae was concerned because she would no longer be living under her mum’s roof.

The next twenty minutes, Rae had been terrified.

College had been hell, but Rae had made it through. University had to be different for her, but what was to say that different meant better? How did Rae know that she would be strong enough to handle what life would throw at her, even after everything she has already been through? Failure was not an option for Rae, but her concerns about how unprepared she suddenly felt and uncertainty about what would happen if everything went tits up for her at Uni made it hard to focus on anything else for those minutes that seemed to drag on endlessly.

As the scenery outside the car window transitioned from the only town she had ever called home to unrecognizable countrysides and finally to the distinct cityscape that had built around the University that was soon becoming her home away from home, the all-consuming fear Rae had felt was quickly replaced with guilt.

Rae was being selfish, it was as simple as that. Her mum and Karim were stuck at home with a young child and Rae was free to just pack up her entire life and leave them behind without second thoughts. She had willingly applied to Uni and agreed to pay more money than she cared to think about at the moment to further her education and pursue her dreams, but her family needed her. Rae’s baby sister—too young to fully understand why her big sister was leaving and telling her goodbye early that morning—needed her, and yet Rae was still going through with all of this.

“Rae...Rachel, dear, I think we’re here,” Linda said most likely not for the first time, pulling Rae from the rabbit hole of doubt and overthinking that she had fallen into.

“Oh, uh yeah, sorry mum. This is the place, I think…”

***

“109...110...try to keep up, Karim! Rae’s dorm room should be right around the corner from here!”

Linda walked along the perimeter of the courtyard, passing each dormitory door as she searched for the room number that matched what was scrawled onto the small envelope containing the keys to Rae’s dorm.

Karim and Rae, who were following a short distance behind, were slowed down slightly by the surprisingly heavy boxes they carried with them. Linda had stopped walking and moved to one side of the sidewalk to give the group of people currently trying to maneuver a large flat screen television through the door to the nearest dorm space to move as necessary.

“Look at this, Rae,” Linda said quietly as she leaned over to her daughter to speak quietly with her, “they have nice and strong Uni boys to help move in the heavier stuff!”

Rae rolled her eyes and leaned away from her mum who gave her a wink and playfully nudged her side with her elbow, but Rae’s poorly contained chuckle showed that she was mostly unbothered by her mum’s joking.

“Alright, let’s just hurry up and find my dorm room. This box is heavier than I remembered it being,” Rae replied with a huff from the weight of the box she carried.

The three continued walking along the row of dormitory doors, smiling politely at the other residents that they passed.

“Which number?” Karim asked as he tried to adjust his grip of the boxes he was holding without dropping either box.

“Room 113, so this one...I believe,” Linda replied as she walked towards a door that was a few down from where the group had been carrying in the TV only minutes ago.

Linda pulled the shiny key from the small envelope it was contained in and inserted it into the lock, giving it a turn.

When the door unlocked without further hesitation, Linda swung open the door and held it open as Rae and Karim stepped inside the dimly lit apartment-style dorm.

“Hello? Oh! You must be Rachel, huh?” Rae heard the cheerful voice before she saw a petite girl with fiery red hair emerge from one of the bedrooms, but she smiled and nodded as the girl walked closer to her.

“Yeah, that’s me, but I go by Rae, not Rachel,” Rae replied with a small smile.

“Perfect, thanks for letting me know, Rae! My name is Isabella, by the way, but you can call me Iz or Izzy or some other nickname if you’d like! You were the last roommate we were waiting on and the other girls have been coming in and out all morning, but I can introduce you to them when I see them, if you’d like.”

“I’d really appreciate that, Izzy! Do you know which room is mine? I’d really like to put these boxes down,” Rae replied with a strained laugh and she tried to adjust her grip on the box she was carrying.

“Oh, silly me! Of course! Your room is right here on the right and I think Maddie took the bed on the left, so the one on the right is your side of the room by default, I guess!”

“Perfect! This is my mum, Linda, and my stepdad, Karim, by the way.” Rae replied as she used her head to motion to Linda and Karim where they stood beside her.

“It’s lovely to meet you both! My parents were here earlier this morning but they left already, or else I surely would have introduced them to you all as well!”

Rae followed Izzy into the bedroom that was lighted solely by the two large windows against the far wall of the room that had the window coverings lifted fully. Rae set the box she was carrying labeled “desk stuff” onto the plain black desk that was set up against the foot of her lofted bed beside the wall.

As soon as she turned around, she was pulled into a tight hug by Izzy, which she returned only slightly awkwardly despite the initial surprise.

“I’m just so happy to finally meet you, Rae! Me and the other two girls met up and got to know each other a bit over summer, so we already feel like old friends, but since you were only recently added to our dorm, all three of us have just been waiting anxiously to finally meet you. I really hope you love it here and we can all be really good friends.”

“I’m really excited to get to know you and the rest of the girls living here as well!” Rae added with a wide grin.

“Do you wanna meet one of the girls now? Or were you gonna go with your parents and get the rest of your stuff from their car?”

Rae looked at her mum and Karim as they stacked the boxes Karim had been carrying neatly on the carpeted floor beneath her lofted dorm bed.

“Go on ahead and meet your suitemates, Rae. Karim and I can get the rest of the stuff from the car. We might even be able to get a little help from those fit boys we saw earlier,” Linda replied with a suggestive eyebrow raise as she herded Karim out of Rae’s bedroom and towards the front door of the dorm.

“Come on! Maddie is at the Student Services building getting the parking permit for her car so she can park in the lot over here without being towed, so you’ll have to meet her a bit later. But you can come meet my roommate, Chloe!”

Izzy grabbed Rae by the hand and gently pulled her into the neighboring bedroom inside their dorm where there was a girl with her back turned towards them hanging clothing in a closet.

“Chloe! This is Rachel, Maddie’s roommate. She likes to go by ‘Rae’ instead of Rachel though!”

“Hiya, nice to meet you, Chloe,” Rae said quietly as the girl turned to face Rae and Izzy where they stood just within the entrance of the room.

“Hey babes! It’s so nice to finally meet you. I was surprised to see that they added someone into our dorm so close to move-in, but I’m glad that you’ll be living with us nonetheless!” Chloe replied as she walked forward and pulled Rae into a hug.

Wow...is it just me or is everyone at Uni a hugger except me?

“Rae’s parents are still getting some of her stuff from their car, but when they get back I can introduce them to you as well, Chloe!”

“Sure, that’s fine with me! Now that you two ladies are here, do you think you can help me with lofting my bed? I want it to be a little bit higher up so then I can fit my dresser and mini fridge underneath my bed to help save some space,”

Izzy and Rae shrugged and agreed, walking up to the bed to try to help Chloe figure out how to loft the bed.

“I don’t know how to loft the beds any higher than this,” Rae replied after they had tried and failed to loft the frame of the bed significantly higher than it had been initially, “my bed was already lofted when I got in there.”

“Should we go ask our neighbors to see if they can help us out?” Izzy asked as she wiped the small bit of sweat that had accumulated on her forehead from the exertion of moving the heavy bed frame.

“Sure! Plus I think it would be good to meet the neighbors and make friends with them, you know?” Chloe replied with a knowing smirk, which confused Rae slightly.

The three girls walked outside their dorm and turned right, towards dorm 114, and Chloe knocked on the door.

“Let’s try our next door neighbors to the left,” Izzy suggested after waiting a while since they knocked to see if anyone was there, “I’m pretty sure I saw a couple of them moving in around the same time that I got here, so they might still be inside their dorm!”

They walked past their dorm door and towards their other neighbors’ door and Chloe knocked on the door while the other two ladies stood beside her waiting to see if anyone would answer the door.

Just as they began to walk away from the door, they heard someone call “just a minute” followed by a loud series of thuds and sounds of items being moved hastily before the door unlocked and was opened.

“Oh! Hello!” called the cute boy wearing glasses who had answered the door as he panted, slightly out of breath from his rush to get the door.

“Good morning! We’re your next door neighbors, from dorm 113! We needed a little bit of help lofting my bed, and I was hoping that you boys could help us out a bit?” Chloe asked, laying on the charm nice and thick and batting her eyelashes excessively.

Boys? What did Chloe mean by ‘you boys’?

“Yeah, of course! My mates and I will head over there to help in a just a second. Dorm 113, right?” the boy asked with a friendly smile.

“Yup! Number 113...we’ll leave the door cracked open for you boys and you can just come right inside, alright?”

Chloe gave the boy another smile and he waved at Izzy and Rae behind her after promising that he and his mates would be over to help them soon, before the three girls returned back to their own dorm.

With the front door propped open using one of the small blue bins for recycling, the three girls walked into the room that Izzy and Chloe shared to clear some of the clutter out of the way so the others would be able to access Chloe’s bed without stepping on anything on the ground.

“Hey ladies!” A booming voice sing-songed as a shirtless boy with short hair walked through the front door of their dorm, followed by the boy in the glasses that had answered the door when Chloe and the girls first knocked.

“Hi, you must be one of our neighbors from 112, huh? I’m Chloe!” she said as she emerged from her bedroom to greet the boys that had walked into their dorm.

“I sure am! You can call me Chop,” he replied with a wide grin that exposed a noticeable, but strangely suiting gap between his two front teeth.

“You three saw me earlier, but we haven’t been formally introduced. My name is Archie and I’m not roommates with Chop, but I was just helping him and our other mate get settled since none of my suitemates have moved into our dorm yet.”

“And who are these two lovely ladies?” Chop asked with an eyebrow waggle as he turned his attention to the other girls that had joined Chloe in the common area of their dorm while Archie introduced himself.

Rae stood beside Izzy in a state of stunned silence when Chloe’s previous statement clicked into place.

‘You boys’ as in our neighbors...who are fit and/or shirtless and casually standing in our dorm room right now...

“My name is Izzy...and this here is Rae!” Izzy replied for both of them when she saw that Rae was not jumping at the chance to introduce herself.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you three ladies,” Chop added with a smirk, “some of the guys aren’t in our dorm right now, but I think between you three and us three, we can loft a bed, don’t ya think?”

“Three of you? I just see you and Archie..?” Rae replied with her eyebrows scrunched in confusion after her initial surprise and shyness had begun to fade in the presence of the two friendly boys standing in their dorm room.

“Huh? Oh! Arch, do ya know where Finn ran off to? He was just here a moment ago…”

“I, uh...maybe he—”

“Oi, Chopper! I’m right here, I just turned back to grab something to help loft the bed,” muttered the shirtless boy with slightly shaggy brown hair as he walked into the girl’s dorm room.

“There he is! It’s about fucking time, mate!” Chop joked as he gave his mate’s shoulder a playful shove.

“Sorry, I...uh…” the boy stood beside Archie and his voice trailed off as he looked between the three girls in front of him and himself, shirtless and dressed only in joggers that hung low on his hips, and he chewed his bottom lip out of nervousness.

“Oh, don’t mind him! My boy Finnley here is just a little bit shy around beautiful ladies like you all,” Chop added with a chuckle, “Ya missed all the introductions here, mate, but these ladies are Izzy, Chloe, and Rae...they are our next door neighbors!”

The girls gave Finn a small wave and smiled as Chop introduced them, but all Finn managed was a tight-lipped smile and silent nod at each of the girls.

“Anyway...we hear that there is a bed that needs lofting, yeah? Let’s get to it!” Archie replied with a smile as he gestured for the ladies to lead them to the bed they wanted to loft.

As Chloe and Izzy explained to Chop and Archie what they had already tried doing, Finn walked up to the bed frame and looked at the structure of the base where the mattress sat.

“Hey, uh, May...was it? Can ya help me move the mattress off the bed frame?” Finn asked quietly when he noticed that Rae was leaned up against the wall nearest to him watching what he was doing.

“Oh, sure, but my name is ‘Rae’ not ‘May’...” she replied as she walked up to the mattress to help him pull it down from the bed frame and lean it against the wall where she stood previously.

“Thanks for the help,” he muttered before returning to his inspection of the bed frame.

“Alright, now that we got the mattress out of the way, you should just be able to lift the base of the bed frame and move it into a higher notch to make the bed lifted higher up,” Chop said as he moved to stand at one end of the bed, “Finn, can you get on the other side and hold it in place so I can lift this side of the base?”

Finn nodded and stood at the opposite end of the bed from Chop and gripped the bed frame tightly to keep it still.

Chop began to pull the base upward, trying to unhook it from the notch it was currently positioned in, but despite his greater than average strength that was clearly a result of years of working out, the base would hardly budge.

“Can I take a look?” Finn asked when Chop stepped away from the bed frame with a frustrated huff.

“By all means. Do you really think you’re stronger than me though, Finn?” Chop asked, lifting his arms up to flex his muscles as if to prove his point.

“Well I am stronger than you, Chopper, but it also might help you lift the base if you undo the screws that are securing them in place,” Finn muttered as he pulled a screwdriver from the pocket of his joggers and loosened the screws on that side of the bed until the base was easily lifted using only one hand, “there ya go!”

Finn handed the screwdriver to Archie who got started loosening all the other screws on the base to help them loft the bed.

“So that’s what you were looking at on the bed frame so closely a minute ago. Nice job by the way, if not for you I don’t know how long we would have tried to loft the bed using brute force,” Rae replied with a smile when Finn walked to stand next to her on the opposite side of the room to give the others more space to adjust the height of the bed.

“Yeah, well I knew the screws had to be holding something in place and I had brought my screwdriver from my dorm just in case I’d need it, so I just took a guess. It wasn’t a big deal or anything,” he replied quietly as he crossed his arms over his torso to try to hide the exposed skin of his bare chest.

“Rae! Can you help Karim with the box on the top of the stack? It’s about to fall off,” Linda replied from the doorway of the dorm as she used a foot to gently kick open the door that was still held open by the recycling bin, since her arms were full with boxes.

“Yeah, of course,” Rae walked into the common room and grabbed the box on top of the stack Karim was carrying before following them both into her bedroom to put the boxes down.

“Are your other roommates here? We heard a few extra voices as we walked into your dorm,” Linda said as she placed the boxes of clothing she carried onto the carpet near the open closet.

“Two of my suitemates are here. Our neighbors also came over to help us loft one of their beds in the other room, so they’re here now too.” Rae explained.

“Perfect! Let’s go meet them!” Linda replied enthusiastically as she walked out of Rae’s bedroom and into the neighboring room that Izzy and Chloe shared.

“Hiya ladies! I’m Rae’s mum, Linda Bouchtat, and this is my husband...Karim…”

Linda stopped dead in her tracks when she walked into the other room and saw that in addition to the perky redhead she had met previously, there was now a pretty girl sitting in a desk chair and three fit boys—two of which shirtless and glistening with sweat—standing beside a newly lofted bed.

“Hello, Mrs. Bouchtat!” Archie said as he reached a hand across to shake Linda’s hand in greeting, “I’m Archie and these two lads are Chop and Finn. We live next door to your daughter and her suitemates!”

“Ah, I see...Rachel, can you come help us get the last couple things from the car, so we don’t have to make an additional trip?” Linda asked almost curtly as she turned to face Rae where she stood behind her.

“Uh, sure, mum…” Rae replied hesitantly, unsure as to why her mum had referred to her by her full first name.

As soon as Rae, Linda, and Karim were a short distance away from the dorm, Linda placed her hand on Rae’s shoulder, causing her to stop walking.

“What the bloody hell was that back there, Rae?”

“What do ya mean, mum?”

“What do I mean? Are you serious, Rachel? Those boys...those shirtless boys...what were they doing in your dorm?”

“They are our neighbors, like Archie said, and they were helping to loft Chloe’s bed, like I had told you,” Rae replied with an eye roll as she continued walking towards her mum’s car.

“You live next to boys?”

“Yeah! Apparently all the odd numbered dorms have girls and even numbered dorms have boys...don’t act so surprised, mum! We both knew that this was a co-ed dormitory community!” Rae replied casually when she noticed the look of shock on Linda’s face.

“Well yeah, but I thought that it would be separated right down the middle or by floor or something!”

“Oh relax, mum! It’s not like there are co-ed showers or toilets that we have to share, since they are apartment-style dorms. Each dorm still only has up to four boys or four girls, but it’s not mixed!”

“Hmm...Alright, I guess. I still wish that I knew about this earlier.”

“I didn’t know about it either until when I met my neighbors, but it’s gonna be fine, mum.”

“I suppose so. It’s a good thing that I trust you so much to make smart choices, Rae!”

When the three of them got to Linda’s car, there was only Rae’s denim backpack and a box with some of her favorite books left to take to her dorm.

“Karim and I should probably get back home to your sister Leila. You know how she can get when she is with a sitter for too long and I’m sure you have plenty of unpacking and bonding with your suitemates to do still.”

“Alright, I should be able to take this last box and my backpack without any trouble. Thanks for helping me move my stuff into my dorm, mum and Karim.”

There was a brief moment of awkward silence before Linda pulled Rae into a tight embrace despite the box Rae was carrying in her arms.

“I’m just really gonna miss you, Rae! You’re my little girl and now you’re growing up so fast and going to Uni and I’m just so proud of you!” Linda said as she rubbed circles on Rae’s back with her hands while the two remained hugging.

“I���m gonna miss you too, mum...both of you and Lei-lei too, actually!” Rae replied as she looked over at Karim when he reached to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, “but I’m not leaving forever. I’m still close enough to come home for holidays and when I have days off of school.”

“I know, I know...and living in the dorms with all the other first year Uni students will be good for you so you can branch out and make some new friends, I think. You better still call us once per week,” Linda said as she released Rae from her tight embrace and wrapped an arm around Karim’s torso instead.

“No, please try to call every day,” Karim added, his accented English thick with concealed emotion.

“Okay, I’ll be sure to call you guys often and keep in touch as much as I can, alright?”

Rae gave Linda and Karim hugs goodbye and she pretended not to notice how glossy their eyes were with holding back tears so that she could maintain her composure as well, but before long her parents climbed into their car and drove away, leaving Rae standing alone in the parking lot with her denim backpack and the cardboard box full of books.

I’ve never lived away from my mum for such a long time, but this is what I wanted, right?

I knew what it would entail to apply for Uni and sign up to live in the dormitories on campus.

But now that it’s actually happening, I feel almost...wistful, I suppose.

The short walk back to her dorm room brought back the excitement, fear, and guilt Rae had felt on the drive earlier that morning in waves, but none of the thoughts lingered and soon she was standing in front of the locked door to her dorm.

My dorm...I think I can get used to the sound of that…

“Oh, good! You had your keys with you,” Izzy called from where she was seated on the couch in the common room of their dorm when Rae unlocked the door and stepped inside, “I wasn’t sure if you had them so I wanted to make sure that you were still able to get back inside after the boys left a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry I left without telling you all. I just went out to grab the last couple things from my mum’s car and then I was seeing off my mum and stepdad because they needed to start driving home,” Rae explained after turning to lock the front door of the dorm behind her.

Rae walked into her bedroom and was surprised to see a short, but athletic-looking girl with long blonde hair pulled back in a loose ponytail standing on the opposite side of the bedroom from where Rae’s boxes were stacked.

“Oh, hello! You must be my roommate, Maddie, right?” Rae asked as she set down the box she was carrying on her desk.

“Yeah, that’s me! Sorry I wasn’t here earlier today, but I’m glad to see that you seem to be getting settled in alright,” Maddie replied with a smile.

“Oh, yeah! The other girls have been so welcoming and we even met some of the boys in the dorm next to us earlier today. I think I’m gonna really like living here,” Rae said as set her denim backpack onto the chair beneath her desk.

“Knock-knock, ladies!” Izzy sing-songed as she walked through the open door to Rae and Maddie’s bedroom door, “I just wanted to let you two know that Chloe and I were going to go into the city to do some dorm room essentials shopping a bit later today, so you are both more than welcome to join us if you’d like!”

“Thanks, but I’m meeting a couple of my friends from back home for a movie tonight, since we all spent all day today getting settled into our dorms,” Maddie replied with a smile as she continued organizing her side of the bedroom.

“Aw, okay. Maybe we can all hang out another time. What about you, Rae? Do ya wanna come shopping with Chloe and me?”

“Yeah, sure! There’s a few things that I still needed to get too, so I’d really like that!” Rae said with a smile.

“Perfect! I’ll give you a while longer to unpack all your boxes and then whenever you’re ready to leave, just come into my room and let Chloe and I know!”

Izzy walked out of the room and Rae turned back towards her side of the bedroom and looked at all of the boxes that she had left to unpack.

18 years of my life.

Every memory with mum, Karim, and Leila...

All the books that hold a special place in my heart…

And the music that has helped me keep my sanity when life went to shit...

All of the reminders from when my life spun out of control and very nearly slipped from my grasp…

And the diaries and memories from hospital that proved that I was stronger than I ever thought I could be…

My entire life up to this point is now reduced down and packed neatly into ten cardboard boxes and my denim backpack.

The past is the past and there’s nothing I can do to change anything that has happened to me.

But now I’m starting this new chapter of my life and truly living away from my family for the first time in my life.

University is a time for new beginnings, and I swear I’m not gonna fuck it up this time.

A/N: Okay, so this is the introductory chapter, or perhaps a preface, to the new multi-chapter fic that I’m going to be writing and posting for a majority of the foreseeable future.

I’ll be completely honest with you when I say that I have no clue exactly how long this story will end up being and/or exactly what this story will entail, but here are a few things I can tell you about this story: this will likely be a pretty long fic though each chapter may vary greatly in length, this AU takes place in modern day but with the background of Rae’s past struggles with her mental health that are detailed in the show (except for the gang, since she meets them all at Uni in this fic), and the vast majority of events that will be covered in this story are going to be based off of real events from my own experiences of living in the dorms during my Freshman year of Uni...I haven’t decided whether I will let you all know which events were real in the author’s notes of each chapter or whether I’ll leave that a mystery for you guys to make your own assumptions about haha.

Without a doubt, my first year of Uni was the most fun/difficult/crazy year of my life up to that point, but it taught me a lot about myself and about the people I had in my life and ones that came into my life during this time and while there were a lot of bad times, there were also a lot of good times and memories that were made...so hopefully with this story, I can help share some of my experiences and memories with you all!

Until next time: Stay awesome, my friends!

[asmediablog-advikarora]

Week 19- Editing of our foundation portfolio

Day 1 

On Day 1, we started our foundation portfolio’s editing. Our entire foundation portfolio was edited on Premiere Pro. During production, I had noted the final take’s source number saved on the camera, so that during post-production I would be able to save time in importing the source files. At the first  and final cut stage of editing, I changed a certain amount of shots that signify more meaning. 

Before the opening credits

There was this mid-close up shot of our main character struggling to open the rope and the moment he shakes his shoulder, I cut it to a long shot of him sitting on a chair and still struggling even though we had never shot a mid-close up shot, in post, I just increased the scale of the long shot and made it a mid-close up shot. I simply did this because the entire long shot had the rule of third used with the character being with more negative spacing and less positive spacing, so by shifting from the mid-close up to the long shot more positive spacing (the space in front of him) was created suggesting that the character has almost managed to untie the rope. After these shots, a short opening credits came, I have given a detailed breakdown ahead. 

Opening credits breakdown(Clickable) 

Firstly, the software that I used for the opening credits was Adobe After Effects. The font that I used for the title was Action Now from Fontspace(clickable). The reason why I particularly chose this font was because of it’s in built grudge effect which in a way suggests that the film has a lot of action because a grudge means roughness. Ideally, when a human eye looks at a plain, for instance, arial font text doesn’t have any sort of roughness to it, it’s just smooth in nature. 

I downloaded the text as a portable network graphics file with a white font color for the the upper title of the time seeker and a red font color, as red signifies danger, action and rage suiting the genre of our film, for the lower title. White signifies peace, tranquility and happiness, but because our film has violence, I kept white but used a rough textured image, positioned it on top of the text files and the background color, and then later changed the blending mode of the image to screen from normal creating that extra grudge effect on the overall frame.

For the text animation, I just played with the position of the the text file and added a motion blur to it. For the camera animations, I am again just playing with the position and scale of the compositions along with a motion blur. Motion blur adds that natural blur that occurs when an object moves in a fast speed, it helps the animation look more realistic. I mainly keyframed the motion of the text and the camera for less than a minute, meaning that the text will move in less than a second, moreover I also played with the graphs of the keyframe by slowing the speed of the motions of the text and the camera animations initially, then increasing it again. The purpose of this type of this fast paced credit scene is too show the contrast between the speeds of the scenes before it and the text animation. The scenes before the text animation are very slow paced, but the text animation is very fast paced helping us to grab the viewer’s attention again and in a way exciting them. 

After the opening credits

Moreover, after the text animation, there is an extreme close up shot and point of view (with a 15 percent camera blur) shot which I kept on cutting again and again with a black fade in and out transition to help the audience understand the character’s vision. The significance of that camera blur is that when someone wakes up in the morning, that person’s vision remains blurry for a couple of seconds after coming back to normal, so because the character had a cloth wrapped around his eyes and because his vision was blocked for a long time, I put a camera blur on all the point of view shots only. 

During pre-production and production, we had written 6 scenes and even shot 6 scenes, however, our opening could only include till the 4th scene.  We wanted the time seeker (our foundation portfolio) to be a slow paced film with less cuts because it gives that freighting feeling to the audience and also makes them curious of what is about to come next, so I used more cut on actions, insert cuts and standard cuts instead of jump cuts because going ahead in time and cutting the character’s action forward in time would ruin that suspense. There was this long shot of Armaan running in the kidnapping room shot one from outside the kidnapping room and the other long shot inside the kidnapping room. So in editing, by matching Armaan’s action of him opening the door in the both the clips at the same time allowed me to cut between them creating a cut on action. There was one more long shot of Armaan hiding outside the kidnapping room and waiting for the kidnapper, and we had also shot of point of view of the kidnapper walking towards the room, so in post what I did is at the very last moment of Armaan hitting the kidnapper with an iron rod in both the shots, I cut to the point of view shot only showing Armaan hitting the kidnapper nothing else making it a small insert cut. 

Day 2(Clickable)

On Day 2, we initially started with the sound designing and mixing. Sound mixing is basically arranging all the foley sounds, pilot sounds, and the background music in a way that makes it go in sync with each other, for instance, if Armaan is speaking his dialogue then the background music or other foley sounds such as traffic noises should be lowered. Through out our opening we only used two foley sounds; one where Armaan’s kidnapper is walking so we needed the footsteps sounds and second where Armaan’s kidnapper is talking on the phone.

Essentially, for the opening credits’ soundtrack I used two different tracks and put them on top of each other so that they can blend well. So for the first track, I used a clock ticking sound effect, and for the second track I used a suspenseful fast tracked music. The reason why I did this is because the title has the word “TIME” in it, hence the clocking ticking and the suspenseful fast tracked music because of the word “SEEKER” which means a person searching for something so that music track technically suggests a panicky effect. 

Additionally, I used Adobe Audition for denoising the entire pilot sounds because we majorly used pilot sounds so it was very important for them to be clear. I selected all the pilot audio tracks in premiere pro, right clicked on them, and then selected the option edit with Adobe Audition. In Adobe Audition, I basically imported an audio track, captured a point under the noise reduction tab located in the effects tab where the noise can be heard the most, then selected the entire audio track by Ctrl+A, then went to noise reduction(process) again under the noise reduction tab located in the effects tab, and then finally let Adobe Audition do the work. Through Adobe’s dynamic link, whatever I save in Adobe Audition gets saved in Adobe Premiere Pro. 

Before starting the color grading of our foundation portfolio, I did some research about Joker, because we were hugely inspired by Joker’s color grading and editing and we thought that would be a perfect example for the way we want our film to look expect that Joker’s color palette had more greens where as our film’s color palette has more reds and blues.

It was very important for me to discuss the color palette once again with the cinematographer and the director, so they sat with me during the color grading session and express their opinions throughout. Inside the kidnapping room, I maintained a more warmth and reddish feeling as warm colors usually create heat helping the audience understand the overall temperature, whereas outside the kidnapping room, I used more blues and cooler colors instead of the same colors helping the audience understand that there is a contrast of temperature or feel between the two rooms. Moreover, in order to maintain the spotlight on Armaan, we designed Armaan’s costume in such a way that the colors of the costume don't blend in with the lighting of our sets. For the costume we decided to use white and black simply because they are such colors that always stand out in the color palette because they are unpleasant to the eye yet the most attractive ones that helped us to maintain the spotlight on Armaan in that kidnapping scene.

So in post, it became very easy for me and I just had to maintain that white color on Armaan’s costume and just play around with the other colors. It was quite a challenge maintaining the white color because there was red lighting right next that was reflecting on Armaan, so initially in the basic color correction, I tried increasing the whites, the contrast, the exposure and I reduced the blacks and the highlights only for the scenes inside the kidnapping rooms. In the other sections of color grading, I tried reducing the reds overall helping Armaan’s costume to stand out inside the kidnapping room scenes. Outside the kidnapping, the lighting in the corridors for when we shot those scenes were white, so in post, under the basic correction, I reduced the whites, the exposure, and the highlights and I increased the blacks, the temperature to blue and the contrast. In the other sections, I overall tried reducing the greens, the reds, and increased the blues creating that cooling effect.

At the final stage of editing that is exporting our opening, I exported the file in a 1980 by 1080 ratio with a high bitrate video source. 

It was a tiring, but a productive week. Finally, our opening was ready, and we could achieve the look that we all desired for by applying all the skills and techniques we learnt through out this academic year.  

-Advik Arora