#the entire point of the story is that despite him literally being a beast belle was able to see “beauty” in him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

raibebe · 4 years

Text

Of needles and seduction

Genre: Fluff and smut Words: 15.2k Prompt: Johnny tattoo shop AU featuring best friends Yangyang and Jaemin Warnings: contains smut, Daddy-kink, size-kink, mentions of mirror-sex

A/N: This is very self-indulgent, I’m sorry. While I do have piercings myself, I know next to nothing about tattoos, so I’m sorry if anything is inaccurate. Also I don’t advise what some characters in this are doing for yourself. Just a quick special thanks to @burtonized who has listened to me ramble about this story and Johnny and helped me write this by giving me ideas and support. Thank you darling! This fic is a beast, I have never written anything this long,it’s insane. If smut isn’t for you, you can stop reading after the phone call and still have a pretty decent story. If you feel like, you’ve seen this post before, you might have. I deleted the original one because tumblr decided to delete it from the tags.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” You asked for what you felt was the tenth time in the past five minutes. “It’s going to be fine. The shop is clean and sanitary,” your friend Yangyang groaned while running his hands through his messy, blonde hair. It was getting way too long, hanging low into his eyes. “I’m just saying that this doesn’t seem like a safe place,” you mumbled but followed your hyper friend through a more than dubious looking side street of Itaewon. “Jaemin got his piercings done in the same shop and those healed just fine, stop being a baby,” the blonde said while rolling his eyes. He quickly checked his phone for the address of the (probably illegal) piercing and tattoo shop and took a sharp turn into an even shadier looking street. “I still don’t get while you need me to come with you when you want to get your nipples pierced for god knows what of a stupid reason.” “It’s easy,” Yangyang grinned at you, “Ten said I wouldn’t dare to do it. And I’m going to prove him wrong and you’re going to document the progress.” “Do you ever listen to yourself talk? You’re literally paying someone to stab you into your nipples to shove a piece of metal through it just to prove a point.” “It’s just one nipple though.” “How does that make it any better, Yangyang?” You deadpanned. Your friend groaned again. “I knew I should have taken Guanheng with me. He would have been supportive.” “He would also be supportive of getting ‘I love Tacos’ tattooed on your ass.” “He would,” Yangyang agreed with an exaggerated dreamy look on his face. “What a madlad.”

You sighed but couldn’t help smiling at his antics. You had befriended the hyper exchange student when you had been assigned to be partners for a group project for your mandarin class. Yangyang had only taken the class for extra credit and easy good grades while you were struggling like crazy and had seriously questioned all your life choices that had let to you taking the class. (But mostly you regretted listening to Renjun who had convinced you it would be an easy class.) The group project turned out to be rather easy when you had a native speaker as your partner and you had become fond of the younger student, staying in touch with him and helping him find his way around the big campus. If you had known that he was a package deal with a bunch of other equally hyper and questionably crazy exchange students, you might have thought a little longer about keeping in touch after the project was over. But who were you kidding, the other boys and Yangyang were incredibly dear to you and if Kun had his regular morning coffee, the others weren’t even that chaotic.

“That’s it,” Yangyang suddenly exclaimed, pointing at a small beat up looking wooden door that looked like it was ready to fall out of the doorway any second. But a little green neon sign that hang next to it flashed the word “open” onto the street indicating that a shop must be hiding behind it. Your arguably best friend quickly grabbed your hand as if he had been sensing that you were about to complain again and dragged you into the shop. A little bell jingled quietly when Yangyang closed the door behind you two. You took a deep breath to calm your nerves (hell you weren’t even the one to get stabbed with a needle) and took a look around the small room. It was small and poorly lit and every free space on the walls was plastered with drawings and photos of both freshly done and healed tattoos. You had to admit that whoever had done those had done a good job, they looked really neat. You guessed that at least two artists must be working in the shop. A good portion of the art were very neat black and white works (some looking freakishly realistic) while others were very vibrant and artistic.

With a confident bounce in his step, Yangyang went up to the counter to a man with wild bubblegum pink hair wearing a black tank top that showed off the ink on his arms and torso, all kept in black except for a deep red rose on the side of his neck. His eyes were lined with dark eyeliner, making them seem like dark bottomless orbs, and they were fixed to the screen of a laptop that was covered in stickers that were a wild mixture of cute characters and various rock and hip-hop bands. “And what brings you here?” The man asked with a surprisingly deep voice, turning his head towards your friend. “A friend of mine told me I could get pierced here,” Yangyang spoke, his hands fumbling with the loose threads of his sweater. “And if that was the case, what would you want to get pierced?” “My nipple.” At that the other man raised one of his perfectly arched eyebrows. “People usually start off with getting an earring or something.” “Go hard or go home,” Yangyang grinned, making the other man snort. “If you have 70.000 Won in cash, I can look if one of the piercers is free.” When your friend got out his worn wallet and put a couple of bills onto the counter, the other man smiled for the first time. It didn’t quite fit his whole dark punk aesthetic but you couldn’t deny that he was really good looking.

“Don’t run away now kiddo, I’ll see if someone is free,” he grinned, “I’m Taeyong by the way.” When he disappeared behind a curtain made out of pearls into the back, Yangyang turned towards you with the biggest smile on his face. “I told you it was going to be fine.” You just hummed nonchalantly, still not entirely supportive of the whole idea. “One of the guys is ready in a bit,” Taeyong said when he came back to the main room. “Are you getting anything?” He asked, looking at you. “Oh no, she’s a scaredy-cat, just here for moral support and to document that I actually did it,” your friend answered for you. Your face immediately heated up under the intense gaze of the pink haired tattoo artist. “Too bad,” he just shrugged. “So technically you need to sign stuff for legal issues and whatnot. But since this place doesn’t exactly exist on records, we’re skipping that part. You’re not on drugs or any meds, right?” “I’m not,” Yangyang shook his head, making his hair flop back into his face. “Any issues with fainting or other medical conditions?” “Nope.” “Great. Had a good meal before coming here?” “I had breakfast,” Yangyang shrugged. “You had a slice of cold pizza from yesterday,” you groaned. “That I ate in the morning, therefore it’s breakfast,” he argued. “Well in that case,” Taeyong interrupted your bickering and threw a granola bar into Yangyang’s hands, “Eat that and let your girlfriend treat you to some proper food afterwards.” Before the blonde could deny anything, you had already opened your mouth to tell the other man that in fact you weren’t dating.

“Sure, sorry for assuming,” he shrugged and sat back behind the counter, taking out an iPad and began drawing something, probably a tattoo design. “Nervous yet?” You asked Yangyang who was uncharacteristically quiet while munching on the granola bar. “Shit, I’m really doing this,” he replied, exhaling shakily. “You don’t actually have to, Yangyang,” you tried to comfort him. “And let Ten just get away like that? No way. I am doing this. I’m not his little baby Yangyang anymore,” he said like the stubborn child he was. You could just sigh and roll your eyes at him. “He might have just been joking, you know?” “One does not simply challenge Liu Yangyang like that and not expect consequences.” “Kun is going to actually flip and pop a vein,” you tried to reason with your friend for a last time. Kun was doing a lot of coordination work for the exchange students with a Chinese background and had taken on almost a fatherly role for the younger students that hadn’t been in Korea for long. And even though Ten wasn’t even that much younger than Kun, he almost lost his otherwise calm composure when the Thai boy had announced that he successfully had pierced his ear by himself yet again after he had convinced a poor med student to smuggle some equipment for him. And from there the situation had somehow escalated into Ten daring Yangyang to get a nipple piercing. “Well he can’t do anything about it once it’s done. We’ll just make sure he’s with someone who can call an ambulance if he ends up having an aneurism.”

“Someone still wants their nipple pierced?” A new voice interrupted your conversation and a tall man with dark inky hair came into the room, making the pearls of the curtain clink against each other. One side of his head was shaved while the longer hair on the other side framed his handsome face beautifully. He was wearing a loose black T-shirt paired with ripped jeans with almost as many holes as there was fabric that hugged his long legs perfectly, showing that he had also ink on his legs. From his lobe dangled a little silver chain and of course his arms were covered in intricate designs, one arm strictly black ink while the other sported some colorful pieces as well. In the center of his plush lower lip sat a black ring and just beneath his left eye two little silver balls were reflecting the low light. You couldn’t deny that the man looked absolutely stunning despite his unusual appearance.

“Yes, me,” Yangyang eagerly answered the man’s question and walked towards him, tugging you with him. “Too bad,” the piercer grinned cheekily and winked in your direction, making your heart flutter in your chest and heat rise to your face, before he extended a big hand to shake Yangyang’s much smaller one. “I’m Johnny,” he introduced himself before leading you both into a smaller room in the back with a simple black padded bench in the middle of the room and a desk tucked into a corner. The walls were plastered with art and photos like the main room, showing that Johnny apparently was able to pull off a bunch of different tattoo styles. He seemed to have a thing for florals and roses though. The only free space was taken up by a full body mirror at the opposite wall. Johnny sat down on the little stool that was standing by the desk and motioned for Yangyang to sit on the bench while you sat down in the only other chair in the room, made of worn looking black leather.

“Let me see your chest before we start this whole thing,” Johnny spoke to your friend after he had grabbed a pair of silver framed glasses that sat low on his elegant nose and slipped on a fresh pair of black gloves. With only slightly trembling hands, Yangyang pulled his sweater over his head, keeping his hands buried in the fabric. “Looks good to me. Left or right one?” “Ehrm, I haven’t really thought about it,” he confessed. Johnny chuckled. “Spontaneous decision to get your nipple pierced?” “He does it to prove a point to a friend,” you supplied before Yangyang had the chance to answer. “Seems like a valid reason,” the tattoo artist grinned, “You play guitar or anything where the strap could irritate the new piercing?” “Just the violin,” Yangyang supplied, demonstrating how he would hold his instrument. “Then I’d suggest we go for the left one,” Johnny concluded, grabbing a bunch of stuff he needed. “Is it going to hurt badly?” “No idea, mine aren’t pierced.” “The first one is fine,” another voice chimed into the conversation and a pink mess of hair appeared in the doorway. “My client is there and Jaehyun isn’t back from his break yet, have an open ear for the door.” Johnny just hummed but it seemed enough to satisfy Taeyong who disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared.

“You ready?” Johnny asked one last time. Yangyang took a deep but shaky breath and nodded. “You better film this so Ten knows it’s real,” he said, holding out his phone towards you. Rolling your eyes, you got up from your actually really comfortable chair and took the phone from your best friend’s hands while Johnny disinfected Yangyang’s nipple and drew two little circles where the bar would go through it before grabbing a small mirror to show him. “Let’s do this,” your best friend nodded and you pressed record. “It’ll be quick,” Johnny promised, disinfecting one last time before he grabbed a pair of tongs to hold the nipple in place and freed a needle from a foil package. “I’ll count to three and then I’ll start, alright?” “A-Alright.” “Last time to chicken out.” “No, I’m doing this,” Yangyang gritted out, closing his eyes. After that everything happened really fast: Johnny counted to three and steadily pushed the needle through Yangyang’s nipple, who bit his lip hard. He then let the needle dangle from the nipple while freeing a little barbell from another foil package to insert it through the canal he just had made. “And that’s it,” he announced when he secured the little balls on either side of the barbell. You ended the recording when Yangyang left out the breath he had been holding in. “Now no sports, especially no swimming or sexual activities for a while. Clean it well and don’t worry if it gets sore, that’s normal. It can take a while to heal, so be patient and don’t let it get infected. You can get a smaller barbell or a ring once it’s healed. Just come back to get it changed to be safe.” “Fuck I really did that,” Yangyang cursed and looked down to his chest, “I think I need a minute before I can get up.”

“Take your time, I don’t have any clients for another half an hour,” Johnny reassured him, putting the used materials into the trash. “Just please don’t vomit all over the floor or hit your head while fainting.” “That has happened before?” You asked, eyes wide. “Not on me but it’s not unheard of. You sure you don’t want anything?” he asked, turning towards you. His silver framed glasses had slid down his nose a little and you couldn’t deny that the man looked really hot, looking at you from beneath his lashes. “She’s too scared,” Yangyang teased. He couldn’t feel too bad if he still could do that then. “Too bad, I think you would really suit a little conch or something,” the piercer motioned around his own ear to indicate what piercing he meant. “A conch?” You asked, turning towards the mirror to try to imagine it. “Wait let me show you.” Johnny quickly got up to search through the drawers of his desk before he pulled out a little box with a bunch of jewelry, grabbing a small hoop. He stood behind you in front of the mirror. “Hold still for me,” he breathed and bend down to push your hair behind your ear before he carefully put the fake piercing in place. For a moment you could swear that time had stopped. You felt his breath fanning over your skin gently and could smell the intoxicating smell of his cologne. You were so close to each other, you were sure that if you turned your head, your noses would brush against each other. But before you could do anything stupid, Johnny pulled back and gently turned your head so you could see the little silver ring. “I think I could put an even smaller one if you wanted,” he said, watching you through the mirror with an intense gaze from his dark eyes. “I’ve never thought about getting a piercing,” you admitted shyly. While you did get your lobes pierced when you were a child, you never thought of it much. “It looks good. Not so much like daddy’s good girl anymore,” the piercer grinned. You almost choked on air when the words left his plush lips, feeling the heat rush to your cheeks.

“How much?” “For you I’ll do it for free, darling,” he grinned, running a hand through his thick dark hair, making his muscles shift beneath his inked skin. While your brain was still short-circuiting from the nickname, Yangyang seemed to be back to 100%, destroying whatever the atmosphere between you and the tattoo artist just was. “Are you really going to say no to a free piercing, dude?” You could just groan and roll your eyes at your best friend. “Stop calling me dude, Yangyang.” “Only if you get that piercing.” “That’s blackmailing.” “Just do it, it won’t even hurt right?” “It’s just a bit of pressure,” Johnny assured you, his lips curled into a smile. “I can always take it out if I don’t end up liking it,” you thought out aloud. “The beauty of temporary body modifications,” Johnny sighed before he stepped in front of you to take the fake piercing off again. With his face so close to yours again, your eyes traveled over the little silver balls beneath his left eye, over his elegant nose down to the black ring in his lower lip and you briefly wondered what it would feel like to kiss him. “So what will it be?” You looked over to your best friend who had put his hoodie back on and nodded his head enthusiastically, making his fluffy hair flop into his eyes. He really needed a haircut.

“Alright, let’s do this,” you decided. “That’s what I like to hear,” Johnny grinned and moved to get his stuff ready. “Need me to hold your hand?” Yangyang grinned when you took his place on the bench. “I wouldn’t want to contaminate you with girl germs,” you teased, sticking your tongue out at him. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind some girl germs if they’re coming from such a pretty girl,” Johnny cut in when he rolled back over on his stool, his glasses pushed back up his nose again. You couldn’t even fight the heat that crept onto your face at his words, he sure could feel it radiating off your cheeks from where his gloved hands were touching your skin. “I’ll do it where I placed the fake one, just with a smaller ring, alright?” He spoke softly when he disinfected your ear. You could just nod, anxiety taking over, making your heart race and skin prickle. When you heard the plastic bag that held the sterile needle rip, you pressed your eyes shut and balled your hands to fists. “Take a deep breath for me, doll,” Johnny mumbled, gently caressing your skin where he had grabbed your face to stabilize you. “In and out.” You shakily did as he asked you, his low voice comforting and calming your anxiety a lot. “Now you breathe in and let me count to three, then you gently release that breath. Can you do that for me, darling?” “Yeah,” you breathed, eyes still closed so you missed the soft smile on Johnny’s face. “Alright, deep breath in. One, two, three,” the pain of the needle piercing through your skin made you clench your fists harder, “And breathe out.” You tried your best to release the breath evenly until the pressure of the needle was just a low thudding. “You’re doing great, darling,” the handsome piercer reassured you, “I’ll just push the ring through and we’re all done here. Take another breath for me.” This time the feeling wasn’t as painful, just a really uncomfortable feeling of pressure. “All done, pretty,” Johnny concluded, clicking the ring closed. “Open your eyes.”

When you did open your eyes again, he held the little hand mirror from before in his still gloved hands so you could see the little ring that sat against your ear now. The skin was a bright red and you could feel your pulse throb around the metal but it actually fit the shape of your ear really nicely. “Thank you,” you smiled at Johnny. “It’s been a pleasure,” he winked before gathering the used needle and tissues to throw them away. “Take good care of it and try to not sleep on that side for a couple of nights and it will be healed in no time.” “Let’s go home, big baby,” Yangyang chirped in, already on his feet to leave the room. “I’m starving.” “There’s a good ramen shop a little up the street, not too expensive either,” Johnny recommended.

“Thanks for the piercings, man,” your best friend thanked the artist when he took you back to the main room. “No big deal,” Johnny shrugged and sat down where Taeyong had sat before, putting his long legs up on the counter. “Well, have a nice day, maybe we’ll come back for more some time,” Yangyang grinned, opening the door to leave the shop. “Oh I’m sure you will,” the artist replied, locking eyes with you before winking. “Take good care of that piercing, doll. You know where you have to come to if you want more.” You nodded shyly before bowing to the man. “Thank you, Johnny.” “I’ll see you again,” it wasn’t a question. Somehow you and him both knew that this wouldn’t be the last time you would step into the shady tattoo shop.

The next time that you found yourself in the shady streets of Itaewon came faster than you had thought. This time you were accompanying Jaemin to his tattoo appointment after Jeno had ditched him because he had to take over a shift at the cat café he worked at. (That poor boy had to take antihistamines before every shift because of his allergies but couldn’t resist the charm of the kittens.) “You’re a lifesaver seriously,” the hyper boy repeated while jumping up and down excitedly, “Sitting still for hours on end is really so boring if you have no one to talk to.” “Can’t you talk to your artist?” You asked confused. “He threatened to stab me with the tattoo gun the last time when I was trying to talk to him while he worked,” Jaemin pouted. You could only imagine how irritating Jaemin and his moods could be to someone who wasn’t used to him. Ever since he had decided that he wanted to commit to what he had dubbed a soft punk look, he had been going to the shop somewhat regularly to start a collection of tattoos and piercings. It had started a year ago when he first had dyed his hair to a light blue color. Shortly after that he had first gotten his ears and then his nose pierced. The two lip rings in his lower lip were his newest addition as far as piercings went. The tattoos came a little later. After much consideration he had made the decision to start a floral piece on his arm, the center would be a hummingbird, all with black ink for now.

After a little bit of Instagram stalking you had easily identified the intricate flowers that adored Jaemin’s upper arm as Johnny’s work and the thought of seeing the handsome tattoo artist again had made your heart beat faster in your chest. Not that Jaemin needed to know that you weren’t coming with him for his sake but rather because of your desire to see the dark haired flirty man again. You had been thinking about his dark eyes behind his silver framed glasses and how he scrunched his eyebrows when he was concentrating a lot for the last weeks. (Not that you had replayed the video of him piercing Yangyang an unhealthy amount of times or anything…) Every time you took care of your new piercing it reminded you of how his fingers felt on your skin and how his deep voice had gently guided you through everything. Not to forget how easily the pet names had rolled from his lips. And oh god his lips… His Instagram account featured a good amount of pictures of himself both casual and while working and the way his plush lips would curl into a confident smirk did things to your heart. His latest update had been the actual death of yours though. It had shown the new tattoo he had gotten recently: It was an intricate eagle that spread over his muscled chest, the feathers of the wings blending seamlessly into the other art covering his strong shoulders and biceps. Did you already mention that he was freaking shirtless in the picture? And that he was hiding a seriously ripped body beneath the wide T-Shirt he wore the last time you were at the shop? So to say that your thoughts had started to spiral after seeing that post was a little understated.

You still felt a little uneasy when you followed Jaemin through the backstreets of Itaewon but when the shabby door with the neon green ‘open’ sign came in sight, you felt the feeling disappear, only for it to be replaced with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Jaemin grinned widely when he pushed the door open and his good mood was always infectious, a smile creeping on your lips. This time a new man sat at the counter, lazily rocking back and forth on the chair with his phone in his hand. His hair was dark and hung into his eyes and he wore a dark, long sleeved hoodie, so you couldn’t see if he had as many tattoos as his colleagues but if the tattoos on his hands and neck were any indication, he must be pretty covered as well. You recognized the rose on the back of his hand from one of Johnny’s Instagram posts. When the man looked up, you saw that he didn’t only have tattoos but piercings as well: In his lower lip sat two rings right next to each other, a ring dangled from his nose and two little silver balls sat in the hollows of his dimples that showed when he smiled at Jaemin. “Back for more?” He asked with a deep, rumbling voice and got up to greet Jaemin properly, bumping their shoulders together. “Got an appointment with Johnny for my sleeve,” the blue haired boy replied. “I see the snake bites healed well.” “Done by the best piercer of the shop.” “You know it,” the man laughed, throwing an arm around Jaemin. “Brought your girlfriend?” “I’m just a friend,” you quickly corrected the piercer. (Why couldn’t you just platonically join a friend for his tattoo session?) “Alright, just a friend, I’m Jaehyun. Johnny should be ready by now. You know the way?” Jaemin nodded and pulled you with him to Johnny’s room.

When Jaemin pulled the curtain to the room open, you weren’t prepared for what you were seeing: Johnny was standing in front of the full length mirror with his black button up shirt unbuttoned, applying cream to his still tender looking eagle tattoo on his chest, making his beautiful sunkissed skin glisten. “You’re early, Jaem,” he spoke. “Jaehyun said you were already ready,” the blue haired boy shrugged and plopped down onto the black bench. “Oh you brought company,” Johnny turned around when he spotted you and grinned, “I knew you’d come back, doll. How’s your piercing healing?” You had to summon all your strength to rip your eyes from Johnny’s strong and glistening chest to meet his dark eyes. “It’s fine as far as I know, doesn’t hurt anymore,” you stumbled across your words. Couldn’t he just button his shirt back up? “Let me see.” Before you could protest he had made two big steps and was right in front of you, the intoxicating smell of his perfume filling your senses. He gently tucked your hair back to have a look at the piercing and you swore you could feel electricity buzz beneath your skin where he had touched you. “You took great care of it, darling. Not regretting it yet?” “No, I like it.” I like you. The words had laid on your tongue but you managed to swallow them back down.

“Stop flirting with her, I’m the one paying for your attention,” Jaemin whined from where he was sitting. You of course immediately felt all your blood rush to your head but Johnny just chuckled. “I haven’t seen any cash yet, boy.” The tattoo artist gave you a last wink before turning towards his actual client, buttoning his shirt back up but leaving the last two buttons unbuttoned, letting the head of the eagle just barely poke out. Taking a deep breath you sat down in the worn leather chair while Jaemin handed Johnny a bunch of bills that the taller quickly counted. “Alright, I’m all yours for the next five hours or so,” he grinned, “You saw the drafts I sent you?” Jaemin nodded while he took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeve of his T-Shirt to expose the ink on his arm. It was already beautiful even though it wasn’t even halfway done. The hummingbird was still missing its shading and he hung in the air for now, the flowers and leaves stopping above its head. “Yeah, I’m still not sure about the color though. Can’t we just do more flowers instead?” “Sure but the inner arm and near the elbow is going to hurt like a bitch. So it’s either that or you let me color that hummingbird.” Jaemin groaned dramatically, turning his arm to look into the mirror. “He does look weird just half-finished like that.” “So color it is?” Johnny asked while rolling up the sleeves of his shirt a bit, exposing his own tattoos: A snake like dragon curled around his entire right arm, kept in all black ink. “I really liked that green-blue watercolor thing you sent,” Jaemin supplied when he turned to lie down. “Right, then I’ll do some flowers directly surrounding the bird and color that thing.” He snapped his black gloves on and turned to prepare his machine and the colors.

“Come closer with that stupid chair,” Jaemin whined, making grabby hands at you. After Johnny nodded, you pushed the chair closer with great effort. “Are you going to whine for the whole time?” You groaned but smiled fondly at your friend. “Most likely,” Johnny answered instead of Jaemin and rolled over on his little stool, his silver framed glasses back on his nose and a pen between his lips. “I’ll freehand a bunch of flowers first to make sure they fit around that little guy nicely.” “And I thought you liked putting others in pain,” Jaemin joked when Johnny adjusted a little lamp and began to draw flower after flower. It was really fascinating how quick his hand drew delicate petals and leaves, filling up the space around the hummingbird. “Oh if I put others in pain, they usually like it,” he grinned, his voice dropping an octave. You almost choked on plain air and had to try to mask it as coughing but if the way Johnny’s eyes twinkled was any indication, he had seen right through it and dared to be smug about it. “Wow my third appointment and we’re already talking about kinks?” “Sorry Jaem, not interested,” the artist laughed, “I’m more into cute girls.” He leaned back to examine his drawing, throwing you another quick wink. You barely held in a squeak. He really wasn’t even trying to be subtle about his flirting anymore. “Ready for the big gun?” “Oh dick jokes now, nice,” Jaemin chuckled while you were sure your head was about to explode from how much blood was collecting in there. You covered your hot cheeks with your hands in a hopeless attempt to cool them. “Oh look Johnny, she’s getting shy already.” “I haven’t even started yet, baby.” That was it. This man was going to be the death of you. You really didn’t need to know what it sounded like when he spoke those words that were dripping with honey. “Why did I agree to come with you?” You groaned, hiding your face in your hands. “Because you missed me”, Johnny said at the same time as Jaemin said: “Because you’re a good friend.”

After a beat of silence in which Johnny arranged his actual tattoo gun and Jaemin stared at you while his smile grew bigger and bigger, he asked: “Now which one is it?” “I’m not answering that,” you mumbled from beneath your fingers. “No answer is an answer as well,” Jaemin singsang but luckily the low buzzing of the tattoo machine saved you from any further embarrassment… For now… “Now hold still or I’ll actually stab you,” Johnny warned before he dipped the needle into black ink and began to trace the lines he had just drawn on with a fine needle. “Yessir,” Jaemin joked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Johnny was unusually quiet while he worked, completely tuning out the chatter of you and Jaemin about shitty professors and assignments. You were absolutely fascinated by the confidence he radiated while dragging the needle over his client’s skin. He went back and forth between two different tattoo guns and rubbed Jaemin’s skin every now and then to get rid of excess ink. Soon Jaemin’s whole upper arm was decorated with delicate flowers and leaves and Johnny leaned back to both take a deep breath while stretching his back and to look at his work. “Let’s take a break before I do the color,” he proposed, wiping down the skin. “It looks great,” you complimented his work, taking a picture for Jaemin so he could see it himself. “Damn that pain really pays off,” your friend grinned, zooming in and out of the picture before posting it to his Instagram. “Does it hurt badly?” “You get used to it,” he shrugged, not taking his eyes from his feed, “It’s more like someone continuously scratching you.” “I can show you if you want,” Johnny chimed in from where he was cleaning his tattoo gun from the black ink. “I don’t think I’m spontaneous enough for a sudden tattoo.” “Not even if I offer it for free again?” He laughed. “I’m not mentally prepared for that,” you tried to reason. “I can still show you how it feels though. Without ink.” You shyly nodded and held out your arm for him that he quickly wiped down with disinfectant when he was done putting a fresh needle into the gun. “Just don’t flinch, darling,” he softly spoke before the buzzing of his tattoo gun filled the silence. You expected it to hurt a lot more when the needle touched your skin but it really wasn’t that bad. It was an odd kind of pain you couldn’t really describe. “It’s not that bad,” you told him, looking into his beautiful brown eyes behind his glasses. “It hurts more when it’s directly on the bone or at a more tender area,” Johnny explained and turned the gun off again, bending down to look at the slightly reddened skin of your arm before chucking the used needle into the nearby trashcan. “Let’s patch that up real quick, just treat it like any other scratch.” You nodded and let the handsome man put a band-aid over it. But before you could pull your arm back again, he leaned down to press a kiss on the cloth “For a good and quick healing,” he breathed and grinned smugly when you quickly turned your head away to hide your heated face.

“When you’re done flirting, will you finally put some color into me?” Jaemin interrupted, grinning widely. “That’s what she said,” you mumbled under your breath, making Johnny chuckle. “All you need to do is ask, darling.” Before you could even wrap your mind around what the tattoo artist had just implied, he had already rolled back over to your blue haired friend to take a look at the hummingbird. “Alright let’s do this,” he grinned before wiping down the skin once more. The buzzing of a new machine filled the room and Jaemin scrunched his eyes shut when the needle dipped in turquoise ink met his skin. “This is nasty,” he complained. “Don’t be a baby,” Johnny murmured, dragging the needle over your friend’s skin that accepted the ink quickly. “You want to hold my hand?” You giggled. What you didn’t expect was for Jaemin to actually reach out to you with his unoccupied arm, making a grabby hand. “Jeno always holds my hand,” he whined. “You’re such a big baby, Nana,” you sighed but still laced your fingers together, yelping loudly when Jaemin squeezed down hard. “You said it didn’t even hurt, you big liar,” you squeezed out between gritted teeth. “You’re not the one getting stabbed,” Jaemin argued, “That shit hurts different than the black.” “It’s a different needle,” Johnny explained, “People usually say it hurts less than outlines though.” “It’s not more or less, it’s just different.” “Well it’s going to hurt more if you keep seizing up like that, relax.” “You’re one to fucking talk,” Jaemin sounded upset. “Don’t curse at me for giving you a pretty tattoo,” Johnny just said, dipping his needle into the little pot that held the color again. “Talk him through it,” the artist said to you, looking up from behind his glasses that had slipped down his nose again.

“Hey, remember that time when Donghyuck was so drunk he wanted to jump from the roof into the pool at that frat house?” You quickly said, the silly story coming to mind first. The memory made Jaemin giggle. “Jeno and Mark had so much trouble holding him back once he managed to climb out of the window,” the blue haired boy chuckled. “They were lucky they didn’t fall off.” “That would have made for an even better story though,” Jaemin laughed. “They could have hurt themselves,” you said, scandalized, “You’re hanging out with Renjun too much.” Jaemin didn’t answer, instead he just hummed and wiggled his dark eyebrows.

“Did you ever go to college?” You asked Johnny out of curiosity even though Jaemin had said that the artist preferred to keep quiet and concentrate on his work. “Do I look like I went?” He just laughed, cocking one of his stupidly perfect eyebrows at you when he looked up. “Well, I didn’t want to assume,” you shied away under his gaze. “I dropped out of high school to learn tattooing,” Johnny shared while painting Jaemin’s skin as blue as his hair, “I wasn’t good in school anyways. So art school or something wasn’t an option either. Not that I would have had any money for that.” “What made you want to pick up tattooing then?” You asked curiously. “Art usually is very temporarily and if you make a mistake, you can just erase it or paint over it with another color. Not so much with tattoos. I like that. It’s immortal as long as you don’t start shooting lasers at it.” “I’ve never thought about it like that,” you confessed. Tattooing had never seemed like art to you but that was exactly what it was. Just not on a canvas but under your skin. “Thinking about getting one now?” Jaemin teased, squeezing your hand that he still held. “I haven’t even told my parents about the piercing,” you scoffed, “They would disown me.” “Well too bad, I know a pretty good tattoo artist,” he joked and poked his tongue out. “Do you now?” Johnny asked, a grin on his lips, wiping down Jaemin’s arm before going in with a lighter color. “Yeah, he works in this shady ass shop in Itaewon and I am pretty sure you can buy drugs there as well.” “Those are not for sale,” the artist chuckled when he saw your scandalized expression. “It’s just anesthetics for certain piercing procedures, calm down doll.” “So sadly, it turns out you can’t buy drugs at their shop but it still looks shady and I’m pretty sure they’re paying part of the mafia so the police won’t come to investigate.” “I know nothing of transactions of this sort,” Johnny commented before you could get an actual heart attack. Illegally tattooing and piercing was one thing but mingling with the mafia was a whole other thing. “Anyways, he does pretty cool tattoos and pierces as well,” Jaemin continued, a grin on his lips, “Also talking male to male here, he’s pretty ripped.” At that Johnny started grinning as well. “Wanna know his name?” Jaemin asked you when Johnny turned to clean his needle and you just rolled your eyes but nodded, wondering what he was getting out of all of this. “It’s Jaehyun.” “Excuse me?” Johnny exclaimed with wide eyes when both you and your blue haired friend started laughed at his stupid joke. “This kid,” he mumbled and shook his head before putting the needle back to Jaemin’s skin who seemed to have forgotten to whine about the pain.

The rest of the appointment was spend with you and Jaemin chatting about this and that and a short video call from a red eyed Jeno who had finished his shift at the cat café and wanted to apologize and promised to buy you two dinner after you were done. “I think that’s all I can do for today,” Johnny said after he had stared at the little hummingbird for a while, “Your skin took the color well but if I do any more, I’ll stress the skin too much. I can go in another time if I need to fix anything.” Jaemin nodded, sitting up so he could inspect the colorful hummingbird in the mirror. “Wow that looks sick,” he commented, his eyes going wide, “Totally worth the pain.” “That’s what I wanna hear,” the artist grinned, grabbing some paper towels to rub the tattoo down once more. “Let me snap a picture to post.”

After both men had taken about 20 photos each, Johnny quickly wrapped Jaemin’s arm in plastic wrap, reminding him how to take care of it. “Text me for the next session, I think we could fit some pretty roses at the bottom. Maybe add a dash of color here and there or other animals,” the artist smiled, slipping the glasses off his nose, gently placing them on the table. “I’ll think about it but first I gotta slave away behind the bar to make more money,” Jaemin sighed, shrugging his jacket back on. “And you darling?” Johnny asked, putting on his confident smile again. “When will I see you again?” You just stared at him, at a loss for an answer. Did he really want to see you again? But before you could even open your mouth, Jaemin had already pulled your phone from your grasp, unlocked it and shoved it towards Johnny. “Put your number in already,” he sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically. Laughing, Johnny did as your friend had said. “Very smooth, Jaem.” “I- I guess I’ll text you,” you stuttered when Johnny gave your phone back, your fingers tingling where his touched yours. “I’ll be waiting, darling,” he winked, raking a hand through his inky strands. “Alright, time to leave, before you start drooling,” Jaemin destroyed the intense atmosphere and grabbed your arm to pull you back to the main room and out of the parlor, leaving a laughing Johnny behind in his room.

“I wasn’t even drooling, what the fuck Jaemin,” you argued when you were outside, your phone clutched to your chest. “Stop complaining, I got you his number, you should be thankful,” he just grinned, absolutely shameless, tugging you along through the little street. “I will not thank you for embarrassing me in front of him,” you pouted, unlocking your phone to confirm that Johnny had indeed put his number into the contacts with a little black heart behind his name.

“Is it too early to text him?” You asked when you and Jaemin sat in the subway on the way to his and Jeno’s dorm to take him up on his offer for food. Your friend just laughed at you, making an elderly man scowl at the two of you, who shook his head in disapproval. Well, Jaemin’s visuals didn’t help him when he acted like this in public. But as long as he didn’t care, you wouldn’t care either. “Text him after we’ve eaten,” he advised you. “Then you don’t seem as desperate as you are,” he added, which earned him a punch to his not tattooed arm.

All through dinner, Jaemin retold every embarrassing moment that happened at the tattoo parlor, making Jeno laugh so hard that he almost choked on his rice. You really needed to find new friends. These ones were just harassing you at this point. (Aside from the fact that Jaemin had indeed managed to get you Johnny’s number, you’d thank him later when he couldn’t make fun at you.)

Later that night, you laid in bed in your own dorm room, staring at the screen of your phone. Your fingers were hovering over the keyboard but you really couldn’t think of what you should text Johnny. You didn’t want to seem weird. With how confident he was, he probably did this a lot and you were too proud to make a fool of yourself. Groaning you tossed and turned in your bed for a while, still staring at the empty chat box that by now must be mocking you for your cowardice. Sighing you typed out another short message to immediately delete it again. Should you just send him a simple ‘Hi’ or ask him if he had eaten? How the rest of his day went? In moments like this you whished you were more confident in yourself.

The sound of an incoming message suddenly filled the room and made you jerk. When you saw Johnny’s name on the screen, your heart first stopped for a second before it started beating about three times as fast as it should. How did that happen? With shaking hands you unlocked the phone to see that you in fact didn’t delete the last message but accidentally send it. Luckily it wasn’t as embarrassing as it could have been and Johnny had just answered that he was glad that you had finally texted him. Before you could think of an answer he sent another text asking you why you were still awake this late when he expected you to be a ‘good girl’. You could practically hear his smirk and you couldn’t fight the heat that rose to your cheeks. You replied that you were already in bed and were about to sleep if he was concerned about your sleep pattern that honestly wasn’t the greatest ever since the semester had started. ‘Oh, sexting already’ he replied, making you shriek in embarrassment. Was this what your message had looked like? ‘You alone?’ He asked and with a furiously beating heart you answered with a simple yes.

A couple of seconds went by with no answer from him which definitely didn’t lower your anxiety before the loud sound of your ringtone tore through the silence, Johnny’s name on the display. You quickly answered it to not wake up anyone on your floor, pressing it tightly to your ear. “Hello?” “Good evening, miss,” you heard the rumble of Johnny’s voice, “Missed me already?” “You’re the one who called,” you argued, making the man on the other end of the line giggle. “That is true.” “Why did you call?” You asked curiously, shifting to lie down on your back, staring at the ceiling. “Just wanted some company. My last client just left and I’m cleaning up the shop for today, the others already left,” he explained. “Jaehyun and Taeyong?” “Yeah those two guys,” he sighed and you heard him rummaging in the background. “Is it just you three at the shop?” “Yeah, it was just me and Taeyong at first but Jaehyun is an incredibly quick learner once he had found someone who was willing to teach him a thing or two. So he quickly joined the two of us.” You just hummed, your fingers playing with your hair, unsure of what to say. It was somehow easier to talk to him like this when you couldn’t see his eyes twinkle in mischief or his lips curling up in that confident smirk. Like this he was just a boy who wanted company and not an insanely handsome, heavily tattooed man who flirted shamelessly. “Do you usually work this late?” You asked to fill the silence and out of curiosity as well. If the shop wasn’t legal there sure weren’t any laws regulating how long the artists were supposed to work. “I don’t,” Johnny laughed, “But thank you for your concern. I was just tattooing a friend for free after my last paying client left because he was in the area.” “You do that a lot? Offering up your services for free?” “Just for friends and special people, doll,” he chuckled, “Why? Are you considering getting inked after all?”

Well were you? You didn’t even know at this point. Whenever you had thought of tattoos you had only ever thought about big bold and very black lines, of skulls, names of exes on your skin forever and warped pictures of people’s faces. But never of delicate flowers, bright colors and intricate designs. Johnny had made it obvious that it was art that he was doing and that it wasn’t just some technical procedure to get color beneath your skin. “I- I don’t know,” you confessed, “I never thought much about tattoos until Jaemin started getting them.” “I thought so,” the artist chuckled, “But I bet I could design a pretty piece that would compliment you nicely.” “I don’t think I’m the type for it though,” you argued, thinking about the amount of ink on Johnny’s body and you hadn’t even seen half of it. (Not that you planned on doing so but you were curious to know if there was more hiding beneath his clothes.) “It doesn’t have to be an obvious one. Just something only you know about.” That really got you thinking. His tattoos were really delicate and you had seen that he could write in really pretty cursive. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything, darling. But if you ever want one, you know who to ask.”

“Yeah, thank you Johnny,” you murmured, lost in thought about how you would look like with multiple tattoos. “I like the way you say my name.” “You- what?” You stuttered when he caught you off guard like that, making him laugh. “You’re cute,” he said once he had calmed down. “Stop pouting,” he added when you weren’t answering. “How did you know I was?” Johnny chuckled again. “I just knew.” “Thank you for keeping me company,” he said when you hadn’t said anything in a while. “It’s alright. I like talking to you,” you confessed. You could hear a door closing and his deep chuckle on the other end of the line. “You probably hear that a lot…” you murmured, embarrassed at how the words had slipped past your lips. “I actually don’t,” Johnny said, “I appreciate the words, darling. I’m all done cleaning up now, thank you for keeping me company.” “It’s fine, no need to thank me.” “You should go sleep now, it’s already late. Sweet dreams, doll. Maybe I’ll even visit you.” “Goodnight, Johnny,” you squeaked. The last thing you heard before he ended the call was another chuckle and a hushed goodbye. Smiling widely you turned your face into your pillow to muffle the scream you let out. How could this man make your heart beat faster like that with just a few simple words? And why did this short phone call make you so happy? Sighing, you put your phone to your nightstand and cuddled tightly into your blanket, the thought of Johnny’s smooth voice guiding you to sleep where he indeed did visit you.

After that initial phone call, Johnny called you more and more often. Sometimes when he was on his lunch break and his colleagues were still working, sometimes later at night when your head was spinning from studying and he was cleaning up the shop. You two talked about your days, you complained about professors, deadlines and assignments and he told you about tattooing and his sometimes crazy clients. And every now and then Johnny would bring up his offer to tattoo you. Which made your thoughts spiral every single time. In class you would scroll through Johnny’s Instagram account, imagining what some of the intricate, more feminine designs would look like on your skin. After much consideration you definitely ruled out anything big or colorful. But something small wouldn’t hurt, right? Well it would, you would be giving him permission to stab you with an automated needle a bunch of times which in itself sounded really scary. But Jaemin’s tattoo looked nice. And after his skin had peeled, the hummingbird truly looked absolutely incredible and you couldn’t wait for him to visit the shop again to keep working on the sleeve.

So in a whim of bravery and with the help of the little glass of wine you had drank you told Johnny that he should tattoo you. “Are you for real?” He asked. “I am,” you giggled, “I’ve thought about it a lot the past weeks.” “I am honored, darling. What will it be?” “Something small and no colors please,” you told him. “That’s all you’re asking for?” “Yeah, I… I like the simple black stuff you do,” you stuttered, suddenly really nervous and unsure if this was actually a good idea. “I’ll design something that’ll match you perfectly,” Johnny promised, sounding very eager. You could hear some rummaging on his end of the line. “I could fit you in Friday evening after my last client. It won’t be too late and I need some time to come up with a design that’s worthy of being in your body.” You swallowed dryly. If you said yes, you couldn’t back out anymore. You would be getting inked. Secretly. Without telling anyone. Not to mention illegally. In a reasonably shady shop that was owned by the most gorgeous man you had ever met. Taking a deep breath, you nodded before you realized that he couldn’t see that. “I’ll be there,” you promised. “I’m looking forward to it, doll,” Johnny said before he wished you sweet dreams just like every time when he called you late at night.

The neon light in front of the door to the shop was already shut off when you arrived the next Friday late in the evening but the door gave away when you pushed it open with trembling hands after taking a deep breath. “I thought you weren’t going to come, darling, you left me waiting,” Johnny greeted you, jumping down from the counter he had sat on. He was wearing a simple black t-shirt with a little white rose design over his heart that fit him perfectly. His hair was elegantly swept back, exposing the freshly shaved part on the side. “I’m sorry,” you mumbled, fumbling with the sleeves of your hoodie. “Don’t be nervous, I’ll take good care of you,” he promised, quickly locking the front door before taking you to his room where he motioned for you to sit on the bench. “Do you trust me?” He asked, tipping your head up so you would look into his dark eyes. “I- I think I do,” you stuttered. “I won’t tell you what you’re getting,” Johnny grinned and your eyes widened in shock. “You will like it and it’s not that big.” “I’m not sure, Johnny,” you voiced your concerns but he just pressed his index finger to your lips before you could say any more. Your breath hitched and he could definitely feel your shaky exhale against his finger. “You said you trust me, doll.” Taking another shaky breath, you nodded and a smile spread over his plush lips. “I need you to take off your shirt and lie down on your left side,” he spoke, his voice casual but you could feel something shift in the air between you. At a loss for words you just nodded again and did as Johnny asked when he turned around to gather his stuff.

“Take a couple of deep breaths for me, darling,” he instructed you when he rolled over on his little stool, his glasses sitting low on his nose and his hands already gloved. “It’s going on your ribs,” he told you so you wouldn’t flinch when he quickly dragged a razor over the area before disinfecting it. “I’ll draw a quick sketch first. I don’t want to mess it up when it’s going on your beautiful skin.” You felt the tip of his pen meet your skin in a gentle stroke, tickling your skin so you had to giggle. “Don’t make me mess this up, baby,” Johnny scolded, playfully slapping your back. “It tickles,” you pouted. “I’m trying to be gentle with you,” he said and you could hear the smile in his voice. While he was sketching, you closed your eyes, trying to figure out what he was drawing. But all you could figure out was that it was something rather small which calmed your nerves a bit.

“All done,” the tattoo artist announced after a while and quickly pulled his little side table with his tattoo gun and ink closer. When the low buzzing noise filled the air, you pressed your eyes shut even tighter, balling your hands into fists. Technically you knew it wouldn’t hurt badly, Johnny had shown you before. But you were still getting stabbed a bunch of times and fuck, you were really doing this. Letting this man put something on your body that was going to be there forever and you didn’t even know what it was going to be. “Relax, darling. I’ll be as gentle as I can be,” he promised, running a hand up and down your back. “It’s going to be on me forever,” you said. “It is. Your own personal piece of art on your body. Just for you to have.” That was a beautiful way to see it, you thought. It’s not just some pigment stabbed into your skin but art. Something unique no one else had. And Johnny would be painting it on just you for you and you alone. “Okay, let’s do this,” you breathed. “That’s my good girl,” Johnny praised and the words made your stomach twist with a feeling you didn’t want to further explore.

The pain was bearable. It was weird at first and the ribs sure hurt more than it had on your arm and the bones somehow seemed to amplify the buzzing, making it travel through your body. You had to grit your teeth when Johnny went over what seemed to be the middle part of the tattoo, where he grazed the skin in quick successions. “That hurts.” “I know, baby. But you’re almost done. You’re doing so well for me,” he soothed and gave you a small break to breathe before he went back in.

“All done, darling,” Johnny announced a little later, turning off his machine and rubbing the tattoo down with a wet paper towel. “Can I see it now?” You asked. “In a bit, keep your eyes closed,” he spoke softly and took your hands in his now ungloved ones to first guide you into a sitting position and then off the bench and over to what you assumed to be the mirror. He turned you so your side was facing the glass and put one of his big hands on your waist. It felt hot on your exposed skin and made goosebumps break out on your skin. “Open your eyes, doll.” You did and looked directly into his dark chocolate brown eyes behind his glasses. “I’m too scared to look now, is that silly?” You asked, losing yourself in his eyes and leaning towards his body that just seemed to radiate heat. “It’s beautiful, just like you,” he assured you, squeezing your waist reassuringly. After taking a deep breath, you tore your gaze away from him and turned to look at yourself in the mirror where a delicate, black chrysanthemum was awaiting you on the skin over your ribs. It indeed looked beautiful, absolutely stunning. It was small but looked so delicate and realistic and fit well with the curves of your body. “It’s stunning,” you whispered.

“Thank you, Johnny.” “No need to thank me, darling,” he chuckled and when your eyes met again, his were dark and almost hungry. “But I think I should reward you for being so good while I tattooed you.” Before you could ask what kind of reward he was talking about, he had already connected your lips in a passionate kiss and pulled your body flush against his. You couldn’t help but sigh now that you finally knew what the metal of his lip piercing felt like against your lips. Johnny was a good kisser and you were boneless in his strong grip not long after he had slipped his tongue past your lips after you had moaned into the kiss when he had started to push you backwards to the bench again, hoisting you back up. “Let me make up for the pain I’ve caused you,” he breathed against your swollen lips when you broke apart to breathe. “Just keep kissing me like that,” you demanded, burying your hands in his soft black locks to kiss him again. He chuckled and let you dominate the kiss for a while, toying with the black ring in his lip and exploring his mouth. Meanwhile Johnny’s hands started to wander from their place on your waist down to grope at your ass, pulling you forward against him, so you could feel his growing erection between your legs which made a spark of arousal shoot through you.

“Let me make you feel good, baby,” he breathed heavily while kissing down your neck, gently taking the skin between his teeth. “Please Johnny,” you begged, feeling the arousal simmer low in your stomach. Grinning he pulled back and raked his dark eyes over your figure before making quick work of your belt and sliding your jeans along with your panties from your legs, only shortly struggling with your shoes. “It’s not Johnny now, baby,” he rasped when he kneeled down in front of you, pulling you towards him roughly, so your glistening core was exposed to him. “It’s Daddy,” he added before licking a broad stripe through your folds and flicking his tongue at your clit. You could just mewl and throw your head back in pleasure. You didn’t know that this would be such a turn on for you. “Say it, baby,” Johnny demanded, lazily dragging his tongue over your sensitive bundle of nerves. “Please Daddy,” you whimpered and you could feel his low groan vibrating against your core. He wasted no time to attach his plush lips to your clit, gently sucking and grazing his teeth over the little nub, making you mewl and shiver in pleasure. He definitely knew what he was doing, altering between stimulating your clit to the point where it almost became too much before he focused on dragging his tongue through your folds, gently prodding against your entrance before it gave away. When Johnny moaned you could feel it travel straight through you, making your head swim with pleasure. Looking down to the man kneeling in front of you, you were met with his dark eyes, staring straight up into yours. Moaning, you threaded your fingers into his soft hair and pressed his face closer to your core, not even taking the chance that he could move back. “Feels so good, Daddy,” you moaned when he spread your labia with his fingers so his tongue could dive deeper into you, stimulating your velvety walls. When he hummed it send sweet vibrations through your core and you could feel your orgasm approach almost embarrassingly fast. “Mmmh, so close Daddy.” “You wanna cum, baby?” He rasped, his hot breath fanning over your clit that he was lazily rubbing with two fingers. You bit your lip and met his dark eyes, nodding furiously. “Then beg for it, doll. I could stay here for hours,” Johnny spoke before he turned his head to mouth at your thigh, gently biting and sucking at the sensitive skin until it bruised under his ministrations. “I would just keep you right on the edge for hours until you’re a shaking mess for me, begging for release.” His lips split into a wicked grin when he saw how his dirty words affected you and he slowed his fingers on your clit until it was just enough to keep you stimulated but not enough to make the knot in your stomach snap. “Please Daddy,” you whimpered. “Please what baby?” He rested his head on your thigh, looking up at you from innocent eyes as if he wasn’t driving you insane with just his fingers. “What is it beautiful?” He repeated the question, replacing his fingers with his tongue. “You wanna cum?” “Yes please,” you whined, grinding your hips against his tongue to get more friction. “Well if you ask so nicely…” Johnny immediately slipped two fingers inside you with almost no resistance from how ridiculously wet you were and began pumping them in and out of your core fast, crooking them to search for your sweet spot. “Come on baby,” he growled, locking eyes with you again when he closed his lips around your clit. Almost screaming his name, you came hard when his fingers finally found your sweet spot, rubbing at it mercilessly to help you ride out your orgasm. Your thighs were shaking and you fell back onto the bench, the leather sticking to your back where you just laid for a while, your head spinning, breathing heavily.

“You look gorgeous like that,” Johnny complimented you, when he got back up from the floor, raking his clean hand through the mess that was his hair before he shamelessly took his fingers that were covered in your essence into his mouth, sucking them clean. Through half lidded eyes you could see the way he was still straining against the fabric of his jeans and the sight made your mouth water. “You’re still hard,” you said breathless. “I am,” he said matter of factly. You wordlessly let your thighs fall open for him, exposing your core to him. “Oh baby,” Johnny cursed, pressing the heel of his palm against his bulge, “As much as I want to fuck you right now, you still have a fresh tattoo, doll.” “Please, Johnny, I want it,” you begged. “Shh, baby,” he soothed you rubbing a hand over your thigh, “Let me dress that tattoo and then I’ll take you upstairs to fuck you on an actual bed like you deserve.” You nodded, amazed by his amount of self-control.

Johnny worked quickly and efficiently: Cleaning your tattoo one last time before putting some ointment on it to keep it moisturized. At last he gently taped down a small sheet of plastic foil to keep it safe. “All done, beautiful,” he spoke before pecking your lips, “You still want to come upstairs with me?” “Yes Daddy,” you answered and you swore you could see his eyes darken just from the word alone. “Hold on tightly,” he ordered before scooping you up into his arms, holding you up by your thighs. Squealing you quickly wrapped your arms and legs around him, holding on tightly. “I’ll get your clothes before we open up tomorrow,” he mumbled when he carried you through the back door of the shop that lead to a dusty staircase. You pressed your body closer to his, nuzzling your face into his neck where the smell of his cologne was the strongest, to have some of his warmth seep into your skin when you started to shiver from the cold air. Lazily you let your lips travel over his skin, sucking a mark next to a splash of ink.

Johnny quickly grabbed the keys to his apartment’s door from atop of the doorframe (not really safe) and unlocked his door while holding you up with just one of his arms, the display of strength making your head spin. With quick steps he crossed the way to his bed and gently laid you down on the soft sheets, immediately crawling on top of you, crowding you against the mattress. “I knew you would look good in my bed,” he rasped, kissing your neck while his hands made quick work of the bra that you were still wearing for some reason. “You’re gorgeous, doll,” he breathed after he had sat up on his knees, looking down at you with dark eyes, his big hands roaming your body. Feeling shy under all the attention and compliments he was giving you, you tried to hide your face behind your fingers but he wasn’t having any of it, quickly grabbing your wrists in one hand to pin them above your head. “Don’t hide from me baby. Daddy wants to see how much you’re enjoying yourself.” You could just nod, trying to force down the whimper that almost spilled past your lips, he hadn’t even done much yet and you were already feeling arousal pulse through your veins. “I couldn’t hear your answer,” Johnny teased, gently grabbing one of your boobs to massage the soft flesh. “Yes, Daddy.” “That’s my good girl,” he grinned, releasing your wrists to slip his T-Shirt over his head, revealing his strong chest where the eagle majestically spread its wings and the hard lines of his abs. “Like what you see?” He asked smugly, climbing off the bed to unbuckle his belt and slip his jeans off his narrow hips, revealing strong, muscled thighs. One of them was covered with the face of a growling panther while the other was decorated with a colorful koifish tattoo that disappeared beneath the fabric of his dark boxers that were doing very little to hide a prominent bulge. “Let me,” you breathed and crawled over to hook your thumbs into the waistband. But before you pulled them down, you pressed a couple of kisses to the cherry blossom branch tattoo that seemed to stretch from his back over his hipbone and further down, mingling with the koi tattoo further down. With every centimeter of skin you exposed, more ink from the blossoms became visible and you kissed every single one of the delicate flowers. When his length finally sprang free, you had to swallow dryly: His cock was huge and hung heavy between his legs. Licking your lips you looked up to him, to find him grinning down at you. “Go to town, baby.”

He didn’t need to tell you twice, you were itching to feel his heavy weight on your tongue. You pressed a sweet kiss to his tip before placing a hand at the base only to find him surprisingly soft as you experimentally pumped your hand once. “It takes a while for it to get fully hard,” he groaned when you moved your hand up and down his shaft a couple of times, feeling it pulse beneath your fingers. Damn if he wasn’t even fully hard, how big would he be if he was? Holding him at the base, you licked a broad stripe up the whole length before you swiped your tongue around the pink head, pulling another groan from Johnny’s lips. Taking a deep breath, you finally took him in your mouth and hollowed your cheeks, tasting his skin. The weight on your tongue felt just right and you couldn’t help but moan as you slowly started to take more and more of him until you felt him hit the back of your throat. Shit, you were barely able to fit half of his length in your mouth like this. “You’re so big,” you moaned when you pulled off of him with a wet pop, spreading your saliva down the shaft with both of your hands. Johnny just hummed and grabbed a handful of your hair to shove your mouth back onto his dick. He cursed when the velvety heat surrounded him again and gently began to thrust in and out your mouth. “Fuck you look so good with my cock in your mouth,” he breathed heavily. You could only moan where your lips were stretched around his length and hollow your cheeks when he pulled out, the grip he had on your hair keeping you in place while he snapped his hips. “Shit baby,” Johnny cursed when he pulled out, panting while he rested the head of his cock on your outstretched tongue. “I could cum like this.” You whined pathetically, looking up at him with pleading eyes. He chuckled and gently slapped his cock against your lips, smearing them with precum. “But you don’t want that, don’t you, baby? You want my cock inside you? Stretching you out?” “Yes Daddy, please. I need it so bad,” you blabbered, not even knowing where those words were coming from but you seemed to have said the right thing with how Johnny’s dick twitched in his hand.

“Then get on your hands and knees for me, baby. Ass up.” It was almost comically how fast you complied, baring yourself to him. “Such a good girl,” he praised, grabbing your asscheeks to knead and pull them apart. “Beautiful.” “Please Daddy,” you begged him, arching your back further. “Patience baby,” he chuckled. A frustrated groan got stuck in your throat and turned into a drawn out whine when he pushed two of his fingers inside you, pumping them quickly and curling them to find your sweet spot again. Soon two fingers became three and he had reduced you to a moaning mess with how he abused your sweet spot once he had found it again. “You think you’re ready for my cock, baby?” “Yes. Oh god, yes please,” you begged while shamelessly grinding back on his fingers that he had stilled inside of you. “Spread your cheeks for me,” he ordered while quickly grabbing a condom from his bedside table and rolling it onto his cock. Balancing your weight on your knees and shoulders, you reached around yourself to pull your asscheeks apart so Johnny could see your core clenching around nothing. “You’re such a good girl for me,” he rasped, running his palm along the curve of your body while lazily thrusting his cock through your folds, making it glisten with your essence. Finally you could feel him nudging at your entrance with the thick head of his cock. “You want it, baby?” “Yes please Daddy,” you gasped, trying hard to be good and not grind back against him. “You’re such a good girl for me,” he chuckled, “And good girls get what they want if they ask so politely.” With that he finally sank into you in one agonizingly slow thrust until you could feel his hip bones press against your skin. You had to screw your eyes shut and bite your lip to suppress a whimper. You had never felt so full before.

“Fuck baby, you’re so tight,” Johnny groaned, grabbing you by the dip of your waist with his big hands, grinding you on his cock. “I’m so full, Daddy,” you gasped when he slowly pulled out until only the head of his cock was inside you before he languidly thrust back in. “Yeah? You like that? Being stuffed full of my cock?” You could only moan and nod where your head was pressed into the sheets. His cock was so big that it seemed to press against every good spot that was inside you, setting your nerve endings on fire, the pain from being stretched like that only adding to your pleasure. “You‘re sucking me right back in baby,” he cursed and gripped your waist harder, pulling you back on his cock as he picked up the pace, low groans falling from his lips. Your moans got progressively louder and louder the faster Johnny snapped his hips. “Hands behind your back, baby,” he ordered panting and immediately grabbed both your wrists in his hands to use them as leverage so he could fuck into you faster, the change of angle and pace making you moan his name. Your head was swimming with pleasure and you could only moan and mewl beneath him, imagining how he would bite his lip while watching his dick disappear inside you over and over again, stretching out the delicate skin of your sex. “God baby, your ass looks amazing,” Johnny groaned, praise after praise falling from his lips that reduced you to a moaning mess.

With one particularly hard thrust he buried himself to the hilt inside you and draped his body over yours, his hot breath fanning over your face when he spoke, a deep rumble in his chest while grinding his dick right against your sweet spot that had you seeing colors behind your closed eyes. “Wanna see you bounce on my dick, doll. Can you do that for me?” Taking a deep breath, you nodded. Your ability to form coherent sentences had left you as soon as he had begun to fuck you in earnest. “You’re such a good girl,” he purred and gently pulled out, making you whimper from the loss. You felt the bed dip next to you and when you opened your eyes, you were met with Johnny’s pleased smirk as he leaned against the headboard of the bed, his cock resting against his hip, too heavy to properly stand up and you couldn’t stop another whimper. “Come on baby, I know you want it,” he grinned, crooking a finger in a ‘come closer’ motion. Dragging your limbs from beneath you with great effort, you climbed onto his lap, immediately claiming his lips in a messy kiss. You buried your hands in his stupidly perfect hair to mess it up and tug at the inky strands, causing Johnny to moan into the kiss. “Hmm, my baby is feisty,” he chuckled when he broke the kiss, the pupils of his dark eyes blown so wide that they seemed almost black. “But you promised me to ride my dick,” he reminded you. “And I’m gonna,” you slurred, reaching between your bodies to grab his cock, giving it a couple of strokes. “But turn around for me baby. Wanna see how much my fat cock is going to stretch you out,” he rasped, playfully biting your lips. “But I want to see you too,” you complained. “Oh you can,” he grinned and pointed over your shoulder. You reluctantly turned around before you saw what he meant. Right across from the bed was a big mirror and you gasped because of how fucked out you already looked. A couple of tears had rolled down your cheeks and messed up your makeup and your lipstick was smeared around your lips.

You carefully grabbed Johnny’s cock again and held it steady so you could sink down on him, watching yourself in the mirror until you sat snug on his lap and had to close your eyes because the feeling was so overwhelming. He felt even bigger like that. “You okay, baby?” He asked, grabbing your hips tightly to help you swivel them on his cock, making it press into your walls just how you liked it. “How does your cock feel even bigger like this?” You gasped as you leaned forward and slowly started to ride him at first to get used to his size and figure out the best angle for you. Your legs shook with the effort to keep your rhythm but the look Johnny had on his face, his eyes glued to where you two were connected, made it worth it. Suddenly a wicked grin spread on his lips and he snapped his hips up when you lowered yourself again, tearing loud moans from both of you. “Fuck, do that again,” you demanded when you raised your hips again. “What’s the magic word?” Johnny teased, holding you up so you wouldn’t drop down again. “Please, Daddy.” Groaning he started to snap his hips up every time you ground down on him, making your skin slap together with an obscene noise.

God you wanted to die on his dick. “Do you now?” Johnny laughed. Shit did you say that out loud? “Want to feel how deep it goes inside you?” He rasped, wrapping his strong arms around your waist. You went lax in his hold and mewled helplessly. Who knew that a little display of strength and a big dick were such turn ons for you that your brain was reduced to mush. Grinning he carefully pulled you up and against his chest and draped your legs over his after he had planted his feet firmly onto the mattress. “Watch, baby,” he ordered as he lifted you off of him until only the tip was barely inside you anymore before letting you drop down again. You mewled and thrashed in his hold, the feeling just on the edge of too much. Feeling him deep inside you was one thing but actually seeing it was a whole other thing and it messed with your head. Curiously you pressed your hand down on your lower stomach when Johnny had started to piston his hips up into you instead of dropping you down onto his cock every time and you swore you could feel him move inside you. A drawn out curse left your lips and you threw your head back onto his shoulder.

With the way he was snapping his hips up you could feel your orgasm approach at lightning speed and you were so far gone that you shamelessly reached between your legs to stimulate your clit. “Fuck baby, you’re so hot like this,” Johnny groaned, grinding his dick inside you as you quickly rubbed your clit, toeing right on the edge. “Please Daddy,” you cried out, not sure what you were even begging for. “You gonna cum on my cock?” He rasped, snapping his hips harshly, “Wrapped around my big cock stretching you out like this?” You nodded your head furiously, your eyes screwed shut. You were so close that you could already feel your toes curling. “Show me baby. Show Daddy how good his cock makes you feel.” That’s what pushed you over the edge, the way he was panting in your ear, his voice strained from how he was drilling into you. The coil in your stomach snapped and you almost screamed his name, your body curling inwards and thighs shivering as your orgasm washed over you, making a bunch of colors explode behind your lids. In the back of your mind you registered Johnny’s curses and how he was grinding his cock inside you to help you ride out your orgasm. “Such a good girl,” he praised when your body went lax on top of him, your chest heaving with heavy breaths. You briefly wondered if you had ever cum this hard and you couldn’t think of any other time. “Thank you Daddy,” you panted, turning your face to press a messy kiss to his plush lips that were bitten raw. He chuckled lowly when you whimpered when his still hard cock shifted when you tried to turn around.

“Will you let me fuck you for a little longer, baby?” He asked, running a hand through your sweaty hair. Instead of answering him, you lifted yourself off his dick to turn around on his lap, capturing his lips again. “Want you to ruin me,” you whispered between kisses, “Want you to ruin me for any other men. Want to only remember how you feel inside of me.” Johnny growled deep in his chest before he pushed you down onto the bed, hungrily licking into your mouth. “You’re the one who is ruining me,” he panted, rising to his knees. He quickly grabbed your legs and threw them over his shoulders before he sank into you again with a low groan. This time he didn’t waste any time with building up the pace and immediately snapped his hips harshly, chasing his own orgasm. “You’re taking me so well, baby,” he panted, folding your thighs to your chest so he could push into you even deeper, making you see stars with how he was nailing your sweet spot with the new angle. And even though you had just cum, you felt another orgasm build inside your stomach. A row of curses left Johnny’s lips when he could watch his dick slide in and out of you again and he gripped your thighs so hard you were sure you’d have bruises there tomorrow. But that was something you’d worry about later, right now your world was only made up of the handsome man with his huge cock that was currently rearranging your guts with how vigorously he was snapping his hips, making your skin slap together with lewd sounds.

“I’m gonna cum baby,” Johnny grunted, his hips losing their rhythm. “On me,” you managed to choke out, still lost in your own pleasure. Another groan left his bitten lips before he quickly pulled out and ripped the condom off, jerking his cock with quick strokes, his eyes fixed to yours. All it took was a couple of jerks before he threw his head back and you could see his abdominal muscles contract before the first burst of white hot cum spurted from his dick and covered your chest and stomach. With parted lips he stroked himself through his orgasm, milking rope after rope from his cock until he hissed with overstimulation. “Fuck,” he cursed before giggling when he saw the mess he had made of you, his cum dripping from your boobs and running down your stomach. He cursed again before claiming your lips. “You want to cum one last time, baby?” “Please Daddy,” you whined, spreading your legs further for him. “My good girl,” he sighed, sinking two fingers into your heat, quickly crooking them to stimulate your sweet spot while his thumb was putting sweet pressure on your clit, making you thrash beneath him. “You look so good covered in my cum,” he rasped before he kissed you harshly to swallow your moans and cries of pleasure. You desperately held on to his shoulders, breaking the kiss when your head was spinning from the lack of oxygen. While speeding up his fingers, Johnny began sucking bruises low on your neck and over the soft skin of your cleavage. “Shit, I’m gonna-“ you didn’t get to finish your sentence because right that moment he had sucked one of your nipples into his mouth which was just enough to send you over the edge for a third time that night, your lips parted in a silent scream of his name and your thighs shaking and closing around the handsome man kneeling between them. “That’s my good girl,” he praised breathily and gently rocked his fingers to help you ride out your orgasm before he pulled them out, instead winding his strong arms around your body, holding you to his inked chest.

For a while he just held you close, not caring that his cum was now also stuck to his chest. “Fuck that was a lot,” you chuckled, burying your face in the crook of his neck, inhaling his calming scent. “Not what you thought would happen when you get a free tattoo?” Johnny softly spoke, carding his hand through your messy hair. “Not at all.” Another question was burning inside your head but you were too scared to ask it. You didn’t want to push him and ruin the mood. “I should clean you up and see if that tattoo is still okay. Then we can cuddle, alright?” The tattoo artist said before he detangled your bodies from one another to get up from the bed. He looked around on the floor for a cloth and you could finally see where the cherry blossoms on his hip were coming from. A big samurai was stretched over half his back, surrounded by the pinkish blossoms. It seemed like it wasn’t a complete piece yet, the samurai staring at the still untouched skin of Johnny’s left shoulderblade. “Your back tattoo is really pretty,” you mumbled to fill the silence while Johnny was wiping his chest clean before he gently did the same to you, taking extra caution when looking at your still fresh tattoo. “Thank you,” he smiled, pressing a kiss to your forehead, the metal of his piercing feeling warm on your skin, “We should change that foil real quick.” You just nodded and let him do his work, exhaustion settling into your bones.

“Do you do this with all your clients?” Shit. You hadn’t meant to ask that, the question had just slipped your lips and you could feel Johnny freeze where he was dressing your tattoo again before he secured the last piece of tape. He sighed and slipped beneath the covers, pulling you against his chest, so you could listen to his heartbeat. “Not all of them,” he answered eventually, “I haven’t slept with a client in a while. It happens sometimes but usually I don’t think much about it.” “And now you do?” He just hummed nonchalantly, playing with your hair. “They usually don’t come back after I fuck them.” He paused, holding his breath. “Will you come back?” Your heart started to race and you could feel a bright smile spreading over your lips. “For more free tattoos and piercings?” “Oh, yeah, I guess,” he sounded so deflated, the confident tattoo artist suddenly gone. “You idiot,” you giggled, pillowing your head on his sternum so he could see the smile on your lips, “I like you Johnny. I’ll come back if you want me to.” Now he was also smiling, his features softening. “Don’t make jokes like that, my heart is fragile,” he joked, wrapping you up in his strong arms.

“Which one was your first one?” You asked him when the silence between you stretched while you traced the scales of the dragon that wound around his arm. “My first tattoo?” Johnny shifted around for a while before he showed you his other arm that had all kinds of different designs on it, some in bright colors, some strictly black. “That little guy over here,” he said with a smile on his lips and pointed to a little sunflower at the bend of his elbow, “To remind me to always look at the sun, at the bright side of life.” “It’s cute,” you breathed, touching the yellow petals. “And then it went downhill from there,” he chuckled, “It’s addicting.” “Let’s hope I can stay abstinent.” “What a shame, I’d love to cover you in my art,” Johnny confessed, tilting your face up so he could claim your lips in a kiss. “Maybe one or two more,” you breathed in between kisses, making him chuckle against your lips.

#kafenetwork #johnny #seo youngho #johnny suh #nct #johnny smut #johnny fluff #nct smut #johnny imagines #johnny scenarios #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct fic #johnny fic #johnny fanfic

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Kazuichi, Byakuya, Gundham, Rantaro, Gonta, Leon, and Toko with an ultimate Broadway actress s/o

Desc; headcanons of kazuichi, byakuya, gundham, rantaro, gonta, leon, toko with an ultimate broadway actress s/o

Warnings; i tried to make this spoiler free, fem!reader, reader uses female pronouns, i guess this takes place at hope’s peak academy? pre-tragedy?? i dont really know about the v3 boys, haven’t finished the game lmao-

Gundham:

◊ He already knows a bunch about Musicals; especially the darker ones.

◊ He thinks your Ultimate is amazing, he loves all your plays.

◊ Neither of you know which between the two of you is more dramatic.

◊ Your dramatic personalities often intertwined, merging the two of you and making you both into one huge drama queen.

◊ It gives everyone a headache as you both scream, “My toe hurts!-” “My king’s toe hurts! Someone bring an ambulance, stat!”

◊ “Someone get the fucking chlorofoam-” “Hiyoko no-”

◊ This is a bad example, but you get my point-

◊ He enjoys Shakespeare and dark love story plays/musicals.

◊ So he would definitely enjoy acting one with you on stage, if you let him.

◊ He’ll somehow incorporate his Dark Devas into the play just for an excuse to bring them with him on-stage.

◊ Once he was playing Romeo and abandoned Juliet to save Cham-P after he ran offstage to eat a sunflower seed someone dropped on the floor.

◊ Fuck Juliet, mans knows his priorities.

◊ He’s kind of a musical theatre nerd, he enjoys discussing the message behind musicals you’ve played.

◊ Throwing in some compliments about how well you perceived the character, and how pretty you looked.

◊ He is always extremely proud and amazed at your ability to sing, dance and act so well all at the same time.

◊ He believes you don’t get enough credit for doing what you do, so he makes sure you know how proud he is of you.

◊ He sometimes quotes Shakespeare or some other dark musical while you two hung out, it was kinda cute seeing him geek out like that.

◊ “As said in ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, Better three hours too soon than a minute too late." Gundham quoted, pride laced in his words as he was proud of remembering that. “Gundham... it’s literally 5 am in the morning, the party starts at 12 pm. Go back to sleep.” Gundham blinks and nearly falls asleep where he stood. “Mmkay.”

◊ If he saw you dress up as the witch in Wicked, he would be whipped.

◊ His evil queen? In an evil costume? A dream come true!

◊ He thinks you look absolutely fabulous and praises you a bunch after the show, telling you how pretty you looked while you acted.

Kazuichi

◊ He wouldn’t know much about musical theatre, since he’s more into machines.

◊ But when you told him to come to a play you were going to star in, he jumped at the offer.

◊ 90 minutes of you? He must be the luckiest guy in the world!(Nagito would be proud)

◊ After watching his first play, he decides he is obsessed with musical theatre now, going to all your shows.

◊ He loves all the romance based musicals, he’s a sucker for romance what can he say?

◊ He’d obsess over all your plays, going into a lot of detail about his favourtite parts.

◊ He’s kinda like, your #1 fan.

◊ He has posters of musicals you’ve starred posted around his dorm room, just a bunch of merch of you and all the musicals you starred in.

◊ When you tell him he has a backstage pass because he’s your boyfriend, he is overjoyed.

◊ He actually trained a bit to be one of the backstage crew members.

◊ He learned how to fix your make up during intermissions, fix a loose stitch on your costume, all that good stuff.

◊ Though every time he sees your face up close for make up, he goes speechless.

◊ He wonders every time, how the hell did he get someone like you?

◊ Though his hands are shaking from how nervous he was, he still managed to make you look absolutely amazing.

◊ He’d blast a bunch of musical soundtracks while he works on his machines, screwing on and unscrewing things with a bop.

◊ I can imagine Kazuichi jamming with you in the car. The car moving violently as you two bounced to the rhythm like mad men.

◊ I think he’d get pretty insecure if he saw you with a love interest, he would think that when you two shared a staged kiss or scene, that it was actually full of love and not fake

◊ But when you cheer him up and tell him how much you love him, he realizes he was being silly over nothing.

◊ After watching many many romance musicals, you notice he gets more romantic; most likely mimicking the love interests.

◊ He is still a bit insecure, but if he does more romantic things, you’ll love him right?

◊ You enjoy the silly grand gestures of love, but you try and assure him constantly that you don’t need any of it.

◊ You only need him <3

Rantaro:

◊ w o a h

◊ He’d love the fact that you’re an actress

◊ He thinks it’s so cool like-

◊ constant fanboying after shows

◊ He’s always bringing you flowers once you’re off the stage, showering you with praises and affections

◊ He’s literally so proud of you wtf??

◊ i think he’d be the type to show you off a lot

◊ “Hey you!” He points at a naked passerby(this is an inside joke, i am so sorry), “Guess what? My girlfriend’s a Broadway actress!” “Rantaro stop, people are staring-” “Are they? hEY YOU! YEAH, YOU STARING!! MY GIR-”

◊ if you ever started spitting out hamilton raps, he’d be the one beatboxing in the back ground for you.

◊ “Pshh, packow, psshh psshh, packow!” “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a-”

◊ you two would jam out to musical soundtracks in your dorm, dancing dramatically as you did.

◊ you two kinda become like a duo of musical theatre kids.

◊ if you stood on a table and started belting lyrics, he would hop on and join you

◊ unless it was a solo, he would never steal your thunder.

◊ if you ever felt a bit nervous before a big show, he would assure you that’d you’d do great and tell you how much he believed in you until you felt better.

◊ he’s your charger before and after a big show.

◊ if you felt exhausted from acting and dancing around the stage, he’s always there to give you what you need most.

◊ whether it’s water, food, flowers, or just him and his cuddles, he always has it ready for you.

◊ the most recent musical soundtrack that you’ve played will be stuck in his head.

◊ For example, if you recently played in Hairspray, ‘Mama, I’m a big girl now!’ will be stuck in his head until the next play he watches.

◊ you’d catch him humming it during everything he does,

◊ and it’s actually so fricking adorable.

◊ if you heard him sing a familiar tune, you would hum along with him.

◊ “Hmm, mmwhen I was, just a kid ♪”

◊ Your ears perked up at the familiar tune, slowly you turned around to face him.

◊ “♪....You never let me do just what the older kids did…♪” You joined in quietly, Rantaro whipped his head towards you, a rising smile on his face.

◊ “♪ But lose that laundry list of what you won't allow ♪,” His voice rose slowly in excitement, pointing at you with a big grin across his face.

◊ And at the same time, you both sang obnoxiously loud, as if it was rehearsed, “♪ 'Cause mama, I'm a big girl now! ♪” Running to each other with excitement,

◊ You let out a fit of giggles as Rantaro picked you up, “MY WIFE, PLEASE BE MY WIFE!”

◊ This is how you two met and you can’t tell me otherwise-

Gonta:

◊ Gonta wouldn’t know much about Broadway musicals- which to you, a broadway actress, was unacceptable!

◊ so you made it your mission to get him to watch as many musicals as he possibly can.

◊ You’d tell him to come to all your plays, him excitedly agreeing despite not knowing what a play is.

◊ You’d do extra good knowing that Gonta was in the crowd watching you, wanting to give him the best first experience with musicals.

◊ He’d applaud at the end of every scene, trying to show his support the best he can.

◊ for his first play he watches, he ends up clapping a bit too early.

◊ he cheered and applauded super loud when he saw you on stage, but stopped when he realized everyone was staring at him.

◊ Though it was a bit embarrassing for both you and him, you felt your heart flutter at how his first instinct was to clap for you when you walked in stage.

◊ You’d introduce him to various musicals, beauty and the beast being his favourite.

◊ He definitely starts to obsess over the more ‘gentlemanly’ characters.

◊ his first impressions of the beast were bad; Denying that old lady shelter? How ungentlemanly!!

◊ so when the dude got cursed, he cheered lmao

◊ but as he kept watching, he could see the beast wasn’t too bad.

◊ The beast had some flaws, but he obviously cared for belle, he thought.

◊ Oh but he hated Gaston, he really really hated him.

◊ If you acted with someone who played Gaston(and you as belle), he would have to hold back and not rip his face off every time Gaston said something idiotic or sexist.

◊ He had to keep reminding himself that, that Gaston wasn’t real(and thank god for that, real gaston would’ve been torn to shreds.)

◊ the dancing scene was his favourite part for sure.

◊ He’s sad he doesn’t get to play beast with you, but he still enjoys the scene nonetheless.

◊ something cute I can imagine him doing is surprising you by dressing up in a prince costume from the musical and asking you for a dance.

◊ It’s the cutest thing ever oml-

◊ It’s such a beautiful moment, you two just dancing together in a random room with no care in the world.

◊ Your arms wrapped his extravagant costume and his arms wrapped around your pj’s.

◊ He’s a bit shy to be so close to you, but he tries his best to be confident and as princely as he could so he pushes his anxiety aside.

◊ As his stomach fills with butterflies, he becomes slightly confused and concerned, ‘Did Gonta eat butterflies??’ He slightly panics-

◊ ‘Those poor butterflies!!’

◊ He’d watch a lot of videos on how to ballroom dance in advance for this moment.

◊ He’s actually not that bad!

◊ Well- as long as you dance with your feet on his, so he doesn’t crush your toes.

◊ If you ever did some beauty and the beast scenes for him, he would be so happy.

◊ He’d be even happier if you let him play the beast with you.

◊ He’d be smiling the entire time during a fight/sad/serious practice scene.

◊ *almost gets stabbed* “Haha oh no!”

◊ When you sing during one of the scenes, he kinda just-

◊ becomes a puddle of a gentleman.

◊ his heart melts and disintegrates(haha what) of love for you.

◊ he absolutely loves your voice, and would beg for you to sing him one of the soundtracks from beauty and the beast before bed.

◊ He’s really proud of all your plays, and is extremely happy that you–of all people–are his girlfriend.

Byakuya Togami

◊ In all honesty, he thinks your ultimate isn’t all that great.

◊ But as he watches one of your plays, his mind ultimately(see what i did there?) changes.

◊ He becomes impressed and dazzled from how passionate you look when you act, not noticing how you had him sitting on the edge of his seat.

◊ After watching you act, he literally cannot watch another play unless you are in it, finding it unworthy of his time and money.

◊^^this is before you two got together,

◊ you two got together after you found him in your crowd, applauding like the rest of them with the same bewildered expression on his face.

◊ You confronted him and he attempted to compliment your acting, but he accidentally let his feelings for you slip out instead, “I find you truly captivating- Wait no, I-I meant your plays. Your plays, they are truly captivating.” You watched in amusement as he stumbled with his words, eventually interrupting him with an, “Are you available right now?”

◊ So yeah, eventually you two get together, and good for Togami! Because now he doesn’t have to secretly applaud you as a fan, he can applaud you whenever and as your lover.

◊ After shows, he’d give you a single rose as a congrats or applause (so romantic!)

◊ If you ever decided to be chaotic and start belting out lyrics, he would just sigh and let you finish.

◊ Very rarely, you would catch him humming a small tune of a musical song you sang.

◊ But very very rarely. If you ever catch him and confront him about it, he will deny it completely.

◊ I think he’d probably like the more serious plays, he enjoys the meanings and emotions of them more than the sillier and playful ones.

◊ If he ever watched Mean Girls, he would start to slightly mimic Regina George.

◊ “Byakuya wha-” “Get in peasant, we’re going shopping.”

◊ It’d be lowkey hot when you hear him sass you like Regina George tho-

◊ He’d have more big dick energy after watching Mean Girls, emitting his dominance to everyone.

◊ Makoto during a class trial: “So we know that she was at the scene of the crime, right?” “Shut up.” Byakuya flipped his imaginary long hair as Makoto stares at him in confusion, silence filling the room. “Shut up!” “I didn’t even say anything-”

◊ “The new motive is going to be-!” “Whatever, I’m getting cheese fries a book.” Byakuya sighed, turning on his heels and catwalking away.

◊ ...

◊ “IT’S PUNISHMENT TIME-!” “MONOKUMA WAIT NO-”

Leon

◊ Would go to every one of your shows.

◊ Would act like an absolute mom in the crowd.

◊*holding a video camera* You’re doing great sweetie!.

◊”That’s my girl!”

◊ You’d get embarrassed every time he does that.

◊ Hypes you up when you get nervous before going on stage.

◊ In back stage, he’d praise you and give you a bouquet of flowers.

◊ Where did they come from? When did he have time to get flowers when he was yelling in the crowed??

◊ Helps you rehearse lines even if he has no idea what they’re about.

◊ Will fight anyone that makes mean comments towards you.

◊ Even if it’s just constructive criticism, he will take it as an insult.

◊ “Hey s/o! You did great! Maybe next time you could-”

◊ Leon: “WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY PUNK!? DO YOU KNOW WHO SHE IS?! I HAVE FRICKING ARMS OF STEEL, I WILL-”

◊ Will take every chance to pick you up and call you a queen.

◊ When you guys watch other plays together, he always says how you’d play a better role or that you’d do so much better.

◊ He is pretty jealous of your talent, he has always wanted to be a singer instead of a baseball star, but his ultimate wouldn’t allow that.

◊ So if you let him sing some musical song duets with you, his heart will be so full.

◊ You make him so happy, he almost breaks into cries.

◊ You two of weekly karoake nights, always singing some Heather’s duet together.

◊ One time, you, Sayaka and Leon sang the Candy Store song, Leon being Heather Chandler, Sayaka as Heather Duke, and you as Heather McNamara.

◊ It was... amazing.

◊ Everyone was cheering, clapping and it praising all of you.

◊ You made Leon feel alive, and he really, really loves you for that.

Toko

◊ She loves your ultimate, and fangirls over you a bunch.

◊ She’s amazed at your confidence to go up in stage, knowing she could never do that.

◊ She thinks your confidence is kinda hot, and decides she is in love.

◊ Likes to add a character in her books that are a lot like you, maybe making them a broadway actress-

◊ She thinks about you a lot, sometimes accidentally blurting out how pretty you were in your last performance in front of everybody.

◊ You confronted her for it, and she almost passed out.

◊ “W-w-why d-do you think t-t-that? D-d-do you th-think you’re b-better than m-me or so-something?”

◊ You already know her and her inferiority complex, so you don’t take offence to what she said, simply replying with, “I think you’re really cute.”

◊ Toko goes silent, except for a few “!??!??” noises that came out of her.

◊ “... U-uh, a-are you j-joking, be-because that isn’t f-funny!” She flushes, denying that you complimented her.

◊ “I’m not joking, here’s my number! Call me, kay?” You grinned before turning on your heel.

◊ She’s kinda dumbfounded, did her crush just ask her out??

◊ She denies it hard at first, not believing that you asked her out.

◊ Thus, not calling you.

◊ Well, I mean, she kinda did.

◊ She dialed your number one day, feeling a bit lonely.

◊ But as she heard your morning voice, she squeaked and hung up quickly.

◊ She felt her face turn into a fireball, her thoughts going into overdrive from how attractive your voice sounded.

◊ Your voice, she was attracted to your voice.

◊ The next day, when you ask her about what that call was about, she denies it and calls you stupid.

◊ Sprinting away while she screamed, “I-i-idiot!!”

◊ Acts like an absolute tsundere around you.

◊ You constantly flirt with her, trying to get her to accept a date with you.

◊ Being the dramatic hoe you are, you try and give her a declaration of your love.

◊ Knowing she is the Ultimate Writer, and into poems, you write one for her.

◊ You declared your love during one of your plays, knowing she sat in the crowd somewhere.

◊ You interrupted a scene and jumped off stage, “Toko Fukawa!”

◊ Her head perked up in surprise, eyes widening as she saw you on one knee for her.

◊ “W-what are you d-doing!?” She yelped, moving her legs away from you.

◊ “I am in love with you. Completely and utterly in love with you, everyday when I see you so immersed in writing a book, I believe I am looking at an angel.”

◊ The crowd stared at the both of you, gasps and aws filling the air.

◊ Toko flushed, you watched her while she wrote?

◊ “For every time you’ve told me I was a fool, an idiot, you weren’t wrong. Because I am a fool, a fool in love with you.” You had one had on your chest, looking into her eyes sincerely.

◊ Her eyes glossed over so slightly you couldn’t see, looking around at the crowd before uttering out, “Y-y-you r-really love m-me, h-huh?” Her face contorting into a lopsided smirk, watching as you giggled.

◊ You laughed out, “Absolutely.”

◊ WHY DID THIS TURN INTO A ONESHOT WHAT WHY WHAT WHYYY

note; thank you so much for reading and sorry for the wait!! we tried our best to finish these together, thank you so much for your patience.

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emilyofjane · 3 years

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Why the Disney Princesses definitely need therapy: a Hot Take

Snow White

Losing her parents as a child and having to learn to take care of herself at a very young age (Snow White is 14 in the movie, and judging by her work ethic, she appears to at least have some experience with living independently before moving in with the 7 dwarves)

Lack of socialization due to isolation

Depression due to isolation and loneliness. This makes the whole “Someday My Prince Will Come” thing much more believable, because Snow White really isn’t in any sort of immediate danger and doesn’t need “saving” or whatever; she’s just tired of being alone and wants human companionship. (And tbh who can blame her? The poor girl’s literally talking to birds and moved in with the first group of humanoid creatures she could find ffs)

This one’s a bit of a stretch, but I’m pretty sure Snow White would also have an unhealthy fear of strangers and/or an irrational fear of being poisoned after the whole apple fiasco

Cinderella

Being raised in an abusive home environment for most (if not virtually all) of her life

The complete lack of positive social interaction throughout her life has probably led to problems with social withdrawal and isolation at some point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she has repressed symptoms of chronic depression due to loneliness.

Her closest emotional confidants are literally two talking mice, and that just screams “My only friends are animals because their love is unconditional I’ve been invalidated and unloved by every human being in my life” (aka extreme emotional neglect)

She probably has tons of questions about her biological parents that were never answerd because, again, her stepfamily hated her, which would obviously lead to some emotional baggage

If we consider Cinderella III: A Twist in Time to be the new canon, she definitely has some unresolved PTSD from her near-death experience (the “almost getting crushed to death in the carriage because it was transforming back into a pumpkin” scene)

Aurora

Existential crisis because the three fairy godmothers basically rewrote her entire identity as “Rose” and hid the fact that she was a princess

Never knowing who her real parents were as a child, leading to emotional baggage similar to that of Cinderella and Snow White mentioned above

Either the emotional burden of having to make up for 16+ years of lost time with her biological family, or the grief of losing her biological family without ever getting the chance to know them (idk whether Aurora actually got to meet her parents by the end of the movie or if they died before she woke up, because I don’t remember exactly how much time had passed while she was in the coma)

Speaking of the spindle prick-induced magical coma (which is a really long-winded and inefficient way to kill someone honestly, idk what Melificent was thinking), Aurora also has to deal with the emotional burden of how much time has passed while she was in a coma, which would only further feed into the existential crisis and emotional trauma in bullet points 1 and 3.

(Also, off the record, but Aurora’s entire life post-movie is just a hot fucking mess and she really deserves a second movie exploring that concept imo. I know that Sleeping Beauty has already gotten a live-action villain spinoff, but the story of Aurora herself really deserves to be reexamined under a modern lens also. Aurora is easily one of the most overlooked Disney princesses and tbh she deserves more love.)

Belle (feat. the expanded lore from the live-action movie)

Witnessing her mother die from the plague in their own home

Being forceed to move from the more culturally progressive city of Paris to the unnamed “poor provential town” in the movie, where she is clearly the odd one out and is subject to gender inequality on a daily basis (in the form of being publically shamed and socially ostacized for being an educated woman)

Being regularly sexually harassed by Gaston, which is further exacerbated by the villagers and their close-mindedness. Not only is Gaston’s behavior enabled and encouraged by the villagers, but they even go so far as to idolize Gaston — as shown during his namesake song — despite his obviously predatory actions, simply because he is a cishet white man that they find conventionally attractive

Watching her father get arrested despite being 100% innocent...TWICE

Also being arrested when her father is wrongly convicted a second time, by none other than her abuser

Watching her lover — who besides her parents was the first person in her life who truly loved her and respected her intellect despite being a woman — nearly die in her arms, as well as everyone else in the castle (who ALSO respected her regardless of her gender) nearly die at the same exact time.

...And you know, Stockholm Syndrome or whatever. (But tbh, given how everyone in the castle was very kind and respectful and how the Beast was a tsundere at best, Belle would probably suffer far more from PTSD brought upon by Gaston and her previous environment than from “Stockholm Syndrome” in a castle where everyone actually treated her like a normal fucking human being. Unpopular opinion I know but as a sexual assault survivor this is literally a hill I will die on.)

Jasmine

I’ve actually never watched Aladdin all the way through, so unfortunately I can’t give a full analysis of Jasmine’s conflicts...but I have seen that gif of her saying “I am not a prize to be won” and that just screams “I’ve suffered a lifetime of female objectification and gender inequality despite my social status, and not even in the highest position of authority possible am I allowed to have a voice” and idk about you but that is really fucked up man

Ariel

PTSD from being manipulated by Ursula to give up her voice and nearly losing everything (both her previous life in the ocean and the promise of a new life on land with her love interest) because of it

Near-death experience from *vague hand gesture to whatever the fuck that was at the end of the movie*

Inevitable depression from abandoning the only home she’s ever known (the ocean) and leaving her friends and family behind

She’ll probably also need some form of behavioral therapy to help her adjust to her new home on land, whose culture is still extremely foreign to her — and maybe even additional therapy for social anxiety, given how her first 3 days of human interaction were so mortifyingly embarrassing that she’ll probably be laying wide awake at 3 AM and thinking “oh my god I can’t believe I looked Eric’s parents dead in the eyes and brushed my hair with a dinner fork” for the next 10 years.

Tiana

PTSD from literally being turned into a frog

Overworking herself to the point of near burnout, and being unable to fully live out her prime adult years because of said burnout

Constantly dealing with shitty customers, bosses, and other white-collared people disrespecting her and treating her as subhuman because of her career choice, which is unfortunately a common shared experience among restaurant workers and those who work hourly wages

Since this movie takes place in the United States presumably before the 1960’s, it’s probably safe to assume that Tiana also probably had to deal with segregation, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of racism off-screen on a daily basis, which would obviously take a toll on her mental well-being and further exacerbate the issues mentioned in #3

Grief from losing her dad, which has likely been repressed due to her workaholic tendencies denying her the ability to properly take the time to mourn

I don’t even know what to categorize the whole witch doctor shenanigans as, I just know that she and Naveen are both going to need some SERIOUS therapy after going through all that shit

Rapunzel

Being raised in an emotionally abusive and controlling environment for her entire life

Being completely isolated for 18 years with no social interaction whatsoever with anyone except her own abuser

Existential/identity crisis from discovering that she’s actually a princess, that her “mom” was actually the one who kidnapped her as a baby and tried to cut her hair, and that everything she knew about herself and the world she lived in was essentially a lie to keep her obedient to Gothel

Near-death experience (the drowning scene)

Internalized fear and mistrust in strangers — and quite possibly in people in general — due to Gothel’s lifelong warnings that people in the outside world would only want to take advantage of her

Watching the woman who raised her MERCILESSLY STAB THE ONLY OTHER PERSON SHE EVER KNEW AND LOVED IN THE GODDAMN CHEST

Watching the woman who raised her LITERALLY CRUMBLE TO DUST IN FRONT OF HER VERY EYES

WATCHING FLYNN, THE ONLY OTHER PERSON SHE EVER KNEW AND LOVED BESIDES HER GODDAMN ABUSER, FUCKING DIE RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER before she miraculously healed him

Because Flynn’s revival was such an uncanny revival that not even Rapunzel knew how she did it, she obviously thought he was gone for good...and since Gothel was gone also, there must’ve been at least a split second before she healed Flynn where, for the first time in her entire life, she was completely and utterly alone. That alone deserves to be a bullet point because holy shit

I’m not even going to get into Tangled: the Series man this list is getting too long as it is

Elsa

Losing her parents at a young age

Abandonment and isolation issues (mostly self-inflicted due to her own fear of hurting others, see #3)

Internalized fear and self-doubt of her powers — and, by extension, fear and self-doubt in herself

Guilt from nearly plunging Arendelle into an eternal winter

Guilt from almost losing her sister (twice!) due to her own direct actions

(Coinciding with #3) Guilt from isolating herself from her sister to protect her, only to nearly get her killed by the very thing she was trying to protect her from

Anxiety. Just lots and lots of general anxiety.

(Omitting Frozen 2 for Elsa because I haven’t seen it yet and this list is getting too long)

Anna

Also losing her parents at a young age

Abandonment and isolation issues, but hers are moreso due to Elsa “shutting her out” as a kid and having no one else her age in the castle to interact with

Lack of socialization in general for much of her childhood, as well as any social anxieties/lack of social knowledge and etiquette/etc. that would come with it

Abusive relationship with Hans (I know it was only one day, but holy fuck that was a trainwreck. What Hans did to Anna is a literal breeding ground for PTSD and trauma)

Coming to terms with the fact that the trolls fucking erased her memories of Elsa having ice powers and that Elsa isolated herself to protect her (and not, you know, because she hated her or something)

Leftover guilt from holding a grudge against Elsa for most of her childhood for shutting her out, because NO ONE BOTHERED TO TELL HER THAT IT WAS FOR HER OWN GOOD and she never knew why

Basically Anna and Elsa both need joint therapy or family counseling or something because holy shit their parents did NOT handle this situation properly AT ALL

(Also omitting Frozen 2 for Anna because I haven’t seen it and this list is also getting too long)

Moana

Surprisingly, Moana’s movie was relatively tame — in fact, because her tribe returned to voyaging and she is now exploring the seas/following her passion, these events were arguably beneficial to Moana’s mental health rather than detrimental. The only emotional baggage I can really imagine Moana having post-movie is leftover grief from her grandma dying and maybe the stress of having to put up with Maui’s shit

#shitpost #meta #disney characters #disney princess #long post #this has been in my drafts for literally a year so i may as well post it

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rohad93 · 4 years

Text

Moonlit Masquerade: Ch 1

Because I couldn't help myself. This was inspired by a piece of fanart i saw. This is also on AO3

After the events of the last week it felt strange to just go back to school like she hadn’t gone up against Belos and everyone hadn't seen her rescue Eda and escape from the Emperor's coven and petrification.

It was weird, to say the least, but then again, there was never a day in the Boiling Isles that wasn't weird in some form or fashion if she were honest, she'd gotten pretty used to rolling with the punches in the last month though if she did say so herself.

This was a little different of course.

Gus and Willow had come by the very next day to check on them and get the rest of the story they’d missed after they’d gone to get Eda.

She could tell that her friends were disappointed that she hadn't come to them or even talked to them about it before throwing herself headlong into danger as she had been want to do as of late, but she had already dragged them into this mess with her once and she’d decided that was to many times, especially now that she had a better idea of what kind of real danger the Emperor posed.

She'd managed to pull one over on him and prove he wasn't invincible, but she also knew he was just messing with her, despite her giving it her all and pulling some rather dangerous stunts to boot.

She couldn’t decide if she was becoming more reckless or if she always had been and the Isles just really brought it out in her what with all the… well, dangerous stuff.

Eh, unimportant right now.

They decided it was probably better for Eda and Lillith to lay low for a while and stay inside the house for now, not draw any attention to themselves, difficult as that was for Eda. Lilith would help keep her wrangled, and maybe King.

Though he was just as likely to egg her on as anything else.

Since they weren’t leaving the house Eda couldn’t take her to school on Owlbert, so it was just her and her trusty legs walking to school that morning. She was a little nervous at the prospect of facing… well, everyone.

Everyone had seen her and as the only human on the Isles she wasn’t exactly hard to miss on a regular day much less when being broadcast by crystal ball to everyone.

Her fingers played with the strap of her bag nervously.

She met up with Willow halfway and some of her fears were temporarily relieved as they walked the rest of the way, chatting animatedly. She almost completely forgot about her worries until the school came into view and she could see all the students moving about outside and on the front steps.

Her grip on her bag tightened again and her shoulders bunched up around her ears.

“You ok?” Willow seemed to quickly pick up on her tenseness.

“Yeah…,” she started slowly, eyes darting around the field out front of the school, no one seemed to even be looking at her, anymore than usual that is, even as they walked right up to the school steps where Gus was waiting for them, waving. “I guess I just thought… I dunno, that after what happened more people would be… talking about me?” She wasn’t really sure what she had been expecting.

“Well, you had your cloak up the entire time and the Emperor did say the titan told him to free Eda, so you’d be included in that.” Gus shrugged.

"Gus and I recognized you, but we're together all the time too," Willow added.

“Yeah, I guess…” She wouldn’t say she was disappointed by the lack of attention, it was just so, anticlimactic she supposed. Luz didn’t mind being in the spotlight, but she didn’t actively seek it either.

The bell screamed its first warning toll and all the kids roaming around outside the school began making their way inside.

“See you guys later!” Luz waved as Gus and Willow headed off to their perspective classes, waving to her over their shoulders as they disappeared in the crowd of students.

Tapping a finger against her cheek she had to think for a moment to remember what track classes she had today. There wasn’t enough time in the day for her to take all nine tracks a day so it had to be split over the five weekdays.

It was Monday, so she had beast keeping and potions. She grinned at the thought. She loved learning about all the tracks, but beast keeping was especially fun.

She never got to practice manticore taming or griffin riding back home after all!

She paused mid-step.

Home

The thought made her frown but she tried to shake off the heavy feeling that had settled over her, there was no point in moping about it right now. She did what she had to do, for the good of everyone… and it was her fault that they had been put in that situation to start with, it was only right that she fix it.

Eda was already looking into it but there were other things going on that needed her attention to, and that was fine! Luz knew what she was doing when she’d done it.

She guessed these were just the consequences of her actions catching up to her that her mom had always been warning her about. Maybe now she’d start learning to look before she leaped.

She had started back toward the steps only to be stopped again.

“Luz!?”

She immediately recognized that voice as she turned around to come face to face with Amity as she jogged up to the steps, her abomination trailing behind her as it carried her books. She stopped a few feet from her.

“Hey Amity! You're out of your cast!” Luz grinned at the sight of her friend finally out of bed and back at school.

“Huh? Oh, yea, a few days ago.” She seemed to fidget as she tucked a stray strand of mint colored hair behind her ear. “Forget about that though!” she seemed to focus again, looking at Luz with a frown, face set in a stern look. “What happened?!” she demanded.

Luz frowned, fingers twitching over the rough canvas strap of her bag, she didn’t need to ask what Amity was talking about, she could only mean the whole petrification, escape from the emperor’s coven thing that had been broadcast across all of the Boiling Isles, she’d no doubt seen it.

“Ah well, it’s kind of a long story…” she rubbed her arm and laughed nervously. Amity did not look at all impressed by that answer. “If you want to meet at the library after school I can explain it all,” she offered. She felt bad that out of all her friends Amity was the only one completely in the dark since she didn’t even know about Eda’s curse or had gone with them on the trip to the Emperor’s castle.

Amity didn’t look satisfied with the answer but just as she opened her mouth to speak the bell screamed again, it’s last call for students to get to class before they were tardy and if Luz knew anything at all about Amity, it was that she loved Azura and was never late.

“Alright, I’ll meet you there,” she agreed, though she still didn't look happy about it.

Amity quickly hurried off to class with her abomination, leaving Luz standing there before she smacked herself in the forehead with her palm.

"I'm gonna be late!" She helped before taking off in the direction of beast keeping 101.

~ ~ ~

The day seemed to fly by after she actually made it to class.

It was nice to have something else to occupy her mind other than impending doom in one form or another.

Potions always took all her concentration, unless she wanted to accidentally turn a potion for curing mild rashes into a literal bomb.

...It had happened before...

It had only been a small explosion and her teacher had quickly put out the fire though.

Now that she thought about it, that would have been so much more useful last week.

She pondered the merits of magical bombs in convenient, throwable glassware as she walked quickly through the Bonesborough market toward the library.

She'd been a little slow cleaning up after her potions class and had ended up staying a little long. Amity would probably be waiting on her already, she was punctual to a fault.

She skipped up the library steps two at a time and quickly snuck by the librarian at the front counter when he wasn’t looking.

After the time she had gotten kicked out with the Blight twins, she wasn’t sure she was exactly welcome in the library, so it was better to just not let the librarian see her really.

She snuck quietly through the halls to the romance section. It was devoid of people as it typically was.

She scanned the shelves before smiling as her eyes settled on a book. ‘The Lone Witch and the Secret Room.’

She pulled the book out and shoved it back in, there was a loud click as the shelf slid away to reveal Amity’s secret room.

Amity was already waiting inside for her, curled up in the corner on some cushions, a book splayed across her lap as she stepped in, letting the shelf slide back into place behind her.

“Hey” She held up a hand in greeting. “Sorry it took me a little longer than normal. I had to clean up after potions.”

“It’s alright, Luz.” She closed her book and motioned to the other cushion several feet away. Luz dropped her bag and plopped onto the floor,crossing her legs as she looked up at the youngest Blight and smiled.

Gold eyes flitted away and cheeks took on a rosy hue. Luz wondered if Amity was hot, it wasn’t bad in here but some people ran warmer and colder than others.

“So…,” Luz started, unsure.

Amity seemed to jolt as her eyes were once again on the human and her expression morphing into one of serious expectancy.

"What happened last week?"

Straight to the point then. Luz nodded as she started with Eda's curse and the field trip to the Emperor's castle.

Amity's face seemed to shift through a myriad of emotions over the course of the story, especially when Luz talked about how Lilith had kidnapped her and tried to kill her.

The horror on her friend's face and those intense gold eyes focussed on her made Luz self conscious and she pulled her knees up to her chest but didn't stop her tale. She squeezed her legs as she got lost in thinking about it.

Amity wasn't the only one experiencing a lot of emotions right now.

The fear as Eda sucame to her curse and later the rage she felt anytime someone so much as uttered Lilith's name or she saw one of those dumb posters made her whole body shake, and finally the helplessness and sorrow as she'd handed over the portal and then had to burn her world away in a flash of fire. All of it came back to her so easily, still fresh on her mind even as she tried not to think about it too hard.

"So, you can't go home?" Amity finally asked quietly after a brief silence following Luz’s explanation of everything that had happened.

She shook her head sadly, eyes downcast and quiet.

Amity hesitated a second before reaching over to set a hand on one of Luz's, resting on her knees and making her look up, brown meeting gold.

"I'm sorry, Luz…" She squeezed gently.

The small touch and the look on her friend's face caused a comforting flash of heat in Luz's chest.

"Thanks… Eda's working on it so…" She shrugged.

Eda who was also without magic, which Amity knew now.

“I’ve seen the owl lady do some pretty impressive things, I’m sure she’ll figure something out.” Amity gave a final squeeze before pulling back, trying to will away the touch of pink on her cheeks, now wasn’t the time for it and she scolded herself for the automatic response.

“Yeah…” Luz nodded to herself, a small smile managing to pull at her lips, which made Amity smile in turn.

“I can’t believe how selfless you are sometimes… destroying the portal to save Eda…,” Amity said, fiddling with her hands now sitting folded in her lap.

“It was my fault she got caught in the first place, I had to fix my mistake…” Luz shrugged, a little flustered by praise she hardly deserved. “She didn’t leave me… I couldn’t leave her.”

“Most people wouldn’t have done that, even if it was their fault,” the young witch insisted.

“Maybe…” Luz shrugged again but couldn’t help the widening of her smile.

Amity glanced at the clock on the wall, her smile turned into a grimace, they had been here longer then she had planned.

“I need to head home…” Amity stood and Luz followed suit as they headed out of the secret room, checking quickly to make sure no one was around to see them as they headed out.

“I have abominations and illusions tomorrow, so I guess I’ll see you in class.” Luz smiled as they stepped outside the library.

“Of course…” Amity nodded but she seemed distracted as they paused at the top of the library steps.

“Amity?” Luz called and again she was focussed on her, but the look on her face was one Luz had seen before, she was thinking.

She hesitated a second, looking around the empty area outside the library before closing the two feet of distance between them.

Luz could only blink as Amity's arms wrapped around her in a tight embrace, chin tucked into her neck, mint green filling the latina's vision.

"I'm so glad you're okay."

It was said so quietly she almost missed it, hardly a whisper, breathed against her neck.

Warmth immediately flooded her chest at the quiet murmur.

Before Luz could reach up to return the embrace Amity was already pulling away.

“See you tomorrow, Luz.” she called as she hurried down the library steps, never looking back and leaving Luz standing there, stunned, in her wake.

“Bye…” she held up a hand in farewell at the retreating witch’s back.

Why was her face so warm?

Shaking it off, Luz adjusted her bag as she hurried back to the owl house before Eda could wonder where she was.

The heat in her face faded quickly but the warmth in her chest lingered all night.

The minute Amity set her things down on her desk she caught sight of the Emperor’s coven poster, with Lilith Clawthorne staring back at her with a smug smile.

With a frown Amity ripped the poster from the wall and stuffed it into the trash can next to her desk.

#Amity Blight #Luz Noceda #Lumity #Eda Clawthorne #Willow Park #Gus Porter

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kellyvela · 5 years

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"Game of Thrones": Don't be shocked by Daenerys — her King's Landing turn was very much earned

Spoilers ahead! From the very first season, Dany has violently lashed out at those who don't idolize her enough

By AMANDA MARCOTTE

MAY 13, 2019 5:00PM (UTC)

Spoiler alert: This article discusses details about the "Game of Thrones" episode "The Bells." Stop reading if you haven't watched yet, or don't blame us for what you find out.

“There’s a beast in every man, and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand.”

Those are the words of wisdom that Jorah Mormont, advisor to Queen Daenerys Targaryen, imparts both to his queen and to the audience in season three of "Game of Thrones." "War is hell" is a common theme in literature and in Hollywood, but few if any fantasy stories have been as unrelenting about deromanticizing warfare as this show and "A Song of Ice and Fire," the book series by George R.R. Martin from which the HBO series is adapted.

And yet, fans of the show exploded in outrage Sunday night when Daenerys, her blood up during the invasion of King's Landing, lost her mind and decided to burn down much of the city, killing an untold numbers of civilians. To make it worse, she did this after Queen Cersei and the Lannister army surrendered. There was a massive sense of betrayal for many fans, who argued that Daenerys's heel turn was unearned and sudden and didn't make any sense.

But as with many things in this last season of "Game of Thrones," it seems the fans simply aren't paying attention. The show has spent 8 seasons signaling the ways that war makes monsters out of people and that Daenerys in particular has a deep capacity for cruelty that is only checked when her ego is being sufficiently fed. That Daenerys is motivated by revenge and ego has been seeded from the very beginning of the show.

To be clear, Jorah wasn't entirely wrong to see a "gentle heart" in his queen. There's no reason to believe her opposition to slavery, for instance, is insincere. But loving Daenerys and rooting for her, from the beginning, has meant ignoring the constant reminders that she not only has a strong capacity for cruelty, but that nothing drives her to murder faster than sensing that someone doesn't worship the ground she walks on.

This is the same woman, after all, who was in love with Khal Drogo, a murderous warlord whose life was literally about sacking villages and towns to kidnap people to sell into slavery. And it's in that storyline that we first see that Daenerys expects people to see her as a savior figure and if they express skepticism, she lashes out with a murderous rage of her own.

That would be, of course, the story of Mirri Maz Duur, a Lhazareen priestess whose village is ransacked by the Dothraki and who is about to be raped when Daenerys intercedes, and takes her on as a personal slave. Daenerys clearly believes that Mirri should be grateful to her and Drogo, and so is caught completely flat-footed with Mirri, pretending to offer medical care, does some mojo that leaves Drogo comatose and Daenerys's newborn son dead.

When Daenerys confronts Mirri about this, saying Mirri should be grateful that she "saved" her, Mirri points out that she'd been raped three times, she "saw my god's house burn" and the streets were piled with the corpses of people she knew and loved.

"Tell me again exactly what it was that you saved?" she finished.

In response, Daenerys burns Mirri to death.

In doing so, she creates the magic that allows her to hatch dragon eggs. It's so wondrous that the audience basically forgets that they just saw a woman burned alive for resisting captivity. But now it is clear to see that the ingredient needed to make the magic work, to bring forth dragons, was Daenerys's will to power and cruelty.

Since then, the story lured audiences into rooting for Daenerys by making her mission — to end slavery in Essos — an undeniably admirable one. But the show also portrayed her motivations as less than selfless, including that controversial scene at the end of season three, when Daenerys is held up by a crowd of mostly brown-skinned people chanting "Mhysha" — the Valyrian word for "mother" — while she basked in the adoration and in her white savior complex.

Loving Daenerys as a savior figure required ignoring a whole bunch of signs of her unchecked ego and her cruelty. She gets into repeated conflicts in Qarth and Astapor and Yunkai, often killing her enemies in breathlessly cruel ways, including burning, starving them to death, and crucifixion. She liberates people but then grows bored of the thankless work of governing, abandoning cities she's conquered over and over again.

Many of her vicious executions are easy to forgive, because the people she kills really are jerks, such as the slave masters, the warlocks of Qarth and imperious Dothraki horselords. But sometimes it's a lot harder to stuff the killings down the memory hole, such as with Mirri's murder or the killing of Randall and Dickon Tarly, whose main crime was being skeptical of accepting the rule of a foreign invader.

This is literally the woman who insists on being called "Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons." The show has not hidden that she has an ego, and there is nothing sudden about this.

The burning of King's Landing, then, is no different than the burning of Mirri in the first season. Daenerys is frustrated that the people of Westeros don't love her and she's explicitly said so repeatedly. She's frustrated that she led the army that defeated the Night King, but that most people don't know or care. She wants the people of Westeros to carry on their shoulders yelling "Mhysha," and since they won't do it, she's furious.

Fans lived in denial for the same reason that the almost exclusively male characters that surround Daenerys — Tyrion, Jorah, Jon — live in denial: She's young and she's pretty and she embraces the nurturing title of "Mother." It's tempting to see her good side and ignore her bad side, and the same fans who are scorning Jon Snow for not seeing it before fell into the same trap that ensnared him.

What's important to remember in all this is that Daenerys's conquest of Westeros is illegitimate. Yes, she happened to land on Dragonstone at a time when Queen Cersei, a tyrant who murders her own people, is in charge, and so it makes it easier to root for Daenerys. And certainly, people who want to oust Cersei — such as Jon and Tyrion and Varys — for their own reasons are happy to back Daenerys because it's politically convenient for them to do so.

But despite all her high-minded rhetoric, Daenerys comes to Westeros as a conqueror and not a liberator. She made the move to invade when she did not because she heard Cersei was bad and she wanted to help, but because that just happens when she had amassed enough resources to make her move. It's easy to imagine an alternate history, where the War of the Five Kings never happened and Daenerys is siding with the Lannisters to wrest power away from King Robert Baratheon and his hand, Ned Stark. In the end, her alliance with the good guys was always just the luck of the draw, and not any testament to her character.

Daenerys is the same person she's been from the beginning of the show, a woman motivated by a desire for revenge and a thwarted sense of entitlement. This is the woman who thrilled to hear Drogo announce he would "take my Khalasar west to where the world ends" to "rape their women, take their children as slaves and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak."

This is the same woman who swore to the leaders of Qarth that, "when my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who have wronged me! We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground! "

Daenerys being motivated by a violent desire for vengeance for perceived wrongs against her and a sense of entitlement to the throne is nothing new. Audiences underestimated her cruelty because she's a pretty young woman who has some genuinely decent impulses at times. Instead of lashing out in a Daenerys-like rage, perhaps it's time to ask why it was so easy to ignore all the signs that pointed to this ending.

#Daenerys Targaryen #Game of Thrones

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calliecat93 · 4 years

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Top 10 Disney Couples

Last year for Valentines, I did a post on some of my favorite all-time ships. I wanted to do something like that again this year, so I decided to do Disney specifically. I’m only gonna count the main animated features (with one exception), so no Pixar but maybe I’ll give that its own list next year. Also, because I put this ship on my list last year, I’m going to exclude Rapunzel/Eugene (they’d be Number 2 otherwise) so that I can talk about some other pairings that I love. And trust me, when it comes to Disney, I got plenty.

Okay, here we go~

#10. Milo Thatch/Kida (Atlantis the Lost Empire)

Atlantis is one of the most underrated Disney films ever, and same with this pair. Okay so I guess technically they didn’t get together since there wasn’t a kiss or anything... but come on! While their intentions were all in the second half of the movie, it was just so... sweet to me. Milo had it rough through the whole movie with so many people belittling him. Even though he made friends with the crew and doing so got them to do the right thing, they were still pretty harsh on the poor guy in the start. He had been mocked due to his dreams, but never gave up even when his inexperience and dorkiness got in the way.

Kida though? She seemed endeared by him. Just like Milo had a curiosity in finding Atlantis and learning of their culture, Kida was interested in Milo and the world he came from. She might be the very first person aside form Mr. Whitmore who acted kindly to Milo right off the bat and asked him to help her save her people and culture. Milo didn’t go for the money, he went because it was his grandfather’s dream, and in turn his dream. They were so cute and fun together as they learned about each other's worlds, and of course, Milo did everything he possibly could to save Kida after she and the crystal bonded, as well as the entire city. Even at the risk of his own life. And just that hug between them at the end and Milo choosing to stay in Atlantis. Just... beautiful. This pair might be subtle, but it's just so sweet and respectful to each other and I just love them.

#9. Duchess and Thomas O’Malley (The Aristocats)

I think this was one of the first movies I ever saw in my life. My mom said I used to watch it all the time as a kid anyways. Heck, pretty sure this movie is why I love cats so much.

Anyways, this pair is cute. Duchess is a classy lady, while Thomas is a swinger. But they just have this natural chemistry the minute that they met. They don’t judge each other from their different walks of life or anything. You can tell that Duchess was charmed the second Thomas first came on. But what sells is, while thrown off for a moment, when Thomas realizes Duchess has kittens? He pretty much goes into dad mode instantly and tries to keep them happy/protect them. I mean he didn't have to help Marie when she fell out of the milk truck at that point, but he did it because it was the right thing to do. He wasn't one of those assholes who got thrown off cause the girl had kids. Heck, that seemed to bring them closer together.

But yeah, it’s just nice and charming to me. There’s nothing real deep about it, but IDK. There’s just something endearing about it to me. Maybe t’s due to Eva Gabor’s performance as Duchess, which also kinda helps with a pairing later on. But I just find them charming and Thomas showed to be a good guy and a good father figure. Sometimes you don’t need a lot of depth for a pair, you just gotta make the sense of romance come off. Disney has always been good at that, and this pair demonstrates that.

#8. Cinderella/Prince Charming (Cinderella)

So to be fair this one has little to no development. Which is kind fo a thing with some of the early Disney films n it’s things like this that Frozen pointed out... even though it kinda fell into the same cliche, but ah well. But you know what? As I said, Disney is usually pretty damn good at making you like a pair, even if it’s out of focus. This one is a prime example. We don’t see much of the Prince, but at the same time there is so much there.

Throughout the movie, we saw Cinderella belittled and abused by her stepfamily. She’s treated like a slave and gets her dreams literally torn apart right in front of her eyes. But she tries to remain kind and hopeful, and the Fairy Godmother rewards her for it. She gets the one night at the Bal. She didn’t go intending to find love, he went because for one time in her life since her parents died, she could have one night of happiness. That was all she wanted. Then Charming saw her. It was him who got struck with love at first sight It was him who walked out on th other girls and approached her. A prince noticed this girl who felt that she was a lowly servant, and danced with her. FOr Cinderella, that had to be so touching and amazing that can we blame her for being so in love after? After someone finally, finally gave her some long overdue affection.

Yeah in RL this can be dangerous. But it isn’t RL. It’s a fairy tale. Cindy earned her happy ending. And if we needed genuine proof about the Prince, A Twist in Time showed that he was indeed a good, heroic person. He didn’t judge Anastasia off her looks. When he found out the truth, he went to find Cinderella and remembered his love for her. He never cared that Cindy was a servant or anything. He loved her when he saw her, and clearly loved her for who she was. Cindy found someone who would give her the love that was so cruelly denied form her and she got out of her abusive family through it. Is it perfect? No, and I can give the remake points for doing a better job at developing the romance. But even so, it’s just s beautiful pair I loved since like... three years old. As such IDC what anyone says, I will always love them.

#7. Belle/Beast aka Adam (Beauty and the Beast)

It might be a surprise to some, but... I’m not a huge fan of Beauty and the Beast. Don’t get me wrong, I like it. I just feel like Belle, compared to Ariel and some of the later princesses is a little too boring. I still love her though. She’s bookish and kind and is seen as weird by her town, but she pursues what she enjoys anyways. She refuses Gaston’s advances as, while she had expressed wanting love, she didn’t want it with a brute like him. She wanted to choose herself. Then The Beast happens.

People tot his day still like to throw the Stockholm Syndrome card around, but it is idiotic. Belle never caved to Beast when he acted like a brute. But he did see that he wasn't a bad person when he saved her from the wolves, ad she chose to tend to him because she’s a good person. Yes, Beast needs her to break the curse, but Belle doesn’t just cave in either. Beast has to change himself to earn Belles's affection, and over time he does. He learns to be kinder and sure it’s a work in progress, but he does try and he does become better. It goes form needing Belle out of necessity, to genuinely falling in love with her because of her kindness towards him. Belle made Beast a better person, and once she saw the person he truly was, she fell in love with him.

But even then, despite those feelings, Belle decides to leave because her father needed her. Beast, instead of trying to force her to stay, allows her to go. That’s how much he loved her at that point. He loved her enough to let her go, even though that meant he’d be doomed. But it’s through that act, that selflessness, that allows the curse to eventually break. Because of Belle, Beast broke away form being a monster and spared Gaston. Because Belle saw the good in Beast, she stood up to Gaston and went back to save the man she loved. Because of that love, the curse was broken, and Beast became Adam once more. Belle saved Adam. Even if I’m not a huge fan of that film, it’s such a beautiful demonstration of the power of love and they truly deserved each other. A tale as old as time, indeed.

#6. Miss Bianca/Bernard (The Rescuers)

THIS IS THE MOST UNDERRATED DISNEY SHIP EVER.

I love these two so much. Again, its a rather understated pair, but it just works. Bernard is the nervous janitor of the Rescue Aid Society, but he clearly believes int heir cause as shown when he sings the anthem outside. Bianca is the Sweedish representative who has many admirers, but her heart is set on her job. She takes a liking to Bernard because she sees that compared to pretty much everyone else, he believes in rescuing those in trouble with the same passion as she does. He also shows how much he cares for her by being worried about her going to save Penny. Not because she’s a girl, but because he wants her to be safe. That clearly touched her and is why she picked him to be her co-agent.

They both work well together, Binca encouraging Bernard and being the charmer, more relaxed one. Bernard is frequently nervous, but he has a clear knack for the job and does it well. By the time they are on the way to Devil’s Bayou, it’s clear that they’ve acknowledged their feelings for one another. Ther’s no major arc or anything, it’s just two individuals feeling mutually attracted and feeling comfortable with their feelings. They work very well together and manage to rescue Penny, and later Doby in the sequel. The sequel retains the same charm, and the end where Bernard finally proposes makes me smile big every single time.

It’s just a lovely pairing that works so well and it is soooo underrated. It needs more love.

#5. Tiana/Prince Naveen (The Princess and the Frog)

I love this pair so much. It’s a classic ‘came from two different worlds’ story. You have the hard-working and ambitious Tiana and the lazy, spoiled Prince Naveen. Tiana is a good person, but she tends to put work over everything else and never lets herself relax. Naveen is a fun and intelligent man, but he’s spoiled and doesn’t know how to do anything, which caused his parents to cut him off. Due to this, Naveen got himself cured and he ended up passing it onto Tiana.

It is through each other that they find what is missing. Naveen has someone who actually pushes him to work and to realize his own flaws. How he doesn’t know how to act in the real world, even though he shows that he has plenty of skills if he tried. Having someone like Tiana who didn’t fall for his charm and pushed him to actually do things got him to better himself, and it clearly drew him to her. With Tiana, Naveen helped her see that there is more to life than working hard. It’s okay to take a step back and to find things like love. Her dream will always be there, but love will only come around every so often. It helps Tiana ease up and believe in things like wishing stars again, and it paid off for her.

Even at the end, when it looks like they’ll never become human, they accept it. Naveen almost gives up his freedom to marry Charlotte not to turn human again but to let Tiana fulfill her dream. Tiana realizes that she loves Naveen and even if it means losing what she wanted, she’ll still have what she needs, just like her father did. But it works out as once they get married, Tiana is now a princess and their kiss breaks the spell. Tiana got her dream. Naveen did everything he could to make that dream happen, including work with his own bare hands. They got the thing they both wanted and needed, and it’s just beautiful. Neither one are perfect, but their love is genuine, and I adore them and their journey,

#4. Hercules/Meg (Hercules)

I just realises that 5-2 are all from Musher and Clements directed films. Huh. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised though. Those two are so good at making likable couples. Even if they only have to much time to develop them, they make them good and their live believable and I love them. Hercules and Meg are no exception.

Unlike other heroines, Meg is a little older and less innocent. Herc is the more innocent one this time around. Herc is a good-hearted guy trying to figure out who he is and wants to be a hero to reunite with his God family. He saves Meg where despite some clumsiness, he pulls it off. Meg is clearly amused and Herc is lovestruck by her beaut. But of course, Meg is with Hades due to selling her soul to save her lover... who left her for another woman. Meg is cynical and hurt, and considering she pretty much gave up her soul for a man who left her without so much as a thank you, it’s hard to blame her.

Even though Hades makes her get close to Herc to find his weakness, Meg ends up falling for him due to his kindness and genuine heroic heart. She’s in denial of it because of what she experienced, but he wins her over. So much so that even if it means eternal servitude, she refuses to help Hades anymore. Unfortunately, it only gives Hades what he needs to break Herc, and it hurts them both. But despite clearly being heartbroken by the deception and being powerless, Herc trie to save everyone anyways. THen Meg sacrifices herself to save him and restore his power, making Herc realize she did really love him. Herc grew to love Meg because she was smart, funny, and she made him feel less alone. Seeing that she was willing to die for him, despite all that happened, really showed how strong that love truly was. Meg again sacrificed herself to save who she loved, and Hercules proved he was a hero by going to the Underworld himself to save Meg. He was willing to sell his own soul to let Meg leave, and this act got him his full Godhood restored.

But the best part? At the end despite finally being deemed a True Hero and being back at Mount Olympus, what does Hercules do? He gives it up. For Meg. He finally found the place he came form... but it wasn’t where he belonged. He belonged on Earth. The place that raised him. The place he found Meg. His parents are stunned, but clearly happy for him and grant his wish. They finally get to kiss, and it feels so earned. Hercules found someone who loves him for him and can fill the void. Meg found some genuinely kind who would never leave or hurt her. That's the best way to describe this pair, genuine.

#3. Ariel/Eric (The Little Mermaid)

In many ways, this pairing set up the basis for many pairings to come.

Ariel is a mermaid who wants to be human. Eric is an adventurous prince wanting to enjoy life. One fateful night, Ariel stumbled upon his ship and it was love at first sight. Not just on her end either. When she saved him, Eric got one glimpse at her, but could only remember her voice. He wanted to find this mysterious girl again (a fact many critics seem to ignore) and thus the stage is set. After Triton destroys her grotto, Ariel takes Ursula’s deal and becomes human, and gets her chance to woo Eric.

These two are just adorable. People still get on Ariel for her choice here, and yeah she fell in love super fast. But she already wanted to be human, and I think some of her feelings were more infatuation than real love at first. But once humans, we see that Eric is a genuinely nice guy. Even though he thinks Ariel isn’t the girl since she can’t talk, what doe she do? He takes her to the palace anyways because clearly, she needs help and shelter, and he’s willing to give her that. I think that’s what gets Ariel to truly love him, seeing that he’s a good person and kind of her ideal vision of what humans are like. Then Ariel, despite being mute, is just so charming and weet that Eric ends up feeling attracted to her. So much sot hat once Grimm points it out to him, he gives up on his curiosity over the girl who saved him and is about to turn his affections towards Ariel. Sure Ursula messed that up, but it showed that no, he didn’t fall for Ariel because it turned out she was that girl. He fell in love with Ariel because of who Ariel was. Just as she fell for him because of who he was.

I truly did not care that their romance was rushed. It was genuinely charming and sweet. They were both good people, and seeing two good people happy is perfectly fine. Especially at the end where once she found out what Ursula was doing, Ariel went after them even though she couldn’t swim in her human form. Eric, despite being human, went to save Ariel from Ursula, and she, in turn, saved him from getting blasted. Then Eric finished Ursula once and for all, nearly getting killed int he process but this proves himself worthy to Triton. He grants Ariel legs, and the two can finally be together. The critics and ‘feminists’ can say what they want, they are adorable and just good for each other and as I said, are the template for so many couples afterwards. I love them, dang it!

#2. Aladdin/Princess Jasmine (Aladdin)

IDK what it is about these two! They’re just so... perfect! IDK how to explain why, but I’m gonna try.

Like I said, Musker and Clements are just really good at making likable pairs. Aladdin is a street rat striving for more. Jasmine is a princess who wants freedom. When they meet, its true love. It doesn't even feel like Aladdin fell for her cause she was pretty, it truly feels like he saw his soulmate for the first time. Then the two find a common link in feeling trapped in their lives. They both want more. Want to create something better for themselves. And they find that they may just be able to get that through each other. But then Aladidn is arrested and Jafar lies that he was executed, breaking Jasmine and essentially ensuring that she wasn’t going to leave again.

Then Prince Ali shows up. Jasmine is angered because he appears pompous and because her everyone si trying to make decisions about her without her consent. She isn’t a prize to be won. Ali, of course, is Aladdin, and once Jasmine tells him off, he realizes how the persona he’s putting on is wrong. He acts more like himself, showing that he likes Jasmine not because of her looks or money, but because she’s a fun, strong-willed person. Once she sees this and suspects he’s Aladdin, she goes with him on the magic carpet. A Whole New World is one of the most romantic scenes in any movie period. You will never be able to convince me otherwise. It ends with Jasmine realizing Ali’s identity, and while he still lies, Aladdin acts like himself and Jasmine falls for the person he truly is.

But of course, Aladdin is still lying. So he still needs to prove himself worthy after. Which he does by defeating Jafar despite having only his street rat skills to aid him. But he accomplishes it masterfully. He realizes that he can't live a lie or force Genie into servitude just to fulfill his won want. He frees Genie, but he didn't need his magic by then. he more than proved himself to the Sultan, who lets Jasmine choose who she wants. I think he’d have done this long before if not for Jafar’s hypnosis, and the smile of Jasmine’s face is just beautiful. She chooses Aladdin, and it is indeed a whole new world for both of them. It’s just so genuine and pure and I love them.

So... back at the top, I said there was one exception to the ‘strictly form Disney animated features’ rule. Why? Because I just could not leave this one off. It would feel wrong because it is one of, if not the, most perfect and longest-lasting couples in all fo entertainment. Who am I talking about?

#1. Mickey and Minnie Mouse

As the old saying goes: it all started with a mouse.

Mickey and Minnie is so freakin pure it makes me feel the warm fuzzies if I so much as see a photo of them. Really, anything they are in together makes me feel that way. For over ninety years, these two have graced pretty much every media form ever and have been together in some fashion throughout it. They have the same birthday and last name for crying out loud! This was destiny!

Both Mickey and Minnie are sweet and endearing. Mickey is the face of Disney and while I know some find him bland and one-note, there’s always just been this charm to him. I love how much of a sweetie he is, and he does have his mischevious streak. Minnie over the years has become more sassy and stern, letting her not just be Mickey’s girlfriend. But no matter what changes the two have been through, their utter love for each other has never faded away. You can put them in anything in any setting, and they will be head over heel for each other.

I mean even their longest-lasting voice actors, Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor, got married due to these roles. Mickey ad Minie got married in real life. It really showed too. You could just tell that Mickey and Minnie, Wayne and Russi, were just so in love and it made you love them. It’s something that’s gonna be hard due to Wayne and Russi’s passings, but true love is eternal. That love will always exit through Mickey and Minnie. Even when Bret Iwan and Chris Diamantopolis took over Mickey, you still feel the love between Mickey and Minnie and I’m sure that whoever takes over Minnie will also keep that intact. That love is immortalized, and I will continue to love every second of it.

Mickey Mouse is the one who started it all, but Mickey and Minnie are the ones who started Disney’s pure love stories. I think that’s something that Disney has always been good at. Sure the romances can be rushed and happen at first sight. Even they’ve made fun of themselves for it But they’re just so good at it. As they say, don’t fix what ain’t broke. Maybe give it a fresh coat of paint, but don’t fix what doesn't need it. I look forward to seeing future Disney pairs, and I will cherish them all, both old and new Happy Valentines Day everyone~

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secret-engima · 4 years

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Yo-hoo. May I ask my favourite author what the Twins think of Star and Wire? As in family terms/close relationship? I remember you had Sides call Star Clan-sister in your side stories?? Is that a thing?? Is Wire their Clan-brother?? Give me the twins spending time and having fun with Star+Wire!! Family tIME!!

Yo! *squints* okay so- the Star Clan-sister thing rings a bell but even I can’t remember where I said that. Lemme see if I can just- *runs off to find it, runs back* can’t figure out where I said that but I’ll take your word for it and just roll with it:

-Starting with thoughts on Starwish: While they had mixed emotions about Starwish when they first met, she is now very firmly in the Family category. Sunstreaker sees her at a little sister, and Sideswipe SAYS he sees her as a little sister, but really he treats her more like a older or equal-age sibling (now that he’s over his crush anyway).

-Of the Twins, Starwish gets along with Sunstreaker/spends time with him more, not because she doesn’t like Sideswipe but because Sunstreaker and Starwish are both Artists in their own way and they tend to fall into each other’s orbit more easily. Sunstreaker has an entire collection of Starwish paintings/sketches, of her sitting or dancing or even of her working (either doing maintenance on medical tools or treating minor injuries in the medbay). Sunstreaker is also incredibly proud of the one he made using a still-image he snapped on impulse while on a mission with her. It shows Starwish slinking up some rubble on all fours (think like the Na’vi from James Cameron Avatar? That cat-like pose they do sometimes? Yeah, that), a half-hidden flash of white amid the dark rubble, there and gone in the time it took Sunstreaker to take the picture that he later based the painting off of.

-This isn’t to say she doesn’t get along with Sideswipe, because they do. Sideswipe likes to make her laugh and she has (multiple times) willingly served as Sideswipe’s alibi for pranks (and also helped pull them off with her ninja skills but literally nobody other than Sunstreaker, Hardwire, her Sparkmate, and the Twinlings believe that).

-If Clan-sister wasn’t a Thing in my AMOSC verse before, it is now. Though in the Twins case it is unofficial because the War makes it took dangerous to officially announce that sort of thing. It is also a very uncommon practice in the “upper” levels of society, since Clans were usually networks of bots who were all “related” either by creation or just by who their guardians were. There are no words for aunt, uncle, or cousin in Cybertronian, so Clan was an umbrella term used for those who were either siblings of your creator, creators of your creator, creations of your creator’s sibling or sparkmates of any of the above. They were essentially ready-built social networks, and “officially” only Nobility had them, with bigger Clans generally meaning more wealth/status/etc. However, lower castes (particularly ones that rubbed shoulders or were involved in Gladiatorial arenas) adopted the term Clan to indicate parts of the social network that were trusted LIKE family, even if there was no relation. Sparkbonds were not necessary, nor was the Amica Endura status (though Amica Endura status was considered automatic inclusion in the Clan for lower castes).

-So basically, when Ultra Magnus named her his spark-child/part of the Clan of Magnus when she came of age, he meant it in the nobility’s sense of formal adoption. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe mean it more in the sense of the lower caste Clan: Someone they trust implicitly with their lives and secrets, AS IF she was a sibling. Since they aren’t Nobility, they have no official Clan, but if they did, Starwish would be on that hypothetical list and would be considered Clan-sibling (the nearest thing Cybertron has to the word “Cousin” because it’s short hand for “sibling through the Clan rather than a shared creator”.

-I hope all that made any amount of sense. Moving on.

-Hardwire is also considered Clan-brother by Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, though it arguably took longer for them to warm up to him. In earth terms, Hardwire is more of a favored cousin than an adoptive sibling like Starwish, but the Twins trust Hardwire to watch their back and visa versa (especially considering Hardwire saving Sunstreaker’s life all those Vorns ago).

-Their affection for Hardwire was forged less through social contact and shared interests (as in the case of Starwish) and more through combat. They learned to trust Hardwire as the sniper who watched their backs as well as the berserker who tore through the front lines with them. Hardwire, despite being chronologically younger, is also firmly an older/more mature cousin in status. He has, at points, served as their impulse control, and all of the autobots shudder in fear of the rare cycles the Twins talk him into joining in their non-prank shenanigans (decepticons live in Fear™ of the times Hardwire goes berserk while in the vicinity of the Terror Twins, because they play off his wild tendencies and Arcee’s speed Perfectly™).

-FAMILY TIMES! As the War goes on, it gets harder and harder for them all to match schedules (especially once the Twinlings join Special Ops) but they make do and have a few beloved group activities. They tend to hang out either in the rec room or an empty hangar for the extra space, exchange stories of what’s been going on lately, and do whatever random thing they can think of to wind down and bond.

-Hardwire once made the mistake of introducing them to the concept of tabletop RPGs during a meet-up where one or both of the Twins were on activity restrictions and bored out of their processors. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe took the basic idea and RAN WITH IT, recruiting Starwish and the Twinlings to help them make the rules, world-building, character roles, etc, so now the autobots have a new form of gambling- betting on the outcomes of a TRPG round. It doesn’t have an official name, but Starwish is a very popular Prime Elect (read: Dungeon Master). If any of them are recovering from injuries and can’t do physical family activities (like pranking) then this is what they do.

-Once Hardwire unlocks his predacon mode, Jet Judo shenanigans crank up to 1000% more reckless, because they totally expect him to catch them in mid-air (he does, but that doesn’t mean he won’t lecture them later).

-Sideswipe ABSOLUTELY uses Earth slang. He may not use it correctly, but he will gleefully use it just to watch Hardwire facepalm.

-Predacon cuddle piles. Nuff said.

-Sunstreaker once made Hardwire stay still in his predacon form for JOORS on end to paint him. Hardwire ended up napping through it and Sideswipe ended up posing on top of Hardwire in the cliche “I have slain the mighty beast” pose only for Hardwire to wake up and casually pin Sideswipe down with his tail and dragon-snicker at Sideswipe’s protests. Guess which one Sunstreaker painted (spoiler: not the one that would boost his Twin’s already sizable ego).

-They rarely if ever use Hardwire as an alibi or a coconspirator for pranks because they know Hardwire will absolutely sell them out to Prowl for the cybertronian equivalent of one (1) corn chip (especially after Hardwire gets his predacon mode because Prowl can understand him in that mode and Hardwire isn’t going to make his translator angry for any reason. That and it’s honestly funny to watch the Twins get caught.) Now- random races through the base or owning everyone in that game with the ball that I’ve forgotten the name of at the moment? That Hardwire will join in on no problem.

#SE asks #oliverslewty asks #AMOSC verse #Starwish (OC)#Hardwire (OC)#Sunstreaker #Sideswipe #transformers

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whirlybirdwhat · 5 years

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East Sea of Monsters - Chapter 5

Franky starts. to notice some weird shit about his crew.

Read the entire series on Ao3 for better quality and authors notes! Gen, creepy, featuring all of the Straw Hats, multi-chapter story.

“The East Blue has a different nickname to those in the Grand Line, and those who hail it as home have a few… unique traits.”

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Creepy - Franky

Now, Franky had seen some weird stuff. The Franky Family’s weird, Water 7’s weird, hell, he’s weird.

But he has to say, the Straw Hat’s take the cake on how weird, how crazyyou can get.

And he’s not just talking about the way the Captain’s made of rubber, their doctor’s a reindeer, their swordsman wields three katanas (one of them is supposedly cursed), and the latest member of their crew is a talking skeleton.

Nah.

That stuffs pretty SUPER if you ask him, the kind he can roll with.

It’s the other things that get to him.

The creepy things.

He first notices these creepythings when he goes into the kitchen to restock his cola and grab a midnight stack after working all night, and finds two pairs of glowing eyes staring at him from a top the counter, accented by a sharp-toothed mouth and far too much glistening red wet stuff for him to handle.

Like a man, he assumes he’s gone far too long without sleep and back tracks out of the room as quickly as he dares before his mind can fool him further.

The eyes follow him every step of the way, and even the thing starts shifting unnaturally to follow him out of the room before Franky gives up on acting SUPER and just sprints away.

The next day he thinks it’s just a nightmare, before realizing he was most definitely awake, his eyes are alwaysperfectly functional, and Luffy just thanked him at breakfast for not ratting his midnight snack out to Sanji.

Hell.

What the fu-

Thriller Bark was creepy for a number of reasons, most of them relating to the island itself and its inhabitants – zombies, shadows, ghosts and SUPER talking skeleton dudes – but Franky can handle that.

It’s the othercreepiness that really stands out to Franky, makes him feel like that time before on the ship – the kind that he thinks isn’t real but knows later it most definitely was.

He first notices it as Brook boards the ship. He seems positively delighted to be there, to be among human souls again, but all the same he appears to… lean awayfrom certain members of the crew. Franky would dismiss it if he didn’t know that A) Brook leans towardother members of the crew and B) Luffy, the most welcoming to the skeleton, is the one that makes the skeleton the most nervous.

(Franky is sure that if he asked the man, he would say something along the lines of They make my hair stand on ends – not that I have any hair – Oh wait! I do! Yohohoho!

He doesn’t ask though. He isn’t sure he wants to know what he thinks Brook knows.

But he’s a builder, a shipwright, however. It’s in his nature to poke around for a potential problem.

Not that his crew is a problem, of course.)

The next creepy things he notices are more Zoro related. It’s subtle, wouldn’t really be an eye catcher if Franky hadn’t been looking for it already.

You see – ever since he met the swordsman, he feels as if he isn’t actually seeing all of him at once. There’s always been a haze, sitting about him, as subtle as they come, like a cloud on a misty day.

Seemingly normal, but with a closer look, it’s like it doesn’t match the rest of the world.

So, he keeps recalibrating and recalibrating his eyes, keeps looking for the odd moments when Zoro seems to just – fadefrom existence, like he slips out of sight and just doesn’t come back until one the crew drags him to where he’s supposed to be.

(Franky entertains the thought that maybe this is why he’s always lost but dismisses it almost immediately.)

And here – on Thriller Bark, when life itself is being torn asunder by humans playing devils and gods – that chain tethering him to thisrealm seems to solidify, and the cloud resting about his shoulders fades away…

Leaving Franky to catch glimpses of limbs coated in shiny green scales, and eyes that flicker red from the back of a green head. They wink at him when Franky stares too long, and fade away the next moment, as if there was only ever cropped mossy hair on the man’s head.

The cyborg would think it was Robin’s handiwork if the eye wasn’t distinctly beast like, and Robin concentrating on using a hundred other summoned limbs to defeat an enemy.

The fading veil like thingover Zoro is even pointed out by the monster that has Luffy shadow of all things and that’s when Franky knowsthis stuff isn’t justin his head.

Because if that idiot can say Hey you guys are little demons (meaning it literally, Franky thinks) and why are you so foggy green sword guyand make Robin smile that scary knowing smile of hers, Franky is definitelysane.

He hopes.

However, the creepiest thing by faris Zoro’s smile, toothy, bloody, and with more thirst and death than Franky has ever seen before.

But maybe that’s just Zoro. He can never tell with the guy.

(So yes, Zoro is creepy. And Franky doesn’t like the way when he shouts Three Thousand Worlds!The world seems to split for just a second, as if a man just stepped and sliced through three thousand places at once and still managed to dissect an enemy with three clear strokes of sharp (cursed, haunted) blades.

No - Franky doesn’t like it at all – because, on stormy nights at Water 7, Tom would give in to Franky’s pleas for the scariest stories Tom knew of, as it fit the mood and would be SUPER during the storm, c’mon Tom! and those stories would oft feature tales of a man – a monster – with a dark hole for a heart, and a pitch of tar for a soul.

The man had a penchant for flashing across seas with a single step, havoc in his wake, as if the barrier between realms had no hold on him, as if space bent to his will and not the other way around.

It reminds him of Zoro, sometimes, when he casts a look at the swordsman in battle.)

The third incident is, funnily enough, with the third member of the ‘monster trio’, Sanji.

Franky thinks he finally knows why they’re called the monster trio, beyond them being simply ridiculously powerful.

The incident occurs when they are in the New World, after two years of training and a heartbreak so deep it cuts all of them to their soul.

(Franky does not like the rumors of Marineford. They say it was the War of the Best, that only the most powerful walked its bloody path, but Franky has heard that there was more than men fighting there –

And that there was a suspicious plume of fire at Ace’s grave, three days after Luffy rang the bell, a horrific mimicry of the fire that was said to have warred over the dead man’s father’s grave three days after his execution.)

Franky’s finally back in his workshop, with the sound of his crew, his family, surrounding him with a cacophonous yet beautiful noise and a new idea under his hands, and he couldn’t be happier.

But the next bit requires a bit of balancing if he wants to make it work – he has to lift the glass panel into the eye of the ring, but he can only reach it if he uses one hand, leans on his tiptoes, and stretches the other arm out for balance.

In hindsight, he should have added this bit first.

Oh well.

Almost there…. Almost got it – easy, easy alri-

“Franky?”

“AH!”

CRASH!

With a thunderous sound, Franky whacks his had around, turning his head as he does, letting the glass shatter to the floor and nearly hitting the tray of Cola out of Sanji’s hands.

And that wouldn’t normally be odd, Franky can be clumsy especially when he’s focused and someone startles him (he supposes he needs to retrain himself in that regard, before their little… break … Luffy had taken to jumping up on Franky’s shoulders while he was working to see the new creation, and Franky had learned not to startle – Luffy will probably continue to do that again (at least some things stay the same…)) however it’s what happens in that second of chaos that freaks Franky out.

Franky’s hand, big and metal as it is, should have grazed Sanji’s side. But it didn’t – and not because Sanji dodged away either.

Instead, it is as if there was a giant hole in his side, gaping and wide yet perfectly ordinary, so that Franky only touched a black silk suit instead of the skin underneath.

That’s not all – in the flashing second, with as focused as Franky’s eyes were, he could see a wisp of smoke and something sparking flickering from the cook’s pointy mouth, as swirly eyebrows stood out against literal ash-gray skin.

He doesn’t know how to react, doesn’t even know if what he saw was real, only gives a small, high pitched laugh and ‘yeah, what about you? You startled me!’ when Sanji asks if he’s okay.

He sits in a kind of stupor, cold cola held in a metal (shaking) hand as Sanji takes his leave.

What did I just see?

Franky casts a glance at the shattered piece of glass on the ground, and the empty space in the machine it was supposed to go in.

Guess I’ll know soon enough.

Thankfully, beyond shadows in the corner of his eyes, weird hazy visions, spooky feelings and flashing eyes in the middle of the night, Franky only has one more major …. freakyevent before he gets the (terrifying) answer he’s looking for.

Nami’s yelling at him for bringing the Watcher (named by Chopper for its big eyepiece after he came down to see if any glass had gotten in his foot after the accident with Sanji) up on deck, as its apparently ‘Too big! I can’t get a proper tan with that in the way!’ and ‘What does it even do’but he doesn’t particularly care.

After all – she’s one of the five reasons he brought the thing up here.

(Brook had been uneasy around her and Usopp too – despite the fact that Usopp was more scared of him, and Nami was a woman (damn bony pervert.) Both were relatively weak and lacking any freaky power like the Monster Trio had, so it had buggedFranky for ages why Brook was tense around them andthe Monster Trio, but not the cyborg or the talking reindeer.)

He turns the machine on just as a dark cloud passes over the sun.

Suddenly – the world is cold, and dark, and dreary, and Franky knows his eyes look far away as he peers through the lens at his comrades.

Wait, what… what?

They aren’t there – only Robin, sitting on her lawn chair, is.

Instead of the others, Franky views a shapeless form of wind and cloud and bursting yellow eyes, and something crouching in the corner of the deck, feathery, shadowed and whimsical.

It has far too many joints to be human.

Franky pulls away as a smashing, sparking noise emits from his left, and a crashing from his right.

The suns shining on them again, and the chilling song Franky swears he must have heard is already nothing but a distant memory.

Nami’s hand rests on the right side of the machine (is Franky imagining the little claw-like scrapes just before her nails?), denting it gently, while faint smoking (a bullet?– no, it smells far too much like Usopp’s Stars to be that) wisps from the cracks of the mention to his left.

“Franky,” Nami smiles, all knowing and terrifying, as her eyes seem to glow a particular shade of molten gold (weren’t her eyes brown?) “I suggest you stop.”

Usopp looks over and cocks his head like a bird, as if his place hadn’t been filled with feathers a second ago. He doesn’t say anything, and that is somehow scarier than Nami’s words.

“Okay?” She prods.

“Okay,” Franky agrees, and promptly begins to dismantle the machine.

“Good.”

The spare parts find a home in the bowels of the ship where only Luffy treads normally, as Franky can’t stand the sight of them, even if it was good metal (can’t bear to throw them out either, something tells him they’ll cause more trouble in the ocean depths than on the ship).

He feels all cold and empty when he looks at them.

He shouldn’t feel that way on his ship of dreams, surrounding by loving crew members.

Robin is the one to finally give him the answer to all the freakiness his crew has going on. He thinks she was amused by it before the Watcher mishap.

(She too avoids the metal when she can. It isn’t like her at all, and it’s the final tipping point in her observation of his interactions with their less… human campanions.)

It’s the day after said mishap and Franky’s still all jittery, feeling like he’s seen something taboo, when Robin glides up to him in the aquarium, where Franky’s relaxing with some Cola Floats (Who knew cola could taste so good with ice cream?).

“Did you know that five of our crew hail from the East Blue? The Going Merry did as well.” She says simply, and hands him an old but cared for book, with pieces of paper – newspaper clippings? And some notes? – sticking out of it. “Read that. Make sure it comes back to me in good condition” She finishes with some grabbing motions, taking Franky back to the time he first joined the crew which results in him nodding vigorously, and the woman disappearing into the hall with a satisfied smile.

The title is East Sea: Devil Waters, and Franky gulps.

Inside, the freakiness is explained, and something in him relaxes with it. At least he knows whythey’re all freaky now, and that all the rumors he’s heard are true.

(His questions are answered and somethings he didn’t even know were strange had an explanation.

He had heard of Klabautermann before, he knew Merry had one, and he knows Sunny does as well. But – this explains the extra presence he felt in Sunny’s hull some days.

He’s glad he created the Mini Merry – who knew ships could have restless ghosts? He’s happy the lamb has a final resting – haunting –place, safe in the cradle of her comrades and out of the ocean’s depths.)

#whirlywrites #whirlywhat #op #one piece #franky #fanfiction #drabbles #roronoa zoro #monkey d. luffy #cat burglar nami #usopp #nami #robin #sanji #going merry #thousand sunny #thriller bark

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mythicallore · 5 years

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Ancient Monster Rears Its Head?

For centuries, Scottish folklore and legend have both been filled with tales of a wild and deadly beast known as the Kelpie. The terrible beast, which has the ability to transform itself into numerous forms – even that of people – was greatly feared throughout the 1600s and 1700s, when reports of the Kelpie were at their height. As for its curious name, “Kelpie” is an ancient Scottish term meaning “water-horse.” There is a very good reason as to why that particular name was applied to the beast, as will soon become very clear. As its name strongly suggests, the water-horse spent much of its time lurking in the waters of Scottish lochs – specifically in the shallower, marshy areas of such locales. It would coldly and callously wait for an unwary passer-by to appear on the scene and then strike, mercilessly and without any hint of a warning. The beast’s mode of attack was, admittedly, ingenious, even if the end result for the victim was not a good one. In fact, it was almost always downright fatal.

Very much creatures of the night, Kelpies were said to dwell in the waters of literally dozens of Scottish lochs. As creature-seeker Roland Watson demonstrated in his book The Water Horses of Loch Ness, however, the vast majority of reports of such beasts emanate from none other than Loch Ness. We may never know, for sure, the real form of the Kelpie; only the guise that led to the creation of its name. But, what we can say for certain is that the small number of witnesses who encountered the beast, and who lived to tell the tale, described it as a large black or white horse. In most cases, the victim was a late-night traveler, walking along an old, well-known pathway near the water’s edge of the relevant loch. Suddenly, the huge horse would rise out of the water, dripping wet, and make its way to the shore, with its coat shining under the light of the Moon.

Under such strange circumstances, many might be inclined to make a run for it immediately. There is, however, a very strange aspect to many of the Kelpie stories. Namely, that the people who crossed its path felt as if their free will had been taken from them and that they were deliberately prevented from fleeing the scene. Today, we might justifiably suggest that the beast had the power to control the minds of those in its deadly sights. Perhaps, even by a form of supernatural hypnosis. Those fortunate enough to escape the icy clutches of the Kelpie described how they felt driven to climb on the back of the horse and grab its reins. Despite having a sense of dread and a fear of doing so, that’s exactly what so many did – and, in the process, failed to survive and tell their tale. It was at that point that the Kelpie made its move – an incredibly fast move.

With the entranced person now atop the monster, it would suddenly launch itself into the deep and cold waters of the loch, with the poor soul unable to let go of the reins. Death by drowning was all but inevitable, aside from that very lucky, aforementioned body of people who were fortunate enough to have survived and who related their stories – hence why we know of the creature and its terrible modus operandi. As for the reason behind these deadly attacks, it was said that the creatures sought one thing more than any other: the human soul.

Although the Kelpie was very much a monster of centuries long gone, there is a thought-provoking case which suggests a Kelpie may have been on the loose in England in the mid-1970s. In the summer of 1976, an encounter with the much-feared and legendary “Man-Monkey”of Bridge 39 on the Shropshire Union Canal occurred; a supernatural creature first reported in January 1879. It was a strange, spectral, ape-like beast. The 1976 witness was a man named Paul Bell, a keen fisherman and someone who, in July and August 1976, spent several Saturdays out at the canal with his rods, reels, bait, his cans of beer and his favorite beef and onion sandwiches,. Bell told me that, on one particular Saturday afternoon, he was sat near the water’s edge on a small wooden stool that he always carried with him, when he was “literally frozen solid” by the sight of “what at first I thought was a big log floating down the cut, about sixty or seventy feet away.” According to Bell, however, it was no log; it was something else entirely. As it got closer, Bell was both astonished and horrified to see a large “dark brown and black-colored’ eel or snake-like creature – possibly ten feet in length or a little bit more – moving slowly in the water, with its head – that “looked like a black sheep” – flicking rapidly from side to side.

Although he had an old Polaroid camera with him, said Bell, he never even thought to take a photograph. Instead, he merely stared in both awe and shock as the animal cruised leisurely and blissfully past him, before finally vanishing out of sight. Bell stressed that the creature apparently did not see him (“or, if it did, it never attacked me”), and did not appear to exhibit any outright hostile tendencies. What elevated Bell’s story to a far stranger level was the fact that he claimed, in quite matter of fact fashion, that the following Saturday he was fishing in practically the same spot when he had a sudden, out of the blue feeling of being watched. He was not wrong. Peering across the width of the canal, Bell was both horrified and petrified to see a dark, hairy face staring intently at him out of the thick, green bushes. It was the Man-Monkey. The head of the animal was unmistakably human-like, said Bell, who added that “as soon as it saw me looking at it, up it went and ran right into the trees and I lost it.” He further explained: “That was it; a second or two was all at the most. But as it got up and ran I knew it was a big monkey. There’s nothing else it could have been.”

The chances of two strange and unidentified creatures being seen in the same location, and only a week apart, are slim to absolute zero. In fact, we can forget the “slim” angle. The chances are 100 percent zero. My conclusion? That what Paul Bell saw was nothing less than a 1970s incarnation of an ancient Kelpie. Bell was lucky to leave the site alive.

#cryptid #paranormal #supernatural

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fawninthewinter · 7 years

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DTV Disney Sequels: Beaty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas

Well, it’s not Christmas but it is July. So we’ll consider this a ‘Christmas in July’ kind of review. Yeah. That sounds good. Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas The first Beauty and the beast is one of my favorite Disney films. It’s in my top ten. It also seems to be a favorite for so many other people. What’s not to like about it? The beautiful animation, the well developed romance, a charming villain who’s entertaining to watch, likeable characters, and unforgettable songs. Sad to say, none of that will be found here. With that, does this one hold a candle to the original? You probably know my personal answer to that if you just read the sentence before that question. Turns out the movie is actually being told by Mrs. Potts as a story. It takes place not long after Beast saves Belle from the pack of wolves in the forest. She’s now trying to get to know him better. So this is actually a midquel. It’s the holiday season and Belle is teaching the Beast how to ice skate. I think. After some ‘hilarious’ slapstick, the Beast gets mad after seeing the shape he made in the snow, which he views as the shadow of a monster. He spends just about all of the movie up until the end being a mopey douchebag. He also hates Christmas and forbids it from being celebrated in his castle. So what does everyone else do? Plan a big Christmas party, of course! Meanwhile our villain, a sentiment pipe organ named Forte voiced by…. Tim Curry, may or may not have some…. feelings for the Beast, and sees Belle as an obstacle in his way. So he does all in his power to make sure the Beast stays in a foul mood and Christmas is not had. That is his entire motivation. I’m not kidding. He sees Belle as an obstacle getting in the way of his relationship with the Beast. He literally says at one point in the movie: “She pulls him away from my grasp”. Could be giving the audience certain impressions and mixed feelings here. So why does Beast hate Christmas so much? Because it happens to be the night the old beggar women/beautiful enchantress put a curse on his castle. Complete with a younger looking and sounding version of him as a human. He’s actually quite a little prick. And Forte is there to memorize on that pain with the Beast. The entire plot of the movie is more or less Belle and the others want to throw a Christmas celebration, Beast keeps yelling at Belle, she still insists on ‘giving him some Christmas cheer’, chaos ensues near the end of the movie, two scenes of it, and after said chaos everyone lives happily ever after. Let’s start of with my first problem. The way Belle, Beast, and their relationship is portrayed. Belle is one of my favorite main characters from Disney. Period. She does what she loves best- reading her books- and isn’t bothered by what anyone else thinks of her despite the rest of the town seeing her as weird, she’s self-sacrificing, she’s kind but she definitely has her limits- standing up to the Beast whenever he was being a dick, and even outsmarting Gaston at one point in the first movie when he proposed to her. That was awesome. Plus, what she’s looking for is something I don’t think she even quite knows what. Her goal isn’t definite at the beginning of the movie and what she ends up wanting turns out to be in the place she would least expect. Why is this important to know? Because I’m gonna bring up the elephant in the room right now. There’s been a ton of criticism against the first film about how Belle and the Beast’s relationship is Stockholm Syndrome. I think we all know about that. I, like a lot of people, think that’s completely unfair because Belle only opens up to the Beast and starts to get to know him after he stops being a complete dick. She refused to eat dinner with him and even said she wanted nothing to do with him when he was holding her captive. Point is, she didn’t sympathize with him when he was being abusive. When he scared her, she even ran away from the castle. When the Beast saved her from the wolf pack, she could have easily left him there. However she chose not to as he did save her. It’s only once he stops yelling at her does she start to get to know him. Also, he let’s her go when she shows him that her father is in danger. She probably wouldn’t have come back except for you know, Gaston and the mob going to attack the castle and murder him. So that gets that out of the way. If you were to watch this movie in the other hand and say their relationship was Stockholm Syndrome here, you would actually have a fair point. Good god Belle and Beast. What happened to you guys? Their entire relationship here consists of Beast yelling and shouting at her, and Belle continuing to insist they try and cheer him up with some good old holiday spirit. Hey Belle; this guy really doesn’t deserve your sympathy or any of what you guys are doing for him. Now would be a good time to leave that God forsaken castle. The Beast is really unlikeable here. First of all, he throws a tantrum all because of a shape he made in the snow when he fell into it. He spends the entirety of the movie moping and doping around, and just being nasty to the other characters in general. At one point he pulls Belle out of the freezing water. So what does he do? Take her back to the castle to get warmed up? No! That would actually make him somewhat of a decent person in this movie. He imprisons her in his dungeon. Yes, Beast. What a great idea. Take the girl who could very possibly have hypothermia your cold dungeon during the winter time and then condemn her there for the rest of her life (I’m not kidding. He actually does that)! Jeez, Beast. You’re quite the evil asshole, aren’t you?! All the characters take a level in dumbass as they’re now making some of the stupidest decisions. Yes, Belle. Trust that totally nice, friendly, and not obviously evil in anyway talking pipe organ to keep your secret about throwing a Christmas party from the Beast. Yes, Chip. Take said organ’s advice to go into the scary woods in the freezing cold to look for a Christmas tree. Keep going further into the scary woods in the freezing cold until you eventually find a perfect tree. Yes, everyone. Clearly what the Beast who despises Christmas needs is some Christmas cheer. Yes, Belle. Stay at that castle even when the Beast continues to scream at you. His happiness is truly what is important. “I just wanted you to be happy” she sobs as he leaves her in the dungeon presumably for dead. She ends up forgiving him just before the climactic ‘battle’. “Can you ever forgive me?” “Well, you only shouted at me constantly, and left me in the your freezing cold dungeon to die. But we did just sing a song about Christmas spirit, teamwork, and all that. And seeing how you did change your mind about the whole letting me freeze and die in here thing… of course I forgive you! Merry Christmas.” Ugh. The belle from the first movie would not be acting like this. There’s a small not really important subplot with a flute named Fife wanting a solo in a musical number and Forte lies about giving him one and he turns on Forte and sides with Belle and the others. That’s pretty much it. Not much to say. Like I said, it’s really not that important. Though I do wonder what happens to Fife when the spell is broken and everyone is human again. Him and Forte never appeared or were mentioned in the original so… Chip has a bigger role in this movie than the first one. He’s voiced by soon to be famous Haley Joel Osment who would lend his voice to characters in a couple of other Disney sequels. And let’s just say, the DTV Disney Sequels were not really in his favor. He does do a good job though. Oh, the other voice actors all reprise their roles. Which I guess is a positive I can say about this film. The animation is typical TV quality animation. It’s not the worst mind you. I mean, it’s better than Return of Jafar. It’s just kind of jarring to see these characters animated with a smaller budget when you remember how great the animation in the first one was. The characters also have less expression to boot. That’s another thing you’ll find with a lot of these sequels. Forte is animated in CGI and I think that’s where most of this films budget was put into. I mean, that’s kind of neat. Big surprise, the songs are forgettable and not well written. Actually, they’re just plain bad. Well, not all of them. The one Belle sings about stories isn’t actually all that bad. Hey, it’s got a nice chorus and Paige O’Hara’s got such a nice voice. I could listen to it all day. Aside from that one, the songs are either really sappy, really preachy, or just really generic. But by far, the worst one is without a doubt the villian song. It is hands down probably the worst villain sing I’ve ever heard, and one of the worst songs to come out of anything Disney related. God, is this even really a song? It sounds like he’s more saying the lyrics than singing them. Not just that. It sounds like he’s making the lyrics up as he goes along. This song needs to be heard to be believed. It is just awful from start to finish. Made even worse by the fact it’s Tim Curry. Tim Curry. There should be some enjoyment in this song from that fact alone. But no. This song is just horrendous. I actually wonder how Curry felt while…. singing this (can you call it singing)? The movies attempts at ‘humor’ don’t fare much better. The only laugh this got out of me was from how hard the movie was trying to tell jokes. In other words the jokes- not even, the attempts at telling jokes- were so bad they actually became entertaining. While that can put the audience in a good mood, if the only thing they’re laughing at is the poor attempt at humor rather than the humor itself, that’s generally not a good sign. People have joked about this plot boiling down to ‘Belle and the Beast defeat an evil gay organ voiced by Tim Curry’. And yeah. That’s exactly what the whole plot more or less is. The story is extremely simplified, the characters are shells of their former selves, the animation likewise is a huge downgrade, the relationship between Belle and Beast is poorly handled, and the songs are other really forgettable or pure garbage. With only one decent one. As you can probably tell, I didn’t like this movie very much. It’s not the worst of the bunch but it is a chore to sit through. Pretty lousy, and I would say especially if you’re a fan of the first one that this really isn’t worth your time. So far this is the closest I’ll come to actually ranting, but I’m sorry. After King of Thieves giving me something good, and me being a huge fan of the first Beauty and the Beast, watching this one left me really…um…. Let’s just say this movie left a sour taste in my mouth. Not entirely god awful (except for the Beast and Belle’s relationship and characterization. I think that’s my biggest problem with this movie), but nothing good either and nothing in the movie I can think of that makes it worth sitting down to watch either. But does this fare better than the other Beauty and the beast sequel? Well, we’ll find out tomorrow when I take a look at Belle’s Magical World. Oh, that’s gonna be fun.

#kat reviews

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nellie-elizabeth · 7 years

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Once Upon a Time: The Final Battle (6x21/22)

This is going to be one of those really long reviews where I have a lot of things in the "Cons" section, but I come out the other side thinking this episode was pretty much great. Let's start with a long list of complaints that I'll mostly sweep under the rug after ranting about them.

Cons:

So, as far as curses and plot consistency goes, this episode was a big ol' mess, where many of the characters' actions didn't mean squat. We have the bulk of our heroes swept off to the Enchanted Forest, where we learn that the Black Fairy's curse is tied to Emma's belief, and that once that belief is dead, all the story realms will disappear. Back in Storybrooke, Emma is convinced that her fairytale family are delusions, and Henry tries to convince her that everything is real, as he seems to be the only one to know what's going on.

Alright, great. So we see Hook and David make a daring trip to find a magic bean, we watch the Evil Queen make a noble sacrifice to try and help the heroes get back to Henry and Emma, and we watch Henry struggle to make his mother believe again. My problem? None of this matters in the least. All of the struggles we see to try and get back to Emma and make her believe again are not at all essential to the plot. In the end, Rumple just has to kill his mother. Once the Black Fairy is dead, Emma believes again, and the realms are restored, no problem. Gideon tries to kill Emma, as the Black Fairy still has his heart and had ordered him to, and Emma fights him for a while before letting herself be killed. Henry then wakes her with a True Love's Kiss to the forehead. My problem here is that everything came back around to the Gideon vs. Emma thing, with the first 75% of this episode having very little bearing on the actual events at the end.

That's a pretty big structural problem, but I can set it aside fairly easily as I did like so many of the details the episode offered. But by "so many," I definitely do not mean "all." Let's start with the worst thing in this episode:

Rumple and Belle get back together after one of the most lackluster redemption arcs ever. Rumple had been working with the Black Fairy on this curse, but in the curse, he's stuck without Belle, and so he's pissed off that his mother double-crossed him. Henry tries to get Rumple to help save Emma, but Rumple says no, all he cares about is Belle. And then his mother shows up, Rumple reveals that he's been "awake" this whole time, and Rumple kills the Black Fairy. He and Belle then go to find Gideon's heart to stop him from killing Emma, but they are too late and it doesn't work. Apparently Rumple "tried to do the right thing" by trying to save the world from Darkness, because if he had let Darkness win, a new realm of magical possibilities would have opened up. Bae could have been brought back from the dead, and Gideon and Belle could have been forced to love Rumple, Darkness and all. In resisting that, he earns his happy ending. Baby Gideon is returned to Belle and Rumple because of... reasons... and we see Belle and Rumple having their famous "Beauty and the Beast" dance, sharing a kiss, and joining our other heroes for a big dinner at Granny's, happy as can be.

Problems? Oh yeah, I've got problems. Doesn't anybody else notice that Rumple only did the "right thing" because his mother screwed him over in the curse? If he'd gotten what he wanted, a happy life with Belle and Gideon, do you really think he would have given a damn about Emma being defeated and Darkness consuming the land? Of course not. He's a selfish ass and he always has been. I'm willing to hand-wave away the silliness of Gideon returning to infant form, but I'm not willing to hand-wave away Rumple and Belle getting back together. She became a prize to be won at the end, and even after all the crap that Rumple had put her through, she suddenly forgives him and kisses him and UGH. I mean, we didn't even get a proper Emma/Hook kiss in this finale, but I have to watch sweet, brave, compassionate Belle fall back into the arms of a abusive monster? NO THANK YOU.

While I accept and even appreciate a certain level of hokey dialogue and cheesy moments on Once Upon a Time, Snow's speech at the end was a little over the top. She's talking about how it's not about happy endings, and it never has been, and how now they get to be happy because they're together, and on and on and on, and then we see all these slow-motion shots of the characters going about their lives. Snow is teaching at the school again, Regina is reinstated as mayor/queen, Hook becomes a deputy and works with Emma, Henry has his girlfriend... all of it is very tying-up-loose-ends, which I don't mind, but the way they did it was just too saccharine sweet. All the slow motion, every character giving a lingering look with love in their eyes, then a big dinner at Granny's where everybody sits along one side of the table for some reason so they look like they're in "The Last Supper." It was all very overwrought and could have been scaled back a bit.

Other tiny complaints before I talk about one more big thing: the CGI was terrible, but what else is new? The Evil Queen sacrificed her life to save everybody, but she gets brought back no problem, effectively erasing the impact of that moment. The Black Fairy's curse was too identical to Regina's original curse, down to the Black Fairy being Henry's mom. Why would she want to be Henry's mom? That's never explained properly. The runes that Henry wrote while in his creepy Author-mode were apparently the key to the final battle, which the Black Fairy easily decodes using a wand. She discovers that "darkness cannot snuff out the light" so only light can kill Emma. That's why she uses Gideon to strike the final blow. But what kind of crap is that? Darkness can't kill the light, so Emma has never been in any real danger from any villain on this show ever, is that what you're telling me? And that's a pretty easy loophole, isn't it? Just take somebody's heart and control them, and problem solved! Also, how did the Black Fairy still have Gideon's heart? Rumple's whole reason behind helping his mother was to get Gideon's heart back. In this episode she just says "despite what Rumple thinks, I still have your heart." Okay? Convenient? How did she pull that off? And I feel like I know a really easy way to solve that. What if the Black Fairy had promised to return Gideon's heart after the curse was enacted, and then had just gone back on her promise? Then I would get why she still had it!

This episode attempted to sum everything up by showing us flashes of the different realms so we could see that life continues as normal. But there were still several characters who never got their due. I'm pretty upset particularly not to know what happened to Mulan, but whatever. Maybe some of these side characters with unfinished stories can come back in for next season in some capacity?

Finally, before I turn to the many good things about this episode, let's talk about the jump-off stuff for Season Seven. We see a little girl with the Once Upon a Time book in the forbidden forest. Her father tells her to run and keep the book safe, while he faces off against some unseen evil. We later see the little girl lamenting her separation from her father, while Tiger Lily shows up and promises her that she will one day be reunited with him. As the episode ends, we flash forward to modern day Seattle, and see this little girl walking up to a door and knocking on it. Her father from earlier opens it, and it's revealed that this is an adult Henry Mills. The little girl introduces herself as Lucy, and says she's Henry's daughter. He doesn't seem to remember her at all. Cut to black.

I like this idea, with one caveat. If this is a literal retread, I'll be pissed. Henry doesn't remember he has a daughter? Fine. But if Henry spends an entire season not believing in fairytales, and then he suddenly remembers everything at the end, I'll be pretty annoyed. Henry has the heart of the truest believer. If he, as an adult, has no memory of Storybrooke and all the stuff that happened to him there, I will be upset. He was raised to adulthood by Emma, Regina, Hook, his grandparents... you can't tell me that he has no memory of all of that stuff. I guess what I'm saying is... tread lightly, Once Upon a Time. Tread very lightly.

Pros:

So. As I mentioned up top, I actually enjoyed watching this episode, despite the many, many flaws. Most of my love of this episode comes from the way that various character relationships were explored.

Emma and Henry - this is where it all began, and this is where it had to end. I love the fact that somehow the curse can't hold Henry, and he wakes up knowing exactly who he is and what's happened. This concept tied things up nicely to the start of the show. Henry helped Emma to believe in herself again, and just as Season One ended with Emma giving Henry a True Love's Kiss, this season ends with Henry waking Emma up with a TLK of his own. I missed seeing more of the love story between Hook and Emma in this one, but it should end with Emma and Henry. That's only proper.

Hook and David get to go on a little Captain Charming adventure to find a magic bean that can get everybody back to Emma. Hook gets a great speech about how he and Emma didn't have an epic love that was meant to be - they fought for their love and they won. David agrees to go with him on his quest, at one point calls him "son-in-law," and screams in anguish when Hook seemingly plummets to his death off of the magic beanstalk. Later, when Hook wakes up and realizes that David is missing, he freaks out in turn. Lots of great material here. I love how much David and Snow both accept Hook into Emma's life. So sweet.

David and Snow get to have a few last great moments as the epic love story that started this all. Snow wakes David after his fall with a TLK, and when everybody's back in Storybrooke, Gideon at one point holds a blade to Snow's throat, and David freaks out and rushes forward, his voice shaking with rage. All great stuff. I do love the fact that the montage at the end shows Snow leaving baby Neal with David while she goes off to work. David as a stay-at-home dad is exactly what I want.

Hook and Emma do get a really cute little reunion, and I love that once they're back in each other's arms, they spend the rest of the episode wrapped around each other. There's this understandable need to be touching one another, just to be sure. I love it. I loved Hook's dramatic speech about his love for Emma, and I love how he refers to her as "my wife" on more than one occasion.

Regina gives Emma the "you can do it" speech just before the final showdown between Emma and Gideon, and it's kind of delightful. She says that when Emma first came to Storybrooke, they fought over who Henry's mother was. And then Emma found a third way. They were both Henry's moms. She believes in Emma. She doesn't know how she'll solve this problem, but she believes in Emma's ability to find a new way. Those two have one of the coolest relationships on the whole show. I mean, talk about a journey!

Also, just... family feels. When Emma is brought back with Henry's kiss, she's pulled from the ground by Hook, and then we have Hook, Henry, Snow, Charming, Zelena, and Regina all bringing it in for a big hug. How stinkin' cute is that?

Like I said, I'm a little skeptical about the flash-forward thing for next season, because I don't want adult Henry's story to just recycle Emma's journey from Season One. But as long as they come up with something new and cool, I am so here for this. A little girl of color as our new wide-eyed innocent? An adult Henry as our protagonist? Damn. That could be super interesting. I'm curious to see how Hook, Rumple, and Regina will be woven in to the story, but I think there might be something good coming along. I'm definitely willing to give it a go.

And there you have it. This episode was structured like a series finale, because in many ways it is. Emma, Snow, David, and young Henry are all gone. Belle and Zelena are gone. This is not going to be the same show at all next season. But that doesn't mean that there might not be something great waiting for us!

8/10

#review #once upon a time #once upon a time review #ouat

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dragonslaved · 7 years

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Now that I’ve had some time to sit on it, I did watch the 2017 B/eaty and the B/east movie so you don’t have to

Let me start first by saying: 1. yes, I did grow up with the ‘91 animated film and Belle was my first non-barbie doll I had and I took her everywhere. 2. I went in with very very low expectations. I was quoted by my roommate as having no optimism for it and was unwilling to give it a chance to which I replied, “I’m optimistic of its chance for how bad it’ll be”. 3. I came out pleasantly surprised at how entertained I was for good or ill.

It does, as often as it can, follow the beats of the ‘91 feature. To the point it’s actually distracting. Instead of just sinking yourself into a movie, you’re mentally comparing it shot for shot to the animated feature (and in my case, considering how something else would have worked, or how it was pointless to try and recreate the imagery of “Be Our Guest” as a live action/CGI scene). Because of the editing, some sets had to be shrunken down and aren’t nearly as expansive as you’d think. The large village of people away from Belle and Maurice’s little farm cottage are now almost on top of each other, meaning she only has to walk about 3 minutes (or one song refrain) to get from one side to the other. The castle on the outside looks large, but we only see a few small rooms and again, it all feels conveniently Right There within a breath’s walking distance.

All of this unfortunately makes the big musical numbers feel lackluster and a bit cheap. It’s one thing for a stage play to make use of its space, but it’s another when it’s a multi-million dollar film where you could do so much but they did so little and spent most of their budget on what I assume are the actors/actresses and some CGI. And even then, that felt sparse. For as much of a big deal as seeing The Beast is, we never actually saw a full length shot of him until the ballroom dance (unless my eyes are tricking me and I missed one in an earlier scene). Some of the castle servants felt static (in both motion and personality) while others were dynamic - an example: ‘91 Lumiere and Cogsworth moved, jumped, did so much while still having weight in the animation, and had fairly well rounded personalities. Live action Lumiere retained a fair bit of that, albeit cut down a hair for time constraints I assume. Cogsworth got none of this, barely moving outside a couple of specific jokes and being 100% Nervous Background Character to supplement others’ jokes. Others had similar treatments.

The editing and pacing of the film are fast and not all that encouraging. The film felt like a series of quicknotes and checkboxes the writers had to go through to make sure it was the same story. The most we sat with a character and learned anything about them was a sort of tie between Belle and Gaston - both their scenes together and their scenes alone. Belle unfortunately didn’t have much personality; I don’t know who this Belle was. Gaston we had some notion of where he came from (a war hero) and where he was going (to try and marry Belle because she was “hard to get”, another challenge). I did appreciate her very stern and blatant decline of his proposal. The film makes no debate or argument had of Nice Guys who are heroes and well loved getting what they think they should have; it’s shown as selfish and villainous with no wiggle room.

We were expected to care a lot about characters we barely got to know, and the ones we did had no clear character direction aside from Gaston. The Beast was pompous and mansplaining but also kind and caring but also a poor woobie boy but also awkward and unsure? While it’s not impossible for someone to be all those things, we were expected to believe it with no show, only all tell. LeFou, despite all my initial anxiety and nervousness about what would be done, is what pleasantly surprised me the most but we still don’t really know what direction he was given; a long time best friend of Gaston who follows his every move until he starts really seeing how dark Gaston can get and then starts changing his mind - we see hints of it here and there, most notably in the scene before they imprison Maurice, but there just isn’t enough there. His heel face turn at the end is legitimately a black/white change and he has to say outright he’s not “on Gaston’s side” and if that’s something you have to verbalize instead of showing, then perhaps it wasn’t written as well as you thought. There is a subplot for Mrs. Potts about her long lost husband that is resolved in the epilogue, but the thing is: nowhere in the film prior to the big battle scene were we given any indication this subplot existed. It, quite literally, sprang up from nowhere.

Something I’m still very confused about is how they took the time and the effort to tell us this movie is in France. Here are period French clothing pieces, period French worries (the plague), period French village mindset. But hired almost an entire cast of British folks.

Some things the film does do is clear up some plot holes fans had discussed and picked apart at length since ‘91. In the prologue, they carefully took care of the Beast’s age by simply omitting the line, “by his twenty-first birthday” when discussing his curse, thereby leaving his age and the time passed ambiguous. The script also details that the Enchantress hid the castle away and removed all memory of it from the local townspeople - so no more wondering “uh if he’s the prince of this area why didn’t anyone know about it”. I actually appreciated those touches. We did get some backstory to Belle’s mother, which I felt a bit unnecessary and time consuming, time they could have spent on characters we are living with now. There is also what I assume was meant to be a joke, but I didn’t take as one: a scene later of three village men getting surprise-dressed in full women’s clothing. Two run off, but the third looks down, then back up at the wardrobe and smiles very proudly and walks calmly away. I, personally, appreciate that though I’m sure others less aware probably laughed.

Ultimately, I did like Gaston the most in this feature. Which is a shame considering he still wasn’t that great in this. The only thing I’m genuinely, truly disappointed by is the removal of my favorite line towards the end in the big climax, Gaston in the ‘91 feature mocking the Beast, asking if he’s “too kind and gentle to fight back”. Which really made the moment the Beast grabbed the bludgeon and stand up even more intimidating. Which sadly was not in this film. But I enjoyed this Gaston’s scenes more than any other in the entire movie.

It’s not the worst movie ever made, and I still find it leagues better than some of Disney’s other recent re-imaginings of their animated classics, but. Overall, a massive “eh”.

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vanity-neverdies · 7 years

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Tale as old as time

So the other day I went on somewhat of a twitter rant regarding the remake of Beauty and The Beast and Disney’s choice to incorporate a gay character into the movie. I was surprised at how many responses (particularly DM’s) I got regarding my post(s) and so I’ve decided to write a tad more about it on a platform that gave me more than 140 characters. It’s Friday night, I’m drinking tequila in pajamas and writing about a Disney movie. Living the dream, am I right? So, to help put into context where I was coming from when I wrote my tweets:

The original story of Beauty and The Beast came out in 1701 (HOLY CRAP, RIGHT?) and Disney turned that story into an original film in 1991. I was born in 1993, so as a child I grew up watching the “OG” Disney princess movies. B&TB, The Little mermaid, Snow White, Pocahontas, etc. etc. That being said, even as A young child, I was never obsessed with the Disney princesses or their stories. They were all well and good but I didn’t LOVE the music or the stories, so usually seeing them once was enough for me.

Except for B&TB. Beauty and The Beast was TOTALLY different for me. I remember being 6 or 7 and having a babysitter come over to watch my twin brother and I, and she brought B&TB for us to watch. We made popcorn and turned off the lights and popped in the VHS (lol) and immediately I was hooked. The opening scene, which plays out like it’s being read from a story book, stayed with me well into adulthood.

“Who could ever love a beast?”

The opening monologue sets up The Beast’s storyline. The Beast is a handsome, wealthy prince who, in his selfishness and narcissism, refuses to help a homeless woman seeking shelter from a storm. Unfortunately for the handsome young prince, the homeless woman ends up being a witch (like, go figure, right?), who curses the beast with ugliness. Until the Beast can learn kindness and let love into his heart, he’ll remain a physical representation of the monster he is. AKA, The Beast.

I remember sitting down on the couch next to my (straight) twin brother, whose initial thoughts on the beast were:

1) OMG HE’S SO SCARY

and

2) What a jerk!

After the opening monologue, six year old me thought the exact same thing. As the movie progresses we meet Belle, A smart, assertive, beautiful young woman in a small french town who loves her dad, reading, and creating inventions. Belle is great, I love Belle. She wasn’t selfish like Arial and she wasn’t willing to risk the lives of her family and friends for love like Pocahontas. Belle had a love for books, which, even that young, I identified with. I love reading to this day, and I can trace that love back to Belle.

But this post, as well as my post earlier this week on twitter, is not about Belle.

This post is about The Beast and Gaston. Six year old me was introduced to Gaston, the handsome, masculine, arrogant suitor whose story is entirely centered around his pursuit of Belle. Six year old me watched B&TB and could NOT understand what Belle DIDN’T like about him. He was so handsome and charming and willing to do just about ANYTHING to impress Belle. Why didn’t she like him? I liked him. I liked him A LOT.

I remember innocently thinking these things to myself, and then hearing my twin brother say stuff about Gaston which was NOTHING like what I was thinking.

“He’s evil!”

“He doesn’t love her!”

“What a jerk!”

Six year old me at the time didn’t realize that I was having my first gay crush. As I grew up, I’d feel the same thing for a myriad of fictional characters. Literally all the male Power Rangers, Batman AND Robin, Ice Man...the list goes on and on. But thats one of the first times I really remember having a “gay” thought. I thought Gaston was handsome.

Belle’s dad eventually gets captured by the enigmatic and terrifying Beast.

As the story continues, Belle ends up sacrificing her freedom in exchange for her father’s (WHAT A BRAVE BITCH THOUGH, FOR REAL), who in turn rushes back to town to try and convince people to go and save Belle. While this is happening, Belle is held as prisoner by The Beast, who, as my brother put at the time was “really scary.” The Beast is a total dick. He demands Belle only venture to certain parts of the castle, is constantly storming around and shouting at Belle and the enchanted pieces of anthropomorphic furniture that inhabit the castle, and is honestly more dramatic than a Real House Wife. However, as time progresses, the Beast and Belle begin to form a relationship. That catalyst to this relationship being when The Beast saves Belle from a pack of wolves who were DEF going to eat her and her horse. It’s the first time we see that The Beast is NOT as harsh as his exterior may insinuate, and it’s the first real moment where Belle sees The Beast as more than just a monster. The rest of the story I know most of you are familiar with, so I won’t spend the rest of this post giving a synopsis. At the end of the movie, The Beast realizes his love for Belle, who has spent majority of the movie showing The Beast that he’s capable of loving someone other than himself. They finally kiss, and The Beast transforms back into his human form, and they all live happily ever after.

Six year old me was shook.

I remember asking our babysitter if I could borrow the movie, and after she had left and everyone in our house had gone to bed, watching it again. It was so epic, the whole thing. Gaston getting a WHOLE town to venture into the woods to kill a monster so he could marry Belle. The Beast fighting Gaston on a rooftop in the middle of fucking rainstorm so HE could be with Belle. I remember thinking how jealous of Belle I was. TWO GUYS fighting over her, hello?

But in all seriousness, six year old me liked the movie a lot. It stuck with me.

So when 12 year old me rewatched the movie in the middle of a ton of puberty, suddenly the movie was A LOT more important. Six years later and I felt like The Beast. At this point I knew I was gay. I knew what gay was, and I knew that was what I was. Like so many guys in the closet, I hid it to the best of my ability, and my best act was by being a fucking jerk. I was nasty to my brother, my friends, parents, girls, guys, dogs, bugs, whatever. If it had a pulse, I had to put up some level of crassness because that would divert form the fact that I really wanted a boyfriend.

Suddenly, The Beast was not so scary.

“...Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind...”

“WHO COULD EVER LOVE A BEAST?”

There was Gaston again, his bulging muscles, his slicked back hair. “God,” I remember muttering to myself, “what is wrong with me?”

At this point, I knew Gaston was a piece of shit...But he was still hot.

As a teenager I remember watching the movie alone and really relating to The Beast. His castle, all by himself...cold, angry, upset. The Beast tears mirrors in his house down because he can hardly stand the sight of himself. The Beast does everything but injure the other inhabitants of the castle, who live not only in fear of him, but in confusion as to why he is the way he is. I can only imagine my family and friends thought similar things about me. Then Belle comes in, and she’s brave, and she’s kind, and she’s patient.

They slowly learn about each other, they bond over books and animals.

16 and 17 year old me wished desperately for a boy like Belle. Someone who was going to look past my harsh exterior, past the parts of myself I could hardly stand to look at. Belle shows The Beast that we all have parts of ourselves that we don’t like. Belle shows The Beast that we deserve love not in despite of our beasts, but because of them. Our “beasts” are just a part of us, not who we are as a whole.

Beauty and The Beast taught me from a very young age that we all deserved love, that monsters live inside of all of us--and that love sees through them. Beauty and the Beast helped show me my gayness, and time and time again showed me that even though I didn’t like who I was, someone would love me for it.

SO when Disney announced earlier this week that they were writing in a gay character into the live action remake of B&TB, it struck a real nerve. When I found out that Lefou, Gaston’s sidekick, would have a “gay moment” directed at Gaston, I had mixed emotions. The six year old me totally would have understood Lefou’s infatuation with Gaston. Even 23 year old me gets it. However, what bothered me was the obvious stereotypical storyline of the gay man falling in love with a straight guy.

I’m thrilled Disney is trying to incorporate queerness into its content. I want to make that clear. I think the more LGBTQ characters we can incorporate into mainstream media, the better. That was NOT what I was getting at in my tweets the other day. Really I was expressing my frustration for how Disney had decided to incorporate gayness into Beauty and the Beast, a story that had helped me understand and realize my own sexuality. I’m frustrated because I KNOW countless young boys (some of whom ARE gay) are going to end up seeing this movie, and rather than see a gay character who recognizes his love and infatuation as something good and worthy and something not to be ashamed of...Is going to see it in a way I remember feeling it SO many times while watching the original Beauty and The Beast. Disney has a real opportunity to show that gay love is something just as true and good as the love between Belle and the prince, love that deserves a happy ending. MY HOPE is that they take that opportunity with Lefou and make it something that helps little kids the way I NEEDED it when I was young.

Gay love is real love, gay love is pure love, and gay love is powerful. It is JUST as scary and unexpected and magical as love between a man and a woman. Beauty and The Beast helped me realize that, and I hope that the remake can help evoke those same emotions for a generation of gay youth that are going to see it.

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Alone in the Dark

Most videogame stories are power fantasies. You spend your time getting ever stronger, ever tougher, ever more formidable as you accumulate experience points, gold, and equipment. Obstacles aren’t things to go around; they’re things you go through. If you can’t get past any given monster, the solution is to go kill some other monsters, then come back when you’re yet more powerful and slay the big beast at last. Life, these games tell us, is or ought to be one unadulterated ride up the escalator of success; a setback just means you haven’t yet risen high enough.

That dynamic held true in 1992 just as much as it usually does today. But during that year there came a well-nigh revolutionary game out of France that upended all of these traditional notions about what the medium of videogames can do and be. It cast you as a painfully ordinary, near-powerless individual adrift in a scary world, with no surefire panaceas in the form of experience points, gold, or portable rocket launchers to look forward to. It was just you and your wits, trapped in a haunted house full of creatures that were stronger than you and badly wanted to kill you. Despite its supernatural elements, this game’s scenario felt more disconcertingly close to real life than that of any of those other games. Here, you truly were alone in the dark. Aren’t we all from time to time?

Any story of how this shockingly innovative game came to be must begin with that of Frédérick Raynal, its mastermind. Born in the south-central French town of Brive-la-Gaillarde in 1966, Raynal was part of the first generation of European youths to have access to personal computers. In fact, right from the time his father first came home with a Sinclair ZX81, he was obsessed with them. He was also lucky: in a dream scenario for any budding hacker, his almost equally obsessed father soon added computers to the product line of the little videocassette-rental shop he owned, thus giving his son access to a wide variety of hardware. Raynal worked at the store during the day, renting out movies and watching them to kill the time — he was a particular fan of horror movies, a fact which would soon have a direct impact on his career — and helping customers with their computer problems. Then, with a nerdy young man’s total obliviousness to proportion, he hacked away most of the night on one or another of the machines he brought home with him. He programmed his very first released game, a platformer called Robix, in 1986 on an obscure home-grown French computer called the Exelvision which his father sold at the store. His father agreed to sell his son’s Exelvision game there as well, managing to shift about 80 units to customers desperate for software for the short-lived machine.

Raynal’s lifestyle was becoming so unbalanced that his family was beginning to worry about him. One day, he ran out of his room in a panic, telling them that all of the color had bled out of his vision. His mother bustled him off to an ophthalmologist, who told him he appeared to have disrupted the photoreceptors in his eyes by staring so long at a monitor screen. Thankfully, the condition persisted only a few hours. But then there came a day when he suddenly couldn’t understand anything that was said to him; he had apparently become so attuned to the language of computer code that he could no longer communicate with humans. That worrisome condition lasted several weeks.

Thus just about everyone around him took it as a good thing on the whole when he was called up for military service in 1988. Just before leaving, Raynal released his second game, this time for MS-DOS machines. Not knowing what else to do with it, he simply posted it online for free. Popcorn was a Breakout clone with many added bells and whistles, the latest entry in a sub-genre which was enjoying new popularity following the recent success of the Taito arcade game Arkanoid and its many ports to home computers and consoles. Raynal’s game could hold its head high in a crowded field, especially given its non-existent price tag. One magazine pronounced it one of the five best arcade games available for MS-DOS, whether commercial or free, and awarded it 21 points on a scale of 20.

Raynal was soon receiving letters at his military posting from all over the world. “Popcorn has made my life hell!” complained one player good-naturedly. Another wrote that “I caught acute Popcornitus. And, it being contagious, now my wife has it as well.” When Raynal completed his service in the summer of 1989, his reputation as the creator of Popcorn preceded him. Most of the companies in the French games industry were eager to offer him a job. His days working at his father’s computer store, it seemed, were behind him. The Lyon-based Infogrames, the most prominent French publisher of all, won the Raynal sweepstakes largely by virtue of its proximity to his hometown.

Yet Raynal quickly realized that the company he had elected to join was in a rather perilous state. An ambitious expansion into many European markets hadn’t paid off; in fact, it had very nearly bankrupted them. Bruno Bonnell, Infogrames’s co-founder and current chief executive, had almost sold the company to the American publisher Epyx, but that deal had fallen through as soon as the latter had gotten their first good look at the state of his books. It seemed that Infogrames would have to dig themselves out of the hole they’d made. Thus Bonnell had slashed costs and shed subsidiaries ruthlessly just to stay alive. Now, having staunched the worst of the bleeding, he knew that he needed as many talented programmers as he could get in order to rebuild his company — especially programmers like Raynal, who weren’t terribly assertive and were naive enough to work cheap. So, Raynal was hired as a programmer of ports, an unglamorous job but an absolutely essential one in a European market that had not yet consolidated around a single computer platform.

Bonnel, for his part, was the polar opposite of the shy computer obsessive he had just hired; he had a huge personality which put its stamp on every aspect of life at Infogrames. He believed his creativity to be the equal of anyone who worked for him, and wasn’t shy about tossing his staff ideas for games. He called one of them, which he first proposed when Raynal had been on the job for about a year, In the Dark. A typically high-concept French idea, its title was meant to be taken literally. The player would wander through a pitch-dark environment, striking the occasional match from her limited supply, but otherwise relying entirely on sound cues for navigation. Bonnell and Raynal were far from bosom buddies, then or ever, but this idea struck a chord with the young programmer.

As Raynal saw it, the question that would make or break the idea was that of how to represent a contiguous environment with enough verisimilitude to give the player an embodied sense of really being there in the dark. Clearly, a conventional adventure-game presentation, with its pixel graphics and static views, wouldn’t do. Only one approach could get the job done: 3D polygonal graphics. Not coincidentally, 3D was much on Raynal’s mind when he took up Bonnell’s idea; he’d been spending his days of late porting an abstract 3D puzzle game known as Continuum from the Atari ST to MS-DOS.

I’ve had occasion to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this burgeoning new approach to game-making in previous articles, so I won’t rehash that material here. Suffice to say that the interest so many European programmers had in 3D reflected not least a disparity in the computing resources available to them in comparison to their American counterparts. American companies in this period were employing larger and larger teams, who were filling handfuls of floppy disks — and soon CD-ROMs — with beautiful hand-drawn art and even digitized snippets of real-world video. European companies had nothing like the resources to compete with the Americans on those terms. But procedurally-generated 3D graphics offered a viable alternative. At this stage in the evolution of computer technology, they couldn’t possibly be as impressively photorealistic as hand-drawn pixel art or full-motion video, but they could offer far more flexible, interactive, immersive environments, with — especially when paired with a French eye for aesthetics — a certain more abstracted allure of their own.

This, then, was the road Raynal now started down. It was a tall order for a single programmer. Not only was he trying to create a functional 3D engine from scratch, but the realities of the European market demanded that he make it run on an 80286-class machine, hardware the Americans by now saw as outdated. Even Bonnell seemed to have no confidence in Raynal’s ability to bring his brainstorm to fruition. He allowed Raynal to work on it only on nights and weekends, demanding that he spend his days porting SimCity to the Commodore CDTV.

An artist named Didier Chanfray was the closest thing to a partner and confidante which Raynal had at Infogrames during his first year of working on the engine. It was Chanfray who provided the rudimentary graphics used to test it. And it was also Chanfray who, in September of 1991, saw the full engine in action for the first time. A character roamed freely around a room under the control of Raynal, able to turn about and bend his body and limbs at least semi-realistically. The scene could be viewed from several angles, and it could be lit — or not — by whatever light sources Raynal elected to place in the room. Even shadows appeared; that of the character rippled eerily over the furniture in the room as he moved from place to place. Chanfray had never seen anything like it. He fairly danced around Raynal’s desk, pronouncing it a miracle, magic, alchemy.

In the meantime, Bruno Bonnell had negotiated and signed a new licensing deal — not exactly a blockbuster, but something commiserate with a rebuilding Infogrames’s circumstances.

Something tentacled and other-worldly, it seems, got into the water at Infogrames from the start: Didier Chanfray provided this very Lovecraftian concept drawing for Raynal’s game long before the conscious decision was made to turn it a Lovecraft pastiche. Raynal kept the sketch tacked on the wall beside his desk throughout the project as a reminder of the atmosphere he was going for.

The American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, who died well before the advent of the computer age in 1937, was nowhere near as well-known in 1991 as he is today, but his so-called “Cthulhu Mythos” of extra-dimensional alien beings, terrifying by virtue of their sheer indifference to humanity and its petty morality, had already made appearances in games. The very first work of ludic Lovecraftia would appear to be the 1979 computer game Kadath, an odd sort of parser-less text adventure. Two years later, at the height of the American tabletop-RPG craze, a small company called Chaosium published Call of Cthulhu, a game which subverted the power fantasy of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons in much the same way that Raynal’s project would soon be subverting that of so many computer games. Still, although Call of Cthulhu was well-supported by Chaosium and remained reasonably popular by the standards of its niche industry throughout the 1980s and beyond, its success didn’t lead to any Lovecraftian onslaught in the realm of digital games. The most notable early example of the breed is Infocom’s very effective 1987 interactive fiction The Lurking Horror. But, being all text at a time when text adventures were becoming hard sells, it didn’t make much commercial impact.

Now, though, Bonnell believed the time had come for a more up-to-date Lovecraftian computer game; he believed such a thing could do well, both in France and elsewhere.

Lovecraft had long had a strong following in France. From the moment his books were first translated into the language in 1954, they had sold in considerable numbers. Indeed, in 1991 H.P. Lovecraft was about as popular in France as he was anywhere — arguably more popular on a per-capita basis than in his native land. The game of Call of Cthulhu too had long since been translated into French, giving a potential digital implementation of it as much natural appeal there as in its homeland. So, Bonnell approached Chaosium about licensing their Call of Cthulhu rules for computers, and the American company agreed.

When viewed retrospectively, it seems a confusing deal to have made, one that really wasn’t necessary for what Infogrames would ultimately choose to do with Lovecraft. When Lovecraft died in obscurity and poverty, he left his literary estate in such a shambles that no one has ever definitively sorted out its confusing tangle of copyright claimants; his writing has been for all intents and purposes in the public domain ever since his death, despite numerous parties making claims to the contrary. Prior to publishing their Lovecraft tabletop RPG, Chaosium had nevertheless negotiated a deal with Arkham House, the publisher that has long been the most strident of Lovecraft’s copyright claimants. With that deal secured, Chaosium had promptly trademarked certain catchphrases, including “Call of Cthulhu” itself, in the context of games. Yet as it turned out Infogrames would use none of them; nor would they draw any plots directly from any of Lovecraft’s published stories. Like the countless makers of Lovecraftian games and stories that would follow them, they would instead draw from the author’s spirit and style of horror, whilst including just a few of his more indelible props, such as the forbidden book of occult lore known as the Necronomicon.

The first Lovecraftian game Infogrames would make would, of course, be the very game that Frédérick Raynal had now spent the last year or so prototyping during his free time. By the time news of his work reached Bonnell, most of Infogrames’s staff were already talking about it like the second coming. While the idea that had inspired it had been wonderfully innovative, it seemed absurd even to the original source of said idea to devote the best 3D engine anyone had ever seen to a game that literally wouldn’t let you see what it could do most of the time. It made perfect sense, on the other hand, to apply its creepy visual aesthetic to the Lovecraft license. The sense of dread and near-powerlessness that was so consciously designed into the tabletop RPG seemed a natural space for the computer game as well to occupy. It was true that it would have to be Call of Cthulhu in concept only: the kinetic, embodied, real-time engine Raynal had created wasn’t suitable for the turn-based rules of the tabletop RPG. For that matter, Raynal didn’t even like the Chaosium game all that much; he considered it too complicated to be fun.

Still, Bonnell, who couldn’t fail to recognize the potential of Raynal’s project, put whatever resources he could spare from his still-rebuilding company at the mild-mannered programmer’s disposal: four more artists to join Chanfray, a sound designer, a second programmer and project manager. When the team’s first attempts at writing an authentic-feeling Lovecraftian scenario proved hopelessly inadequate, Bonnell hired for the task Hubert Chardot, a screenwriter from 20th Century Fox’s French division, a fellow who loved Lovecraft so much that he had turned his first trip to the United States into a tour of his dead hero’s New England haunts. One of Chardot’s first suggestions was to add the word “alone” to the title of the game. He pointed out, correctly, that it would convey the sense of existential loneliness that was such an integral part of Lovecraftian horror — even, one might say, the very thing that sets it apart from more conventional takes on horror.

You can choose to enter the mansion as either of two characters.

The game takes place in the 1920s, the era of Lovecraft himself and of most of his stories (and thus the default era as well for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu game). It begins as you arrive in the deserted Louisiana mansion known as Derceto, whose owner Jeremy Hartwood has recently hanged himself. You play either as Edward Carnby, a relic hunter on the trail of a valuable piano owned by the deceased, or as Emily Hartwood, the deceased’s niece, eager to clear up the strange rumors that have dogged her uncle’s reputation and to figure out what really went down on his final night of life. The direction in which the investigation leads you will surprise no one familiar with Lovecraft’s oeuvre or Chaosium’s RPG: occult practices, forbidden books, “things man was never meant to know,” etc. But, even as Chardot’s script treads over this ground that was well-worn already in the early 1990s, it does so with considerable flair, slowly revealing its horrifying backstory via the books and journals you find hidden about the mansion as you explore. (There is no in-game dialog and no real foreground story whatsoever, only monsters and traps to defeat or avoid.) Like most ludic adaptations of Lovecraft, the game differs markedly from its source material only in that there is a victory state; the protagonist isn’t absolutely guaranteed to die or become a gibbering lunatic at the end.

One of the in-game journals, which nails the spirit and style of Lovecraft perfectly. As I noted in an earlier article about the writer, the emotion he does better than any other is disgust.

Yet Chaosium wasn’t at all pleased when Infogrames sent them an early build of the game for their stamp of approval. It seems that the American company had believed they were licensing not just their trademarks to their French colleagues, nor even the idea of a Lovecraft game in the abstract, but rather the actual Call of Cthulhu rules, which they had expected to see faithfully implemented. And, indeed, this may have been Bonnell’s intention when he was making the deal — until Raynal’s 3D engine had changed everything. Chaosium, who had evidently been looking forward to an equivalent of sorts to the Gold Box line of licensed Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs, felt betrayed. After some tense negotiation, they agreed to let Alone in the Dark continue without the Call of Cthulhu name on the box; some editions would include a note saying the game had been “inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft,” while others wouldn’t even go that far. In return for Chaosium’s largess on this front, Infogrames agreed to make a more conventional adventure game that would make explicit use of the Call of Cthulhu trademarks.

Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet, the fruit of that negotiation, would prove a serviceable game, albeit one that still didn’t make much direct use of the tabletop rules. But, whatever its merits, it would come and go without leaving much of a mark on an industry filled to bursting with graphical adventures much like it in terms of implementation. Alone in the Dark, on the other hand, would soon be taking the world by storm — and Chaosium could have had their name on it, a form of advertisement which could hardly have failed to increase their commercial profile dramatically. Chalk it up as just one more poor decision in the life of a company that had a strange talent for surviving — Chaosium is still around to this day — without ever quite managing to become really successful.

Infogrames got their first preview of just what an impact Alone in the Dark was poised to make in the spring of 1992, when Dany Boolauk, a journalist from the French videogame magazine Tilt, arrived to write a rather typical industry puff piece, a set of capsule previews of some of the company’s current works-in-progress. He never got any further than Alone in the Dark. After just a few minutes with it, he declared it “the best game of the last five years!” and asked for permission to turn the capsule blurb about it into a feature-length article, complete with a fawning interview with Raynal. (He described him in thoroughly overwrought terms: as a reincarnation of The Little Prince from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s beloved novella of the same name.) In a “review” published in the summer of 1992, still a couple of months before Infogrames anticipated releasing the game, he gave it 19 of 20 stars, gushing over its “exceptional staging” and “almost perfect character movement,” calling it “a revolution in the field of play” that “people must buy!”

Bruno Bonnell was pleased with the positive press coverage, but less thrilled by Boolauk’s portrayal of Raynal as the game’s genius auteur. He called in his introverted young programmer, who seemed a bit befuddled by all the attention, and told him to scrub the words “a Frédérick Raynal creation” from the end credits. Alone in the Dark, he said, was an Infogrames creation, full stop. Raynal agreed, but a grievance began to fester in his heart.

Thanks to Bonnell’s policy of not advertising the individuals behind Infogrames’s games, Raynal’s name didn’t spread quite so far and wide as that of such other celebrated gaming auteurs as Éric Chahi, the mastermind of Another World, France’s standout game from the previous year. Nevertheless, upon its European release in September of 1992, Raynal’s game stood out on its own terms as something special — as an artistic creation that was not just fun or scary but important to its medium. As one would expect, the buzz started in France. “We review many games,” wrote one magazine there. “Some are terrible, some mediocre, some excellent. And occasionally there comes along the game that will revolutionize the world of microcomputers, one that causes sleepless nights, one that you cannot tear yourself away from, can only marvel at. We bid welcome now to the latest member of this exclusive club: Alone in the Dark.” By the end of 1992, the game was a hit not only in France but across most of Europe. Now for America.

Bonnell closed a deal with the American publisher Interplay for distribution of the game there. Interplay had also published Another World, which had turned into a big success Stadeside, and the company’s head Brian Fargo was sure he saw similar potential in Alone in the Dark. He thus put the game through his company’s internal testing wringer, just as he had Another World; the French studios had their strengths, but such detail work didn’t tend to be among them. Raynal’s game became a much cleaner, much more polished experience thanks to Interplay’s QA team. Yet Bonnell still had big international ambitions for Infogrames, and he wasn’t willing to let such a remarkable game as this one share with Another World the fate of becoming known to American players simply as an Interplay title. Instead he convinced Fargo to accept a unique arrangement. Interplay and Infogrames each took a stake in a new shared American subsidiary known as I-Magic, under which imprint they published Alone in the Dark.

The game took North America by storm in early 1993, just as it had Europe a few months earlier. It was that rarest of things in games, a genuine paradigm shift; no one had ever seen one that played quite like this. Worldwide, it sold at least 400,000 copies, putting Infogrames on the map in the United States and other non-European countries in the process. Indeed, amidst the international avalanche of praise and punditry, perhaps the most gratifying press notice of all reached Frédérick Raynal’s ears from all the way off in Japan. Shigeru Miyamoto, the designer of Super Mario Bros. and many other iconic Nintendo classics, proclaimed Alone in the Dark to be, more so than any other game, the one he wished he could have come up with.

Arguably the creepiest visual in the game is the weird mannequin’s head of your own character. Its crudely painted expression rather smacks of Chucky the doll from the Child’s Play horror films.

Seen from the perspective of a modern player, however, the verdict on Alone in the Dark must be more mixed. Some historically important games transcend that status to remain vital experiences even today, still every bit as fun and playable as the day they were made. But others — and please forgive me the hoary old reviewer’s cliché! — haven’t aged as well. This game, alas, belongs to the latter category.

Today, in an era when 3D graphics have long since ceased to impress us simply for existing at all, those of Alone in the Dark are pretty painful to look at, all jagged pixels sticking out everywhere from grotesquely octagonal creatures. Textures simply don’t exist, leaving everything to be rendered out of broad swatches of single colors. And the engine isn’t even holistically 3D: the 3D characters move across pasted-on pre-rendered backgrounds, which looks decidedly awkward in many situations. (On the other hand, it could have been worse: Raynal first tried to build the backgrounds out of digitized photographs of a real spooky mansion, a truly unholy union that he finally had to give up on.) Needless to say, a comparison with the lovingly hand-drawn pixel art in the adventure games being put out by companies like LucasArts and Sierra during this period does the crude graphics found here no favors whatsoever. Some of the visuals verge on the unintentionally comical; one of the first monsters you meet was evidently meant to be a fierce dragon-like creature, but actually looks more like a sort of carnivorous chicken. (Shades of the dragon ducks from the original Atari Adventure…)

Dead again! Killed by… Prince during his Purple Rain period?

Then, too, the keyboard-only controls are clunky and unintuitive, and they aren’t made any less awkward by a fixed camera that’s constantly shifting about to new arbitrary locations as you move through the environment; some individual rooms have as many as nine separate camera angles. This is confusing as all get-out when you’re just trying to get a sense of the space, and quickly becomes infuriating when you’re being chased by a monster and really, really don’t have time to stop and adjust your thinking to a new perspective.

The more abstract design choices also leave something to be desired. Sudden deaths abound. The very first room of the game kills you when you step on a certain floorboard, and every book is either a source of backstory and clues or an instant game-ender; the only way to know which it is is to save your game and open it. Some of the puzzles are clever, some less so, but even those that are otherwise worthy too often depend on you standing in just the right position; if you aren’t, you get no feedback whatsoever on what you’re doing wrong, and are thus likely to go off on some other track entirely, never realizing how close you were to the solution. This fiddliness and lack of attention to the else in the “if, then, else” dynamic of puzzle design is a clear sign of a game that never got sufficiently tested for playability and solubility. At times, the game’s uncommunicativeness verges on the passive-aggressive. You’ll quickly grow to loathe the weirdly stilted message, “There is a mechanism which can be triggered here,” which the game is constantly spitting out at you as you gaze upon the latest pixelated whatsit. Is it a button? A knob? A keyhole? Who knows… in the end, the only viable course of action is to try every object in your inventory on it, then go back and start trying all the other objects you had to leave lying around the house thanks to your character’s rather brutal inventory limit.

Fighting is a strange, bloodless pantomime.

Yes, one might be able to write some of the game’s issues off as an aesthetic choice — as merely more ways to make the environment feel unsettling. Franck de Girolami, the second programmer on the development team as well as its project leader, has acknowledged using the disorienting camera consciously for just that purpose: “We realized that the camera angles in which the player was the most helpless were the best to bring in a monster. Players would instantly run for a view in which they felt comfortable.” While one does have to admire the team’s absolute commitment to the core concept of the game, the line between aesthetic choice and poor implementation is, at best, blurred in cases like this one.

And yet the fact remains that it was almost entirely thanks to that same commitment to its core concept that Alone in the Dark became one of the most important games of its era. Not a patch on a contemporary like Ultima Underworld as a demonstration of the full power and flexibility of 3D graphics — to be fair, it ran on an 80286 processor with just 640 K of memory while its texture-mapped, fully 3D rival demanded at least an 80386 with 2 MB — it remained conceptually unlike anything that had come before in daring to cast you as an ordinary mortal, weak and scared and alone, for whom any aspirations toward glory quickly turn into nothing more than a desperate desire to just escape the mansion. For all that it threw the Call of Cthulhu rules completely overboard, it retained this most fundamental aspect of its inspiration, bringing Chaosium’s greatest innovation to a digital medium for the first time. It’s not always impossible to kill the monsters in Alone in the Dark — often it’s even necessary to do so — but, with weapons and ammunition scarce and your health bar all too short, doing so never fails to feel like the literal death struggle it ought to. When you do win a fight, you feel more relieved than triumphant. And you’re always left with that nagging doubt in the back of the mind as you count your depleted ammo and drag your battered self toward the next room: was it worth it?

The legacy of this brave and important game is as rich as that of any that was released in its year, running along at least three separate tracks. We’ll begin with the subsequent career of Frédérick Raynal, its original mastermind.

The seeds of that career were actually planted a couple of weeks before the release of Alone in the Dark, when Raynal and others from Infogrames brought a late build of it to the European Computer Trade Show in London. There he met the journalist Dany Boolauk once again, learning in the process that Boolauk had switched gigs: he had left his magazine and now worked for Delphine Software, one of Infogrames’s French competitors. Delphine had recently lost the services of their biggest star: Éric Chahi, the auteur behind the international hit Another World. As his first assignment in his own new job, Boolauk had been given the task of replacing Chahi with a similarly towering talent. Raynal struck him as the perfect choice; he rather resembled Chahi in many respects, what with his very French aesthetic sensibility, his undeniable technical gifts, and his obsessive commitment to his work. Boolauk called in Paul de Senneville, the well-known composer who had launched Delphine Software as a spinoff from his record label of the same name, to add his dulcet voice to the mix. “We wish to place you in a setting where you will be able to create, where you will not be bullied, where we can make you a star,” said the distinguished older gentleman. “We want to give free rein to the fabulous talent you showed in Alone in the Dark.” When Raynal returned to Lyon to a reprimand from Bruno Bonnell for letting his game’s planned release date slip by a week, the contrast between his old boss and the possible new one who was courting him was painted all too clearly.

Much to Raynal’s dismay, Bonnell was already pushing him and the rest of the team that had made the first Alone in the Dark to make a sequel as quickly as possible using the exact same engine. One Friday just before the new year, Bonnell threw his charges a party to celebrate what he now believed would go down in history as the year when his struggling company turned the corner, thanks not least to Raynal’s game. On the following Monday morning, Raynal knocked on Bonnell’s office door along with three other members of the newly christened Alone in the Dark 2 team, including his most longstanding partner Didier Chanfray. They were all quitting, going to work for Delphine, Raynal said quietly. Much to their surprise, Bonnell offered to match Delphine’s offer, the first overt sign he’d ever given that he understood how talented and valuable they really were. But his counteroffer only prompted Delphine to raise the stakes again. Just after New Years Day, Bonnell bowed out of the bidding in a huff: “You want to leave? Goodbye!”

A couple of weeks later, the videogame magazine Génération 4 held an awards ceremony for the previous year’s top titles at Disneyland Paris. Everyone who had been involved with Alone in the Dark, both those who still worked at Infogrames and those who didn’t, was invited. When, as expected, it took the prize for top adventure game, Bruno Bonnell walked onto the stage to accept the award on behalf of his company. The departure of Raynal and crew being the talk of the industry, the room held its collective breath to see what would happen next. “My name is Bruno Bonnell,” he said from behind the rostrum. “I’d like to thank God, my dog, my grandmother, and of course the whole team at Infogrames for a beautiful project.” And with that he stumped offstage again.

It hadn’t been a particularly gracious acceptance speech, but Raynal and his colleagues nonetheless had much to feel good about. Dany Boolauk and Paul de Senneville were true to their word: they set Raynal up with a little auteur’s studio all his own, known as Adeline Software. They even allowed him to run it from Lyon rather than joining the rest of Delphine in Paris.

Naturally, all of the Alone in the Dark technology, along with the name itself and the Chaosium license (whatever that was worth), stayed with Infogrames. Raynal and his colleagues were thus forced to develop a new engine in the style of the old and to devise a fresh game idea for it to execute. Instead of going dark again, they went light. Released in 1994, Little Big Adventure (known as Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure in North America) was a poetic action-adventure set in a world of cartoon Impressionism, consciously conceived by Raynal as an antidote to the ultra-violent Doom mania that was sweeping the culture of gaming at the time. He followed it up in 1997 with Little Big Adventure 2 (known as Twinsen’s Odyssey in North America). Although both games were and remain lovely to look at, Raynal still struggled to find the right balance between the art and the science of game design; both games are as absurdly punishing to play as they are charming to watch, with a paucity of save points between the countless places where they demand pin-point maneuvering and split-second timing. This sort of thing was, alas, something of a theme with the French games industry for far too many years.

This, then, is one legacy of Alone in the Dark. Another followed on even more directly, taking the form of the two sequels which Infogrames published in 1993 and 1994. Both used the same engine, as Bruno Bonnell had demanded in the name of efficiency, and both continued the story of the first game, with Edward Carnby still in the role of protagonist. (Poor Emily Hartwood got tossed by the wayside.) But, although Hubert Chardot once again provided their scripts, much of the spirit of the first game got lost, as the development team began letting the player get away with much more head-to-head combat. Neither sequel garnered as many positive reviews or sales as the original game, and Infogrames left the property alone for quite some time thereafter. A few post-millennial attempts to revive the old magic, still without the involvement of Raynal, have likewise yielded mixed results at best.

But it’s with Alone in the Dark‘s third legacy, its most important by far, that we should close. For several years, few games — not even its own sequels — did much to build upon the nerve-wracking style of play it had pioneered. But then, in 1996, the Japanese company Capcom published a zombie nightmare known as Resident Evil for the Sony Playstation console. “When I first played Resident Evil,” remembers Infogrames programmer Franck de Girolami, “I honestly thought it was plagiarism. I could recognize entire rooms from Alone in the Dark.” Nevertheless, Resident Evil sold in huge numbers on the consoles, reaching a mass market the likes of which the computer-only Alone in the Dark could never have dreamed. In doing so, it well and truly cemented the new genre that became known as survival-horror, which had gradually filtered its way up from the obscure works of a poverty-stricken writer to a niche tabletop RPG to a very successful computer game to a mainstream ludic blockbuster. Culture does move in mysterious ways sometimes, doesn’t it?

(Sources: the books La Saga des Jeux Vidéo by Daniel Ichbiah, Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry, Volume 1 by Shannon Appelcline, and Alone in the Dark: The Official Strategy Guide by Johan Robson; Todd David Spaulding’s PhD thesis “H.P. Lovecraft & The French Connection: Translations, Pulps, and Literary History”; Computer Gaming World of February 1993; Amiga Format of June 1991; Edge of November 1994; Retro Gamer 98. Online sources include Adventure Europe‘s interview with Frédérick Raynal, Just Adventure‘s interview with Hubert Chardot, and the video of Frédérick Raynal’s Alone in the Dark postmortem at the 2012 Game Developers Conference.

The original Alone in the Dark trilogy is available as a package download at GOG.com.)

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