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wakaoujisenhime · 3 years

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Reference material

Synopsis: While in Hyougo, looking for inspiration for your company’s upcoming fashion chain, you end up meeting some of the former Karasuno and Inarizaki volleyball team members with whom you sit together and recollect.

So how did this seemingly innocent get-together end up with you having former captain Kita and former Libero Nishinoya try out some thigh-flattering clothes?

tags/warnings: suggested Kita x reader x Nishinoya ✅ thigh appreciation/marking/biting ✅ some Kita in a skirt towards the end ✅

A/N: my first and slightly delayed contribution to The Church of Meian’s Thigh July collab! I originally planned to do this scenario for one of the boys but got swayed by the church’s babes to do both, so here it is! (੭˃ᴗ˂)੭ Hope you enjoy and please make sure to check everyone else’s delicious works out as well! ♥️

.wc 4.6k

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Your heart was thumping hard against your chest as you nervously fiddled with your fingers and looked around your living room. You were so skittish that even the smallest sound made you jump and fixate your vision towards the door of your guest room. After taking a deep breath you tried to let your thoughts wander away from the two men that were just beyond the door you were facing.

How did we even end up in this situation…?

Just this morning you’d arrived in Hyougo per your boss’ request to look for inspiration for your new fashion collection. You wandered for hours, observing farmers, workers, students, and whatnot until you decided to take a much-deserved lunch break, and since you were in the home country of the renowned Miya twins, what place was best suited for a short break than Onigiri Miya?

The moment you’d entered the small and humbly decorated shop, you were greeted by the owner himself and his former volleyball team’s captain Kita. While you exchanged the typical greetings with both men, the blond twin came down from the upper floor and, much to Osamu’s chagrin, joined in on your conversation. Just as you and Kita were about to leave and go back to your respective plans the front door was practically kicked open by a short young man and his two companions.

“Well, I’ll be damned…if it ain’t Karasuno’s libero, ace, and moral cheerleader, what’s got ya so far away from Tokyo?” asked Atsumu in a slightly condescending tone. But before anyone could even comment on that, Nishinoya, who most likely didn’t even hear what the man before him said, spread his arms out and happily suggested that you all stay together and recollect over some delicious onigiri.

Thanks to everyone’s enthusiasm, you got roped into it as well and ended up being surrounded by several young men who happily jugged one beer after the other and argued about who gets to eat the last piece of meat.

Fortunately for you, you weren’t the only one that had decided to keep their hands off of alcohol. Nishinoya and Kita had both preferred to stay sober in case something were to happen.

The time flew by and before you’d noticed the group had started to disperse. Asahi, who was surprisingly sober enough to support Sugawara, had gotten up first, excusing himself and his friend, saying that they had to get up early tomorrow in order to catch their flight back to Tokyo. Minutes later Osamu decided to single-handedly put a stop to Atsumu’s flirtatious behavior to which you’d fallen prey to, so he simply threw his brother over his shoulder, apologized to you three, and asked you to simply turn the “OPEN” sign around when you left as he carried the wiggling man back upstairs.

“Alright then…I think it’s time for me to leave as well” announced Kita with a small smile as he started preparing himself. With a firm nod, the young man next to him followed suit and you were about to do the same when an idea popped into your head.

“You two live quite far away, right?” you asked as you pointed your finger to Noya who nodded, telling you that the motel he stayed at was almost an hour away, then you directed your finger to the captain who confirmed that his house was situated at a very remote part of Hyougo.

“Then how about you guys stay over at my hotel room? It’s just a walk away from here and thanks to my boss it’s big enough to accommodate an entire volleyball team and its substitutes.”

Both boys couldn’t help but giggle at the metaphor you’d used and despite the small fear of inconveniencing you, they yielded eventually.

Everything was going smoothly at first, you brought them over, showed them around, discussed where they wanted to sleep, and even had some time to sit down and continue your chat from before, but then Kita, as conscious as he was, just couldn’t let your generosity go unpaid.

“(Y/N), I appreciate ya going to such lengths to help us out, but I can’t let this sit on me like that. Please tell me what ya’d like us to do as compensation.”

From the exaggerated way he talked, one would think that you had done some kind of heroic act and his words were unfortunately inspiring enough for Nishinoya to start demanding the same.

And just like that the two of them had backed you into a corner. You were so overwhelmed that you didn’t know what to tell them so that they were satisfied, but then your eyes caught a glimpse of a red suitcase you had tucked away under the sofa.

“I…I think I know how you can repay me” you silently announced as your hand reached for the object. Both men remained silent as they waited for your terms.

“You see…the reason I’m here is that I was asked to look for inspiration for our company’s upcoming fashion collection and uh…how should I put this…?” Your internal struggle was obvious and the fact that your cheeks were flushed told the men that whatever you were about to ask wasn’t easy for you, so to take some of your nervousness away, Noya placed one of his hands on top of your and with his other one he gave you a thumbs up.

“W-Would you two be willing to try on some of these clothing pieces and model for me?”

The silence that followed made you anxious and you immediately regretted uttering that question, preparing yourself for a rejection, but before you could take it back Kita giggled, followed by a heart-warming laugh from the former Libero.

“So that’s all? Why are you even hesitating on asking us to model for you?” The nonchalance with which both of them reacted to your request was truly unexpected. While you still tried to process this turn of events, the suitcase was taken from your grasp and the men retreated to the guest room to change into the clothes you’d prepared for them…

And here you were, waiting for them for almost 15 minutes. Your nervousness was partially to blame because you couldn’t quite tell them what kind of clothes you’d tucked away in that red rectangular container and the fact that they were in that room for an unnatural amount of time made you wonder whether they’d given it up.

N-No, calm down! They most likely h-have some difficulties with fitting into the garments, si–

…no wait…didn’t boss give me the medium ones…?

While you panicked internally, you failed to notice the two men that slowly exited the room in front of you and with slow steps closed in on you.

“(Y/N)?”

“W-We finished changin’.”

Their soft voices finally caught your attention, making you instinctively look up and the first thing that you noticed was their legs.

Kita had chosen the pair of black latex jeans while Noya had settled for the leather ones. With wide eyes, you take in the view before you. The two defense specialists, whose thighs were so well-toned, were wearing such tight and figure-enhancing pants that you just couldn’t help but stare at their lower bodies.

Being stared at was nothing new for these two, but the way your beautiful and big eyes were fixated on them just because of some unnatural wear, made their cheeks heat up and redden ever so slightly.

“Sooo should we turn or strike some kind of pose?” asked the brown-haired young man with his usual big grin. Before answering him you had to swallow first and then proceeded by affirming his question.

”I need to design something that brings out the wearer’s thighs, s-so if you could…bend forward, kneel or something of that sort, i-it might help.“

A word and a blow, not even a second passed and you watched as the men before you started to arrange themselves in rather compromising positions. The libero went back a few steps, now facing the couch, raised his left knee, and placed it on the armrest. Kita, on the other hand, moved closer to the soft rug next to you, got on his knees, and though a little challenged by the tightness of his jeans, he stretched his left leg back, while he bent his right one at a 90-degree angle before him.

When they were ready, their eyes darted to you, eagerly awaiting your comment or reaction. You cleared your throat and nodded a few times before praising them for the fitting poses.

Having two men dressed in these rather kinky garments excited you more than initially expected. The urge to go up to them and get more touchy-feely than necessary grew with each passing second you stared at them, until you decided to blame whatever you were about to do on that one glass of alcohol you had drunk some hours ago.

You walked towards the captain and intentionally circled him a few times at a slow pace. You knew fully well that this pose was difficult to maintain for a long time, but the moment you saw the slight tremble of his legs, you just couldn’t help yourself.

“Kita-san, please try to stand still.”

“Forgive me (Y/N), it’s just–”

“Give me your hands” you suddenly ordered, interrupting whatever he was about to say. He did as told and placed both of his hands in yours, slightly squeezing them for additional support. With a small smile, you explained what you were about to do and asked him whether he could manage to hold his balance for at least a couple more minutes. It took the young man a few seconds to answer, but he was set on repaying you so a little strain was a small price for your kindness.

You took a deep breath and slowly lifted your hands, causing Kita to raise his own and with them the fabric of his white shirt, revealing the high waist of the latex jeans.

Oh god…I knew it

“Please hold this position for a little and try to move as little as possible, I’ll have to touch you a couple of times to…to get a better grasp of the material and its effects on your body, ok?”

“G-Got it” answered the captain in a silent voice and closed his eyes. You unobtrusively bit your lower lip as you squat down and gently placed your hands on the man’s waist, an unexpected gesture that managed to educe a surprised gasp from the young man. This trousers’ waist, which was covering the entire abdominal area until it stopped a little over the navel, was designed the same way as a corset, meaning it had ribbons on both sides where your hands now were and an entire row of beautifully designed buttons running down to where his underwear probably began.

You slowly moved his shirt up and savored the sight of his slightly trembling abdominal muscles, then continued down to his thighs, his delicious thighs. If you thought the tremble of his tummy was satisfying to look at then ready yourself for something even better. The way he tensed his muscles up every time your fingers trailed his body, combined with his reddened cheeks and slightly heavy breathing made you want to tease him even more and you did.

“Ok Kita-san I want you to let yourself fall back as slowly as you can and when you’re lying on your back, please stretch out both of your legs so that your soles point to the ceiling” you commanded while you hooked your arm behind his back for the additional support he needed to perform the thing you asked of him. If it weren’t for your hand that didn’t let up even once from his left thigh, his movements might have been a tad more elegant.

After almost a minute you had the young man on his back with his legs outstretched, just as you wanted…but was this enough?

“Please don’t be surprised, but I have to…step on you”

“Wha–”

Kita’s wide brown eyes looked up at you in embarrassment as he felt your foot gently push against the back of his thigh. His hand immediately darted to both his mouth and your leg, but before his trembling fingers could reach you, you began moving your foot ever so slightly from one side to the other, enjoying how pleasant the plush skin beneath your sole felt. You’d lost yourself for a second and failed to notice just how close your foot was to the man’s most sensitive area and if it weren’t for the silent mewl that reached your ear, you most likely would’ve stepped on it as well.

In a slight panic, you set down the former captain’s legs and helped him sit upright.

“I-Is that enough (Y/N)..?” he then asked in a silent voice as he tried to look away from both you and Nishinoya, attempting to hide his flushed cheeks and the small tears in the corner of his eyes. You would’ve loved to go even further but seeing him that disheveled forced you to give him a break, at least while you were busy with the other boy behind you.

The two of you watched as the young man retreated into the guest room on wobbly legs. You sighed to yourself, your conscience nagging you with questions such as why you had to go so far and what you were even thinking, and just as you were about to sit back down on the floor Noya’s cheerful voice chirped in: “And, what am I supposed to do?”

When your eyes focused on the shorter man you saw him strike his earlier pose once again with a satisfied grin on his face. Looking at him genuinely enjoying himself made you smile and you wondered whether he’d be able to hold out more than the man before him.

“Could you…step on me?”

He was quite taken aback by your question and his slightly flushed cheeks let on that he was more embarrassed by your request than he might’ve expected. It didn’t take him long to agree though, which in turn caught you off guard.

As he slowly closed the distance between you two, you used this opportunity to take a better look at the pair of jeans he’d picked out. In contrast to Kita’s, Nishinoya’s were made out of leather. They seemed looser and if it weren’t for the laces that were tied around his thighs, up until they reached the area a little above his knees, you were sure that they wouldn’t have fit him. Additionally to this little perk, the designer had chosen to cut from the leg opening up to the middle of the wearer’s shins and then cord it, similarly as most sneakers, making this particular set of trousers more skin-revealing than the former one you “inspected”.

The moment the man was finally in front of you, he didn’t lose any more time than necessary and immediately asked where he should put his foot. With a satisfied smile, you explained that your shoulder was the main goal, but if the laces were too tightly bound then he could set his foot down lower, on your chest for example.

You watched as the young man slowly raised his left leg and as carefully as he could positioned it right between your neck and shoulder. Thanks to the slight tremble of his foot it was easy for you to tell that he didn’t put his entire weight on you, most likely out of fear of injuring you. A small grin adorned your lips as you moved your shoulder a bit and watched Noya freak out and almost lose his balance and fall down. Luckily for him, your reactions were quicker than his and you had taken a tight hold of his leg and hips, supporting him as well as making sure that he didn’t ruin his position. But now, thanks to your little escapade, he was forced to lean on you, so except having one hand on your shoulder and the other on your head, his crotch was dangerously close to your face.

“Um…(Y/N)? C-Can I just redo the pos–“

“Don’t move…this is perfect!”

Confused by your sudden enthusiasm, the young man took a glance down at you and saw how intensely you started at both his thighs and groin. Not wanting to embarrass himself any further, Noya copied the man before him and closed his eyes, giving you the freedom of doing whatever you wanted yet again.

You didn’t want to admit it, but there wasn’t a better way this could’ve worked out. Not only were you able to see how the tightly bound laces made some of his flesh bulge out in between them, but also how these pants had neither a button nor a zipper, and the wearer had to make use of the strings, that circled their thighs, to steady them. You slowly opened your mouth and bit the end of the laces, tugging on them slightly.

“W-Wait, if you do that then-!”

With a smile plastered on your face, you loosened the bow just enough that only the knot remained and murmured: “Sorry, had to make sure that such flashy trousers were sturdy enough to withstand a feline’s possible attack.”

A weak excuse which’s logic he first had to comprehend while you made use of his confused state in order to place your hands on his buttocks and squeeze them as much as the fabric allowed you to. While your hands kneaded his firm buttcheeks, you rubbed your cheek on his thigh, explaining that you and to test whether this design was comfortable for pets. You remained that way for a couple of minutes and softly kissed the young man’s trained leg before slapping his ass a few times, and finally allowing him to stand by himself.

To escape any uncomfortable questions from him, you quickly reached for the notepad you’d placed on top of the decorative table close to you and started scribbling down some nonsense, giving off the impression that whatever you were doing right now was truly work-related and not simply for your own pleasure. Only when you heard the door to the guest room shut behind him did you look up, burying your face in your hands not short after.

Just what am I doing, using them like that…?

Your excuse of using them as reference material was somewhere true, but stepping on Kita and kneading Nishinoya’s ass were not necessary advances you’d done only for the sake of satisfying your curiosity.

Left alone with your guilt, you waited for another ten minutes wondering once more what took them so long. As far as you remember, your boss had only put in these two sets of trousers and two other special items he refused to elaborate on further, telling you to find out for yourself. Now that you thought back, you remembered the pervy grin your boss had shot you after mentioning the suitcase and its mysterious contents, and you couldn’t help but be curious as to what the two men were about to put on and present you.

Speak of the devil, not even a second after you’d formulated your thought and the door opposite of you cracked open as the two young men slowly walked out.

I’m done for…

Before you stood the former Inarizaki captain with what looked like to be a schoolgirl’s skirt and fishnet tights, next to him Karasuno’s legendary guardian of the backcourt with overknee black stockings that he’d attached to his black boxer shorts with the help of a leather garter belt.

Saying that you were at a loss for words was an understatement, this was absolutely jaw-dropping. Now that their legs were almost entirely exposed you just had to come up with some type of irrefutable excuse that would make it possible for you to not only touch their bare skin but also taste it.

You crossed your arms in front of your chest and covered your mouth with your hand, giving them the impression that you were lost deep in your thoughts when in reality you tried to hide your blushing cheeks.

“Ok before I do anything, I need to ask you guys if…if you can deal with pain” you began and observed how they looked at each other and then slowly nodded.

In order to make up for your earlier teasing, you decided to directly tell them what you were planning this time, instead of keeping them in the dark.

“I need to test something out…you see, with such revealing pieces of clothing the buyers often focus on how good pantyhose such as these can hide markings or injuries, s-so I need to mark your thighs as reference” you paused and gave them a couple of seconds to process the explanation you’d offered them before continuing, “the way I want to mark you guys, will have to be with…my teeth. Usually, we’d use a marker or makeup, but neither of those would produce good results with these particular choices of material, especially Nishinoya’s might pose a bigger problem than the ones on Kita-san.”

While you dished out something that sounded professional enough to convince them, you were surprised at yourself and your creativity concerning these white lies. The moment you’d wrapped up your monologue you intended to give them some space so that they could think it over, but much to your surprise, they were quicker on board than expected.

“Are you two s-sure? I mean…I’m asking to bite your thighs here, you know?”

Nishinoya put both his hands on his hips and puffed his cheeks out as he answered: “Yeah so what of it? It won’t be the first time my thighs end up bruised.”

“I agree n’ more than that, we promised to do anythin’ to repay ya, remember?” added Kita with a small smile.

Yes of course…anything to repay me, huh?

The captain’s last few words left a bitter feeling behind, but you shoved it aside and figured that both of them most likely used that excuse to fulfill their own fantasies, just like you did, so in a sense you guys were even, right?

You focused on their legs once more and decided to start with Nishinoya first, so you commanded him to slowly remove the garter belt on his right leg, but the moment his nimble fingers had taken a hold of the leather you immediately stopped him.

“It might be better if someone who has no experience with it takes it off…Kita-san, please undo it for him.”

A small nod that represented said man’s answer was all you got before he got on one knee and started undoing the accessory. You had to admit that the older man’s overly gentle and careful way of loosening the small buckle warmed your heart, but regarding the entire picture, namely Kita in a skirt, kneeling, which caused the fishnet pattern around his legs to dig into his skin, making the plush of his thighs stick out, while Nishinoya stood above him in nothing but a shirt, boxers, and of course, the black stockings that perfectly hugged his toned legs, made your heart thump harder against your chest with each passing second.

Kita whispered a silent done and got back on his feet as he gently unclipped the garter belt from the libero’s briefs, letting it fall along the perfect curves of the young man’s leg. With a small nod, Noya readied himself for you and tried to somehow position his arms so that they don't get in your way.

You copied the white-haired young man before you, kneeling and softly rolling down the black fabric, exposing some of his slightly tanned skin. With your right hand, you steadied his hips, minimizing his movements, and with your left, which you hooked under his thigh, you were now able to turn or raise it the way you needed. To avoid a similar fall from before, you asked if the captain could support Nishinoya, which he affirmed and got behind him, taking a hold of his hands and whispering something that sounded like I’m here, don’t be afraid, I got you.

God, these two…

You turned the young man’s leg in such a way that the inner side of his thigh was facing you and slowly let your teeth sink in his flesh, gradually hardening your bite until it almost pierced his skin. Millimeters before you could draw blood, you stopped and let your tongue glide along the marks you left behind. Without moving yourself too much, you simply turned his leg a little to the side and once again planted your mouth on his still flawless skin, but this time you gently clamped a portion of his flesh between your teeth, started sucking on it until it reddened and finally took on a bluish-purple tone, only then did you let up completely, licked your lips and looked up. The young man above you was leaning on Kita’s shoulder, panting slightly, and looking down at you through half-lidded eyes. You swallowed audibly, rolled the black fabric back up, and gently patted his thigh as a form of release. While he recomposed himself, you took a step back and looked at what you’d accomplished. The bite mark you’d left behind on his inner thigh was barely visible, the hickey on the other hand was quite eye-catching.

You once again grabbed the notebook and scribbled something in it while Kita praised the young man with a rather awkward smile and tried to prepare himself mentally next for what was about to come.

At first, you confirmed the former captain’s readiness, then proceeded to ask Nishinoya for support this time, and finally offered your upper leg for him as some kind of footstep for him to step on, just so you could see his flesh stick out from the rhombus-shaped patterns of his stockings and poke at them for a short while. You asked him questions such as whether he felt uncomfortable or if it hurt when the string-like material pressed down on his skin, only when he answered these questions negatively did you place your hand on his leg, moved closer, and bit down on his stockings, tearing them easily with your bare teeth. That unexpected action of yours successfully managed to make the young man take a deep breath and cause him to hold on tighter to Noya’s hands.

At this point, you couldn’t even bother to come up with an excuse and simply started biting down on the exposed skin. You were so lost in observing how the teeth marks and hickeys you left behind gradually darkened, that only when Kita placed his hand on top of your head did you look up to see his cheeks redder than before and a small smile adorning his lips.

You gave the injuries you’d inflicted a gentle kiss and once again returned to scribbling in the notebook.

“How long do ya plan on keepin’ that fake writin’ up?”

The sudden question caught you off guard, causing you to stop writing mid-stroke.

“W-What…?”

With wide eyes, you looked at both men who started at you with their mesmerizing sharp eyes.

Nishinoya extended his hand towards you with a smile and said: “I’m sure you still need more references for your designs, right? So just come over here and do whatever you’d like…”

…we still have to properly pay you back after all

And with that, you finally dropped the notebook, and your act along with it. Now that you were aware of their true intentions and feelings there was no need for you to hold back anymore.

A few more experiments weren’t going to harm anyone, right?

Since all of this was for the upcoming fashion chain…right?

It’s not like you’d planned all of this out beforehand…

…right?

#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu kita #haikyuu nishinoya #hq x reader #hq scenarios #hq kita #hq nishinoya #the church of meian #church of meian collab #thigh july #━𝙷𝚀

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yue-muffin · 4 years

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well, cherry magic was absolutely devastating and yet another example of why i love jdramas: when they set out to do so, they are full of so much heart and understanding of what it means to be human. i have had so many emotional rollercoasters over the years, but the angst is not usually angst for its own sake; there’s a purpose: to paint a tragedy and make you think ah, if only..., or testing the bonds of friends and family to show that what makes us human can just as easily tear us apart as be the cause for us to overcome obstacles in life.

i usually don’t like romances. i avoid them. which is also why i like jdramas. romance-centric ones are clearly marked and indicated in the summary, if a romance appears in a non romantic drama, it doesn’t often take anything away from the plot or characters. in fact, aside from old bl movies, i’ve never watched a single romance jdrama, no matter how highly recommended.

this got LONG so.

two things: 1) im really glad i gave cherry magic a chance. 2) my mind was blown by how far the japanese romance genre has come in terms of depicting same sex relationships. all you have to do is look to the old bl movies i used to watch- even if the characters are respected within their medium, they all end in tragedy.

so, cherry magic along with several other jdramas coming out or that have come out recently, really impressed me. i stepped away from the jdrama world for a while, and im glad that i slipped back in.

so about the whole drama since ive really been talking about the overall genre - it’s so damn good and relatable, to a painful degree. to me, particularly, who has lived a privileged life and moves through the world without too much fuss, it’s that self-sabotage of adachi’s that really hit me hard. you’re your own worst enemy sometimes. and, indeed, his anxiety is also really relatable. how many times do i always think the worst of my performance, when the grades, the instructors’ assessments, my friends and family, all say i didn’t do as bad as i think in my head? or thinking whatever you do, it’s never going to be enough to match so-and-so’s expectations, and if you fail their expectations you fail them and yourself. man, that spiral of his thoughts in the last two episodes was painful but the resolution of which was so cathartic.

(also, i guess i just have to own up to the fact that i do have some sort of anxiety. i never really talk about myself to others, and to my family who i do, they don’t believe anxiety is even a thing beyond a funny feeling in your gut which is like “wow, really”, but a thing i’ve learned to ignore, except this ongoing pandemic situation has really made it rear its ugly head, which i can normally keep in check ok)

but the drama as a whole...it’s so realistic, and positive. it’s a perfect balance. it handles the “typical” bl tropes well, giving a bit of its original manga flair but taking it to a realistic level. like all the classic kabedons! the mind reading bit is actually really helpful here to break those tropes apart a bit by being able to know kurosawa’s thoughts even tho on the outside he’s mostly as suave as ever

and another thing! it’s so...life-affirming. that it’s ok to not know where you’re going even at age 30, to set little goals for yourself, to pursue happiness in your relationships. the way society is these days, there’s so much pressure to be the best and succeed - even to the point, it’s not just good to be happy with what you’re doing, you must be successful by society’s standard (the minato storyline particularly addressed this)

and i, at least, really need that reminder. i love the career im working towards now, but when i was only 21, i was just about having a breakdown every other week bc i was coming to the end of my undergrad studies and didn’t know where i wanted to go next. it felt like ‘if i don’t make the right choice in these 3 months, it’ll ruin the rest of my life or i’ll just never be happy’. that’s so crazy, thinking back.

and another thing: the characters are all so different, but i found a bit of myself in each of them nonetheless. unlike fujisaki, i do want to be in a relationship someday, but i don’t want one now and i would greatly appreciate people in my life to stop pressuring me into one with their well-intentioned comments. i thought at first that kurosawa wasn’t going to be super deep, just a really nice guy in love, but actually his mask of perfection and need to meet others’ expectations as his self-perceived redeeming qualities really hit hard. and adachi, who is like my spirit animal, his anxiety and worries over whether he’s worth a love that seems so good and perfect, running away rather than face the possibility of getting hurt from that interaction. even rokkaku, who acted all energetic and excited at the drinking party but really just wanted to get the heck out of there

the actors were all just. so good. i mentioned this last time, but they got the perfect balance of comedy moments + realistic reactions/nuanced acting that isn’t exaggerated, for the non-comedy moments. they all did a stellar job of selling this drama!

so, the bad thing is that this has set the bar high on modern romance dramas for me, and considering i don’t give them much of a chance in the first place, lol.

#the muffin's drama watching adventures #cherry magic

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masterhandss · 4 years

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Hamefura Idol AU! (part 2)

Here’s a completely unrelated Katarina idol art by @Sangotofura on twitter!

This is a continuation of my first post, the one that is more of an overview of the original FL game and the original descriptions of the characters. I don’t know if I want to write a story for this, since again this is just an excuse to draw, but I’m really having fun with expanding the alternate version of the world of hamefura.

It’s a lot of fun to rewrite hamefura’s story to fit in an idol setting, so I hope you guys don’t mind if I write a bit more for my dumb au dhjgfjs

More tidbits about the ‘Game’:

The game’s name, Fortune Lover: Cinderella Idol! or “Fortune Lover”, is read as “for-tune lover” by the fans (get it? tune?? pls laugh). The ‘F’ of the name is written as a fortissimo.

In the setting for Fortune Lover, the entertainment industry is the biggest industry of all time, with music being the most popular form. It has been like this for decades, and as time progressed, people’s tastes and expectations of music evolved, leading to the creation and popularity of idols.

Idol-Producers are a new project that is testing the capabilities of a idol teen, observing how their involvement in their own success can impact how they manage their time and how they can bring the absolute best out of themselves, on their own. Maria is the first idol who will be testing this new style. She is still a producer to herself, the boys, and even Sophia and Mary if you choose to have them join you. Despite being an idol, they still call Maria their “producer” and treats her like one.

The characters in the game are in 3D CG, as the game includes the dance choreography or “MV Mode” if you perfect the score of the rhythm game.

While Katarina’s bullying isn’t really death threatening, it’s more in line with the petty kind like verbal threats, sabotaging Maria’s idol clothes and stage equipment, paying someone to mess up her tracks during performances, badmouthing her infront of tv show producers and hosts, and stuff like that.

Katarina’s bullying isn’t as bad as it is in the original otome game, but she gets shunned by the public because behavior like that is only supposed to be done behind the curtains. The public has such a pure and honest perception of idols that they never think of the idea that the girls who smile and sing on stage actually try to stab each other in the back when the stage lights are off. Some people think that Katarina’s character is just a persona, so knowing that she is actually an ignorant and arrogant rich girl idol-wannabe, her fans lose respect for her. Katarina’s harassment of Maria is one of the few cases that are brought to light by the end of the game, and because of how much the public loves Maria by that point, they are enraged by Katarina’s behavior, making her lose support on all sides

Katarina had been in love with Gerald ever since they were children, and while Gerald has always been a popular boy among both his peers, when she found out Gerald was going to be an idol, she disliked the idea of sharing her beloved Gerald to a huge audience of people, so she became an idol to stand alongside him and to make herself worth of him by charming him as as an idol and gaining a large following herself. Despite this, Katarina didn’t strive too hard to be a talented idol, as she was too confident on herself due to the pampering of her parents.

Even if the player doesn’t desire to romance any of the four boys, given how the game is written and how it is programmed, the boy with the highest relationship points with Maria will confess to her by the end of the game. It would be impossible to not interact and gain points with the boys, as you gain relationship points in most areas of the games (when you “practice” your characters, when you “play” their songs, when you “give” them new clothes, when you “converse” with them in story mode, etc.). In the event that there are two characters with the exact same amount of points, the game will choose a boy for you.

Sorcier Pro.’s current president is Geoffrey Stuart (for reasons that will make sense someday)

Katarina-Gerald and Mary-Alan aren’t engaged in this au, but are constantly in each other’s presence due to most powerful bussinessmen and celebrities being good friends with each other.

Each girl has a specialty in a certain area: Katarina with dancing, Sophia with singing, Mary with acting/drama, and Maria (according to the official description of her in the box) with fashion coordination. Maria can be seen as more of a jack of all trades though, as she does represent the player.

While any of the boys can trigger the condemnation event that will lead to Katarina’s social suicide, the event is specifically associated with Keith and Gerald due to the severity of her presence and bullying if you have high relationship points with the two. With Alan and Nicole, Katarina’s event only happens for a few lines, but for Keith and Gerald, it takes place in complete detail, with it’s own animated cutscene.

Gerald’s route is also the most popular among the fans, with community surveys reporting that 53% of the game’s player base had Gerald as their final chosen love interest ( 25% with Keith, 12% with Nicol and 10% with Alan)

Monkey Girl/Past-Life Katarina

Since Maria’s name can’t be change in the game, but you can give her a “nickname” that represents the username of the player, Past-life Katarina’s name in the game is “SaruP” (or “Monkey producer” lol)

Saruchan (Monkey Girl) dies before she could finish her playthrough of the game, and all of her knowledge is based on her idol-expert best friend Acchan. She’s a bit tomboyish, and she loves to climb trees and move freely without a hint of poise or shyness, and is friendly to all genders. Her love for climbing, running, gardening with her grandma, and never ending amounts of energy gave her a pretty strong, flexible, agile and energetic body.

In Saruchan’s world, idols do exist, but aren’t portrayed in the cutesy and exaggerated manner that fiction does. Though it’s no surprise to know that in her world, almost every girl had dreamed to become an idol at one point, even herself. Acchan doesn’t find the idea interesting though, as she only lives for the idealized version of idols that exist in fiction. Acchan explains that girls their age are being brainwashed by the idealized version of idols that are presented in the media that they consume, and that they should wake up and learn to enjoy the fictional idols as they are. Despite Acchan’s realistic disapproval of idol fantasies, she does love playing idol rhythm games and gacha games, and spends her allowance on getting DLC costumes for Maria in FL. Acchan even pre-ordered tickets for herself and Saruchan for an idol concert featuring the VA of the characters, that they were supposed to attend to on the day that Saruchan dies.

She dies the game way: on her way to school and being killed by a truck that runs her over.

The last thing Saruchan sees before she loses consciousness forever is the wallpaper of the game’s boxart from her phone screen as it flies out of her hands.

My Next Life as an ‘Idol’?? All Routes Lead to Doom!!!

As usual, Katarina ends up remembering her future as an 8 year old kid, and plans to prepare for her future “banishment” and humiliation. She learns to farm in order to provide for herself once she gets shunned and retreats to the countryside, and (unknowingly) meets all the characters in the game and gains their good favor before the events of the game begins.

Her head bump still happens with Gerald, but their encounter happened in a party rather than an engagement meeting, with her tripping over a rock as she decides to run to the young man in order to introduce herself. Such introductions never got past beyond their names and few exchanges of dialogue, as the bump occurred and Katarina was immediately brought to the hospital after he called for help.

Being a girl who wanted to be an idol at one point, Katarina wanted to use this chance to fulfill her dream of becoming one! But knowing the fate that will await her, (public humiliation, isolation, and banishment to some degree) she tries to figure out ways to avoid ruining her future.

While not as bad as death, Katarina is aware that the ending of the game implies that the blemished opinion that everyone will gain of her will lead to her leading a miserable life; one that will prevent her from gaining new allies and even studying in peace without being made fun of or called out for. It might even ruin her marriage prospects, for all she knows (it doesn’t but she’s too stupid to know that). The stakes of the bad ending aren’t life threatening, but it is personal, as Katarina always dreamed of becoming an idol as a teen and doesn’t like the idea of being able to enjoy it for a few months only to be dragged down to hell right afterwards.

The Claes is a wealthy family known for her father’s knowledge and skills when it comes to trades and business, and for her mother’s beautiful opera singing voice and celebrity presence. As usual, Katarina’s father adopts Keith for the purpose of gaining a direct heir for the business, in fear that Katarina’s future significant other might just to interested in her to gain it.

Katarina’s plan is to learn how to farm in order to be able to support herself after her banishment, give Keith lots of love so he doesn’t end up becoming a playboy like in the game, and to train herself in dancing and singing in order to not embarrass herself like the original Katarina did. After meeting Gerald again and realizes his weakness, she eventually prepares (or buys, since the setting is modern) toy snakes that she can use to surprise him whenever the condemnation event occurs, using his shocked and panicked reaction as a way to distract the media from the claims that will surely fall upon her (since no one would have expected the calm and collected Gerald Stuart to scream like a girl at the sight of a toy snake, right? That would stay in the headlines for weeks! maybe).

As a kid, she has private singing tutors, and takes more general singing classes when she gets older. She doesn’t have dance training as a kid, but she does like to exercise and move her body around, so it slowly turned into the stamina-filled flexible body that she is used to.

Katarina and Keith - Their meeting and impressions are mostly the same, which the difference being that Katarina used a display axe above a fireplace to break down the door, and Keith got her injured by accidentally pushing her off a pretty high cliff in the Claes grounds while they were both running and playing chase (rather than being isolated for dangerous Earth Magic, Keith as a child was a clutz who attracted danger to everyone around him, making his older brothers make fun of him for being “cursed”).

Katarina showers him with love, making him affectionate towards his step sister, in the same as he was in the original material.

When Keith finds out about Katarina’s desire to train to become an idol, he is very supportive of her, and decides to train with her in order to be able to stand by his sister on stage (as well as to generally gain the same interests as her in order to guarantee that they will stay close as they age). The contrast being that instead of becoming an idol to gain the adoration of millions of nameless faces, he now wants to become an idol to gain the love and attention of a single person, which is Katarina uwu.

Katarina and Gerald - Gerald eventually attempts to visit Katarina to apologize for the incident, expecting her to blame him for what happened, given the personality she showed him. He was shocked to find a scar on her forehead, farming while wearing a farmer’s attire despite coming from a wealthy and esteemed family, singing and dancing to a song as she waters her vegetables. He watches for only a minute, unable to look away from the girl who danced like deflating balloon and sang off key while almost drowning her small vegetable in water. She looked weird, but she was having the time of her life, and he could see and hear it from where he stood.

In a daze, thinking he might have entered the wrong house by accident or walked on the daughter of a maid doing chores. He walks out and leave the Claes estate without a word, and visits again after only a few days, as he couldn’t get his mind off of the oddity that he had witnessed.

He eventually realizes that it was Katarina on his second visit, as he finds the scar of the odd farmer girl on the same girl who boasted about her family’s wealth in the party. After giving formal introductions, Gerald offers to walk around the garden to get to know each other better, in order to continue the conversation that she had originally forced on him back in the party (it was done to be polite and respectful, rather than any interest to continue). In the garden, they pass by the area that Katarina had planned to turn into her farm, and Gerald was in awe at how unorganized and messy everything looked (there was dirt everywhere, the tools were left on the floor because she had to prepare to meet him, there was more bags of manure than what was even needed etc! Katarina internally cursed at her 8 year old delicate rich girl body for not having the same arm strength as her 17 year old self). It was then that it sunk in that the adorable singing and dancing farming girl that he accidentally saw really was Katarina Claes. She wasn’t the very definition of abnormal, but she was nothing like the daughters of his father’s friends that cried when not attended to or complained when not given the best dresses and shoes. There was no shred of worry about her family’s expectations in her eyes, nor expectations of him to act like his perfect and matured self whenever they met in parties, movie premiers or social events, which made him yearn for her company.

After finding out about Katarina’s desire to become an idol one day, Gerald secretly planned to do the same (and even have her recruited in his brother’s agency) in order to become closer to her through her love of entertainment and to have a chance to be constantly in her presence. When he found out about the charms that male idols have on their female fans, he also plans on using this as an opportunity to gain both her attention and romantic affection, by perfecting his (already maxed out) charms as male idol.

Katarina and Mary - The two met during a part hosted by Mary’s mother in the Hunt Estate, inviting all of her mother’s old opera acquaintances, sponsors and co-workers for a formal reunion. Katarina and Keith accompanied their parents to the party, leading them to be introduced to the Hunt Family’s daughters. As usual, Katarina had the urge to “release the chocolate shark” during the party and takes an elegant leave. She eventually gets lost in the estate and finds herself in the garden. Katarina was in awe of the garden’s beauty, and stood still as she watched what seemed like beautiful siren sing by herself near a majestic fountain, with a single rose in hand.

Mary was surprised to hear an aggressive applause after singing to herself. Katarina aggressively complimented Mary for her adorable yet elegant voice, and asked who she was seeing as a singing trainer. When Mary replied that she was not having any singing or vocal training, Katarina rains even more compliments down, claiming that “her voice was that of an angel!”. Mary denied it, so Katarina proceeded to sing the same song that she had sang, as a point of comparison to make her feel more confident in herself. Mary shyly and unexpectedly joins her, and they ended up having a small and quiet duet in the garden. Katarina’s voice sounded a bit rough and squeak-ish, but alongside Mary’s elegant and controlled singing, they didn’t sound bad at all.

When Katarina finds out that Mary is also the one who tends to the flower garden, she proceeds to shower Mary with even more compliments, and asks her to visit and help with her own farm garden. Being complimented for having a beautiful voice and a green thumb made her feel validated and appreciated, so she often visits the Claes household in order to be in constant presence of her first and dearest friend. The rest is the same.

When Mary found out about Katarina’s dream of becoming an idol, she started taking intense vocal training as well as various exercises in order to be able to join her in her endeavor. She slowly built a more brazen and tough personality in order to be able to join and protect her friend from the rumored cold and intense reality of the idol world, as well as due to the antics of her friends.

Katarina and Alan - From Mary, she eventually finds out that the event where Mary duets and falls in love with Alan occurred. Katarina realizes that duet must not have been that effective because she has done the same with Mary, but is confident that Mary is in love with him because Alan is a very talented and handsome individual. A few days later, the fourth Stuart son bursts into the doors of the Claes household, and demands to meet with Katarina. She learns that Alan had developed a small crush on Mary, and that he wants to challenge Katarina for her hand. Same shenanigans ensues, leading up to the piano duel where his talents in the piano was in full display to everyone in the manor.

Katarina knew how to play the piano (just the basics though), so she was in awe listening to someone who almost sounded like a pro! Alan runs off after Gerald compliments him, Katarina chases after him, and they got to talk behind a bush. Alan wouldn’t take her compliments, but Katarina aggressively insisted that his talents are nothing to scoff at.

When Alan says that he’s sure that his brother can play just as good, if not better than him, Katarina speculates that it wasn’t the case, because everyone had things that they are good and bad at. Not everyone is the same, no one learns at the same pace, and that she’s sure even if Gerald can play the piano better than him (and she doubts he can in the first place), no one can play the piano like Alan can. The scores in his heart are his alone, and that nothing is more beautiful than the melody that the heart enacts. Katarina knew that the score he played wasn’t an existing one, and knowing Alan’s character from the game, it’s probably either an impromptu score or one he had composed by himself. Her guess was correct, leading Alan to be caught off guard by her compliment, almost feeling emotional as no one had ever guessed and believed that the music he played was his own, until Katarina did.

She shows off the power of the toy snake to Alan, making him laugh and see his brother in a different light. He still constantly visited Katarina for their duels, but as time progressed, he lost the affection for Mary (as he saw her as a little sister now after interacting with her in the Claes Household) that made him want to challenge Katarina. They still followed up on those challenges, for fun rather than for sport.

When he finds out about Katarina’s dream to become an idol, he is determined to join her in order to be able to compose songs and melodies that she can sing, intending to bring out the absolute best of his muse’s voice with his own music. Someone his age might not be fit to compose songs for an idol, so he intends to become one as well in order to gain a reputation as a competent composer.

Katarina and Sophia - The two meets at an afternoon party hosted by the Stuarts, as a celebration for the birthday of the twins. Katarina had to “powder her noes” after a few trips to the buffet table, and leaves Keith and Mary. She’s chased down by a dog, climbs up a tree, and accidentally watches a group of kids and older bully a small girl who sounded like she was about to cry. The same events occur, up to their second encounter in the party. Katarina accidentally quotes a line from a novel that she was reading, and after realizing that Sophia understood her reference, she asked for them to meet again in order to discuss their similar interests.

Everything is pretty much the same, the difference being that somehow idols were brought as a topic of conversation, with Sophia revealing that she is actually a huge fan of idols. Katarina, feeling reminiscent of her idol-expert best friend Acchan, tells her that she actually wants to be an idol herself and insists that Sophia tell her about everything she loves about idols. Sophia, who is surprised to also find another idol fan who is as young as her, becomes even more excited and tells her all about her love for idols: how they are able to wear such adorable outfits onstage, how they sing songs that carry so much meaning, how they carry their fan’s dreams with them when they dance and sing, how amazing it is to be able to juggle so many occupations at once, and much more.

With both love of novels and idols, Sophia constantly finds herself in the Claes Household in order to talk to Katarina about books, idols, song recommendations etc.

When Sophia was first told that Katarina wanted to be an idol, she was very supportive of her and announced herself as Katarina’s number one fan. As time passed, she realized she wasn’t just satisfied with just watching Katarina from afar, she wanted to sing and dance alongside her! She wants to use her knowledge of romance novels and idols to help make herself and Katarina the best idols to ever exist! She wants to sing on stage about her feelings: about how much she loves Katarina, idols and their beloved novels!

Katarina and Nicol - When he found out that someone had invited his little sister to a small book club, he was very wary, thinking that she was one of the many other girls who tried to use Sophia in order to become closer with him. He was shocked to realize that that was not the case, and that Katarina had barely seen him at all, and had opened his timid little sister’s heart. When Sophia asked Katarina if she found her appearance creepy, Nicol proceeds to explain further, expecting to see a hint of guilt or displeasure from Katarina Claes, only for both of them to be met with unyielding determination to have Sophia as a close friend. Sophia went home that day in tears, thankful to have found a friend who truly wanted to stick by her side.

The Claes siblings often visits their home so the girls can have their book club, even bringing Mary Hunt with them occasionally. Katarina, while looking a bit flustered, is capable of having a conversation with him without averting her eyes, which was a breath of fresh air to the countless camera crew, staff, visitors and even strangers who couldn’t look him in the eyes because how of how much of a beautiful child model he was. It all leads up to the moment where Katarina compliments him with how blessed he is to have such a beautiful and wonderful family, which contrasted against the ignorant adults who pitied him for having parents who refused to abuse the potential of his beautiful face and for not being as beautiful as their son, as well as for having a freakish looking sister.

Nicol, just like his sister, desired to constantly be in Katarina’s positive presence, and visited her often, leading them to be acquainted and friends with the entire group that Katarina enraptured.

When he found about his sister’s and Katarina’s desire to become idols, Nicol thought of doing the same, in order to be able to continue to watch over and protect both Sophia and Katarina, as well to be able to continue being close with Katarina (as their lack of similar interests and age gap might lead her away from him, but tbh that is never gonna be a problem with Katarina). He also plans to use his influence as a child model to propel Sophia and Katarina’s careers, as a way of supporting his two favorite girls.

Notes

I’m not sure how I feel about Gerald’s backstory, I might rewrite that if anyone kindly wants to critique it.

Instead of Mary’s green thumb, it’s her voice that leads her to Katarina and Alan, but I still think Sophia would still have a better singing voice than her, so both her voice and green thumbs both play a part in her character. Mary’s high pitched voice gets a bit deeper as she ages, while Sophia’s voice stays very high.

I really like the idea that rather than the original ambitions and goals that leads the harem to become idols in Fortune Lover, now it’s the effect of Katarina’s constant insistence and declarations of becoming an idol that leads to everyone doing the same. In this timeline, the harem probably wouldn’t have thought of (or planned early) becoming an idol if Katarina never brought it up.

I’m writing this at midnight again, lol, but yeah I’m not planning on writing a fanfiction for this, I guess, but I do want to have an established plot so rather than chapters, I’m just writing a full overview for fun haha

When I mentioned that Sophia loved idols, I didn’t realize that I might have accidentally implied that she was just as an idol fan as Acchan was, but with actual idols this time, so I went with :DD

I’ll touch up on Idol Katarina, Anne, Maria, Sirius/Raphael and Fortune Lover 2 in the next one.

I’m really happy that there are people who actually read my previous post and said that they liked it! Feedback and suggestions are appreciated! I still need a final name for the units so help me pls hahaha.

I’ll rewrite this post when I feel like adding/changing stuff.

137 notes · View notes

willow-salix · 4 years

Text

Fluffember Prompt: Toy

Big massive thanks to the awesome @myladykayo for jumping in and writing this for me while I rest.

Day 20 of isolation on Tracy Island 2.0

Kayo here... I was “convinced” to write this update by Scott...

“Witchy has never skipped a day before in her isolation updates. We can’t let her down when she’s sick and needs her rest,” he said, using the pity card like one waves a white flag around.

“Then why don’t you write it? You’re her best friend,” I protested.

I’m not a writer. I don’t have Gordon’s knack for storytelling and exaggeration, or Alan’s naivete about life that makes his stories amusing. Scott is used to telling his brothers bedtime stories from when they were younger. Let him do it.

“I have to do office stuff...”

And then, he dared. He smiled his dimpled smile that no one on Earth and beyond can resist, except perhaps for Alan’s zombies and dead people.

“Office stuff.” I tried to sound unimpressed but to my greatest shame, I’m not impervious to the Dimple King’s magical powers and my resolve was already fading. I can’t say I’m very proud of that.

“I can’t postpone it... Please?”

He knows, the traitor. He fluttered his eyelashes, putting damsels in distress to shame and waited.

I do like Witchy and I do want to help her because she’s taking the burden of those idiots off of me when she’s here, so I caved in... I rolled my eyes at him and made sure my face showed how annoyed at him I was. “Fine, but you owe me now.”

“Deal,” he said. We shook hands and he sauntered away toward his office.

***

Witchy was upstairs, resting (or trying to) and the others were relatively calm in the lounge, which is always a little suspicious. Personally, I would have gone to the training room to lift some weights or do a few fan forms, but I felt I shouldn’t wander off too far in case someone needed a reminder not to go and bother her. I was pondering about catching up on my reading or doing some office work when Virgil arrived from the hangars holding a flat box. “I was doing some cleaning and found a bin of old toys… Remember that game, John?” he asked, putting the box on the lounge table.

The box was faded and something told me that it was old enough to be not only from when the boys were kids and before I arrived on the island, but before that when Jeff was young. Why he kept some of those things, I had no idea. The garish yellow colour was an assault to the eyes in itself, and the silly-looking man pictured there didn’t improve things, nor were the bold red letters forming the word Operation.

John glanced up from his tablet and smiled. “Alan used to stick the tweezers on the edge and let the buzzer ring to no end until dad stopped him and gave him something else to do,” he said.

“Gordon used to tap rhythms and songs with the tweezers,” Virgil added.

“Did Jeff stop him and give him something else to do?” I asked.

“He’d wait for dad to be off with Alan to do it.”

“Then Scott would slap him upside the head,” John finished.

I barely managed not to roll my eyes. I can’t say I was surprised.

Alan opened the box and peered inside. “It requires batteries,” he commented, taking everything out.

Virgil went to fetch some in Jeff’s desk.

“Are you sure about this?” John asked.

Virgil shrugged. “It’s one way to pass time.” He smiled. “Afraid you lost your touch?”

“Not at all. I’m trying to spare you from a crushing defeat.”

All Tracys are competitive. All of them. Even quiet, suspectless John.

“Did I hear crushing defeat? I’m here for the show,” Gordon exclaimed, appearing from nowhere and eying the game on the table. “Wanna play, Kayo?”

I laughed. “No. I’ll take a seat in the peanut gallery,” I said, settling down in my usual launch seat. “I can handle the bank if you want.”

Let them ridicule themselves. I took the pile of false notes from him and Virgil distributed the specialist cards between the four brothers.

“So how do you play?” Alan asked.

“You pick a card and try to remove the part indicated on it. If you succeed, Kayo will pay you. If you fail, whoever has the specialist card can have a go and earn twice the amount if he succeeds. Whoever has the most money at the end wins.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

I saw the exchange between Virgil and Gordon and I think John’s mouth quirked. Nothing was simple with them. Not even children’s games. Why do you think I was sitting away from them?

They let Alan have a go at first. He picked Water on the Knee and successfully removed the plastic bucket. It was handed to me so that I could pay accordingly. John picked the Wish Bone, but as he positioned his hand over the board, Gordon leaned over and began singing close to his brother’s ear to try and distract him. John declared his tactic amateurish and also succeeded.

Apparently, the unspoken rules Tracy version of the game was to try and distract whoever was playing so that they failed. This included John shouting “Look out!” at Gordon at the last moment, Gordon imitating the buzzer sound each time Virgil approached the tweezers from the board, Alan—who caught on very quickly—inching his fingers close to the board as if he was going to rattle it when John had another go and Virgil fully integrating his youngest brother to the game by whispering something to him, which earned him a reply that I can’t write here.

The rowdy game was fully underway when Scott stepped into the lounge. “What are you guys doing? I can hear you all the way from the office,” he complained.

“We’re playing Operation,” Alan replied.

Scott seemed surprised. “I didn’t even know we still had that. I thought you took it apart when you were ten to see how it worked, Virg?”

“And put it back together. Wasn’t that hard.”

“Want to join us?” Alan invited him.

Scott seemed to hesitate. “I still have things to do and I should go back.”

I had to bite my lip to hold back my laughter when someone—and I think it was Virgil!—clucked like a chicken. And as expected, Scott took the bait. He sat down next to John while I was handed back all of the money and the specialist cards were gathered and redistributed.

“Hey, you can’t reset it, I was winning!” Gordon protested.

“You were not. I had $100 more than you,” Alan stated.

Gordon huffed, put the pieces back inside their respective spots, then couldn’t resist playing “Shave and a Haircut” with the buzzer. Scott’s reaction was instantaneous and he reached out to slap the back of his brother’s head twice without even missing a beat.

They all played a first round with varying degrees of success. Watching them play was more entertaining than actually playing. I began mentally assigning scores to their distraction tactics.

When it was his turn, Scott picked Writer’s cramp. The irony of the situation was not lost on me and I fought my better judgement for a whole two seconds before I decided to make a move—I am a Tracy at heart after all... I carefully shifted my weight as he concentrated and extended my arm... then at the last moment, I poked his armpit in that one location I know will tickle him then hurried to sit back straight with my bank notes in my hand and an innocent expression on my face.

He squawked like an offended seagull, hit the side of the game and made it buzz, then looked at the nearest brother accusingly. When said brother stopped laughing long enough to say it wasn’t him, he directed his suspicious eyes at me and I’m rather proud to say that I could keep a straight face and raised an eyebrow at him in return.

John was next. He picked a card... the bread basket. He took the tweezers from Scott’s hand and didn’t even try to be careful and made the game buzz in less than a second.

“HA!” Alan hooted out.

“You didn’t have to play if you didn’t want to anymore,” Virgil side-whispered to him.”

“Oh no, I’m playing,” he assured him, then took one of the specialist cards in front of him and flicked it between his long fingers before handing it to me.

He manoeuvred the tweezers with surgical precision, ignoring Gordon’s heavy breathing in his ear, and dropped the plastic slice of bread into my hand. “I believe that is $2000,” he said with a smug smile.

“Show off,” Virgil muttered good-naturedly while I counted the paper slips and gave them to John.

“My turn,” Gordon said, reaching for a card, “It says... butterflies in the stomach.”

The four others froze more or less visibly and Scott gave me a quick side-eye. He remembered the Venom incident, my aversion for the fluttery little creeps and how I made him pay for laughing at me. I ignored him and winked at Gordon. Surprisingly, he had been my hero at the time and I’ll never forget that. But that’s a story for another time.

Gordon extracted the item from the board without touching the edges. “Once again, I prevailed,” he claimed triumphantly, flicking the plastic butterfly in the air and catching it a few times.

I handed him two $100 notes and of course, Gordon being Gordon tried to take them while the game piece was still in the air. He failed, the plastic butterfly ricocheted off his elbow and landed somewhere under the furniture.

Little items like that never land where you expect them, especially on carpet, especially when bouncing off sharp Tracy elbows (I think we can all agree that they are not lumpy, Lady Penelope’s flirting techniques need a little improvement). I refused to join in on the search because, of course, too many people were there already and I was more helpful sitting in my seat with my legs crossed out of the way.

Gordon looked under the table, then moved on to the little shelf where my father’s bonsai tree and Lady Penelope’s communicator picture are located. He peered underneath, sneezed loudly, then backtracked in horror.

Screeching like a banshee, he rushed out of the seating area and fled toward the kitchen, nearly knocking over poor Witchy who stood at the top of the stairs.

“I go fight a lurgy for an hour, take a moment to get something to drink and this is what I come back to?” she said, visibly unimpressed by the sight of four Tracy butts in the air around the lounge table as they scanned the carpet.

I had to disagree with her on that, it was a rather interesting sight.

“Why is he even screaming like that, he sounds like he’s seen a ghost?” Gordon could be heard sneezing somewhere in the background and she rolled her eyes.

She strode to where he had been crouching and bent down and sighed. “Just as I thought... Scott, you forgot to close the office door again,” she said, reaching out and picking up Buddy the bearded dragon from his hiding spot before he scampered away.

She removed the plastic butterfly from his mouth and cradled him close. “I don’t want a repeat of last time when I had to get him in the vent—”

Witchy’s eagle eye spotted the twitch in John’s face instantly and he held her gaze, doing his own version of the Tracy smile to placate her. They did that fascinating wordless exchange established couples seem to be able to do for a moment and then, she then turned to me, noticed the fake bank notes in my hands and threw me a disappointed: “You’re encouraging them?”

I immediately pointed at John to defend myself. “He’s winning,” I said.

“If I draw brain freeze, I’ll be able to get you a lifetime supply of socks that don’t roll down. Think about it,” he deadpanned.

She looked at us as if we had lost our minds—she might be right—then stormed off with the dragon.

I guess I should go check on Gordon now. And probably make a new batch of soup as a peace offering.

Author’s note: Shave and a Haircut is what “that knock on the door” is called.

#isolation island #Thunderbirds in isolation #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirdsarego #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds 2015 #fluffember2020

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chxssix · 4 years

Text

So, you want to go to Oxford?

On the 12th of January 2021, I got the incredible shock of being offered a place to study at Oxford University, and since then I have been asked about the admissions process by several different people, so I thought I’d make a post explaining as much about the process as I can - and giving advice along the way!

A little background on me: I’m a student in my Upper Sixth year at a state-funded Sixth Form College in England. My GCSE grades were 5 8′s, 2 7′s, and 4 6′s. My A-Level predicted grades are A*AAA in Law, Classics, Biology and EPQ, respectively. I’d like to make a note here that while some Universities may lower the grades in their conditional offer if you have an EPQ, Oxford generally do not and do not seem to favour it in any way. My offer is an AAA in my A-Levels, to read Classics IIB (meaning I have not studied Latin or Greek to A-Level standard and will be studying Greek first) at Oriel College.

So, onto the post!

1) Get started early

While you don’t have to have planned going to Oxford from the age of 5, it helps to have some idea you’d like to go there, preferably when in year 10, however as long as you’ve decided by the end of your first year at college you’ll be set!

The reason I suggest as early as year 10 is that Oxford do put some weight on your GCSE grades (although not a massive amount so don’t stress too much!) As I’m evidence for, you don’t need straight 9′s to get an offer, however strong grades at GCSE can make you a more competitive applicant. On top of this you may need certain grades to enrol onto the A-Level subjects which are required for your application to Oxford. These subject requirements can be found on the Oxford website, under the Undergraduate Admissions section, and it’s a good idea to look in advance.

Something else to be aware of is that Oxford (and Cambridge) have application deadlines EARLIER THAN UCAS, so you will need to have everything sorted a few months earlier.

2) What predicted grades do you need?

Your predicted grades will usually need to at least meet the average offer for the course you’re applying for, in the correct subjects. At Oxford, the lowest conditional offer seems to be AAA (this was the case for my course). Something which may help you out is to have at least one grade above what is required of you, as again this makes you more competitive), so if you’re really wanting an answer other than ‘it doesn’t really matter’, then predicted grades of A*AA would stand you in good stead for most courses.

I’ve also had people ask whether taking 4 or 5 A-Levels increases your chances of admission and, while I’m not totally sure on the answer myself, I can’t see why it would put you at any advantage, as all you are doing is spreading your energy even further between more subjects, Why do mediocre at five when you can excel at three? Although Oxford doesn’t lower the offer for doing an EPQ, I would ALWAYS recommend this in lieu of a 4th A-Level. An EPQ is an Extended Project and usually takes the form of a dissertation. It requires you to take on your own research in a field of your choice (mine was on Homosexuality in ancient Greece) at University level - this shows the University that you’re capable of research (a fundamental part of every degree), you’re passionate about your subject and have a genuine interest, and you’re willing to go beyond your school’s curriculum. All three are things that Oxford look for in applicants.

3) What should you put in a personal statement?

The most important thing to do here is to show your enthusiasm for the subject you intend to read at Oxford - remember though that the same statement is read by ALL your UCAS choices, not just Oxford. Ask yourself these questions: why do I like this subject? What interests me most? How have I shown this in my super-curricular activities? (for anyone unsure a ‘super-curricular’ is like an extracurricular, except it has to do directly with your subject of interest - for example I teach a beginner’s course for Classics once a week at my college).

I used a very specific structure for my personal statement, where I stated something I had done, what it showed about my interest in Classics, and what it led me to discover. For example, I went to the British Museum to see the exhibition Troy: Myth and Reality, and while I was there, explaining Achilles and Patroklos to my mum, I was approached by someone who asked if I’d ever read The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I told him no, and he recommended I read it. The book led to my decision on EPQ topic. By showing a link between things I had done which have developed my interest and understanding of my subject, I have told the admissions tutors why I love the subject, and what I’m doing on my own intuition to further my knowledge. Another idea is to drop in some extracurriculars as you go - I mentioned my roles as a Peer Mentor at school and College, attending Latin and Greek workshops, and being part of a stage school (which is why Greco-Roman theatre appeals to me so much).

4) Admissions tests

Not every subject requires you to take an admissions test, but a fair few do. I have very little advice for this as they are essentially unable to be studied for. Do plenty of practice tests (which can be found on Oxford’s website) and you’ll be good to go.

You will have to book this admission test, so speak to your Tutor or Careers Department at College about how to do so.

Some courses may also require written work, which can also be found under the Undergraduate Admissions section of the website.

5) Interviews

If you’re invited to interview then congratulations! Some people won’t make it to this stage so feel free to have a little celebrate, it’s a massive achievement to get here.

You may be offered more than one interview for your college, and more than one college may interview you. This is totally normal, and a lot of people are interviewed by more than one college (I was interviewed by both Oriel - my college of choice and the one I hold an offer for - and St Hugh’s).

Out of everything I’ve been asked repeatedly since my offer is “how do I ace the interview?”. You don’t, is the answer. Oxford treats the interviews as a chance to assess how you will work in their academic environment, structuring them like a tutorial. For some you may be shown something in advance that they will question you on. When preparing for your interview make sure you re-read your personal statement and any submitted written work, as this is where, if you have exaggerated your knowledge, they will catch you out.

At interview try to remain as open minded as possible. They will ask for your opinions on things, or for you to explain a bit more about what you said in the written work. They will also want you to be able to argue the reverse of that belief (i.e. say you believe Book 11 of The Odyssey is useless, you would explain this but likely also suggest how it could be useful).

If you don’t understand what they’ve asked of you, then ask them to clarify for you. They understand it’s a stressful situation and you may not have properly processed what they said. Clarification when you’re unsure gives you the best shot at being able to give a quality answer to their questions, rather than rambling about what you think they asked about.

The long and short of interviews is that no two are the same, there were joking comments made in a couple of mine by both me and the tutors in relation to something that had been said, or that I had written in my submitted work. The other interviews were more serious and one had a very deep academic discussion on my EPQ topic (I’m someone who tends to read modern sources on ancient texts a little more often than the texts themselves, so talking about my EPQ was the best opportunity for me to show my knowledge and passion).

There’s not any other advice I can really think of, but if you have any questions please feel free to ask me! :)

If you decide to apply to Oxford then I wish you all the luck in the world with your application!! Xx

#oxford #oxforduni #oriel #uniadmissions #university

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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What do you think of dick hability to read the body language in new 52 People act as it doesn't exist and it really bugs me because thats one of the few things i really liked from new 52

I actually really like it, and it fits with some longtime headcanons of mine, but it hasn’t been touched on enough that I can understand it rubbing some people the wrong way, due to Cass.

But its like I said in that post earlier this week, about how I think its pointless to be ‘possessive’ of character traits…..I think Dick is an expert hacker himself, but I don’t think he’s on Babs’ level. Nobody is on Barbara’s level. But his own expertise isn’t diminished because he’s not on the level of the pretty much undisputed best hacker in the DC Universe. Neither is Barbara’s expertise lessened by virtue of Dick, as well as Tim, Bruce and most of the rest of the Batclan, all being damn good at it in their own right.

I see it as being the same thing here. I like the idea that Dick is intuitive and highly capable when it comes to reading body language, for a number of reasons, but I don’t think it suddenly makes him Cass, means he’s as good at it as Cass, or that Cass being on a whole other level with that, being like…lessened or threatened because Dick’s own capabilities in that regard are touched on every now and again.

I’ve actually said this many times before, but I think this insistence so many fans have about their faves being the only ones associated with certain traits, stories or characteristics actually does them a disservice, because when you stop viewing things as a competition and instead look at it as a chance for common ground, you unveil SO many possibilities.

For instance, I’ve always felt, long before the New 52, that it makes sense for Dick to have a strong, unconscious understanding of body language….as in, he’s at the upper levels of what humans are naturally capable of having in that regard, which of course still puts him at an entirely different level than Cass, whose mastery of it is deliberately BEYOND peak human levels because of her own backstory.

But if you think about it, Dick having skills in that direction makes sense for him AND opens up a lot of areas for Dick and Cass to bond more AND have occasional conflict.

Dick is one of the only other Batkids aside from Cass AND Damian, who knows what its like to be raised literally from the time he can walk, to be a proficient athlete with complete control of his body as like…a lifestyle. The kind of demands that makes of someone, the way that instills certain work ethics and instincts in someone practically from birth, to such a degree that it probably NEVER becomes something he can wrap his mind around, that for some people, these kinds of habits AREN’T second nature, practically built into him….that’s something that I don’t think even some of the other most highly capable athletes in the DC universe are fully capable of grasping…like Bruce, Tim, Jason, Dinah, etc. Obviously this doesn’t lessen any of their skills or proficiency as athletes, just as professional athletes who don’t start training in their chosen fields until later in childhood can be just as capable as ones who started in early childhood. But it makes I think, for a slightly different mindset.

I think this is part of why Dick understands Damian so much better or more easily than a lot of others do. Because Damian was raised this way too, just with different end goals than Dick. Dick can’t relate to being raised to kill, to stamp down on his urge to show affection, the specific training methods of the League with someone as young as Damian, no. But that unconscious, built in awareness of his own body in ways that even a lot of other athletes or fighters never develop just because they approach their bodies and training so differently…that I think Dick gets, and because of that he gets Damian and his own work ethic, and the way that telling him to not push himself so hard or take it easy at times….like is going to be totally wasted on Damian, FOR THE SAME REASONS those things have so often been wasted on Dick.

Telling someone to be careful not to strain or overwork their body is not going to carry a whole lot of weight with a twelve year old kid who has spent ten of those twelve years being instilled with a greater awareness of his own body and capabilities than anyone else will EVER grasp….let alone someone who only met them a year or two ago (notice how this applies to both Damian AND Dick).

Similarly, causing people to worry when they go throw themselves into an extremely rigorous workout routine in the name of ‘relaxing or de-stressing’ is always going to be a thing, when other people just fundamentally don’t get that for someone raised from birth to eat, sleep and breathe their own physicality….this IS relaxing.

So IMO Dick and Damian have at least that much in common, which has given Dick particular insight into Damian that others don’t have, and helped him get further in reaching Damian and developing a bond with him. And extend this to Cass and her own backstory, and I think they all three have this in common, and thus could share this understanding between all three of them….thus giving Cass more opportunities and ways to bond with Dick and Damian in particular.

Continue on for ten thousand more words (lol, I wish I was exaggerating. Oh, me) of Dick Meta, Cass Meta, and Dick and Cass Meta, below the cut:

Now, add in the fact that Dick wasn’t just raised from birth to be a world-class athlete, like Cass was…..but as I often stress, just as important….he was raised from birth to be a PERFORMER. This is where I think his instinctive awareness of body language would have come from. Because he was raised to do all of his athletics with apparent ease, to show none of the strain it takes, to make it look like art, like the performance that it so usually was. And he was also raised to not just perform for a crowd, but to command their attention, to draw eyes, to feed off their energy and use that to tailor his own performances, his every action, to achieve maximum impact.

Don’t forget Dick was a world-class acrobat as a CHILD. He was quite literally a child prodigy….and people LOVE meeting a child prodigy. Something like the encounter with the Drakes’ that’s part of Tim’s own backstory would have been an every day occurrence to Dick. Which means it was every bit as likely a part of his early training to be able to glean from the rich strangers that wanted a photo op with the young, exhausted child performer that probably just wanted to go to bed now….exactly what would go over best with those strangers, expedite this encounter, and enable Dick to move on to the next one or better yet, out of the tent ASAP.

I’ve talked about the classism Dick endures just by virtue of being a circus performer…its never been about how much money he and his parents did or didn’t have, its about the fact that most people look down on circus performers as like…an amusement to enjoy, not athletes to respect. You can’t deny that people summoning to mind an Olympic level gymnast would view that gymnast in an entirely different way than they would a Cirque de Soleil acrobat they called to mind, even if they had similar levels of athletic skill….because as a society, we regard something like the Olympics as a WORTHY pursuit for an athlete of that caliber….whereas one might sit in the audience of a circus and enjoy the performance, but that doesn’t mean most people walk out of that tent thinking of what they just saw in terms of the SKILL rather than their entertainment, because there’s this unconscious bias that like….if one wanted to actually be respected for their athletics, they’d aim for the Olympics, not to wear gaudy costumes and face paint and travel around in a caravan and never put up roots in any one place, etc.

Our view of the circus goes well back before Dick’s creation, even, but its very much there. You simply can’t argue that most people give circus performers the respect their skillsets deserve and would merit in other situations…..and you bet your ass, someone like Dick who was raised as one, would have been instilled from a very young age with an awareness of how to glean when someone was treating him with disdain…and respond without offending them, but still not necessarily letting them impact him with their disdain.

Because one of the things I don’t think I’ve ever talked much about is how for as much as we talk about Dick’s self esteem issues and insecurities in regards to Bruce…..the boy Bruce first took in as an orphan was NOT overly insecure. If anything, Dick was the complete opposite. He knew EXACTLY what he was capable of, and was not shy about insisting upon it. I would say by all accounts and reading between the lines, the Graysons did a tremendous job in instilling in Dick from a young age an amazing degree of self-confidence….WHICH probably accounts for a LOT of the later conflict between Dick and Bruce, because it was never just a matter of Dick not getting the vocal or visible respect or appreciation from Bruce that he wanted….it was that Bruce wasn’t giving him it in the forms he’d been raised with, and grown accustomed to.

Its that disconnect that I think Dick has always struggled with…where he KNOWS, on some level, that Bruce loves and respects him, and holds enormous appreciation for Dick’s own skills….but Dick only knows this because of….well, what he gleans from Bruce’s body language and his own awareness of Bruce and his nature. He has to read between the lines, and still be left guessing (since Bruce is himself pretty much a master of obscuring his own emotions and body language, in as much as anyone is, to the extent that only someone like Cass can willfully pierce that shroud).

But my point is, there’s every reason in the world to think that Dick’s parents were very good at preparing their world-class prodigy son for the pressures of the spotlight he grew up in, and heavily prioritized making sure he wasn’t going to be diminished by the disdain of whatever snobs he encountered during the meet and greet portion of that lifestyle. And to be good at that, to know how to manage people who make you want to put your fist in their face while giving away nothing but a nod and smile, and still manage to seize enough control over the encounter to walk away with your head held high rather than feeling like you were just thrown to the wolves….that takes a high mastery of body language and an instinctive grasp of how to read people and put them at ease, to seize control of a conversation from someone who is used to having control at all times in all places. You have to know how to PERFORM, at all times. And in this regard, Dick was every bit as much a prodigy as he was in his acrobatics.

IMO Dick Grayson on his A-game could make Brucie weep in envy. I think this training, this ability to read people with just a look and adapt himself accordingly, to make the most of the encounter while giving up the least along the way….I think its absolutely nothing that Bruce himself taught him, that Dick already came to Gotham with, and its what ACTUALLY enabled Dick to survive the lifestyle and spotlight that Bruce’s lifestyle and spotlight made Dick grow up in. Its what enables Dick to handle the pressures of leadership and get along so well with his various teammates, coordinate dissenting personalities well enough to create teams that are famous for how well they gel and work together in battle no matter what they’re like when interacting in civilian arenas. Bruce, for all his skills, is notoriously not a people person. He knows how to manage people. He struggles with understanding them. And this has always been where in comparison to Bruce, Dick soars.

He didn’t learn any of what he knows about being a people person from Bruce. But he sure as hell learned it SOMEWHERE.

And I think that somewhere is in the circus, with his parents and whatever other various babysitters he picked up things along the way from. A kid as friendly and outgoing as Dick would have been soaking things up from all the circus performers like a sponge, I bet. Little tips and tricks of the trade from not just the knife-throwers, as is occasionally referenced….but also the fortune teller and ringmaster and clowns and magicians and escape artists. A couple dozen varieties of different masters of their own crafts, with one thing in common of all of them….all their crafts rely on performing. On reading an audience, even audiences of one. And selling that audience exactly what they’re looking for from that performance.

Let’s not forget that for all Dick’s insecurities and self-esteem issues as an adult….those almost unilaterally exist in regards to his family and closest friends. For the same reasons as he struggles with these things with Bruce….because they’re not great at showing Dick the respect and appreciation he needs from THEM, SPECIFICALLY….in the forms he would recognize, the forms he was raised since birth to receive and recognize as such, when his parents and circus family gave him these things.

Outside matters pertaining to just his family and closest friends, however, Dick is not remotely insecure. There’s a huge chasm between the former and the latter, in terms of how Dick acts and conducts himself. And its probably a large part of why Dick is so adept at not giving away to his family that he’s more in need of their acknowledgment and support than they realize….because Dick spends so MUCH of his life genuinely not giving a shit what most people think about him or say about him….he’s that much more proficient at wearing that as a mask when interacting even with his family of detectives, who are pretty good at reading even him in a lot of other aspects.

Because I maintain that Dick absolutely endured a hell of a lot of classism and racism growing up, and still does….which is not okay no matter how well he endures it….but he for the most part clearly doesn’t let this constant barrage effect his general self-esteem, and that is fairly important to note. Just as is the fact that like….he calls himself Dick, by his own choice, because its more important to him that he hold on to what he can of his parents, every last physical reminder he has available to him….and thus I think its especially shitty to write his second family using his parents’ fond nickname for him as a joke or insult, and probably hurts Dick when they do it….but the rest of the time? The general public making him a punchline for it? Dick could give a fuck. Same with general opinions of his costumes and what he looked like as Robin or early Nightwing, etc, etc.

Dick Grayson is not an insecure person overall….and that I credit entirely to his first parents, the Graysons.

All of this feeds into that overall awareness of body language, reading people for emotional cues and ways to survive a lifetime in the spotlight without being consumed by it…and without alienating people in the process, because a performer needs an audience, and growing up in a circus taught Dick early on that he had to find a way to end these encounters with asshole patrons in a way that kept his head held high but DIDN’T cost the circus - his family - their patronage in the future.

(Another reason I maintain Dick’s oh so infamous temper has been vastly more inflated than fits either canon evidence of it OR his overall characterization…..a man who has been raised from birth in the spotlight and constantly exposed to people who look down on him….like, KNOWS how to control his temper. I’m sorry, he just does, lol. This is basic understanding of human awareness. If your entire life is in one spotlight or another, be it the circus then Wayne Manor and Page Six, as well as being one of the most focused on superheroes in the entire cape community….and you’re somehow overall regarded in all public perceptions as charming….you do NOT have an infamous temper. You just don’t. People love to shove public figures off their pedestals whenever possible….and in both his civilian and superhero personas, Dick Grayson is on very high pedestals. There is no way in hell his general reputation in any of his communities would be anything close to what it is if he actually has as short and nasty of a temper as people love to spin him as having, because of a dozen scenes taken mostly out of context, over the course of 80 years as a high profile character. I’ll stop harping on this one when it stops being the first thing to come to mind when people cite a ‘flaw’ of his.)

Going back to reasons for him to have such a mastery of body language in his own right….Dick was also raised from birth to do his routines as part of a TROUPE, a group of athletes, not just singular by himself. Thus, a TON of what he was raised practicing every day….would have included reading his family’s body language for cues on what to do next. Watching for signs that something might be wrong or off even just by a second and requiring that he adjust his own movements to compensate for that, when they’re all fifty feet in the air and with the crowd cheering so loudly they couldn’t possibly communicate with words….this could literally be a matter of life and death for a troupe of performers whose reputation hinged on them being death-defying in their stunts.

Yes, in most continuities its stressed that his parents didn’t let Dick perform the most dangerous routines with them yet, due to his age…..but that doesn’t mean they weren’t preparing him for them as early as humanly possible, given that its never too early to start working on various skills that are integral to these kinds of things.

And with one of the most fundamental and essential skills needed to be part of a group of performers who excel at dangerous routines being communication, this is all the more reason to think they were probably teaching Dick from a very young age to pick up on body language and watch for even the slightest hints of different indicators of stress, fatigue, anxiety, fear, etc.

Because compensating for something going wrong with a partner’s part of a routine can be essential in matters of teamwork. (Again, just gotta give a shout out to the Flying Graysons here, because its not stated enough that everything Dick knows about being a solo vigilante, he learned from Bruce, but everything he knows about teamwork is either instinctive or built in, OR learned from his parents, part of a team). And most of the time, when we’re talking about shifting position just enough while fifty feet above a crowd in order to make a catch of a partner that launched with not quite enough momentum or is overshooting their mark….compensating or cheating one’s own routine just enough to be there for your partner is the kind of thing that needs to happen in a SPLIT-SECOND…..like, with you making the adjustment the micro-second you realize its necessary….which means you have to be picking up the slightest hint of it the second it shows up in their body language, like a….what’s the word…oh yeah. A pro.

And given that these acrobats were all performers as much as athletes, with it being a given that their performances needed to appear as light and carefree at possible at all times, for the sake of the crowd….they couldn’t afford to give away obvious tells of anxiety, stress or exhaustion, had to keep a performer’s mask of total poise and control at all times throughout their routines….which makes it all the more likely Dick’s own ability to read body language and instinctive or hidden cues is exceptional….as he had to be trained from early on to be able to see behind those masks and read his parents and family for tells even while they were doing their professional best to keep those very tells hidden so that nobody would pick up on them…unless they were a master of reading such things.

So all in all, I believe that among however many languages Dick Grayson was taught from a very early age as part of a globe-trotting circus….one of those was body language itself, even if it was never actually couched in those terms, as though it were an actual language being taught the way it was regarded as such for Cass….as for Dick and his family, it was probably just regarded as tools of the trade, a necessary component of the performer and acrobat toolbox Dick was raised familiarizing himself with from as early as he began walking and talking.

Which brings us back to Cassandra…..as stated, I think Dick is exceptional at reading body language, with as much mastery of that as is possible at peak human potential…..but, that doesn’t make him the equal of Cass, whose own skills in that regard are beyond even that, due to the precise and comic book nature of her own origin. And how her father did something similar but for totally different reasons and no regard whatsoever for Cassandra’s well-being.

So I don’t think there’s any reason that Dick being the next best at reading and reacting to body language takes anything away from Cass being the undisputed master of that, and interpreter of the Batfamily’s hidden emotional cues.

In fact, allowing Dick to be acknowledged as adept at reading body language benefits her character….as she’s so often solely used as the interpreter of the emotionally stunted Batfamily’s attempted repression of their emotional cues. Basically just being treated as a plot device rather than a character in her own right.

As much as I project onto Dick and thus talk about fandom’s neglect of various facets of his character, it can’t be denied that the same is true of Cass….times ten.

Fanfics spend WAY more time using Cass to establish or well, tattle on various Batfamily members’ emotions than they spend on giving Cass emotions of her own in regards to whatever situation is going on in a given scene.

And since Dick is so often used as the family mediator or peacemaker anyway, this doesn’t actually change anything about his own role in things….it merely supplies a concrete reason for why he so often is defaulted into that position, and so good at it, despite his family’s overall emotional constipation. He has to be amazing not just at teamwork, but reading hidden emotions as well, in order to manage his family and their various arguments even just as well as he does already.

(Just a quick clarification…earlier when I noted that Dick’s own insecurities largely stem from the Batfamily and not always knowing or trusting where he stands with them….its not that he has no ability to read them despite their own very well crafted performer masks. Its just that as good as he is, he’s still never going to be as good at this as Cassandra is, and there’s still going to be things he misses, or things he misinterprets. And additionally, the problem remains, that he shouldn’t HAVE to glean any hints of familial love, respect and appreciation from his family’s body language. When he’s constantly relying on subtext and body language to reassure himself that they really do love and appreciate him, its inevitable that sooner or later self-doubts and second guessing are going to start to creep in. So its not that Dick doesn’t ever see these things in his family’s body language. Its that over time, I believe this has progressed to the point where even when he sees these cues, he second guesses himself as to whether he’s actually seeing things that are there, or just seeing what he wants to see. And since none of them are exactly making a point to validate what he sees or thinks he sees with actual validation in indisputable forms, like verbal confirmation of this…eventually, Dick’s own skills reading body language become irrelevant here, since he himself is aware he’s an unreliable narrator when trying to narrate what his family’s body language is saying. He wants it to be saying all the things he uses to assuage whatever hurt he feels for not hearing them tell him these things…thus he’s too aware of his own bias when reading them for cues to actually trust any of the cues he reads, that could otherwise confirm this.)

Anyway. So acknowledging or even emphasizing Dick’s own exceptional abilities with body language would actually be to Cassandra’s benefit, I maintain. Because without expecting anything of Dick that isn’t already expected of him and his role in canon and fandom, it merely provides additional support for the idea he’s good at playing family mediator even with as emotionally repressed most of their family is. Thus freeing up Cass from constantly being looked to as the interpreter for all the things most of their family have trouble saying….and allowing for more focus to be paid to her own emotions. And letting her HAVE them, in the first place.

Because we have to talk about the elephant in the room here: racism in regards to Cass. The quiet, stoic, normally serene and beatific Asian martial arts master is a racist as hell trope, and its one that makes all too frequent an appearance when Cass is used at all in fics. AND canon.

Its not that Cass can’t be all those things at various times. Its that they can’t be ALL that she is. At ALL times. (And that, for the record, she’s not usually ANY of those things in canon that actually tries to develop her rather than use her as a one-note trope in its own right. Cassandra Cain…serene? LOLOL. Please, I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it ain’t the Cass I know and love).

First of all, give her a sense of humor, because she has one, and its amazing. You’ll note I make a point whenever I write her to emphasize her having a kind of dry, sardonic wit that is not at all opposed at being at her siblings’ expense, lol. I mean, its not like that’s the only take possible on her, or even just her sense of humor, I just mean…have one. Humor is one of the most telling representatives of a person’s characterization. By that I mean, a person’s sense of humor is one of the things we most initially associate with them in our mind, and a character having a distinct sense of humor is one of the easiest and best ways to develop them as having their own character voice, something that marks them as distinct in your awareness from other characters. Where if you close your eyes and picture them in a scene, what comes out when they talk, like, to make a joke….isn’t interchangeable with just any other character. It sounds or feels like them, specifically.

And just FYI, you might have an easier time writing Cass making jokes if you allow her to form full sentences. She can speak English, has been written speaking English quite well in the past, and the insistence on broken English when writing her that way in canon is shitty and racist in and of itself anyway, so those particular takes on her don’t need to be respected let alone emulated in fanfiction. Let Cass Speak English In Complete Sentences 2KForever. She’ll still be Cass, I promise you. But the changes made to her brain in canon that allowed her to finally learn spoken languages years after her brain had finished developing, like, that happened early enough after Cass’ debut that there’s really no excuse for writing fic where she’s been part of the family for years and still hasn’t picked up a strong grasp of English.

Y’know how I’m always saying the entire Batfamily are ALL Mary Sues, they are a family of Mary Sues, that is pretty much their high concept as a group, that they’re a composite of the most otherwise competent people in the world and completely emotionally incompetent at the same time? Like, it applies here, because as I also harp on a lot about, I think all of the Batfamily are actual literal geniuses, and I do mean all. Cassandra included. She’s a master of her own many areas of expertise and thus IMO more than capable of picking up languages fairly quickly once the canon barrier to her doing that earlier in life is removed. It just looks and sounds weird and suspect, to insist on writing her as never moving past broken English, IMO.

And also, like, she doesn’t need to ever be as talkative as Steph, nor do I think would it fit her to be written that way either, but there’s a very wide range of options between that and hardly ever talking at all. I do think she defaults to being one of the more quiet ones in a room, as in one of the last to speak….but give her reasons to be that way, instead of just more imitation of our media’s racist insistence on treating Asian characters as the quiet, all-knowing keepers of sage wisdom who only share their truths once you’ve made the trek up to their mountain top.

So again just in terms of my own personal take, I tend to write Cass as being one of the last to speak up when around people she’s not as familiar with, because its her version of keeping her back to the wall of a room so no one can sneak up behind and surprise her. She’s only quiet at first in my stuff because focusing on using conversations to glean as much information as she can about the people in them before jumping in is just like, a form of intel-gathering for her and her past left her with a tendency to be as overly cautious in her own way as the rest of her family, and this is what her way looks like.

(Dick puts on his performer’s mask, Jason blusters and leads with bravado, Damian adopts a position of superiority and will only climb down once you sufficiently peak his interest, Tim recites facts and trivia and likes to bore people he dislikes into submission so you give up and go away, Duke is the family member who really makes friends so easily that any time he makes enemies, his friends have already plotted to destroy you before Duke even gets around to trying to do that himself, Babs has already hacked your bank account and credit rating by the time you open your mouth and thus feels no social anxiety whatsoever as worst comes to worst, she can always just tank your credit score to make herself feel better, and upon meeting you for the first time, Steph either adopts you or punches you in the throat, depending on which way her gut is leaning. As for Bruce, well. He’s terrified of pretty much all social settings, but he’d have to actually admit to that for the first time in recorded human history before anyone could actually cite what ‘his way’ of dealing with social interactions he’s wary of might be. I mean, its basically just ‘Brucie’, but you get what I mean.)

So I mean, its not inherently bad to write Cass as being quieter than the rest of her siblings, and you don’t need her quoting Shakespeare back and forth with Jason in order to prove you’re not writing her speaking broken English. Its just. Do some digging in her head before settling in and writing what you’ve found there. Actually TRY getting in her head in the first place. Spruce it up a bit, redecorate your surroundings, make it feel lived in and homey. Give it CHARACTER. Whenever you write a character choice, in my personal opinion, you should, if asked, be able to back up that character choice by having a reason you feel the character would choose that.

For me, I write Cass being the quietest of her siblings in social settings simply because she’s doing recon first, and of her various skillsets, spoken language is the one she’s mastered most recently and thus she has the least familiarity with….and thus is the last thing she turns to in any given situation, because she’d rather go down the list and run through every other skill she has to see if it could apply here, before resigning herself to having to converse with the person in front of her because she doesn’t think Bruce would accept “I didn’t know how else to change the subject” as a justification for stabbing someone in a non-vital and easily healed location that had the fringe benefit of rapid bloodloss leading to them passing out fairly quickly.

And of course, none of this applies with Batfamily, because she is comfortable with her family for the most part, and thus when I write her being the most quiet in those group scenes, its because she prefers listening their just purely because she finds her siblings’ antics entertaining. And also because I view her as being as batshit competitive as the rest of them, so IMO she’s always plotting the perfect conversational one-hit KO to have at the ready before she wades in. Because in the Batfamily, even ordinary conversations are something you can and should win. Otherwise, what’s even the point? LOL.

Also in terms of my own stuff, I tend to write Cass and Tim as having very similar forms of wit, and my personal take on them is that they both have just slightly different degrees of that same dry, sardonic kind of commentary, as their primary display of humor. This doesn’t necessarily always match their canon characterizations and how they display humor there - but its due to the fact that they’re two of the characters canon most rarely allows to show a sense of humor in recent years, and it tends to be all over the place more often than not. This is a major departure from how they both were portrayed in the 90s, where Tim’s humor was much more consistently in line with what I’m describing…and thus, so was Cassandra’s, when she debuted and developed her own primary characterization.

So basically, I consider Tim to be a major influence on Cass’ humor….or more accurately, in the shape her own sense of humor more commonly takes. Because it was with and around Tim that Cass first started to pick up a lot of social cues and explore her own sense of self for pretty much the first time in her life.

Stephanie’s humor, by contrast is a lot more loud and gregarious and in your face….which when you put the three of them in scene together as a trio, like they once spent a lot of time as, positions her as an extremely different version of the ‘straight man’ to their comedic duo. Because Steph doesn’t need anyone to back up or appreciate her own humor, she’s already landing the punchlines way before anyone else has even had time to think of any, and she doesn’t care what the reception is, the lovable loudmouth goof that she is. Which allows for Cass and Tim to sigh behind her and exchange sidelong glances and kinda….narrate her theatrics in that ‘faces the camera like they’re on The Office’ sort of way, which I mean, I personally find hilarious when they do it, and she’s not remotely bothered by, because like, she’s fucking hilarious and anyone who doesn’t get that is simply wrong and needs to be pitied, if you ask her.

Anyway, that’s just why my own depictions of Cass and Tim share a lot of their humor in common and some of their other characteristics….they’re the ones Cass either consciously or unconsciously picked up from Tim, as he was one of the first people for her to genuinely feel comfortable around and thus someone she trusted to both have knowledge of and mastery over the various social cues she was now finding she needed to learn because of her new environments.

(Of course, this is one of the times where Cass was dead wrong about something, IMO, as she might have overestimated Tim’s mastery of certain specific social cues and her body-language reads have her aware people aren’t responding her own attempts at mimicking them in the way she’s fairly confident they should be, and she’s not sure what she’s doing wrong there. Oh well. She’s still better off than if she’d picked Bruce to emulate there. When she asked him, he’d stiffened and radiated such intense discomfort, even Steph froze in mid-ramble as she sensed it on even the complete opposite side of the Cave.)

ANYWAY. Wrapping up THAT particular tangent and cycling back around to Dick and Cass having skill with reading body language in common….I think this could also be a huge opportunity to write Dick having a dynamic with Cass that’s unique to just the two of them and distinct from the dynamics they have with the rest of their family. Not to give them a super special bond but just because I mean, all the sibling dynamics between the various individual Batkids should ideally have their own flavor, because nobody interacts with two different siblings in the same way. Each sibling is their own unique individual, and thus should have their own unique dynamic when interacting with them.

So I like to headcanon Dick and Cass in private being the family gossips. They love dishing on the rest of the family with just each other….and being the two most skilled at seeing behind their family’s masks (and thus what their family most wants to keep hidden, to varying degrees), they have more dirt on everyone else than most intelligence agencies have on their nations’ enemies. Of course, they’re both staunchly moral, so they would never ever use their powers here for evil, or to hurt or embarrass their family.

They would, however, occasionally indulge in snickers and giggles about it behind closed doors. Look, shut up, they’re BONDING, they have childhood trauma, its fine.

And if Cassandra’s superior skills with body language means she inevitably has more gossip to share with Dick than vice versa, that’s okay, she’s still more than happy to share. He’s the one who introduced her to the joys of gossip, after all, so if anyone’s entitled to it, its him.

I also headcanon that because they’re both the best at reading body language, there are occasions when in group environments or just at the dinner table with the whole family, they both happen to pick up on certain cues or be aware that a sibling is lying through their teeth about something or being full of shit, and then catch each other’s eye and give the faintest of eye rolls or ‘can you believe they’re falling for this.’ Which sometimes other siblings catch, because Cass and Dick have forgotten to be subtle about it. Or did they not forget anything, and are just being trolls and instigating shit for the giggles? Who can say. Probably just them, which they find quite fun.

In fact, its slightly possible that the rest of the family, ever since Cass joined them, have developed a slightly inflated estimation of Dick’s own skills with reading body language, and now credit him with more of a mastery of it than even he actually possesses.

See, I have this one headcanon that every now and then, just to mess with their family, Dick and Cass make a point to hold a silent conversation in front of them. You know that thing people who know each other really well do with just their eyes, like managing to convey certain impressions to each other just by being expressive enough in ways and about things they’re pretty sure the other person will get and be on the same wavelength about?

Yeah, that, but Cass and Dick do it without exaggerated facial expressions. And for like. Ten whole minutes. Meanwhile, Tim’s like: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not buying any of this” and then determinedly ignoring them. Jason’s annoyed because he can’t actually ever seem to ignore them, and then this builds into something like: “You guys better not be talking about me behind my back. Or I mean, right in front of my face. Whatever. And you definitely better not be talking about Tim right in front of his face and not including me!” Steph just keeps continuing on with whatever she’s doing, entirely unbothered, because she knows if they’re actually communicating anything important (or even slightly of interest to her), she’s sure she can get Cass to tell her later. And she’s not wrong, of course. Duke just shakes his head and feels better about being slightly jealous due to how funny it is watching it get under everyone else’s skin, but in the name of not feeling left out, he joins in on shit-talking Dick and Cass in order to have Vengeance. “B, didn’t you ever teach them its rude to exclude people from your conversation? You know, some people would say its never to late to ground your children.”

Damian, by stark contrast to the rest, completely abandons whatever else he’s doing to watch them both as intently as he can for as long as they persist. As he’s probably third in line behind the two of them when it comes to instinctive grasp of body language, due to the whole ‘being raised to read/scan others for as much information as possible just from their movements. Y’know. In case you have to kill them.’ In his case, his full grasp of it was hindered by seemingly being taught to dismiss certain specific emotions as irrelevant or a weakness, and though Dick and the rest of the family have by now done a pretty good job at getting him slowly but surely past all of that, its like retraining himself, trying to consciously now pick up on cues that he spent a decade discarding and moving past the second he saw them.

But he’s determined to become as adept at reading body language now as even Grayson is, at least, even if his implicit acceptness that he’ll never have the same mastery their sister does is fully internalized and something he’ll never admit to, even on pain of death. Both Dick and Cass have at various times offered to help him with it, but he refuses as a point of pride….he wants to do it himself. So every time they have one of these ‘conversations’ in front of the family, he drops everything else he does and scrutinizes them for the whole thing like he’s a codebreaker sure that in time, he’ll crack the code and all its secrets will be revealed. (Mostly, its more like he dreams of the day he’s become good enough at it that he and Dick can hold silent conversations like this and he can rub it in Drake’s face. Hah! It will be glorious, Internal Damian insists).

Even Bruce himself isn’t entirely sure whether or not Dick and Cass are fully communicating the whole time they converse like this, or just faking it for funsies. It frustrates him to no end that he’s yet to figure out a way to just…ask them, without giving away that he doesn’t actually already know the answer, and that’s BUGGING THE CRAP OUT OF HIM, C’MON!!

(Of course, both Dick and Cass have fully picked up on his frustration and thus realized he’s as clueless as the rest of the family, and its this precise thing that they spend most of these ‘conversations’ silently giggling about to each other).

And in terms of fleshing Cass out…..part of what frustrates me so much about the excuse people give for focusing on certain negative fanon takes on Dick, that its done to make him more interesting, because no one’s perfect….

Its never been that this claim, in and of itself, is untrue. The problem I’ve always had with it is they add in ‘flaws’ in the name of making Dick more realistic, while at the same time ignoring plenty of material that’s already present in Dick’s character…but which focusing on, would require people spend more time and insight on him than they want to. Just making Dick angry and ‘remind people he has a temper’ is quick and easy, in comparison.

However, the other part of why this claim bugs me so much is because it IS valid and applies to fanon’s two dimensional takes of two other characters….who are never written with any kind of flaws which is part of why they come across as fairly superficial in a lot of works. And that’s Duke and Cass. When they show up at all, their usage is VERY superficial, and like….I don’t think I’ve ever read something with either of them, where they were written having a conflict with another member of the family, other than just sometimes Cass not liking Jason because of his stance on killing. (And usually this is in Jason-centric fics, so its not really in the name of fleshing out Cass so much as making Jason more misunderstood and Cass the bad guy for not respecting that okay he kills people, but only because he’s very sad, she should be able to see that, ugh have a heart).

So, I also headcanon there is a slightly negative dynamic between Dick and Cass specifically, albeit one Dick himself is not aware of.

(And also complicated by the fact that as much as I gripe about Dick being perceived as having negative dynamics with the rest of his siblings that are all his fault, Cass is the ONE sibling this is ACTUALLY true of, even if it was only really in one story, Redemption Road. I go into that in more depth in another meta, but long story short it was after she was brainwashed by Deathstroke and killed because he made her, and Dick was written as wary and untrusting of her return, not because he didn’t like her - they’d already spent a lot of time in years before this bonding - but rather because he didn’t trust that they could be totally sure the brainwashing was gone yet, and thought Bruce was being too relaxed about that. I maintain this is a callback to his own issues with that time he was brainwashed by Brother Blood and people were a lot less great at understanding in the aftermath that a lot of his choices hadn’t been his to actually make, and that there was bitterness here on his part for Cass getting the understanding and support from Bruce that we never saw Dick get when it was him in a similar position. Kinda a Prodigal Son type vibe. But point being, this was a brief period and it didn’t last, but it is there so there’s interesting potential to have Dick and Cass not DISLIKE each other by any means, but just at times be slightly uncomfortable around each other and trying their best to hide it...from the one other person in the family most capable of/likely to pick up on it).

So what I think it is on Cass’ part, the discomfort/slight ‘not quite sure how I feel about this’ aspect of things.... Like, its just a headcanon, and one where in my head she’s put a lot of effort into making sure he never ever picks up on this particular thing from her. Because she’s not proud of it. At all.

Even if pride is really the problem.

See, I’ve long believed that out of the entire Batclan, Dick is the only person who can ever beat Cass in a fight. Even compared to Bruce.

And to be clear, its not like Dick can always beat Cass. Or even often. At most, its still maybe like, two fights out of ten. And its not deliberate, like something he can do or capitalize on consciously.

But for someone like Cass, who otherwise is pretty much undefeated unless she’s going up against her own mother, Lady Shiva….even two fights out of ten is a lot.

And it bugs her, more than she cares to admit.

Because she is as competitive in her own ways as the rest of her family. She does have her own ego about certain things, like everyone else does. And David Cain, monster that he was, raised her to be the best there is, at one thing and one thing only: fighting. As much as she hates him, as much as she hates her childhood and what was done to her, how much she missed out on and the things she still feels left out for not understanding or grasping the way she thinks she should…..alongside all that has always been at least an awareness that at least there is one thing that came out of it: she is the best. Absent her mother, who one day she will fully and consistently surpass, everyone including Lady Shiva believes…as much as Cass hates her father and everything he did to her and why, she’s still at times taken a certain sort of pride in her skills in fighting. At least in that one slight respect, even if its not something she would have chosen, had she ever been given a choice….at least it had worked, had done what it’d been intended to.

Except for when it comes to Dick. Who will probably always be able to beat her, maybe two times out of ten. No matter how much more she grows in her skills. There’s that one or two times every now and then, where it will always be a toss-up, as likely to go to him as to her.

And its not something that Dick’s even aware of giving him a specific edge when it comes to fighting her, and its not something he could capitalize on even if he were aware of it.

See, as much as fighting is second nature to Cass, as instinctive as breathing…it goes hand in hand with her ability to read body language. That’s her edge, the one variable that no one else can compete with or match her on, the thing that will always put her in a class of her own…..the one result of specific training that was crafted specifically to create this one result.

You can’t separate Cassandra’s fighting prowess from her ability to read body language. They are one and the same, even if she can use the latter for other things too, and even if her fighting prowess isn’t JUST due to her ability to read body language. Which its not, by any means. BUT, regardless, she can’t train herself out of a reliance on body language while fighting….especially not to fight one person in specific, her own brother, and even there pretty much just out of pride.

Because the slight advantage Dick has over everyone else when facing her, is that like her, he’s one of the only fighters out there who was trained from birth to have an almost inhuman mastery of his own body, to be at the peak of human capability in specific regards. Even though his training wasn’t at all in the arena of fighting, at least not before he was taken in by Bruce. For Dick as well as Cass, there are certain things that are so fundamental to him, so ingrained into his movements because they were taught to him at the same time as he was taught to walk, the one being every bit as natural as the other.

And acrobatics was only one of these things. Performing was the other.

Y’see, the one variable Cass can’t totally account for every single time she spars with Dick….is that Dick’s body lies.

Like I said earlier on….its not just reading body language that Dick was likely raised to do, albeit in different, less rigorous ways than Cass. He was also taught from an equally early age how to DISPLAY body language. Or rather, a specific kind of body language.

My headcanon is that because as early as he began learning acrobatics, Dick was taught acrobatics with an eye towards performing, specifically. Since that was what his family did. And the one thing performers like the Flying Graysons always, always have to do…is perform with a smile.

So it was probably drilled into Dick from an early age, even if it wasn’t couched in these terms or even consciously thought of in this specific way…..but while taught the fundamental components of a flip, breaking it down into each individual micro-movement expected of his body in order to achieve the optimal flip for performing in front of a crowd…..one of those micro-movements, for Dick…was a smile.

Its as fundamental to his acrobatics as every other command his conscious AND subconscious mind sends to the various muscle groups he uses in his routines and now in his fighting even. I think its a large part of why quips and banter and grins are so intrinsic to his fighting as well. He doesn’t KNOW how to be anything else. Bruce probably tried to train it out of him before realizing or accepting that focusing on just making Dick not smile while backflipping over an opponent was detrimental, if not merely just unnecessary. Its just second nature to Dick, as much as reading body language is to Cass.

His own training from the time he could walk, put just as much emphasis on ensuring that no matter how he felt during a performance, no matter how exhausted he was or how stressed, whether he was having a bad day or was just cranky or mad at his parents or mad about something someone in the crowd said or just didn’t feel like practicing his routines today….he did it all with a smile, an easy, effortless grin, as though he was lighter than air and nothing he did was taking a toll on his body, it was all equally effortless.

Combine that with the fact that for Dick, because of what his training was FOR….because it was all done in the name of being with his family, being like his family, it was so he could do what nobody else could do, so he could fly….unlike Cass, Dick’s early training instilled in him an intrinsic pairing of movement and joy. To him, movement IS joy. Its essential to his core, to who he is.

Where other people see him throwing in unnecessary flips to his fighting to show off, Dick’s always just grinned and shrugged his shoulders at this, unable to explain what’s not even a matter of conscious thought….to him, saying he added an unnecessary flip is like saying to someone else they took an unnecessary breath. He can understand what they’re saying….just like you can take note of taking an extra breath that you don’t really need…but he can’t link that to the ‘show off’ part of things anymore than you could understand someone accusing you of showing off for taking shorter, quicker breaths than you need to.

Because Dick doesn’t throw in unnecessary acrobatics while fighting because he wants to show off, IMO. Who is he showing off for? The people he’s fighting? Why on earth would they be more impressed by him doing an extra fancy flip than they would just by virtue of knowing his reputation as a fighter and seeing it proven true as he kicked their ass? No, I think he does it because he’s not even thinking about it, and he certainly can’t think of a reason not to. Its just what he does. Flipping out of the way of an incoming punch in such a way as to make that flip as aesthetically appealing as it is functional, is every bit as instinctive to Dick as every other part of the flip.

Because that’s WHY he was trained to do all this. That’s what its for. Not fighting and superheroics. Those are what he adapted it to do. First and foremost, it was done, taught to him, perfected by him…..so he could fly. And show everybody just how much he loved doing that, when you get right down to it. Because he loves being able to do that. For Dick, the heights he can reach are his higher power, and every single movement he makes is like an individual prayer given in thanks of the gift given to him, that enables him to do that in ways nobody else can match.

But in terms of fighting, and in terms of body language that Cass reads on an equally unconscious level….this has the unexpected and accidental side effect where every so often…Dick’s body lies. At least, I imagine that’s how Cass would describe it, if she ever put it into words for someone. Because he links his joy, his happiness and pleasure at being able to do the acrobatics he does with the movements themselves, because its so ingrained in him to do it all with a smile, to sell for the crowd that its all done with the greatest of ease, and because its inevitable that on some basic level, there are some flips or techniques that the mere act of doing brings to mind - even just his subconscious - memories he associates with that movement, that are largely, more often than not, pleasurable memories….Dick’s body language every so often doesn’t quite read the way everyone else’s does. The way Cass expects it to, knows how to interpret.

And this is nothing deliberate on his part. Nothing he could capitalize on, even if Cass did ever tell him what it reads like from her perspective. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t train himself to use this to his advantage in fights against Cass, any more than Bruce for all his mastery of his body, can effectively train himself to not broadcast certain body language tells when sparring with Cass. Because Bruce’s training, as extensive and intense as it was, and as he commits himself to it, still only started later in life. When his movements and how they pair with each other and his emotional states, they were already set in stone. Because those things go deeper than conscious control….even if Bruce made an effort to hide his next punch from Cass, she’d see the indicators of him preparing to deceive and adapt just as instinctively.

But Dick, because his training began as early and was so 24/7 in its own way as Cassandra’s, when they were both just learning their basic fundamentals and their body was building connections between their muscle movements and emotions they felt when using each precise combination of each specific muscles to achieve each specific end result….with Dick, the times his body language misleads Cass is as unconscious as breathing to him, as instinctive as every other of these movements, and the urge to smile while doing it. He’s not aware of doing it, couldn’t consciously command himself to do it more without giving that away in micro-expressions in his face….but its there, nonetheless. Because its not like it was done or trained into him in order to lie to Cass or someone like her….that’s just an unanticipated side-effect. It was done for one reason only: to make even the most rigorous of efforts look as effortless as skipping.

And it being that instinctive is WHY Cass occasionally falls for it, every now and again. Even when she tries to prepare for it sometimes. Because its like a lie spoken in her own first language. Every so often, she misreads how exhausted or worn out he is while in the middle of a spar, because Dick’s body language while flipping around so often reads as easy, light-hearted, happy. None of the things associated with being on the verge of his legs giving out, even if they are. And every now and again, a punch catches her off guard, because its not telegraphed in any of the normal ways, his body language is too focused on what’s coming after the punch, the preparation to make a leap or a vault that its particularly excited for, that always paired with anticipation, from as early as he could attempt it. Every once in awhile she fails to capitalize on a moment of weakness he has or an injury he’s nursing…because she’s missed the signs for it, its so buried deep beneath the performance mask he was trained to wear specifically while continuing through a routine even while feeling an ache or pain in that particular muscle group.

Even if no one else entirely knows why, Dick can beat Cass every once in awhile, even more often than Bruce can. Because the LESS Dick focuses his conscious thoughts, the MORE instinctive he makes his movements, basically when he MOST relies on just muscle memory and lets his body take over on autopilot, trusting it to get him safely through a fight while his conscious mind and troubles might be otherwise distracting him…..that’s when Cass has the hardest time reading him reliably. Because when he gets like that, everything else vanishes. Its like no other emotions exist for him. Even while being otherwise miserable or unhappy or grieving or tired….when he just lets go and trusts his body to do what its been trained to do so often and extensively its just pure instinct at this point….all of her brother’s movements at that point just sing. The brutality of a fight gets lost in the beauty of his acrobatics, even on the very same level and in the very language she most relies on…because they were meant to be ‘spoken’ even that bone-deep, they were meant to look like and indicate pure joy of movement in even the most primal of languages.

On a certain level, Cassandra has always been the least surprised of any of their family, why people like Deathstroke and the Court of Owls and countless other villains have always been so intent, so focused on making Dick specifically turn to their side, become one of them…become a killer. She understands the draw they feel towards him perfectly, probably even better than they do. Because the language these villains speak most naturally is violence. And her eldest brother takes violence and makes it art.

And even villains are drawn to art that speaks to them in a language they can understand.

So, even though she doesn’t want it to, even though it shouldn’t bother her, even though it ultimately doesn’t even matter that much….it bothers Cass, a little bit. That Dick has just enough of an x-factor in sparrings specific to just the two of them, that no matter how much Cass tries to adjust for it, she can still be thrown or fooled as easily as anyone else can fall for a lie spoken in a shared language. Its actually probably for the best that her own unique form of Kryptonite belongs to none other than her very own big brother, protective to a fault. Someone who would never hurt her.

Except…

Even with all that, she can’t help herself. Every once in awhile, she looks at Dick and can’t help but be wary. She doesn’t like having a potential blindspot she knows full well is there and can’t do a damn thing about. She doesn’t like that it bugs her so much either, but it does. She doesn’t like that the fighting and body-language reading that are the end results of her father’s abuse have become in different ways just enough of points of pride that she finds her pride pricked at the reminder she’s still fallible. Still human. Can still be fooled, even if unintentionally, even if not that often.

Because given the price she paid - that she never asked to pay, never was asked if she WANTED to pay it - to be so foolproof, at least where everyone else is concerned, she at least wished the damn training had worked as intended, instead of one specific monkey wrench her father hadn’t accounted for. All because who was prepared for an acrobatic vigilante who’s happy and gleeful on a primal level even when fighting for his life, because his body can’t help but be glad it can fly?

So she fights that feeling down any time it arises, becomes all the more determined for it not to create a wedge between her and the big brother she honestly adores and she knows honestly adores her too.

But sometimes when he smiles at her, Cass hates the way she is. What it makes her. Because all of them by now are used to people like the Court constantly trying to repurpose Dick, turn him against everything he holds dear. And each time everyone else is reminded of that, they turn to cast glances at Cass, without even thinking about it. They’re all just as aware of Dick’s own fighting prowess, after all. And how deadly he could be if he ever put his mind to it and set aside his morality.

She knows full well that if that ever happened, if any villain ever did manage to get their hooks in deep, she’s the one it would ultimately fall to. The Break Glass in Case of Emergency, Plan Z, final failsafe. She was who they would sic on the big brother that’s always drawn the darkness like moths to his flickering flame.

And she alone nurses the knowledge that if it ever came to that….she’s not quite as certain as the rest of their family, that she could infallibly win.

It bothers her more than she can say, more than she will ever dare say….that one of her greatest fears wears her doting eldest brother’s face.

Because if the Court of Owls ever did make a Talon of him for real, there’s no one who could sink a fatal blade past her guard more easily than he. She might never see it coming, too busy looking at him and seeing nothing but poetry instead.

Dick held her once while she came down from a lungful of Fear Toxin. Even as she shook the last of it from her system and looked at him with fresh, clear eyes again, she couldn’t help but flinch. He asked her what she’d seen while under its influence. She didn’t answer, and hated how sad he looked while covering up. No doubt thinking that it was because even now she didn’t trust him, her own family, wouldn’t let herself be completely vulnerable with them.

Still, she’s certain he would have looked far sadder if she’d told him the truth.

So each and every time her big brother’s body tells her a lie, she tells him one right back.

After all, the flip side of being the two best truthseers in the family, is there’s nobody better at being lie-tellers at the same time.

Who else is ever going to know?

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ionicspacemarmot · 4 years

Text

Modern Visual Effects and the Ethics of Digitally Revived Actors

Since its earliest days, illusions have been a staple of cinema. Filmmakers like Georges Méliès sought to use the medium to achieve visual spectacles which could never be accomplished in a live setting like theatre.

Over the past century, special effects have advanced to an unprecedented extent. We now live in a world in which just about anything that can be visualized can be translated to the screen, whether through practical or digital means.

When CGI, or Computer Generated Imagery, was first introduced to mainstream cinema, one of the main goals of VFX artists was to perfect photorealistic human beings. In this industry, one of the most difficult tasks is to create a human being detailed enough to fool the audience into believing it's really there. This is an art which only recently has even come close to being achieved.

Why So Complicated?

When a CGI character is present in a film, it's very rarely seamlessly integrated. Many would argue that it still has yet to be perfected. This is generally not for lack of effort or talent on the part of the artists, but rather the fact that human beings have evolved over many years to identify other humans based on the smallest details and microexpressions. We, as a species, are incredibly good at picking up on the slightest inconsistencies. When a character teeters too precariously on the line between realistic and unconvincing, it runs the risk of falling into what is known as the "uncanny valley."

What is the Uncanny Valley?

The uncanny valley refers to our empathetic response to humanoid creations who look real, but not quite real enough to be completely convincing, thus eliciting a discomforting emotional response from the audience. As explained before, we are extraordinarily good at identifying when something doesn't look or behave as it would in real life, as we experience real world textures, lighting, and physics every single day.

This discrepancy is especially true when it comes to identifying flaws in other human creations. The animal part of our brains immediately recognize that what they're looking at resembles another human being, but those slight imperfections trigger something inherently off-putting. (1)

This is why 3D animated films opt for more exaggerated, cartoony character designs. Mr. Incredible does not look like a real person. Homer Simpson is not designed to look as though he exists in the real world. Our brains have a much easier time registering these designs because they are not designed to imitate reality and fool us.

A Very Brief History

In recent years, technology and techniques have evolved within the VFX industry to the point where convincing photorealistic characters are quite possible. This has been the goal of many artists since the introduction of CGI, meaning there is a great deal of research and development behind it.

While Disney is known today, for better or worse, for their recent advancements in 3D human animation, this is something that has been attempted many times over the past twenty or so years, with varying degrees of success.

Even at the time, this movie was criticized for its creepy, imperfect character models who fell deep into the uncanny valley. That being said, this film was still an immense technical achievement unlike anything that had come before, and paved the way for the truly groundbreaking effects of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, released the following year in 2002.

One of the earliest experiments in 3D human animation was the 2001 Japanese-American film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. This was the first fully motion-captured mainstream film, as well as the first film to utilize "photorealistic" human characters.

The Beginning of De-Aging

The Two Towers introduced audiences to Gollum, a fully computer-animated character who is still praised today for his realism. This film took the technology introduced in Final Fantasy far beyond its limits, taking Andy Serkis's motion-captured performance and taking the time to ensure his character was composited as seamlessly as possible into the live action world of the film.

A wide variety of films followed, all trying to perfect the art of CGI human beings. While some of these projects were well-executed and have aged quite well, such as (some of) the Matrix sequels. Most, however, failed to properly bridge the uncanny valley, notoriously films such as The Polar Express and The Scorpion King.

In 2006, Bryan Singer's X-Men: The Last Stand, introduced a new frontier to this evolving art: Digital de-aging. In this film, a flashback sequence shows off actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, both digitally altered to resemble younger versions of themselves.

Today, of course, the charge in the effort to perfect 3D human animation is led by none other than Disney. Specifically, Marvel Studios.

The Reign of Disney

While a bit jarring by today's standards, this was extremely new and impressive technology for 2006. It was also a technique that would once again be taken on by a number of other filmmakers in subsequent films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Tron: Legacy (2010).

Tron was Disney's first real foray into the world of digital de-aging technology. While once again, the de-aged Kurt Russell featured in the film is quite unsettling to look at, it paved the way for 2015's Ant-Man. This film opens with a flashback in which actors Michael Douglas and Martin Donovan have been de-aged approximately twenty-five years.

2016 would also see an unprecedented use of this evolving technology upon the release of Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Using a miraculously found, highly detailed lifecast of the actors face from the 1984 film Top Secret, the artists at ILM were able to produce an accurate 3D sculpt of the actor's face and composite it onto the motion-tracked performance of Guy Henry. (2)

This effect was remarkably successful and the film continues to be praised for its use of the technology. This technology would again be applied the following year, in Captain America: Civil War, which features a rather convincingly de-aged Robert Downey Jr.

While imperfect, CGI Tarkin was a groundbreaking achievement in terms of technological innovation. However, it did raise a number of ethical discussions. In particular, is it ethical to use this technology to revive deceased actors? And by extension, do actors have a legal right to their physical likeness?

Star Wars Changes the Game

A major element kept secret in the marketing for the film was the prominent role of the character Grand Moff Tarkin, a major character from the original Star Wars in 1977. The immediate issue here is that the actor who originally portrayed the character, Peter Cushing, passed away in 1994.

Ethical Dilemmas

For this film, the immensely talented artists at Industrial Light and Magic were tasked not with de-aging a character, but with bringing a deceased actor back from the dead. This daunting project was achieved by casting a stand-in actor, Guy Henry, who could not only imitate Cushing's voice, but also looked a bit like him.

While Lucasfilm did receive permission from Peter Cushing's estate to use his likeness, this is something they theoretically did not have to do. Legally, it can be quite tricky to protect one's physical likeness. That being said, because they were granted permission by the estate, the studio was not heavily criticized. However, it certainly opened up an interesting ethical discussion. (3)

Again, it begs the question: is this the beginning of a trend? Disney is far from the only studio to attempt something like this. Usually when a deceased actor is revived for a role through special effects, it's for a specific reason. For example, Brandon Lee and Oliver Reed both passed during production of The Crow and Gladiator, respectively. Special effects were used to finish a project they were already heavily involved in. A character like Tarkin is different. (5)

Soon after Rogue One was released, Carrie Fisher tragically passed away before she could film her scenes as Princess Leia Organa in the ninth installment of the main Star Wars saga. Disney released a statement soon after claiming they would not use CGI to recreate her likeness for Episode IX.

As it came to pass, the film ended up utilizing unused footage of Fisher from 2015's The Force Awakens. Writers JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio attempted to write scenes around her pre-existing dialogue to try and fit her into the overarching narrative. Whether or not this worked in the film's favor is besides the point. From a technical standpoint, it's undoubtedly impressive and a testament to how far VFX has come. (4)

One again, however, many questioned the implications of such a practice. Like Peter Cushing's return as Tarkin, Fisher's role in The Rise of Skywalker did not face much scrutiny due to the fact that once again, the production was given the family's blessing to use her likeness in this way. Her daughter, Billie Lourd, actually plays a significant role in the film and shares scenes with her mother's character.

While exciting for hardcore Star Wars fans like myself to see, Tarkin was a character that could have been absent from Rogue One, or at least kept more to the sidelines. However, Edwards chose to make the character a prominent player for the duration of the film, showing him off in great detail quite often. They have essentially used special effects to synthesize an entirely new performance from an actor who has been dead for more than twenty years.

So again, could this be the start of a trend in cinema? Will we see the return of great actors who are no longer with us? Is that a bad thing? Who gets credited and paid? This is entirely new territory that comes with our rapidly growing technological advancements in the film industry. It seems that this is a phenomenon that will continue for the time being. The question remains as to whether or not legal and ethical attitudes change as a result of this ever-evolving medium.

Notes:

Bill Desowitz. "Advanced De-Aging VFX Are Crucial to The Irishman, Gemini Man, and Captain Marvel," Indiewire, October 1, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

(2)Bill Desowitz. "Rogue One: How ILM Created CGI Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia," Indiewire, January 9, 2017, accessed May 2, 2020.

Brian Welk. "How Samuel L Jackson’s De-Aging on ‘Captain Marvel’ Cut Shooting Time in Half," The Wrap, March 18, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

Carolyn Giardina. "Will Smith, Robert DeNiro and the Rise of the All-Digital Actor," The Hollywood Reporter, August 10, 2019, accessed April 20, 2020.

David Ehrlich. "James Dean Is Just the Beginning: Critics Debate the Future of CGI Acting," Indiewire, November 11, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

Erin Winick. "Actors are Digitally Preserving Themselves to Continue Their Careers Beyond the Grave," MIT Technology Review, October 16, 2018, accessed April 20, 2020.

Laura M. Holson. "A C.G.I. James Dean? Some in Hollywood See ‘an Awful Precedent’," New York Times, November 7, 2019, accessed April 20, 2020.

Leon Miller. "14 Actors Resurrected With Crazy CGI (And 6 That Can Never Be)," Screenrant, August 9, 2018, accessed April 26, 2020.

Luke Kemp. "In the age of deepfakes, could virtual actors put humans out of business?" The Guardian, July 8, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020.

(4)Jordan Zakarin. "It Took More CGI Than You Think to Bring Carrie Fisher Into The Rise of Skywalker," Syfy, January 7, 2020.

(3,5)Joseph Waltz. "Rogue One: the CGI resurrection of Peter Cushing is thrilling – but is it right?," The Guardian, December 16, 2016, accessed April 26, 2020.

(1)"VFX Artists React to Resurrected Actors Bad and Great CGI," YouTube video, 13:20, "Corridor Crew," June 1, 2019. https://youtu.be/2ZKPnuUFwOk

#film #filmcommunity #filmmaking #star wars #marvel #carrie fisher #peter cushing #deepfake #deaging #disney #vfxartist #cgi animation #cgi #weta workshop #weta digital #industrial light and magic

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stark-raving-strange · 6 years

Text

Slight of hands

This is a fill for a prompt by the lovely Amethyst-Noir

from this post

Hope it fills the bill!

Read on AO3 here

The first time Tony notices it, he lets it go. The inscrutable Doctor Strange must have been too distracted to tend to the more mundane things of daily living.

They had been on an inter dimensional mission for over a day. Was it just a day?. Maybe just very long day. They had returned to the Sanctum exhausted and hungry. Well at least Tony was hungry. Famished totally!

When the Italian pasta-a-plenty take out order had finally arrived Tony had quickly spread it out on the table grabbed a plastic fork and tucked in with single minded purpose.

Stephen had looked at the food with a blank expression before assuming a meditative state legs crossed, hovering near the table and hands resting together in his lap, (in what Tony was told was the Dhyana Mudra position). Tony could see that those hands were shaking quite noticeably despite the supportive hand positioning. Stephen didn’t seem to be concerned at all and Tony continued eating in the companionable silence.

Stephen never did eat, not while tony was there anyway.

Following that evening, Tony started to think about Stephen and how many times he had actually seen him eat something more complicated than a donut. He realized that it was not often. Almost never to be honest.

Yes, there had been the occasional slice of pizza on movie nights, and popcorn maybe but beyond that he had to really scrape for any memory of food making it into Stephen’s mouth while anyone was around. Now, in retrospect Tony could see the obvious pattern. He had never once seen Stephen with a fork or a spoon in his hands. Stephen’s hands, of course, were at the center of it all. Those amazingly magically adept hands that could pull miracles from thin air. Those heartbreakingly damaged, fragile and constantly shaking hands. Tony chided himself for not having noticed sooner.

Tony liked to think that he had come to know Stephen pretty well over the last year. They had been through some world saving shit situations as well as minor conflicts of varied degrees. Some situations even absurdly humorous on occasion. They worked surprisingly well as a team, despite their obvious similarities in what others had termed “their huge dueling narcissistic egos”. That was somewhat true but neither in all honesty were actual narcissists. They were undeniably top notch brains and could be arrogant at times. Sure. They had also both been through significant amounts of life changing trauma. Admittedly, they were both snarky bastards but yet they both undeniably cared for others over themselves. They also both shared a mile wide stubborn streak as well as the bone deep need to be seen as in control and competent. Tony liked to think he understood where Strange was coming from. So Tony tried to place himself in Stephen’s position and with sudden clarity he saw the heart of the problem.

He knew that confronting Stephen on the issue would just cause the sorcerer to withdraw and that was unacceptable. Tony had become increasingly fond of the good Doctor. Fond and maybe something a bit stronger. Maybe a lot stronger. He needed the man to be around. Period.

Tony also needed to make sure Stephen was well and taken care of. The sorcerer could not afford to miss meals. He was already lean enough. Tony constantly had the compelling urge to feed him up. He would gladly do it. The problem that remained was how to go about taking care of the wizard without being completely obvious about it. He doubted Stephen would accept an offer to let Tony spoon feed him. Though the thought of that being allowed to do that caused a place in Tony’s chest get quite warm and shivery..

Tony shook it off for the moment. Focus Stark, focus. So how to make a man who is super self conscious about appearing inept let himself be assisted with a simple task like eating. A proud man who is apparently hyper aware of the potential discomfort and possible embarrassment that might come from trying to eat food in the traditional utensil bearing ways, when others could see. Tony could not force Stephen to change his behavior but Tony could alter his own and level the playing field a bit..

The next group night at the Avengers compound included dinner. Tony had arranged a surprise meal made up of multicultural food items that by tradition demanded they eaten by hand. There was not an eating utensils in sight. He announced the night as F’* OFF night (or the Fingers only Food Foray...some such foolery). He thought it was pretty amusing.

“Ok heroes this is a communal sharing feast so hope everyone washed your hands first,” Tony pointed to Peter who was caught in mid reach for the stack of spring rolls. “You know that includes you too Underoos.” Peter’s gasped indignation “Dude I did wash them, gross!.” caused chuckles around the table. Tony smirked and continued “And for the vegetarians the green plated items are for you and the rest are for us omnivores.”

Stephen had taken his usual seat and smiled a pleased little smile at the large number of green plates surrounding him. Tony noticed and again that odd warm feeling in his chest bloomed and thrummed.

The whole meal was fun. No one thought twice about the whole thing. Tony watched Stephen all through the night trying to not be too obvious. Stephen seemed to hesitate at the start but Tony smiled inwardly as the man reached out with trembling hands to retrieve a stuffed mushroom and, with little effort in managing the shaking, was able to pop it into his mouth.

Throughout the meal he spied Stephen eating more than he had ever seen him eat before. The general good mood around the table was lovely. Toward the end of the meal his really bad attempts at careful spying were noticed and he found himself smiling back at Stephen’s thoughtful look.

Tony nodded and raised an empanada to him before taking a healthy bite. Strange also nodded and lifted a small slice of bruschetta in salute.

From that night on Tony made sure the compound’s fridge was stocked with foods acceptably eaten by hand.

When getting take out, it always included a majority of foods that were traditionally finger foods.

Tony liked to think that Stephen’s face was a little less gaunt these days and that those cheekbones were a little less sharp. The thought of Stephen being more comfortable eating around him was extremely pleasant. The thought of Stephen maybe trusting him was more than pleasant. The thought of Stephen was just pleasant all around. If he were being honest.

Stephen had noticed the change. Of course he had. He was a brilliant and observant man. Tony could often see the questions hovering behind those silver blue eyes but nothing about the new eating routine had been brought up or addressed.

Until it was.

It had been a long week and Tony found himself again at the Sanctum with Strange eating takeout. It was from his favorite Iberian restaurant.

Stephen sat across from him and looked at the different foods all but one dish did not require a utensil to eat. He suddenly frowned and looked up at Tony.

“I do appreciate what you have been doing, and please don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“Don’t know whatcha talking about Houdini.” Tony dipped his patata brava in the dipping sauce and took an exaggerated relishing bite.

Stephen sighed. “Tony. Just because my hands are shit at using forks and spoons doesn't mean that you have to give up on all non -finger foods. I can deal with it, I’m not a total pity case, I do manage to feed myself on a regular basis.“ There was no heat to Stephen’s words, only a quiet sad resignation.

“Hold on there right now!” Tony swallowed and looked up to meet Stephen’s gaze soberly. “You, Doctor Stephen Vincent Strange are definitely not a pity case or any foolish variation on that ridiculous notion. I would never even joke about something like that. You are one of the most powerful people I know if not the most powerful. And I would hope that you know that I have nothing but immense respect for you.”

Stephen straightened up with surprise at the sudden frank sincerity from the other man.

Tony gave Stephen a moment to let that sink in and then continued, “That being said, I think you are a bit of an idiot to feel embarrassed that your food might shake a bit while it on its way to your pie hole.” Tony gestured agitatedly at the table top. “Damn it! No one is judging you on your dining skills and you know what? Fuck them if they are! They would be the assholes then!”

Stephen’s eyebrows raised at the force of that statement “Tony-”

“No I'm serious Steph, you cannot neglect yourself out of some fear of looking weak in front of others, or at east you can’t and shouldn’t do that when it's just the two of us.”

“I don't-”

“No! Stop right there! You cannot deny that you have gone hungry instead of eating in front of me. I am saying it right now, clearly, so there is no ambiguity. I will not tolerate that behavior anymore. I just can't. I care about you Stephen, and I trust you with my life. I need you to at least trust me with your fears of being seen as having a physical deficit.” Tony took a deep breath trying to steady his suddenly volatile emotions.

Stephen now looked like a deer caught in the headlights. If Tony hadn't been so worked up he might have laughed at the sight.

“I,” Stephen started then seemed to try to gather his thoughts. “I'm sorry Tony. You are right. I never meant to be that way especially toward you, please believe that.” he paused and sighed. “My hands, or my loss of efficiency with them…” He folded his hands on the tabletop. “ It’s complicated.” He breathed out a huff of frustration.. “After the accident, It took me a very long time to come to terms with the fact that I was not ever going to get them back, not they way it was before anyway. Even when I had the means through magic to fix them, it was not going to happen and I knew it when I made the decision to continue to use magic instead.” “The frequent lack of control has been, yes, embarrassing. I know that it is ridiculous and based in foolish pride but I have not been able to shake it. Letting people see me struggle with a fork full of pata of all things feels so humiliating. I know it shouldn’t but it seems to be one of the last vestiges of my old ego that I have been unable to rise above. I am sorry. You have done nothing but try to make things more comfortable for me and I have been a jerk.’’

Tony reached slowly across the table and rested his hand upon Stephen's folded ones. They both were quiet each man focusing on the hands resting together.

“Look, I get it, I really do”. Tony said quietly as he stroked Stephen’s tremorous hands with his thumb, quietly noting the feeling the raised scars and protrusions of the metal pins beneath the surface. Tony wished he could fix them. “I just-, I want you to know that you don’t have to be afraid appearing ‘anything’ in front of me. I want the true you at all times. The pretty and the not so pretty.” Tony smiled an almost sad smile. “Honestly you know me, most days I am a walking hot mess, and I absolutely do not fear that you will judge me for it. Or hold it against me.”

Stephens head snapped up to look fiercely at tony. “I would never!”

“There it is, but I need to know this goes both ways. I need to know that you think better of me than to think i would ever see you as somehow less than you are.’

Stephen moved one hand and brought it up to cover Tony’s and he cleared his throat suddenly tight with emotion. “I do trust you tony. I mean that without any reservation or hesitation. I'm sorry if I made that a question or doubt for you.”

They sat there quietly for some time as they each seemed to need time to adjust to and acknowledge this sudden shift in their relationship.

Stephen was the first to break the silence and make a move. “ I think I would like to try some of that.” he pointed to the one container of food that actually required a utensil for eating it.

Tony smiled sagely. ”Aah the Zanahorias Aliñadas, marinated carrots, fine choice Senor.”. He pause slightly when a fork magically appeared in the container. “Well there you go! he handed it to Stephen.

Stephen smiled a small thank you and carefully held the container up and grasped the fork in his hand. Tony casually ate another patata and spoke about admiringly of the place in Madrid that he loved to go for the real thing, as Stephen carefully and with concentration speared a carrot and brought it slowly and shakily but successfully to his mouth.

He placed the container down as he chewed listening to Tony talk happily about tapas.

Two weeks later at 7:12 AM, Stephen stumbled through a portal into Tony’s workshop. He promptly collapsed in a heap the Cloak only prevented him not hitting the floor full force.

Tony was at his side in a flash lifting him up and carrying his limp form to the nearby couch.

Stephen groaned and opened his eyes to see Tony. “Hey” he said in a hoarse grunt.

“Hey you alright there? What do you need?” Tony glanced over his body, but saw no apparent injuries “FRIDAY scan him what’s going on with our man here?”

“Already on it Boss,” the AI responded and continued after a moment,.”Doctor Strange is stable, no notable injuries present, all functions appear in acceptable parameters but he is showing signs of physical exhaustion. His blood sugar level is quite low and he is suffering from a moderate level dehydration.”

“Got it! Juice it is!” Tony rushed to the fridge and poured a large mug of orange juice and made his way back to the sorcerer’s side in seconds. “Up you go magic man.” He helped the still groggy Stephen to sit up and positioned him to be supported by the arm of the couch.

“Ok, Stephen focus time, you need to drink this sweetheart!” Stephen looked up in surprise at the term of endearment and smiled woozily in amusement.

“Oh shut up and drink!” Tony rolled his eyes. Then Tony faltered, suddenly unsure about how to present the cup, as Stephen’s hands were obviously shaking wildly with the poor state of his body. He hesitated both hands wrapped around the cup as he held it toward Stephen. Fortunately the decision was made for him. Stephen had reached out with both of his trembling hands and grasped Tony’s steady hands still around the cup and together they worked to stabilize and bring the cup to Stephen’s lips.

Tony was intent on making sure that the trembling hands were fully supported and that Stephen could drink easily

Tony was acutely aware of the privilege he was being granted. And the level of trust and intimacy was sobering as well as elating. They proceeded slowly and Stephen was able to finish the drink and tony took the mug and placed it aside.

He turned to meet Stephen’s eyes and they did not speak for a moment.

“Thank you,” they both said in unison. But for different reasons.

Their exchanged smiles were radiant.

The unexpected but mutually initiated press of lips that followed, was incandescent.

#ironstrange #fanfic #amethyst-noir #tumbler prompt #budding relationship

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magic-and-moonlit-wings · 6 years

Text

Chapter 33: Amulet of Deceit

Becoming The Mask

In addition to their permanent collections, the Museum of Arcadia played host to a rotation of touring exhibits and collections throughout the year. Geology collections were especially common, since Arcadia Oaks had begun as a mining town during the California gold rush, and humans loved interesting rocks.

One of these shows was opening the weekend after the weekend where the world had been supposed to end. Since the world had not ended, Jim and Toby were there, metaphorically drooling over the mineral samples.

"I bet I could eat that," said Jim, about a chunk of torbernite. The interfolding swirls of green crystals resembled a head of cabbage. "If it wasn't radioactive." Torbernite contained uranium. Probably not enough to actually kill someone, since it was on public display, but eating it would be an entirely different degree of exposure than simply standing by the case.

Jim took a selfie, angling his phone so the glass case wasn't creating too much glare, and opening his mouth like he was about to nom the rock. Toby, in the background, pointed at Jim, his other hand on his cheek, mouth and eyes wide in comically exaggerated shock.

"Remember the April Fools' jawbreakers?" said Toby. In elementary school, Steve Palchuck had given a jawbreaker to everyone in class and claimed they were gumballs. Jim had crunched right through his. "They might have some stone orbs in the gift shop if you wanted to recreate that."

"Or I could just get some marbles from the dollar store. You know, cheaper."

It was a safe conversation for a public space. Two teenagers, talking about stupidly eating things they shouldn't, possibly to film for the internet, possibly as hypothetical boasting they would never follow through on. Nothing suspicious there.

"Whoa, check out that chrysocolla formation!" Toby moved on to some blue-green spikes. "The nodes don't usually get this long before something happens to break them off. This probably has a higher ratio of silicates; that would make it harder. Or maybe it's mostly quartz, with chrysocolla inclusions for colour."

The chrysocolla made Jim think of Draal, except for the rounded points. Maybe Draal once he reached Vendel's age? Did trolls' facets lose sharpness as they got older, the way humans got wrinkly?

Toby was examining an emerald in pyrite from various angles when Jim started to feel watched.

Had the museum gotten its security cameras back up and running now that Bular was out of the picture? … No; well, maybe; but Nomura was on the other side of the room. When she saw Jim look her way, she titled her head in a 'meet me outside' gesture.

"I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'll be right back."

"I really am just here for the rock show."

"Of course you are." Nomura rolled her eyes. "If you were here to check up on me, it would be as a distraction while someone with actual subtlety searched my office."

A plan which would have already failed, since Jim and Nomura were in her office now.

"… Okay, feeling like I should be offended by that, but I really can't argue."

"And because you have no subtlety, I thought I'd help you out, in case the next agent to catch you isn't as merciful as I am." Nomura got something small and shiny out of her desk and tossed it to Jim.

Jim fumbled his catch and blinked. He flicked one of the device's watch-like hands. It was a nearly perfect replica of the Amulet of Daylight. It didn't glow and it wasn't warm, but for a second he almost thought she'd gotten the real amulet from him somehow and this was a lesson on how not to be pickpocketed.

"Two questions," he said.

"Stricklander made it," Nomura answered pre-emptively. "Decades ago. He thought a fake amulet might be able to trick Killahead Bridge into reopening."

Like using a lockpick instead of a key. There was some logic to that.

"He gave it to me when I was … infiltrating Trollmarket. If I could get close enough to Kanjigar to switch them, it would muddy the waters as to when and how it was stolen. After that mission failed, the first idea remained a possibility – at least before it was rendered moot when we gained access to the real thing – and I kept the fake out of sight so Bular wouldn't destroy it in a fit of temper at the implication we doubted he could defeat the Trollhunter."

"Still one question."

"If someone sees you with the Amulet, but not in armour, you can now pretend Stricklander gave you the fake one for safekeeping. Everyone knows you're his favourite."

"I … wouldn't say 'favourite'. Favoured, maybe –"

"You're his favourite," she repeated flatly.

Jim rotated the false amulet. It was remarkably similar to the real one. How many snippets of reports and distant glimpses had Stricklander had to piece together for this imitation?

This would also come in handy if Jim was ever in a 'surrender your weapon' situation.

"You really like having me in your debt, don't you?" the Trollhunter asked the Changeling.

She smiled. "I believe I'm owed four favours, now."

"Three," he countered – just on principle. A quick mental tally confirmed she was right, assuming they were counting the same things, but some of Nomura's favours could be argued as self-serving beyond putting Jim in her debt.

Toby was waiting for Jim down the hall.

"You know, they have public bathrooms here," he said casually. "You don't have to break into the Employees Only areas."

"Did you follow me?"

"I had to go, too. You weren't back at the rock show when I came out, so I figured you were still here."

"… Toby, I –"

"Don't. Just – just tell me it was because of your volunteer work, because otherwise I really am going to freak out."

"Yeah. Yeah, it was."

"And next time maybe just say that's why you're leaving. It's not fun to think 'is he lying?' every time you tell me something."

Jim had been avoiding Trollmarket for the past week. Blinky and AAARRRGGHH were getting worried – worried enough that, just a few days ago, they'd taken the tunnels to Jim's house to check in with Draal.

Jim had not been there. According to Draal, Jim had followed through on his plan to live with Toby after Barbara evicted him from her home.

Jim still visited the house in Barbara's absence, and Draal reported that the young Changeling did not appear particularly distressed – though Blinky was hardly inclined to trust Draal's assessment in matters of emotional sensitivity, nor did he think Jim was likely to confide in Draal regarding such things.

Perhaps Jim thought, falsely, that the need for a Trollhunter had been lessened after Bular's death. Perhaps he thought, also falsely, that Vendel would bar him entry now that his true species was known. Perhaps he thought, falsely, that it was now widely known that the Trollhunter was a Changeling, and therefore Trollmarket was no longer safe for him.

Blinky didn't know what Jim thought, because Blinky had not spoken to Jim in nearly a week. It was very frustrating.

Bular's severed head was still in the library. Jim had brought it back from the troll pub but hadn't taken it to the surface with him. Blinky, grimacing, had covered the head in cloth and put it on a low shelf, where it wouldn't be in the way or immediately draw the eye. He'd wanted to dispose of it somehow, rather than keep it in his space, but AAARRRGGHH had been adamant that Jim should be the one to decide what to do with it.

AAARRRGGHH had not been very clear on why, only enough to confirm that such gristly battle trophies were part of Gumm-Gumm culture and doing anything to Bular's head would now be an insult to Jim.

Blinky had made the mistake of pointing out Gumm-Gumms didn't count Changelings as members of their society. He'd been intending to follow up with the point that while Jim, like AAARRRGGHH, had once served the Gumm-Gumms, neither troll did so anymore, but before he could say as much, AAARRRGGHH roared at him, and growled for Blinky to stop saying Jim wasn't a troll.

(AAARRRGGHH had not been in the library when Blinkous made that grievously mistaken statement, but Blinky had given him a full run-down of the conversation prior to his arrival.)

AAARRRGGHH did not roar at Blinky. AAARRRGGHH seldom roared at all. Being roared at by AAARRRGGHH was nearly as shocking and upsetting and unthinkable for Blinky as the idea of AAARRRGGHH hitting him.

Blinky had covered and shelved Bular's head, and declared they could discuss the matter further once they were both calm.

AAARRRGGHH apologized later, of course, for losing his temper and for acting like Blinky wasn't sorry for hurting Jim's feelings and for not being able to explain battle trophies better. Blinky, too, had apologized, for pushing a subject that he knew AAARRRGGHH found rightfully upsetting instead of taking the information AAARRRGGHH volunteered and accepting that as launching point for future research that did not require AAARRRGGHH's direct input.

Blinky did not apologize to AAARRRGGHH for saying Jim wasn't a troll. That was an apology that needed to be made to Jim.

The head stayed covered and shelved, waiting for Jim to come back to Trollmarket and decide what to do with it.

Blinkous would prefer for this to happen soon.

"Tomorrow night," he announced, "we should go back up there and look for him. It's been a week, that's a respectable length of time as humans measure it; if Master Jim needs space, no one can say we refused to allow him that; but we cannot allow the Trollhunter to simply – shrug off his duties and vanish."

"Other Trollhunters did," AAARRRGGHH pointed out. "Sully-fairy quests."

"Solitary," Blinky corrected reflexively, "meaning 'alone' or 'independent'. Yes, but they also traditionally notified Trollmarket's elder that this was what they were doing before they went and did it."

"Blinky? AAARRRGGHH? Knock-knock – you guys here?"

That voice, that was one of Jim's human friends!

"Mary!" Blinky greeted warmly. "It's good to have you back. And Claire, as well! Are Tobias and Darci elsewhere in the market?"

"They dragged Jim right to the Forge," said Mary. "We said we'd get you. I come bearing gifts!"

She handed Blinky a rectangle. He almost popped it into his mouth.

"This is a prepaid cellphone. I programmed the number into ours and all our numbers into it so we can call and text each other."

Mary also gave Blinky a pen.

"I'm not sure how well a touchscreen will work with stone skin, but this pen's been specially designed to work on phone screens, just in case. Push this button here," Blinky followed her instructions and one face of the rectangle lit up, "and then drag your finger or the pen across the screen to unlock it. I didn't bother with setting up a password."

AAARRRGGHH leaned over Blinky's shoulder as Blinky experimented.

The device did seem to respond to Blinky's touch, but the phone screen proved too small for the pad of one of AAARRRGGHH's fingers when the larger troll gave it a curious, gentle tap. Blinky handed AAARRRGGHH the pen; AAARRRGGHH held it delicately, and tried again, successfully pushing one of the onscreen buttons.

"Now we don't have to depend on Jim to let us come down here," said Claire. She sounded … bitter? Had she resented her enforced week outside of Trollmarket while Jim avoided the place? "We can contact you directly."

"Claire …" said Mary.

"Did you know Jim's a Changeling?" Claire asked, apropos of nothing. "He said you knew but we don't know if he was lying."

"Claire," said Mary again, more sharply.

"This … did recently come to our knowledge, yes," said Blinky. "Considering the pains he took to keep it secret, I'm surprised and relieved to learn he's confided in you."

"He didn't. We found out he was one when we found out he replaced my little brother with one."

"Claire!"

Previous Chapter (Strickler and Barbara talk about Changelings)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Maybe finally starting to look for the Triumbric Stones)

The image isn't there anymore, but the Wikipedia page for chrysocolla used to have a photo of a spiky chrysocolla-and-quartz specimen which I thought was kind of Draal-esque. Luckily I saved it on my computer:

Look in my blog’s Becoming The Mask extras tag if you want to see the torbernite.

I do not have a specific emerald and pyrite formation in mind for the third stone described, but it’s relatively common for those minerals to form together so a quick Googling should show you how cool it is to see bars of emerald poking out of glittery gold rocks like the columns of some ancient ruin.

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one-and-a-half-yikes · 5 years

Text

This AU Idea I never finished

ABYSS

CHAPTER 1 (no longer a thing RIP)

Henry Crosem liked to think of himself as a simple man. Ever since he was a boy he’d only ever had his sights respectively fall upon the category of:

Get good grades.

Get a good scholarship, specifically in the art field.

Maybe find himself a beautiful wife who could cook about as well as him.

They’d get married and have kids. How many kids Henry was never sure about, he just knew he wanted some kids. A couple of girls and a couple of boys.

Then he’d get old and have grandchildren. He would die happy with the ones he loved.

A simple, American way of thinking. Just living a happy life till the end of days. Nevermind the dreamers with big ideas and egotistical mindsets with business, business, business on their minds; all Henry wanted to achieve at was being happy.

Forever.

He had never imagined himself as someone who was an amazing artist. It just so happened he was capable of drawing cartoons the best. Everytime he put pencil to paper those sketches became outlines and those outlines seemed to almost always breathe life in them with their exaggerated facial expressions and happy-go-lucky smiles adorning their round, plump cheeks. Pie cut eyes colored in black held all assortments of emotions ranging from melancholy, angry, grumpy, sad, bored, irritated, you name it; he could draw it.

An amazing cartoonist is what they’d called him.

He’d do well working for Fleischer or Disney, they would praise to him.

Henry, however, liked to think otherwise. It had never been a case of what studio he would go to, more like what kind of college would give him the best experience of his twenties. There was never a goal to join a big studio, too much expectation to follow the rules, stick strictly to the guidelines, don’t go off script! If there was one thing Henry Crosem hated more than algebra as a whole, it was having his creativity diminished or restrained into oblivion.

With the creative liberty he gave himself, he had managed to create something quite amazing. Something you wouldn't expect to get pass the parent censors, but this was Henry they were referring to and so they didn’t question the sharp horns and gleefully, creepy (but not sinister) smile that adorned the white of its face.

It had been created, though it had no name. It would be four exact months before a name that would be recognized and feared in the land would be given to the cartoon character.

…

“Bendy.”

“Huh?”

“No, I mean the name - for the character - should be Bendy.”

Henry looked over at the voice who had spoken. It was a boy, well a man technically, but he had a few set features that made him seem like a boy, with a lanky build about him. His knees were knobby, and one even appeared to be slightly crooked (he was not wearing long pants like he usually would to hide such an extremity) and an angular and narrow face, his eyes were kind of big, and they were a bright brown swimming with mirth, his cheek bones portruded from the sides of his face, chin just a tad too sharp for one’s liking; his ears were pointy and big and stuck out like elf ears and his nose was sharp and curved up a bit at the end. To top it all off, he wore big, goofy-looking glasses that lo and behold, completed the nerd aesthetic to a fine degree.

Henry gave him a raised eyebrow and turned to look down at the little doodle he had created. “Bendy, huh?”

The picture itself was simplistic in design with “Bendy” waving enthusiastically at nothing in particular with a big smile on his face. Behind him lay a sweetly curved tail with the tip being drawn to look like the tip of an ink pen. A niche little design Henry was especially proud of.

Joey laid back into the bench he was situated on and shrugged, “It seemed like a good idea to me - I mean, it’s just..remember that essay from a few months back?”

“What essay?”

“The one where I specifically remember coming into your dorm room and witnessing you bashing your head on a table while muttering about how much you want to jump out a window.”

Oh. That one. Some time ago, three months actually, Henry had embarked on an amazing journey through literature, in which he was told to write an entire essay on character designs and how they should and must coincide with their personalities in some shape or form. The teacher had given the students permission to use their own characters they had created in the essay as an example, and naturally, Henry had picked the first ever toon he'd called an actual success. The little toon demon had had many names running through Henry's brain, but none had ever stuck, and when he had found one halfway through his essay and sleep deprived he'd accidentally misspelled the name, and what came of it was jumbled jargon of what should have been Bentley.

Luckily, it was his own work and so his teacher completely glossed over the typo when he'd turned it in, didn't mean anything to Henry who was a wreck throughout the whole endeavor and beyond. To hear Joey bring it back up again had him quite annoyed and embarrassed, which was always a good combination of emotions.

“I mean...that doesn't...really...sound - feasible?...” Henry stated, wincing at how his voice strained on the last word. He'd had a sore throat for a whole week, and it was annoying - agitating - at best.

Joey suddenly leaned in, eyes wild with excitement. “But, it could work so well! Like a pun!”

“...a pun?”

“Well, I mean, he's a toon; and they're pretty bendy aren't they?” Joey stated in a matter-of-fact tone. He shrugged.

“Well yeah-” Henry muttered, finding himself becoming a tad more convinced.

“Then it's perfect!” Joey exclaimed, arms flailing about. He almost fell out of his seat in the process of his jerky movements.

Henry snorted and rolled his eyes at his friends antics, then glanced back down at his crinkled, white paper. Hesitantly he reached for the pen he had laid down on the table, before lightly gripping it, and, holding it steadily, etched the word ‘Bendy’ into the paper.

“Bendy...huh?”

Well...it wasn't that bad of a name…

…

The name for the studio, was pretty lacking in creativity.

Joey Drew Studios.

It was bad enough that Joey's name was viable to turn into someone's pun of the week, but then to gleefully add it to the studio's name - considering on the fact that it was an animation studio to begin with - didn't make it better, and Henry so badly wanted to bury himself into the sandy and gravel parking lot.

Beside him Joey stood proud and tall with his hands on his waist looking up at the crooked sign reading his name in big, blocky letters. A smile, all teeth exposed, like it could light up a Christmas tree was plastered on his face, and with some carelessness, the man slammed a hand upon Henry's shoulder with more force than he had intended, especially for someone so skinny.

Henry looked, and his moss greens met excited browns that seemed to have a smile of their own. It was infectious in a way and the chestnut haired man smiled as well.

“With this, Henry. This studio; you and I...we're gonna go places...big places…”

Joey said it with confidence and bravado and Henry couldn't help but to believe him. Even if he thought that couldn't be further from the truth.

Even though some part of him felt like this was lie. A big lie.

One of many lies yet to be made.

…

The place itself was desolate and gray.

Faded, yellowed walls with torn and shredded wood, along with the pervasive smell of old ink was all that was left of a dream.

And Henry had long since cried about it.

Shuffling through the strangely quiet halls of the studio, he tried to keep his breathing as shallow as possible, especially with the aforementioned dust and...rotten wood, he hoped that was what that smell was. Stepping lightly over wooden boards so as to not immediately fall down another hole the man continued on, clutching a broken and bent pipe against his chest, if only if to feel secure if nothing else. His axe, which would be his third axe having been lost, had broken while in the midst of a fight with a hoard of searchers. He’d narrowly escaped death for the twentieth time before giving up and thrusting the rest of what was left of the weapon into the ‘stomach’ of one of the moaning creatures of blackness.

Didn’t mean anything though because he still ended up with a mouthful of ink that he just barely managed to stop from slithering down his throat. He scratched at his neck feeling an itching sensation welling up inside him.

Another coughing fit.

Not now! Not now! Henry cast his eyes around the space he was in but all he could see were blank walls with questionable dark stains splattered on them that definitely didn’t look like ink to him.

Walking just a little bit faster till he was going in a light jog he made it to the end of the hallway where he came across two passages.

A wheezy breath in the form of an exhale escaped passed his lips, releasing some of the pressure from off his chest. With a quickness, the man hadn’t known himself to have he slapped a thick hand against his mouth silencing any further noise less he make a noise loud enough to attract attention to any monsters roaming the halls and be killed off - that, and he didn’t even know of any other Bendy statues that could be down here. And besides that, he couldn’t afford to get into another fight, not now; not after having to deal with killing the only true companion he’d found solace in in this hellhole of a studio turned into a beast of nightmarish proportions by that fucking someone he thought he could trust. And then having to fight them afterwards when they didn’t get their way, Henry just slightly escaping the inky person’s grasp and making a beeline for the exit. Now he found himself incredibly deep within the studio, and at this point he was certain that there was no way of escape, all he could truly do now was survive, and maybe hope that he could come across someone else trapped here as well, although the likelihood of that being the case was quite small as far as he was concerned, and yet optimism had always been one of Henry’s defining characteristics. Now alongside being able to cheat death itself!

It was funny though really - the ink could destroy you or heal you, yet it could never figure out which to stick with when it came to Henry, which technically gave him the advantage to do as he pleases, but there was a need to still be cautious around the stuff…

He wondered if that’s why Wally and Norman ended up sharing the same fate...

Henry shook his head, his faded, chestnut hair bobbing lightly with the motion. He couldn’t think about those things now. When he found a safe room to rest in he could reminiscence and cry like a bitch then, right now he needed to focus. The pressure in his chest had built up even more and the wheezes were turning into full on gulps for air as he tried to maintain composure, but it was kind of hard to do that when his lungs felt as if they could burst at any second, and he was sure that if he stopped now to let out a polite and quiet cough he would end just showing that it was truly possible for a human to projectile vomit from a distance.

But he couldn’t stop, and his coughing fit could very well leave him vulnerable to any ambush.

Better to be safe than to be sorry.

That’s what he told his daughter at least.

“But the spider looks so cute! Why can’t I touch it? It ain’t doin’ nothing!” A small girl with pale skin and dark hazel hair and intense dark blue eyes stared up him with a small pout, her brow furrowed.

“Only if you wanna get bitten!” Henry exclaimed sitting the tool box covered in oil. He’d been working on the family car has it had broken down for the third time in a row and he wanted to check it out and see if he could fix the problem himself before even entertaining the thought of going to a car shop to get it repaired. He turned to her and placed his hands on his hips, a steady, playful glare directed at her. “Your mother and I don’t have the means to pay another hospital bill because you’re feelin’ a little adventurous.”

The girl pouted just a little bit more to the point of where her bottom lip began to wobble, and with some cursed talent she managed to give off the impression that she was about to cry. Luckily, Henry had had plenty of time to get used to her ‘pouty face’ and so was able to ignore it. He waggled a finger at her with a stern glare, “Nuh-uh, ain’t happenin’.”

“Daaaaaad!” She stomped her feet on the hard packed earth causing small dust clouds to poof into existence. She balled her small hands into small fists and glared back at him silently. Her dark eyes reflecting a storm, yep, she certainly was her mother…

“Better to be safe than sorry my dear!” And he said this in what he considered to be a perfect match to the Wicked Witch’s voice from ‘The Wizard of Oz’, though of course his wife and child would digress heavily on that front.

So caught up in his memories, Henry completely forgot to pay attention to just about...well anything, and so when the first cough, which turned into a second and then a third came loose from his throat, he immediately collapsed on his hands and knees, inhaling shaky breaths and desperately wishing for some water to alleviate the misery his throat was under. Coughing seized for a moment before making a comeback faster than he could anticipate, and soon he was hacking and choking on bits of ink lodged in his throat refusing to come out anytime soon. Spat on the ground and looked in horror and the wet chunk of dried ink and blood glistening in the dim light of the hall.

He stood back up hastily, groaning and still spitting and hacking and wheezing and coughing. As he did this he could hear the sounds of heavy moans from behind, and he turned to see thin amalgamations of a half-human half-melted deformity crawling across the floor, its thin arms shivering as if they could collapse at any moment.

A searcher.

Although this one was small, where there was one, there would be ten more to count and Henry knew he definitely didn’t have the strength to fight them all off.

So he ran.

Or attempted to at least. Instead he hobbled a meger pace that would grandmas seem faster in comparison to a man in his late fifties.

He wasn’t anywhere near the end of the hallway when he heard a ghastly screech from behind, and, deciding that looking back was really stupid (he was going to die anyways though) he looked behind him to see ‘Bendy’ casually making his way out if the inky portal he’d created. From the looks of it, he was now more skinny than before, with what was supposed to be a spinal cord now looking closer to sharp spikes protruding from his back. His ribcage was more defined and poked through his ‘skin’ showing bits of white. If Henry dared to squint and look closer he could even make out bits of dark ‘flesh’ hanging off the ends of the white marrow.

The monster seemed to look to his left before looking to his right and staring dead at him.

Or at least he thought he was staring at him.

It paused, as if observing him, and then with a loud cry unlike all the others he’d heard before, it charged with clawed, inky limbs outstretched, ready to kill him immediately. At that point, still hacking up blood and ink, Henry allowed the creature to grip him, its claws digging deep into his flesh. He cried out in agony, but realized it was pointless because it was all the same dance and no amount of pleading or crying or begging would cause the pain to end; his suffering would continue onwards whether he wanted it to or not. And he was pretty sure this thing was just sentient enough to be able to understand how to sneak up and kill its prey, but not enough to have a moral conscience. Or at least that was the only theory he could come to.

Then again, was it really a theory? The amount of times he had been ambushed by ‘Bendy’ was immense after all.

Henry had long since stopped screaming, even as those wicked claws ripped flesh and skin from his white bones; even as he felt those same claws puncture a lung, causing him to gasp desperately for air; even as he had his intestines ripped violently from his stomach and in his faded moments of lasting life he watched the creature, with an ever present grin etched onto its face, crush his heart.

Blood was splattered everywhere, some of it old, and some of it new. Although if you asked Henry he wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference.

Henry’s entire body had been eviscerated and mutilated beyond recognition and could very well be described as a smears of red and chunks of flesh scattered about. Because that was basically what he had become, and still was technically.

Struggling through the tunnel of ink he could feel bits of his body wriggling and growing back. It was at this point, as he grew a neck for his decapitated head, that he realized he had just mere moments ago been nothing but a floating mass of empty air, or better yet, if this world worked the way it evidently did, he had been nothing but a floating soul amongst the ink that was now regrowing a body. And that was kind of cool, but also terrifying.

Everyone else lost their soul to the ink and yet he was still here?!

He had died in the worst way imaginable. In a way that should not have ended with him emerging from the ink puddle next to the Bendy statue he had become familiarized with. Everyone else was gone, but even when he lost all his body parts his soul was able to go on…

Apparently, Joey was really fucking adamant about keeping him alive…

Fuck you, Joey...just- fuck you…

“Welp, twice times the charm I guess…”he muttered making his way back down…

Shit where the fuck was he?

He paused and looked both ways before a sudden realization dawned on him.

“Seriously, fuck you Joey…”

…

Successfully raiding a trashcan for food in a world dominated by inky creatures that didn’t necessarily need food to survive was always a blessing.

Which was incredibly ironic considering on the fact that this place ran on Satanic magic.

At least Bendy liked to think so.

Curved, white claws dragged through rubbish pulling out scraps of meat and black, fleshy things covered in ink. The toon was sure it was worms. He shrugged and shoved the food in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Two more days before he would at least reach the sewer parts of the city, though of course he could cut that down to one-in-a-half if he snuck aboard one of those supply ships those Goldies were stationed in. But then again, everyone was looking for him most likely, or would soon.

Snatching a few more scraps of rotten meat covered in ink he shoved it deep into his pant pockets which were a dark, navy-green coloring with a dark, gray-orange coat wrapped snug around his top torso.

The toon jumped up and looked around wildly with oddly off-model eyes. He had stopped in one of the many alleyways designated throughout the city. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of shouting and yelling and the sounds of blaring horns.

Guards…

Great - more hiding. And just when he didn't feel like involving Boris in anymore danger than he already was…

And he didn't trust his magic to be cooperative with him at the moment with his nerves all frazzled.

#holy shit #walls of text #long reads #one-and-a-half-yikes #big yikes #being revised #batim au

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jibunstudies · 7 years

Photo

I wish I could tell you that counting in Japanese is easy, but unfortunately it’s not as easy as it looks. The basic counting system (one, two, three) is quite simple, but from there it gets a little crazy!

I’m not going to put anything in romaji, so please don’t ask me.

This post is going to be quite long, so click below to keep reading!

First, let’s start with the basic counting system! NOTE: zero (0) is generally just ゼロ or まる in room numbers

一（いち）one

二（に）two

三（さん）three

四（よん・し）four

五（ご）five

六（ろく）six

七（なな・しち）seven

八（はち）eight

九（きゅう）nine

十（じゅう）ten

十一（じゅういち）eleven

十五（じゅうご）fifteen

二十（にじゅう）twenty

二十五（にじゅうご）twenty-five

百（ひゃく）one hundred

千（せん）one thousand

万（まん）ten thousand

一億（いちおく）one hundred million

When forming numbers larger than ten, it’s really simple! If you want to say 50, simply put 5 before 10: ご＋じゅう＝ごじゅう. Similarly, if you want to say 74 then put 7 before 10 before 4: なな＋じゅう＋よん＝ななじゅうよん. I promise the longer you expose yourself to numbers, the more this system will make sense.

However, there are six special numbers: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8.

1 -- this number almost always changes its reading when used to count. Generally speaking, when used to count the reading becomes いっ, with whatever follows after. We’ll talk more about this later!

3 -- this number never changes its reading, but the kanji after does change its reading. We’ll talk more about this later, but remember 3 is special!

4 -- four can be read both as よん, よ, and し. You’ll occasionally hear し when natives are counting, though it’s fine to use よん as well. よ is common when it’s used to count time or years. For example, “fourth year student” would be よねんせい（四年生）.

6 -- similar to 3, but the reading of 6 also changes from ろく to ろっ. However, this isn’t always true so just remember that 6 is also special.

7 -- this is similar to 4 in that it has two readings which are both fine: なな and しち. The first is most common, but you’ll see しち used with time and years. For example, 2017年 is read にせんじゅうしちねん.

8 -- similar to 3 and 6. The reading generally becomes はっ with whatever follows after generally changing its reading.

Instead of trying to memorize all of the rules, just expect that these numbers might have special readings. When I was first learning how to count in Japanese I spent too much time memorizing every single reading for these numbers but realized later that their patterns are more or less consistent.

So, let’s put this into practice! Here are some of those “special readings” that I was talking about:

三百（さんびゃく）-- Instead of the usual ひゃく reading, 300 is read with a “b” sound.

六百（ろっぴゃく）-- In the case of 600, you’re skipping sounds and adding a “p” sound.

八百（はっぴゃく）-- Luckily, 6 and 8 are generally read almost the same way! So in this case, it follows the pattern.

三千（さんぜん）-- Instead of せん, you’re going to read this with a “z” sound.

六千（ろくせん）-- It’s normal! Hooray!

八千（はっせん）-- Again with the skipping sound, but that’s it this time.

But what about 万(まん)? Luckily, everything stays the same for this one! Nothing gets too fancy here. Thank goodness, right?

Now that we know how the counting system works in general, let’s turn it up a notch and have some fun! Below is how to count things in the basic way...

一つ（ひとつ）one thing

二つ（ふたつ）two things

三つ（みっつ）three things

四つ（よっつ）four things

五つ（いつつ）five things

六つ（むっつ）six things

七つ（なのつ）seven things

八つ（やっつ）eight things

九つ（ここのつ）nine things

十（とお）ten things

This system can be used for things that are not countable in other ways. For example, you might say “I have three classes tomorrow” and say “明日は三つの授業がある,” in which case there is no counter for classes. You cannot use this system for people, books, animals, cars, floors in a building, and like a million other things. Remember when I said that the Japanese counting system isn’t easy? I meant it.

However, familiarize yourself with this system because it’s the counting system! You’re going to hear it all of the time. When ordering food in Japan it’s common to use this system, so get used to it. You also use this system when counting days in a month...

一日（いちにち）first

二日（ふつか）second

三日（みっか）third

四日（よっか）fourth

五日（いつか）fifth

六日（むいか）sixth

七日（なのか）seventh

八日（ようか）eighth

九日（ここのか）ninth

十日（とおか）tenth

二十日（はつか）twentieth

In this case, 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, and 20 are counted differently! Fun, right?

But what if you want to count people? This is definitely important! You’re going to count people a lot more than you think, but luckily it’s fairly simple once you get past one and two.

一人（ひとり）one person

二人（ふたり）two people

三人（さんにん）three people

四人（よにん）four people

五人（ごにん）five people

4 is different in this case (we’re dropping that extra “n” sound), but once you get past 2 it’s all easy from there! Simply take a number and add “にん” after it and you’ve got “X people”. Finally something simple!

But wait...didn’t you say there are more ways to count in Japanese? Well...yes, and no. Japanese has a fairly basic counting system when you think about it (you’re basically adding things together), but the problem comes up in how Japanese counts objects. Which is to say...not in an easy way.

Japanese uses counters, which you may or may not have figured out already in the way つ and 日 are used to count things and days, respectively. There are (and I’m not exaggerating about this) over 50 ways to count things beyond the basic counting systems we covered. You can even count loaves of bread!

I’m fairly certain Japanese natives know all of these things and don’t even realize they know them (actually this is kind of true because my Japanese native boyfriend had no idea about the 3, 6, 8 pattern until I pointed it out to him lol), but as a learner there are “common” counters you’ll be constantly exposed to that are definitely important to learn! They’ll make your counting, and therefore your Japanese, sound more native.

Here’s a list of some of the more “common” counters:

部（ぶ）-- copies of a magazine or newspaper, or other packets of paper

台（だい）-- cars, bicycles, machines, mechanical devices, household appliances

杯（はい・ばい・ぱい）-- cups and glasses of drinks

匹（ひき・びき・ぴき）-- small animals, insects, fish, reptiles, and amphibians

本（ほん・ぼん・ぽん）-- long, thin objects (rivers, roads, train tracks, ties, pencils, bottles)

階（かい・がい）-- number of floors/stories in a building

個（こ）-- implies that the item is small/round; also used to count kanji and military units

枚（まい）-- thin, flat objects (sheets of paper, photographs, plates, articles of clothing)

名（めい）-- the polite way to count people, often heard in restaurants from staff

面（めん）-- mirrors, boards for board games, stages of computer games, walls of a room

冊（さつ）-- books

話（わ）-- stories, episodes of a tv series, etc.

There are also various time counters:

秒（びょう）-- seconds

分（ふん・ぷん）-- minutes

時（じ）-- hours

泊（はく・ぱく）-- nights of stay

ヶ月（かげつ）-- month-long periods (ex. 2 months = ２ヶ月)

歳（さい）-- age

And various counters for extent/frequency:

倍（ばい）-- multiples, -fold as in “twofold”

番（ばん）-- position, turn, sports matches

度（ど）-- occurrences, number of times, degrees of temperature or angle

回（かい）-- occurrences, number of times

Honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to counting in Japanese, but these counters will get you far in conversations or when you’re trying to list amounts.

Here are some tips for memorizing numbers + counters in Japanese!

Try not to think too hard about it! I know this sounds weirdly counterproductive considering there are so many counters to memorize, but if you just start familiarizing yourself with them it’ll become normal to use them for certain objects and not for others.

Memorize patterns. There are a lot of patterns when counting in Japanese because of 3, 6, and 8. If you memorize those patterns, it’ll be a lot easier to guess correct readings for new counters you discover!

Expose yourself to them. If you can, putting your phone in Japanese or your Netflix account can help with this. Your phone counts songs, etc., and Netflix will count episodes! They’re not common in spoken language so it’s good to expose yourself in other ways.

#japanese #japanese language #japanese vocabulary #japanese grammar #japanese langblr #langblr #studyblr #language learning #learning languages #vocabulary #grammar #counting #numbers #日本語 #言葉 #mine #jpnlangblrnet #langblrnet

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staying-strong-with-miso · 6 years

Text

**content warning: suicidal thoughts, self-harm, cutting, family problems, mothers**

Oh my god anon, you are not over analyzing for attention. Please let me remind you and everyone else reading that “acting out” for attention is a symptom of needing attention, for a specific disorder or bad situation. Let me repeat, putting yourself in harms way “for attention”, means you need attention!! People who don’t genuinely require attention, do not hurt themselves because they want it. It is not and it is never bad or silly to “attention-seek” for help, whatever it is you need help with.

It’s easy to feel that you are exaggerating your problems for attention, when that is the message getting sent to you by people in your life and society as a whole. Look at how you phrased this anon, “my generation tends to do that”. Teenagers and kids have been told that their problems don’t matter, that they’re over-exaggerating, that they’re just seeking attention, since before time itself.

Today’s hyperbolic memes aside, this is no more true now than it was fifty years ago. Adults tend to look down on the experiences of kids and teens, (especially young girls, mentally ill and disabled kids, queer kids, kids of color,), they forget we are people. It is easy to accept that and feel it is true when we have been told this message for so long, to internalize it and not question it. It becomes your inner voice. Focus, how do YOU feel and what is YOUR BODY telling you it’s feeling?

Remember, no matter what anyone tells you, your emotions and your perceptions of your emotions, your thoughts, they are valid and they matter. It is not abnormal to feel suicidal when you have Misophonia. Every teen Misophonic I know has struggled with it. It’s because Misophonia is scary! It’s painful! It terrorizes you, it makes you feel there is no way out, that everything is out of control.

Remember that this is not true. It is also far too easy to accept that bad ideas like that are true when you are scared. Remember movies and tv shows, stories where the villain recruits new villains to work alongside them. Something you’ll notice quickly is that the villain takes the hero when they are at their weakest, their most broken down and scared. Then they lie to them. When watching this, it’s difficult to understand how the hero could believe such ridiculous lies! You can easily see from your detached viewpoint that the hero only believes this because they are in pain. The hero can’t see any good prospects, anything good in their life. Nothing beautiful on the horizon. When they’re like this, it’s easy to see how when the villain tells them that poison is a magic potion that’ll cure everything, they’ll believe such an obvious lie. Because when you can’t see anything good, its way too easy to mistake bad things for good ones.

Think of the “villain” in this situation as mental illness. If I could draw this out like Steven usually does I would. I hope you’re getting the picture with just my words. Unless this is more ramble-y and incoherent than I thought, in which case know I care for you and I’m trying my best rn, and I’ll rewrite when I can.

Anyways, what’s most important for you to remember here is that you are not alone. There are people who have been through and are going through the exact same thing. There are people who care about you. I think I can say with a pretty high degree of safety that most of my followers and mutuals here are among that group.

Not only are there people who have been through this exact same thing, they have come out of it too. I’m not saying Misophonia goes away, but after your teen years, it really does get better. You have a future. You have a life and you can make it yours. Do you know how precious a human life is anon? How precious your life is? It’s more than you could ever know, more than could ever be counted or calculated. One day you will have control over your life, over your situation. Yes Misophonia will be a part of it, but it gets less controlling when you’re an adult.

I’d be the first to admit that my hopes and dreams for my adult life have been drastically changed by my disorders. Changed anon, not killed. There is so much out there for you to be excited for! What you held on for yesterday and today and tomorrow might not all be the same but oh I can promise you there will always be something to hold onto, if you look. When you can’t find anything, remember the stories with the weathered heroes who can’t see the good things right in front of them. No, maybe their good things aren’t the exact same as yours, but in both cases, they are always there. if you still can’t find them, you have the power to make your own, even if you don’t know it yet.

You can have a great life anon. You can have a great future. I know what it’s like to not be able to see it, but I promise it’s there waiting.

Things won’t always be as they are right now. Change is as inevitable as the passing of time. There are plenty of things that may be able to help you.

Anxiety medication might help you, (I know it’s helped me and a few others), counseling might help you, (also helped me and others like us), definitely antidepressants. (Again, has been very helpful for me and many other Misophonics I know.) These things also might take time to work. They all take a long journey of trial and error. I know you’re probably tired of hearing that already, but please trust me that every single second of waiting in pain has been worth it, 100 times over. I genuinely, hand-on-my-heart, mean that.

Anonymous, I need to repeat this, I need to know that you get it. You are not making this up for attention. You, like many others before you and with you, are experiencing serious repercussions on your mental health from living with Misophonia. It is a beyond-terrible, straight-from-hell disorder that yes, you, like all of us, will survive, will live beyond in ways you can’t imagine right now, but is currently endangering you.

Please, don’t underestimate the effect it’s having on your mental health. Don’t understate it, or make excuses for it. You need and deserve help, anon.

I’m terribly sorry about how your mom is treating you. You deserve so much better. Even if she doesn’t understand Misophonia, maybe she will take your mental health seriously, especially if you tell her that you’re suicidal. Which, I urge you to do. I know it will not be anywhere near easy, but believe me when I say it’s necessary. Don’t panic, you don’t have to do anything major right away. There’s no time limit. When you’ve worked up the courage, just be honest. Be brave.

If she has a bad reaction, if she invalidates your feelings or brushes it off, please know that has everything to do with her, and absolutely nothing to do with the severity of your pain. And be proud! One of the most difficult and important parts of learning to thrive with this disorder, maybe the most important part, is learning how to communicate about it. About your pain, and about your needs. Once you learn how to do this, once you practice and get good at it, trust me, everything is easier.

Whether you end up talking to her about it or not, be proud of yourself for recognizing you need help, and reaching out to me. Asking for help is both incredibly brave and the biggest favor you could do for yourself. You deserve it anon, you deserve help.

Another thing I want to talk to you about is guilt. Something a lot of mentally ill and disabled people, people with unique needs, have to go through, is people in their lives trying to make them feel guilty for those needs. For demanding to have those needs met. No matter what it is you need, if it’s because of your disorder, if it’s your family you’re asking, demanding they meet your needs is never, ever an unreasonable thing to do. It is in fact, necessary.

You are her child. It is her responsibility to take care of you, to love and nurture you, and to respect you. You deserve those things. Every child deserves those things, inherently. You are not an exception to that. You are no less important than anyone else, your needs are no less important than anyone else.

Sometimes people in our lives act like us being Misophonics is worse for them then it is for us. That can never be true. Ultimately, the worst those people experience because of our Misophonia, is inconveniences. Or, even, sadness and frustration on our behalf. We, you, are the one in serious pain here. Maybe that sounds selfish, to care about only our pain. But when the topic is our disorder, and for some, for me, our disability, that is exactly what we need to do.

I have seen guilt rip up Misophonics from the inside. Guilt they do not deserve. Having our Misophonia triggered does not only do damage to our body over time, is is a legitimately traumatizing experience. It does damage to our psych, our mental health overall. We need to avoid it at all costs. If doing so hurts other people, that really is too bad, and we should be mindful of how we can lessen that. But when you’re young, when it’s at it’s worst, when no one respects your disorder and your pain, when you’re overwhelmed and in agony and barely beginning to understand what’s happening to you, when people equate their inconvenience to that agony, to this whole experience, we really cannot afford giving them that mindfulness.

When you are struggling with if your pain matters or not, when they are not doing anything but making that feeling worse, when they try to make you feel bad for them, bad for needing things, bad for being Misophonic, excuse my french, but f**k them. They are your family! You are the one in pain here! They need to wake tf up and do better by you, you deserve better!

So never doubt the validity of your pain. Never apologize for needing things. Demand better! This society thrives off our self-hatred and self-doubt, don’t give it to them! You are important damn it! You deserve help! You deserve sympathy! Your family owes those things to you!

Anon I love you. You are stronger than you could ever, ever know. I am on your side. Take care of yourself because you are worthy of it, because you have a future. You will find people, (you have! right here!) who will listen to you and respect you and love you. This awful situation is not permanent, it will not be your end. This disorder really does get easier as an adult, enduring this really will be worth it. I let my rage lead me out of the worst of it, which probably isn’t for everyone. But I do know this, you will find your way.

#If anyone has better advice or something they want to add or tell anon PLEASE do!!#long post #self harm cw #suicide cw

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425599167 · 7 years

Note

Do you have any advice on writing Barriss? I got recommended you as the person to ask, because I was thinking about writing something with her.

Really? Alright, here are some guidelines for her and the other canon/legend characters I’ve included. Let me know if it helps.

Barriss:

Barriss embodies every contradiction and failing of Jedi philosophy. Pacifism when convenient, fear of the dark side despite fear being considered a path to it, all of that. Training her whole life to become a Jedi has left her mired in that mindset and she can’t see her way out, because she’s stopped wanting the thing she’s always wanted, and that would make all her efforts “pointless”.

Barriss is completely self-aware. On some level, she knows about #1. And it gnaws at her. Constantly. The reason she’s seemingly the first Jedi to have doubts about the war and act on them is because the contradictions became too much.

Barriss is resourceful. Combat-wise, she is scarily good at using the environment to her advantage, either through improvised weapons or use of terrain. This was obvious in her fight with Ashoka, hiding behind industrial machinery, creating distractions, and then the steam trick. This was also noticeable on Geonosis: it was her initial idea to use the enemy’s own tank against them. Depending on how much control the brain worm had, using shards of broken equipment may have also been her idea. Being weirdly proficient at combat is just another thing about herself that confuses and worries her.

Barriss isn’t dark-sided. Alignment in the Force is usually treated as dependent on intent, not consequence, that’s why dark sides rely on emotions like anger and hatred. Killing alone isn’t what draws on either side of the Force, motivation determine that. Barriss does not want to be what she is. She still killed those people, and has to be held responsible for it, but there wasn’t any real malevolence behind it, just fear and desperation. That’s not darkness on its own.

Barriss is highly intelligent, arguably the smartest padawan we see, probably one of the smartest people in the Jedi Order. Her memory is keen, and with adequate prep time, she can come up with detailed and extremely effective strategies. Improvisation isn’t her forte, but she can at least adapt fast enough to accomplish her goal. The only reason her plot failed, even after things started getting beyond her control, was because she let Ventress live and kept her sabers, which could charitably be interpreted as an act of self-sabotage.

Barriss is isolated. Sure, she gets along enough well with others, but Ahsoka was probably her only actual friend. Her self-image revolves around what (she thinks) Luminara thinks of her, and has no other role models. She hates being touched, but needs to be hugged.

Barriss is self-loathing. She’s a murderer and a hypocrite and she knows it. It’s important to note she considered herself those things before the bombing due to her participation in the war. She also has no idea what to do about it. No matter what opinion people have of her, in-universe or out, no one hates Barriss more than Barriss hates Barriss.

Ahsoka:

Ahsoka doesn’t like being jerked around. Attempts to manipulate or use her in any way really irritate her, especially after the events leading up to her leaving the Jedi. Any kind of foul play or indication of such will immediately tick her off.

Ahsoka doesn’t like being alone. She was raised in a communal setting, and throughout the Clone Wars, there probably wasn’t a single day that went by without her interacting with Anakin, Obi-Wan, R2, other Jedi, the clones, or Padmé, all of whom were practically family to her. Now she doesn’t have them. At best, she knows they’re alive but can’t reach them, at worst, she knows or believes they’re dead. She’s getting new people in her life and mending her relationship with Barriss, but it’s difficult.

Ahsoka won’t hesitate. Her development didn’t just teach her restraint, it was gaining experience so she knows what to do immediately when split-second decision making is required. She’s a survivor, and will kill people if they’re a threat. Killing isn’t her go-to option, but if her opponent has to die for her or her friends to live, it’s the end for them.

Ahsoka is tough. Should go without saying at this point, but she’s extremely strong and is an experienced soldier and survivalist. She can whether harsh environments, and use weapons other than her saber with a reasonable degree of skill. The destruction of the Jedi and the Republic shook her, but she kept going. She hurts, but she endures. Somehow.

Ahsoka learns from her mistakes. She has combat experience both in space and on the ground, in infiltration and direct attack, some of which nearly killed her and those around her. Every lesson about what it means to be a Jedi, or a leader, she is paying attention and learning, even if she doesn’t get it right away.

Ahsoka is much like Anakin, except better. As her master, he’s had more of an effect on her than anyone else, acting as her primary role model. And she’s better than him. She’s less arrogant, more in control of her emotions, less aggressive, more self-reflective, and isn’t possessive of the people she cares about like he is.

Thrawn:

Thrawn is a static character. That’s not a criticism of the writing behind him, Thrawn’s lack of personal development is the reason he’s a villain and the eventual cause of his death. He has immense intelligence, but never, not once at any point in his life does he commit any of it towards becoming a better person. He’s completely certain he’s thought everything out and chosen the best option. Throw whatever impassioned speech you want at him about the evils he’s committed, he won’t change. Rukh killed him because he kept the Noghri enslaved, even when he had all the power in the Empire and could’ve freed them, could’ve stopped compromising morality, could’ve stopped lying to himself, and he didn’t.

Thrawn is a master of psychological warfare and counterintelligence. He understands others easily, but that skill is completely dedicated towards finding ways to bring them down, often by feeding them information which will cause them to act in a way that furthers his plans, or simply causes groups of enemies to lose cohesion because they don’t trust each other. He doesn’t just anticipate his enemies, he makes them do what he wants. Also the art thing is over-exaggerated. If you can come up with an interesting way to include it, great, but it’s really the least interesting or menacing thing about the character.

Thrawn has just enough noble qualities to make people think the Empire is something worth fighting for. While the xenophobic higher-ups in the Empire may loathe him, one of his greatest strengths is how he’s seen by people who serve under him. He values the lives of his soldiers, and won’t waste them. Through his skill as a strategist, he gives them hope of victory. He respects their work, and they know it. And it’s not an act. Vader is feared, Thrawn is respected. Palpatine controls, Thrawn leads.

Thrawn is only as evil as necessary, but he’s still Evil. Don’t ignore that.

Thrawn is alien. While he may be closer to human than many Star Wars species, he has an uncanny-valley creepiness to him in contrast to more overtly terrifying villains like Vader. One thing I wish Rebels had kept was that his eyes don’t have pupils; I understand it was so the audience can see where he’s looking, but not being able to read him would work in the show’s favor. Don’t show his inner thoughts unless it’s absolutely necessary. Keep his exact mindset and motivations unknown to everyone, including his allies. With Ahsoka, despite being non-human she still acts and emotes like one, and her alien features correspond to human ones i.e. hair and eyebrows. The audience is intended to treat Ahsoka like a human, while they should be given reminders that Thrawn is definitely not.

Talon Karrde:

Karrde honors his deals. If he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it, even if he does so at a loss, and he won’t pull any exact-words bullshit to wriggle out of it. He’s a good foil for Hondo Ohnaka.

Karrde is fair. His employees are paid well, and there are significant benefits to working for him, especially in comparison to other criminals. The agreements he makes with people that are mutually beneficial, and he’s open to renegotiation. Still, that’s all it is: an agreement. Working with him doesn’t make him your friend.

Karrde came from nothing. It’s never established in Legends, but I think this guy grew up poor, and now that he has considerable funds at his disposal with more coming in, he wants the bestest, highest-quality ships and equipment and supplies. For himself, and for the people who work for him. Looking down on him for being a smuggler is one of the few things that can get under his skin. Brings back memories.

Karrde is nondescript. He’s got a lot of money, but nothing about his appearance and residence are ostentatious. It’s all part of keeping a low profile, not drawing more enemies by showing off his success.

Karrde keeps calm. Even in dire situations, the guy keeps a cool head and tries to see his way out of it. He’s in complete control of his facial expressions and body language, and gives nothing away. In Legends, he was able to keep out of Thrawn’s clutches for a while, and his abilities should reflect that.

Karrde tries to act True Neutral, but he’s actually Neutral Good. He doesn’t like people knowing this.

Oh boy, do I have thoughts on Revan:

Revan is not good or evil. In my opinion, it’s best when “Revan the Prodigal Knight” and “Darth Revan, Lord of the Sith” are only a hair’s breadth different from each other. Close enough you wouldn’t be able to tell which is which until you’ve had a very long discussion. My “light side” Revan holocron has not lost a step and is still one of the baddest (ex)meatbags in the galaxy. If they’re being written as a perfect hero or a remorseless monster, you’re missing a lot of opportunities.

Revan thinks in the long-term. The extreme long term. It wouldn’t be unusual for them to lay groundwork for objectives which are years, decades, or in the case of my Revan, centuries away. This is also a factor in how their sense of morality got warped, willing to sacrifice millions if it means the galaxy will still be populated in a thousand years. That big-picture thinking lets them shrug off the “small” stuff. Like the trail of corpses they leave.

Revan is a polymath. Much of what makes them so improbably hypercompetent is that, unlike many characters, they are not overspecialized either in skill or general knowledge. They don’t know everything, but they can be considered to have taken a 100-level course in basically any subject you want to bring up. They’ve canonically shown knowledge of strategy, tactics, politics, history, economics, sociology, linguistics, and multiple fields of engineering ranging from functional to expert, in addition to detailed understanding of the Jedi and Sith.

Revan is pretty laid back most of the time. They’re probably the least dramatic Sith… for however much that’s worth, and are pretty forgiving. While Malak was giddily prepping the stage for their climactic final duel on the top deck of the Star Forge, Revan was probably standing alone in the elevator during the long ride up the megastructure, humming their own made-up theme music or something. Among Star Wars characters, they have one of the more deliberate senses of humor, intentionally making jokes rather than incidentally doing things the audience might be amused by. Even when explaining something deeply philosophical, they speak with a casual tone and vocabulary you’d expect of an average person. They know bigger words, in several languages, but if the intent is communicating a point to people, there’s no need to act sophisticated. They’re not overly polite or sesquipedalian, and they’re not reserved about profanity.

Revan doesn’t depend on the Force. I have no love for Kreia, but this is consistent with what you might expect from her training. While stronger with it, Revan is fully capable of fighting without supernatural aid, or lightsabers for that matter. In-game, they show skill in using vibroblades, blasters, and various explosives, and the game allows the use of advanced cybernetic implants. Even after becoming a Jedi again, Revan is the one operating the gun turret and regularly shooting down whole squads of fighters. They’re also capable of talking their way out of most situations either through negotiation, bribery, lies, or threats, to the point where a high persuade skill is arguably better than the mind-trick power. For all the jokes about how most players approached the final battle with Malak with mines, to me, it’s completely in character for Revan to have been using grenades and mines both out of practicality, and to mock Malak with the fact he’s getting a taste of his own medicine by getting blown up from a distance.

Revan doesn’t care for your rules. This isn’t some juvenile “rebellious” attitude. It’s logically picking apart constraints and flawed processes, not for the sake of doing so, but because they are wrong, Revan can prove it, and they are superior to those who refuse to address their own mistakes as a result. No one and nothing is above criticism or ridicule, ever. And that includes Revan themself. They can take (useful) criticism.

Revan is a control freak. Their core flaw is immense confidence in their own superiority over everyone driving them to control everything because they can clearly do it better than anybody else can. People don’t often pick up on this because a) it’s a fun and necessary part of the game and b) Revan usually does do a better job than everybody. This behavior is obvious as a Sith, but even as a Jedi, Revan is someone who takes it upon themself to solve every single problem they encounter. Revan was the only one who could stop the Mandalorians. The only one who could save the Republic. The only one who could control the Star Forge. The only one who can beat Malak. You could make jokes about how everyone else in the galaxy is too incompetent to do anything right, or you could see various unnecessary sidequests as examples of Revan needlessly inserting themself into every situation they come across to exercise their power, benevolently motivated or otherwise. Revan didn’t need to hunt those bounties on Taris, or become swoop champion on two planets, or literally beat every professional pazaak player in the galaxy at their own game, or decide the outcome of the Sunry trial, or do every single thing possible to get prestige on Korriban when half would do, or hunt down and kill that woman’s fuckbot. That last one didn’t even have any reward, but they do it all anyway. The ultimate end of a light-sided Revan’s character development is to give up on this mindset, summed up with one really underrated line in the tomb of Naga Sadow, directed at Sith who consider themselves so much better than other people and think you should, too: “I don’t believe you. I don’t feel superior to anyone.” If Revan is dark-sided, they never learn when to quit and the entire galaxy suffers for it. Even if you’re writing them as light-sided, those are tough habits to break.

Avoiding pronouns is surprisingly easy and I recommend doing so.

#Anonymous #barriss offee #ahsoka tano #thrawn #talon karrde #revan

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potterlivesrp · 7 years

Text

sample application.

Below you will find my sample application for Seamus Finnegan (FC: Thomas Doherty)! Thank you for your patience as I got this all together. I do want to make the strong point that the freeform section is absolutely up to you. I mean it when I say you can do whatever you want! I have elected to write a bunch of headcanons because that works for my personal character building process; if you want to do something different, please do! Good luck to everyone who is applying, and if there is anything I can do to help, please do not hesitate to let me know.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name/alias: Honey

Age (18+): Twenty three

Preferred pronouns: She/her

Timezone: GMT+11

Life responsibilities: 8/10. In addition to being the admin, I am also a newly minted PhD student (yikes!). Between all the chaos that entails, I am actually quite good at time management, so I am here for the long run! If ever I need to duck away for a few days, I will make a post on the main and the OOC blog just to keep everyone updated.

OUT OF CHARACTER - Q&A

Answer the questions in the application here! No, I won’t give away the answers.

IN CHARACTER - BASICS

Full name: Seamus James Finnegan

Age and date of birth: Twenty years old (December 10th, 1980)

Zodiac sign: Sagittarius

Gryffindors born under this sign are exuberant and full of good humour. They are intelligent, but often do not make the best of students, because they would rather be outside enjoying the fresh air or off studying on their own. They aren’t good at diplomatic silence; if a teacher makes a mistake, the Gryffindor Sag will draw attention to it right away, usually loudly and in front of the entire class. At length. These students can get into trouble - their hot tempers make for easy dueling matches, and their impish senses of humour inspire a great many practical jokes. Still, they rarely mean anything malicious. They’re too jovial to harbour malice. These Gryffindors are likeable extraverts, on good terms with practically everybody, and they generally do all right in the end. Many excellent Quidditch players come from this sign. (Source)

Ex-Hogwarts house: Gryffindor

Gender identity: Cisgender male

Sexual orientation: Homosexual panromantic

Faceclaim: Thomas Doherty (if I were an applicant, I would put three FCs here in order of preference!)

IN CHARACTER - IN DEPTH

PERSONALITY TRAITS

POSITIVE: Generous, curious, idealistic, humorous, energetic, adventuresome, enthusiastic, brave, optimistic, confident, flirtatious.

NEGATIVE: Inconsistent, impatient, upfront, brash, undiplomatic, tactless, disorganized, careless, superficial, gullible.

HEADCANONS

Although he would loudly object otherwise, Seamus is a bit of a country bumpkin. His father was a muggle farmer when he met his mother, who was a field officer for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. The way they met was hardly romantic: she was there to investigate an outbreak of grindylows; he was about to call the council about the strange creatures infesting the water supply for his flock of sheep. But in a twist that is now legendary, Mary didn’t tell James about her magic until after they were married. This was hilarious to a young Seamus, who never tired of teasing his parents about their mutual deception. “Didn’t she give anything away?” Seamus would demand, laughing, and his father would grin, “Aye, I did wonder why a woman so beautiful would look my way.” Theirs was a happy home, one full of good humor and light-hearted conversation. Both of Seamus’ parents were Irish: national pride was not so much an aspect of Seamus’ upbringing as a permanent feature. Endlessly curious, Seamus would pour over old family photographs, nose nearly pressed to the unmoving faces of his father’s side, fingers tracing the crinkling smiles of his mother’s ancestors. In many ways Mary and James had parallel families, despite being magical and muggle respectively. They had seen famine and hardship, cruelty and poverty. The Finnegans were working stock, all calloused hands and sun-browned skin. Seamus burst with pride when he thought of his family’s blood and sweat that had seeped into the green fields of An Neidín.

Even in the middle of a war, Seamus knows he will return to Kenmare. His childhood was spent helping out on the farm, flying brooms with his cousin Fergus, and playing tricks on the local muggles. None of this was ever in ill-humor, for Seamus has an especially warm approach to all people. At school it wasn’t uncommon for him to apologize profusely if one of his jokes went a little too far (once he’d stopped laughing fit to burst, of course). One of the most important things in life, he reckons, is laughter. Laughter and good conversation. Indeed, Seamus could talk the hind leg off a donkey. When he was a child, Seamus would often ride his bike into the local muggle village on an errand of some kind – the newspaper for his Da, a bottle of ale for supper – and be found some hours later, engrossed in discussion with the shopkeeper over any manner of topics: animals, weather, farming. Seamus has an open, approachable manner that attracts him to farm-hands, milkmen, beleaguered Ministry workers, bartenders. With a vast and rambling mind, he manages to pick up snippets of information that, although often untrue or exaggerated, do mean he can contribute to essentially any topic in some respect. The degree to which his contribution is useful or even heeded, however, is up for debate.

Seamus has no clue what he wants to do after the war. Survival is his priority, as is anyone’s, in his opinion. For some years, however, he and his cousin Fergus have discussed opening up a whiskey distillery. This idea often surfaces after they have had a few too many whiskeys themselves, although Seamus would be remiss to say he isn’t seriously interested in the idea. He likes to imagine himself as the salesmen, the face of the company, while Fergus can do all the hard work. Fergus, needless to say, refutes this distribution of labor, and usually remarks that of the two of them, anyone would be more willing to look at Fergus’ pretty face than deal with Seamus and all his freckles. These conversations then regress into a tussle, which Seamus rarely wins. Fergus is a slippery little fucker.

The Finnegans are a small clan, and so Fergus is Seamus’ closest and only cousin. His senior by five years, it was Fergus who introduced Seamus to the first of most things. They attended the Quidditch World Cup together (where Seamus got catastrophically drunk – at fourteen, no less – under Fergus’ careful “supervision”); they often met in Diagon Alley for a pint and a game of chess together (Fergus always loses, mainly because he is easily distracted by the barmaid); and they flew brooms together. The last is among Seamus’ most treasured memories. Fergus would say he wanted to be a famous Quidditch player when he grew up. “I’m destined for greatness,” he insisted seriously, “haven’t ye seen me skills? Lad, you’ll be beggin’ for me autograph one o’ these days, just you wait.” Fergus did in fact make the reserve team of the Kenmare Kestrels a couple of years ago. Professional Quidditch, it turns out, is more about training and hoping you stick out enough to be picked for a game than it is about fame and glory. Now that the war has struck, Fergus has returned to Kenmare to stay with Seamus’ mother and father. The Regime has little need for sports at the moment, particularly when they’re too busy murdering muggles. If Seamus writes to anyone, it’s to Fergus, and damn Hermione’s rules about owling out too often. Fergus is his one link to home: without him, how would Seamus know about the new calf, or his mother’s redundancy from the Ministry, or his father staying up late, night after night, smoking his pipe and gazing into the fire? War means more than battles; it means leaving your family behind and hoping beyond hope that they’re missing you less than you miss them. For Seamus, who is so connected to his blood, the Resistance can be a form of torture.

Seamus dresses in muggle clothes more often than not. His parents had a relaxed attitude towards presentation, with his mother foregoing wizarding robes in favor of floral dresses or comfortable slacks, and his father usually slogging through the back door in enormous green wellies, a tweed flat cap crammed over his greying hair. Seamus is all muggle black Levi jeans, tight t-shirts of bands he’s never heard of, flannel overshirts, and a denim jacket littered with magical badges. He’s often found lounging on a sofa, trainer laces trailing, t-shirt rucked up his freckled stomach, a Quidditch magazine glued to his nose. Seamus has perfected the art of claiming a sofa to oneself (this also extends to beds, brick walls, and queues outside clubs). The trick, he reckons, is in looking utterly bored and somewhat post-coital, with half-mast eyes and a ready smirk, should anyone catch his eye. Seamus does have an air of sensuality about him -- and he can be an incorrigible flirt. “I can’t help being a sex god, can I?” he’s asked rhetorically on more than one occasion. In reality, Seamus is less sex god and more sex menace. At school he was often complaining about the regularity of his shags, the quality thereof, and the attractiveness of his partners. Being a part of the Resistance has had the effect of dampening his sex drive, but only slightly. Instead, Seamus channels his frustration into dueling. Blue balls is a very effective battle tactic.

Seamus is actually remarkably ordinary when it comes to magic. He is fair at transfiguration, good at charms, and reasonable at hexes. But it’s his patronus charm that is remarkable without exception. Seamus’ corporeal patronus – and it is always corporeal, make no doubt about that – is a fox. At first he demurred when it was suggested he teach others in the Resistance how to cast a patronus charm. “I’m not that good,” he said uncomfortably, “can’t ye get someone else t’do it?” Seamus isn’t a very good teacher when it comes down to it. He is easily distracted and often goes off on tangents, preferring instead to fall into conversation than to actually direct his student’s magic. This is a shame, because Seamus does have a gift, and it’s certainly lucky that this falls into one of the most difficult areas of magic there is.

His place in the Resistance is unquestioned. Seamus couldn’t bear to be at home, twiddling his thumbs, hoping that someone else was going to save them all from His reign of terror. Part of the reason why he joined the Order for a hot minute was simply all that energy. Seamus, for all his humor and chatterbox nature, is a doer. He needs to be in the fray, to feel useful. The Finnegans never got anywhere without getting their hands dirty, after all, and hard work is something Seamus is used to. His father certainly didn’t allow his only son to lollygag about the farm when there were cows to milk or agricultural fairs to attend. Much of Seamus’ early memories take place in the passenger seat of his father’s truck, bumping along endless green fields, heading towards some distant destination, their border collie panting and bouncing over Seamus’ shoulder. The problem with the Order was that he felt peripheral. Seamus will never kid himself: he knows he’s not a leader. He doesn’t have the charisma, for one, or the attention span. Although he’s definitely gifted at boosting morale and connecting with people, he far prefers a secondary role than being right at the front (this doesn’t stop him soundly criticizing anyone he believes is slacking off, of course). In the Resistance at least there is the feeling that they are working towards something. The Order was all cloaks and daggers: now Seamus is engaged in the gritty everyday of the Resistance’s existence. Someone has to scout out new camping spots, to figure out when they should attack that Death Eater hot zone, to teach people how to cast a patronus. Seamus is happy right in the middle of the action. He needs to feel valued.

For Seamus, the war sounds like late-night laughter, hushed in the blue dark, from people sitting around a bonfire. It’s the smell of a forest at dawn, of the rain-washed clean of another nameless British moor, the cold rush of ocean air whipping over dunes. Unmade beds, dish-washing duty, the organized cacophony of group breakfast. It feels like trudging along another country track, his boots sticking in the mud, Dean bumping into his side as their readjust the straps of their backpacks. The war sounds like the music that thumped out of a muggle club that one time in London; the way it pounded into the close summer air and tangled in Hermione’s sweat-damp hair. It’s that time he and Ron found themselves stuck in an abandoned warehouse for hours, watching a Death Eater do Merlin knew what across the way, until finally she apparated at four in the morning and left them sore, tired, and stupid, snapping at everyone when they arrived back at headquarters before collapsing asleep in bed for twelve hours. It’s the red bruise forming between his fingers from where he holds his wand. The war mainly feels like one anticlimax after another, but it mainly feels like holding a cup of tea on a frosty morning in Devon, sitting outside the flap of the tent and watching the light turn from dust to silver to gold. It feels the way that Dean makes him feel: short of breath, nervous, thrilled with their proximity.

For all his positive qualities, Seamus is a flawed individual. He finds it easy to identity the alleged weak spots of other people and does not hesitate in pointing them out, often loudly at at length, with little regard for other people’s feelings. He can also be quite brusque and even dismissive, believing that he has already considered the consequences and someone else’s opinion is merely a beat too late. In addition to this, his brash nature can cause him to be sloppy, clumsy, and heedless of consequence. Taking responsibility for his actions is something he struggles with constantly. There is a reason Seamus is not put on the trickier missions, when a careful hand and a steady eye are the only ways they can succeed. He is far better in the thick of it, with his spirit burning bright, his spells shooting through the dark like jets of flame. He lacks the finesse that a true spy requires; he does, however, have the mettle of a freedom fighter, and that is his redeeming feature.

One of Seamus’ biggest problems is his ability to jump to conclusions. It’s not an uncommon occurrence for Seamus to forego any logical explanation and simply choose whichever answer is the most salacious, extraordinary, or unbelievable. And somewhere, in the crowded, bright places in his mind, these tales take on a life of their own. At school it meant he was especially susceptible to gossip. More recently, his doubt in Harry Potter exemplifies this. Seamus would never discriminate based on blood status, and that is not the reason he feels uncertain around the prophecy of Potter being the Chosen One. No, he has a problem with the fact that Harry essentially knows nothing about how to fulfill this supposed prophecy. Although a halfblood himself, Seamus did essentially have a magical childhood. His mother imbued their home with magic in all of its ordinary glory: floating teapots, evergreen flowers on the sill, self-refreshing laundry. Seamus is used to the lovely everyday of magic and the wonder it can inspire in even the most mundane of chores. Even his father, in his sentimental moments (which are frequent; the Finnegans are an emotional lot and prone to heated monologues) expresses how strange and empty his old life feels without the touch of his wife’s wand. So how can someone who has never known the poisoned touch of You-Know-Who, who never grew up with stories about his reign of terror -- how can someone like that be expected to save someone like him? Even Seamus’ mother had a rough time during the first war; Seamus has seen her scars. You-Know-Who might have taken everything from Harry -- and that angers Seamus on Harry’s behalf -- but he also doesn’t know about the grim reality of Dark magic. What a word without Light is really like. And that, to Seamus, is difficult to reconcile.

EXTRAS

Seamus’ blog can be found here!

Here is a Pinterest board for him.

This is also where I would link to two writing samples if I were an applicant! They do not have to be IC.

#hp rp #golden trio rp #harry potter rp #literate rp #seamus finnegan #sample application

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