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aboveallarescuer · 4 years

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Daenerys Targaryen in A Storm of Swords vs Game of Thrones - Episode 4.1: Two Swords

In this series of posts, I intend to analyze precisely how the show writers downplayed or erased several key aspects of Daenerys Targaryen’s characterization, even when they had the books to help them write her as the compelling, intelligent, compassionate, frugal, open-minded and self-critical character that GRRM created.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not primarily meant to offer a better alternative to what the show writers gave us. I understand that they had many constraints (e.g. other storylines to handle, a limited amount of time to write the scripts, budget, actors who may have asked for a certain number of lines, etc) working against them. However, considering how disrespectful the show’s ending was to Daenerys Targaryen and how the book material that they left out makes it even more ludicrous to think that she will also become a villain in A Song of Ice and Fire, I believe that these reviews are more than warranted. They are meant to dissect everything about Dany’s characterization that was lost in translation, with a lot of book evidence to corroborate my statements.

Since these reviews will dissect scene by scene, I recommend taking a look at this post because I will use its sequence to order Dany’s scenes.

This post is relevant in case you want to know which chapters were adapted in which GoT episodes (however, I didn’t make the list myself, all the information comes from the GoT Wiki, so I can’t guarantee that it’s 100% reliable).

In general, I will call the Dany from the books “Dany” and the Dany from the TV series “show!Dany”.

Scene 1

While seeing show!Dany with her dragons is always enjoyable on its own, I have some problems with this moment. The first is that we'll begin season four with show!Dany worrying about her dragons' behavior here and, later, end it with her locking two of her dragons away. These scenes don't focus as much on show!Dany herself as they focus on her relationship with her dragons, which I think is quite a problem in comparison to how ASOS and ADWD (which will be the book that the writers will adapt starting from episode 4.6) begin and end:

Dany begins ASOS hopeful and happy that she's finally going to Westeros. She ends the book disillusioned because her efforts to help the former slaves didn't pay off like she expected, so she calls off her dreams of home in order to stay and fulfill (what she thinks is) her moral duty as queen.

Dany begins ADWD distraught because she's still dealing with the nobility's backlash and retaliation against her authority even now that she has tried to be conciliatory and rule in peace. She ends the book a) disabused of the notion that peace is possible and b) directing her eyes to Westeros again.

As we can see, these two books begin and end displaying Dany's multiple dilemmas: home vs duty, other people vs herself, peace vs war, conciliation vs use of force and so on.

In the show, while her last scene in the season four finale at least highlights her compassion towards her people, I'd argue it still mainly focuses on her relationship with her dragons (which is only one of many issues that Dany deals with in the books) rather than on grappling with the questions above in a way that centers primarily on show!Dany herself, like the books do with Dany.

My second problem is that having show!Dany be concerned about her dragons' behavior that much earlier than in the books poses another problem:

In ADWD, Dany ultimately failed in protecting her human children during her tenure because she chose peace with the slavers and was, therefore, detached from her dragon children, from her Targaryen heritage and from her identity as the Mother of Dragons. By meeting Drogon again, getting in touch with who she was and choosing fire and blood (war), she will be able to protect her people again and be a better mhysa. Ultimately, mother of dragons and mhysa are complementary parts of who Dany is.

In the show, however, the dragons begin to seem troublesome before we get to Meereen, before show!Dany begins to rule and before the issue of peace vs war becomes a major dilemma for her. This happened for two reasons: a) D&D are bad writers who dismiss themes as only being necessary for eighth-grade book reports (here, I imagine they probably just wanted to add more shock value to show!Dany's plotline) and b) D&D think that peace = good (even if it privileges a status quo that normalizes slavery) and war = bad, so killing slavers = bad, dragons = bad and continuing on with an anti-slavery revolution = bad (failure to understand reason 1 of why Dany's storyline matters).

My third problem is that, in the books, it's clear that what really upsets Dany is not that the dragons are eating goats, but rather that, as they grow and become more independent, the chances of her dragons a) hurting other people or b) running away increase:

“They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi,” Irri told her. “Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me.” She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.

“Did any of them try to burn their way free?” That was the thing that frightened Dany the most.

“No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty air. The slaver men feared to come near him.”

She kissed Irri’s hand where Drogon had bitten it. “I’m sorry he hurt you. Dragons are not meant to be locked up in a small ship’s cabin.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

There was no sign of Viserion, but when she went to the parapet and scanned the horizon she saw pale wings in the far distance, sweeping above the river. He is hunting. They grow bolder every day. Yet it still made her anxious when they flew too far away. One day one of them may not return, she thought. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Her dragons were growing wild of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak’s tokar ablaze the last time the seneschal had called. I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them? (ADWD Daenerys I)

If I look back, I am doomed, Dany told herself … but how could she not look back? I should have seen it coming. Was I so blind, or did I close my eyes willfully, so I would not have to see the price of power?

[...] At Astapor the slaver's eyes had melted. On the road to Yunkai, when Daario tossed the heads of Sallor the Bald and Prendahl na Ghezn at her feet, her children made a feast of them. Dragons had no fear of men. And a dragon large enough to gorge on sheep could take a child just as easily. (ADWD Daenerys II)

Before what happened to Hazzea, she was okay with the fact that they were hunting and devouring sheep:

Viserion sensed her disquiet. [...] “You should be hunting with your brothers. Have you and Drogon been fighting again?” (ADWD Daenerys I)

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. (ADWD Daenerys I)

Basically, this is my way of saying that, if they needed to have a scene where show!Dany is uneasy about what the dragons were doing, they should've shown them almost harming one of the people in her retinue or something along those lines (rather than being shocked at seeing them hunt and eat), for that would showcase her empathy like in the books.

My fourth problem with this scene is that we see part of it from show!Jorah's point of view:

JORAH: They’re dragons, Khaleesi. They can never be tamed. Not even by their mother.

In the show, he gets the first line of show!Dany's season four storyline, he gets to be anxious about the dragons before show!Dany is (which undermines how reflective she is in the books) and he is the one who warns her of their wildness when, in the books, she is aware of it without anyone having to tell her. It's another subtle way of undermining show!Dany's agency in comparison to her book counterpart, unfortunately.

My fifth and final problem is that, well, this scene was written by the same people who thought that it was necessary to have show!Dany's dragons taken from her in season two (which never happened in ACOK) and show her going "back to being a really frightened little girl" because she is "so defined" by them. It's the opposite in the books: the dragons only turned into weapons to fight against slavery because of her choices. So, with that in mind, I don't like how they made them so important in her first and last scenes of the season when they never were in the books. And all of this conflict feels superfluous in retrospect, when one remembers that show!Dany doesn't struggle to control them in the last three seasons at all.

DAENERYS: Ser Barristan.

BARRISTAN: Your Grace.

DAENERYS: Where’s Daario Naharis? Where’s Grey Worm?

BARRISTAN: Gambling, Your Grace.

DAENERYS: Gambling?

I have problems with how show!Barristan and show!Dany are being portrayed here because it feels like the show writers switched their characterizations when we consider what we know of them in the books.

First, why is show!Barristan holding his laughter about this situation? In the books, Barristan clearly dislikes Daario and his influence on Dany:

On the day that he returned from his latest sortie, he had tossed the head of a Yunkish lord at her feet and kissed her in the hall for all the world to see, until Barristan Selmy pulled the two of them apart. Ser Grandfather had been so wroth that Dany feared blood might be shed. (ADWD Daenerys VII)

“This is your gift? A scrap of writing?” Daario snatched the parchment out of the Dornishman’s hands and unrolled it, squinting at the seals and signatures. “Very pretty, all the gold and ribbons, but I do not read your Westerosi scratchings.”

“Bring it to the queen,” Ser Barristan commanded. “Now.” (ADWD Daenerys VII)

“...Poor Daario, her brave captain … she will never forget him, no … but better for all of us if he is dead, yes? Better for Daenerys too.”

Better for Daenerys, and for Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen loved her captain, but that was the girl in her, not the queen. [...]

Her love for Daario is poison. A slower poison than the locusts, but in the end as deadly. (ADWD The Kingbreaker)

Now, Barristan is a product of his misogynistic society and I do think he's wrong for thinking (in the last quote above) that Dany's love for Daario is a sign of immaturity, but my point here is that he wouldn't be laughing about something that Daario was doing behind Dany's back; in fact, he would've most likely informed her as soon as he learned about it because he respects her authority.

Additionally, he's known for lacking a sense of humor and not being relaxed, which makes this scene even more OOC for him:

The old knight was a good man, but sometimes very literal. It was only a jape, ser, she thought, but she sat on one of the pillows just the same. (ADWD Daenerys II)

“She needs a spear,” Ser Barristan said, as Barsena vaulted over the beast’s second charge. “That is no way to fight a boar.” He sounded like someone’s fussy old grandsire, just as Daario was always saying. (ADWD Daenerys IX)

Second, why is show!Dany being portrayed as the uptight one here? In the chapter that they are drawing from, there are several moments displaying her carefree side:

“Five, were there? Well, that’s a confusion. I could not give you a number, my queen. This old Plumm was a lord, though, must have been a famous fellow in his day, the talk of all the land. The thing was, begging your royal pardon, he had himself a cock six foot long.”

The three bells in Dany’s braid tinkled when she laughed. “You mean inches, I think.”

“Feet,” Brown Ben said firmly. “If it was inches, who’d want to talk about it, now? Your Grace.”

Dany giggled like a little girl. (ASOS Daenerys V)

He tried to spare me the sight of the dead children too. He should not have done that, but he meant it kindly. And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Besides admiring Daario's sense of humor and swagger, Dany also appreciates that she can let go of the burdens of queenship (and luxury) and be more spontaneous and frugal when she's with him:

In Meereen I was a queen in silk, nibbling on stuffed dates and honeyed lamb, she remembered. What would my noble husband think if he could see me now? Hizdahr would be horrified, no doubt. But Daario ...

Daario would laugh, carve off a hunk of horsemeat with his arakh, and squat down to eat beside her. (ADWD Daenerys X)

Unfortunately, the show never allows any of those aspects of Dany's characterization to come across onscreen because the writers wanted show!Dany to appear very stoic, which we know because Emilia's said in an interview that they wanted her to "sit up straight and don't smile, you're not funny", which is quite a shame; not only the writers would've been more faithful to the books by allowing her to smile and laugh and enjoy herself, it would've made show!Dany more endearing.

Ultimately, I think the change in these characters comes down to a) D&D not really understanding any of the characters of the books and b) their sexist assumptions that men are funnier than women and that powerful women are all ice queens.

I also need to talk about how show!Dany's connection to the Dothraki, the Unsullied and the freedmen is being undermined onscreen in comparison to what we get solely from ASOS Daenerys V.

In the show, the Dothraki only appear briefly in the background of this episode to never be seen again through the rest of season four and the entirety of season five.

In ASOS Daenerys V, we see how Dany's time with the Dothraki influenced her when she judges the slavers' reaction to her army or assesses the way that Oznak fights:

They are pissing on slaves, to show how little they fear us, she thought. They would never dare such a thing if it were a Dothraki khalasar outside their gates. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Oznak zo Pahl charged a third time, and now Dany could see plainly that he was riding past Belwas, the way a Westerosi knight might ride at an opponent in a tilt, rather than at him, like a Dothraki riding down a foe. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We also see her interacting with her khalasar and considering that her bloodriders a) are too important to send to fight against Oznak and b) aren't the most adequate men to send to Meereen's sewers:

Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly, no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too. (ASOS Daenerys V)

“When cowards hide behind great walls, it is they who are defeated, Khaleesi,” Ko Jhogo said.

Her other bloodriders concurred. “Blood of my blood,” said Rakharo, “when cowards hide and burn the food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes. This is known.”

“It is known,” Jhiqui agreed, as she poured.

“Not to me.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

“These sewers do not sound promising.” Grey Worm would lead his Unsullied down the sewers if she commanded it, she knew; her bloodriders would do no less. But none of them was suited to the task. The Dothraki were horsemen, and the strength of the Unsullied was their discipline on the battlefield. Can I send men to die in the dark on such a slender hope? (ASOS Daenerys V)

So, despite not getting enough characterization to be set apart as their own individuals because of GRRM's racism, the Dothraki people's influence on Dany's decision-making is still clear. Unfortunately, this is completely absent from the show.

On HBO, when show!Dany passes by the Unsullied, they are shown standing still in silent ranks for no reason while their commander show!Grey Worm is on a contest against show!Daario because the writers wanted it to happen, even though it doesn't gel with his characterization (more on that later).

In ASOS Daenerys V, when Dany passes by the Unsullied, a) they are shown separated in groups that are either training (along with Grey Worm) or bathing and b) we get information on their hygiene practices:

As they rode past the stakes and pits that surrounded the eunuch encampment, Dany could hear Grey Worm and his sergeants running one company through a series of drills with shield, shortsword, and heavy spear. Another company was bathing in the sea, clad only in white linen breechclouts. The eunuchs were very clean, she had noticed. Some of her sellswords smelled as if they had not washed or changed their clothes since her father lost the Iron Throne, but the Unsullied bathed each evening, even if they’d marched all day. When no water was available they cleansed themselves with sand, the Dothraki way. (ASOS Daenerys V)

It's lovely to see Dany returning the Unsullied's greeting, which is another example of how she (relatively speaking) sees lowborn people as equals to her:

The eunuchs knelt as she passed, raising clenched fists to their breasts. Dany returned the salute. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We also get to see the Unsullied cheer for Belwas after he won his duel:

The besiegers gave him a raucous welcome as soon as he reached the camp. Her Dothraki hooted and screamed, and the Unsullied sent up a great clangor by banging their spears against their shields. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We get to see Grey Worm openly objecting to Daario's suggestion that the Unsullied are immune to the boiling oil that the slavers would probably throw at them if they tried to storm the gates. While he and the Unsullied would still do this if Dany had given them the command, this is a subtle sign of his character development because it displays that, unlike with the slave masters, he's at least now able to speak out about the risks that he and his men would face:

“...We can storm the gates with axes, to be sure, but ...”

“Did you see them bronze heads above the gates?” asked Brown Ben Plumm. “Rows of harpy heads with open mouths? The Meereenese can squirt boiling oil out them mouths, and cook your axemen where they stand.”

Daario Naharis gave Grey Worm a smile. “Perhaps the Unsullied should wield the axes. Boiling oil feels like no more than a warm bath to you, I have heard.”

“This is false.” Grey Worm did not return the smile. “These ones do not feel burns as men do, yet such oil blinds and kills. The Unsullied do not fear to die, though. Give these ones rams, and we will batter down these gates or die in the attempt.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

And then, we see Dany deciding not to endanger the Unsullied's lives (similar to how she sought to prevent too many former slaves of Astapor from dying in the battle of Yunkai), which highlights both her compassion and her intelligence (since she shows knowledge of the Unsullied's particular strengths to conclude that they shouldn't be sent to the sewers):

Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey Worm. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Sadly, the show ignores all of this.

On HBO, show!Dany walked past the freedmen on her way to meet show!Daario.

In ASOS Daenerys V, Dany chose to go meet the freedmen because she didn't want to spend time distracted by her feelings for Daario:

“Missandei,” she called, “have my silver saddled. Your own mount as well.”

The little scribe bowed. “As Your Grace commands. Shall I summon your bloodriders to guard you?”

“We’ll take Arstan. I do not mean to leave the camps.” She had no enemies among her children. (ASOS Daenerys V)

We learn that the fighting men were provided with weapons from the other two cities and were now being trained (though not at the particular moment that she chose to meet them):

South of the ordered realm of stakes, pits, drills, and bathing eunuchs lay the encampments of her freedmen, a far noisier and more chaotic place. Dany had armed the former slaves as best she could with weapons from Astapor and Yunkai, and Ser Jorah had organized the fighting men into four strong companies, yet she saw no one drilling here. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Besides the fighting men, we also get information on children and women:

They passed a driftwood fire where a hundred people had gathered to roast the carcass of a horse. She could smell the meat and hear the fat sizzling as the spit boys turned, but the sight only made her frown.

Children ran behind their horses, skipping and laughing. [...]

Dany had stopped to speak to a pregnant woman who wanted the Mother of Dragons to name her baby[.] (ASOS Daenerys V)

Then, there's also how the freedmen perceive and act around Dany:

Some of the freedmen greeted her as “Mother,” while others begged for boons or favors. Some prayed for strange gods to bless her, and some asked her to bless them instead. She smiled at them, turning right and left, touching their hands when they raised them, letting those who knelt reach up to touch her stirrup or her leg. Many of the freedmen believed there was good fortune in her touch. If it helps give them courage, let them touch me, she thought. There are hard trials yet ahead ... (ASOS Daenerys V)

Instead of believing that she has a "glorious destiny" (like the show writers put it), Dany's actual thoughts display that she only allows the freedmen to revere her because it helps them to feel safe; this is another sign of her empathy, not of her self-gratification or entitlement as many often think.

Finally, the chapter shows the freedmen killing a man for Dany:

Mero went sprawling, blood bubbling from his mouth as the waves washed over him. A moment later the freedmen washed over him too, knives and stones and angry fists rising and falling in a frenzy. (ASOS Daenerys V)

In the books, the former captain of the Second Sons, Mero, hid among the freedmen and bided his time to kill Dany out of revenge for having been deceived by her in Yunkai. Barristan defended her and defeated Mero with a stick, which then led to the freedmen ultimately killing him for their mhysa (and to Barristan's identity and Jorah's treason being revealed).

On HBO, because a) show!Barristan's identity was revealed right away and b) show!Mero was killed by show!Daario (who is part of the Second Sons onscreen rather than the Stormcrows onpage), this scene never happened, making this another example of Dany's connection with the freedmen being undermined from books to show.

If the writers really cared about "the people who may be suffering the repercussions of the decisions made by those heroic people" (which was their justification for leaving show!Dany out of the picture in the second half of the episode where they had her decide to kill thousands of innocents out of nowhere), they would've shown the (already limited) interactions between Dany and her khalasar, the Unsullied and the freedmen at the very least. In fact, if the writers really cared about them, they could've gone further and explored characters that GRRM himself didn't:

“Nine, the noble Reznak said. Who else?”

“Three freedmen, murdered in their homes,” the Shavepate said. “A moneylender, a cobbler, and the harpist Rylona Rhee. They cut her fingers off before they killed her.” The queen flinched. Rylona Rhee had played the harp as sweetly as the Maiden. When she had been a slave in Yunkai, she had played for every highborn family in the city. In Meereen she had become a leader amongst the Yunkish freedmen, their voice in Dany’s councils. (ADWD Daenerys II)

Rylona Rhee was a character whose existence we only learned about in ADWD, after she was already killed by the Harpy's Sons. As the quote shows, though, she represented the Yunkish freedmen's interests in Dany's court and had a lot of potential as a character that GRRM didn't tap into. The show could've easily improved this... Think about it: if Rylona was among the Yunkish freedmen, this means that she met Dany at the end of ASOS Daenerys IV (which, in the show, was episode 3.10). From that point until ADWD Daenerys II, the entirety of season four and the beginning of season five went by (this happened because the show writers reaaaallly stretched out the events of ASOS Daenerys V and VI and parts of ADWD Daenerys I and II). This span of time would've been the perfect opportunity to introduce Rylona's character, flesh her out and give us more information about the freedmen.

Now, the show writers would've never done something like this, of course; they only cared about the lowborn people's deaths and the shock value that would come with them, not about their motivations and lives in general.

DAENERYS: How long have they been at it?

MISSANDEI: Since midnight, Your Grace.

DAARIO: Ser Worm is stronger than he looks. But I can see his arms beginning to shake.

DAENERYS: What’s the prize to winning this stupid contest?

DAARIO: The honour of riding by your side on the road to Meereen.

DAENERYS: That honour goes to Ser Jorah and Ser Barristan, as neither of them kept me waiting this morning. You two will ride in the rear guard and protect the livestock. The last man holding his sword can find a new queen to fight for.

I already talked about my first issue with the scene, which is that it portrays show!Dany as rigid and strict while it ignores that her book counterpart is allowed to be playful and not take herself seriously in several moments in the books, including in this chapter (see above).

My second problem with it is that ... why would either show!Grey Worm or show!Daario think that this contest would give one of them "the honour of riding by [show!Dany's] side on the road to Meereen"? Did they forget that this choice is show!Dany's to make? Did they forget that she is their leader? By comparison, this is what Grey Worm says when Hizdahr tries to give him orders after Dany departs Meereen:

Hizdahr’s blunder with Grey Worm had cost him the Unsullied. When His Grace had tried to put them under the command of a cousin, as he had the Brazen Beasts, Grey Worm had informed the king that they were free men who took commands only from their mother. (ADWD The Queensguard)

Considering that Grey Worm only respects his queen's authority in the books, I doubt that he would've accepted to join this contest because he would know that its "prize" is worthless to begin with. Same goes for Daario. Unfortunately, this goes in line with how the (sexist) writers of this show have show!Dany's men make decisions among themselves and forget that show!Dany is their liege (another example: show!Barristan asking show!Jorah (rather than show!Dany) to take part in the battle of Yunkai), which is something that would've been fixed by simply paying more attention to the books. Unfortunately, this will only get worse as time goes on.

DAARIO: You like this girl? Must be frustrating.

GREY WORM: You are not a smart man, Daario Naharis.

DAARIO: I’d rather have no brains and two balls.

I'm fine with the show introducing a romantic relationship between show!Grey Worm and show!Missandei (which doesn't happen in the books because Missandei is 10-11), but it bothers me that the writers thought that the very first scene suggesting that show!Grey Worm has feelings for show!Missandei should feature show!Daario making an eunuch joke. Not that this would've been better if it weren't the first scene hinting at MissWorm, of course, it's needlessly offensive regardless and, while GRRM isn't immune to stuff like this either, it's true that this doesn't even happen in the books to begin with.

Scene 2

DAENERYS: Have you ever been to Meereen?

MISSANDEI: Several times, Your Grace, with Master Kraznys.

DAENERYS: And?

MISSANDEI: They say a thousand slaves died building the Great Pyramid of Meereen.

DAENERYS: And now an army of former slaves is marching to her gates. You think the Great Masters are worried?

MISSANDEI: If they’re smart, Your Grace.

This detail about a thousand slaves having died while they built the Great Pyramid of Meereen is a show only invention.

Show!Missandei telling show!Dany that the Great Masters should be worried about the latter's army if they are smart is also a show only invention (which leaves a really bad taste in my mouth in retrospect, since this original bit of dialogue most likely stems from their impression that show!Dany is "becoming more and more viable as a threat" based on her campaign in Slaver's Bay, which will also inform why, six years later, they'll think that it's okay to say that show!Dany's actions in King's Landing were foreshadowed by her "willingness to go forth and conquer all [her] enemies"; failure to understand reasons 1 and 2 of why Dany's storyline matters).

It makes no sense that the writers felt the need to add original lines when we could've had what ASOS Daenerys V actually gave us:

When she looked over one shoulder, there it stood, the afternoon sun blazing off the bronze harpy atop the Great Pyramid. Inside Meereen the slavers would soon be reclining in their fringed tokars to feast on lamb and olives, unborn puppies, honeyed dormice and other such delicacies, whilst outside her children went hungry. A sudden wild anger filled her. I will bring you down, she swore. (ASOS Daenerys V)

As the quote above shows, Dany's discomfort with the Meereenese slavers' privileges and traditions stems from the fact that they only have these things to begin with because they've maintained and benefitted from the slave trade for centuries. That's why she no longer enjoys eating puppies:

“...We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Good dog in Astapor, little queen. Eat?” He offered it with a greasy grin.

“That is kind of you, Belwas, but no.” Dany had eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies. (ASOS Daenerys II)

Or why she asked Jhogo not to use the whip inside Astapor:

He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked Kraznys.

“If it please your worship.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Make way for the Mother of Dragons!” But when he uncoiled the great silverhandled whip that Dany had given him, and made to crack it in the air, she leaned out and told him nay. “Not in this place, blood of my blood,” she said, in his own tongue. “These bricks have heard too much of the sound of whips.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

Or why she considered banning the tokar, though she ultimately kept it in an attempt to help to make peace with the slavers:

Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master’s garment, a sign of wealth and power.

Dany had wanted to ban the tokar when she took Meereen, but her advisors had convinced her otherwise. “The Mother of Dragons must don the tokar or be forever hated,” warned the Green Grace, Galazza Galare. “In the wools of Westeros or a gown of Myrish lace, Your Radiance shall forever remain a stranger amongst us, a grotesque outlander, a barbarian conqueror. Meereen’s queen must be a lady of Old Ghis.” Brown Ben Plumm, the captain of the Second Sons, had put it more succinctly. “Man wants to be the king o’ the rabbits, he best wear a pair o’ floppy ears.” (ADWD Daenerys I)

Or why she was intent on keeping the fighting pits closed:

“Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits,” Kraznys added. “Douquor’s Pit has a fine folly scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and she may wager on which the bear will eat first.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Why?” she demanded, when Ithoke had finished. “You are no longer slaves, doomed to die at a master’s whim. I freed you. Why should you wish to end your lives upon the scarlet sands?” (ADWD Daenerys II)

Or, finally, why she chose to replace the previous throne for an ebony bench:

Her audience chamber was on the level below, an echoing high-ceilinged room with walls of purple marble. It was a chilly place for all its grandeur. There had been a throne there, a fantastic thing of carved and gilded wood in the shape of a savage harpy. She had taken one long look and commanded it be broken up for firewood. “I will not sit in the harpy’s lap,” she told them. Instead she sat upon a simple ebony bench. It served, though she had heard the Meereenese muttering that it did not befit a queen. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

All of these examples highlight that Dany struggles to accept the Meereenese slavers' culture because of her desire to end slavery and achieve equality. The quote from ASOS Daenerys V above could've easily been added in the show during a conversation between show!Dany and show!Missandei like this one.

Now, one could argue that this couldn't have happened in this episode because show!Dany hadn't yet a) seen the one hundred and sixty-three dead children, b) arrived in Meereen, c) seen the Great Pyramid and/or d) faced the risk of her people starve during the siege, all of which increase her righteous anger and determination to move forward with her crusade and do justice. That's true, but it leads to another question: why didn't they let this episode begin with show!Dany in Meereen like how ASOS Daenerys V begins, that is, with her having to face Meereen's champion?

Meereen was as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. Like her sister cities she was built of brick, but where Astapor had been red and Yunkai yellow, Meereen was made with bricks of many colors. Her walls were higher than Yunkai’s and in better repair, studded with bastions and anchored by great defensive towers at every angle. Behind them, huge against the sky, could be seen the top of the Great Pyramid, a monstrous thing eight hundred feet tall with a towering bronze harpy at its top.

“The harpy is a craven thing,” Daario Naharis said when he saw it. “She has a woman’s heart and a chicken’s legs. Small wonder her sons hide behind their walls.”

But the hero did not hide. He rode out the city gates, armored in scales of copper and jet and mounted upon a white charger whose striped pink-and-white barding matched the silk cloak flowing from the hero’s shoulders. The lance he bore was fourteen feet long, swirled in pink and white, and his hair was shaped and teased and lacquered into two great curling ram’s horns. Back and forth he rode beneath the walls of multicolored bricks, challenging the besiegers to send a champion forth to meet him in single combat. (ASOS Daenerys V)

That's a problem that I have with how they adapted ASOS Daenerys V. The chapter can be divided in a list of four parts, which goes like this:

How Dany deals with Meereen's champion (this happens in episode 4.3)

Discussions on how to take Meereen (this never happens in the show)

Dany's thoughts on/flashbacks with Daario and Jorah (this more or less happens in episode 4.1; some are show only inventions)

Dany a) meeting her children and Mero and b) finding out the truth about her knights (a never happens; b happens in episodes 3.1 for show!Barristan and 4.8 for show!Jorah)

Despite being a chapter jam-packed with action and drama, the show adaptation diluted its impact by 1) fragmenting it, 2) overfocusing on certain parts over others, 3) creating new (and often unnecessary) scenes and 4) displaying its events out of the intended sequence. Problems 1-3 were already present in the adaptation of Dany's first four ASOS chapters, but I'd argue problem 4 is more serious in ASOS Daenerys V.

In the case of this particular scene, again, because it takes place before show!Dany reaches Meereen (and because the show writers never understood reasons 1 and 2 of why Dany's storyline matters), we don't get to see how her problems with the Meereenese slavers' culture are tied to their practice of slavery. This, unfortunately, is another case of the show undermining Dany's characterization from page to screen.

DAENERYS: You were told to ride at the back of the train.

DAARIO: Yes, My Queen. But I need to speak to you about something important. A matter of strategy.

MISSANDEI: Your Grace.

DAENERYS: All right, what is this matter of strategy?

DAARIO: A dusk rose.

DAENERYS: Would you like to walk at the back of the train instead of riding?

DAARIO: And this one’s called lady’s lace.

DAENERYS: Would you like to walk without shoes?

DAARIO: You have to know a land to rule it. Its plants, its rivers, its roads, its people. Dusk rose tea eases fever. Everyone in Meereen knows that. Especially the slaves who have to make the tea. If you want them to follow you, you have to become a part of their world.

DAARIO: Strategy. Harpy’s Gold. No tea from this one. Beautiful but poisonous.

DAENERYS: You are a gambler, aren’t you?

DAARIO: Your Grace.

This exchange is adapted from this part of ASOS Daenerys V:

On the road from Yunkai, Daario had brought her a flower or a sprig of some plant every evening when he made his report ... to help her learn the land, he said. Waspwillow, dusky roses, wild mint, lady’s lace, daggerleaf, broom, prickly ben, harpy’s gold ... (ASOS Daenerys V)

I have some problems with it, though. The first is that they have show!Daario tell show!Dany that she has "to know a land to rule it". In the books, at this point in time, Dany does not have any intention to stay and rule Meereen because she thinks that abolishing slavery was enough on its own; she only changes her mind after seeing the aftermath of the sack of Meereen, hearing news of Astapor (where her council was deposed and slavery is being reinstalled by a former slave named Cleon) and Yunkai (which was rumored to be making alliances with sellswords to defeat her) and understanding that her anti-slavery measures can be easily undone if she leaves so soon. Additionally, I dislike that they chose to only adapt a (veeery brief) scene from the chapter where she's shown to lack knowledge. Why not also adapt, for example, the scene in which she chooses Belwas to fight for her against Meereen's champion and we get to see her whole line of reasoning for doing so? That they even added the detail (that isn't in the books) about how a ruler should have knowledge of the region (which show!Dany doesn't yet) only adds salt to the wound, since it subtly indicates that the show writers themselves find her ineffective as a ruler when she certainly isn't.

The second problem is that show!Dany's feelings for show!Daario are not that clear onscreen in comparison to what we get in the books:

Dany found herself stealing looks at the Tyroshi when her captains came to council, and sometimes at night she remembered the way his gold tooth glittered when he smiled. That, and his eyes. His bright blue eyes. On the road from Yunkai, Daario had brought her a flower or a sprig of some plant every evening when he made his report ... to help her learn the land, he said. Waspwillow, dusky roses, wild mint, lady’s lace, daggerleaf, broom, prickly ben, harpy’s gold ... He tried to spare me the sight of the dead children too. He should not have done that, but he meant it kindly. And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did.

Dany tried to imagine what it would be like if she allowed Daario to kiss her, the way Jorah had kissed her on the ship. The thought was exciting and disturbing, both at once. It is too great a risk. The Tyroshi sellsword was not a good man, no one needed to tell her that. Under the smiles and the jests he was dangerous, even cruel. Sallor and Prendahl had woken one morning as his partners; that very night he’d given her their heads. Khal Drogo could be cruel as well, and there was never a man more dangerous. She had come to love him all the same. Could I love Daario? What would it mean, if I took him into my bed? Would that make him one of the heads of the dragon? Ser Jorah would be angry, she knew, but he was the one who’d said she had to take two husbands. Perhaps I should marry them both and be done with it. (ASOS Daenerys V)

As one can see, Dany's crush on Daario is significant for highlighting a) how Dany is a romantic person who associates sexual attraction with love and marriage (hence why she compares Daario with her first husband) and b) how her feelings for Daario are tied to her desire to find a home or, in this case, someone who she can rely on (hence why she remembers the prophecy of the three heads of the dragon when she thinks of him).

It was particularly important to display her crush onscreen because of what happens later in ADWD. Unlike what certain people think, Dany's dilemma between Daario and Hizdahr doesn't just represent the choices that she needs to make as a ruler (war or peace), it also illustrates the clash between her main motivations, home and duty: Daario is the former (what Dany wants for herself) and Hizdahr is the latter (what Dany thinks she must do for her people).

Unfortunately, this doesn't come across in the show. To be fair, at least we get to see show!Dany shyly smiling here, but this will be undermined later. In episode 4.7, show!Daario will say:

DAARIO: Never met a woman who didn’t like wildflowers.

In episode 5.7, this is how show!Dany will answer to show!Daario's marriage proposal:

DAENERYS: Even if I wanted to do such an inadvisable thing, I couldn’t.

Then, in episode 6.10, this is what she tells show!Tyrion after rejecting show!Daario:

DAENERYS: Do you know what frightens me? I said farewell to a man who loves me. A man I thought I cared for. And I felt nothing.

I wouldn't be surprised if the show writers made these changes because they a) are among the readers who think that Dany is unlikable/irresponsible when she expresses her romantic feelings for Daario in the books (whereas I happen to think that that makes her more relatable) and b) wanted her to appear more regal (based on their ideas of what that means, of course) in the show because she's older, but, regardless of why they did so, this is quite a problem: if show!Dany isn't in love with show!Daario, her conflict becomes much less pronounced in comparison to her book counterpart's (which, as we'll see later as the show progresses, it did).

JORAH: There’s one on every mile marker between here and Meereen.

DAENERYS: How many miles are there between here and Meereen?

JORAH: One-hundred and sixty three, Your Grace.

BARRISTAN: I’ll tell our men to ride ahead and bury them. You don’t need to see this.

DAENERYS: You will do no such thing. I will see each and every one of their faces. Remove her collar before you bury her.

This is my favorite moment of the episode because it's a major example of how Dany's leadership style is defined by her desire to protect the ones who can't protect themselves (which applies to both book and show versions). Now that she wields power, she won't remain passive when she sees injustices occur, in fact, she'll want to confront them in order to remember why is it that she's fighting:

“I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”

By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three. I will have this city, Dany pledged to herself once more. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Being a queen is not about self-gratification for Dany, it's about her responsibility and duty towards others, which is what this scene ultimately reinforces.

That being said, there are still some problems with the scene.

One, while the scene on its own does illustrate the kind of ruler (and person) that show!Dany is regardless of what the show writers were intending, I think that their primary intention was to provide shock value with the sight of the dead children (which is also the most likely reason as to why they succeeded in depicting how horrific the Unsullied's training was). If they had intended the scene to showcase show!Dany's selfless motivations like in the books, they wouldn't have later stated that her war in Slaver's Bay was defined by "that willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies" or by how "she's not seeing the cost" (failure to understand reasons 1, 2 and 5 of why Dany's storyline matters). Unlike them, Dany knows that some wars are morally righteous because there are cases in which the status quo is not worthy of being uphold, especially not one that allows children to be murdered without their killers being punished (which also informs her views on Robert, his supporters and the Baratheon regime in general).

Two, the show leaves out the fact that, in the books, the Meereenese slavers burned their own city's lands in order to prepare for Dany's arrival:

The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at every hand. (ASOS Daenerys V)

This is important for two major reasons.

One, it raises the stakes of the conflict in the moment. If Dany continues to besiege the city for too long, her people will starve. If she gives up on conquering Meereen, on the other hand, not only slavery will remain, but her people will die of starvation on the way back to Westeros. If she wants to protect the freedmen that followed her, then, her only choice is to take Meereen.

Dany set great store by Ser Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road. “Ser Jorah, you say we have no food left. If I march west, how can I feed my freedmen?”

“You can’t. I am sorry, Khaleesi. They must feed themselves or starve. Many and more will die along the march, yes. That will be hard, but there is no way to save them. We need to put this scorched earth well behind us.”

Dany had left a trail of corpses behind her when she crossed the red waste. It was a sight she never meant to see again. “No,” she said. “I will not march my people off to die.” My children. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Two, it raises the stakes of the conflict in ADWD. By scorching the fields, the slavers deprived Meereen of one of its main sources of income: olives. Now the city's economy is stagnant because it has neither olives nor slaves (because, as we know, Dany abolished slavery) to sell:

For centuries Meereen and her sister cities Yunkai and Astapor had been the linchpins of the slave trade, the place where Dothraki khals and the corsairs of the Basilisk Isles sold their captives and the rest of the world came to buy. Without slaves, Meereen had little to offer traders. Copper was plentiful in the Ghiscari hills, but the metal was not as valuable as it had been when bronze ruled the world. The cedars that had once grown tall along the coast grew no more, felled by the axes of the Old Empire or consumed by dragonfire when Ghis made war against Valyria. Once the trees had gone, the soil baked beneath the hot sun and blew away in thick red clouds. (ADWD Daenerys III)

“The sea provides all the salt that Qarth requires, but I would gladly take as many olives as you cared to sell me. Olive oil as well.”

“I have none to offer. The slavers burned the trees.” Olives had been grown along the shores of Slaver’s Bay for centuries; but the Meereenese had put their ancient groves to the torch as Dany’s host advanced on them, leaving her to cross a blackened wasteland. “We are replanting, but it takes seven years before an olive tree begins to bear, and thirty years before it can truly be called productive.” (ADWD Daenerys III)

However, because the show didn't bother to depict how the slavers destroyed their own city's fields, we don't get to see neither a) how it becomes harder for Dany to sustain a siege (and how conquering Meereen became her only choice if she wanted not only to free the slaves, but also to protect the freedmen that came with her) nor b) how, later, she struggles with reforming the city's economy (which is one of the many ways that the show adaptation undermined her political arc in ADWD).

For this review, there’s no comment of mine on any Inside the Episode because D&D’s Inside the Episode 4.1 doesn’t talk about show!Dany’s storyline. I’m not commenting on show!Dany’s clothes either because she’s wearing the same clothes from season three and I’ve talked about them before in past reviews.

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #asoiaf vs got #asos vs got #daario naharis #grey worm #rylona rhee #barristan selmy #s4 #a storm of swords #a dance with dragons

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mst3kproject · 4 years

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The Face of Marble

This movie has a zombie dog. It’s also got John Carradine from The Unearthly and Robert Shayne from Teenage Caveman, and was directed by William Beaudine, who brought us Design for Dreaming. But honestly, who cares about that when there’s a zombie dog?

On a storm-wracked cliff somewhere live mad scientists Dr. Randolph and Dr. Cochrane, who are trying to raise the dead but aren’t very good at it. Their first experimental subject, a drowned sailor, promptly dies all over again when lightning strikes the Frankenstein equipment. This was probably a lucky escape, because subject two, Mrs. Randolph’s dog Brutus, comes back to life as a bulletproof zombie with a thirst for blood and the ability to walk through walls! They get back to work on improving their technique, and when Mrs. Randolph herself later dies in a tragic matchmaking accident, the two scientists figure she may as well be subject three. It kinda works, and kinda doesn’t… but not in the way anyone expected, especially me.

I guess I have to explain ‘tragic matchmaking accident’. Elaine Randolph’s ethnic stereotype maid, Maria, wants out of this place and has decided that the best way to bring it about is to have her mistress and Dr. Cochrane fall in love and run off together, taking her with them. A combination of voodoo and persuasion seems to be on the verge of bringing this about when Dr. Cochrane’s pre-existing fiancée Linda shows up to surprise him on his birthday. Maria therefore sets out to murder Linda by releasing toxic smoke into her bedroom, but doesn’t know that Linda and Elaine have switched rooms because Linda freaked out when the ghostly Brutus wandered through hers in the middle of the night. It was much shorter to just say ‘tragic matchmaking accident’.

That probably gave you a pretty good idea of just what a dumb and contrived movie this is. The print is also pretty terrible, old and scratchy and with poor sound – and yet it’s actually kind of fun to watch. The Face of Marble is a bit slower than it should be despite being only an hour and a quarter long, and the ending unfortunately makes no sense, but the plot twists managed to surprise me a couple of times. Nobody here is a great actor but nobody’s really terrible, either. You can tell who’s who and what’s going on. For something I would watch, it’s a decent film

What I really liked about it, though, was the treatment of the characters. For all I’ve called them mad scientists, Randolph and Cochrane don’t really fall into that ‘type’. They’re not trying to create an indestructible army or Show Those Fools or anything, they want to save lives: Randolph talks about people who’ve drowned or asphyxiated, people for whom rescue came just a few minutes too late. Nor do they display the mad scientist’s typical lack of conscience. Randolph gets so caught up in his work that he euthanizes Brutus the dog, but he’s absolutely sure his process will bring the animal back as good as new. When this doesn’t work, he feels terrible about it and hides it from Elaine, partly so she won’t be angry but partly because he’s deeply ashamed of himself.

The incident also destroys his confidence in the project. When Elaine dies, it’s Cochrane who talks him into trying to resurrect her, since he has been working on the formula and he now believes it will work. Randolph almost refuses, saying he’d rather see Elaine actually dead than become some monster like the dog, and Cochrane has to do quite a bit of convincing. What we see in these two men is a folie à deux – each would be quite reasonable on his own, but when they can play off and encourage each other they end up doing unbelievably awful things. That’s kind of neat, and makes it more believable that they would try the experiment on Elaine even after their previous failures.

The two men’s relationships with the women in their lives also have some complexity. The backstory tells us that Randolph saved Elaine’s life by removing a brain tumor, and subsequently fell in love with and married her. Despite this, he doesn’t seem to spend much time with her, and she appears to be downright intimidated by him. Elaine is shown to prefer confiding in Cochrane rather than confronting Randolph about her fears, despite the fact that Cochrane’s reaction is invariably condescending. On the other hand, Cochrane is very tender with his own fiancée, Linda, and actually listens to her when she tells him she doesn’t like Randolph and thinks they both need to get away from this place!

Elaine and Linda are set up, both by the writers and by Maria the sorceress, as romantic rivals for Cochrane. You’d think this would lead to a lot of petty hostility between them, but the movie avoids that, too. They are fairly cool towards each other at first meeting, but quickly make peace after Linda’s sighting of the zombie dog. By the time they’re about to part they’re still not best friends, but they clearly don’t dislike each other. Linda has figured out that Elaine has a crush on Cochrane but as long as Cochrane isn’t going to act on it she won’t let it worry her. She could have been a villain in this story, as could Randolph and Cochrane themselves, but the writers avoid taking the easy way out.

Instead, the villain of this story is Maria. The situation would never have arisen if she hadn’t attempted to murder Linda, and later we see her use both the police and the zombies trying to get herself out of the mess she’s gotten into. Unfortunately, this is where the movie starts to fall apart.

A few days after the undead Brutus leaves the lab by leaping right through the wall, a detective shows up at the house to ask Dr. Randolph about a series of attacks on local livestock. Randolph identifies the culprit as an animal suffering from ‘hemomania’, or a need to drink blood. When Elaine comes back from the dead, then, we expect her to do so as a vampire. Everything we’ve seen so far seems to be leading up to that idea. When she comes to and appears to be tired, but all right, we assume the condition will set in eventually.

It never does. Instead, Maria is suddenly able to control the undead Elaine and Brutus! Dr. Randolph soon figures out that it was Maria who killed Elaine, and in his anger and grief he considers stabbing her to death until Cochrane talks him out of it. In order to save herself, Maria has Elaine stab Randolph, then go back to bed and forget it happened.

Where did that come from? We have never seen the slightest indication that Maria can do this. Whenever she has been working magic, such as leaving effigies under people’s pillows or preparing potions, we’ve never seen any evidence that she actually has supernatural powers. The love charms were suggestion and the poison was simple chemistry! The film-makers had ample opportunity to set something up here, by having her take control of the zombiefied Brutus through similar actual magic, but they didn’t do that. We just see Maria sitting in front of a fire waving her arms… then Brutus comes into Elaine’s room, Elaine rises in a trance, and Maria just hands her a knife and orders her to stab away, as if she has the woman under hypnosis. Did I miss something?

At the end, the cops get the real story from another servant (I’m tempted to insert a quip about how you can tell it’s fiction because the police listen to a black man, but we’re way beyond that being funny) and show up to arrest Maria, but she’s already committed suicide, and footprints in the sand show that Elaine and Brutus have just wandered off into the ocean. Okay. Does that mean anything? Are they gonna drown or just wander around on the bottom and fight sharks like in Zombie 2? Did Maria make her do it or not? Is Elaine even aware that there’s anything wrong with her? Earlier she didn’t seem to be, and nobody told her what happened… she seems to think she was merely ‘taken ill’.

The feeling I get from all this is that the writers didn’t know what to do with Zombie-Elaine. They were too chicken to have her go around tearing throats out because then she wouldn’t be attractive anymore. They can’t kill her because they’ve already established that the zombies are bulletproof and they can’t think of any other way to do it. So they just have her leave, mysteriously and unsatisfyingly, and completely squander several opportunities they’ve set up for themselves.

Elaine wondering what’s wrong with her, unable to help herself even as she’s horrified by her own actions, would easily have been the scariest thing in the movie. Randolph and Cochrane realizing that what came back isn’t quite Elaine, and having to deal with what they’ve done, would have been the most heart-wrenching. They could even have had the two of them, formerly unbelievers, go to Maria for magical help – only to have Maria refuse to do anything because she, as previously established in dialogue, really does love her mistress. The ending could have been really cool, but they just ran out of ideas.

I did enjoy about the first two thirds of The Face of Marble. By the time Elaine finally dies I was getting a little impatient to see some actual zombies, but the film then went in a totally different direction, in a bad way. The ending doesn’t feel like a plot twist, because a plot twist should be something that makes sense of things we’ve already seen. It’s doubly disappointing, because the attention paid to the characters and their motivations and relationships really made it look like writers knew what they were doing.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the face of marble #poor john carradine #40s #everybody do the zombie stomp

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suometar · 3 years

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Hi, weird anon here again :) Thank you so much for the kind words, you're really lovely :) And obviously I have more questions ;)

I think I get the sexual attraction now, thank you, although I have to say it still seems kinda fake ;P

In a way I can relate to the mental vs physical attraction, although neither makes me want to do anything sexual. There are some people I just find gorgeous and I like to look at them and that's it, and there are some that I'm interested in for some other reason and once I know them better I may also find them attractive. Like for example Tom - I'd seen him (and Loki) around on my dash many times and never looked twice at him until I watched the Avengers and Loki turned out to be so fascinating. And that's actually how 99% of my celebrity crushes happened lol, I fell for the characters first, actors second.

So, would you say that this mental thing could be like romantic attraction? The kind that makes you want to know the person better but not jump into bed with them right away? I can imagine how it works regarding a specific person, I've read enough fanfiction for that, but how the heck do I determine which gender in general am I romantically attracted to? I can find both men and women beautiful but that alone is not attraction, right? Do other people even differentiate the two or do the sexual and romantic attraction go neatly together?

Hi!

Worry not, you're not weird at all here in my blog! I'm anything but normal myself 😄 Besides, normal is way overrated imo!

And thank you 🙂 I'm always kind to everyone who's being nice at me - what goes around comes around.

Haha, you just have to trust me on that sexual attraction is a very real thing 😂

Same goes for me too with celeb crushes, it's always the role/music/work first, then the person behind it. Well, that's probably kinda obvious, we wouldn't know them otherwise at all.

I think romantic attraction is a good term for the mental attraction I mentioned. Yes, it is exactly like that, wanting to get to know the person better first before getting into more intimate interactions. But it doesn't always evolve into sexual attraction either. You just might find the person interesting on mental level and rather have a friendship with them than anything else. Sometimes it's unfortunately the only option you have too - and sometimes it's a mutual decision even though you both are sexually attracted to each other. I have a bittersweet experience on the later.

No, just finding someone beautiful isn't actual attraction in my opinion. I can for example clearly see that Chris Evans is gorgeous but that's it. He doesn't ring any of my bells. At all. Or basically any female celebs either. Nothing happens when I see them even though I see many of them as being beautiful.

I think most people do differentiate the two, or at least they should know the difference. It's then again another thing if they can tell the difference or if they have the self-awareness to recognise which one they're feeling. Because those two can be tricky to tell apart if you lack that. Especially bc we're usually wired on the sexual way first and it overrides the mental attraction at least in the beginning.

Feeling sexual attraction does make it easier to figure out what gender you prefer.

Then again as I'm bisexual and have always been I honestly don't know how that really works with people who have a preference on gender. While I can differentiate the ways I'm attracted to men and women very distinctively, in real life, with real flesh and blood people, gender doesn't really play a significant role to me when it comes to attraction. It's one thing to get attracted to a bypasser but when I'm serious about any relationship I always get to know the person first and then if I get attracted to them, it's because who they are, what they think, what they value and so on. I'm always drawn in by the brain, so I'm clearly a sapiosexual as well :D Gender is only a part of the equation to me and not a very important one at that.

What I then project online is exactly bc of the sexual attraction I have towards men, so I might appear not bi. But as usual, what you see online about someone isn't everything.

I could imagine that if you had a preference you'd find an idea of having sexual relations with the other gender(s) somewhat uncomfortable maybe? Like for example to a hetero man even the idea of having a sexual relationship with another man wouldn't definitely feel good at all, it would be repulsive in fact, and that then clearly underlines what their preference is.

That said, I get it that if you're indeed asexual there's not even that to help you.

Maybe you have already thought of these but to me two questions come to mind that might help at least to some extent:

Do you find it uncomfortable thought if you didn't have a specific preference on the gender of the person you're attracted to? And is gender or the looks in fact at all a reason for you being attracted to someone? That it might be totally something else instead, like who that person is as a human being?

I don't think that sexual attraction is at all required at first, as I experience it that way irl. That maybe it's just that you don't feel attraction by looks at all and you too get attracted by the mental side. Which could explain that you see and recognise beautiful people but don't get attracted to them.

Obviously, these are just my views based on what you've told me, so don't take it as the ultimate truth 🙂

Like I said, to me it has always been clear what my orientation is and I'm not familiar with really figuring out this particular thing. But I'm always in for helping others figure it out the best I can! I have gone through extensive self-exploration but that has been to work through childhood trauma and grow away from that which is probably a bit different - but I do know what it's like figuring out stuff for sure.

#answered #nonny asks #anonymous

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boldly-ho · 4 years

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Another Life - Chapter 1

Fandom: What We Do In The Shadows

Rating: Will be M, eventually.

Pairing: Vladislav x Reader

Word count: 1892

Summary: You wake up to find you have no memories of the past year...

A/N: I have this outlined, but not completed. Bear with me here, people. This is crossposted to AO3.

You opened your eyes to sunlight streaming in through your bedroom window. You sat bolt upright. You’d overslept and were late for work. Grabbing your phone off the nightstand, you stopped when you realized your phone background wasn’t a picture of that gorgeous actor from your favorite movie, but was instead a photo of a crescent moon. You didn’t remember changing it. As you puzzled over your lockscreen, you realized that the date was wrong. It said April. But it was May, not April. And the year was wrong. It’s May of the previous year.

Your phone is telling you almost a year has passed.

“Dawn!” you threw yourself out of bed and ran into the living area. “Dawn!”

Your flatmate, Dawn, sat on the couch, watching Netflix on the large TV. “Nice of you to finally join the living,” she joked. Glancing up and seeing the look on your face, she muted the TV. “Y/N, what’s wrong?”

“What day is it?”

“Tuesday. Why? What happened?”

You ignored her questions. “No. What’s the date?”

Dawn paused. “It’s April 10.”

“What year?”

“Y/N, you’re scaring me. Come here; sit down.” She moved aside and gestured to the couch cushion beside her.

“What year!” You knew you shouldn’t be yelling. You knew you were panicking. But being aware of your panic didn’t mean you could stop it.

Dawn told you what year it was.

You collapsed on, rather than sat on, the couch beside her. Your heart was racing and you felt lightheaded. “I lost a year,” you exhaled.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I lost a year.” You looked over at Dawn. “I don’t remember the last year.”

You looked around the strangely dressed man, Viago, he’d introduced himself as, and into the house. It was a bit of shithole. But you steeled yourself as you stepped over the threshold and into the lounge. You’d been prepared for this. Anything that was both in your price range and available at the last minute was going to be subpar at best.

The place looked fairly tidy, though you suspected that might not be the norm. Your potential new flatmate was odd. He spoke with an accent you’d never heard before, maybe some sort of eastern European? And he wore clothes you didn’t think you’d see outside of a period drama. He was jittery, seemingly on edge, but he was friendly enough.

“Vladislav and Deacon are out for the night. Petyr is here, but he’s a bit of hermit, so I don’t think you’ll see him around too often, anyway. But all three gave me permission to make a final decision on the new flatmate. We could schedule another interview with Vladislav and Deacon if you’d be more comfortable with that, though.”

You’d been hoping the other three weren’t as odd as Viago. But a flatmate so antisocial you might not see him? That’s the extreme of eccentric. And someone named Vladislav? You chided yourself for being xenophobic. It was probably a common enough name in parts of Europe. Still, you found yourself really hoping this Deacon character at least was normal.

As Viago led you through the house, the chore wheel on the kitchen wall gave you some comfort. Maybe the place was well kept, after all. Though, the spelling of Petyr with a “Y” gave you pause.

“And this would be your room,” Viago said, as he opened a door to a bedroom, isolated down it’s own hallway. The room was surprisingly big, with huge windows on the far wall. It had its own attached bathroom, which was actually a big step up from sharing one with Dawn. This might work out after all.

“It’s nice,” you offered, upon realizing Viago was waiting for a reaction.

He smiled. “Great! I do have a few questions for you.”

“Of course.”

You migrated back downstairs to the kitchen table, where Viago pulled out a notebook, writing your name at the top of a blank page in the most gorgeous script you’d ever seen. You felt self conscious, despite the fact that you hadn’t written anything anywhere where Viago could see it and compare.

“Ok,” he began. “Will you be able to pay your share of the bills? Rent and utilities?”

You nodded. “That shouldn’t be an issue. I only work part time, but the hours are regular.” True enough, though you were transitioning to working remotely. No need to let him know you might be a constant presence in the way just yet.

He jotted something down. “Reason for leaving your current living situation?”

You tried not to let your irritation show on your face. “My roommate’s boyfriend is moving in, so she asked if I could find somewhere else to live.” And at the very last minute, you thought bitterly.

Viago made a face and muttered under his breath as he wrote in his notebook, “…a little rude.” He was right. It drew a faint smile from you.

“We are all awake at night,” he paused, “for, uh, work. So, we sleep during the day. We’re willing to keep the noise to a minimum after midnight for your sake. Would you be able to mind the noise level during daylight hours?”

You thought about it. Inconvenient, but not unmanageable. Especially on the days you still went into work. “I think so, yeah.”

He nodded. “And finally, would you be willing to clean up after yourself and help with communal chores?”

“Definitely. I like a tidy home.”

“Great!” He scrawled again in his book before flipping it shut with a flourish. “Do you have any questions for me?”

“Just a few. Why the vacancy?”

“Well, we never had a fifth flatmate. But the bills keep increasing and there’s a spare room, so we decided it might be time to bring in a st-, uh, another steady income.”

You nodded. Makes sense. The utilities costs in Wellington had been climbing through the roof. You and Dawn had been struggling a bit. Sure, this place was bigger, but utilities split five ways was guaranteed to be cheaper nonetheless.

“Four guys all flatting together. Are you sure you’re all comfortable with me moving in? I don’t want it to be an issue.” You personally didn’t see much of a problem in living with men, but you wanted to make sure that feeling was returned.

“We discussed it. There may be a bit of an adjustment, living with a… woman, after all these years. But, we’re willing to make any necessary adjustments.” Viago offered you a large, sudden smile, alarming you both with the gesture and with his pronounced canines. “Any other questions?”

“Uh, no, I think that just about covers it.”

“Wonderful! Then I would like to offer you the room! Unless, of course, you wanted to interview with Vladislav and Deacon first?”

You shook your head. In an ideal situation, obviously you’d want to meet the people you’d be living with. Unfortunately, time was of the essence in getting out of your current place, so you were willing to forgo the interviews to expedite the process.

“Ok, well I have a key already made up for you. You can move in as soon as you like, but remember to be quiet if you move in during the day.”

You took the key and shook his smooth, cool hand. “I can move in tomorrow afternoon.”

“I moved out?” you asked. “And Zach moved in?”

Dawn nodded, though her lips were pursed. “Yeah. He did. Didn’t last very long. He was a useless excuse for a boyfriend.”

You gave her a questioning look.

“He was cheating on me. God, it’s weird telling you this again. But, yeah. We broke up. I ran into you about six months ago. We caught up, but never got as close again as we used to be before I kicked you out.” She reached for your hand, and you let her grab it. “I apologized already, and we made up, but since you can’t remember; I’m sorry for how I handled that situation, and for letting us drift apart like that.”

You weren’t mad at Dawn. You felt like you should be. The offense seemed fresh in your mind, recent. But it didn’t feelfresh. You didn’t feel hurt anymore. “I forgive you,” you told her honestly. “Again. And I’m sorry for whatever role I played in letting us drift apart.”

She brushed off your apology. “I already forgave you.”

“Ok. But if we never got close again, how did I end up living here again? How long have I been living here? What happened this past year?”

“Since you and I made up six months ago, we’ve only seen each other three times. The last time was almost two weeks ago. We had lunch. You seemed fine, though. No memory issues. But yesterday morning, really early, you texted and asked if the spare room was still available. It was, clearly, and you were here in bed when I got back home last night.”

You were more curious than confused. There was so little information that your brain couldn’t even throw around unfounded theories or become frustrated by unsolved puzzles. There was nothing to clarify even the biggest, most important, or obvious pieces yet.

“Why though? What happened?”

“All the text said was ‘I need to move out ASAP. It isn’t working out here anymore. Can I move back in?’”

“Dawn, I don’t-“

“I really, really don’t know what you’ve been up to this past year. You’ve been closed off the few times we hung out. Secretive, almost.”

“Me? Secretive?” you asked incredulously. You had never been overly private, especially not with friends.

“I don’t know. Maybe not secretive, I guess, but definitely less open than usual. I figured it was because we ended up drifting apart. You just weren’t as comfortable with me anymore.” The thought made you sad. “Whatever it was,” Dawn continued, “I really only know the most basic information on the past year.”

You didn’t say anything, waiting for her to fill the silence with whatever it was she knew. She obliged.

“You were flatting with a few guys, four or five, I think, from Europe. You were seeing one of them though.”

“What!”

Dawn nodded. “You were head over heels. Even I could tell, but again, you weren’t giving me too much info to work with in our limited interactions, so that’s really all I got.”

“Right. Sorry.”

She ignored your interrupting apology. “I figured that’s why you had to leave in such a hurry. ‘It isn’t working out.’ I figured you guys must’ve broken up.”

“Were we together long?”

“I think so. When we reconnected that first time, you already seemed pretty serious, and that was six months ago.”

A boyfriend. An ex-boyfriend, technically. An ex-boyfriend you didn’t even remember. How could that have happened? How could any of this have happened? How could you just go to sleep one night, and wake up the next day without remembering the past year?

“Did you ever meet him? Or any of the flatmates? Anyone at all I interacted with?”

You had forgotten Dawn still held your hand until she gave it a gentle, encouraging squeeze. “I never met anyone. You didn’t talk about the others too much, just Vlad. That’s his name, by the way. Vlad.”

Vlad. Okay, then.

#wwdits #what we do in the shadows #vladislav #vladislav x reader #jemaine clement #another life #al fic

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queerchoicesblog · 5 years

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Ghost of You (SC Titanic, Zetta x Adele)

So this is my very first SC Titanic fanfic: I am excited to post it and well I suppose I should warn you that probably Zetta x Adele fictions will be rather long as this love story features themes that are very dear and meaningful to me, such as 1. well, obviously the Titanic story, 2. references to beginning of the century cinema (love very old and b&w movies), 3. sapphism and 4. femminism/suffragette movement. It’s basically everything I could have ever asked for. The Gentleman Jack fans out there might find a reference here...

So here I tried to imagine what brought Zetta to write that little note to Adele after basically disappearing. Loved that scene and I had to try and portray her turmoil, her missing Adele but also, as any historical lesbian (maybe not only historical), fearing the strings of society and their effect on their love and her beloved suffragette. Hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I quoted some pieces of dialogue from the original book

Word Count: 2555

Zetta x Adele Tag: @marmolady @animus-and-anima @hayley-carter19 @escako @everlastingchoices @andrxrneda @aestheticsayeed @eleanorwaverrley @indescribablechoices @ahrielstuff @lvcley @nazario-sayeed

________________________

Two rapid knocks on the door then:

“Are you there, doll? Can I come in?”

Richard’s voice abruptly brought Zetta’s back to reality, involuntarily making her jump in her seat. She blinked twice as if wakingg from a dream and took a quick look around. She couldn’t recall how long she had been sitting at her vanity lost in her thoughts with a brush in her hand. She just couldn’t focus that day as she was haunted by memories of the past. But Richard didn’t have to know, mustn’t have to know. She put down the brush and quickly fixed her hair before adjusting her robe to limit the skin exposure to the minimum: after all, they weren’t married yet…and her heart didn’t belong to Mr. King. Only after that, she answered loud enough to be heard on the other side of the ebony door:

“Sure, darling”

She resumed her interrupted makeup session, pretending to be fully taken by that routine that didn’t bring her the usual joy anymore. She looked at herself in the mirror and put on a practiced smile: it would have been enough to fool her fiancé.

Richard entered her boudoir and theatrically opened his arms as a seasoned professional: he mentioned that he started as an actor before becoming a stellar director.

“My love, every time I see you I’m completely blinded by your beauty. You’re the brightest star in the sky, even brighter than Venus itself” he said moving closer and kneeling beside her chair.

“…And you’re gonna be the most radiant woman at the party tonight. The belle of the ball, la plus belle” he added, courtly taking her free hand and placing a kiss on her knuckles.

He looked up at her with a dashing smile.

“Trés charmant, Richard…but are you done with poetry?” she smirked, retrieving her hand and resuming her previous core.

“Ah, la belle dame sans merci!” Richard exclaimed before falling back to the floor holding a hand on his chest.

“Silly” Zetta laughed and she was soon joined by Richard who stood again and leaned on her table.

“I can’t help it around you, doll, apologies” he shrugged, flashing her another smile.

Zetta had to summon all her acting expertise not to cringe at “doll”. She hated it when every fiber of her being when Richard -or any other men- called her “doll”. Even her first director called her so, even her husband…doll, as if that was all she was to them: a beautiful toy, maybe a collectible but not truly a woman. Not truly Zetta.

Instead, she mirrored his smile and threw him a quick look before methodically applying some rouge on her cheek.

“So, what are you dying to say that can’t wait?”

“Seeing you isn’t a reasonable excuse?”

Richard was a charming man, without doubt. He wasn’t a bad man or so it seemed to her but she had been deceived by men who swore to only want the best for her that it was hardly possible for Zetta to fully trust any of them. And a man could have never won her heart.

As she flashed him just one of her enigmatic smile, he spoke again:

“Fine, you got me: I just wanted to see you and to remind you that our producers are expecting us at Rao’s for dinner in an hour. We should leave soon” he gave an apologetic smile and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Will we be there in time?”

“We will, I promise you” Zetta confirmed then made a show of shooing him away. “Now shoo, call Sabine and let me get dressed or else we will be late”

Richard raised his arms in surrender, laughing. Then he pressed a kiss on the crown of her head.

“I’ll get off of your hair, doll”

Zetta resumed her makeup as Richard moved towards the door. He was halfway out when

“Oh I almost forgot! I spoke to Alan yesterday and he loved the movie: the story of the two sisters reunited in the midst of chaos on the sinking ship is just perfect, so heart-warming-“

“Yes, it truly is heart-warming” Zetta commented, losing focus again.

“The story is real, right? You met at least one of them on board, didn’t you?”

Zetta’s voice lowered as memories started surfacing back.

“Yes, we were…rather close”

“If they survived, we should track them down and invite them at the movie: it would be great if they could talk to the press. Journalists love stories like this: I can see the headlines alrea-“

“We’ll see, Richard. Now please go call Sabine”

She tried to keep her voice from betraying her feelings, but she could feel a rush of anger surging. She would have never handed the Carrem sisters and such a private and tragic moment of their lives to those shameless sharks who go under the name of journalists. The subtle hint of heartbreak and they prey the unfortunate victims like vultures over a corpse: they wouldn’t stop until they had dissected those aching hearts, leaving them to bleed out. No, she would have done everything in her power to prevent this.

The story she wrote down when asked to bring the grim fate of the Titanic on the big screen was fiction: inspired by true facts but fiction. Zetta was smart enough to know that life and fiction are two separate things and that an edulcorated tale of those most tragic hours was all the world could take: the people of New York, who weren’t there that night, would have been overwhelmed by the real story.

Still, when she sat at her desk and started writing a draft of the script her mind immediately turned to…Adele.

She didn’t even notice Richard leaving the room as the silhouette of Miss Carrem clouded her thoughts. Finally alone, her face fell and she shut her eyes as if to prevent the memory from fading away.

Adele, most gracious, fearless Adele…

Her lips curled into a sad smile as she reminisced their first meeting. She was sitting in her suite smoking and listening to James making some pointless speech when the door opened and Teo stepped in followed by Adele. She had the beauty of a Greek goddess and the look of someone who was going through a lot. She clearly felt out of place among finely dressed first-class passengers in the lavish room but she kept her head high. Zetta remembered feeling the urge to know what troubled her but she put on her mask, the sardonic film star ever out of reach. And then…was it a brave move or just an insane one? Adele told her of her arrest, of prison. Everyone else would have hidden from her, a new employer and Zetta Serda…not Adele. She handed her everything she needed to destroy her life as if it was no big deal. Zetta was taken aback and searched her green eyes for any sign of mockery but find none: the stranger girl truly trusted her with her life. That’s when she realized how unique Miss Carrem was.

Adele found a way to her heart effortlessly as if she had the map from the very start. When she placed her hand over hers in the projection room, she startled Zetta: whenever she had made the fatal mistake to show her vulnerable side to anyone, they would have used it against her to make her feel weak or small…clearly in need of someone who would tell her what to do, to guide her. They would have refilled her glass with wine again and again instead of going for the simplest gesture: taking her hand into theirs and comfort her. Making her believe with that touch that everything would have been fine, and she was stronger than whatever life threw her.

For a moment, as Adele held her hand, she felt safe, pacified, something she had never experienced with any of her supposed lovers. She couldn’t even be mad at her secretary when she revealed her James’ plan and the true reason behind his bailing her out of jail. She was shocked, obviously but she also couldn’t believe that Adele, brave foolish Adele, had put her life into her hands again. “I’m perfectly aware of the risk I’m taking by revealing this to you but you deserve to know. I cannot keep this from you” she said, looking her right in the eye.

Those eyes…they took Zetta’s breath away whenever they ignited with the fire sparking inside her. She could have lost herself in their green depths when they gleamed with pride and mischief as she proposed a toast to the vote to women or whenever their eyes met. She got lost in them when their lips touched, and they grew dark with desire. How daring and foolish they had been in the Turkish baths…but she couldn’t bring herself to regret that moment of ecstasy when she felt free and truly loved, for once. She could still shiver remembering Adele’s touch, the way her lips traced down her body with reverence and adoration, the soft moans the tender girl in her arms suffocated hiding her face in the crook of her neck as she melted under her caresses. In those stolen embraces she knew happiness.

How happy she felt whenever Adele was around: just exchanging a brief look across the room would make her heart flutter.

Then other memories surged and Zetta felt tears welling her closed eyes. Her birthday night, that cursed birthday night…Adele and her sneaking away from the party to find a private spot on the deck. The wine, the cold breeze of the ocean, Adele’s silvery laughter at her tipsy enthusiasm, how she craved those sweet lips all night.

“If I’m honest, I don’t even want to reach shore, I don’t want to go back to the party…I just want to stay out here with you. Forever.”

Adele’s tender smile in agreement.

“Let’s just make a tent of this blanket – we can live off seal meat and rainwater”

Her tipsy proposal made the two of them laugh again.

“What about your acting career?” Adele inquired, a smile lingering on her face.

“We’ll make our own plays. Whaddya say?”

God, how those words sounded different now…how she would have given everything to have Adele there to cup her face and give her a slow, deep kiss. But Adele wasn’t by her side anymore…she lost sight of her when her agent and Richard dragged her and James away from the crowd at the New York pier.

She hadn’t written her ever since that day and she felt so impossibly guilty because of that: Adele must have thought she had forgotten about her after all her words of love on the ship. Maybe she felt used, maybe she hated her by now and cursed the memory of her. She would have reasons to hold a grudge to her…the truth was that happiness and love are hard to accept if you have never truly had them before and if they came from a woman loving another woman.

Zetta had tried to write her a thousand time but every time she had made an effort to put her feelings into words, her lines rang hollow. Yet the words that got stuck in her throat when Adele pulled her into a corner and confessed that no matter what happened that night she needed to tell that she loved her were clear in her mind.

The months spent parted from you are the saddest time of my life. I’m haunted by you, the ghost of you. You’re everywhere: even if I’m silent, not an hour passed where I haven’t thought of you. I tried not to, but whenever I closed my eyes, there you were. I love you and I can’t live without you, without your smile, your wit, your touch. I just can’t but how can I ask you to be with me in the dark? I can’t step back from this wedding and I don’t want you to be a secret mistress: that would squalid and offensive when you are the one I want to give all of me. To marry, if that was even a possibility for us so that I could spend every single day of my life with you, waking up with you by my side, taking care of you…making you happy. Your absence makes even breathing hard, not to mention smiling to strangers, “capitalist pigs” as you would say…I even try and talk like you do, you see? But I find myself wondering: will I make you happy if I have to hide our love from the world? Kiss you only behind closed doors? Let you see me marry a man? You’re a free spirit, my love, I don’t want to put you in a cage because our love, our pure love would be a scandal and a scandal would ruin everything I worked for since I was even younger than you. I don’t want you to spend your life as a ghost yet I find myself craving to see your face one more time as living without you is barely surviving but all the light has gone as I lost you.

Suddenly she felt someone placing their hands on her shoulders.

“Let me help you here, Madame”

She opened her eyes and saw Sabine, smiling sympathetically down at her. She tried and failed to mirror her smile as her mascara was now running down her cheeks.

Sabine helped her to her feet and took care of everything. Zetta let her washed up her face and helped her into her shiny evening dress: she felt like a child in the hands of a loving mother. When she was putting on her earrings, the final touch, Sabine handed her a small stack of envelopes.

“The invitations to the movie screening and party” she explained. “It’s October first, I would suggest to send them first thing tomorrow to ensure that everyone get the invitation within reasonable notice. It wasn’t easy to find all the addresses, but I did my best”

“I’m sure you did, Sabine. Thank you for taking care of it.” Zetta said as she checked the succession of familiar names of former passengers and famous colleagues. “I will sign them personally when we come back from the party”.

“Excellent” Sabine nodded.

Then as Zetta placed the stack on her desk, she presented her a single envelope.

“I hope you don’t mind if I requested a faster delivery for this one” she added before bowing her head curtly and leaving the room. “Have a nice evening, Madame”

Zetta read the name handwritten on the last envelope where a different stamp had been appointed.

‘Mademoiselle Adele Carrem’

A lump formed in her throat but she forced herself not to cry and just smile, mentally thanking Sabine: she had found her. Following nothing else but her instinct, Zetta picked out the invitation and signed it with her fountain pen. Then, as Richard called her name, she grabbed a slip of paper and wrote a brief note:

“Please come, my love. I must see you again. Yours, Zetta”.

She folded everything back into the envelope and finally left her room as a newfound hope kindled inside her.

#storyscape #titanic sc #zetta serda #adele carrem #zetta x adele

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claudia1829things · 4 years

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"THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" (1977) Review

"THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" (1977) Review I have seen my share of movie and television productions that are based on novels and plays by Alexandre Dumas père and his son Alexandre Dumas fils And for some reason, I never get tired of watching them - over and over again. And one of them is the 1977 television movie, "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK".

Directed by Mike Newell and adapted by William Bast, "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" is loosely based on Alexandre Dumas père's 1847-50 novel, "The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later". The novel was the third and last of the author's "The d'Artagnan Romances" literary trilogy, following "The Three Musketeers" and "Twenty Years After". The movie begins with Philippe Bourbon being snatched by a group of mysterious men from his small French estate and imprisoned at the Bastille. It turns out that the men behind this kidnapping is King Louis XIV's finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert and the head of the Musketeers, D'Artagnan. Aware that Philippe is the twin brother of the king (and the rightful monarch of France), the pair plan to conduct a bloodless coup to eventually switch Philippe with the corrupt and malicious Louis. However, their plans are stymied when the Chevalier Duval, an aide of the also corrupt Superintendent of Finances Nicolas Fouquet, stumbles across Philippe. Fouquet, via instructions from Louis, orders Duval to take Philippe from the Bastille and install him in another prison on the coast. Fortunately for Colbert and D'Artagnan, they learn of Philippe's fate from Louis' reluctant and disenchanted mistress Louise de La Vallière and plot to rescue the royal twin and continue with their plot to replace him with Louis. When I saw "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" for the first time, I thought it was perfect. Flawless. And it became one of my favorite Alexandre Dumas adaptations and television movies for years. After my recent viewing of the television movie, I now realize that it is not perfect. I feel that screenwriter William Bast had changed one aspect of Dumas' novel, "The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later", that had an impact on the 1977 movie's narrative. The novel had portrayed Louis as the older twin and rightful king of France. For some reason, Bast had made Philippe the oldest twin. Why? I have no idea. To justify Philippe's theft of the French throne? Unfortunately, this narrative change left me wondering why Philippe, as the "older twin" was not allowed to be his father's heir and later, successor. In one scene, Colbert explained that former French minister and lover of the twins' mother Queen Anne, Cardinal Mazarin, had Philippe taken away following the latter's birth, in order to manipulate then King Louis XIII. This explanation struck me as lame and confusing. And Bast should have never changed this aspect of Dumas' plot. Many moviegoers have become increasingly critical of any production that have not closely adhere to its literary source over the years. I have no idea how many of them felt about this 1977 television movie. But I have a pretty good idea how I feel about it. Although I found the major change mentioned in the above paragraph troubling, I had no problems with many of other Bast's changes. I have read Dumas' novel. It was interesting . . . to say the least. I have no problems reading or watching a story with a downbeat ending if it suits the narrative or if I am in the mood to embrace it. I have never been in the mood to embrace Dumas' 1847-50 novel. Which would probably explain why I enjoyed the changes in this adaptation a lot. But wait . . . extreme changes had been made in other adaptations of "The Vicomte de Bragelonne". What was it about this particular adaptation that I enjoyed? I found it better written than the other adaptations. For me, "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" was a tight and well-written story that did not drag or rush the movie's narrative. Which is more than I can say for Dumas' story. Most Dumas' adaptations tend to be part-dramas/part-swashbucklers. "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" - at least this version - seemed to be eighty-five percent drama and fifteen percent action. In fact, the only real action sequence in this production turned out to be D'Artagnan's rescue of Philippe from the coastal prison. And if I must be honest, I thought Mike Newell's direction, Freddie Young's cinematography and Bill Blunden's editing made that sequence a tense, yet exciting affair. However, the meat of "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" centered around its dramatic scenes. Thanks to Newell's direction, Bast's screenplay and a talented cast, the television movie featured some very memorable scenes. Among my favorites are Philippe's discovery that he is the King of France's twin brother, Louis' malicious reaction to his failure to impress Louise de La Vallière, a tense conversation between Philippe and Queen Marie-Therese, and the last verbal duel between Colbert and Fouquet. If I had to select my absolute favorite scene, it had to be the one that featured Louis' "Sun King" ballet, Louise's failure to be impressed and Louis' malicious act of using the Queen as a scapegoat for his embarrassment. As I had earlier stated, the dramatic scenes in "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" would have never been fully satisfying to me without its top notch cast. Yes, there were solid performances from the likes of Denis Lawson, Hugh Fraser and Brenda Bruce. But I found myself impressed by other members of the cast. They include Vivien Merchant, who did an excellent job in conveying Queen Marie-Therese's mixed emotions toward her emotionally abusive spouse - whether it was desire, resentment or a combination of both. Ian Holm was excellent as Minister Fouchet's aide, the Chevalier Duval, who seemed to be brimming with cunning intelligence and stealth. I would never associate Louis Jordan portraying a swashbuckling figure. But I must admit that he made an excellent man-of-action in his portrayal of the experienced, competent and quick-thinking D'Artagnan. Jenny Agutter gave a sublime and passionate performance as Louise de La Vallière, Louis' reluctant mistress who ended up falling in love with the latter's twin. Ralph Richardson's portrayal of France's finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert struck me as one of the more entertaining performances in the production. I found Richardson's Colbert cunning, intelligent, patient and more importantly - at least to me - witty. I have seen Patrick McGoohan in several heroic and villainous roles. But I must admit that his Nicolas Fouquet struck me as one of the most subtlety portrayed villains I have ever seen on screen. McGoohan's Fouquet could put Sheev Palpatine from the STAR WARS saga when it comes to subtle villainy. And I like subtle villains. I find them more dangerous. If I had to give an award for the best performance in "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK", I would give it to its leading man, Richard Chamberlain. Mind you, Chamberlain had to portray two characters - the decent, yet slightly hot-headed Philippe Bourbon; and the vain and egotistic King Louis XIV. Mind you, I thought Chamberlain did an excellent job of conveying Philippe's sense of confusion, anger and passion. But the actor's portrayal of Louis literally knocked my socks off. Chamberlain's performance was not over-the-top. He did a subtle job of conveying Louis' villainy. And yet, he managed to inject a great deal of - how can I put it - joie de vivre quality in his performance that I found truly entertaining. There was no doubt that Chamberlain's Louis was a villain. But his Louis proved to be one of the most entertaining villains I have seen on screen. I realize that I have yet to discuss the television movie's production values. We are talking about the 1970s. Although I can recall a good number of television miniseries with first-rate production values, I cannot say the same about several period television productions from both sides of the Atlantic. And "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" is a television movie with a 100 minutes running time. However, I thought its production values were first-rate. Despite being a made-for-TV movie, "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" was shot on several locations in both France and Great Britain. Thankfully, Freddie Young's photography did an excellent job in enhancing those locations. John Stoll took advantage of those locations and skillfully re-created France and Louis XIV's court of the late 1660s or early 1670s. I am not an expert of 17th century fashion - in France or anywhere else. I have no idea whether Olga Lehmann's costume designs or Betty Glasow's hairstyle are historically accurate. But I cannot deny that I found the hairstyles satisfying and Lehman's costumes beautiful, as shown below:

In the end, I am happy to state that "THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK" remains one of my all time favorite adaptations of an Alexandre Dumas père novel. Despite my quibble of one of William Bast's changes in Dumas' story, I feel more than satisfied with his other changes and thought he had presented a first-rate story. And my satisfaction also extends to Mike Newell's top-notch direction and the excellent performances from a cast led by the always superb Richard Chamberlain.

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doroyamz · 4 years

Text

Love in Accra

The road looked like it was sweating.

Rain. Heavy rain. The rush hour traffic on the 37 Military Hospital Road had come to a standstill. The downpour, from nowhere, was a welcome distraction for Tony. Last night’s encounter with his wife, Alicia, still all too fresh in his mind.

Cars were barely moving along on in the ever-rising storm.

He felt a movement on his right thigh but was too preoccupied with his thoughts to give it any attention. Esi by this time was growing restless, tired of Tony’s now constant rebuffing of her advances. Last night, and for many nights in the past month, he was totally limp when she unzipped him, a far cry from the throbbing pistol that had thrilled her to no end when they first began their countless rendezvous.

In those early days, they were lust personified. Crazed and addicted to each other beyond reason. Their constant need to feel each other’s skin had a near cataclysmic pull on them and their respective worlds. Alicia got pregnant in those early days, an event Tony privately regarded as a spillover from being with his now long-standing mistress. Esi’s marriage was virtually in the gutter. She often showed up at home disheveled and night after night, retired to her marriage bed wearing a satisfying post-coital daze on her face. Her husband, would just watch her. Mute and completely emasculated.

But now her once insatiable incubus was limp to her touch. She could not understand it.

xxx

Alicia had found the video on his phone.

Tony’s entire world came to a screeching halt. His throat was so dry, he wasn’t sure if he had one anymore. He stood paralyzed; the phone screen thrust in his face. Cocked his head at an angle as if in disbelief at the two actors in the tiny screen.

The man in the screen was bald, tall and dark and looked very much like him. He stood at about 6”3 with an NBA player’s build and had the beard to match. The male actor was indubitably approaching climax and his voluptuous female understudy, on cue, fiercely gripped onto dear life – which in that moment, was her male lead.

The ochre-skinned woman in the screen was of the finest fettle. Folasade was a full-blooded Nigerian but her unapologetic curves screamed South Africa. She looked like a Marvel comic heroine brought to life.

Fola and Tony met at a seminar for West African business executives at the Kempinski Hotel, a few months after his wedding. Fola was leading a breakout panel session which Tony sat in on, intoxicated by her form and presence. The two had exchanged steamy glances all day long, making no attempt to restrain their mutual intentions for each other when the conference ended.

Tony could never get enough of Fola and in Tony, Fola had found a man who could satisfy her every whim. They could go for months on end without so much as a text message to each other. But whenever contact was made, their respective schedules were cleared until further notice. They were fully aware that their combined desire was a vast black hole with the potential to consume them, so they took conscious steps to maintain some modicum of balance in their meeting arrangements.

The night the fated video was shot, Fola was headed for a month-long business trip in Morocco. They had arranged to meet at her private office on Volta Street in the Airport Residential Area.

Fola’s suggestion to record themselves as a temporary parting memento was inexplicable to Tony. Her claim that it would be something that would hold her while she was away, seemed puzzling to him. Her feigned desperation, even more perplexing.

Tony was completely against the idea of recording their liaison. Remonstrating over and over again about how technology and affairs of love should never cross. Fola ogled him for a while, offered tiny chuckles as he groped her every now and then during his rant.

Tony became so engrossed in his personal deliberations that he missed her slip into the bathroom. When he finally took a moment to break from his monologue, he was out of breath and had worked up a sweat. The man felt he just needed to wash away all traces of that unholy proposal.

Once on the other side of the bathroom door, Tony became Pavlov’s Dog.

That was over a year ago and Fola still hadn’t returned from her trip.

His mind slowly drifted back to the screen. The soft moans and cries. The sound of skin on skin rhythmically playing from the Samsung phone speakers.

He didn’t feel shame. He didn’t feel regret. He heard Alicia’s cries, felt her pain slide across his skin. He just stood there. Numb.

xxx

“We have asked around about Tony…Alicia…for your sake, for your parents’ sake, for all our sakes…please…do not marry this man.”

One of the many admonitions Alicia fielded from her aunts and cousins after announcing Tony’s marriage proposal at her younger sister’s festive birthday party.

In the ensuing weeks after her announcement, the family matriarchs conducted an extensive background check to gather as much intel as they could on her suitor. From what Alicia’s mum told her the matriarchs searched far and wide, even unearthing some very unsavory stories about Tony’s maternal grandfather in Mampong, a township in the Ashanti region.

The women came back with a most damning report on Alicia’s debonair Asante. Alicia, however, was defiant and unmoved by their findings.

She stood up to address the mini-assembly.

“Each woman here knows how highly I value them. You have all shaped me, guided me and helped me become the woman I am today,” she said in a restrained voice.

“But with all respect, none of you know Tony like I do. You don’t know what I see in him, his potential. The depths of emotion I have felt in the time I’ve gotten to know him. None of you can know that. He’s not perfect, Lord I know he’s far from it, but I know he’s the one for me. Nothing you say or do can make me feel differently.”

She loved Tony deeply. She had never believed she was capable of loving a man, let alone marrying one, after all the damage she had seen men wreak in and around her life. And Tony had flaws, many serious ones, but he had a certain light to him and he had showed her honesty and a vulnerability she had never known men to possess.

Deep down, she believed she could change him, iron out his weaknesses and over time drive out his especially troubling womanizing habit. She knew he liked women and on countless occasions, with her own eyes, she noticed the magnetizing effect he had on them. Alicia also believed some of his troubles with women lay in the fact that he was a true empath. That he, unfortunately, had never learned to draw boundaries to his empathy which inadvertently led to his many ‘situationships.’

“I won’t lie Alicia. I know I have a woman problem. It’s like an addiction. The intimacy, the need to connect, the sex.” They were having lunch at the Hinlone Chinese Restaurant in Labone. The night before, as they lay in bed, Tony had told he loved her for the first time. Alicia simply smiled at his declaration, electing to play it cool although inwardly, she was beside herself with joy.

Flashes from the video.

The woman’s legs splayed. Tony’s thrusts. The glistening sheen of sweat.

“But I swear to you, most of my things with these women often start out because I pity them or I want to help them in some way…along the line, things just get muddled up and…I lose my way...”

The woman crying out in throes of pleasure.

Her mind was a broken dam. Thoughts, memories and conversations flooded her head and receded at their own leisure.

She wondered why these memories and conversations were coming up at this time. The video was still a freshly opened gash, one she had already accepted was going to be a large and permanent scar. But for the other flashbacks, she questioned their relevance to her current predicament.

He was always a monster. Why was I pretending all this time that he wasn’t? Who was I kidding?

The video was the bomb but Tony’s desensitized demeanor and harrowing forced confessions were the firestorm. She knew there was so much more he would have confessed to if she had had any more emotional stamina during her five-hour interrogation of the stranger she called her husband. She had been beyond foolish.

Time had lost its meaning. She had spent three days huddled in the corner of their bedroom tormented by her broken heart and mind.

Alicia just wanted to disappear.

xxx

One week and seventy-seven unanswered calls had passed since the explosive encounter. Tony wasn’t sure if Alicia was alive.

He was parked outside the Total House Clinic in Adabraka on a Saturday morning. Completely engrossed in his thoughts and yearning for divine intervention to offer him some guidance. Since his exposé, his mind had been in a fog that thickened with each passing day. The only silver lining were the test results from his urologist. Tony’s recent erectile issues were deemed a stress response and his dysfunction persisted due to a lack of proper rest. He needed to relax.

His wife was even more inaccessible now than she’d been during the miscarriage. For Tony, the miscarriage was a living hell made more intolerable by how suicidal Alicia had been. He was disappointed to have lost the baby especially after how hard they’d tried over the years but a small and, perhaps, darker part of him felt relieved. He didn’t think it was right to have conceived a child with his wife barely an hour after stealing sordid moments with another woman. A woman he met through his wife. In his mind, it was perhaps the universe’s way of warning him that he had gone too far this time. He would never have been able to look at that child without seeing Esi in his mind’s eye.

This time though, he had overstepped the good faith that the universe seemed to constantly extend to him. He knew his credit line with the powers-that-be was now in the red and would stay there indefinitely. His latest debt, while not his most damning by a long shot, was irredeemable. He had nowhere to hide. There were no more lies he could spin around Alicia.

But he needed her. He couldn’t lose his North Star. She was the only thing that prevented his chaotic nature from engulfing him or so he thought. Surely, after all these years she knew what she was signing on for. Why was she so surprised? That video was nothing compared to the numerous other unspeakables he’d committed over the course of their marriage. Of all the things to do him in, it had to be a twenty-minute porno. What a sick joke.

In a bloodrush, he let out a hollow scream. His mind was drowning in haphazard thoughts.

“What have I done? God what have I done?” he blurted out repeatedly at his steering wheel, as he fought to hold back tears.

“Why? Why now? Why did it happen like this?” he plaintively questioned.

No answer.

Deflated and resigned, he took out his work phone and called the only person who would always welcome him with open arms and accept him for the depraved and gluttonous animal he was.

xxx

Incense burned as Jill Scott’s ‘He Loves Me’ played softly from the soundbar. The room had been steamed to perfection.

The Executive Suite at the La Beach Hotel was their favourite love nest. Any sexual fantasy - from orgies to swing parties - either party happened to be in the mood for or could imagine, this was the room that staged its enactment.

Tonight it was just the two of them.

The toned, dark-skinned Ga woman on the bed was in her early seventies but inexplicably did not look a day past twenty. Tightly twisted Senegalese crochet braids, flowed magnificently from her scalp to her dainty waist. Her oval-shaped face remained flawless as did her soft, wrinkle-free skin. How she managed to defy time with her looks and poise was a much pondered upon mystery to all who knew her.

Dede was naked underneath a black, sparkling see-through gown. Her shea-butter glistened body glowed through the gown. A wet, willing and wanting goddess. Ready to be ravaged by her young midnight warrior. She rose to sit on her knees, directing her eyes to her nude captor’s crotch. She rendered a wry smile.

The warrior was flat-out flaccid.

“Mm,” she remarked, as she beckoned him to draw closer.

“Looks like our little man needs a little something before he comes out to play eh?” she teased in playful Ga.

He smirked as he approached her, only stopping when his groin and her face were level.

The mind-fog was still present but he closed his eyes as he begun to feel the slow and perfectly measured licking sensations in his nether region. Dede was always masterful with the things she could do with her mouth. Two lifetimes worth of experience to draw from.

Two minutes passed but Tony’s situation did not improve.

She paused to look up at Tony, “Is something the matter? You usually perk up for me with no effort. Have I done something wrong?”

“No…it’s not you love…,” he paused, longer than he’d intended.

“Just been under a lot of stress lately,” he sighed as he pulled away. He turned his back on the regal woman to look around the room for his clothes.

Dede wasn’t buying it. His tone. That pause. Something was definitely up. She had never known her beast to act or sound so tame in all the years she’d known him, not even during his grooming period.

“But you’re even more marvelous when you’re stressed…or have you forgotten Abidjan?” she asked, biting her lip.

He shrugged at her retort.

Tony was troubled by his recurring limpness.

xxx

Esi’s heart froze when she saw the Caller ID on her phone screen.

Alicia.

Why would Alicia be calling her? For what reason? Was it about Tony? Had she found out about them?

The phone was still ringing but Esi just stared at her mobile. A million worst-case scenarios flying around in her mind each time her ringtone looped over.

She decided she would not answer the call.

It’d been over eight months since they last spoke and the distance that had grown between them suited Esi, considering the increased frequency of her liaisons with Tony in those months. After years of clandestine maneuvers, she felt she was finally closing in on Alicia’s husband.

Both women had known each other from childhood. Esi even witnessed Alicia’s declaration of Tony’s marriage proposal.

The announcement was a mild shock for her at first but she remembered feeling something resembling happiness for her longtime friend. Alicia had found a man who could actually hold her attention. He had to be special. She’d seen Alicia turn down the most desirable of bachelors - a few of whom Esi herself subsequently sampled extensively - on countless occasions.

In her quiet moments, she sometimes wondered why her then soon-to-be-engaged friend seemed to routinely attract men of a higher caliber without even trying, while she often had to go above and beyond to pull a semi-decent man. She felt she was equally as - if not more - attractive than Alicia and just as accomplished professionally but somehow, she always seemed to come out second-best to her childhood friend when it mattered. These thoughts irked Esi more than she cared to admit to herself.

Alicia mirthfully introduced her old friend and soon-to-be-husband to each other a few days after her announcement.

Their eyes locked for a brief but intense moment during the exchange of pleasantries.

xxx

Nyarko Abronoma could not look at the man she called her son.

She was disgusted.

Why were the men in her family such cancers?

To the uninitiated, her family’s men were walking gods. Dazzling men who could bend the wills and desires of the staunchest hearts. They were gifted manipulators and they used their power to wreak havoc. Their preferred targets, were often women of high standing and character. They swarmed on these women like bees to honey. Once ensnared, their targets were mentally and emotionally stretched and bent beyond their limits, enduring relentless acts of gross disrespect and shame on account of these bedeviled men. And in no time, the prey merely became a shell of their former selves.

Nyarko, at the age of nine, saw her mother gradually lose her mind. A year later, a young Nyarko watched on as her mother was lowered into an unmarked grave. Both events, her father’s handiwork.

Her mother used to say that the men of Nyarko’s lineage were descendants of the fallen angels from the Book of Genesis. The Nephilim.

Even in her womb, she already knew Tony was one of them. Throughout her pregnancy, Nyarko prayed, fasted, sought the counsel of several spiritual leaders to save her unborn child. She desperately wanted her son to chart a different path than the men before him.

Tony didn’t know how to break the silence between them.

His mother had always been his trump card whenever things between him and Alicia were coming to a head. This time around though he was seeking his mother’s intervention as a Hail Mary. He knew she admired and loved Alicia. She would probably have traded her for him as her child if she had her way.

He told her what had happened, leaving out a few details.

Nyarko knew her son hadn’t told her everything.

She raised her head to observe her son. A beautiful boy with a Machiavellian heart. He was a poisoned chalice like his predecessors.

Tony looked away, uncomfortable with her soul-piercing stare.

“I can’t help you and I won’t,” she said in Twi.

He was stunned.

“I won’t let you drive that poor woman to the grave. If I help you, you are only going to repeat what your grandfather put my mother through and what my brothers did to their wives. Alicia is too much of a good woman for that. Too much. She deserves better. This time you have been exposed for all to see and we both know there are countless more lies and secrets behind those scheming eyes of yours!”

Tony’s throat tightened. He hadn’t anticipated this tirade from the old woman.

“You think I don’t know about you? The things you scurry around town doing like a possessed rat? I weep for Alicia everyday. I always pray to God to give her strength in dealing with you. You have no shame. Even during your wife’s miscarriage you had no decency, no respect for her, not an ounce of self-control. Hiding in and out of Accra with your concubines.”

Nyarko spat at her son’s feet.

“If anything should happen to Alicia, it will be on your head and I pray you pay for it.”

xxx

Three weeks and still no word from Tony.

Alicia’s call coupled with Tony’s prolonged radio silence led Esi to assume the worst.

She was driving back into Accra, via the Accra-Tema Motorway, after wrapping up a meeting in Tema's harbour area. Hawkers streamed along either side of her car, as she neared one of the highway's three toll booths.

Esi's mind was spinning. Everything seemed to be falling apart. Had she been stupid? Why couldn’t she be allowed to have her own slice of heaven? Was it a crime to want to be loved? She didn’t mean Alicia any harm but the connection between her and Tony was unavoidable.

Why was Tony all of a sudden ignoring her? Why weren’t they making love anymore? She knew he had a harem of ‘playmates’ he could call on but he always came back to her. Was he over her? Had somebody else taken her place?

Too many questions with no answers. She wracked her brain to think of a solution, a way out through all the madness.

Dede. The Madame. The old woman would probably know something. She and Tony were close, a little too close for Esi’s liking. But Esi figured that a woman at that age didn’t have that long to live, no matter how well she kept herself or how many boys she gobbled up, so Esi was fine with their relationship. Besides she was on good terms with Dede, the three had had some raunchy episodes through the years.

Esi called Dede and inquired about Tony.

“I last saw him about a week ago but I haven’t heard from him since then,” Dede stated.

More worry for Esi. He had gone to see Dede but had not even bothered to call her for three weeks? What was going on with him? Was he over her? She knew Dede had some skills but the old witch had enough boy toys to keep her satisfied.

Dede hummed an Erykah Badu tune. Esi forgot she was still on the line.

“Thank you Dede. I’ll give him a buzz again.”

“Dear girl, hold on for a second please.”

Esi was caught off guard by The Madame’s request. Outside of their fervid love-ins, Dede was typically brisk and forthright with her.

“Have you noticed anything…strange about Tony lately?” Dede asked, an almost mischievous lilt in her slivery voice.

“Strange? What do you mean?” a puzzled Esi asked.

“His performance, has it changed in any noticeable way?” The Madame was sipping on something in the background.

“Oh Dede…,” Esi responded bashfully.

“My girl let’s not beat around the bush. Is anything different or not?”

The sudden firmness in The Madame’s voice unsettled Esi.

“W-Well…recently he doesn’t respond to my touch. You know…,” she didn’t know why she was so shy in speaking to Dede about her sexual affairs with Tony. She had seen the woman on all fours.

Static on the phone.

“He can’t get it up,” Esi muttered feebly.

“Mm..I see. Thank you Esi, that’s all I needed to know. Best of luck reaching him.”

The line cut.

Why would Dede ask that? Was she experiencing the same issues she’d been having with Tony?

The suspicion that had been floating in Esi’s mind for the past few weeks was too absurd to now consider an actual possibility. It was impossible for that to happen to Tony, he was too red-blooded, way too potent for that.

It couldn’t be.

No...no..not Tony...

Tony couldn’t be…?

No!

It isn’t possible. Tony couldn’t be impotent. The mere thought alone was utterly absurd.

But how else could she explain his sudden limpness? Plus Dede would never have asked that question if she hadn’t noti---

Esi fatally rear-ended her Nissan Qashqai into a heavy cargo truck.

xxx

Their luxury three-bedroom apartment home on Second Circular Road, Cantonments, was a stone throw away from the U.S. Embassy. It was a $600,000 property that Tony had astoundingly managed to wind down to a sale price just short of a $100,000. Alicia used to call him ‘Puppet Master T,’ for his uncanny ability to always get what he wanted.

Tony lingered outside the apartment door for nearly half an hour. He was jittery.

A flurry of deep and quick deep breaths filled his lungs as he steeled himself and turned the doorknob.

The apartment felt hostile as if it despised his presence.

His sweep around his marriage home confirmed Alicia had packed up, that much was clear. Their bedroom was half empty, with no trace of his wife left in the room. Alicia was gone and she was gone for good.

A small stack of papers was neatly arranged on the bed. Divorce papers and a small sheet with a number to call when he was done signing. That was Alicia, methodical and precise, even in the worst of circumstances.

Tony sat on the bed, staring at the divorce papers.

He wanted to call Alicia but thought better of it. She’d probably blocked him on all platforms. When his wife didn’t want to be found, she did it well.

The die was cast. There were no more moves he could play.

Something vibrated under his left thigh, briefly snapping him out of his self-pity. He shifted his weight to find the smoking gun that had ended everything.

Tony unlocked the phone to find a freeze-frame shot of a busty Fola in a most compromising position. Alicia must have watched the video countless times, trying to make sense of it all. Her soon-to-be ex-husband zoomed out of the video application to the notification center.

Ato, his closest friend and fellow degenerate, had just sent him series of confusing text messages.

The first message read: “Bro...I have been trying to reach you.” Tony checked his call log to indeed find several missed calls from his main man.

Second message: “I don’t know if you’ve heard already.”

Third: “Bro…I’m so so sorry about Esi...I can’t imagine what you’re feeling. I’m so sorry bro. Please call me if you need me. I’m here for you…”

xxx

Marijuana smoke filled the air of the love nest.

Tony’s head lay buried in Dede’s bosom. He was silent, as Dede gently stroked his head and offered hushed words of consolation.

She drew a few more puffs from her joint and moved it down to Tony’s lips but her wounded warrior declined.

They stayed silent for a lengthy period of time as Dede spaced out from the weed.

Memories of a lifetime’s worth of sexual dissipation with her favorite boy streamed across her mind. Despite her wanton admiration for his sexual prowess, she had grown to develop an affection for her former protégé over the years.

The Madame, as Dede was referred to by Accra’s high society, had known Tony since he was fourteen. Even as a sprightly teenage boy - and much to her pleasant surprise - he oozed raw potential with his savage-like lovemaking abilities. By seventeen, the boy could do things she had never known men to be capable of. He had a frightening and near bottomless appetite that bordered on the frenetic, that even her infamous grooming techniques couldn’t temper.

She shed an unseen tear for her paramour’s wasted manhood. To be completely robbed of his virility in his prime was a cruel blow from the gods.

Dede nonchalantly crushed the end of the burnt-out joint into an ashtray on the bedside table.

“It’s a pity but it seems I have no use for you anymore, my dear,” she said sofly.

Tony was still, his eyes shut. It was what he expected from his Madame.

“There’s a young French couple coming by shortly. Quite the adventurous duo. It’s a shame you wouldn’t be joining us,” she sighed airily.

“A shame,” he whispered.

She started running rings around his lips.

“You’re of course welcome to stay and watch if you please my love,” she said somewhat coyly.

Tony slowly reached for her moving hand and kissed it.

He rose from his resting place, stretched to his full height, and promptly made his way to the door without looking back.

“Tony..,” he heard Dede call out before he shut the door.

Two spirited European-looking girls gaily passed him in the lobby hallway.

As he stepped onto the elevator, the vivacious couple turned around to take in the view of the brooding stud exiting the floor.

xxx

Tony hopped over the fence that separated the La Beach Hotel premises from the beach.

It was a little past midnight and the cool and salty breeze of the sea, soothed Tony’s mood. The mind-fog was clearing up. Whether the fog’s retreat was a result of the second-hand smoke from the weed or the effect of the beach, he wasn’t sure but he was grateful.

It was a moonless, starless sky. The ocean’s waves roared gently, calling to him. He had been here before, in another life perhaps.

He took in the scene before him one last time and smiled. All was fair.

Tony took the first steps towards his death.

xxx

#love accra ghana short story

3 notes · View notes

yeenybeanies · 4 years

Text

Gone Hunting pt. 2

continuation of this little piece! not sure how long i’ll keep going on with this specific story beyond here, but i love charles & i want him to meet devin, so there’s probably going to be at least one more :>

arthur morgan, charles smith, & devin clarke ( oc )

2640 words

mild language warnings

feel free to leave comments in the tags!! thanks!!

part 1 | part 3

Ever since they’d left camp, the blue streak of curses hasn’t quieted much. Arthur’s jaw is tense, along with the rest of him, as one might expect when there’s an angry ( and scared ) borrower trapped under his hat. Who knew so much vitriol could come from such a small body? Arthur can’t bring himself to be upset at them, though; Devin has every right to be as pissed as they are.

And they are pissed.

Unfortunately, Arthur’s company doesn’t quite know what’s going on. He can tell that something is off, that Arthur is bothered, but he hasn’t the foggiest as to why. Arthur knows he’s onto him, too; he sees the man glancing over at him, growing more and more suspicious by the minute. Never mind that Arthur isn’t much of an actor as is, but Charles is as sharp as they come. How the hell is he going to play this one off? How is he going to delay the inevitable?

“ Arthur. ”

Here it comes.

Arthur looks over at his company, all while trying to keep his movements from jostling Devin. They’ve gone quiet after hearing Charles’ voice.

“ Yeah? ” He can do this. He can spin some excuse for the pained look on his face.

“ What’s wrong? ”

There’s no point denying it. Arthur swallows and forces the tension out of his jaw. “ Think whatever Pearson made last night’s actin’ up. Not presently feelin’ my greatest. ‘m okay, though. Don’t you worry about me, Charles. ” He forces a smile for his companion. Charles only looks semi-convinced ( it’s not an unbelievable story; everyone’s suffered an unhappy gut at least once at the hands of the camp cook ), but he opts not to press on it for now.

“ Okay . . .. If you need to stop, just let me know. I could probably find you something to soothe your stomach. ”

“ Naw, I’ll be alright. Hopefully it’ll settle down by the time we get to where we’re goin’. ” Devin shifts under his hat, their little hands holding onto locks of his hair to try and keep themself from flopping around too much. It can’t be comfortable for them up there––at least, not while Arthur’s on horseback. Even a Tennessee Walker’s gait would be bothersome to a borrower, he imagines.

Devin goes quiet now, but it’s not very comforting. Arthur’s not sure what he likes less: the cussing or the silence. At least with them chewing him out, he knew they were still alive and kicking. The silence is a bit more ominous. All he has to go by now is feeling their grip on his hair, and trying to interpret how they’re doing from that.

This is going to be a long ride . . ..

The sun is low in the sky by the time the two men reach their destination: a hilly grassland spot sparsely sheltered with trees and mounds of rocks. Devin’s silence has continued to worry Arthur, but he’s pretty sure he’s felt them move a little here and there. He thinks he feels them move, too, when he and Charles slow their horses on their approach to their would-be campsite under one of the rock piles.

“ Alright, then . . .. ” Arthur pulls the reins, slowing his horse to a stop, and dismounts at the base of the rocks. Devin seems to be moving a bit more, no longer being jostled so much now that he’s on his own feet. “ I gotta relieve myself, then I’ll help ya set up camp. ” Which isn’t entirely a lie; he’s been on horseback since he woke up.

“ Sure thing, Arthur. ” Charles starts to unpack, and Arthur takes his leave, heading around to the other side of the rocks.

“ You alright up there, Devin? ” He speaks just above a whisper, and looks up at the brim of his hat as if he could see the borrower settled atop his head.

“ . . . I’m alive, ” comes the weak voice. Arthur breathes out a heavy, relieved sigh.

“ Miss Devin, I––I’m real sorry about this mess. I promise you I didn’t mean to kidnap you and bring ya along. ” It is sincere, but Arthur wouldn’t be surprised if the borrower snapped and blew up on him again. Hell, he might if he were in this situation.

“ Just––just do what you need to do and let me out, ” they say, sounding exhausted from the journey. “ . . . and rinse your hands off first. ”

Can-do. Arthur takes care of his business and, as requested, rinses his hands off with a bit of water from his canteen, then gently lifts his hat. Devin takes in a deep breath, taking in cool air for the first time in hours.

Relief is short-lived, though.

“ Arthur? ”

Charles.

Arthur quickly puts his hat back on, once more covering Devin, and looks back towards the voice, a little bewildered.

“ Are you talking to someone? ” The man steps out more, rounding the rock to better face Arthur.

“ I, er . . . naw, not really. I was just voicin’ some thoughts that I’ll probably end up writin’ in my journal. ” He looks a bit sheepish. How much longer is Charles going to let him get away with these little fibs? The man narrows his eyes, one brow lifted.

“ You sure you’re okay? Stomach’s not still bothering you, is it? ”

This isn’t going to last much longer. Charles knows that Arthur is hiding something, which makes Arthur feel worse for continuing to hide it than he already did.

“ Nah. Think I got that cleared out. ‘least until the next time I get it. ” He attempts a chuckle, though it’s half-hearted and weak. Charles, of course, looks unconvinced. “ Charles. I’m okay. don’t worry about me. ”

“ Arthur, you––– ”

“ I said I’m fine, didn’t I? ” Atop his head, Devin tenses, their little hands holding tighter to his hair. Arthur is a little taken aback himself; he hadn’t meant to raise his voice at Charles. The man doesn’t deserve it. He clears his throat, fist to his lips, and tips his hat down, hiding his eyes. God dammit . . ..

“ . . . okay. ” Charles straightens.

This doesn’t feel good, but Arthur doesn’t see another route right now. He isn’t sure for how long Charles will be placated, but at least he’s dropped it for now.

“ Right. Let’s get this camp set up. ” Arthur takes a breath and straightens his belt, then heads back around to the other side of the rock. He can give Devin some relief when manages to set his hat aside so they don’t have to endure him constantly bending down and straightening up. However, it doesn’t change the fact that they are stuck out here, so the relief is minimal.

It’s startling, seeing the hat shift around them when Arthur starts to lift it. Devin feels a moment of panic, only exacerbated as that massive hand sweeps in through the growing crack. They squeak, which makes the hand pause for a moment, almost looking remorseful, before it overtakes them, surrounding them.

“ Arthur––– . . .. ” The rough callouses scratch at them, but the skin is warm, and, despite the confines, the cowboy is impossibly gentle. He isn’t squeezing them––not beyond needing to keep them contained in his hold. Devin’s heart still pounds in their chest, but they remind themself that Arthur has never been anything but kind and careful with them . . ..

Devin squeaks again when the hold on them loosens, and they drop down into Arthur’s hat, now upturned. The borrower shakes their head and looks up. Silhouetted against the oranges and pinks of the sky, Arthur towers above them. It isn’t just the setting sun that’s casting long shadows on his face, though; he’s clearly bothered. Devin feels a pang of guilt, aware that they are the source, but––but it’s also Arthur’s own damn fault that they’re here at all! They huff quietly to themself and huddle against the leather, trying not to focus on the shifting world beyond the hat.

“ Gonna set you down while I help Charles, ” the man whispers, sparing a glance down at Devin.

“ Thank you, ” they squeak back, no louder than a mouse. The hat tilts, and they follow the movement to avoid falling. Arthur lowers them to a smooth patch of rock, and settles the hat down over them, keeping them concealed. At least for a little bit they don’t have to deal with the constant swaying that comes with being carried by a human.

Between Charles and Arthur, it doesn’t take long to set up camp and get a fire pit built. Charles is mostly silent through it, and Arthur can feel the tension. It’s eating away at him. He doesn’t want to lose his friendship with Charles over this, but Devin . . . their life depends on their secrecy ( not that he thinks Charles would hurt them, but it isn’t his place to expose them ).

“ Arthur! ” Charles’ sharp voice cuts into Arthur’s thoughts, making him jump. Charles must have been talking to him, and he hadn’t been listening at all. Damn . . ..

“ Hn? Yeah? Sorry, I was––I was miles away. ” He rubs his neck sheepishly as he faces his friend.

“ As you’ve been this whole trip. ” The man frowns. For a moment, Arthur thinks he’s going to ask again what the problem is, but he doesn’t. He sighs and continues, “ We should get some rest. We’re getting up early tomorrow and going after the bison. ”

“ Right. Sounds good. I’ll start the fire. ” Arthur heads back towards where he left his hat and tries to subtly lift both it and the borrower under it. It’s a little awkward, but Arthur does feel some relief when he feels the minuscule weight in his hand. At least they haven’t run off yet, or worse. He shifts to carry Devin and his hat in one hand so he can use his other to grab the matches from his saddle bag.

Charles doesn’t seem to be paying too much attention as Arthur returns to the pit they’ve built, holding his hat a little awkwardly. Once he manages to get a fire going one-handed, he shuffles back to settle on his bedroll, hat coming to rest on his stomach. Little footsteps push against his palm and hop down onto his shirt. It tickles. Arthur has to keep himself from reacting, wanting neither to disturb the borrower or alert Charles to more of his odd behavior.

Dinner isn’t anything spectacular: foods warmed up over the fire, or, in Arthur’s case, eaten straight from the can. He manages to sneak Devin a few pieces to fill their belly while they stay hidden. The poor little borrower––they’ve been through a lot today. Arthur sighs, then kicks himself mentally. He should try to keep his breathing steady if he’s got Devin on his stomach . . ..

“ Arthur, ” comes Charles’ voice. Arthur glances over towards his friend, one brow lifted. “ You aren’t upset with me, are you? That’s not why you’re acting strange? ”

Oof. Arthur winces and looks away. “ Naw, Charles. You n’ me––we’re good. Promise. I just . . . got a lot on my mind is all. ” At least that’s a truth he can offer. Charles’ features glow in the fire’s light, still shaped with concern, but he does show some understanding to Arthur’s answer.

As the conversation dies, Arthur gingerly shifts to make himself a bit more comfortable on his bedroll. He should sleep. He only hopes that Devin will manage to do so as well.

It’s been almost half a day now since they left the camp––Charles and Arthur, with Devin brought unwillingly ( and accidentally, to Arthur’s credit ) along for the ride. Almost half a day’s worth of bouncing around under Arthur’s hat has now brought Devin to be lying . . . well, still under Arthur’s hat. At least the ride here is less bumpy. From where they are, they can hear Arthur’s breathing, and they can feel the thumping of his pulse under his shirt. If they’re honest, it’s a little bit comforting, a little bit soothing. But it is also, as they eventually come to realize, very hot under here––hotter on his middle than it was on top of his head. The borrower does try to move carefully, though they know well that Arthur doesn’t wake easily, as they feel around in the darkness for the hat’s wall. Once located, they dig their arms under and lift, taking in a breath of fresh, cool night’s air.

“ Okay, Devin, ” they whisper to themself, “ everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine. ” Arthur will get them back to camp. Alive. This whole ordeal will be over soon. They take another deep breath, then shuffle their way out from under the hat’s brim, out into the open. The surface beneath them continues to rise and fall slowly; Arthur is still asleep, as expected. Much of their anger with him has faded by now. There’s just exasperation left in the ashes of the earlier flames. Devin thinks for a moment that they ought to apologize for the verbal lashing they’d given him, but . . . nah. He deserved it for being so damn stupid. Besides, they’re sure he won’t hold it against them.

Using what little light the moon and the faded fire offer, Devin makes their way down to the cowboy’s hip, and down further to his knee––the one lifted, crossed over the other. There’s a gentle breeze blowing through, stirring their hair, calming them. For the first time in the past twelve hours, things are peaceful.

Unfortunately, in the case of borrowers and unlucky cowboys, peace doesn’t tend to last long. Whispers reach Devin’s ears, making them go stiff. Their head snaps in the direction of the voices, eyes wide and straining to see what––or who––is out there. In the darkness, they can just barely make out two shadowy figures. From the look and sound of it, they seem to be getting closer.

“ Arthur . . .? ” Devin pushes themself to a crouch, eyes locked on the figures. The whispers are getting louder, more intelligible.

“ We gonna jus’ rob ‘em? Or we gonna kill ‘em too? ” says one.

“ There’s only two of ‘em. We can kill ‘em easy n’ see if they got anything valuable on their persons too, ” says the other.

Oh no. Bandits. Devin’s blood runs cold. They shoot a quick glance towards Arthur’s face. He is still very much asleep. And the bandits are getting closer.

“ Arthur! “ Their own whispers aren’t going to wake the cowboy, but they don’t exactly want the bandits to hear them either.

Then again, if they don’t wake Arthur and the bandits end up killing him as a result––– . . ..

“ Arthur! ” Louder now is their voice, yelling. They scurry off of his knee and slide down onto the ground, hidden from the bandits’ view, but also now unable to see them in return.

“ Wait. D’ja year that? ” Oh no. “ Sounded like a squeaky li’l voice. Is there someone else here? ”

Now the panic sets in. Devin sprints up a couple of feet, sticking close to Arthur’s side.

“ ARTHUR! ”

#g/t #g/t writing #G/t fiction #g/t rdr #rdr #arthur morgan #charles smith #devin clarke #hyena writes #hyena ocs #also hello this is the 100th post on this blog!!

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bangtaninink · 4 years

Text

i’m too lit to dim down a notch vi

Summary: Jeongguk is the new kid in town. Kind of. He’s looking for an Authentic College Experience™, and you have no problem helping him out with achieving that (fratboy!AU)

Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

〰️

Jeongguk is just a tiny bit stressed.

He’s been running around campus like a headless chicken, no idea where he is or which building he’s in anymore. Why does the Film Society meet in the Engineering building anyway?

Oh. Nevermind.

The giant Film Society sign makes him feel like an idiot, because he’s pretty sure that he’s passed through here before, so how the hell did he miss it? He’s a little out of breath, and he pulls his phone out to look at himself, cringing at his bedhead.

(He really should have listened to Seokjin when he told him to bring a comb. Has he been walking around all day looking like this?)

When he walks into the room, the first thing he does is look at his phone and check the time, instantly feeling like even more of an idiot, because he’s a whole fifteen minutes early. There’s barely anyone here: two people are at the front setting up the projector and laptop, and then he looks around and...

“Oh? Noona, you’re here already,” he says, spotting you in the back corner, curled up in a bean bag that could easily fit another two people. You look up from your phone, lips curling into a smile.

“Hey, babe. You’re early,” you say, sitting up.

“Yeah, hah. I, uh, thought I was gonna be late, so...” He walks over, sitting down on a pile of pillows next to you, dropping his bag down behind him.

“Engineering building?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I don’t fucking get it either,” you laugh. “Hey, Sora. Explain to me again why the Film Society meets in the most confusing building on campus.”

One of the people at the front turns around, hands on their hips.

“First of all,” Sora says. “The Engineering building is not the most confusing building on campus. That award goes to the Fine Arts building. Second of all, why wouldn’t I take advantage of the best technology in our university? You know that the Engineers have the best shit. And third of all, who’s the hottie?”

“This is Jeongguk,” you reply, chuckling. “Sports science sophomore.”

“Ooh. It shows.”

“He’s also Beta Tau.”

“Oh. Eww. Sorry.”

“Jeongguk, this is Sora. They’re a social studies senior. Not the biggest fan of frat boys if you didn’t catch that earlier.”

“Um, nice to meet you,” Jeongguk says sheepishly.

“Man. You had so much potential, Jeongguk-sshi.”

“Ignore them,” you say, rolling your eyes. “Sora’s first love was a frat boy until he moved to Paris to “pursue his art” or some bull like that. They’re butthurt, and angsty, and have vowed to never mess with another frat boy again.”

“A-fucking-men,” Sora comments.

“Don’t take it personally, babe.”

“Oh. Okay, yeah. Sure,” Jeongguk replies, nodding.

More Film Society members start to trickle in the closer it gets to five, and Jeongguk is, needless to say, beautifully surprised by the array of people that come in. You seem to notice this, but you don’t make a comment on it.

“Alright. Okay,” someone at the front calls out, clapping his hands. “Let’s get into it. Welcome to the Film Society. I’m Kiha, your president. This is Sora, your vice president. Thanks for being here tonight.”

“We do have some new faces here, so welcome to the newbies,” Sora continues, sitting comfortably on the table by the laptop. “We will take this moment to remind everyone about the rules. One: the Film Society is not a place to take a siesta, or a nap, or get your fucking beauty sleep. We are here to watch and appreciate films.”

“Two: respect everyone’s request,” Kiha says. “Even if Minwoo is requesting Despicable Me 2 for the fiftieth fucking time.”

“It’s a great fucking movie!” someone at the front calls out -- Jeongguk assumes it’s Minwoo, if the following groans are anything to go by.

“Shut up, bitch. Okay, two-point-five: if you’re new, tell us your birthday if you’d like, because we organise viewing parties of your favourite movies. Three: if your request is chosen for the week, you must come up here and explain why you chose the movie you did, but don’t bullshit. If your reason is “I just like it”, then say that. Don’t try to sound cool, and start making up shit about cinematography and camera work or whatever. You ain’t slick, fool.”

“Why’re you talking like a lame Samuel L. Jackson?” Sora asks, looking annoyed.

“I dunno. I’m sorry.”

“Anyway. While Kiha recovers from that, four: we’re kind of obliged to say that pornography cannot be shown. Personally, I think that’s kinda lame, but whatever.” “True. Five: there will be absolutely no devil worship in the Film Society. So if you think Weinstein, or Scorsese, or fucking Selena Gomez are gods amongst mortals, get the fuck out now because you are not welcome here.” In the corner of his eye, Jeongguk sees someone raise their hand. “Yes. New kid.”

“Uh... what if we wanted to request something like Pulp Fiction? It’s a great film, but Weinstein worked on it, I think,” he asks.

“If we all come to a consensus and want to watch the movie, all good,” Sora answers. “We know some films are just absolute classics that are, unfortunately, directed and or produced by spawns of Satan, so we leave that up to the group to decide. Just don’t bring up any controversial producers and directors.”

“And actors,” Kiha adds.

“Yeah. Unless you’d like to get into a fight with Jinah. Fair warning: you’re gonna lose.” Someone on the other side of the room raises a fist in the air and nods. “Six: no sex. I know it’s fucking tempting with the dim lights and shit, but... keep it in your pants, people. And, that’s it I think.”

“Alright. Tonight’s film has been chosen by... who chose today’s film?”

“I think we picked Jungwoo, right?”

Jeongguk watches as someone by the front stands, turning around to face the group.

“Hey, guys. I’m Jungwoo. Uh, the movie I requested is Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. I requested it because... I dunno. I just love the way Brad Pitt says Nazis in his weird ass accent in the movie, honestly. So... yeah.”

Jungwoo sits down as Kiha and Sora set the projector and laptop up, and Jeongguk looks around, shifting on his pile of cushions to get comfortable.

“Hey.”

Jeongguk turns when you grab his attention.

“You wanna sit on here with me?” you ask, already moving to the side. “Inglourious Basterds goes for two and a half hours. You might not have an ass if you’re on those pillows the entire time.” He chuckles softly.

“Have you seen the movie before, noona?” Jeongguk asks, sitting down next to you -- you’re right; now that he’s sitting on the bean bag, he knows he would’ve left with a numb ass if he stayed on those cushions.

“Mhm. A while ago though. Have you seen it?”

“Nah. I haven’t seen a lot of Tarantino movies. I’ve seen Kill Bill a couple times. And that one about the flight attendant lady who smuggles money for Samuel L. Jackson.”

“Oh, Jackie Brown. That’s a pretty good movie too.”

“Alright everyone,” Sora announces from the back of the room, standing by the light switches. “Phones off. Let’s watch.”

〰️

Jeongguk thinks the movie’s pretty good.

Until, that is, you decide to get comfortable about halfway through.

He tries, very hard, to keep his composure when you move around to sit a little closer to Jeongguk, not taking your eyes off the screen when you rest your head on his shoulder and press yourself against his side. You’re the epitome of calm, relaxed as if you do this all the time, but Jeongguk is the complete opposite, unsure if he’s about to piss his pants or pop a boner.

(He prays to God neither happens.)

Inglourious Basterds is gruesome, as all Tarantino films are, and Jeongguk tries his best to focus on all of it, eyes hyperfocused on the blood on the screen and not the blood heading south in his own body. He gulps, and tries to stay cool.

〰️

Fifteen minutes of the movie is enough for you to remember how the rest goes, and you proceed to zone out, not really watching what’s on the screen and instead, staring blankly towards the front.

It’s cruel, what you’re doing to Jeongguk, but Yoongi’s words don’t seem to sit right with you still as you replay them over and over again. You like to think that you’re pretty good at sensing looming crushes, at figuring out if someone is going to start developing some feelings before they’re even aware of it themselves, so needless to say, it’s stumps you that there’s a possibility that you hadn’t caught this early enough.

Since that night at the bar, you’d convinced yourself that it’s because you’re not fucking him that explains why you hadn’t suspected anything. You blame it on Jeongguk being new to the group, to Seoul itself, and assumed that the way he acted around you was just him being him.

So Yoongi telling you that he suspected that Jeongguk had a crush on you so blatantly like that had been a big slap to the face.

This is dangerous and ballsy, but you have to know for yourself if what Yoongi says is true. You shift around, adjust your position on the super sized bean bag to lie on your side pressed up against Jeongguk, eyes still glued to the screen in an image of nonchalance, and the way Jeongguk tenses a little against you tells you everything you need to know.

Fuck.

〰️

“See you guys next week,” Kiha says as everyone files out of the room, Sora adding a wave over their shoulder as they get to work on rolling up the screen of the projector.

“Wait, so... is that it, noona?” Jeongguk asks you once you’re both out of the room, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

“What do you mean?” you ask with a soft chuckle.

“Like... there’s no disussing or assignments? No three-page paper on the themes of Inglourious Basterds?” You throw your head back and laugh.

“It’s a club, babe, not a class. Kiha and Sora aren’t trying to add more to your workload.”

“So... we just watch movies every week? That’s it?”

You shrug.

“Pretty much, yeah. Sometimes, we’ll go down to watch a new release at the cinema or whatever, but for the most part, it’s just a movie or two in the Engineering building.”

“Wow. That’s... fucking cool,” Jeongguk says, nodding thoughtfully. You laugh and shake your head.

“Where are you headed to now, babe?” you ask. “You don’t have anymore classes, do you?”

“No, I’m all done for the week.” Jeongguk stops walking suddenly, hand resting on your arm to do the same. “Hey, noona. You wanna go get something to eat? My treat.”

“Wh-- Jeongguk, no way. I still owe you from baseball last week.”

“Noona, that was nothing. I told you that already,” he says, laughing. “It was just Burger King. And then you also let me sleep on your sofa that one time, and came to both my tryouts, so technically, I owe you.”

“God, you are next level,” you mutter, chuckling and shaking your head. “Alright, Richie Rich. Where do you wanna go?”

Jeongguk grins.

“Barbecue.”

“Barbec-- Jeon Jeongguk, are you insane?”

“C’mon, noona. I’m starved.”

〰️

“You wanna slow down there, champ?” you say, amused as you watch Jeongguk shovel another heaped spoonful of rice into his full cheeks. He smiles, tight-lipped, chewing and swallowing.

“Do you have work tomorrow, noona?” Jeongguk asks, reaching for a napkin to wipe the corners of his mouth.

“I do. Why? You wanna stop by?”

He shrugs.

“Depends. I’m not sure if Taehyung hyung wants to spend the entire day playing Overwatch again. It’s kinda weird though.”

“What is?”

“I never really thought I’d enjoy going to a club. Like, there’s so many people, and it smells like sweat and... other bodily fluids... I mean, how can you work there, noona?”

“I mean, the pay’s pretty good. And for the most part, as long as I’m behind the bar, I’m fine,” you reply. “Most guys are too drunk to coordinate their limbs over the counter and shit, you know?”

“But... the smell... the people...”

“You get used to it after a while. A couple shots every now and again helps.”

“Man,” Jeongguk sighs. “I could never. You’ve got bigger balls than me, noona.”

“So. Should I keep an eye out for you tomorrow night?”

“I’ll text you.”

〰️

“On your left, Jeon,” Taehyung says, fingers moving frantically across the keyboard of his laptop.

“Yep. I see him,” Jeongguk replies, licking his lips in anticipation.

The ruckus outside of Taehyung’s room is drowned out by the sounds coming from his laptop and Jeongguk’s, two pairs of eyes glued to the screens, half empty Red Bull cans at their feet.

Taehyung whoops when a player of the opposition dies, and Jeongguk grins, chest swelling with pride as they win yet another match.

“Dude.” Taehyung flexes his fingers as Jeongguk finishes off the last of his drink. “Have I ever told you how fucking glad I am that you moved down here?”

“Only every time we’ve played Overwatch together, yeah,” Jeongguk chuckles.

“Well, I just wanna say I’m glad one more time. Another round?”

“Sure, hyung. Just give me a minute. I’m about to piss my fucking pants.”

“I reckon I should get a toilet installed in my room. Do you know how goddamn convenient that’d be?”

“Gross. Your room’s gonna smell even more like shit than it already does,” Jeongguk says, scrunching up his nose as he walks out.

“Dick.”

Jeongguk laughs to himself as he makes his way over to the bathroom and proceeds to empty out a bladder full of coffee and Red Bull. It’s a disgusting combination, and he finds himself wincing at the smell, vowing to never subject his body to such an atrocity, knowing full well he’ll do it again next week when Taehyung is rousing him from his sleep Saturday morning.

He’s in the middle of washing his hands when his phone chimes in the pocket of his sweatpants, and then again when he haphazardly dries his hands on his shirt before he fishes it out.

< hey, guk. i won’t be coming into work tonight :( think we might’ve eaten something weird last night? i feel like shit’s shit > < how’re you? are you feeling alright? have you been gracing the porcelain with your beautiful face like i have?? >

“What’s up with you?”

Jeongguk looks up from his phone at the sound of Taehyung’s voice once he’s stepped back into his room.

“Huh?”

“You look like you just found out your grandpa died,” Taehyung says. His eyes grow wide the second he finishes. “Wait. He didn’t, did he? Oh my God, fuck. I’m so--”

“No, I’m fine. My grandpa died when I was two, hyung. I’m good,” Jeongguk replies, sitting back down in front of his laptop, phone tucked back into his sweatpants.

“Oh. Then why were you looking at your phone like that? Don’t tell me you got kicked off one of the teams, man. I was looking forward to coming watch you.”

Jeongguk snorts.

“You told me yesterday that you wanted to pick up chicks and dicks at every game.”

“That too. But, for real. What’s up?”

Jeongguk hesitates, worrying at his lip and picking at the edge of his thumbnail.

“Nothing. _____ noona just texted me saying she won’t be going to work tonight, that’s all,” he says, trying to sound casual, unbothered. Taehyung, however, sees right past that, arching a questioning eyebrow at the younger.

“_____?” Jeongguk shrugs, reaching over to grab a new can of Red Bull. “As in... my sister, _____?”

“Step sister,” Jeongguk mutters under his breath.

“You can’t pull the ‘step sister’ card on me, dude,” Taehyung laughs. “But, regardless, explain.”

“Wh-- um, what am I explaining exactly?”

“Let’s start with why you’re texting my sister.”

Jeongguk watches Taehyung crack open another can of Red Bull, leaning back against his bed with a growing smirk on his lips. Jeongguk doesn’t know why he’s nervous; he’s not guilty of anything, and it’s an innocent question from Taehyung. He knows nothing about his not-crush; if anything, his smugness is an indication that Taehyung assumes Jeongguk has joined the gang of guys having sex with you.

Jeongguk desperately wills the rising blood to his cheeks away at the thought.

“Well, uh... we’re both in Film Society together,” Jeongguk offers.

“And?” Taehyung prompts. “Just ‘cause you guys are in the same club, doesn’t mean you gotta be texting each other.”

“Uh... I asked her to have dinner with me last night after Film Society because I still owe her from baseball. And, uh, we were just talking and stuff. I was gonna go down to the club and hangout today if she was working.”

“Uh huh.” The corners of Taehyung’s mouth twitch as he holds back a grin. “And, just to clarify, you were the one who asked her to have dinner with you last night?”

“Um... yeah.”

“Jeon Jeongguk, are you fucking my sister?”

Jeongguk stutters and stammers at Taehyung’s question, caught off guard by how upfront the elder is. He can’t even begin to comprehend it all, mind reeling with hypotheticals and an out of control imagination that he has to get a grip of.

“Wh-- h-hyung!” he splutters. “No! N-no, I... I’m not h-having sex with your sister! I swear! We were just... w-we just hung out last night after Film Society. We’re just friends.”

Taehyung hums, fingers tapping on the rim of his can as he says, “I mean, sure, but _____’s also friends with Jimin, and Yoongi hyung, and a bunch of other frat dudes, but that doesn’t stop them from doin’ the do any time they’re feeling horny.” Jeongguk looks everywhere but at Taehyung; Taehyung chuckles at the sheer panic on the younger’s face. “Hey. Dude, it’s fine. If you’re fucking my sister, it’s chill. I don’t really care. She can do whatever she wants; it’s her body. And you can do whatever you want.”

“Hyung... seriously. I haven’t had sex with _____ noona,” Jeongguk urges.

“Hmm. Well, if that’s true, then I’m surprised. You seem like you’d be her ideal lay.”

Jeongguk opens his mouth to ask for some clarification, but Taehyung cuts him off with a slap to the younger’s knee, jerking his chin towards his laptop.

〰️

“I love Saturdays. Don’t you love Saturdays, Guk?” Hoseok asks.

“Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure,” Jeongguk says, not looking up from his phone, resting on his elbows against the kitchen counter. “Hey, um. Do you know how to make juk, hyung?”

Hoseok looks at him with confusion, bottle of soju in hand.

“Jeongguk, no one in this house cooks. Well, no one except Jin hyung, but he’s busy with Namjoon doing whatever the fuck they do on Saturdays. Those lame slam poetry readings at those bougie bars or whatever.”

“Oh.”

“Why? Do you want juk? They probably sell instant juk at convenience stores and shit. It’s probably not the kind your mama makes, but who’s expecting that?”

“Aren’t those, like, super salty and bad for you?”

“Probably,” Hoseok replies, shrugging. “But it’s either that, or you learn how to cook, dude.”

“True.”

“I guess if you want the good shit, you’d go to, like, a supermarket. If you’ve got the funds, anyway.”

“Right.” Jeongguk taps his finger against his phone, thinking. “Do you think anyone’ll let me borrow their car, hyung?”

“Probably not. We have a bad rep with cars, and on Saturdays, they’re either in use, or two kilometres away from being totalled. You can use my board if you want though.”

“Yeah?”

“As long as you return it in one piece.”

“Of course, hyung,” Jeongguk replies, straightening up with a smile. “I’m not Taehyung hyung.”

〰️

Jeongguk holds Hoseok’s skateboard tucked tightly between his arm and side, wary of keeping a distance from the stacked foods along the shelves. He picks up a plastic wrapped styrofoam cup of instant soup, turning it in his hand to read off the label.

Reduced salt.

That sounds like a good thing, right?

He puts the cup back onto the shelf, and pulls out his phone to read off the list he’d typed up earlier.

Instant juk. Bananas. Plain crackers. Something with electrolytes.

Jeongguk frowns at the shelves full of cups of instant foods, lamenting on all the requests he turned down from his mother to join her in the kitchen back home in Busan. This’ll have to do for now, he muses, making a mental note to learn how to cook.

Jeongguk wanders the aisles and picks up everything he needs: three cups of instant juk (reduced salt), a bundle of bananas, unsalted rice crackers, and two bottles of Pocari Sweat. He watches, adjusting his grip on the skateboard, as the cashier scans and bags everything, taking his card and swiping it through the machine boredly.

(A second mental note: start looking for a job.)

The ride to the Eta Theta Tau sorority house is uneventful and quick, the streets not too busy; Jeongguk assumes that at eight o’clock in the evening on a Saturday, most normal college students are getting ready for parties, not riding down the empty streets on a borrowed skateboard to bring food to their friend-slash-maybe-but-not-really-crush.

When he gets to the front door of the Eta Theta Tau sorority house, it occurs to Jeongguk that he has no idea what the protocol is: does he knock, or is he allowed to walk right in? He’s not here for a party. He picks up the skateboard, tucks it under his arm, shifting his hold on the bag of groceries to grab his phone.

But he hesitates again because he could call, but you might not be feeling well enough to meet him at the doo--

“Oh!”

Jeongguk looks up to find the front door now wide open, a wide-eyed and surprised Halla standing in the doorway.

“Jeongguk... sunbaenim, right?” she asks, smiling politely.

“Uh, yeah. Halla, right? From the party?” Jeongguk asks back, eyes narrowed slightly in thought.

“That’s me. What brings you to the Hot Box, sunbaenim?”

“Oh. Right. Um, _____ noona’s here, right?”

“Yeah, she is! Although, she’s not feelin’ so hot right now. Food poisoning, I think she said. Real gnarly.” Halla makes a face, shaking her head. “But she’s upstairs in her room, if you so dare to enter the dragon’s lair.” Jeongguk chuckles, stepping inside when she steps aside and waves an arm, letting him in.

“Thanks. You heading out somewhere?” he asks.

“Mhm! Hyuna unnie told me to meet her down at the Pie Hole,” Halla answers, fixing her hair.

“The... Pie Hole?”

“The Delta Pi frat house. Their parties are supposed to be epic. Unforgettable.”

“Does every frat and sorority have a nickname or something?”

“From what I’ve heard? I think so.”

“Uh huh. Wait. What’s the nickname for Beta Tau then?”

Halla tilts her head, lower lip jutted out.

“I think Beta Tau are the Boyscouts or something.” Halla smiles, dipping her head a little in a polite bow. “I’ll see you around, sunbaenim. Tell unnie I hope she gets better soon!”

Jeongguk watches Halla walk off with a wave over her shoulder, waving back dumbfoundedly.

〰️

You groan softly and lift your head up off the pillow, emerging from your little blanket cocoon at the sound of gentle knocking on your bedroom door.

“Who is it?” you croak.

“It’s me, noona,” you hear, eyebrows rising in surprise at the voice.

“Come in.”

You watch as your door opens slowly, Jeongguk’s head poking into your room tentatively.

“Hey, noona,” he says, smiling as he steps into the room, shutting the door behind him.

“Hey, babe. What’re you doing here? You feeling okay?”

“I’m doin’ okay. But I had, like, five Red Bulls and a couple coffees with Taehyung hyung today, so maybe not.”

You chuckle softly, pushing yourself up to sit against the wall as Jeongguk sets his skateboard down by your door and sits down at the foot of your bed.

“What’s in the bag?” you ask.

“Oh. Um.” He pulls it closer, reaching in to unpack everything, laying it all out on the sheets. “I bought you some stuff. I feel bad, ‘cause... y’know. I asked you to eat barbecue with me last night, but you got sick and I didn’t.”

You click your tongue.

“Guk, it’s fine. It happens. You didn’t have to go and buy me all this.”

“No, for real, noona,” he insists. “Also, um, sorry I only got instant juk. I’d cook you some, but... well, I can’t. I bought you some Pocari Sweat, and some bananas too. Oh, and some rice crackers as well.”

“God, you are really something, Jeongguk,” you say, laughing and shaking your head as you reach for the packet of crackers. “Last time I was sick, Taehyung sat right there, sipping his Coke, saying I had it coming for me.”

“That’s kinda mean.”

“That’s Taehyung for you.”

“Should I cook one of these for you, noona?” Jeongguk asks, reaching for one of the plastic-wrapped styrofoam cups.

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m not crazy hungry right now,” you reply, grabbing his wrist before he can get off your bed. “The crackers and the banana look good.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” you chuckle. “Let’s just sit here and watch a crime documentary on Netflix or something. I’m not getting out of this bed for a while.”

“You... you like crime documentaries too, noona?”

Jeongguk looks at you with eyes as wide and round as a baby deer, and you can’t help the fond smile that spreads across your face.

“Sure do, babe,” you say, wiggling your eyebrows.

“Have you seen the Making a Murderer one?” he asks, excitement clear in his eyes as he turns around and sits on his knees, leaning forward with anticipation.

“Oof. A classic. Put that one on.”

〰️

Jeongguk’s eyes are so hyper-focused on the screen of your laptop, that he doesn’t notice the added weight on his arm right away.

“It’s pretty tough, don’t you think, noona?” he mutters quietly, not turning. “How can you tell if they’re really innocent, or just really good actors?” He doesn’t get a reply. “Noona?”

When Jeongguk finally turns to look at you, he almost chokes on his own spit. The documentary continues to play, but he pays it no attention, stunned silent by the way you’ve fallen asleep on his shoulder, hands softly curled around his forearm. His heartbeat is deafening in his ears, taking in the way your eyelashes seem to cast a slight shadow on your cheeks; the way your lips are parted is unfairly tempting, and Jeongguk isn’t sure how strong his resolve is. He swallows thickly, throat suddenly dry.

“Noon--” Nope. Bad idea, Jeongguk thinks, realising that he should let you sleep since you aren’t feeling well. He leans over as best as he can without disturbing you to pause the documentary, the room drowning in almost complete silence immediately.

The position you’re in is bound to leave you with a stiff neck or a sore shoulder, and as much as he wants to let you sleep, he cannot let you sleep like that. With weird and awkward manoeuvring, he manages to nudge the laptop shut with his socked foot without jostling you too much. He doesn’t know how to go about moving you from your half-sitting-up position to lying down properly on your bed without somehow wrapping his arms around you and getting into a very awkward position that, in the event you wake up in the process, he would have no idea where to begin explaining himself. Still, the need to make sure that you don’t wake up with a sore neck on top of your food poisoning outweighs whatever weird feeling is stirring in his stomach at the sight of you pressed up against him, neatly polished nails stark against his forearm.

He sends a silent apology your way, unable to shake this weird feeling of violating you when he leans over and tucks his hand between the bed and your thighs, slowly lifting you to pull you down gently, stretching your legs out from where you’d pulled them up against his knee. You stir, and Jeongguk freezes immediately at the way you make a soft sound, your head turning slightly, hair falling over your cheek, lips parted. He swallows thickly at the sight before him, all of a sudden hyper aware of how hot his hands feel from the nerves and Something Else, and he withdraws his hand from your thighs as soon as he realises he hasn’t.

Jeongguk waits a beat for you to settle before he attempts to pull his arm out of your grasp. He doesn’t know if he’s only imagining the way your fingers seem to tighten their hold on his forearm ever so slightly, but it makes him freeze again nevertheless. He spends a moment trying to figure out a good plan of action, and maybe it’s the smell of your shampoo, or the faint aroma of perfume hanging in the air, but something seems to lead him to lying down with you.

If he can’t make you lie down on your own, he’ll just coax you into doing it with him.

Jeongguk wraps an arm around your thighs again. There’s a dull ache in his shoulder starting to creep up on him from holding himself up for so long on his elbow, careful not to crush you. Gently he pulls your legs down to slowly drag your body down his bed, your back sliding against the pillows to lay flat on the mattress. Jeongguk stops to shuffle himself down until he’s level with you, your hands still wrapped around his arm, and soon enough, he finds himself hitting the pillow beside you.

Jeongguk stares with wide eyes at your sleeping face, fascinated with the pink of your cheek where it had been resting on his shoulder. If you were to wake up now, he thinks, he would have no clue what to even say to you to begin to explain why he’s here, on your bed, lying beside you, eyelids growing heavy with sudden sleepiness. He feels your fingers twitch against his arm before you start to shift, still asleep, lips in a pout as you roll over onto your side, draping an arm across his stomach.

Jeongguk’s eyes snap open, and he wills all the blood in his body to not head south immediately.

He’s never been more tense in his life, and he’ll be very surprised if the rapid beating of his heart doesn’t wake you up. He swallows thickly and dares to look down, relieved to see that you’re still sound asleep, face smushed up against his chest, soft breaths ghosting across his shirt.

You shuffle again, and Jeongguk has no time to try and hold back his gasp when your leg drapes over his thighs, chest rising with surprise. He stares up at the ceiling, holding his breath as you mumble incoherent words unknowingly.

“Noo--” he starts, stopping himself immediately before he can finish. He breaks out into a cold sweat, hands clammy be his side.

The seconds -- minutes -- seem to tick by slower than usual, the traffic outside quieting down until all Jeongguk can hear is the sound of your breaths while you sleep. Gradually, the urge for everything to rush south subsides in favour of his body warming beside yours, a fond smile forming on his lips the longer he looks at you. This close, he swears he can count all your eyelashes, mentally trace patterns with the tiny moles on your cheek and neck, and before he can stop himself, his eyelids begin to grow heavy, certainly too heavy to keep open any longer.

Jeongguk tells himself he’ll just rest his eyes for a few minutes -- staring at the screen was a lot for his eyes, after all -- but inevitably, without meaning to, he falls asleep, face just inches away from yours.

〰️

Before you’ve even opened your eyes, the first thing you notice when you wake up is how much stiffer your pillow seems to be than usual, and the way it seems to rise and fall in time to your breaths.

When it dawns on you what you ‘pillow’ is, you slowly crack one eye open, hesitantly focusing your gaze.

Oh fuck, is your initial thought.

Oh. FUCK, is your second.

You stomach stirs ominously; it’s unpleasant, but tolerable, and definitely better than how it was yesterday. You open both eyes properly to take a look at Jeongguk’s sleeping face, and you curse yourself for staring, completely enamoured by his parted pink lips and the slight flush creeping on his cheek from where its pressed up against your pillow. Every fibre of your being is telling you to look away or push him off the bed and wake him up, but you can’t. You can’t bring yourself to look away, not when Jeongguk’s lips look so ready for a quick peck, or how adorable the fading scars from past pimples scatter his cheeks like faint freckles.

You really should turn away, or at least shut your eyes and pretend to still be asleep in case he wakes up, but you just can’t.

You hold your breath when Jeongguk starts to stir, tongue darting out to lick his chapped lips, nose and eyebrows scrunching up. He takes a deep breath in, and groans slowly as his eyes blink open.

It takes him a moment to properly wake up.

“G’mornin’, noona,” he says, voice croaky and rough with sleep. He clears his throat quietly, one hand reaching up to rub his eyes.

Then, all of a sudden, Jeongguk stops, freezes, before lowering his hand slowly to look at you.

“Noona!” he cries out, jerking back so quickly to create distance between the both of you that he ends up falling off the bed completely. You gasp, scrambling up onto your knees to lean over.

“Jeongguk? You okay?” you ask.

His words come out rapid fire as he quickly gets up to stand, hands frantically trying to tame his hair. “Yep. Mhm. Yep. I’m good. I’m okay.” His eyes look all around the room, anywhere but you, and it’s cute as fuck -- so cute, that you can’t help but smile fondly as he clears his throat and scratches the side of his neck.

“You okay?” you ask again, stretching your hand out. He looks at your hand like it’s the first time he’s ever seen a hand, but takes it eventually, standing to sit down on the edge of your bed.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Well, I-I mean... I fell asleep here... and I probably took up all the space... a-and--”

“Babe. It’s fine.”

“Huh?”

“It’s fine. I’m glad you slept over, actually. It was nice to know someone was watchin’ out for me,” you reply, laughing.

“Oh.” Jeongguk blinks, as if processing the information. “Well, I felt bad -- I still do, honestly. You wouldn’t have gotten sick if I didn’t ask you to have dinner with me.”

You click your tongue.

“I said it last night, and I’m saying it again: Jeon Jeongguk, it’s fine. It happens. Don’t beat yourself up about it,” you say, shuffling over to drape yourself over his back, chin resting on his shoulder, arms loosely locked around his neck. He stiffens a little, and tries his best not to be so obvious with the way he breathes in sharply at the sudden hug. “And you bought me all that stuff. If you owed me because I got sick -- which you definitely don’t -- you’ve already paid it back. Consider yourself a debt free man.”

Jeongguk worries at his bottom lip, fidgeting with his fingers, thoughts running a mile a minute because this is all too much to handle so early in the morning. This close, he can smell your shampoo, and the remnants of your perfume, and he’s a little dizzy with how nice the combination is.

“I mean...” he starts. “If... if you’re sure, noona.”

“A hundred percent,” you reply back instantly. “Don’t worry so much. You’re the last person in Beta Tau to owe me anything right now. You have nothing to feel bad about. ‘Kay?” You see Jeongguk jut his bottom lip out, nodding back in reply anyway.

“Mmkay.”

〰️

“Jeon Jeongguk.”

Jeongguk furrows his brow, Hoseok’s skateboard tucked under his arm, the laces of his sneakers half untied. The sight of Taehyung, Jimin, Hoseok and a disgruntled Yoongi in front of him, arms crossed over their chests, is a strange thing to see at half past ten in the morning, and Jeongguk is undoubtedly confused.

“Uh... yeah?”

“Where’ve you been?” Jimin asks. “You didn’t come home last night.”

Jeongguk clears his throat, and straightens up, shoving his free hand into the pocket of his sweatpants as he toes off his shoes.

“Right. Yeah, um. Sorry.”

“Where’ve you been?” Taehyung says, repeating Jimin’s question.

“Um. The Hot Box?”

“The Hot Box,” Hoseok repeats, eyes narrowing with suspicion. “You spent the night at the Hot Box. And what business do you have over there?”

Jeongguk clears his throat again and sniffs, tampering down the nervousness that’s quickly rising in his chest, instead feigning nonchalance.

“Well, if you must know, hyung,” he replies. “I was taking care of _____ noona.”

Yoongi eyes dart towards the younger, expression giving no clues away.

“‘Taking care of _____’,” Taehyung repeats, fingers curling in the air in makeshift quotation marks.

“Taking care of her... with your dick?” Jimin asks, smirking.

“No,” Jeongguk says, proud of himself for not choking on his own spit at the accusation. “She had -- no, has food poisoning. I was making sure she was okay.”

“Making sure she was okay by giving her a little Netflix and Chill.”

“Yeah, but not in the way you’re implying, hyung. We watched a crime documentary and slept.”

“And did your dick make an appearance, Jeon?” Taehyung asks, sniggering.

“Wh-- no!”

“You’ve slept over at _____’s room twice now, and you’re telling me you two haven’t fucked?” Hoseok asks. “Honestly, I dunno if I’m more surprised by you or her!”

“You idiots woke me up for this?” Yoongi says, sighing and ruffling his hair. “Who cares if Guk and _____ are fuckin’?”

“I do,” Jimin says, jabbing his finger against his chest.

“Why?”

“Because I think it’s only fair that our fellow brother here gets a good piece of ass during his time here. _____ needs a good talking to.”

“Oh. She’s gonna get one,” Taehyung says, nodding firmly.

Jeongguk watches Yoongi shut his eyes and take a long, deep breath in through his nose.

“I’m out,” he says. “You bitches are on a whole ‘nother level of ridiculous.”

Hoseok steps forward towards Jeongguk, draping his arm around the younger’s shoulders as Yoongi shuffles away and back upstairs to his room.

“Dude. You really didn’t bone _____? For reals?” he asks.

“I didn’t,” Jeongguk replies, toeing off his shoes. “You can ask her if you want.”

“Damn. Prayer circle for the Jeon, coming right up,” Taehyung says, frowning.

〰️

You drop your bag down with a loud thud, dropping yourself down onto the bench and leaning over to snatch Taehyung’s drink right out of his grasp, just as he’s about to take a sip.

“That’s it,” you say, sipping loudly on his Coke. “I’m quitting Yoga.”

“Wh-- oh wow, hello,” Jimin says, eyebrows raised as he gives you a onceover.

“Please keep your dick at bay, Park Jimin. I feel like death.”

“Yoga?” Taehyung chuckles, taking his drink back.

“Hot yoga. Jesus fuck, I thought I was gonna pass out doing the goddamn downward dog.” You sigh, tucking a sweaty lock of hair behind your ear. “Where is everyone?”

“It’s Monday morning. Probably asleep.”

“Except Jeongguk. He’s at practice,” Jimin says, leaning over to take a sip from Taehyung’s drink too.

“Oh?” You sit up onto the table, eyebrow raised as you cross your legs. “Swim, or baseball?”

“Can’t remember, but the guy was up at the fuckin’ crack of dawn.”

“I have a question though, o great sister of mine: you really haven’t hooked up with Jeongguk?” Taehyung asks, leaning forward and nudging your yoga pants-covered knee. “Like, legit?”

“Yeah, legit. Why? Is that really so hard to believe?” you ask.

“A little, mainly because he seems like he’s right up your alley.” Taehyung finishes off his drink, before tossing the empty cup into the closest trash can, groaning when it bounces off the rim and falls to the concrete ground, lid popping off on impact. “But, hey. If he’s not your type, he’s not your type.”

“Well... it’s not that he’s not my type, per se...”

“So, you do wanna bone.”

“I mean... if he asked, I wouldn’t say no. I’m not ins--”

“Hey. Wow, you look... gross.”

Three heads turn, watching Hoseok approach the table, Jeongguk and Namjoon following right behind. You scoff at the scowl on Hoseok’s face.

“Dude. Showers exist for a reason,” he says.

“Give me a break. You try doing hot yoga on the cusp of Summer, bitch,” you say.

“No one forced you to join the Yoga Club. That was your choice. And clubs don’t contribute to your grades, so it’s not like you have to do the hot yoga sesh to be able to graduate.”

“Whatever. I’ll leave then if my sweat is so offensive to you, oppa.”

“Ya nasty, _____. Downright nasty.”

You roll your eyes and get off the table, bending down to pick up your bag.

“I actually do have to go though. I have a lab at nine,” you say.

“How fun,” Namjoon says, chuckling.

“Oh, definitely. We’re dissecting spleens today. Joy.”

“I hope you’re gonna shower first,” Hoseok says. “See, you should be more like Jeongguk here. Jeongguk swam, like, ten kilometres, was soaked head to toe in chlorinated water, and still had the decency to take a shower before coming here. Why can’t you be more like Guk here?”

You look over Hoseok’s shoulder to where Jeongguk stands, one strap of his bag slung over his shoulder, giving you a little wave and a shy smile.

“Hey, Guk,” you say, smiling back, glaring at Hoseok briefly, your whole demeanour shifting quickly, depending on who your attention is directed at. “How was practice?”

“Hey. Yeah, it was good, noona,” he replies, carding his fingers through his still-damp hair. “I haven’t swam that much in a while though, so I’m probably gonna be sore for a few days.”

“I’m sure _____’ll be more than happy to give you a massage,” Jimin says, smirking. “Her hands are amazing, dude.”

Jeongguk’s cheeks colour and warm up while you turn to look at Jimin over your shoulder with a pointed look.

“Well these hands won’t be goin’ anywhere near you any time soon, babe,” you say.

“Woah, woah, woah. Wait. That’s not fair!”

“Should’ve thought of that before you said some clown shit, you fool. Alright. I’m off.”

“Wait, noona,” Jeongguk says, hand on your wrist to stop you from walking too far. “When’s your last class today?”

“I’ll be done by three today. You want me to wait for you before we go to Photography?”

“I mean... if that’s okay with you. My last class finishes at four.”

“That’s all good,” you say. “I got some books I need to pick up from the library anyway.”

“Ah. Should I meet you there, noona?”

“If you want. Or I can meet you somewhere closer.”

Jeongguk hums softly, lips pouted as he thinks it over.

“The library should be good,” he replies. “I’ll run over as soon as I’m done.”

“Sounds good -- but you don’t have to literally run, babe.”

“Eh. What’s a light jog in the middle of the day?”

You snort, shaking your head with a laugh.

“Alright, well, I’m off. I’ll see you losers later!” you say, waving over Jeongguk’s shoulder at the rest of the group, who reply with tired waves back.

〰️

“I see we’ve got some new faces,” Jaewon says, rolling a camera lens between his hands, watching as people file into the room. “Hmm? I see the troublemaker’s back.”

“Wow,” you say, scoffing. “You’re really gonna say that when you made me the subject of your last portfolio?”

“You’ve got a pretty face, _____, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re like a goddamn typhoon when it comes to the student body.”

“_____’s got the student body,” Yura says as she walks past, sending a wink your way.

“Glad to see you’ve always got my back, unnie,” you say, laughing.

“Ooh, new guy,” Wheein says, sidling up to Jaewon. “Wow. Look at that jawline. That shit could cut a brick.”

“Guys, this is Jeongguk. Guk, this is Jaewon oppa, president of the club; Yura unnie, the secretary; and Wheein unnie, the treasurer.”

“Hello. It’s nice to meet you guys,” Jeongguk says, bowing his head in greeting.

“Hey, as VP, couldn’t you make more of an effort to get here earlier? You should be setting an example to the rest of the club members,” Jaewon sighs, nudging your shoulder with the camera lens.

“Hey, I got here, didn’t I?” you reply. “And besides, I waited for Jeongguk to finish class so that we could walk here together. It’s his first meeting and all.”

“Yeah, yeah. Alright. Let’s get started. Everyone, grab a seat!”

〰️

“Well, we’re getting closer to the Summer break. Should we set a little project, kids?” Jaewon asks; he’s met with a room of groans.

“Hey, c’mon, guys,” you say, laughing from where you’re sitting on the edge of the table. “It’s not gonna be that bad. It’s not even mandatory. It’s just a club, remember?”

“Way to keep them motivated, VP. Anyway, in the spirit of photography, we’re gonna set a little project for you kids. We want you guys to build up a portfolio of pictures that showcases your Summer.”

“It doesn’t have to be a huge portfolio,” you add. “It can have as little or as many photos as you want, just as long as it captures the essence of your beautiful time away from these lecture theatres.”

“We’re planning on having the presentations on the second meeting after the Summer break, just to give you guys some time to edit the photos and compile everything together, but you’ll have the whole break to take all the photos you want.”

“The next few meetings until the break’ll be some time to plan out your portfolios and take some test shots around campus, if you so please. It’s a free for all; you pick your photos and topics. Everyone just remember the club rules—”

“No nudes, no lewds, no boobs,” Jaewon finishes.

“It’s a damn shame, honestly,” Wheein says as the club members disperse, sliding off the table she was sitting on to cross the room and grab her camera. “_____ photographs so well when she’s naked.”

The club sniggers and you laugh loudly, amused by the scandalised look on Jaewon’s face.

“Why do you act like you’ve never seen _____ naked?” Yura asks, shoving Jaewon’s shoulder. “I saw your fucking portfolio’s B-cuts, idiot.”

“What a church boy,” Wheein says, grinning as she wraps an arm around Yura’s waist, chin resting on her shoulder.

“Well... I don’t think I’ve ever met a church boy who sends dick pics to the entire yoga club — allegedly by accident.”

“That was no fuckin’ accident.”

“Jeongguk, right?”

“Um, yep,” Jeongguk asks, frozen at your side.

“You’re not a church boy, are you?”

“Um... not that I’m aware of, no?”

Yura and Wheein look at you pointedly; you shrug dismissively in reply.

〰️

“You know some... interesting people, noona,” Jeongguk says, chuckling as you both walk out of the club room, slinging his bag onto his shoulder.

“I’m sure you’ll meet a few characters while you’re here, babe,” you laugh. “You’re in two clubs and two varsity sports teams.”

“It’s funny. I thought I needed to join more clubs, because I was worried I wasn’t in enough. But I dunno if I could handle more than what I already have.”

“Mmm, I think you’re good for now. You’re in more than everyone else at Beta Tau. I think those guys are more interested in maintaining their place at the frat, to be honest.”

“That’s fair, I guess.”

“What are you doing for the rest of the night?” you ask.

“Not sure, but I’m exhausted,” Jeongguk replies, running his fingers through his hair.

“Oh yeah. You’ve been up for a while, huh?” He hums in reply.

“Gonna take a while to get used to this routine, I think.”

You bring Jeongguk over to one of the last remaining food trucks on campus, the smell of hot soup and spicy rice cakes rich in the air.

“Let’s grub, bub,” you say, nodding your head in greeting to the vendor, pulling out one of the plastic stools under the bench, Jeongguk following suit as he drops his bag at his feet.

“Damn. This smells so good,” he says, taking a deep breath.

“Auntie Choi’s the best on campus. You can never go wrong with her food.”

Auntie Choi scoffs, waving her hand dismissively as she laughs quietly and serves you both a bowl of noodles, eventually turning her attention back to cutting up and skewering fish cakes.

“Thank you for the food,” you and Jeongguk say, snapping your chopsticks and digging in.

Jeongguk groans with a mouthful of noodles as he looks at you, and you completely understand, without words, what he’s trying to say. The food is really damn good, there’s absolutely no denying it, and you won’t be even a tiny bit surprised if Jeongguk himself becomes a regular customer just like you.

A bowl of noodles, two plates of spicy rice cakes, and an argument over who was paying — you won eventually — later, the both of you head back to the houses, Jeongguk, once again, dropping you off at the sorority first before he heads back to Beta Tau.

You’re halfway through your nighttime skincare routine when your phone pings with a new message.

< noona, do you have any camera recommendations?? i forgot to ask you earlier at dinner hehe >

“Cute,” you say quietly as you finish rubbing moisturiser into you skin before you reply to him.

The conversation lasts well into the night, the both of you falling asleep somewhere around half past one, in the middle of sharing vine compilations, and you letting Jeongguk know of the inner workings of the Beta Tau Fraternity.

“Woah, dude. You good?” Namjoon says the next morning, eyebrows furrowed as he holds a hand out to stop Jeongguk from walking any further down the hall. “Did you not sleep?”

“Huh?” Jeongguk asks, ruffling his hair mid-yawn. “Oh. Yeah, I’m good, hyung. Just had a late night.”

“Thought you would’ve knocked out in an instant. You were up even earlier than me and Jin hyung yesterday.”

Jeongguk chuckles tiredly, saying, “yeah, I was pretty exhausted; but, uh... I was talking to _____ noona last night. Lost track of the time I guess.”

“Ah.”

Jeongguk looks at Namjoon, and hates the look the elder gives him.

“Don’t, hyung,” he groans. “I don’t need you giving me shit too.”

“Alright, alright,” Namjoon replies, chuckling.

“Why does everyone react like that anytime I bring up _____ noona?”

“I guess she has... somewhat of a reputation.”

“What, because she sleeps with a lot of people? But she’s a straight A student too. Why doesn’t anyone focus on that?”

Namjoon shrugs, saying, “dunno, but I feel like she’s kind of made her reputation more about her... ‘sleeping habits’, rather than her academic standing.”

“Huh?”

Chuckling, Namjoon pats Jeongguk’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it, Guk. If you enjoy her company, you enjoy her company. _____’s honestly pretty entertaining ninety-nine percent of the time. She’s a good study buddy, good friend, and... I’ll admit it: she’s great in bed too.”

“Wait, wh—”

“Go to class, dude. I gotta go take a shower.”

#jungkook #jeon jeongguk #bts #bangtan #bts scenarios #fratboy!au #me: crawls out of the sewer to post #also me: crawls back in

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