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smutson · 1 year

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A Little Advice

Authors Note: Sorry it's been so long since any new fanfics. School and work have been kicking my ass. More to come soon!! DMS and Requests always open :)

Summary : Agreeing to go to the new roller skating rink, Robin, Steve and Nancy can't take it anymore. After watching you flirt for months with Eddie, they attempt to take matters into their own hands and give you the "push" you needed.

Warnings: cursing, kissing, blood, female reader, mostly just a fluffly little blurb.

Word Count: 2.2k

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“Ugh. They’re so adorable I think I’m gonna vomit.” Robin says with a big slurp of her drink.

“Nope. That was a 5$ milkshake! Gimme that.” Steve urges, snatching the cup from her hands causing Robin to snort as he takes a sip.

“It’s frustrating to watch really.” Nancy chips in as the three of them watch you and Eddie rollerblading from their spot in the dining area. Everyone had excitedly agreed to come skating tonight at the new and brightly decorated rink, but the performance that was you and Eddie had quickly taken over the entertainment aspect of the night. Both of you had been more touchy than normal tonight and the shamelessly clueless flirting was getting hard to watch.

Steve scoffs and rolls his eyes as Eddie catches you from falling and embraces you tightly, a shit eating grin on his face.

“One of them just needs to make a move already. They’ve been like this for weeks!”

“More than that dude. They’ve always been like this, you were just too clueless to notice.” Robin says to Steve with a lazy point of the finger. Nancy nods with a sheepish smile. He responds with the raise of his brows and another eye roll before continuing.

“Okay. Sorry I wasn’t keeping a closer eye on Munson’s dating life…” he says throwing his hands defensively in the air. “They just need a little push. Something. Anything. Or I might blow chunks with Robin if I have to watch him grin like that again.”

Nancy giggles at this and takes the milkshake from him, sipping a few times before she grabs her small purple purse. She fishes out some cash and grins mischievously at the equally confused expressions from both Steve and Robin.

She taps her fingertips on the neon table and adds a quick “be right back!” before skating towards the DJ. Robin smirks at this and nods, catching onto Nancy’s plan long before Steve can connect the dots. The two of them watch as she hands the cash to the vibrantly dressed man behind the booth and nods enthusiastically at him.

Steve flicks his eyes towards the rink again, the dramatic saga that was you two’s feelings towards each other still in full swing as Eddie gives you a huge smile as you catch yourself from falling. He can’t help but feel a small smile tug on his lips. Two of his best friends were falling hard for each other but neither had a clue. The shared happiness you two had any time the other is present is adorable. He can admit that. Even if you were both idiots for not realizing it sooner.

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Nancy’s plan was a total epic failure. She had requested a popular and sappy love song to play. In high hopes that the music and the “couple’s only!” rule (hand holding not required but encouraged!) for the song would spark something between you two. Forever the hopeless romantic Nancy was.

Only problem though.

Nancy requested a Cyndi Lauper song and hoped Eddie the Freak Munson would enjoy it. Let alone seize some kind of moment with it. Absolutely not. Nancy realized this within seconds of sitting back down besides Steve.

“Oh…damn it.” She mumbles to herself quietly as Eddie dramatically pretends to puke once the song starts, earning a giggle from you.

Robin rolls her eyes to Nancy.

“You really thought this song would do it for 'em?”

“I like this song!”

“But this is is EDDIE!"

And speak of the devil, there you both were. Faces flushed red and small drops of sweat lining your foreheads, you both tiredly slumped down into the booth next to Robin. Practically squishing her into the wall.

"Ugh. They really need to do something about the music here. This is the third Lauper song they've played in like 5 minutes." Eddie says with an exhale. Steve and Robin both stifle a giggle as Nancy suddenly becomes very interested in the salt shaker and quietly agrees. Total failure.

"Not to mention the hand-holding rule! That sounds like a great way to end up with matching couple's bruises." You giggle and point to a younger teenager wiping out and taking his date to the ground with him. Eddie chuckles and starts playing with a soggy french fry drenched in ketchup. You notice a perk rise in Steve's face, who taps Eddie on the shoulder and gestures to the counter.

"Hey man, come with me to get some more food. Robin demolished those fries."

"As long as you're buying dude!" he responds cheerfully as they hop out of the booth.

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Before Eddie can even start browsing the menu for some food, Steve loudly claps him on the back. He pauses a moment before saying anything, which sends nervous summersaults deep into Eddie's already growling stomach.

"What are you doing man?"

"Um...Well Harrington, I am trying to decide on my dinner, as was the plan."

"What? Shit. No. I mean with Y/N."

This causes a warm tingle in Eddie's cheeks as he glances back at the table towards you, who is swinging a half eaten fry in front of Nancy trying to get her take a bite. You both laugh heartily and he feels his chest tighten familiarly. An involuntary feeling that he had grown accustomed to each time he saw you laugh.

"I mean...I don't know man. I've been telling you, she just doesn't see me like that." He glumly replies and nervously starts picking at his hair. A habit that always gave away when he was anxious. Steve sighs with another roll of the eyes.

"Have you asked her? We all see the way she looks at you Munson. Anyone with eyes can see that she has a crush on you." Steve replies, softening his approach a little once he sees Eddie nervous expression, a look that not a lot of people in Hawkins had seen him display, usually well hidden under his usual bravado.

"Look. Skate with her, be confident and just show her you care. She's already fallen for you, so now just don't fall on your ass. Quite literally." Steve finishes, but not before Eddie notices a longing glance Steve gives to Nancy. Their relationship was it's own after school special. Christ.

Eddie turns towards him and gives him a knowing and mischievous grin which results in a joking shove from Steve.

"I know I know. Shut up."

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Eddie and Steve finally return to the booth with a large cheap beer and the biggest chili cheese dog you've ever seen in your life. They also returned with a strange unspoken tension between the two of them and a few knowing glances at each other. It doesn't take you long to sense that their conversation was probably quite similar to the interrogation Robin and Nancy put on you as soon as they left. Everyone had been trying to set you and Eddie up and drop little hints every chance they got, and although you appreciated the efforts, it hurt more each time they were in vain. You had liked Eds since you were inducted into their small friend group and the crush was starting to wear down on your emotions.

Suddenly, She Blinded me with Science! starts blaring in the small skating rink and you were determined to have fun before you sank deep into the dark recesses of your mind about the whole situation. You abruptly stand up, gesturing your hand to Robin to join you on the rink.

"C'mon! I can promise you're not that bad at skating! I mean I saw a 5 year old fall two more times than you did!" You joke encouragingly and she scoffs but grabs your hand to join. You muster the best puppy-dog eyes you can possibly manage at the rest of the table and everyone starts to stand, besides Eddie. Who holds a finger up, takes 4 big swigs of the beer that only he was old enough to order, and slams the empty and foamy glass back on the table. Clapping his hands together, he follows the rest of you back onto the floor.

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“Eddie! Stop showing off!” Robin shouts at his back as he makes another quick lap around the rink, passing her and sticking out his tongue. Robin has her hands glued to the walls as she slowly tries inching her way along the path, similar to the pace of a drunken toddler. Which was probably the safest option as far as you were concerned. Robin plus wheels plus momentum only brought images of an emergency room to your mind. Eddie was the only one in the group that was great at roller skating. Bringing his own old and worn pair of blades he had gotten years ago from Wayne when he first moved in with him. As old as the skates were, he was had been showing off his moves and speed all night to the less athletically inclined. Including Robin and yourself.

“Heads up!” Eddie shouts from behind you with his fingers waving in front of his mischievously grinning face. He had been chasing you for the past two songs, jumping up from behind you and scaring the shit out of you each time he made a rotation. Grabbing your shoulders and giving you a quick shake and giggle each time. After busting your ass for the second time though because of it, you were determined to get him back. Time to take down the Dungeon Master, you think with a smirk. You try to build some momentum and push deeper with each glide to try and catch up with Eddie, but damn was he fast.

You pass Steve and give a point to Eddie's back, hinting at your plan and Steve smiles giving a thumbs up, with a slight wobble.

"Bleeeeeh!" Eddie yells with his tongue out from behind you as he swiftly skirts between you and Steve, nearly taking you both down in the process. He glances back at you, hair gracefully gliding past his shoulders and chuckles when he sees you try and regain your balance. You push off both feet and race to meet him before he can make another rotation. Your lungs and calves start to feel burn at the effort, but finally you are directly behind an unsuspecting Eddie. Before you can reach out and grab him, you left skate wobbles beneath you and your body slams hardly into his, taking you both to the ground.

The fall was quick, but you could feel Eddie wrap his arms around you bracing for impact but only seconds too late as your chin makes direct contact with the ground. Blood fills your mouth quickly as your tongue burns. You had slammed you jaw slammed shut directly over your tongue and your teeth were stronger than you anticipated.

"Oh shit! Y/N! Are you okay? You're bleeding!" He asks, scrambling closer to you. A bright red line of blood is pouring from his nose and dripping onto the wooden ground.

"Woah! Are you okay?! You are too!" You sputter out, tongue already throbbing. He reaches a ringed hand to his nose and chuckles when it comes back bloody.

"Well shit." He laughs, his breath hitting your face which flutters your stomach. "I'm okay, but what about you? Your teeth are all bloody."

"Just about bit my tongue off, but besides that I'm peachy keen!" A giggle comes out of your throat as he inches closer to you and places a hand on your cheek. You give him a huge smile, which he meets with his classic Eddie grin.

"Very exorcist with the bloody teeth Y/N." Eddie jokes and pauses for a moment, deep in thought and before you know it he presses a soft kiss on your mouth. Any air in the skating rink gets sucked out of the atmosphere in a millisecond. His soft lips were on yours and the kisses were deep. Longing. You push deeper into him and the music seems to fade out and the rink is suddenly empty. Just the two of you. You had been daydreaming about this for months and all of a sudden dreams became reality. You let out a small gasp and he quickly pulls away, eyes dark and concerned. You can't help but burst out laughing at the blood covering both of your faces and the fact that you were still sitting on the floor or the rink, getting curious looks from passing skaters. Any worry on his face quickly evaporates and he lets out a large laugh as he takes in the ridiculousness of it all. He lays down on the floor, still giggling as you try and get to your feet. Thinking about this moment for so long and you had finally kissed. Had you pictured that you both would be covered in blood and soon to be bruises? No. Was it in typical spontaneous Eddie fashion? Absolutely.

Steve glides past the two of you, beaming with pride and says, "Well Munson, I said not to fall on your ass, but it seems to have worked out."

"Last time I get girl advice from you Harrington." Eddie jokes, giving you a groundbreaking grin as he helps you regain balance in his arms.

Thanks for reading! DMs and Requests always open!

#eddie stranger things #eddie smut #eddie fanfic #eddie x reader #stranger things fluff #eddie munson #eddie fluff #stranger things x you #stranger things imagine #stranger things #fanfic #fanfiction #fluff #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x you #eddie x y/n

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anolyso · 3 years

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Utena thoughts...about 2 weeks later

I've been putting it off for way too long and so most of my thoughts stopped being fresh. On top of watching way too many analysis vids post-watch, but still I do at least want to put my 2cents of Revolutionary Girl Utena out there for the world.

Utena is perhaps one of the most famous "magical girl"/shoujo action shows out there for not only it's transgressive themes of relationship abuse and low-key pretty much being the poster girl for like actual feminist perspective on/in anime...but also just doing it all in both a heavily allegorical and understated, yet super over-the-top stylish fashion

But that's it's reputation preceding itself, is Utena worth while all these years? The answer is Yes, but it also really shows it's age and budget in pacing and repetition, tho as an appreciator for "behind the scenes" compromises in art, it's more showcasing Ikuhara's talent in working around both taboo and long-form budget constraints with just well-thought out and iconic imagery that - while episodic and formulaic - is just very good at filling the 39 eps with feasts for the eyes.

Utena broadly is about tomboy Utena with memories long ago after her parents died being "saved" by a princely figure like a princess...except she's so enthralled by the nostalgia that instead she becomes a full on Prince herself and receives a dueling ring to fight in the Ohtori Acadamy secret duels for "engagement" to Rose Bride Himemiya Anthy.

Utena is divided between 4 arcs, only the first and last being Manga adapted from hearsay:

1: Student Council Saga

2: Black Rose Saga

3: Akio Ohtori Saga

4: Apocalypse

From back to forth I'd say that Akio + Apoc is more just escalation into the finale while Black Rose being anime original comes off as a glorified side-character study which while complementing the secondary cast, feels like one of those Anime movies that has to say "but if you don't watch this part, it's pretty much optional for the main plot" despite it also actually introducing the most important antagonist within it's margins.

More importantly, it's the Student Council (arc and the actual people) that lay the foundation but also a large part of the show's focus which ironically puts Utena in the background until like almost the finale and some in-between developments, so it's less "Utena (and Anthy Himemiya)'s story" until the very end, but more like a showcase of how fucked up the system at large is (pin in that).

By the Council themselves is:

Kyouichi Saionji: The biggest jobber, like actually introduced as the most despicable loser ep 1 and proceeds to be a complete arrogant joke for the rest of the show. Honestly in another shojo "love" story, they'd find some way to redeem him but semi-compellingly they turn him into like an Aqua-lad type pathetic brat with an inferiority complex to the actual Student head

Miki Kaoru: the naive "nice, non-threatening soft boy" that also just never actually listens to the girls around him. Probably adds more complexity to the whole patriarchal idea on analytic reflection since yeah, the whole "nice guy finishes last" plays up better when the kid comes off as that "ally" energy of wanting to save Himemiya from being the Rose Bride but also low-key won't actually not just do the duels and win her cuz he's that sorta wishy-washy hypocrite. Arguably the least hateable guy in the cast (minus mascot Chu-Chu)

Juri Arisugawa: TRAGIC LESBIAN TRIANGLE LOVE. Probably the biggest point to of both "not-explicitly homosexual" but also really freaking obvious since her entire story is her girlfriend stealing her "boy crush" when actually she was crushing on her and being pretty much frustrated throughout her story as pining most of it. It's quaint by today's standards but also like damn girl, get over her she was like the worst back stabbing bitch (literally if Black Rose counts)

Nanami Kiryuu: SPEAKING OF QUEEN BITCH, it's been a long time since I've watched a High School girl bully and honestly it's kinda refreshing. If Miki is "soft-boy uwu" Nanami is a brat that gets her come-uppance often, featured prominently as an anime only with the MOST filler/comedic episodes but also not low-key, being the most out-spoken actual brother complex ironically spins perhaps the biggest twist and ironic relationships of "I love my brother but not-like-that but also like-that" by the end. Mostly comedic relief but I find her inclusion to actually add a lot more to juxtapose...

Touga Kiryuu: Big Student Council Prez himself, the first arc antagonist and also a strong foil to Saionji and later a stepping stone for Akio. Touga is THE image of a Princely Playboy Heart-Throb that in any other Shoujo romance would have the main girl win him over from all those "other girls" despite him being apathetic if not outright manipulative of them. Good thing Utena is better than that and really puts a spotlight on just not-actually-ok his power hunger for "the power to bring the world revolution" that leads him to heavily objectify Anthy, arguably even more than Misogynist Trophy Girlfriend beater Saionji, since he doesn't even see her as more than a means to an end despite professing and looking the Prince part but lacking all the actual virtues.

The Student council matters more since they're characters and subsequent tragic flaws are the ACTUAL meat of the show and on second rumination actual shows more how fucked up the system/gender dynamic/power hierarchy is since - while it blatantly fucks over Juri who can't just outright say who she likes - also show almost it's own sub-text of Masculine failings: Saionji desperately clinging to being TOXIC MASCULINE™ and completely falling short underneath Touga; Miki's "nice boy" act belying him trying to replace his low-key nostalgia for his sister (also a bitch, but apparently was more like Nanami in the manga); and best yet Touga being the quintessential "Prince in all but actual behavior" by emulating a cutthroat and Machiavellian world view but coming up empty because well, he's just an illusion of a prince...but that leads in way more to the big finale piece where I'll reintroduce the actual story's main trio

Utena Tenjou: Tomboy Prince with brain empty except for lesbian thoughts. Honestly probably what every western "STRONG INDEPENDENT WOMAN" archetype wishes they were since while having very tomboyish personality in athletics, blunt speaking and also VERY oblivious to the actual plot for REAL DRAMATIC IRONY, but also never actually demeaning her being feminine partially due to her love of an childhood prince and how she maintains her relationship with both her friend Wakaba and later Anthy. Honestly mostly a plot device after S1 until she gets ACTUAL development by the very end and instead kinda bumbles her way into undoing the entire REVOLUTION OF THE WORLD. I kinda wish she felt either more cognizant or at least felt like she was developing/properly rebuking the rest of the cast's power obsessions but I guess that's for the movie.

Anthy Himemiya: Actual Trophy Wife with a dark secret (darker than ski- wait no that's terrible scratch that). Set-up very much as an immediate princess in distress while also being the most femme Yamato Nadeshiko, Anthy being the Rose Bride as a literal prize who acts and behaves as whom she's "engaged" with desires while otherwise being quiet, wry, mysterious and noticably submissive, by the end it actually plays up into THE BIG REVEALS of just how abused she's been into a hopeless acceptance...like y'know actual abuse victims.

Akio Ohtori: Grade A Antagonist, probably the most insidious I've seen a villain in a while, Akio is notable for, back in 1997, being perhaps the big go-to of actual deconstructing the facade of a whole shoujo genre's "hots for a teacher/sexy man putting the moves" and highlighting how actually exploitative and abusive a person like that really is. Being Himemiya's brother (somewhat justified in the manga by both being a weird Sailor Moon-esque reincarnation of gods/godesses of Dios), despite how much of his motives are runing the background and how the entire back story is uh...brought up in like barely in the last arc with little lead up (some scenes feel like they'd be a full melodrama season and they just have like 1 scene in the final arc episodes) he manages to one-up Touga (in the plot as well) by instead of "just" objectifying girls, not-just-flat out saying Utena looks best as a princess, but y'know the fact that he is implicitly yet constantly exploiting and victim-blaming Anthy for her own suffering for "the power of Dios/Revolution of the world" turns it on its head

I've spent all this time on characters but in truth a lot of the meat of the show relies again on the Council Members fleshing out the issues of system leading to outright divorcing "being a Prince" (heroic altruistic virtues) and "being a man" (considering like all but maybe the comedic relief have some deliberately misogynistic behavior) and beyond just the plot (or rather character) synopsis, the talent goes far more in how it's framed, the symbolic/allegorical shots, the repetition adding a good episode formula flow to character showcases, probably the most "tasteful" allusion to uh...*ahem* sexual abuse that so many other edgier/prentious shows fumble. Both in how intimidating yet understated it's foreshadowing is until they hard-reveal it despite never explicitly naming it even tho it sends Nanami into hysterics

Really it's both a massive blessing and reason for it's cult beloved status for it's aesthetics but also it's burden, for being a full 39 episodic season by season character development study of everyone BUT the main trio except for snippets and the very end that makes it greatly appreciable as a legitimate work of art.

What I wanted more to say however (long overdue) is that a large part of following is, visibly at least, western feminist critiques and yes while it almost seems like Utena fits the "deconstructing patriarchy" story like a glove...it's weird how almost none of them actually can give a good historical account of actual Japanese female/gender/sexuality norms nor Anime contemporaries actually were. Like Tenchi Muyo and Berserk came out the same year (Cardcaptor Sakura the next) and despite how you can "feel" the influence in lots of modern shows like SHAFT's signature visual imagery cuts or many WESETERN shows having straight scene references to Utena....almost no one has a similar feel to Utena until like Princess Tutu comes out.

Really tho probably should've watched Utena and then Tutu because while it's undeniable that Utena is a major pillar of shoujo re-codification - what with everyone before Utena was saying they thought it'd be like a Rose of Versaille or Lady Knight rip-off...whose laughing now? - it's almost like there's a missing link between it and it's major western fanbase (probably with what few anime did get overseas, this one probably rose to the top), or how very noticeable there IS an influence on it's genre in Japan

Almost none of the big analyst fans actually know A) it's not "a deconstruction of Magical Girls" since despite Ikuhara working on Sailor Moon just before this, almost none of the tropes line up and instead more with Shoujo genre as a whole. or one of the major inspirations was Takarazuka theater.

And this is not to dismiss how inspirational it is to it's western fandom, but while I am notably cynical towards placing things on pedestals, there's probably something about cultivating the whole pop-culture feminist reading commune with people making weird time-loop theories while kinda most of it is just filling in a mad-lib mostly thanks to Ikuhara just keeping things on the vague and letting the audience take away their own perspective.

Again, most of the show is completely sub-textual or visually/symbolically depicted and never stated nor properly defines it's weird key words (End of the World, Revolutionize the World, Power of Dios, Rose Bride, all things said constantly but never really said what they "mean". But that's also perhaps its charm, in it's allegory and very Death of the Author approach, it has definitely allowed it's fan theorizing and appreciation to flourish so there's something there for that.

Ultimately I'd say Utena the TV series is great more so for what it isn't...or rather I should say it's great for not just subverting Shoujo tropes and archetypes for the Japanese audience but also that despite dealing with some very serious and heavy subjects in obtuse and perhaps understated ways for the time, people have allowed it to be put on it's pedestal because they can easily fit it in themselves.

Honestly though, not that a more "straight forward" approach wouldn't detract from Utena but I will say that the movie, Adolescence of Utena, is very much the best encapsulation of what Utena strives to be (for another big blog post) and while the TV series has plenty of time and flexes it's directorial muscles with budget constraints and season pacing UNrestrained, the movie will trim a lot of the fat

#long post #Revolutionary Girl Utena #I haven't actually done my Anime thoughts in a while #Maybe I'll keep this on my main blog this time #I wrote this mostly on facebook tho if I wrote it here first I'd better integrate images probably #anolyso's media time #uh...except now that's on my main blog

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rallamajoop · 3 years

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The Witcher: The Games vs the Books part 2 – Characters and Accents

So, I've already talked at length about the relationship between the Witcher books and games, but how well they captured individual characters is its whole own subject – and you’d better believe I have enough thoughts on it for a whole extra post.

Andrej Sapkowski's skill for creating vivid and engaging characters really is so much of what brings the books to life, and no matter how much work an adaptation might put into worldbuilding and plot, it's the characters you've really got to nail to get the long-time fans on board. Especially when you’ve done what the games have, framing themselves as a direct continuation of Sapkowski's story. Nothing invites comparison to your source material like basically forcing fans to read the original novels to understand even half the backstory alluded to in-game.

So how did they do? I can only offer my opinion – characterisation is necessarily going to be a lot more subjective than just telling you what plot points the games contradicted outright – but like any fan, I have opinions in plenty.

Of the main cast, I feel Yennefer is the character they've captured the best. They've done just as well with some supporting players – I have no real complaints about Dijkstra or Phillipa, for example, who are favourites of mine in both games and books. For the main players though, Geralt and Regis seem to be the ones who's differences I'm most inclined to forgive, whereas I don't feel like they've done Ciri justice at all. Book!Geralt is much less of a smartarse, for one thing, whereas Book!Ciri is much more of one. But if we're talking about the differences, I’m afraid we really need to start with Dandelion.

Dandelion

For all the genuinely good work the games do with characters, old and new, I don't think I can overstate what a disservice the they've done Dandelion, who I could not stand in TW3, but is now one of my favourite book!verse characters. Alas, Dandelion is a prime example of something the Witcher games really don't do well: camp. Being the archtypical bard, Dandelion is about as flamboyant as any enthusiastically-heterosexual man can be: you should be able to spot this guy by body language alone, he should be flouncing around and he should talk like a spoiled noble auditioning for Shakespeare. Book!Dandelion is over-the-top and ridiculous and just so much fun, and I loved him well before I'd even really gotten into the rest of the books around him.

Here's just a bit of dialogue from one of his first appearances, to give you a sense of how he and Geralt play off each other.

The bard seized the fingerboard of his lute and plucked the strings vigorously. ‘How would you prefer it, in verse or in normal speech?’ ‘Normal speech.’ ‘As you please,’ Dandelion said, not putting his lute down. ‘Listen then, noble gentlemen, to what occurred a week ago near the free town of Barefield. ‘Twas thus, that at the crack of dawn, when the rising sun had barely tinged pink the shrouds of mist hanging pendent above the meadows—’ ‘It was supposed to be normal speech,’ Geralt reminded him. ‘Isn’t it? Very well, very well. I understand. Concise, without metaphors. A dragon alighted on the pastures outside Barefield.’

Though TW3's Dandelion certainly looks the part, you have to go hunting through art from the Gwent cards to find much that comes close to really capturing his personality (see left pic below – though even there, a Dandelion who'd voluntarily break his treasured lute is a very hard sell). Though a lot of fanart does better (right-below – credit goes to Tatiana Ortaliz).

But as poorly as the games capture his flamboyance, they're not that much better when it comes to taking him seriously. TW3 left me thinking he was all talk and no substance; the books make abundantly clear that he really is renowned enough to be welcome in courts across the continent. Though he often overestimates what he can talk himself out of, he isn’t stupid either: he's lectured at Oxenfurt, spied for Dijkstra, and then there are the moments where the frivolous playboy mask slips and you realise he's sometimes much better at understanding people and relationships than Geralt will ever be (which is honestly kind of funny considering how many of Dandelion’s relationships end with plates being thrown at him from an upper story). He's not at all above mocking Geralt when he deserves it either (and especially his personal and relationship issues) – Geralt will happily mock him right back.

We never do learn how they became friends (I'm pretty sure the incident listed in the wiki is just the date of their first expedition together, not their first meeting), but Geralt just doesn't form lasting friendships or romances with anyone he can't have an intelligent conversation with. And Dandelion is a damn good friend to Geralt – one who, despite being a helpless, squishy little bard, will keep Geralt's secrets under torture, or will follow him into Nilfgaard in the middle of a war simply because you don't let a friend make a trip like that alone. (Seriously, I don’t ship it nearly as much as some, but hot damn there is some material in here if you do.) In short, it's basically inconceivable that he'd leave an amnesic Geralt wandering around Vizima alone, as he does in the first Witcher game – which is the kind of thing I can mostly forgive as a gameplay conceit, only it doesn’t really get better from there.

He’s also supposed to be blond, something I don’t think is technically specified until fairly late in the novels, but 100% what I’d been picturing since his first description as a man in a colourful bonnet with cornflower-blue eyes (let’s face it: Dandelion’s hair isn’t the only thing about him that screams ‘blond’). It’s a shame no-one from the games to the show to the novels’ cover artists seem to have noticed – but at least there are some fanartists out there who were paying attention (credit for these goes to Asphaloth, Ghostcupdraws, Hvit-ravn (tumblr deleted), 94355 and itsmespicaa).

As for the games? Well, I cannot speak to how Dandelion came across in the original Polish, but I think it speaks worlds about the priorities of the English version that they didn’t even bother to cast someone with a halfway-decent singing voice as their master bard. There are isolated moments of dialogue that come close to sounding like book!Dandelion– mostly in Witcher 2, which comes closer to capturing the spirit of the books than either 1 or 3, or his attempts to convince his captor he's a disguised noble when you rescue him TW3 – but his voice actor is just painfully ill-suited to the role.

Geralt

Geralt fares much better than Dandelion, though he’s still a little hard to square with the Geralt of the books. Book!Geralt spends a lot more time sulking, just to begin with: he sulks because his job is complicated and gets him no respect, and because the world is unjust and unfair – and, most of all, he sulks because Yennefer has dumped him again. He also gets mocked for sulking, and usually deserves it. Book!Geralt is generally a lot more taciturn and a less prone to making smart comments just to have something to say – arguably because in book!Geralt's world, making smart comments often ends at the gallows, or at least with some corrupt official making your life much harder. Book!Geralt's world kind of sucks, and he's just got to put up with it.

As much as he often plays into the expectations of being an uneducated monster hunter, he's also got a more of an intellectual streak than you’d guess. He may prefer to stay out of politics (because damnit, his job is to save people from monsters, not people who are monsters), but he attended school at Nenneke's temple and has even taken classes at Oxenfurt academy, and there's a lot of thoughtful nuance to his opinions – his speech to Ciri about why he can't in good conscience take a stronger stance against the Scoiata'el contains a wealth of historical perspective, just for one example. Even his smart comments tend to be, well, somewhat smarter in the books.

Book!Geralt’s explicitly a lot younger than Yennefer – around 50 is the usual estimate, falling far short of the 100-ish the games suggest (the scandal of having a man fall for – gasp! – an older woman clearly didn’t bother Sapkowski one bit). You don’t see nearly as much "I'm getting too old for this" from book!Geralt, who's really not that old by witcher standards, and is apparently still hunting monsters long into his future. I'm also a little annoyed by the way they play off his hatred of portals like he's a grumpy old man who doesn't like mobile phones, when his distrust originally came from having seen the gruesome deaths that result when portals go wrong. This is not to say Book!Geralt lacks other ordinary human flaws, however – twice in the last two books of the main saga, he gets severely sidetracked after his ego gets the better of him (in the adulation he receives after being knighted, then after arriving in Toussaint), and it's quite some time before he properly gets back on track for that whole rescuing-Ciri thing again. He’s also pretty hopeless when it comes to romance and relationships – breaking things off gracefully is really not in his skillset.

So why does game!Geralt not bother me more? Well, he's the main player character of a game franchise, and one who has to carry the experience largely solo. Some adjustments for genre are pretty much inevitable in that position. He's certainly fared better than Meve, for example, who's been softened far more from her book characterisation for her PC role in Thronebreaker. Then there's the whole amnesia thing – it's easy to believe that sort of experience would change a man – and if he doesn't sulk so much as he used to, maybe he's grown up a bit. Geralt's also in many ways the straight-man of Sapkowski's Witcher universe – there largely as the reliable centre for other, louder personalities to play off. But I expect the real bottom line here is that I do still like game!Geralt enough to forgive him a lot of what he lacks.

The books never do describe Geralt as being very attractive – something book-based fanart often tries to reflect. The point has been made before that the rather-alien-looking Geralt of the first game (left pic above) is probably a lot closer to his book-description. However, the main distinguishing factor you’ll see in book-based fanart is probably the ubiquitous headband, which genuinely is what book!Geralt wears to make his hair behave (the example on the right above comes from Diana Novich).

All that said, if Sapkowski really wants me to believe that nearly so many women are eager to jump into bed with him, I’m going to have to shallowly assume our witnesses are unreliable on this front, and Geralt is at least as attractive as Witcher 3′s take on him. Nothing else makes sense. *g*

Regis

Regis varies mostly in that book!Regis is a lot more smug, sometimes verging on obnoxious – and a lot keener to make fun of Geralt (who generally deserves it). But then, Regis is old and wise and superpowered enough to dance rings around most everyone else – can you blame him? By Blood and Wine, Regis' overconfidence has been recently smacked down hard after his near-death-experience at the hands of Vilgefortz, and that kind of thing could knock some chips off anyone's shoulder. Throw in the fact that with Dettlaff, we have a situation not even Regis could make light of, and the changes to game!Regis make a certain amount of sense.

I do feel it's a bit of a shame that the vocal direction didn't work just a little bit harder to capture some of Regis' smugger side, or emphasise that his long-winded philosophising on human behaviour is supposed to sound a bit pretentious. This is actually something I suspect they were going for a few times in the script, but which didn't come through in the dialogue quite the way it was meant to. Still, again, I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that I like game!Regis far too much to find much fault in what they've done with him. They've done a lovely job capturing his friendship with Geralt too.

Looks-wise, there's a tendency in book-based art to portray Regis with long hair (even some pre-Blood-and-Wine Gwent art did so – see the two pics on the left above, from Gwent and early B&W concepts. The right-most pic is cover art from the books). I couldn't rightly tell you where long-haired-Regis comes from, though – perhaps it's described more explicitly in the original Polish, or perhaps it comes up in passing in some passage I've forgotten, though it may just as well just be a fannish meme.

The books do describe him as looking rather like a tax collector, slim, middle-aged, with an aquiline nose, prone to wearing black, and his hair as 'greying' or 'grey streaked', so presumably somewhat younger-looking than the game would have it. The hammer-horror-esque sideburns are likewise a game-verse addition, though I do like the look they went with – it's distinct from Geralt in a way that making him another long-grey-haired man wouldn't have been, and that's probably the point.

Being the hopeless Regis fan I am, I have quite the folder full of different fanart takes on book!Regis, so have a selection – art here is by gellihana-art, justanor, greysmartwolf, Nastyaskaya, NatalyLanier, beidak, natalliel, ellaine and afternoon63. For what it’s worth, I feel beidak’s (bottom pic, second from the left) comes the closest to what I’d have pictured personally, based on how he’s first described.

Ciri

I find it much harder to rationalise the changes to game!Ciri, who I didn't exactly dislike, but found stuck too close to the role of generic-macguffin-girl-who-just-wants-to-be-normal to be very interesting. Having read the books, not only do I much prefer book!Ciri, I'm not sure I can emphasize enough how much the game did NOT prepare me for utter gauntlet of whump and misery that girl survives in the last four titles. Book!Ciri is a character who works for me mostly because of the same flaws the game mostly strips her free of – TW3 makes some token noise about how you can't tell her what to do, but she’s an utter little royal brat when we first meet book!Ciri, and it’s so much of what brings her to life. She throws herself into her witcher training with the enthusiasm of a kid going completely native, but still revels in getting to be girly for a change when Triss first arrives at Kaer Morhen. She hates Yennefer at first, but soon bonds with her just as strongly as she ever did with Geralt, picking up some of Yennfer’s haughty mannerisms along the way. And then she gets thrown through a portal and lost in the distant wilderness, and the whole world comes down on her head.

The build up to the first time Ciri actually has to kill someone is intense... and things only get worse from there. Steadily. For another couple of novels at a stretch. Seriously, a major caveat that pretty much has to go into any rec for these books (and I will absolutely rec these books) is that Ciri's story gets heavy. So heavy one finds oneself using phrases like, "that time that one guy died of his wounds on top of her while semi-consensually feeling her up was honestly one of the less traumatic incidents in the period."

By the end of the novels, Ciri has nearly died of thirst, been beaten, tied up, dragged around the country as a prisoner, run with bandits and killed innocent people for the fun of it, done fantasy-cocaine and got a tattoo, fought off more than one attempted rape, been drugged, lain for multiple nights next to an impotent elf who completely fails to impregnate her, watched the bodies of her friends and girlfriend being mutilated in front of her, and did I mention where she got that scar? She has survived hell, and it is absolutely a testament to her own strength that she somehow comes through it and puts herself back together at the end. When Geralt finally arrives to rescue her, what matters most isn't that her ordeal is over, but that she finally knows she hasn’t been abandoned by everyone who’d ever loved her after all.

The Ciri of the books is fierce and wild and arrogant, but she's learned her morals from the best, and she holds onto them until she can't, then picks them back up again when she can, and above all she survives. For all that her story turns arguably too much of the last two books into a slog of misery, oh boy does it pay off at the end. And that's probably about as much as I can say about her Big Moment in the last book without spoiling too much, so suffice to say that by the end of the saga, Geralt has pretty much become a supporting character in Ciri's story, not the other way around. (Seriously, you’d be surprised how few chapters of the last two books he’s actually in.)

Finding art which captures the aspects of Ciri’s character and history which are missing from the game has turned out to be pretty hard, though the fanart above from her bandit phase takes a decent crack at it (credit to Loles Romero and NastyaSkaya). I do rather like that one shot of her on horseback beside her girlfriend too, which comes from Denis Gordeev’s illustrations for the novels (below).

How much of this does TW3 get across with her portrayal in the game? Well, she's still pretty headstrong, I guess. And they let you give a 'sorry, I like girls' answer in one bit of dialogue, so they remembered her girlfriend existed. That's nice. But game!Ciri still has a kind of wide-eyed innocence that book!Ciri lost years ago, while book!Ciri is a little force of nature in ways the games hardly even hint at, and that's a really shameful loss.

You'd think, with a character so young, it ought to be easier to imagine she's simply grown up since we saw her last, but so much of what's changed about Ciri feels like a step back rather than forwards. I can shrug off Geralt and Regis' differences and still enjoy their game-verse-selves, but Ciri leaves me genuinely disappointed.

I’d say the official art that comes closest to capturing book!Ciri is that one portrait of her as a very grumpy young child (right above). Some of the early concept art (left above) feels a little more like it has her attitude, though she’s rather too yellow-blonde – not to mention too pretty. I think it also bears pointing out that Ciri isn’t really supposed to be the kind of beauty she is in the game – even before she gets what’s meant to be a seriously ugly and disfiguring scar. (Fanart below by justanor and bobolip)

But of course, the male gamer fanbase can’t be expected to give a fuck about a girl they wouldn’t want to fuck, so game!Ciri must be generically gorgeous. Le sigh.

Triss

I suppose I should at least touch on Triss, too, though she's a very odd case. She's so out of character in the first Witcher game that I am wryly amused that the biggest thing they arguably do get right is that taking advantage of Geralt the moment he showed up with amnesia is... pretty well in-character for her (look, I gotta be honest here, I'm not much of a fan of Triss in any of her incarnations).

The second game does a much better job with her – she actually feels like book!Triss, she has some good dialogue, we're finally dealing with some of her conflicted loyalties to the Lodge and to Geralt – though by the third, her characterisation has been so softened into “the nice one” that none of that potentially meaty conflict is ever resolved, or even really mentioned. Perhaps there's more buried in the Triss-romance path, which I've never bothered with, but the writers seem to have just given up on dealing with anything that might make her look less than wholly sympathetic. Heck, we hardly even get a clear statement about why she and Geralt broke up between Witchers 2 and 3.

Even speaking as such a not-a-fan of Triss, I promise there is more they could've done with the character the books give us. There's her ongoing trauma in from the Battle of Sodden, where she was injured so badly she was memorialised as one the dead: the 14th of the hill. There's her furious impatience with the neutrality of both the witchers and the Lodge: Triss has fought and died for a cause, and is ready to do so again. The second game sort of gets into this, but by and large, the games really aren't up to tackling the moral complexity of having such a theoretically-sympathetic character as Triss, who was still broadly willing to go along with the Lodge's plans to pair Ciri off and get her pregnant as soon as possible – her own wishes be damned. No, instead, Triss has conveniently left the Lodge before the rest of them go spiraling into abject villainy in the second game, clearing all that messy grey stuff out of the conflict.

Of course, the really big unresolved plot point still hanging over book!Triss is how badly she needs to terms with the fact Geralt's just Not That Into Her, and never has been – but since the games want Triss to be a serious romantic option, that's definitely not getting the resolution it could've used.

Book!Triss also pointedly avoids any outfit with a plunging neckline because her chest is covered with the ugly scars she received in the Battle of Sodden, something the games did not have the guts to reproduce. In a more confusing note, the books do consistently describe her hair as 'chestnut', which we'd usually think of as meaning 'brown' – though it turns out the games actually may not have been wrong to make her a redhead, since in Poland 'chestnut hair' apparently mean dark red hair (google some pictures of actual chestnuts, and you'll see why). Still, the firy-red-haired Triss of TW3 who wears nothing but plunging necklines remains a bit of a stretch, however you slice it. Once again, TW2 gets her best (and I must say, gave her the nicest outfit) – though even here she's conspicuously unscarred in all her sex scenes.

(Leftmost pic above is official Witcher 2 art, whereas Triss-with-scars fanart comes to us – once again – from nastyaskaya)

Shani

Shani sort of falls into a similar category as Triss as someone who isn't terribly well-served by any of her appearances, given that both exist in the first game largely to compete for Geralt's attentions. But I can't honestly say I find Shani’s portrayal in the Hearts of Stone expansion to be much better – the degree to which either version exists solely to fall all over Geralt is a bit painful, especially given that their relationship in the books is limited to a single, undramatic hook-up. Book!Shani really only appears in a couple of chapters: we meet her as a medical student friend of Dandelion's, who's been surreptitiously selling pilfered university supplies to fund her degree, then later see her again in the final book, where she proves herself as a battlefield medic during the climactic Battle of Brenna. She's pragmatic to a fault, and I really can't see her as the type who needs Geralt to point out to her that her patient is dead, for example, or who'd subject a guy with Geralt's problems to such an extended feelings-dump as you'll get out of her during the wedding.

Shani is a reasonably logical book-character to bring back, if only because she’s one of those who explicitly survives the ending, but for my money, "serious contender for Geralt's affections" is just not a role she works in.

Anna Henrietta

The duchess of Toussaint, Anna Henrietta, is another case who differs more from her book counterpart than you might think. In the books, the duchess is by far the least competent of the (pleasantly many and) various female leaders and rulers we meet – she comes across as rather young and naive, and every bit as absurd as everyone else in the ridiculous fairy-tale duchy she rules. She is, for example, most displeased to learn that Nilfgaard's war against the north is ongoing (something her courtiers have carefully avoided mentioning in her presence), because she'd long since sent the Emperor a stern note demanding he brought it to an end. She promptly has one of her ministers sent to the tower for misinforming her, and demands the others prepare an even sterner note for the emperor, which will surely do the job.

After Dandelion (inevitably) cheats on her, she has him repeatedly sent to the gallows, only to change her mind and send him a reprieve at the very last minute each time. Picture yourself a much younger and prettier version of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and you've about got her general vibe.

Blood and Wine sort of waves at this part of her character when she first speaks about Dandelion, and again in suggesting there's a widespread feeling she lacks compassion, and once more as she proves utterly immovable on the subject of her sister. But the generally sensible and insightful woman you deal with for most of the main story is a far cry from her book-verse characterisation. That’s a bit of a shame, because I feel like there's a lot more they could have done to blend the two versions of her. Still, it’s hard to argue the duchess we get suits the story being told around her.

Other characters

Much as I love Yennefer, Dijkstra and Phillipa, I don't really have much more to say about them because I feel the games have done such a good job. The Yennefer of the books gets to show a lot more depth and complexity simply because she has more scenes and more space in which to do so, but when ‘there isn’t more of her’ is your biggest complaint, the game is officially doing pretty well. I could certainly gripe her about how “dresses in black and white” seems to have been taken as “dresses in black with maybe a trace of white trim”, or how Yennefer and Triss seem to be the only sorceresses in the world capable of wearing pants, when Phillipa (just for one) is in sensible men’s clothing the very first time we meet her, but that’s getting into serious nitpicking territory.

(Not that Yen can’t look amazing in outfits with more white – art by Emily Caroll, theclashofqueens, BarbaraRosiak, and cosplay by greatqueenlina)

Vesimir, Lambert and Eskel, Geralt's fellow witchers from the School of the Wolf, fall into a similar category for me – though we spend far less time with them in the books, everything we see of them in the games feels like a fairly logical extension of their book-roles. Vesimir is somewhat over-played as the old fogey, and his death is painfully cliched, but the impact on the characters and Kaer Morhen still hits home – and the games do some especially great work expanding Lambert into a much more complex character. To my mind, the only shame is that more of the book-original characters didn't get the same treatment.

Who have I missed? There's Avallac'h, of course, but I think I've got him pretty well covered by that last post. Zoltan, perhaps inevitably, has had his personality largely flattened into 'generic dwarf', with nothing better to do than hang around Geralt and Dandelion. You wouldn't know Book!Zoltan was apparently incapable of turning away women and children in need, for example – even human women and children with the chronic inability to say thankyou for his help. Or that he eventually admits to Geralt that the luggage he and his friends are carrying comes from a decidedly unsavoury source for such a supposedly charitable, upstanding guy. Yes, even Zoltan gets to be a morally complicated character in the books – who knew?

Speaking of dwarves, pleased as I am that Yarpen Zigren gets remembered in TW2, he's an odd one to talk about, since even in the books, he appears to have had a substantial personality transplant between his two main appearances. Yarpen’s a largely comedic figure in The Bounds of Reason short story, where he cheerfully admits to having considered letting his men knock down a particularly pompous aristocrat and piss all over him to teach him a lesson, but he’s evolved into a studious voice of reason against the scoiata'el by Blood of Elves. TW2 doesn't do a particularly good job of capturing either version, which I suspect probably bothered me more than most people – I liked the later book-incarnation of Yarpen immensely (and not even just because he's one of few ever to really call Triss out on just how much she needs to stop misreading Geralt's friendship as anything more than it is). His chapter in Blood of Elves packs a hell of a punch.

On the subject of accents

I do have to wonder if I'd have warmed up to characters like Triss, Shani and Dandelion (or even Letho) more if they'd only had halfway decent voice actors. It's not just that none are exactly leading the talent at the acting part of the job, it's that their American accents stick out in TW3 like a sore thumb.

Geralt mostly gets away his own US accent by dint of being the very first character we meet, so we've gotten used to the way he talks long before we notice how he stands out – hell, maybe that's just how they talk down in Rivia (hilariously, book!Geralt eventually reveals he's not even from Rivia, but simply picked the place and taught himself the accent so he could feel a bit less like the abandoned foundling he is, which only gives us yet more excuse for why his accent might sound a bit weird). More importantly, Geralt is meant to stand out, to be the outsider wherever he goes, so having him sound like no-one else fits the character.

But neither Triss or Dandelion are "of Rivia", and by the time they show up we've had dozens of hours in a game where literally everyone else sounds British, or Scottish, or Irish, or vaguely-eastern-European in the case of the Nilfgaardians. So why do these weirdos sound like no-one else on the continent?

The short answer seems to be that every character with an American accent in TW3 is someone who had an American accent in at least one of the previous games, which were way looser with their casting and had enough incidental American accents around that they didn't stand out. Clearly, by TW3, consistency with prior games has been prioritised over consistency with literally anything else we’re hearing.

Gaetan is an exception to the rule as the only new character (at least that I caught) with an American accent – presumably because between Geralt, Eskel, Lambert, Berengar, and Letho (and cohorts), some sort of 'witchers have American accents' rule has been pretty well established (another random American-accented witcher shows up in Thronebreaker, just to underline the point). We're going to mostly ignore Jad Karadin here, since his British accent is presumably a recent affectation to go with his new identity, and so makes sense.

This still doesn't really work though, since Letho’s school is all the way down in Nilfgaard (land of the Eastern European accents), while the oldest witcher from Kaer Morhen (Vesimir) is the one guy with a British accent. He sounds nothing like any of his students, despite the fact he's logically the guy they ought to have learned their accents from. So the logic falls in a heap however you slice it, and I'm thrown right out of the game.

With TW3 as your intro to the series, it feels almost as if characters like Triss and Dandelion have been assigned American accents because they're just too important to be saddled with the same pedestrian British accents as everyone else, which did nothing to endear them to me. The only one I eventually warmed up to was Lambert, and then only because he's just such a bitter asshole that he eventually goes full circle and comes out the other side (somewhere around when you've heard his miserable backstory, then gotten drunk together and told him how much you love him, man). Gaetan similarly snuck in under the same clause – American accents clearly work better for me in this series when attached to characters you're supposed to find pretty insufferable on first impressions.

Some final notes

To conclude, it seems only fair to throw in a quick nod to some of the more memorable book-characters who don't appear in the games. Neither Mother Nenneke (Geralt's sort-of-surrogate mother) or Vissena (Geralt's biological mother) ever appear either, alas – Vissena doesn't even merit so much as a Gwent card, which seems quite the wasted opportunity.

Milva, Cahir and Angouleme – the three remaining companions of Geralt’s who died alongside Regis but who were not so easily resurrected – naturally don’t appear. But nor are even really mentioned in all the games, which seems rather less than they deserve after giving their lives to Geralt's cause.

Cahir and Angouleme do at least have pretty badass Gwent cards to their names, though I am properly offended that Milva (who has the dubious honour of being my very favourite book character who doesn't ever appear in the games) is stuck with a card of her freaking death scene – which not only gets the scene wrong (believe me, there was no grimacing and gripping the arrow buried shallowly in her chest for poor Milva), but doesn't even bother to get her hair the right colour, for fuck’s sake. Basically, Milva was a stone cold badass and absolutely deserves better. #justice4milva

One can only guess how I'd have felt about some of these characters had I read the books before playing the games – I am obviously biased towards forgiving changes to characters whom I liked in their game incarnations, regardless of how they compare. Still, I think it does speak wonders that there still all these characters who suddenly made sense only after I'd met them in the books.

Even if only for Dandelion and Ciri, I can only dream of seeing a bit more of the book-original characterisations make it into the collective fannish consciousness. There's nothing wrong with getting into the canon purely based on the show or the games, but having read Sapkowski's novels, it's no longer any mystery how they spawned this massive franchise. That the saga wasn’t even fully available in English until well after Witcher 3 was released – a solid couple of decades late, and long after it had already been translated into Russian, French, German, Spanish and more – is a real shame. For once, it’s us in the anglophone world who’ve been missing out: these books deserve so much more than to be thought of as a footnote to the games or the show.

#Dandelion #Witcher novels #Jaskier #Ciri #Regis #Geralt of Rivia #meta #The Witcher #long post is even longer this time #I blame everyone who gave me such lovely feedback on that last post *g*

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otterskin · 3 years

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Loki Episode #1 Thoughts

Well it’s 5AM and I still can’t sleep. Surely the safest thing to do is go on social media, right?

Anyway, time to spew some brainwaves on the digital page.

I loved it. I knew I’d love the TVA - I’m a big fan of all its influences and even took some time out to watch some films about fantastic bureaucracies to prime me for it (recommendations: The Trial (1962), Beetlejuice, Brazil, Ikiru, Naked Lunch, University of Laughs, aaaand Astérix and the Twelve Tasks - thanks for attending this brief perusal of my taste in film). I loved the little characters there, and wish we had more time in some scenes (no way was that little stack of paper all that Loki had ever said, it must’ve been an index for it). Casey especially. I want more Casey. Möbius, of course, was always destined to be my new favourite character - affable personality hiding a quietly calculating mind, soft, fluffy moustache you could nestle in during stormy weather, world-weary eyes but a spring in his step. It seems Loki hasn’t quite escaped his habit of finding father figures everywhere he does.

The other best thing was the constant, beautiful, vigorous, creative, slapstick, ridiculous beat downs and humiliations they put Loki through. This show definitely gets the most important thing about Loki’s character - he’s a complete loser. A poseur, an actor in a poorly reviewed show, a wimp, and sadly aware of all of that. Loki is not a dignified character, he’s not a mastermind or a Machiavellian manipulator. Simply put, he’s not cool. He is the designated punching bag of the universe, and anything or anyone that he cares about gets punched because of him. This is what I’ve always loved about Loki since I was tiny kid reading my first books. This is what I’ve enjoyed seeing play out in the MCU most of all. I can’t tell you how important it is to me to see Loki repeatedly punched in the face, thrown to the floor, told hard truths, see his dreams reduced to paper weights and his universe contained in a snowglobe, to be made to feel small and pathetic and worse to reveal that he feels that way to someone in a position of power over him. And here, it’s for a purpose, rather than a quick one-off gag (although I do still love the Hulk Smash like everyone else). Of course I loved this when it happened in Ragnarok as well, but that film was more focused on humiliating Thor until he felt a bit like Loki had (as well it should), although that pride-beating and Thor finally ‘getting it’ did help Loki take off a lot of his false airs. Here we see the same done again in record speed, made possible thanks to Ragnarok’s good work, but nonetheless I do cherish any opportunity to see Loki mortified.

A small fly in the ointment - I’m not a fan how the name ‘Laufeyson’ is just dropped casually upon him by the TVA. The name has never before been used onscreen in the MCU, thanks, I thought, to Loki’s backstory changing so drastically from the comics, making that name no longer work emotionally or even logically (it was Odin and Frigga who named him Loki afterall, so why is he bereft of the other name they gave him? If the TVA records only his birthname, how could it be Loki? I doubt two different sets of people gave him the same name, unless Loki is the equivalent of William or something). To see him not so much as protest its use was strange and out of character, and that the TVA would tell an adoptee their ‘official name’ is something they’ve never used is cruel. I would hope that’s a part of establishing the TVA as an uncaring bureaucracy, but nonetheless it’s an unwelcome, shrieking note that makes me a little nervous. I know Hiddleston has been referring to the Main-Timeline-Loki-Arc as the ‘Odinson Saga’, so it’s possible this is just a way of differentiating the two Lokis, although I do not care for it. Still, I can be patient, and I am willing to see if they will address this possibly insensitive plot point. Maybe it’s something foisted on Loki that he eventually rejects (I’m fine with him forgoing any last name at all if they need a different one) or if it’s a sign the writer might’ve confused the comics canon with the MCU’s. I don’t think that’s the case, since the rest is so well done, if a little...hand-holdy.

This is my other quiet fear.

I loved WandaVision...until episode 4. I went to film school, I excelled at English class, part of the fun for me was always being given a piece of media and deciphering its myriad meanings and interpretations. WandaVision was a Disneyfied Lynch series at first, and I had such fun pulling apart the visual metaphors, deciphering the dialogue, searching for meaning.

And then.

Monica.

Dammit, they did her dirty.

“It’s about grief,” she says.

From then on, WV spent a significant portion of every episode not only telling you what every little thing meant, but how it should make you feel.

Falling out of love at 9.18 m/s allowed for some serious acceleration by the time we hit the infamous finale.

Loki has not exactly been a difficult puzzle to solve compared to some obtuse pieces of media I adore, but by god, it was easy to take his limited screen time and talk and talk and talk about the guy. While I could fill five pages about Tony Stark, I could write a book about Loki (and it seems like I am with Finnesang, damn it). I liked interpreting, I liked using my limited knowledge of Shakespeare and Mythology to glean insight into creative choices, I even kinda liked arguing with people about who this character was. A part of me is scared that this show will just...say it. Like Monica did. And that takes something away. There was a little of that here, but I’m torn on whether it was necessary to get the people who are way off on Loki’s characterization on close to the same page as everyone else, or whether it was a little too...explain-o-vision. At the same time, speaking frankly about a character we’ve supposed about for years is refreshing, lets us clear out the old air, and maybe gives us permission to open the windows and let new things in.

That’s what I really want from the show. Some old things, plenty of new things, and lots for me to dig into and play with. I suppose I’ve already done so with material from the trailers, which means I definitely do still have something to play with, but...I just want to avoid taking the specialness out of a very special character to me.

It definitely means something that I am so exhilarated after watching it that it is now 5:30 AM and I’ve still no desire for sleep. This is gonna be an...intense six weeks.

I guess I’ll just watch Valhalla again while I chew on this first episode.

#loki #loki show #review #disney+

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

Note

This isn't a meme thing or anything but I was wondering if you had a top ten favorite characters from books? I actually end up getting a lot of good book recs from reading your blog so I was just curious lol.

LOL I wasn't going to do this ask because I was like ugh I suck at top ten lists because I can never pick just ten. But then I thought about it for like, five whole seconds and realized I DO have ten standout characters in answer to this so its like oh hey, learned something new about myself today! Lmao.

Anyway, in no particular order:

1) Anyanwu - from Wild Seed by Octavia Butler - Can not stress how like fucking...formative Anyanwu's character was for me as an abused kid who first read this when I was like 12. The book heavily deals with the back and forth across centuries between these two immortals, Anyanwu and Doro, as Doro basically tries to control her every which way he can, and Anyanwu just defies him at every turn, and it just....you love to see it. She's a bad-ass and I adore her.

2) Prince Corwin and Merle Corey/Merlin - from Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny - Yes I'm cheating but its me so you should have seen that coming. Another fave series from when I was in middle school, its ten books in total, and the first five are in Corwin's POV and the second five are in the POV of his son Merle/Merlin. So I maintain it counts. And is fine. Shhh, let it go, Elsa said so. ANYWAY, I actually probably like Merle better than his dad, because I mean, lbr, Corwin is a total asshole. But he's MY asshole, y'know? Wait, that came out wrong. Don't quote me there. But you know what I mean. Merle is a lot more level-headed, and quick-witted I think, and I like his supporting cast of relatives who want to kill him and he sometimes want to kill more than his dad's supporting cast of relatives who want to kill him and he always wants to kill, but like. Both are Valid. Also shout out to Fiona and Rinaldo, with a side shout out to Flora, who are probably my next three favorites from the series. Dara would be up there too but she knows what she did.

3) Elric/Corum/Dorian/etc - from the Eternal Champion books by Michael Moorcock - Look I'm already cheating so why not continue on a theme. But basically this counts too, I'm just saying. See Michael Moorcock's big project going all the way back to the 60s was he created a fantasy multiverse of different dimensions where this one Eternal Champion, meant to balance the scales between the Lords of Law and the Lords of Chaos, like, is reborn over and over again in different incarnations but who are all essentially him. So Elric of Melnibone, Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum I can never remember his last name.....they're all essentially the same guy.....but they're all at the same time very very very different, and they have extremely different storylines. But I maintain if you're gonna read one you kinda gotta just read them all, all Pokemon like and such forth, because the real beauty of these books is seeing the familiar traces of the Eternal Champion threaded through each of these incarnations but also contrasting how different they are from each other and like, looking at what makes them so different each time and how much it stems from their environment and situations, etc.

4) Civet - from the Dragons of the Inland Sea series by Laurence Yep - This is a kids' series, like for ages 10-12 kinda, but easily my favorite from when I was a kid. I reread them so many times, and I love pretty much all the characters from Shimmer to Thorn to Monkey, but Civet was always a standout. She's essentially a tragic character and her ending is bittersweet, but like.....she fully knows who she is and what she's about and makes no apologies for that, and she ends on exactly the note she wants to. Like, her story and her characterization was pretty damn dark for such a young-aimed series, but that's part of what drew me to it, it managed to capture the tone it set out to convey but in a completely age-appropriate way, and in an era when most books aimed at kids dumbed down most of their story concepts and themes, this one was refreshing for just being....real. Despite being blatantly fantasy. Also the Boneless King is one of the best villains ever, despite being deliberately over the top a lot of the times....idk what it was about him, but he was just chilling.

5) Jack the Bodiless and Diamond Mask - from the Galactic Milieu series by Julian May - These are linked as well because they're a couple and their stories intertwine so much that there's no real point in separating them y'know? That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But anyway, they're a weird choice for me because Julian May is hit or miss for me overall....I HATE her Saga of the Pliocene Epic, which is technically in the same universe as her Galactic Milieu series, but they have totally different vibes and the latter series doesn't contain any of the elements from the Saga of the Pliocene that I loathe, so it just works. Plus it has Jack and Diamond Mask, and like.....I don't actually know why I love them so much? They're just so different from pretty much any other characters I've ever read. Like, May does a lot of really high concept stuff across the board, but Jack and Diamond Mask are like.....high concept character wise? If that makes sense? Its okay if it doesn't. I'm literally just spitting words out here. Honestly, its hard to say anything specific about them because so much of their characters conceptually just doesn't make sense without knowing the in-universe concepts that led to them even existing, but like. They're weird and off the wall but still astoundingly human for all that and I love them.

6) Naomi Nagata - from the Expanse books by James S. A. Corey - I mean, if you've seen me ramble all the Naomi love in my live-watches of The Expanse TV show, this should be no surprise, but my love for her in the books like, exists manifold. She's great in both, but the books cover so much more content-wise, that her character has so much more room to breathe and be explored in all kinds of directions the TV show never touches on. The funny thing is, I actually prefer the TV characterizations overall....I think the authors of the books are actually pretty shit at characterization a lot of the time, but the basic thread of Naomi's character is consistent and the sheer abundance of story material she has in the books like.....keeps me going back to them even just for her. Her conflict with Marco in the books in particular just has so much more depth than in the show....like, I don't hate the show's version at all, anyone who's seen my posts there knows that lol, and I'm not actually even sure which version I actually like more in terms of that particular storyline.....but I just love that both versions are so different, while still being recognizably the same, y'know? I don't even know. Nobody knows. Its a mystery. Just nod and say yes, shh, its fine.

7) Locke Lamora - from The Lies of Locke Lamora/The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch. This is an odd one for me, because in one sense Locke is a very contrived archetypal character from an author that doesn't always pull it off as successfully as I feel he thinks he does.....like, what I mean is Locke is inherently that type of character that is SUPPOSED to push buttons and straddle a line between likable and unlikable....and to be fair, that is VERY hard to pull off without at least some of the time falling on the wrong side of that line and alienating at least some readers. But there's something very genuine or sincere feeling about the character underneath all that, which is ironic for a character who is an acknowledged pathological liar and hardly ever tells the truth....like I said, its an odd one for me because I can't actually put my finger on what makes this particular character work for me when so many similar characters just bug the crap out of me.

8) Damien - from Black Sun Rising/The Coldfire trilogy by C. S. Friedman - This one is a whole fucking lie because I don't actually even like Damien that much lmao, but the thing is, I don't have a particular fondness for any of the characters in this series? But I gotta put it on the list anyway because I just love the world in this series so much, and its practically a character in and of itself. Like, so this was a science fantasy series set on a distant planet in the future but otherwise steeped in fantasy archetypes about spirit creatures that only Adepts could see, and like, Fae and life energy and sorcery that had roots in scientific principles but was otherworldly all the same. And that's like.....all literally my jam, and so I can't deny that this series was very formative for me even if its not the best example of those concepts. Its just the one I tend to go back to the most in my mind, like....the world and its characters are very standout and larger than life for me, even if they don't specifically APPEAL to me? They're impactful all the same. Its another odd one. I'm odd. You just kinda gotta roll with it. Its a thing. Its factual.

9) Yeine Darr - from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin - This was a tough one because I love literally everything by Jemisin and all her characters are just so....ooof. They're very very real, even in the most fantastical of settings. I have mad characterization envy every time I read her stuff, but like. Its so good. So really the struggle was picking one character or even two, because I mean, The Fifth Season and its sequels are easily her best known works and have a ton of fantastic characters, and I think her Dreamblood duology is vastly overlooked but in the end I had to go with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms even if just cuz of nostalgia. Its the first of her works and when I first started reading her and so its just.....anyway, if I was gonna go with that, it had to be Yeine, because she's so central to everything and also just....fantastic. Nahadoth and Sieh are also standout characters who get mentioned a lot in talk of this trilogy, and they're both such big personalities that at times they kinda overshadow Yeine, but Yeine has such a compelling.....undercurrent to her that she never actually gets lost in the shuffle even when surrounded by all these larger than life gods, and just. You love to see it. I do anyway. And its my list so nyah. But also if you're gonna read Jemisin, read everything Jemisin. It just makes sense, y'know? Good for the pores.

10) Cayal and Arkady - from The Immortal Prince/The Tide Lords by Jennifer Fallon - All the other Tide Lords can rot, but Cayal is hilarious in a depressing way. He's a ten thousand year old immortal whose greatest wish is just to die, which is how he meets Arkady who is a historian who just wants to like....know everything he knows once she realizes he actually is the figure of legend he professes to be and is so mad at him for not really giving a shit about all the weight of history he's been present for, but Cayal's just like, umm, I LIVED it so that's why I don't care, I'm allowed to not care, that shit hurt. Did you miss the part where one of the other Tide Lords threw a fucking meteor at me? And Arkady, distinctly unimpressed, is just like....I thought YOU did that, to Jasper. And Cayal's like, no that doesn't sound right. And Arkady's just like, you literally JUST told me that story. And Cayal's like, huh. I must have been lying. I do that sometimes. And Arkady's like, I thought you never lie, that's your whole thing? And Cayal's like, ahah, but what if THAT was a lie too? And Arkady's just like, bitch I hate you so goddamn much, how are you the worst of all the Immortals while still the only one who will actually talk to me and answer my questions. Cayal's like, we may never know.

Anyway, there's my list but like there's a lot more obviously because I'm me, I don't do moderation, its against my religion, but also I have to stop some time and the ask was for ten and those were the ten that popped into my head so they must be the right ones! Probably. Until I change my mind at least.

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misscorn · 4 years

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Day 2 Clumsy/Date

Here's my second contribution to @takaritsuweek ! I really hope yall are enjoying these, I feel like writing oneshots is kinda hard for me bc I dont want too much or too little to happen

Anyways, high school nostalgia literally gives me life so yes we're still in the past lol

***

Onodera Ritsu was currently trying to ignore how his senpai was staring at him. The brunette had his face in a book, using it as a wall of defense as he tried not to give into the temptation of looking beside him where Saga Masamune sat. However, Ritsu couldn't bear the weight of his senpai's gaze for very long, feeling his cheeks start to heat up with embarrassment. Was his hair sticking up in a weird way? Or was he having some kind of wardrobe malfunction? Or was there something on his face? It was practically killing the first year at this point, so finally he turned ever so slightly to face Saga just a tad more, not being bold or brave enough to face him straight on.

"Um, S-Saga-senpai, w-why are you s-staring at me?" Ritsu managed to get out, not meeting Saga's eyes.

"Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to. I was just thinking." Saga said vaguely, averting his gaze since it seemed to be making his kohai uncomfortable.

"Thinking about what? I-If you don't mind me asking!" Ritsu hoped he wouldn't come off as prying or nosy. If his senpai didn't want to share then that was okay!

"Just that we should go on another date sometime soon." Saga said calmly, knowing perfectly well what kind of reaction his words would elicit.

As if on que, Ritsu went red to his ears and had to stop himself from shouting 'a date?!' not wanting to bring any more attention to the two of them than necessary. However, one particular word caught his ear.

"Another?" Ritsu parroted, blinking at Saga blankly, seeming to have no recollection of a first date ever happening which made Saga frowned.

"Yes, another." Saga said. "Remember, we got lunch together? You freaked out when trying to order because of all the options." He reminded him, trying not to smirk. It was a little funny, after all, the way Ritsu got so flustered, but also kind of cute and endearing.

Did Ritsu really not remember their first date? Saga knew the brunette could be a little bit scatterbrained sometimes, but the thought of him forgetting their first date kind of...hurt. Not that Saga would ever admit that.

However, Saga's fears were laid to rest as Ritsu's eyes lit up with realization. "Yes! Yes, I remember, but I just...I d-didn't realize th-that was a...d-d-date." He admitted, struggling to even get the word out.

"What? Did you not have fun or something?" Saga asked, frowning again.

"N-no, no, that's not it!" Ritsu assured. Although it had been difficult for him to order, the food was good and he had enjoyed spending time with his senpai, like he always did. He looked down nervously before he spoke again to explain himself. "I-I guess I just didn't want to assume that senpai would want to g-go on a d-date with m-me." Ritsu said quietly. Somehow, he was even embarrassed by that confession. He felt like everything he said and did was wrong and annoying and stupid and-

BONK

Ritsu sat there stunned for a moment before realizing Saga had gently brought his fist down on to the top of his head. "Idiot. Of course I want to go on a date with you. We are dating after all." Saga said. "It's settled then. We're going on another date. Are you free on Sunday?"

"E-Eh?! W-wait-s-senpai-I don't-"

"Do you not wanna go on a date?" Saga asked, trying not to hint at his disappointment.

"N-no! I m-mean yes! I mean-" Ritsu paused and took a breath. "I mean I'd very much like to go on a d-date." He said, face completely red. "A-and yes, I'm free on Sunday." He added.

"Good. Want to get lunch again? We can go someplace else this time if you want." Saga said.

"N-no, I'm okay with going to the same spot. I don't get to eat a lot of fast food, so..." He trailed off, giving a sheepish laugh. "I'll just have to figure out my order before hand so I don't get overwhelmed." He added, looking determined now.

Saga had to stop himself from chuckling, not wanting to accidentally discourage the brunette, he was just so damn cute.

"I'll meet you there at noon then?" Saga said, his voice giving way to his excitement just a little bit, but Ritsu either didn't notice or thought nothing of it.

"Yeah! A-and maybe afterward w-we can go to the bookstore?" Ritsu suggested hesitantly.

As if Saga would say no.

"Sure." He said.

Ritsu smiled brightly, satisified with their plan and now looking greatly forward to the upcoming weekend.

---------------------------------------------------

Saga had been looking forward to this weekend too. Until he was standing alone, an hour after noon. He frowned to himself, considering going inside and getting something to go before heading home, but he continued to hold out hope that Ritsu would miraculously show up.

Ritsu wouldn't stand him up, right? Ritsu wouldn't forget about their date, would he? Maybe something popped up, some kind of emergency. Or worse, maybe Ritsu got hurt somehow. It didn't help that the underclassman didn't have a freaking cellphone! Seriously, this was the twenty-first century and if something had happened then Ritsu could have easily texted or called instead of leaving him out to dry like this. Ritsu better have a good excuse come tomorrow afternoon as to why he bailed.

Saga sighed, feeling defeated as he was about to forget the food all together and head home to sulk in his room when he heard a familiar voice call out.

"S-Senpai!"

Saga turned to see Ritsu waving and running toward him. Never had Saga been so happy to see the awkward teen. However, his relief was short-lived as a splitsecond later the brunette fell on his face.

"Oi, Ritsu! Are you alright?" Saga asked, quickly at his side and helping him up.

"Ooow." Ritsu complained as he stood from the sidewalk. "I'm fine, I'm fine, I fall like that all the time." He admitted. "I'm clumsy like that." He said, his embarrassment starting to catch up with him as he blushed darkly. "A-anyways, I'm so, so sorry for being late senpai!" Ritsu apologized quickly, a frown on his face. "I told my mother I was leaving to meet a friend and she wouldn't let me go. She just kept hounding me about details and she kept trying to keep me there by guilt tripping me about not spending time with family." He sighed. "I'm really, really sorry for making you wait, senpai. Kind of a lousy start to a date, huh?" Ritsu said, trying to joke around to lighten the mood, but he just felt like crying.

Saga wanted to tell him that all was forgiven, that he would wait for Ritsu endlessly, that he had been so happy to see him running down the street, that he was relieved that he wasn't the only one who cared about this date and wanted it to go well, and most of all he wanted to tell him that he loved him. Instead, he just ruffled Ritsu's hair. "It's okay." He assured. "We still have all afternoon. There's no rush."

Ritsu smiled up at him, his worries allevated at his senpai's words. Although Saga was quiet, sometimes even distant, he always proved again and again what Ritsu had originally thought: his senpai was so kind.

"Come on, I'm starving." Saga said, leading him inside. "Tell me what you want, I'll order for you if you wanna get us a table." He said.

Ritsu, although wanting to prove he could order, was very grateful for the offer. He recited to his senpai the order he had memorized before coming here and then left his side to go sit.

Saga waited behind a couple people, glancing at Ritsu ever so often and smiling to himself.

This would be a good second date.

He would make sure of it so Ritsu would want a third.

#sekaiichi hatsukoi #onodera ritsu #oda ritsu #saga masamune #sekai ichi hatsukoi #takaritsu week

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allicekitty13 · 3 years

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Glitter On The Floor

Feeling guilty about not getting Alice anything for Christmas, Jasper comprises a plan to make it up to his girlfriend. (Part 4 of the Jalice through the holidays series.)

Read on Ao3

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They'd been at the mall for two hours when Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie walked into yet another store. Jasper was beginning to tire from the walking and seemingly endless number of shops targeted toward teenage girls. He honestly wondered just how many variations of the same concept needed to be produced and just why his sister seemed to need so damn many. However, the teen did keep his mouth shut, very much aware of the hypocrisy of his thoughts. If Jasper had taken this trip with Alice he wouldn't have taken a single issue in watching as the girl skipped throughout the shopping center delighting in the wide variety of clothing, makeup, and accessories available to customers. Rosalie knew this was the case, and he preferred not to have that fact audibly pointed out by his twin.

Rosalie had been planning the trip for a few days now, being the type of girl who changed interests weekly their parents had long ago decided it was better for all parties to gift her cash as Christmas and birthday gifts. Her brother's inclusion, however, had been a last-minute decision. While Jasper very much enjoyed his new video games, three days straight of playing was a little much even for him.

Most of his friends were otherwise occupied that day. Peter and Riley working as their respective places of employment were taking advantage of the winter break. Edward had whisked Bella away for what he surely believed was a romantic outing- only time would tell if his long-suffering girlfriend would agree. Alice, who was sharing regular updates on the group Snapchat, was spending a few days in Seattle with her father and step-mother.

Apparently, after their run-in with Edgar on Black Friday, the man had started treating his daughter much better... at least, in public. Alice, however, felt the attention was insincere and hollow. More for show than anything else. The majority of her messages consisted of the girl lamenting about how she couldn't wait to return to Forks at the end of the week.

So, with no other options available and desperately needing to socialize, Jasper had agreed to accompany Emmett and Rosalie on their trip to blow through the latter's Christmas cash.

Currently, the trio were in Rue 21. Emmett was modeling an array of hats strutting up and down the aisle like a runway, likely providing some much-needed amusement to the unfortunate retail worker's suffering through a shift in the busy weeks post Christmas. Rosalie was pretending to find the antics bothersome, making an off-handed comment about her boyfriend's maturity level. Yet, even from across the shop, Jasper could see the smile she was trying to hide.

As he turned away from his friend's shenanigans, a thin silver headband with faux gems adorning the surface caught Jasper's eye. The jewels glittered lightly under the harsh fluorescent lighting as he approached, almost as if in a trance. The hair accessory was the epitome of Alice, almost like it had been made exclusively for the girl. Jasper knew, nearly instinctually, that she needed to own this. So, he plucked the item from its place and eagerly made his way to the checkout counter.

While he knew, logically, Alice had been sincere when she'd told him it was okay that he hadn't gotten her a physical gift for Christmas. That his willingness to partake in an activity she loved despite it being something that bored him had been gift enough. Logic, however, hadn't stopped him from feeling guilty for the past week. Jasper genuinely cared for the girl. He wasn't quite there yet, but he did know he was falling in love with her fast. Someone as special to him as Alice deserved better than a boyfriend who couldn't even get her a Christmas present. That being said, at this point, wrapping the headband and just handing it over to her didn't feel like enough. He needed a bigger gesture.

As the three friends left the store, Rosalie parted ways with the boys. She'd made an appointment at the mall salon to do something about her hair. The girl's locks were still stained silver from a dye mishap on Halloween. She'd gone along with the look for a while, leaning hard into the aesthetic. Her roots were beginning to grow out though, and the girl had made it clear she was ready to do something about it. Her brother was curious about her plans, and the way she dodged his questions had him mildly concerned. Rosalie loved theatrics. That being said, he wasn't invested enough in the saga of Rosalie's hair to put much effort into the mystery, accepting that her plans would be made clear in due time. So he and Emmett headed down to the food court to get some lunch while they waited for the girl.

"So," Emmett asked through a mouthful of fries as they sat down with their respective orders at one of the few empty tables in the food court. "What's in the bag?"

"I finally found a Christmas present for Alice," Jasper replied as he set down the soda he'd been sipping on the table in between the two friends. He handed the shopping bag to Emmett, who pulled out the slips of paper sprayed with perfume the cashier had placed inside the plastic sack. The boy sniffed them before making a comment about how they weren't really Jasper's scent as he tossed them into a nearby trash can.

Finally, Emmett pulled the headband out of the bag; he turned it over in his hands examining it closely before placing it on his head, careful not to stretch it out. He leaned forward on one hand as he blinked at his friend in a flirty manner. "Whatcha' think, Jas? Does it match my eyes?"

Jasper rolled his eyes in response as both boys laughed. "In all seriousness though," Emmet spoke, taking off the accessory and handing it back to his friend. "It's perfect for Alice. She's going to love it."

"I really hope your right..."

"Dude, I'm always right." The other boy laughed and threw a french fry at this friend. "So, when are you going to give it to her?"

One of the things Jasper liked about having Emmett as a friend was just how observant the guy was. Most of their classmates never really looked past the surface of his fun-loving, class clown persona. But the teen was also smart, caring, and a genuinely good friend to have on your side. So, as Jasper told the boy about his worries, guilt, and half-formed plans for a grand gesture, Emmett was more than happy to join in on the brainstorming. After all, even though his idea for Halloween hadn't gone quite as planned, it had still worked out in Jasper's favor. By the time Rosalie returned, they'd formed what Jasper thought was a pretty solid plan.

---

Rosalie had a yearly tradition of throwing a New Year's Eve party. What had started as a sleepover back when the twins were in middle school was now a huge bash the students of Forks High looked forward to every winter. Currently, the girl was standing in the foyer greeting her guests and basking in their compliments on her hair freshly dyed a light denim shade of blue. In the living room, Bella and Emmett were chatting with an overly tense Jasper. He sat on the new setee his parents bought during Black Friday, jumping slightly every time the doorbell rang in anticipation of his girlfriend's arrival.

When the doorbell chimed, indicating yet another guest had arrived, Jasper startled once again prompting Emmett to chide him good-naturedly. His heart began to race as Alice's voice carried into the room from the foyer. He could hear her excitedly awing over Rosalie's hair, rapidly detailing all the outfits that would compliment the look. As she excused herself by telling the blue-haired teen that they just had to go shopping soon, but she needed to find Jasper, the man in question figured he must have looked as though he'd seen a ghost judging by the way Bella looked at him in sympathy as she reassured that it was going to be Okay.

"Hey, you guys," Alice beamed as she entered the room. The teen gracefully took a seat next to Jasper on the couch, lifting one of his arms to drape around her shoulders. "Sorry I'm so late. Mom got called into the hospital last minute again. I actually wasn't going to come, but Esme insisted on watching Cynthia so I could be here."

"Well, we're sure glad you could make it," Emmett smirked, turning to look at his very pale friend. "Aren't we, Jasper." Afraid that were he to speak, he may throw up, the teen simply nodded in response as he gently squeezed his girlfriend's shoulder.

Alice looked between the two with a raised eyebrow, clearly suspicious of the pair. The hardest part of surprising the girl was just how intuitive she was, seeming to know everything before it happened. Jasper could practically see the gears turning in her head as Alice glanced back and forth between the boys. She had eventually either given up or settled on a conclusion as she settled into Jasper's side and picked up a conversation with Bella about She-Ra on Netflix.

Jasper tried to focus on his conversation with Emmett and now Peter, who joined their group in the living room. With Alice snuggled into his side, however, it was difficult to focus. His eyes kept drifting over to the old clock hanging on the wall watching as the hands moved slowly but surely, ticking closer and closer to midnight. A weight settled in his stomach as he began to overthink his plan. What if Alice thought it was too much. What if she didn't feel the same way about him? It was entirely possible his profound feelings weren't reciprocated.

By the time Charlotte peeked her head into the room, giving all the gathered teenagers a ten-minute warning that it was nearly time for the countdown, Jasper was absolutely second-guessing himself. Frozen in place, staring at the clock still ticking closer to the new year, he was vaguely aware of his friends standing up and heading over to the other side of the room where the TV where they gathered around the screen in anticipation. Emmett, on his way over to join the crowd, nudged him in the shoulder causing Jasper to look up. His friend gave him an expressive reassuring look, communicating that everything was going to be alright.

With a deep breath, Jasper rose from his seat holding out a hand to Alice in feigned confidence as he asked the girl if she would care to join him on the patio. The concerned look she'd been giving him quickly morphed into one of curiosity as she gladly intertwined her fingers with his allowing him to lead her outside.

The patio had been decorated with fairy lights, and sitting on a white iron outdoor table sat the headband wrapped neatly in a slightly shimmery deep blue paper that sparkled subtly in the moonlight. The package had been decorated with a ribbon of the same shade tied into a bow. Jasper silently thanked his sister for her handiwork in wrapping the gift, fully aware he wouldn't have been able to make it look anywhere near as perfect.

Jasper strode over to the table picking up the package and handing it to Alice as he spoke. "So, I uh... I saw this the other day when I was shopping with Rose. And, I thought of you and how much you'd love it. And you know... I feel like an asshole for not getting you anything for Christmas and..."

"Jas," She cut off his rambling speech, "Stop beating yourself up. I mean what I said on Christmas Eve."

"Just open it, Alice."

The girl shook her head as she proceeded to slide the bow off the package, placing it neatly onto the table next to her, doing the same with the paper. When she pulled the lid off of the cardboard box Rosalie had placed the accessory in, Alice gasped as she gazed down at the headband. "It's beautiful." She commented, prying her eyes away from the gift to stare at her boyfriend.

Jasper, feeling reassured by her reaction, stepped into her space, taking the accessory from her hands, and placed it gently on her head. "A queen deserves to wear a crown."

"How do I look?" She asked, staring up at him.

"Perfect." He looked back down at the girl, not backing away as he gazed into her blue eyes, trying to wordlessly communicate just how much he truly cared for the girl standing before him.

From inside the house, the couple could hear their friends shouting as they began to count down from ten to one. Jasper had timed this out perfectly as everything was lining up according to plan. The count down reached five and he leaned down, asking her if this was okay. The action elicited a nervous smile from Alice, something he'd rarely ever seen on the confident girl. At two, she responded with a clear yes, and as their friends cheered out the number one from the living room, their lips met for the first time.

Inside, their friends were excitedly ringing in the new year, but for the two outside time seemed to stop stuck in that split second between one year ending and another beginning.

#Jasper Hale #alice cullen #Jalice #Twilight #twilight fic

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bangtan-madi · 4 years

Note

First of all, I wish your new approach on your tumblr is a success! With that said, before you stop writing for MM, could you write a second part for the platonic headcannons with Seven and Yoosung, please? ♥️

For you, my dear, of course! 🙂 Thank you for being such a loyal reader and requesting so many headcanons/scenarios for MM. I really loved writing what you requested. Hope this is as cute as the last one turned out!

Yoosung

I can definitely see Yoosung being just as touchy as Zen, if not more.

This boy is such a cuddly little puppy, I swear to god. All he has to do is give you those damn doe eyes and you're being pulled into one of his many, many all-encompassing hugs. The kind that doesn't end for minutes at a time.

Doesn't matter where you are--school, work, home, with friends--Yoosung will take advantage of your touch any time it suits him.

Being best friends with this blondie means putting up with hugs that outlast what is useful. I mean, him holding onto you after hours or while relaxing is one thing. You don't mind the back hugs in the hallway or during a conversation with the other members of the RFA.

But when he refuses to let you move without him attached to you? That's when it gets both hilarious and slightly annoying.

Need to go to the bathroom? When Yoosung's in a clingy mood, not gonna happen.

In the middle of a research paper or cooking in the kitchen? You're gonna have to learn to move with a baby attached to your back and arms wrapped around your waist.

"Yoosung, you've got to give me some space. I'm trying to make snacks for when the group gets here!"

"You can do that with me here, can't you?"

"Not really...would you like to help? Then we can finish faster and go back to cuddling."

That's literally the only way you're going to get the toddler to detach himself. It's actually endearing, bringing a smile to your face.

But there are other forms of platonic affection that the two of you have.

When you actually set out time to study or get some other form of work done, whether at home or at the library, you can be sure that Yoosung is going to make sure you have everything you need.

Snacks? Coffee? Already taken care of. Can't quite reach that book on the top shelf? He's already pulling it down for you. Forgot to bring your notes on the assignment? He's sharing his with you, no objections allowed.

Reassurance comes constantly in the form of brief back rubs and knee pats. When you're struggling on a project or don't understand a concept, he's there to make sure you don't fall behind. Even if he doesn't quite understand himself, he'll make sure that you're confident enough to handle whatever the class or your boss throws at you.

I also see him being a shoulder to cry on, more than anyone else in the RFA (with Zen as a close second.) He's empathetic and knows how hard life can be sometimes. You can tell this boy anything and it stays between you two. Even if there's nothing he can do to help, he'll make sure you know you're safe and secure with him.

If that means staying over at his place for a while, so be it. If that means him helping you study or think out-loud on your assignment, he's there with you. If it's an issue with family, he'll be the anchor that keeps you from slipping into a darker place.

Basically, whatever you need, Yoosung is going to be one of the best friends you can ask for. This boy's the whole damn package, and now I want a Yoosung.

Seven

Having Seven as a best friend would be a wild ride, to say the least.

The boy's got so much energy, I only hope you can keep up!

That being said, all that energy gets focused on you more often than not. Rest assured that your friendship will be filled with plenty of activities. I'm talking amusement parks, water parks, sky diving (if you're up for it, if not, he'll probably do it himself lol), plenty of sports, snorkeling--this kid is gonna do it all. When the urge hits him to go out and explore, to try something new, rest assured he's gonna drag you along for the ride.

But there are few places you'd rather be than with the redhead when he's having so much fun his face turns the color of his hair.

Much of your friendship is based on experiences, but that doesn't mean you don't love a good night in, too.

I mean, the boy's kinda an enigma. One minute, he's ready to climb Mt. Everest because Zen dared him to. The next, he's curled up under a mountain of games and old movies, reclusively hiding in his signature hoodie.

He's more than happy to have you there for that, too.

It's in those times that you get to see the softer, less energetic side of Seven. You've spent entire weekends wrapped up with him, your head on his shoulder, watching the entire Star Wars saga from Episode I (a mistake, you both concur) to Episode IX (which you both end up debating quite ferociously.)

Seven isn't one for excessive skinship, unlike some of the other members of the RFA (lookin' at you, Zen and Yoosung!) That's something you pick up on pretty early into your friendship, and it's never really bothered you. You have your own ways of showing each other how much you care about the other. There's never been a doubt in your mind that your best friend is one of the most important people in your life, and vice versa.

However, when Seven is stressed about work or his relationship with his estranged brother, that's when he's more open to your touch. Not in an overly feely way, like Zen or Yoosung might be accustomed to, but he'll never push you away when you take a seat behind him as he works and play with his hair.

If this were the first few months, you might've asked him to put his work away and leave it be for a while. Seven doesn't work like that; he has to keep going until his genius brain figures out a solution. Now, you are simply there for him, reassuring him through your fingers along his scalp that he can figure it out.

You believe in him, and he feels that through your gentle caresses. In the end, when he does inevitably solve the problem, your rub the stress from his shoulders and let his head fall back into the curve of your shoulders.

"Thanks for just being here, babe. You don't know how much easier it is to focus when you do that."

To that, you smile and press a platonic kiss to his red locks.

"You do the same for me."

And he does. He's picked up on your stress triggers and anxiety warning signs. Whether it be from work, school, or some other source, he's concocted a few ways to get your mind off them.

For one, he returns the skinship you provide him. He knows how much you love it, and even if he's not the most comfortable person with touch, he'll do just about anything for you.

And unlike him, he knows that when a problem is irking you, it's best to put away the laptop and focus on something else. He'll gently push the device out of the way, turn off your phone, and bring your attention to him. He'll give you hand and neck massages until the tenseness shifts to relaxation. He'll drag you into a playful game of "who can create the most obnoxious snack" and force you to play games with him until you're completely occupied.

After the night winds down, he'll try his best to talk it out with you. You've found that, oftentimes, your issues are solved just by letting Seven make jokes about your classmates or coworkers. Even your boss gets made fun of every now and then. Even when he's kidding, Seven is a genius and provides plenty of ideas that return your spark and motivation.

He's not the best with advice, but if you need someone to get your mind off things, Seven is your guy. He may not be the most conventional of best friends, but you wouldn't change him for the world.

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iffeelscouldkill · 3 years

Text

say what we wanna do, make it all come true (chapter 2)

A/N: In my original notes for this fic I had written that Chapter 3 might be rolled into Chapter 2 depending on length because I thought that Chapter 2 was going to be super short. *laughs wildly in 7.1k-long chapter* But this is my favourite chapter of the fic, so it's nice that we get to spend extra time with it!

No particular content warnings for this; everything’s pretty chill. Enjoy! <3

Link to Chapter One | Read on AO3

“That, dear listeners, was ‘Landers Never Stand Down’, the hit single – or should that be anthem? – by beloved indie band Rumor, from their debut album, ‘Ghost Squid’. If you’re just joining us, I’m Piper Tanaka, and this is Radio Indie, Folk and Techno. With us in the studio are Rumor frontwoman Sana Tripathi-”

“Hello again.”

“-and bassist Arkady Patel. We’ve just been hearing the stunning true story of how the band added a new member to its line-up, drummer Violet Liu, after she was discovered trying to obtain confidential files in order to blow the whistle on her employer, the notorious IGR Corp, and its development of an unethical surveillance device.”

“Isn’t that, really, the only logical way to join a band?” Kestrel quipped.

“It sure worked out well for the Rumor crew!” said Piper. “On a more musical note, though – and yes, that pun was intended – that was a great track we just heard. I’m curious about the name you picked for your debut album; is there a story there?”

Sana glanced at Arkady, amused. “Call it an in joke,” she said. “We were originally going to go with ‘In the Deep’, since there’s kind of a loose space theme to the first album, and then… after rehearsal one day, we were just riffing on what kind of creatures might live out in the depths of outer space-” They had also been pretty drunk at the time, but she didn’t need to mention that live on air. “-and Arkady suggested that maybe there’d be giant squid, like in the depths of the ocean.”

“Space squid!” Piper enthused. “Now there’s a concept I can get behind.”

“Right, but Violet, who is our resident science expert – she has a Masters in Molecular Biology–”

“Fancy. Love a woman of science.”

“-pointed out that a squid could never propel itself in a vacuum. Unless it was, you know, a ghost squid.”

“How much had you guys been drinking?” Kestrel asked shrewdly. Arkady coughed.

“It was a dumb joke, but we thought it would make a pretty unique name for a first album,” she finished.

“You were right there!” said Piper brightly. “Then, of course, there’s your upcoming second album, which we’ve heard will be titled ‘More Than a Rumor’.”

“That’s right,” Sana confirmed. “We’ve been working on some really cool material for this one, and we’re excited to bring it to you all.”

“We’ve been hearing some interesting talk about what exactly that material might be,” said Piper. “The discussion boards online are buzzing about one track, ‘The Saga of the House of Zravshen’, which is said to be a thirteen-minute-long “epic space opera ballad” written by Brian Jeeter.”

Arkady made a derisive noise. “It’ll be a thirteen-minute-long something, all right.”

“Arkady, maybe you could tell us about ‘Nanoswarm’,” said Kestrel slyly. “I’ve heard that you and Violet Liu collaborated closely on that track.”

“I – we didn’t – what I mean is, uh, it really wasn’t a formal – collaboration–”

Arkady’s transformation from self-assured to completely flustered was delightful to behold, even though Sana felt like she should maybe step in and save her best friend from herself.

“It was more of a, uh, sort of a side project – we just worked on it and it sounded pretty cool, so it, uh – went onto the album.”

“What I think is really great about ‘More Than a Rumor’,” Sana intervened smoothly, and Arkady let out a breath, sitting back in her chair, “is that there are various tracks where different band members get a chance to shine. Building on ‘Ghost Squid’, which was the introduction to the band as a whole, we really delve into different members’ specialisms in our second album, which has made the material really varied as a result. But at the same time, we’ve worked hard to give it a cohesive flow…”

---

Not everything about adding a new member to the band had been as seamless as that first set. They’d improvised together well over the course of a performance, sure, but there was a different quality to rehearsals now that there were five of them instead of four; they were still figuring out how to navigate each other, adapting routines and in-jokes to accommodate a new person.

A lot of their original material sounded different now with the addition of a keytar and a new drummer; Liu was more technically capable than Jeeter had been, and she also wasn’t content with just falling into a role that had been laid down for her. She had ideas, things she wanted to change, and they weren’t bad ideas, but they still bugged Arkady anyway. She was just attached to a lot of their old songs, that was all.

And okay, maybe she’d pushed back on a few suggestions during rehearsals in a way that had Sana raising an amused eyebrow at her and Krejjh pretending to duck and cover. To her credit, Liu didn’t just roll over and give up on her ideas at the first sign of resistance, sticking to her guns in a way that Arkady respected even if it was also annoying. Things never deteriorated too far, mainly because Sana was quick to play peacemaker, but there always seemed to be some kind of friction between the two of them. It was like an itch under Arkady’s skin whenever she was around Liu, quick to flare up.

Then there was the time that Liu had made an offhanded comment that, “Everyone here went to an underground concert or two in college, right?” in the context of discussing the kinds of set-ups that they’d performed with in the past. Arkady had said nothing, but could feel her teeth grinding as she played an overly loud riff on her bass. It was an innocuous enough comment on its own, but the easy presumptions behind it – the idea that everyone had had access to the same educational opportunities that Liu had had – were what pissed Arkady off.

But contradicting her would have meant talking about something that was personal to Arkady, something that cut way too close to the bone, and she didn’t want to do that. Liu hadn’t earned that from her. Instead, Jeeter made a joke about having been way too immersed in books to find time for concerts, and Sana tactfully steered the conversation out of dangerous waters.

After the rehearsal, she’d pulled Arkady aside. “If you want me to talk to her about—”

Arkady shook her head. “It’s not a big deal. Really,” she added at Sana’s unconvinced look. “It was a stupid assumption, but I can let it go. I’d rather just… let it go.”

They were in a band together, but that didn’t mean they had to be best friends. Arkady could maintain a civil working relationship. It didn’t matter what she’d… thought when she first met Liu, or what Liu might have been about to say to her in the bar. All of that was in the past, so there was no point dwelling on it. All Arkady needed to do was work with Liu within the context of the band; she could do that.

Until one afternoon when Arkady arrived early for rehearsal without really meaning to, and found that the only other person in the warehouse was Liu, who was setting up her drumkit. Before Arkady could turn around and pretend she’d never been there, Liu looked up and spotted her.

“Oh… hey. I was just planning to run through a few drum lines before the rehearsal… try some stuff out,” she said.

“Right,” Arkady said, casting about for an excuse that would get her out of the warehouse until the others arrived. “Uh, I’m gonna go get some coffee from the-”

“Arkady, listen, can we, uh… Can we clear the air between us?” Liu asked, the last few words coming out all in a rush.

Arkady froze. “Clear… what air?” she asked, hoping to god that Liu would say something innocuous about why she thought the drum line on Fear for the Storm needed work.

No such luck. “Look, I get that you’re not… thrilled with having me in the band,” Liu said, quietly, though her voice still carried in the echoey space. “I’ve been in a lot of workplace environments where I’m not welcome, so I… know how to spot the signs. And maybe I’m being hypersensitive, or looking for things to worry about, but something still feels off between us, so whatever it is, can we just talk about it and deal with it? Please?”

Arkady’s chest clenched at Liu’s mention of not being welcome in ‘workplace environments’. Damn it, she didn’t want to make Liu feel the same way she’d felt in whatever white dudebro-filled tech companies she’d worked for. But she also didn’t want to go into the reasons why she wasn’t always a ray of sunshine when they interacted. There was no way that that conversation was going to make anything better.

“I don’t have a problem with you being in the band. Really,” she said instead. “If it comes off that way, it’s just because… Sana and I worked on a lot of those early songs together, and I’m… attached to how they sound. That’s all.”

“So… this is really just a musical disagreement?” said Liu, sounding unconvinced. “Because it feels like there’s… something else. I know you’re not the biggest fan of my former employer – and I mean, me neither – but I figure if it bothered you that much, you wouldn’t have come to help me when Seiders was threatening me-”

“I wasn’t going to just let you die,” Arkady said, nettled. “And no, I’m not in the habit of judging people for where they work. I’ve worked my fair share of jobs for shitty employers just to get by.” She shrugged. Then, almost without meaning to, she added, “Of course, I didn’t have the choice that you probably had…”

Liu frowned, but more like she was confused than like she was annoyed by Arkady’s comment. “What do you mean?”

Arkady sighed. “Not everyone went to college, Liu,” she said. “I’m a high school dropout. So no, I didn’t go to any underground concerts. Or any kind of gigs in college.”

Liu’s eyes widened as her comment from earlier came back to her. “Oh my god,” she groaned, putting her hand to her head. “I am so sorry, Arkady – I should know better than to make assumptions like that. I was just – I’d been talking to Brian about his studies and how he met Krejjh doing fieldwork, and I guess I assumed you guys had all met in college-”

Arkady barked out a laugh, too startled to even really be annoyed. “What, you thought that I could’ve been studying alongside Jeeter? You know he went to Brightwell, right? That elite college that’s supposed to be harder than Harvard to get into?”

Liu shrugged like the idea was actually plausible and not something that sounded like part of a bizarre alternate reality. “Yeah, I don’t see why not.” Then, quickly, as if she was afraid that this might have offended Arkady even more, she added, “But like I said – I really shouldn’t have assumed, and I’m sorry – I know better than that. I was only able to go to the college I did because I won a scholarship.”

Keen to move away from the topic of Arkady possibly having gone to Brightwell – because really, what – Arkady said, “You went to uh, that all-girls college, right? Harmony?” She vaguely remembered overhearing a conversation between Liu and Jeeter where Liu had talked about there being a Latin motto. “It sounded… interesting.”

Liu pulled a face. “Yeah, that’s one word for it.” She went on almost shyly, like she was confessing to a deeply-held secret, “I would have liked to study something more artistic – music, maybe – or at least do more extra-curriculars, but… I got that scholarship, and I was under a lot of pressure from my parents to do something ‘worthwhile’. Plus, I really wanted to show the kids who said I only got that scholarship because I was ‘a minority’.” There was an anger and a bitterness and a tiredness underlying those last two words that Arkady knew far too well.

“They what,” she spat out. God, was she glad she’d never been to college. Then again, she’d worked at places where she’d come up against the exact same attitude.

“Yeah,” Liu said wearily, fiddling with the drumsticks she was holding. “It wasn’t all bad, though. Being away at college was the first time I was really able to be myself – play the drums, be out. I got this haircut in my freshman year that was just – wild, it was awful.” She laughed, though Arkady barely heard her, her heartbeat suddenly pounding in her ears at the word ‘out’. God, Patel, get a grip. “My parents never liked the drums, they thought they were too – un-feminine,” she pulled a face again. “I play the flute, too, but I’m bad at it.”

“We should add that into the line-up,” said Arkady, to distract herself from thinking about Violet’s – Liu’s – flushed cheeks and her smile as she talked about her old haircut. “Sana can write a flute part.”

“Oh god, no,” Liu said, laughing again. “I don’t even have my flute any more, I sold it in grad school.”

“So… if you went to grad school… you can’t have hated it that much, right?” Arkady asked. “Uh – the biology, not the – flute playing.”

“Oh, no, I love biology,” Liu enthused. “It’s the study of living things – what’s not to love? Grad school itself, though, was…” She pulled a face. “I came close to quitting, a few times.”

“What happened?” Arkady asked. They were pretty far off their original subject by now, and Arkady was willing to admit to herself (and only herself) that maybe she was enjoying the conversation. It was all in the name of building better inter-band relationships, of course. Sana would be thrilled that they were bonding like this.

Liu sighed. “Let’s just say there were a few people on my course who were determined to let me know I didn’t belong. We had a lab work module where we were supposed to carry out an experiment as a group, and… I got put in charge of our group of six. My teammates would do things like pretend not to understand my instructions, or move things I needed to shelves I couldn’t reach… make comments they knew I could overhear… Growing up with an anxiety disorder, everyone’s always telling you not to worry – you learn to doubt your own thoughts. And my advisor just dismissed my concerns as ‘over-sensitivity’, so…” Arkady’s eyes narrowed further with every word that Liu spoke. “It was too late for me to transfer to another module. In the end I wound up carrying the whole project basically by myself.”

Liu gave Arkady a weak smile. “So, y’know, you didn’t miss out on much. I interned for a pharmaceutical company for a couple of years after college, did some work as a research assistant. When I got the job offer from IGR Corp, I felt like I’d finally made it – and look how that turned out.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault that IGR Corp turned out to be a special brand of greedy, soul-sucking and unethical,” said Arkady bluntly – even though she’d previously thought that maybe Liu could have had less awful taste in employers. “That’s on them. Look… I know a thing or two about soul-sucking workplaces myself.”

Arkady hadn’t intended this to turn into Personal Story Hour, but at the same time she felt like she should at least offer something after Liu had opened up about her time in college. She hadn’t needed to justify herself; she could just have apologised and left it at that. Instead, she’d shared something that Arkady suspected she didn’t talk about to a lot of people.

“The last job I worked before Sana and I started Rumor was for Telemachus Enterprises,” Arkady said, and Liu’s eyes widened in recognition.

“The global consulting firm? That’s very… well…”

“Capitalist? Soullessly corporate?” Arkady finished for her.

“I was going to say stable,” Liu said diplomatically.

“Sure, as long as you also like ladder-climbing, backstabbing and toxic work environments,” said Arkady. “I was an assistant, doing all the crap work like photocopying, fetching coffee, making calls, scheduling appointments and dealing with angry clients. It was the kind of job you get to get a ‘foothold’ in the world of business, and all of the other assistants were recent college grads who were way younger than me. I hated it.”

Liu nodded, listening intently, not offering any kind of commentary or judgement.

“Playing the bass was kind of the only thing that kept me sane, so… I used to go down to these shitty clubs at night and play, sometimes straight from work because the overtime was ridiculous. I’d join up with a couple of other musicians and do jam sessions, or sometimes play solo stuff. I’d sing, sometimes, too,” she added, a little self-consciously, even though she sang backing vocals on most of Rumor’s songs, and everyone in the band had heard her sing.

“I moved around a lot, never performed at the same place two nights in a row, so that no-one got to know me too well. I used to use different stage names – my favourite was Duchess Calpurnia Higginsworth-Cobb.”

Liu burst out laughing. “You didn’t really tell people that was your name?”

“Drunk people will believe anything,” Arkady told her. “I’m still known as ‘Duchess’ in a few places. It was a precaution, in case anything got back to my work, but in the end… the person who recognised me was someone I hadn’t seen in over a decade. Sana.”

Liu’s eyes widened. “You guys go back that far?”

“Kind of,” Arkady said. “It’s a long story–” delving into the tale of The Landing and her and Sana’s shared history definitely felt like it would be going a step too far – “but uh, I used to do work at a tattoo parlour that Sana came to a few times. I didn’t think she’d really noticed me at the time, but she remembered me well enough that when I played at a club near her workplace, she recognised me. She managed to catch a few more of my performances, figure out where I’d be, and one night she showed up with her guitar, and… we played together.”

Arkady smiled a little, remembering that night, the spark she’d felt as soon as they started to play. The drummer had been awful, some white asshole named Ricky who thought he was God’s gift to music – and wasn’t – but they’d sounded like magic anyway.

“Somehow she managed to figure out where I worked, showed up one day, invited me to get lunch, and after she found out how much I hated it there, she told me I should quit so that we could start a band,” Arkady said.

“And you did?” Liu asked, sounding half impressed, half scandalised.

“I really hated that job,” Arkady said. “Besides, the Capt- Sana can be really persuasive. We joke about her motivational speeches, but she’s…” Arkady hated to admit this, because it sounded so goddamn cheesy, but there wasn’t another word to describe it. “…inspirational.”

Liu smiled. “Yeah, I can tell. She seems like that kind of person.”

“We wrote a lot of our early songs together during that time,” Arkady said. “‘Landers Never Stand Down’, ‘Fear for the Storm’… they kind of – ugh, this is going to sound so corny, but they were about our hope for something better. So… that’s why I’m weird about changing them.”

Liu’s expression softened. “I completely get it. Look, I know that all of this has been pretty sudden – me joining the band, us trying to put together an album – and I’d understand if you wanted me to… back off a little. I was throwing out ideas for things that I thought would sound good with our new line-up, but I should have appreciated that these aren’t just songs to you and Sana.”

“No, it’s – you’re – okay,” Arkady said awkwardly. “You’re fine. They’re… they’re uh, really…” God, Arkady, just spit it out. People pay each other compliments all the time – it doesn’t have to mean anything. (Even if you might want it to mean something). “They’re really good. Ideas, I mean. And the others seem to like them! So… don’t stop on my account.”

Arkady’s urge to just leave the building after finally stumbling through that awkward admission was pretty strong, but she managed to resist. Which turned out to be worth it to see the small, pleased smile unfolding on Liu’s face. It was a different kind of smile to the one that she wore when the Captain paid her a compliment, though Arkady couldn’t have said exactly how. It just felt… personal to her.

“Well, in that case,” said Liu. “I had this idea I really wanted to try out on ‘Landers’, and… I’d love to get your thoughts? On how it sounds?”

Which was how, when Sana showed up for the start of the rehearsal fifteen minutes later, Arkady and Violet came to be mid-debate about the merits of speeding up the tempo of the drum line in the first half of the second verse, Arkady singing Sana’s part of the vocals to illustrate her point.

“Am I late?” Sana joked, throwing Arkady an amused glance. “Sorry, I didn’t realise practice was starting early.”

“The cool kids show up to practice a half hour early to go over new drum lines,” Arkady deadpanned, and Liu laughed. Sana smiled as she brought out her guitar.

“What you were playing just then sounded really good – can you go over it again?”

The conversation with Liu didn’t magically fix everything between them, but the tension eased up significantly after that, and it became easier for Arkady and Liu to come to a compromise whenever they disagreed. The album started to come together much more quickly, and when Red Gregor stopped by (which he did a lot more than he strictly needed to as the head of their record label, and Arkady suspected he was mostly there to see Sana), he was full of praise for the new arrangements.

It also somehow became a habit for Arkady to start showing up early to rehearsal. She told herself it was because the line in the coffee shop was easier to deal with at that time, and it was true that at some point she’d bought enough coffee for both her and Violet to have Violet’s regular order memorised; but it also had something to do with the fact that more often than not, Violet would arrive while she was setting up, or vice versa, and they’d run through the parts that had been bugging them, each lending the other an honest and unjudgemental ear. Sometimes they’d play around with something new, or improvise, trying on new techniques and styles for size.

Arkady honestly hadn’t had this much fun experimenting with music since those first early, heady days with Sana, when they started to lay down exactly what kind of performers they wanted to be. It was different with Violet – they had a different relationship, a different vibe – but there was still something about their sessions that felt similar, like they were breaking new ground.

One day, Arkady had been messing around with a bass line that she couldn’t get out of her head – she’d been thinking of adding it to ‘The Carmen Gambit’, one of the band’s originals that Jeeter had helped write, but it didn’t really fit. She liked how it sounded on its own, though. Liu had been listening, head tilted to one side, which Arkady didn’t really think anything of until quietly, underneath the bass line, Violet started to add a drum part.

Arkady was startled, mostly by how well the two fit together; after a slight fumble, she carried on playing, improvising and adding a couple of variations to the bass line when she ran out of material. Liu smoothly changed up the rhythm of the drum line to match just a second later, and Arkady realised that they had something that almost sounded like… a real piece of music. Something organic, something that flowed and moved and changed with-

Crap. Arkady came to a stop at the end of a section as she realised she didn’t have any idea what to play next. “Uh…” She threw an apologetic glance in Violet’s direction. “I haven’t really figured out what comes after that.”

Violet nodded, not seeming put out by this. “What about…” She hummed the end section of the melody that Arkady had been playing, and then another phrase that almost mirrored it. “Actually, that part could come before the-”

“Right, right-” Arkady understood Violet’s meaning, and quickly picked up the tune on her bass.

The song (well, technically it was an instrumental) they were writing didn’t have a name for the first few days. Arkady and Violet would pick up where they left off each time they came to rehearsal, and would throw around ideas for additions and changes, discussing the overall sound and vibe, but it didn’t feel like there was a need to put a name to it.

Then in the middle of one of these discussions, Violet started scribbling something in a notebook, and Arkady realised she was writing down their song. She peered curiously at the letters and notes, and Violet grimaced self-consciously.

“I’m not sure if I’ve got all of the bass chords right,” she admitted, tilting the notebook so Arkady could see it better. “Feel free to correct any bits that are wrong, I was mostly trying to get the drum part down for my own benefit. My memory’s not as good as yours is.”

Arkady hesitated. She was tempted to lie and say the notation was fine; Violet would accept it, and it probably wouldn’t come up again. There was a time when she would have done it without a second’s thought. But Violet already knew that Arkady had dropped out of high school; knew bits and pieces of her background, if not the whole story; and Arkady had to admit that she’d been enjoying being herself more around Violet. She didn’t want to backtrack on that.

“I never really learned to read sheet music,” she admitted. “I can recognise a few chords, but… I mostly learned how to play from YouTube videos, so it always seemed easier to just watch someone else play the chords, and learn which ones went with which songs, and… for performances I always had to memorise stuff anyway, so, um.” Arkady was rambling, and Violet was staring at her, which was possibly not good. “There didn’t seem much point in having it written down.”

“So… you never had a bass teacher?” Violet said slowly. “All of your playing, your singing – it’s all self-taught?”

“Uh,” Arkady cringed. “Yes?”

“Wow,” Violet said, and Arkady suddenly realised that she was dumbfounded because she was impressed, not because she’d just realised she was playing with an amateur. “That’s… really impressive.”

Arkady fidgeted, uncomfortable with the pure admiration in Violet’s gaze. “It’s not really – I mean sure, I put in a lot of hours, but so does every musician,” she hedged. “It wasn’t anything special, I just – couldn’t afford to pay for classes.”

She braced herself for an awkward silence to follow, but instead Violet nodded. “No, you’re right, everyone has to put in the work if they want to improve,” she agreed. “But I imagine that it would be harder to motivate yourself when it’s just you and the instrument.”

Arkady shrugged her shoulder slightly. “It wasn’t so bad. It helped that I enjoyed it, I guess.” After the disaster that was her high school education, it had been a relief to find something she’d felt like she was good at – and wasn’t being assessed on.

Violet smiled, and mercifully changed the topic by looking down at the notation she’d scribbled and saying lightly, “Well, now that it’s been written down, it feels like we should give it a name.”

Arkady thought about it. “Anything that’s shorter than whatever the hell it is Jeeter and Krejjh are working on,” she said, because Jeeter had been waxing lyrical about the ‘epic space opera ballad’ that he’d been composing with his fiancé. Apparently it was about a race of fictional aliens, and some of the lyrics were in a made-up alien language that Jeeter had invented. Arkady had no idea why Jeeter had such a dedicated following among their fans for the weird shit that he came up with, but there you were.

Violet grinned, tapping her pen against the space above the lines and notations. “So, one word, then. It’s got a pretty futuristic sound… What about ‘Cyberpunk’?”

Arkady couldn’t help grimacing a little bit. “Yeah, too clichéd,” Violet agreed. “Maybe something themed around space… ‘Supernova’?”

They tossed around a few other ideas, but none of them quite seemed to fit the mood of the song. Violet frowned down at the music she’d written, and Arkady was about to suggest they come back to it later when she said, “This might sound like a weird association for a piece of music, but I was reading a paper the other day on nanotechnology, you know, technology used at the atomic and molecular level?”

“Sounds kind of dry for bedtime reading, but I’m with you,” Arkady said.

Violet laughed, blushing a little. “Yeah, a friend from my Masters sent it to me; I still like to keep up with new developments in the field, and there are fascinating implications for biology. But I’m thinking, what if none of the space names fit because they’re too big, too grand? What if instead we went really small, like… ‘Nanobot’?”

“Nanobot…” Arkady turned the name over in her mind, thinking about the quick, intricate rhythms of the song they were creating together. It was a surprisingly good fit, but something about it felt off. Something about the ‘bot’ part was too… lonely. “What about ‘Nanoswarm’?”

Violet’s eyes widened slightly and a smile spread across her face. “Nanoswarm,” she said, and wrote the song title in blocky capitals above their music. “I like it.”

Both Red Gregor and Campbell came to rehearsal that night, which Arkady took as a sign that they were there to discuss something Important. Their album, ‘Ghost Squid’, was selling more copies than any of them had expected, and had actually got them some interview requests from indie music blogs and magazines. This seemed to be partly down to Red Gregor, who apparently had enough of a reputation as a business investor that his decision to start up a record label had attracted a lot of interest, and consequently a lot of interest in the first band he’d signed to it. But they’d also had some great reviews, including from Radio, Indie, Folk and Techno (also known as RIFT), the go-to station for all things indie music, who had covered it on their ‘Rave Review Hour’.

There’d also been a noticeably bigger audience at most of their gigs. They’d had a modest but dedicated following before Violet had joined the band, and were regulars at a couple of underground venues where they pulled decent crowds, plus one bar where Arkady had managed not to piss off the owner (the other four were… long stories); a bunch of people also streamed their music from various parts of the world. But since Ghost Squid came out, they’d started playing at (and filling) much bigger venues across a much wider area. It was fun, but also a little surreal.

“What’s the good word, Campbell?” Krejjh asked, leaning on their keyboard. “Are you here to tell us how much the people love us?”

Campbell’s lips twitched in amusement. “They love you a whole lot,” he said. “More every day.”

Krejjh fist-pumped, and Arkady asked, “So, what are you guys here for? Is this about ‘Ghost Squid 2: Electric Boogaloo’?”

They’d had a discussion with Red Gregor about beginning work on a second album; this one would take longer, since they’d had plenty of existing songs to draw on for ‘Ghost Squid’, and hadn’t needed to put together any new material. But, as Gregor had pointed out, it was better to start thinking about that sooner rather than later, and they’d been working on a few new songs anyway. So far, the second album was still nameless, but they’d taken to calling it by a range of joke nicknames.

Red Gregor grinned. “Sort of, in the sense that it’ll be good promo,” he said. Spreading his hands out to either side like a showman introducing his next act, he said grandly, “I’ve landed you a gig at the CUI Stadium.”

Jeeter’s mouth dropped open, Krejjh flailed and exclaimed, “Holy moley!”, and Violet repeated, “Stadium?!” in an almost horrified tone. Even Sana seemed surprised by the news.

“You actually got it?” she asked Red Gregor, who nodded.

Arkady’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, what’s the catch?” she asked. “They don’t let just anyone play the CUI Stadium.”

“No catch,” Campbell promised them. “Red has some contacts who tipped him off that the CUI is looking for some new, lesser-known talent to put on its billing. Once upon a time, the CUI had a reputation for scouting the best undiscovered bands and giving them a bigger stage – literally – and they feel they’ve been losing their touch.”

Put like that, it did make a kind of sense. “Cool, so who are we supporting?” Jeeter asked. “Oooh, maybe it’s Hremreh.”

Hremreh was a weird electronic band that Jeeter and Krejjh were completely obsessed with. Arkady rolled her eyes. “I hope the CUI has more taste than that.”

“Excuse you, Hremreh is an underrated gem of a band,” Krejjh retorted.

“The Destroyer?” Violet suggested jokingly. “They’re local.”

Arkady knew from having spent time with Violet that The Destroyer was one of her favourite bands from college, whose gigs she’d religiously attended during her freshman year. Everyone else looked interested but bemused, and Violet hurriedly added, “Uh, that was a bit of a niche joke. I used to go to their gigs a lot in college.”

“All great guesses,” Red Gregor said, “but you’re all missing one important piece of information. You’ll be the headline act.”

“What?” said Arkady.

“Heck yeah!” Krejjh exclaimed, and high-fived Jeeter.

“So, someone will be supporting us?” Violet said a little faintly.

“Red, exactly how many strings did you pull?” Sana asked, sounding halfway between amused and disapproving. Red Gregor held up his hands.

“I just talked to my contacts, I promise,” he said. “It gave me a chance to put your name forward, but that was all I needed to do. You guys have a great sound; they’re excited to have you on.”

Everything dissolved into a flurry of noise and celebration. Jeeter played a celebratory tune on his keytar that Arkady was fairly sure was from some video game, Krejjh whooped and slid their hands up the keys of their keyboard, and Campbell picked up Sana and spun her around, both of them and Red Gregor laughing. Violet caught Arkady’s eye, grinned, and did a little roll on one of her cymbals. Arkady huffed and rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t fight the smile that was trying to emerge.

“So, when is the gig?” Sana asked, flushed and catching her breath, after Campbell had put her down.

“A month from today,” Red told them. Sana straightened up.

“Wow, okay, we need to get rehearsing! Everyone—”

They quickly got into position, picking up instruments and drumsticks and plugging in amplifiers. Sana beamed around at the assembled band members.

“I just want to say how proud I am of all of you for what we’ve accomplished so far, and everything that lies ahead of us. I-”

“Not to head you off at the pass,” Arkady interrupted, sensing a long Sana Monologue was coming, “but didn’t you say we needed to get rehearsing? Maybe save the speech for after?”

Most people would have taken offence at being interrupted, but Sana, being Sana, smiled at Arkady. “Thank you for the reminder, Arkady. I am proud of you all, but I’ll tell you exactly how proud once we’re done.”

Rehearsal went well, everyone energetic and buoyed up from the good news. As they were packing down afterwards, under the noise of Sana, Krejjh, Jeeter, Campbell and Gregor eagerly discussing where they could go out for drinks to celebrate, Violet said to Arkady,

“I forgot to tell you earlier, but I heard back from the journalist. Emily Craddock.”

Arkady fumbled the wire that she was looping around itself. “Yeah? What did she say?”

“She said that she thinks we have enough for a story. Even with the missing data,” Violet said.

She looked happy, but something in Arkady’s chest still clenched. It had been nearly four weeks since the fateful gig at IGR Corp, and so far, everything had been quiet. The band had been on high alert at all of their performances at first, not spending any more time than was necessary setting up or lingering on the stage, but there’d been no attempts at sabotage, no suspicious ‘fans’ trying to approach them after a set. (There had been a few real fans whom Arkady had cross-examined a bit too aggressively when they tried to get close to the band, but people seemed to actually find it funny and no-one got offended).

They figured that IGR Corp must not know about the files that Violet had managed to copy across; Seiders had been unconscious, after all, and it was possible that they hadn’t realised that Violet had made off with anything, or had downplayed the severity of the incident to the higher-ups. Arkady had, in spite of her misgivings, broken the encryption on the files for Violet, but she’d been secretly hoping that the data wouldn’t turn out to be useful, or that there wouldn’t be enough of it to do anything with.

She’d hoped that even after Violet told her that she’d found a tech journalist who was interested in taking a look at the files and potentially investigate the story. Of course Arkady was a fan of doing whatever they could to stick it to the corporates; she just wished there was a way to do it that wouldn’t involve Violet painting a huge target on her back.

“That’s… good,” Arkady managed, and even she could hear how unconvincing it sounded. Violet looked at her questioningly. “It’s just…” She tried to find a way to word things that wasn’t, ‘I’m afraid that you won’t be safe’. “Once the information is out there, IGR Corp is going to know who leaked it. What happens if they come after you?”

“By that point, they should have bigger things to worry about, if the evidence that Emily Craddock has found is as damning as she says it is,” Violet pointed out. “She’s been looking into that engineer that Seiders mentioned, Alvy Connors. It’s not really clear whether something… happened to him, or whether he just made a run for it, but he definitely disappeared. And it wasn’t that long after he started work on Project ADVANCE.”

As they talked, the other band members had been clearing equipment away and loading it into the van, until Violet and Arkady were the only ones left in the warehouse.

“I know there’s risk involved,” Violet said. “But I can’t just forget everything I’ve learned. And this is bigger than me – I have to do it for Alvy, too, and his family and friends, and everyone else who could be affected by Project ADVANCE. What IGR Corp is doing-”

“I know, I know,” Arkady said. “Don’t get me wrong, I think they deserve to have the cover blown right off their shitty, awful surveillance plan.”

“I’m going to talk to the Captain before I do anything,” Violet assured her. “I know this could affect the band, too. I just wanted to tell you first.”

Why? Arkady wanted to ask, but that would have taken the conversation down a road that Arkady was not prepared to go down. Either Violet would say something like, ‘Because we’re friends’, or ‘Because you’re my bandmate’, and Arkady would feel like a moron for having hoped for anything different. Or she wouldn’t, and that would be worse, because Arkady had no idea how to respond to Violet saying… Well, it didn’t matter, because it would never happen, anyway.

“Sana will tell you to go for it,” she said. “If it’s what you think is right, she’ll be behind you all the way.”

“And… you?” Violet asked quietly.

“I…”

Why was it so hard for Arkady to just say that she approved? Violet was a grown woman who could make her own decisions; she didn’t need Arkady second-guessing her. Violet didn’t even need Arkady to agree with what she was doing – she could just go and do it anyway. But the fact that she’d asked Arkady meant that she cared what Arkady thought… and that made Arkady want to be honest with her.

And honesty was terrifying.

The moment stretched out; Arkady composed and drafted half a dozen different versions of what she wanted to say in her head. ‘I just need you to be careful’ – ugh, that sounded like something Sana would say. Also, of course Violet was going to be careful; that didn’t mean there was no risk involved. ‘I trust you to make the right choice’ – vague, and it also made Arkady feel weird. ‘If they hurt you, they’ll wish they’d never been born’ – alarming, and probably too honest.

Arkady took a breath in, gathering her nerve – and then both of them jumped as the van horn beeped loudly from outside.

“Paging bandmates Liu and Patel!” Krejjh shouted. “Bandmates Liu and Patel to the Rumormobile, please!”

Violet laughed a little, as Arkady huffed, inwardly cursing her own goddamn indecision. She’d spent so long trying to figure out what to say that she’d lost the chance to say anything.

“I guess we shouldn’t keep them waiting,” Violet said, slanting a small smile in Arkady’s direction.

“I trust you,” Arkady found herself saying, almost without meaning to. Violet looked puzzled, and Arkady scrambled to clarify. “Uh, that is – if you think this is the right thing to do. Then, you should… do it. Just…”

She still couldn’t say it, but Violet’s smile widened, her eyes softening like she knew what Arkady was trying (and failing) to tell her. “I’ll be careful,” she promised.

#TSCOSI #Podcast Big Bang 2021 #The Strange Case of Starship Iris #Vikady #Arkady Patel/Violet Liu #Sana Tripathi #Brian Jeeter #Krejjh #Sana/Campbell/Red Gregor #Band AU #RIFT #Piper Tanaka #Kestrel Colvin #screams in emotionally constipated Vikady #which might be my favourite kind of Vikady #Also no disrespect intended to Telemachus by turning it into a soulless consulting firm #It was meant to be a stand-in for Arkady's guard job on Telemachus rather than the planet itself

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medea10 · 4 years

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My Review of Magical Girl Site

How did I get into this anime? I…huh…Good question! I don’t recall. Probably some other anime reviewers mentioned it and I put it on the Amazon/Netflix list hoping I won’t have to watch it any time soon. Two years later and here we are!

Aya Asagiri’s life is a living hell. She is constantly bullied at school and no one does a thing to stop it. Her teachers don’t care about her well-being. Her father barely notices she exists. And to top it off, her brother beats the crap out of her just for him to relieve stress! Is it any wonder that she wants to commit suicide? One night, her computer mysteriously turns on to a website, promoting Aya to become a magical girl. She brushed it off and thought nothing of it…

That is until the next morning when she finds a note and a gun in her shoe locker. After being tortured by her bullies and almost raped, she finds herself at the end of her ropes and pulls out the mysterious gun. When she pulled the trigger, her bullies disappeared. Turns out, the targets are transported to another place. In the case of some of her bullies, they were transported to in front of a moving train.

Karma, bitches!

It’s unknown why Aya was specifically chosen to become a magical girl, but fellow magical girl Yatsumura feels she could use Aya’s magic to combat a looming threat to other magical girls. But they must not overuse their magic, otherwise they will die.

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: As of this moment, this anime seems to be in the capable hands of Amazon Prime. And we all know how well they treat animes, right?! Hahaha! Funny! Anyways, don’t expect a dub! The cast seems to be comprised of many female seiyuus I’m not particularly familiar with. I mean with the exception of Aina Suzuki, I hear her sounds every day thanks to the Love Live game apps! Add to that the creepy, raspy voice of Frieza playing the site administrator! One voice actor however I heard the second he let out a creepy, hygena-like laugh, I knew exactly who this crazy bastard was! Nobuhiko Okamoto plays a great psychopath. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

*Aya is played by Yuuko Oono

*Yatsumura is played by Himika Akaneya

*Sarina is played by Haruka Yamazaki (known for Ruka on Hayate the Combat Butler, Mero on Monster Musume, Aika on High School DxD, and Natsumi on Danganronpa 3)

*Nijimi is played by Yuu Serizawa (known for Shera on How Not to Summon a Demon Lord)

*Shioi is played by Aina Suzuki (known for Mari on Love Live Sunshine)

AUTOMATICLY THROWN ON DISLIKED LIST: Okay children, who automatically ends up on my hate list for life?

Fuckers who commit rape and fuckers who kill animals for fun!

Damn right! Give this anime some credit for not showing Aya’s bullies throwing a cat in front of a moving train. If this were 10 years ago, they probably would have animated it and I would have been puking afterward. I’m not sure which of Aya’s bullies threw a cat in front of a moving train, but for the time being, I’m throwing them all on the list.

And while I’m here, Sarina! She was like the ring-leader in the bullying of Aya. I’m almost certain she’s the bitch that killed the stray cat but I have no proof of that. With my history with horrible people like that, I have no sympathy for bullies in the slightest and feel she got what was coming to her. Bitch, you got that big, ugly scar on your neck for a reason. You got what was coming!

DEFINITELY BELONGS IN DISLIKE HISTORY: Now that I got the usual gripe off my chest, gotta add Aya’s onii-chan, Kaname! Sweet merciful crap, do I love hearing Nobuhiko Okamoto play a psychopath, but this is going way too far. And Kaname is just irredeemable! He has this complex that makes him think he’s on God-tier and everyone else is beneth him. Now I do have to hate Kaname and Aya’s father for placing this kind of pressure on Kaname and beating the shit out of him if he gets bad grades. But good fuck, this guy just pushes past the line of no return when he tries to manipulate little girls, steal their power, and lose control. And this wasn’t like he had no control over his own body and wants to stop this from happening! Kaname meant every thing he did to his sister and her friends. OH…and that one guy he forced to off himself! I just can’t even with this guy!

SHIPPING: I know a lot of people ship the hell out of Aya and Yatsumura and yeah, I can see that and I would ship them too. But for reals, I just want these two girls to live a life of peace together for as long as they’re around. For fuck’s sake, did you see the shit they put up with in their lives? Aya was bullied relentlessly at home and school. Yatsumura watched her whole family be slaughtered by a creep. These girls deserve some sort of peace! I know this is the shipping category, but I felt the need to say this.

STICKS: Okay anime, what are you doing? Aya uses a magical gun! Sarina uses a magical yo-yo! Nijimi uses magical panties (insert immature laugh here)! Yatsumura uses a magical remote! How hard is it to have them say that! And I probably shouldn’t put blame on the anime and holler at the manga! But calling magical items “Sticks”, that feels…I don’t want to say stupid, but I can’t think of any other word to go along with that. I just feel like the manga was on some deadline and they were frantically finishing what to call their magical items and just went “FUCK IT, IT’S STICKS”.

COULD HAVE FOOLED ME: In the “Could have fooled me” category we have a boy who identifies as a girl magical girl! Man, 2018 definitely was the progressive AF year! I mean, we had Lily from Zombieland Saga, we had the girls who transformed into magical buff men in Magical Girl Ore, and now THIS! So we have Kiyo! An openly transgendered magical girl that’s not a token joke! Okay, well done guys! Pearl points all around!

ENDING: Early in the series, we learned about a moment called “The Tempest”. A catastrophic even set to take place once enough negative energy is caught. There are a lot of Magical Girl Site administrators that take advantage of “POOR UNFORTUNATE SOULS”. They pick the most unfortunate girls as pawns in their game. And once “The Tempest” hits, everyone will die and the world will start over anew. Aya and Yatsumura end up meeting new magical girl allies and even a few that were coersed by different administrators. Not to mention one of Aya’s bullies is a magical girl too with a score to settle! What could be worse?

How about we add Aya’s disgusting brother to this mix?! As I’ve mentioned before, Aya’s brother Kaname would use Aya as a personal punching bag in order to get rid of stress. When Aya became a magical girl, she would spend more time with Yatsumura or the other girls, leaving Kaname to go without slugging his sister. So fuckface over here manipulates another magical girl, Nijimi to do what he says. This leads to him stealing Nijimi’s underwear and gaining her magical power of mind control. I never thought I would have to say a sentence like that, but here we are.

Kaname went out of control with this power as he managed to injure all of the girls and give a fatal blow to Nijimi. But another possible enemy dropped a bomb on us when they kidnapped Kaname. THEN, these girls are targeted at Nijimi’s funeral and they almost died. Add another plot-twist, a police officer that’s been seen from time to time in a lot of the tragedies in the show is in cahoots with one of the magical girl site administrators. This keeps getting fuckier by the minute! Well, the girls felt it was time to take action and try to take out the administrators that screwed them with this doomed fate. But once they took out one of the administrators, they came across an ugly truth.

Sight administrators are magical girls who died previously!

Yeah, not that big of a shock! Madoka Magica gave us magical girls who end up so corrupt that they become witches they’re supposed to fight. While some of the administrators ended up falling to these girls, Nana (the creepy one we’ve been watching since ep 1) is the hardest one to take out. She ends up killing Yatsumura (because she used up too much of her power), but then manipulates her to become an administrator.

Once she manipulated Yatsumura, she ends up going after Aya. And after a lot of back-and-forth between the two girls, Yatsumura was able to snap out of Nana’s control and they managed to take out Nana. And we end the series with a brighter future for Aya and Yatsumura as their lives become a little less unfortunate.

Yeah, few issues here!

1.) There are still a butt-load of site administrators. Isn’t there still a “Tempest” going to happen? 2.) Aya and Yatsumura’s lives aren’t in danger anymore after using fuck-tons of their power? WTF?! 3.) What was the point of Aya shooting herself to get Yatsumura back? I am not following you. Is this some sort of Insception shit?! 4.) That detective! Misumi was his name? Why was he just casually talking to Nana a few episodes back? 5.) Why don’t we see him until the final few moments in the finale? 6.) WHY DID HE RAPE KANAME?! 7.) WHY WAS THIS SCENE A THING? 8.) I don’t want to say Kaname deserved it, buuuuuut… Uuuggghhh…Mumble, mumble. I can’t finish that thought. 9.) These site administrators are probably pissed and are going to want revenge on these magical girls. What’s going on here?

…Let me guess, I need to read the manga to get all my questions answered…

FUCKING FIGURES!

Seriously...what Misumi did. That scene is forever etched in my brain forever. Next to that scene of Kaname wiggling his junk in front of a guy.

This anime was pretty bad. No wait...

This anime was way too edgy for me! Episode 1 was just absolute torture porn involving Aya. The first episode managed to combine the bully scene in Vivid Strike, the puppy killing scene in Elfen Lied, and every bullying episode of Hell Girl all into one single episode. As for the rest of this series, they go above and beyond to grab some of the worst aspects of other animes and implement them here. Aya’s older brother almost has a God-complex that rivals that of Light Yagami of Death Note. Nijimi has a devoted fan that’s almost crossing over from the movie Perfect Blue. Body mutilation scenes on levels not seen since Higurashi! And fill this world up with the worst kinds of humans imaginable like in Elfen Lied! This was just too much hatred! Too much!

Add to that, there’s absolutely no resolution to this story. Yes, Aya and Yatsumura are alive and together. But guys, there are still some other-worldly strong site administrators looming! Tempest is still happening. KANAME IS STILL FUCKING ALIVE…literally and figuratively speaking! And with how much this anime has been panned by anime fans across the board, I doubt if this anime will ever receive a sequel. Guys, if you want a really good 12-episode anime about magical girls with an edge, just watch Madoka Magica. But if you’re a curious idiot like me, whatever, you do you!

As this anime is an Amazon Prime exclusive, I’m afraid that’s the only legal outlet for this.

Now that this is over, my next Amazon/Netflix/Crunchyroll anime is…

Grand Blue!

Oh, it’s set in a cute ocean town. Am I going to enjoy some cute absurdity like I did with Tsuritama?

Sort of!

OH GOOD FUCK, WHAT FRAT HOUSE WAS THIS BIRTHED FROM?!

#anime review #magical girl site #mahou shoujo site #aya asagiri #tsuyuno yatsumura #kaname asagiri #sarina shizukume

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tclcpathy · 4 years

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we need to talk about Dark Phoenix

This is going to be a VERY long post alert. And I also want to preface this by saying that this is just my analysis for my interpretation of Charles. If anyone else in the Charles squad wants to add or debate anything said in this post, feel free to message me! I would love to talk character meta and see what makes each of our interpretations unique and special!

So. Where to start with the clusterfuck of a movie that is Dark Phoenix? I mean, I had seen the dark phoenix plot play out in the old gen movies, so I thought I had a bit of an idea what they were going for, but BOY OH BOY was I wrong. Movie criticisms aside (though I thought it was actually a pretty enjoyable film all things considered, setting aside that atrocious scene where Jean puppets Charles up the stairs I mean COME ON), this movie gave me A LOT to think about in terms of character analysis for my boy. In part, I am really making this long ass unnecessary post just to get my thoughts down about how to even portray Charles moving into the future.

I have always been a very unwavering member of team Charles in the messy Charles-Erik divorce saga. I have made other posts about Charles major character flaw, but by in large Charles main motivations were for the good of human and mutant kind alike. And on a gross scale this still holds true in light of XMDP. But things got COMPLICATED man. This film threw Charles in a new light. We already knew that Charles had been altering Jeans mind in XM Last Stand, but he still more or less came out to be the good guy put up to the impossible task of trying to rein in the destructive force of the dark phoenix. He was, in essence, tasked with trying to put the ocean in a box. He may have gone about it in an ethically grey (pun intended) way, but he still came out to be a good guy with honest intentions of trying to help Jean, and even trying to protect the world FROM Jean.

But man, oh MAN does Charles look to be the main villain in XMDP. When I was watching, I was disgusted with his actions, and rightfully so. The film does a good job painting him as despicable, at least for the majority of the film. The main difference plot-wise between Last Stand and Dark Phoenix is that in XMDP, Charles alters Jeans memories BEFORE she is venom’ed by the spooky dark phoenix energy. In last stand, Charles always knew that Jean was capable of darkness, like an alter ego vying for control that he had to fight against. In XMDP, yes, Jean is still the most powerful mutant, like, EVER (get rekt en sabah nur), but she doesn’t adopt the dark phoenix personality (if you can call wanting to boink her boyfriend a ‘personality change’) until she is inhabited by the space junk. The chronic tension before the events of XMDP isn’t Jean struggling with a dark alter ego, but merely just trying to come to terms with the shear amount of power she has. She can’t control her powers because they are simply too strong to be contained.

So that begs the question… how does altering her memories and LYING to Jean help her with the chronic tension of the movie? How does altering the memory of her parents help her control her powers? Well, it doesn’t really. And this is where we diverge. This is why Charles in Last Stand comes off much cleaner than in XMDP.

So, we have to address the question, why the hell did Charles do it then? In essence, Charles doesn’t alert her memories to HELP Jean necessarily. I mean you could make the weak argument that Charles did it to protect Jean from the guilt of knowing she killed her mother, and that her father wants nothing to do with her, but even the film seems to think that this is a weak answer at best. For that matter, why does Charles not alter the memory of every child at the school with a hard to swallow past? How can he preach accepting the past to make you stronger when he turns around and makes Jean forget hers just so she doesn’t have to feel sad about her parents?

This is where it gets complicated. We all know that Charles puts everything with a pulse in the dad zone. Raven, Scott, this blue kid with a tail, this guy with memory problems who is hundreds of years older than Charles, yeah sure, throw them in the mix. But none fill the family sized hole in Charles’ life better than Jean. Charles sees so much of himself in Jean that he cannot separate himself from her identity. To Charles, Jean is not necessarily her own person, but an extension of his own consciousness, of how he relates to himself and his past (sounding familiar?? Perhaps reminding you of a whole movie devoted to Charles realizing that his surrogate sister is her own damn person??). When Charles meets Jean, he doesn’t see a girl who needs to overcome her past and accept what she is capable of for better or worse. More than anything, Charles sees the opportunity to give this struggling, lonely child what he wished he had. He puts himself into the role of father, caregiver, sole confidant. He attempts to erase her traumatic childhood and set her on a different path, the path that he thinks is best for her because it is what would have been best for him.

Again, we see Charles exhibit his fatal flaw. For someone with access to every person’s perspective, he cannot see past his own damn ego. Charles sees the people in his life, Erik, Raven, Jean, as players that he can control. And Charles is stubborn with a capital S. He is an unwinning combination: he has the perspective of someone who is extremely privileged with the notion that he genuinely knows exactly what everyone is going through. That he has observed everyone’s truth exactly as it is without his own privileged filter.

This is what kills Raven (other than Jennifer Lawrence’s absolute disdain for the series). Charles will not listen to anyone, convinced that he is a good person, and that he ultimately does what is best for those around him. When Raven brings her concerns to him, he dismisses her time and time again. And when Raven dies and Hank confronts him, he is STILL convinced that he did what is best for Jean, despite the obvious truth that he was WRONG. Full stop. If Jean had been allowed to process her past with her powers, she could have been able to have some element of control over her powers even after she is inhabited by the dark phoenix juice. He simply cannot believe that his actions set in motion the events that kill his sister. And so he comes across as extremely disingenuous and ignorant, like a child thinking pulling a rug over the broken lamp will make it go away. In short, he looks like a big bald idiot.

And I’m not convinced Charles has really learned his lesson. To be honest, I don’t remember exactly what changed Charles’ mind other than Erik deciding he’s going to ’86 Jean. And Erik calls Charles on it (it is always a treat when Erik bitchslaps Charles with reality). Until Charles realizes that the people in his life are their own people, he will never understand. And all of his pontification will fall on empty ears.

I’m not even going to get into Charles clout chasing and basically being an attention whore for the American government, because I do think this comes from a genuine place of wanting mutants to be seen as saviors instead of threats. It does humanize Charles to some degree; we are all victim to loosing our heads when it comes to fame and attention yadda yadda etc.

So, where to go from here? Well, Charles basically has a lot of ‘splaining to do when it comes to his future in the XMCU. I’m rejecting canon that he retires from the school, despite how cute his little chess match with Erik is. This seems like a cop out, dismissing Charles from the main x men plot lines instead of dealing with his ongoing character development. And understandably so, no one wants another movie devoted to Charles learning how to not be a dickbag. Well, except me I guess.

Here’s how I see his development going forward: we all know Charles has a lot to make up for. Step one is swallowing his damn ego and seeing the world from a different viewpoint. Charles has to rebuild the trust placed in him by Hank, Jean, his whole damn school, in essence his family. Charles is no longer the infallible patriarch, the almighty, almost deification of a father figure. This façade has been ripped away, and he must learn to accept this new way of perceiving himself in the world.

OKAY well that’s all I have to say for now. If you actually managed to read all of this, holy shit why but also thank you and I hope it made one iota of sense. Feel free to message me and talk more about it, because I don’t think my thoughts on the matter are fully realized and I would love to further develop the subject. Until then lovlies!

#;; ooc #;; character meta #Charles Xavier #charles xavier rp #x men dark phoenix

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