#Especially if I finally manage to pull Black Grail by then

[azuregold]

I keep seeing people talk about Izou’s bond CE and I want to read it so badly, but I don’t want to look at it on a wiki, I want to read it when I get there myself. And I want to get there with active play, not backline bond farming, so it’s probably going to take a long, long time, because as much as I love him, I have enough good options that I don’t take him to much besides Rider/Berserker enemies. I’ve been using him for a year and he’s not even bond 7 yet. How.

(Also I hate the idea of not using him once he gets to b10, but I also hate missing out on bond points. On the other hand, if I give him a lantern, I’ll then feel obligated to rush him to b11 if I don’t want to “waste” SQ, and then it’ll be the same cycle again and again until he gets to b15…I’m currently going through this with Emiya and Ozy, so I’m speaking from experience)

#It feels so good every time I use him though #especially now that he's NP5 #Max grails + Tamamo + Waver + L100 HNS + maxed Arctic = stupid high damage for a 3* #especially against humanoids but tbh he does pretty good even outside his niche #I can't wait to see what he'll do with Castoria next year #Especially if I finally manage to pull Black Grail by then #Seriously it's been over a year and a half and no copies #Where are they all hiding? #Fate/Grand Order #Okada Izou

[xu-ren]

A Kinder End

Genre: Fluff and angst

Pairings: Diarmuid (Fate/Zero) x reader

Wordcount: 2000+

My requests and askbox are open, so pretty please don't be shy.

Masterpost

*~*~*

“Lancer, prepare yourself! I can’t hold this spell for long.” Lancer readied himself at [Name]’s words. “God of the North wind, Boreas, God of the East wind, Eurus, God of the South wind, Notus, God of the East wind, Zephyus, Your faithful servant besieged you to lend get your strength so that she may vanquish her mighty foe!”

The wind tore her hair away from her usual bun, letting it whip freely around her. Had it been any other time, Lancer would have appreciated the sight of her unbound black tress. As it was, the wind she summoned started to clear a path to Caster. Lancer tensed up as her wind went closer and closer to Caster. ‘Come on…Just a bit more…’ Just as Lancer caught a glimpse of Caster, her spell failed and she collapsed.

“My lady…!” Luckily, he managed to catch her just before she hit the ground and lowered her down gently. Saber and Rider, who had stopped their assault on Caster when [Name] started her spell, prepared to resume their assault on Caster. Rider offered to buy them time to think of another plan to defeat Caster as [Name]’s plan had failed. Lancer didn’t hesitate to break Gáe Buidhe so that Saber could defeat Caster. His number one priority was to get [Name] to safety now that she was unconscious and vulnerable. However, he had to ensure that Caster was defeated first so he stood at the water’s edge cradling [Name] carefully as he watched Saber defeat Caster.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Lancer laid [Name] down as gently as possible at an abandoned building. It was unfortunately the best place that he could find for now.

“Lan…cer?”

“My lady!” *Her eyes narrowed for a brief moment before they relaxed again. It was a testament to her weariness that she didn’t even bother to correct him.

“Where are we?” “An abandoned building, my lady. I apologise, it was the best…” Lancer trailed off as [Name] raised a hand to silence him. They both kept silent as [Name]’s eyes darted around, absorbing every minute detail of their surroundings.

“Diarmuid, where’s Gáe Buidhe?”

“I…broke it so that Saber could defeat Caster. I apolo…” This time, [Name] pushed herself up and placed a finger upon Lender’s lips to silence him. They stayed as they were for what seemed to be an eternity until [Name] collapsed upon Lancer’s chest. What meagre strength she had accumulated from her brief rest had been spent.

“You are apologising a lot today, aren’t you, Diarmuid?” asked [Name], her tone mildly scolding.

“I apolo-“

“You are doing it again, Diarmuid. You have no reason to apologise to me, after all, you merely did what you thought was best at that moment. Besides, we are a team, not master and servant.”

By the end of her short speech, her voice was scarcely a whisper. If not for their proximity, he would have never heard it.

“My lady…”

Suddenly, Lancer tensed up and he tightened his hold on [Name].

“Diarmuid?”

“Someone’s here.”

“Go, Diarmuid.”

“My lady…”

“Go on, I await your return.”

“Yes, my lady.”

He hated to leave [Name] alone, especially when she was so vulnerable but he couldn’t disobey her either.He wasn’t very surprised when it was Saber who met him in the courtyard of the abandoned building. At the very least, they would finally be able to finish their battle.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

She watched from her spot as the two servants fought it out. Such honourable warriors, there were no one more deserving of the title ‘Heroic Spirits. She was glad to have met them despite her reluctance to enter this war in the first place.

Suddenly, a shadow was casted upon her and she looked up to see Kiritsugu pointing a gun at her. 

“Mr. Kiritsugu, how…expected,” she whispered quietly as her lips formed a small, wry smile. 

He put his finger to his lips in the universal gesture of silence. She cocked her head to the side. In response, Kiritsugu hands her a scroll.

‘A Self-Geas Scroll. A magical item used by Magi to form an unbreakable contract. Binding spell… Affected Party: Emiya Kiritsugu. The Emiya family crest orders the following. The pledge is to be observed by the affected party upon fulfilment of the conditions described herein. Pledge: Kiritsugu, son of Norikata and the fifth descendant of the House of Emiya, will be forever forbidden from harming or intending to harm, [Name] [Middle Name] [Last Name]. Condition…’

 After reading the scroll, she looked at Kiritsugu searchingly. She gathered the magick stored at the amulet around her neck before speaking into his mind. To his credit, he didn’t even flinch. In fact, the only outwardly respond he showed was the slight widening of his eyes.

‘I won’t do it.’

Kiritsugu responded by pulling the safety of his gun.

‘After all, it doesn’t matter, does it? You are going to kill me either way. A master without a servant can form a pact with another servant and you can ill afford that.’

For a moment, she thought that she saw a shadow of surprise pass through Kiritsugu’s face.

‘Kill me, Emiya Kiritsugu. Let me be but another life you sacrificed in your quest to save the world. However, will you listen to this girl’s final wish?’

He lowered his gun slightly and she took it as her cue to continue.

‘Ensure that my death isn’t instant.’

This time, she definitely saw the surprise on his face. She smirked. It was a highly unusual wish as most people hoped for the opposite.

‘I wish to say farewell to Lancer.’

He nodded and shot her in the aorta, ensuring that it gazed the aorta so that she would bleed out in 5 minutes.

‘Thank you.’

The gunshot rang across the abandoned building.

Lancer’s head whipped towards the direction where the gunshot came from so fast that he gave himself whip splash. He immediately abandoned his stalemate with Saber when he saw that the gunshot came from where he had left [Name].

“My lady!” 

He raced towards her, hoping against hope that she wasn’t shot. His heart had never been filled with such rage as when he saw her bleeding from where he left her with Emiya Kiritsugu standing over her holding a gun. He readied his lance to slay the miscreant who dared to harm his lady.

“Diarmuid!”

Her voice was authoritative and they had been together long enough to know that she wanted him to stand down. He tore his gaze from where he was glaring at Kiritsugu to look at her. He barely registered the shocked gasps of Saber behind him.

Her right hand on her chest was stained with blood while she used her left hand to gesture for him to come to her side. He approached her while keeping Kiritsugu in his line of sight. As he got closer, Kiritsugu backed away to give them some privacy.

He dropped down on his knees next to her as she smiled at him. Her face was paler than he had ever seen and that only makes the blood on her lips stand out even more starkly. He held her gently and lowered her carefully to not aggravate her wound so that her head rested on his knees in hopes of making her more comfortable.

***His clothes changed to the daily wear that [Name] had bought for him and he made to tear it apart to make some makeshift bandages.

“Lea…ve it.”

“My lady…”

“Leave. It.” 

“My lady, I can see the blood on your clothes.”

She opened her mouth to answer him but more blood merely dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. Instead, she spoke into his mind.

*‘Is that so? I will find even darker clothes next time then.’

She tilted her head to the scroll resting innocently at her side so he picked it up and read it. His eyes widened with understanding as he read it.

“My lady! You should have let me die.”

 ‘Do I seem like such a heartless person to you, Diarmuid? I would never even think of sacrificing another’s life for mine.’

“I don’t mean to insult you, my lady, but I have already died once.”

‘It doesn’t matter. Kiritsugu had no intentions of allowing me to live either way.’

“But…”

“My servant. By her Command Seal, [Name] [Middle Name] [Last Name] orders you, Lancer, to not take revenge upon…” she coughed, causing blood to bubble out of her mouth. “Emiya Kiritsugu or anyone else that you hold responsible for her death.”

“My lady!”

“By my Command Seal, I order you to return to the spirit world upon my death. And by my Command Seal, I order you to not form a pact with another master for the duration of the 4th Holy Grail War.”

More blood spilt from mouth and her face was bone white.

“My lady! How can you possibly expect me to do such things?”

‘You will do it, either because I commanded you or as a deathbed promise to me. And no more of that my lady nonsense, I have used up all three Command Seals and therefore am no longer your master. Call me [Name] at least once before I go, please?’

“My…[Name].”

A wide, genuine smile spread across her face and suddenly, she looked as if she was full of life despite the blood seeping out of her. Using the last of her strength, she spoke into the minds of Diarmuid and Kiritsugu respectively.

‘Don’t despair. Let’s meet again in another life, Diarmuid.’

‘The ends don’t justify the means, Emiya Kiritsugu.’

Lancer’s heart clenched as she raised her right hand to stroke his face, her eyes memorizing every feature of his face hungrily before her hand fell and her eyes closed for all eternity.

“[Name]…! [Name]…! Please…come back…!”

He rocked back and forth while holding her tightly to him, his lithe body wracked with sobs. He brushed her hair from her face and the memory of brilliant smile she had gifted him with when he called her by name only made him sob harder. If he knew how happy it would have made her, he would have called her by name more often, propriety be damned. If only he had disobeyed her and stayed with her, she would still be alive.

How could life be this cruel? She was a powerful magus with a bright future ahead of her and suddenly, it was gone. She was no more than another life lost during the Holy Grail War. 

How desperately he wanted to take revenge for her death and yet her words bound her. He couldn’t bear to disappoint her, even in death.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

*

“My lady, why are all your clothes black?” Diarmuid was curious, never had he seen a woman who wore nothing but black.

“Black is my favourite colour. Besides, doesn’t it look good on me?” she asked as she gave a little twirl.

Black did look good on her. It emphasised the paleness of her skin and made her eyes look bigger. Her lips, painted black as well stood out starkly against her pale skin. It also made her look slender and intimidating despite her diminutive height.

“Finally, you can’t really see blood on me if I’m wearing black, right?”

“My lady!”

“Kidding… Don’t be so uptight, Diarmuid,” said [Name] while giggling.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

**

“Diarmuid.”

“Yes, my lady?”

“Stop calling me ‘my lady’. I have already said it many times but we are a team and therefore equals. Call me [Name].”

“I’m afraid that I can’t do so, my lady. It would be highly improper to call you by your name.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*

***

“Diarmuid, do you have nothing else to wear?”

“I’m afraid that this is my only outfit, my lady.”

“Well, you certainly can’t go out like that. Let’s go shopping.”

“My lady, there’s …there’s no need to trouble yourself!”

“It’s no trouble at all. Besides, I have been wanting to explore the shops here anyways. How about this? You be my bag carrier for the day and I buy you an outfit as a thank you present?”

“Al…Alright, my lady.”

(Time skip)

“So, so? What do you think?”

“You have good taste, my lady.”

“Of course.”

Lancer couldn’t help but admire his outfit that consist of a dark green shirt, black pants and black shoes paired with a black vest in the mirror. 

“As a bonus, we match too,” said [Name] as she gave a twirl in her black dress with dark green embellishments.

#fate zero #fate #fate series #fgo #fgo na #fate diarmuid #lancer diarmuid #diarmuid ua duibhne #diarmuid #diarmuid x reader #fgo imagines #fate imagines

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

He Could Be the One

(Part Two of the Hannah Montana au that nobody asked for but that’s actually really fun to write)

---

Geralt slips into the alleyway behind the venue and clambers his way onto a pile of empty boxes outside the star’s green room. If he can’t take Jaskier to see Dandelion then he can certainly take an exclusive picture of Dandelion to give Jaskier. Hopefully his unrequited crush would be one step closer to, well, requiting things.

When Geralt finally reaches the top of the pile and peeks in through the window, though, that plan goes to shit. He watches with wide, shocked amber eyes as Dandelion removes what is, apparently, a heavily styled blonde wig. Underneath the disguise is a shock of messy, chestnut brown hair.

When Dandelion turns around to face the window again, his makeup removed and his wig clutched in his hand, Geralt gasps in shock and loses his grip on the rough bricks of the windowsill. 

“Fuck!” he cries, falling backwards onto his ass in the alley. The camera he’d rented from the school newspaper goes hurtling off into the darkness, probably broken. 

He knows that face. He knows that soft-looking brown hair.

Dandelion and Jaskier are one in the same.

A moment after he hits the ground, the venue’s back door bursts open and Jaskier glances around, brows furrowed with worry. “Hello? Are you okay out here?”

“Hnnn...” Geralt groans, rubbing the spot on his hip where his body had first connected with the ground. He knows it’s going to bruise; if this is even really happening. It feels like a dream. Like something that only happens on the Disney channel but never in real life (this cannot be real life). If it does bruise well...holy fucking shit, Jaskier is a pop star.

“G-Geralt!?” Jaskier glances between his classmate, still laying sprawled against the dirty asphalt of the alley in a state of apparent catatonia, and the wig still clutched in his hand. “Well shit.”

“You-you’re-” he gawks, pointing up at Jaskier. You know, like an idiot. “You’re Dandelion!”

“Ta da?” Jaskier half-smiles. The slender brunette is clearly exhausted from the show he’s just put on and now he looks anxious on top of it. Seeing just how vulnerable and scared Jaskier seems, Geralt’s heart melts in his chest. It always melts when he sees the cute junior; he’s had a crush on the other boy for months. Ever since he’d transferred into Geralt’s English class. 

The same junior who is, apparently, an internationally recognized pop sensation with a net worth somewhere in the millions. 

“G...Geralt?” Jaskier asks again, waving his hand in front of the older boy’s face. “Hello?”

“You’re uh...” Geralt is trying desperately to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth so he can fucking say something and stop staring like a fool. “Holy shit, you’re Dandelion. That’s why you’re always humming his - your songs between classes, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“I think I broke the school’s only camera,” Geralt says, gesturing out into the darkness. “But it was worth it.”

“Want to come sit in my green room and chat? My manager is probably going to want you to sign an NDA or some shit,” Jaskier sighs. “I don’t know. I’ll let him handle it. I’m too tired. That was fun, but I’m exhausted. And hungry.”

“I’m so sorry.” It’s the only thing Geralt can think to say as he stands up and dusts himself off. He hadn’t meant to encroach on such an enormous and personal secret; he’d just wanted a gift for... “I was trying to take a picture of Dandelion to give to this guy at school that I like.”

“Oh yeah?” Jaskier smiles, leading Geralt into the warmth of the green room. The shorter boy takes a seat on a very comfortable looking couch and pats the cushion next to him. “Come sit, I don’t bite.”

The nervous senior lowers himself onto the couch as if he’s afraid it might come alive and eat him. His ass is perched on the very edge; ready to take flight at any moment if necessary. “It was going to be a gift for him. His name is uh, it’s Jaskier.”

“What?”

“I thought you were busy tonight,” Geralt gestures vaguely towards the wig, “Although I didn’t think it would be anything like this. Since you couldn’t be here with me, I was going to take a one-of-a-kind candid picture of Dandelion as a gift for you.” 

“That’s incredibly sweet, Geralt,” the pop-star croons, placing a casual hand on his classmate’s knee. Geralt is very, very close to swooning (which he will never admit out loud). 

“Am I going to be in trouble?”

“No. Probably not. Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“I’d never do anything to hurt you or break your trust, Jask.”

The young pop icon smiles, ducks his head, and blushes. Geralt has never been happier before in his entire fucking life.

---

Dandelion has a show two towns over the following weekend. Jaskier gives Geralt a free ticket (complete with a backstage pass) and begs him to come along and see some kind of ‘cool surprise’. The senior is flabbergasted, holding the laminated papers in his hands as if they’re the holy grail. 

They might as well be.

---

“So I’ve got a new album coming out,” Dandelion announces towards the end of his set. “And since you’ve been such a wonderful and rowdy crowd, I think you deserve a sneak peek. What do you think?”

The audience’s response is nearly deafening. Geralt’s chest is being crushed against a black metal barrier by a wave of other giddy teens but he doesn’t give a shit. He wants to be as close to the stage as possible; he could wake up from this dream at any moment and he really wants to enjoy it until then.

“This one is for my homecoming date,” Dandelion states. He shoots a quick wink in Geralt’s direction and the senior’s heart stops rather suddenly in his chest. 

Jaskier is waiting for him to answer. To give him the affirmative. To reassure him that his declaration has been met with with agreement. 

Geralt nods subtly and watches the pop star’s beautiful, bright blue eyes light up with joy. “Alright!”

The beat picks up quickly and Dandelion is lost to the music. After every few words he glances surreptitiously in Geralt’s direction and the white-haired high schooler realizes rather suddenly how exciting this really is. A fucking millionaire pop star is masquerading as a regular kid at his high school. The kid he’s had a quiet crush on for quite some time. A kid that likes him back. Dandelion starts to sing and Geralt is jolted out of his thoughts by the pointed lyrics. 

“Smooth-talking. So rocking. He's got everything that a guy's wanting. Guitar cutie, He plays it groovy; And I can't keep myself from doing something stupid...”

---

When the show is over and Geralt is alone with Jaskier/Dandelion backstage, the younger boy steps forward and reaches out tentatively. Geralt takes his hand and twines their fingers together comfortably. Confidently. “So, would you perhaps be interested in being my boyfriend?”

“Which one of you?” Geralt teases.

“Both. You  might be in some tabloids. Gay celebrities are, unfortunately, still kind of a novelty. Especially young ones.”

“This isn’t fair,” Geralt whispers. 

“What’s not fair?” Jaskier replies, sounding panicked. Geralt pulls Jaskier and releases their clasped hands to embrace him tightly.  

“How am I supposed to impress you with a cool prom-posal if you ask me to homecoming like that?” he grumbles, “It’s not fair. I’m not a rich, hot pop star. At best you’re getting a public display of devotion and affection and at worst you’re getting dinner from McDonald’s.”

“You think I’m hot!?” Jaskier giggles, the rest of the context only slightly less important somehow. His fingers grip the front of Geralt’s shirt and the older boy barely resists the urge to shudder. He’s never really been this close to someone before and he really likes it. Especially since it’s Jaskier. Then the younger boy shocks him again by going off on a tangential monologue.“You’re insane if you think I’m the hot one in this potential relationship! You have the softest looking naturally white hair I’ve ever seen. Your shoulders are fucking beautiful and if you murdered me by suffocating me with your pecs then I would die a very happy guy.”

When Jaskier looks up into Geralt’s face he sees that the older boy is blushing furiously and desperately trying to avoid any kind of eye contact. His hand on Jaskier’s waist twitches anxiously. Aw, he’s shy! 

“I can’t wait for homecoming,” Geralt finally mutters. 

“I can’t wait for you to shut up and kiss me.”

“Really?”

Jaskier, the international pop star and millionaire, leans up onto the tips of his bedazzled converse and smiles. “Yeah. I would really like it if you kissed me.”

Geralt, the shy high school senior with an interest in photojournalism, presses their lips together slowly. Jaskier’s hand finds its way into Geralt’s hair and tangles there comfortably. Geralt’s hand squeezes against the younger man’s soft, slender hip. He lets himself feel a touch of velvet-soft skin here and there as Jaskier’s shirt rides up or moves along with them.

They stay wrapped up in each other like that until Dandelion’s manager knocks on the door. He calls through the door. “Well you’re going to have to sign some paperwork if you want to be his boyfriend for real.”

Jaskier bites his lip and looks at Geralt with nervous anticipation written across his face. 

Geralt smiles and pulls Jaskier close again. “Where’s the pen?”

#geraskier fanfic #geraskier fic #geraskier ficlet #geraskier #geraskier hannah montana au #hannah montana au??? #jaskier as hannah montana #geralt is having a good time #soft geralt #soft jaskier #soft geraskier #shy geralt #journalist geralt #high school au #witcher high school au #witcher hannah montana au apparently #he could be the one

[rexcoatlarchive]

Such a thing as too much love (rewrite)

After receiving some criticism and advice and taking a look back at Quetz in game I've decided to rewrite this story. I'm leaving the other one alone for comparisons sake.

Palingenesis was a unique ritual chaldea used to help improve the servants and help them reach their fullest. The process caps out at what would be considered lvl 100 but it was never said whether or not that was truly the maximum.

Rex, in his deep love for his wife, had already helped her achieve the maximum for both her rider and ruler forms. But he always considered the possibility of going further. He wanted his goddess of a wife to go even further beyond her limits in this fight to save humanity.

Quetzalcoatl on the other hand saw the idea as him picking favorites. She thought it wasn't right and would rather prioritize grailing others to help. He wasn't afraid to admit that he really was biased, but that it only made sense, she was his wife so why shouldn't he treat her better.

Eventually after enough convincing she finally agreed on the condition that he only use 1 more grail, and any others would be used for other servants. Rex was fine with this, since she would go beyond 100 but others would still cap off at 100.

Quetz: mi amor, I understand that you love me very much. But it still doesn't feel right for you to spoil me in this way.

Rex: I understand mi corazon, but what kind of husband would I be if I don't spoil you once in a while.

Quetz: even if you did, I rather other forms of spoiling. Like setting up another lucha match like before.

Rex: we can do that another time. Now it's time for you to go beyond!

The ritual was being done in the couple's room rather then where it was traditionally done, as it wasn't allowed to try to go beyond the maximum. It also took a large amount of concentration, which was not Rex's strong suit.

Quetz: since you're doing it anyways, make sure you concentrate as hard as you can. You know you're not that good at it, your mind wanders too much.

Rex: I understand, and I will make sure it goes without a hitch!

He would be unable to do this however. As he was focusing, he couldn't help but get excited at the idea of a stronger Quetzalcoatl, this would cause him to botch the ritual and lead to the creation of something very interesting.

Rex: here goes nothing!

As he said this the grail glowed a bright white color and then light filled the room, before subsiding revealing the couple to be left on the floor.

Rex: oooohh, Quetz are you good?

Quetz: si. What about you mi amor?

Rex: I'm fine, what happ-

But before he could finish this thought the two noticed the new presence in the room. Another female servant, who looked remarkably similar to the floored sun goddess.

Quetz: eh?! Who are you?!

The other Quetzalcoatl stood there, with a more aggressive demeanor. Her smile was far more toothy then the original, her skin a pale snow white. Her headdress consisting mostly of feathers, her clothing colored an obsidian black and her choice of weaponry, a large spear rather then the sword the original wielded.

???: I'm you, pendeja!

Her words felt different from how the original would've spoken. They felt like the words of someone trying to start a fight. Her eyes shined a sharp gold color, and were slit like those of a snake's. When she opened her mouth a forked tongue could be seen, flickering like a snake's.

Quetz stood up, ready to fight if need be, but prioritized protecting her beloved master. She stood in front of Rex to keep him safe.

Quetz: mi amor! Stay behind me! We don't know who she is or what she'll do

The other one was clearly annoyed by this, when she looked at the original Quetzalcoatl her eyes stared daggers, she clearly wanted to start fighting the original. But when her eyes met those of the master they dilated like a cat seeing their prey, she seemed to harbor genuine affection towards him. It seemed to be something that carried over from the original.

???: you trying to keep master away from me is really irritating other me. Things would go smoother if you learned to share.

Quetz: I don't know what you mean by "other me" but I do know I won't let you get to my master.

???: isn't it obvious? Do you not remember Christmas? Or do you need another lucha match to help jog the memories?!

The other goddess spoke in a very aggressive manner. She was like a heel wrestler in WWE, or a Ruda as they would be called in lucha libre. She wanted to fight, she loved the idea. Especially with the original. Perhaps it was a way to show dominance.

Quetz: are you telling me you're Black Quetzal mask?

???: close enough, I have the memories of her from that Christmas. But I'm so much more this time around.

Rex: so did I end up splitting you like before?

Quetz: I don't think so, I don't feel any different. Maybe that's what she means by more?

???: exactly! Now you're getting it other me! I'm the new aggressive ruda Quetzalcoatl! Tho I guess another name would be more fitting? Hmmm, how about Kulkucan!?

Rex: the mayan feathered serpent? The one far more ok with the sacrifices and acted more like a war goddess?

Kuku: that's exactly right! My how smart mi amor!

She spoke to Rex in a far more kind manner then towards the original, she almost felt like the original gentler version when speaking to him. It was clear she seemed to want to be with him, but Quetzalcoatl wasn't having it.

Quetz: you don't have the right to call him that! Es mi esposo! Not yours!

Kuku: I knew you'd be like this! I was ready for a fight! Now we can have a real lucha match, no holding back!

Quetz: fine by me!

Rex: wait! Not here! You'll wreck the room!

Quetz: he's right, we're better off doing this somewhere else.

Kuku: fine by me! Anywhere's fine, I'll kick your ass regardless!

But as this was being said, the door opened

Mash: hey senpai! Da Vinci needs to ta- what the!? Whose that?!

Rex: it seems we've stumbled upon a Quetzalcoatl alter.

Mash: how do you stumble upon an alter in your room?

As she said this she noticed the grail on the floor

Mash: senpai! Did you try to use palingenesis more then what's allowed?!

Rex: ...maybe

Quetz: wait is that why?! Did you not concentrate?!

Rex: I was trying to but I guess my mind wandered. I didn't think this would happen tho!

Mash: it seems like you accidentally did the same thing Gilles and Medb did in their respective singularities.

Rex: not sure how to feel about those comparisons.

Mash: now what do we do?!

As this was happening Kulkucan took the opportunity to try and steal away the master, but Quetzalcoatl managed to grab him before she could make off with him.

Quetz: please let go of him! *she says as she starts to pull*

Kuku: I don't think so! He's mine now! *she pulls in her direction*

Quetz: like I'll let that happen! You're hurting him anyways so stop!

Kulkucan reluctantly conceded, if there was one thing she didn't want to do it was hurting Rex.

Kuku: ugh fine! *she says as she let's go of him*

This action lead to Rex and Quetzalcoatl falling over.

Mash: senpai are you ok?!

Rex: I'm fine

The alter stared daggers at the original again, annoyed that she had to let go

Mash: I think we need to get the others involved.

Later the group were in the command room. When Da Vinci was informed of what had happened, she was annoyed.

Da Vinci: you see stuff like this is why we cap it off at 100. And why we have a special facility for the ritual in the first place!

Rex: I'm sorry!

Quetz: ...si, I'm sorry too.

Da Vinci: what the hell are we going to do with the 2nd Quetzalcoatl.

Kuku: there's nothing to do! Just let us have our lucha match! Winner takes Rex!

Quetz: like I'd ever agree to those terms!

Kuku: ha! Afraid of losing!?

Quetz: I won't risk my marriage on a single lucha match! Regardless of how confident I am of victory!

Kuku: that just proves you don't think you can handle it!

Rex: that's enough you two! Please stop this, you don't need to fight so much!

Quetz: I'm sorry mi amor! I guess the idea of losing you riled me up too much!

She says this while hugging Rex, though it seemed that Kulkucan had something to say about this.

Kuku: don't hog all the love for yourself!

Now she started to try and hug him, leading to pushing and shoving from the two goddesses.

Da Vinci: cut it out! You might hurt him!

This lead to the two to stop what they were doing. It seemed that their master's safety was of the utmost importance to the both of them.

Both: sorry.

Da Vinci: Rex, you have to decide what to do. You caused this so now decide how to resolve it.

Rex: I mean, I'm not sure what to do. I know Quetz doesn't like Kuku. But she's a lot like Quetz, just more aggressive, so getting rid of her sounds wrong too.

The two goddesses didn't like that the situation frustrated their master, so they did the unexpected.

Quetz: ...well, I guess I can deal with her for your sake.

Rex: are you sure?

Quetz: si... I don't Ike sharing but you don't have to get rid of her.

Kuku: and I won't try fighting her so much, for your sake. It's the least I can do.

Rex: well I guess that's fine.

Da Vinci: well another servant joining isn't too bad.

Mash: what's her clas anyways? Is she a rider?

Kuku: I'm actually a Lancer! If you couldn't tell from my spear.

Rex: now we have 3 classes for Quetz! Interesting.

There's the rewrite. Hopefully I did a better job of keeping the original Quetz feeling more like herself and Kulkucan feeling more aggressive.

Tagging again

@panyum @hasereshdoneanythingwrong @haspaulbunyandoneanythingwrong @gxymlky @hasishtardoneanythingwrong @grievouslyxorvia @hasabbydoneanythingwrong @castlecsejtespeakertechnician

#fate grand order #quetzalcoatl #wife #mash kyrielight #rex #rexcoatl #kukulcan #leonardo da vinci

[barefoot-pianist]

Les Mis – Sondheim Theatre (New Production) – 28/01/20

** HUGE HUGE SPOILER ALERT! CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED**

**second disclaimer: it is nearly half midnight and I’ve been on the go since 5:30am, please forgive rambling, meta commentary to myself, and bad grammar. I just wanted to get this all out whilst it was still fresh**

General

YES the new staging was 90% a hit. I liked it. It was great to see Les Mis performed in a radically different way, I think, and enough was kept (like, for example, the basic structure of One Day More) that it didn’t feel totally alien and I didn’t miss the turntable all that much?. The opening scene is now on a ship, rather than in a mine. More on specific stagings below.

THE. SET. WAS. BEAUTIFUL. There is literally no other word for it. The original Les Mis set is quite minimalist, I think, whereas this one was lush – heavily centred on the idea of houses, which really gave more of a feel to the Paris streets. They had tenements and posh houses, the barricade was still huge, don’t worry, and they had a staircase which was in the café and the Thenardiers’ inn, etc. The scale really worked as well – like in Who Am I, the courtroom felt enormous as opposed to the little mobile thing they had before.

A preface to this point is that I don’t think I’m the right person to offer a critical commentary on race & the cast of Les Mis, but I think it is worth flagging – will 100% defer to folks with more experience/expertise. There were four black cast members – Éponine, Gavroche, and two of the chorus, which is way more than I’ve ever seen in the West End in this damn show. I’m under no illusions that Les Mis in the UK hasn’t got a bit of a problem with race. It is slowly inching its way better – when the Bishop came out and he was black right at the beginning I had a moment of “finally? Are they finally doing this right?” but the diversity wasn’t quite as much as I’d hoped. Especially as in my head, I’ve developed a huge, very multi-racial dream cast for the show, so…yeah. I’d love to see some of the characters who always get played by white people played by folks of colour – Enjolras, for example, Grantaire, Valjean himself. Or have both Éponine and Cosette be not white? For once? This would be great? Please let me know what you all think?? (this is West-End specific, I know there have been some productions working on this elsewhere).

The general mood seemed a bit darker? More violent? Perhaps that was the updated lights and set, idk, but more fake blood abounded I felt, and yeah – more actual deliberate fight scenes. It worked, ngl, the world feels like it’s gotten to a darker place, and the new Les Mis reflects that in a way, doesn’t gloss over the violence. Again, I think more thinking will let me know what I actually think about this, but we’ll see.

ONTO SPECIFIC CHARACTERS & SCENES!

Valjean

·       Jon Robyns – he was brilliant, like, nearly as good as my holy grail (Killian Donnelly). Voice incredibly on-point – I’ve seen some Valjeans with really harsh voices which I don’t think fits the character – his Bring Him Home started so softly and gently and then really soared (until some twat decided to take a FLASH PHOTOGRAPH of him mid-song, whoever it was should have been ASHAMED of themselves).

·       He was so sweet with little Cosette! At the end of the curtain call, he and the actress had their own mini bow and then hugged, and he carried her off into the wings.

·       He really made more of Valjean’s physicality than other actors I’ve seen – perhaps to do with staging too – but his and Javert’s interactions were much more physical, violent, and in your face than they have been. It wasn’t OTT on his end I don’t think, but you definitely got the sense that he was trying to rein himself in and that the violence was still there? You know? But ofc NEVER towards Cosette or anyone unlike SOME adaptations I could mention (yes I am still bitter about the BBC trashfire, sorry to anyone who liked it but eh, imho, gross).

·       At the end, he and the Bishop have a hug in heaven! It was very sweet!

Javert

·       This is the second time I’ve seen Bradley Jaden in the role of Javert and I am a blessed human being (really want to take my Dad to see him too) because he has officially ruined every other Javert for me. Like ever. His characterisation feels very book Javert, very stern and uncompromising but more so than other Javerts, idk, it’s just his sheer stage presence as well, and his facial expressions and his general look…I can’t put my finger on it. He’s just phenomenal.

·       Stars was on this beautiful Parisian bridge (fake stone balustrade-style complete with four hanging lanterns) that came down from the flies, incredible backdrop, and he just brought the house down again.

·       Ngl – they have him actually holding a legit chain during the Confrontation and maybe I’ve read too much ship fic, but it certainly gives a whole new dimension to the line “Msieur le maire, you’ll wear a different chain!” Also especially as the Confrontation was so much more physical as well, they were properly fighting each other instead of just circling.

·       He was much more bloodied at the barricade, and there was this moment where he was being taken offstage as a prisoner and he’s on his knees in front of Enjolras, who’s very blonde hair is all you could see from where I was sitting, and they’re both in a spotlight, and the mood just really reminded me of the dynamic in the fic Les Hommes de la Misericorde by Kchan88 (which is great and you should read if you want to).

·       After the barricade, they incorporated that heartbreaking idea from the movie – Gavroche is lying dead in the front of the stage and Javert bends down to shut his eyes and crosses himself. There’s then a total reversal of the moment with Enjolras described above, but I’ll get to that in more detail in the Enjolras section.

·       In Javert’s Suicide, he did the complete breakdown thing again – which worked as he actually had blood on his face and long hair loose everywhere from the barricade scenes. Back on the pretty bridge, which split in two and he legit FLEW for the drowning scenes, so was thrashing suspended in midair as the lights and backdrop swirled around and behind him. That was something special.

Fantine

·       The one, the only, the Carrie Hope! She played a very understated Fantine? Which…I liked more than I thought I would? Like the voice came out at the end of I Dreamed a Dream, Lovely Ladies etc, but she was so…controlled? It perhaps felt odd after seeing her as Éponine and Veronica in Heathers where she let loose a lot more, but her Fantine just felt a little more mature, a little more resigned?

·       Her Fantine also gets put through the bloody wringer, jeez – the fight with the factory woman is much more physical (and when I say more physical, I actually think they were properly choreographed?) and with Bamabatois, who is just as grim but less slimy than the last actor I saw play him?

·       I’d kind of almost forgotten about her by the time she came out as a ghost at the end, but that bit was lovely, as it always is.

Éponine

·       Shan Ako was a scene stealer. Bloody hell she can sing – she put some pretty riffs in On My Own (small, but noticeable if you know the song) and her belting voice was unbelievable.

·       With the new set, you really get a feel of the Gorbeau tenement – she’s hanging around up there a bit. Also in Attack on the Rue Plumet, with the set the way it is (a house with a wrought iron balcony and a door, with the gate and fence extending out towards centre stage) you again get a feel for the scene in the book when Éponine basically says to her father and his gang that they’re dogs but she’s a wolf and she’s not afraid of them because she’s standing guarding the door with her arms wide…yeah, it really worked.

·       She and Gavroche are either friends or it’s a subtle nod to their siblinghood, as they fist bump right when Gav introduces Éponine.

·       On My Own was a tour de force – second standout of the night after Stars, for me.

·       Her A Little Fall of Rain was also gorgeous, and she had a real fizz with Marius, which was cute.

·       A rather large niggle – Shan Ako is black, and Young Éponine was white. Perhaps there was a last-minute emergency, but surely they could have got a little black actress to play Young Éponine? Idk, it just bothered me.

Cosette & Marius

·       Oh my god, Harry Apps as Marius – he Pontmercied around the place, and was so awkward and adorable! In Éponine’s errand, when he tried to go up the stairs, he banged into the set! During his bit in Red and Black he gets up on the staircase and starts full on declaiming, arms wide etc. His scene with Cosette in Heart Full of Love was gorgeous – he chucks a stone at her window, and she comes out, sees him, and disappears and he’s like “oh god I’m doing everything all wrong” and then she comes hurtling out of the front door instead and then stops and they stare at each other and it’s so cute! And then he’s just so self-conscious for the entire scene? And what’s so interesting is in the reprise at the end and the wedding, he’s so much more sure of himself – I really loved all the little nuances like that?

·       He’s also really young! He’s the complete unknown they cast off the open auditions for the UK tour, and he is bloody amazing – totally deserved that!

·       Lily Kerhoas was very charming as Cosette. I adore the character, but sometimes actresses play her too girly, which drives me a bit nuts, but she managed to pull off young/innocent/naïve/very soprano with a bit of practicality, heart, and edge. And there was a great moment when she and Éponine are both in the garden after, and getting that look in at each other without the gate in the way was really powerful.

·       Cosette and Marius had chemistry! It was lovely!

·       Empty Chairs – wow. So basically Turning (my underrated fave) was a range of women dressed in black who leave candles dotted all over the stage. Marius sings Empty Chairs surrounded by them, and (you guessed it) the dead Amis come in and all pick one up and Marius does too, and then they blow them out and leave and Marius is left holding the only lit one and blows it out then raises it like a toast and WOW MY FEELINGS WERE NOT PREPARED.

 Gavroche

·       This kid STOLE THE SHOW. LITERALLY. He was black too (like Éponine) and they had a proper little thing going, it felt like it really drew on the brother-sister Brick canon. He also felt very book-Gavroche, so cheeky and so serious at times.

·       They’ve changed his first set of lyrics in Look Down to be those from the movie, which…sure. Worked.

·       OKAY – in The Robbery, when Javert is like “everyone about your business/clear this garbage off the street” everyone scatters APART FROM GAV who’s pootling around behind Javert yelling “go on! You heard the man! Go away, even you!” and then when Javert turns to face him, Gav just does this irreverent little salute and saunters offstage and Javert just…lets him?? It was a FANTASTIC moment.

·       At the barricade when Gavroche busts Javert’s disguise, he goes right up to him and on “this only goes to show what little people can do” just cheerfully gives Javert a big old middle finger. Which was SO GREAT.

·       When Éponine is dying, he spends most of a little fall of rain loitering next to Marius and not really knowing what to do and my heart just BROKE.

·       He and Grantaire had a cute bromance going – after Drink With Me, when Grantaire nonverbally tells Enjolras to go fuck off and goes off to the side of the stage, Gavroche just goes over to him and starts hugging his back, and then they have a cuddle on the side of the stage together for Marius’ solo.

·       Because no turntable – Gav didn’t die alone on the other side of the barricade, he makes it just back to the top, gets shot with the bright white light (which they kept) and then just falls over into Enjolras’ arms, who then carries him down the barricade and puts him in Grantaire’s arms who just stands there, centre-stage, cradling a dead Gavroche for a few minutes before lying him down at the front of the stage.

·       At the end, Gavroche gets dumped unceremoniously into the cart with dead Enjolras and idk, it’s just a moment.

Enjolras

·       Right – instant disclaimer that I am incredibly biased and Hyoie O’Grady is and will forever be my Enjolras and I measure everyone against his performance.

·       This guy, Ashley Gilmour, – mostly had the look and the hair and general icy beauty. I was initially disappointed with his voice, but he did grow on me – he just really didn’t have the presence I associate with a great Enjolras. This was especially evident in the speech bits like in Red and Black?. Like, you know they’re not right for the role when you don’t particularly have much to write home about. Maybe I’m being unfair – other people who’ve seen him – what do you think?

·       The one bit of changed staging I didn’t like was Do You Hear the People Sing. I think Enjolras being towed around on the cart (which did come back during the beginning of the barricade) gives the song the momentum it needs & deserves? Whereas they were just marching round a staircase they’d shoved in the middle of the stage which Feuilly got up on for his verse, so…

·       Aside from a few handclasps, there was basically no E/R. Not even a hug during Drink With Me. It wasn’t even like “no homo” bullshit whatever, it just…didn’t happen. Actors didn’t have chemistry, and it’s a fair reading – this Enjolras read ace/too busy for romance quite strongly, I guess, and also very young, but yeah. After the joy that was Sam Edwards, even a bit more chemistry with Hyoie O’Grady (even though he said he didn’t really like that reading (I think??) which totally fair), and some actors I believe ACTUALLY KISSING OMG in other productions (one Enjolras also wore a Pride sash instead of a revolutionary one in Brazil, I think???) it really wasn’t anything. I would love a cast with an outwardly gay & together E/R, but I think the West End has a while to go before that becomes reality.

·       Enjolras’ death: obviously no turntable, end of that iconic spin to reveal him draped across the front of the barricade with his flag. In this version, he basically yeets himself off the front of the barricade very dramatically (there is no other word for it, I promise I’m not using “yeet” gratuitously) and then when Javert comes back after the fall of the barricade, there’s a soldier with the cart from the building of the barricade with a very dead Enjolras on his flag, arms akimbo out the end. Which worked. It was more quiet and understated, but it worked. No complaints from me.

·       At the curtain call he gave us a little hand heart, Taylor-Swift-circa-2010 style. It was cute and I should probably stop being a cow.

Les Amis

·       They’ll never cast them as diverse as they are in my head (I can only hope one day, perhaps, PLEASE!) but they were a good bunch. Their Feuilly looked more like a Jehan to me, but eh. Again, just no real…buzz. Not in the way I’ve seen them performed before? And I think Les Amis depends on a good Enjolras and a good Grantaire, because as the two main Amis in the musical, they set the tone?

·       When the soldiers’ final announcements were happening during the Dawn of Anguish, one of the boys (idk which, they were basically all blonde) was having a very obvious panic attack on the floor by the tables, and one of the others was comforting him and it was like that horrible powerful scene in the 2012 movie and I didn’t like it because it was heartbreaking but it was very effective.

·       They all seemed a bit less tolerant of Grantaire, who wasn’t even that disruptive by other actors standards, which I didn’t like?

·       Grantaire was, again, eh? Funny, fine, but didn’t have interesting things going for him (like Adam Filipe’s pacifism, for example, or any kind of chemistry with Enjolras) in the way others have done, but it was a solid performance.

The Thenardiers

·       Yes, they were great! Master of the House built to Thenardier being given the birthday bumps, which was funny.

·       Madame Thenardier’s solo in Master of the House was delivered in the kitchen all by herself as a bitter monologue, rather than the drunken rowdiness you used to get in the old show.

·       They were a pretty typical funny Thenardier couple, and I’m getting tired, I might remember some more about them tomorrow.

 So yeah. Those are my thoughts. Would love to hear what other people think, and I definitely want to go back and see it again, perhaps with a different cast (a different Enjolras, argh). I’m off to bed, I have class in ten hours. Oops.

#les mis #les miserables #les miserables west end #west end #show notes #les mis notes #sondheim theatre #les miserables 2020 #enjolras #grantaire #valjean #javert #bradley jaden fan service #shan ako fan service too #eponine #fantine #carrie hope fletcher #cosette #marius #meta #les mis analysis #les mis musical

[fullsunhyuckie]

lost in osaka(’s beauty)

uber driver!yuta

in which you needed a plus one for a work event and yuta was conveniently there to aid you,,and maybe even more.

a/n: i’ve officially gotten out of my slump (i hope hehehe) so this is pretty long. oh and i swear this fic sounds better than you think. enjoy!

12.19am

if anyone knows you, they’d know how much your work means to you. everything else comes second to your work. your family complains about how you take it too seriously most of the time and that you should consider taking a break. so when the day comes that you finally decide to bring yourself on a vacation, they might as well mark it as a public holiday.

as you were packing for your trip in the two hours you had left before you had to depart, you received a call from your boss. a part of you was glad because maybe you could, in fact, ditch this trip and get back to work. the other part of you was a little disappointed because you did plan the whole trip by yourself.

'' y/l/n, i need you to stand in for me at the Japanese Media Conference in Osaka, the night after tomorrow.'' your boss ordered casually. ''and do bring a plus one. that should suffice. you'll need to prepare a sum of money enough for a pair of outfit for you and your plus one. please be there by 8 and dress nicely. thank you.'' he added only to hang up abruptly.

though you were shocked, you were more frustrated because how in the world are you going to find a boy willing enough to go to a conference all the way in Japan. just as you were about to deliver the news to your parents, you saw them come in with a bag of medication and toiletries with wide smiles on their faces.

so when they asked you, " where's our baby going? you haven't told us yet!", you softly replied to them, "i guess i’m going to japan!" they cheered and your anger washed away. it was one thing to have tiny accomplishments celebrated by yourself, but to see your loved ones do it, they seem ten times more valid. so without complaints, you rushed out the door waving to your parents, with the boarding pass you printed at most 20 minutes ago.

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5.48 pm.

pacing about door 27, you were frustratingly waiting for your uber that was said to have arrived 5 minutes ago. well, whoever Nakamoto Yuta was, he should have a valid explanation as to why he was late. but in that exact moment, you saw a black sedan car appear in front of you.

the windows of the car were rolled down and you see a man with purple hair greeting you with a rather attractive smile but you had to keep your cool.

"are you miss y/n?" he flashes you the smile once more.

"yes and you're late. i'm rushing for something here." you responded almost simultaneously to which he nodded and rolled up his windows. but before he did it fully, you stopped him.

"aren't you going to help me with my bags? i cant possibly carry it myself.” you gave an exasperated sigh. he chuckled and rolled the windows back up, with no intent of helping you out. 'asshole', you thought. but the truth was that's what yuta thinks too, because he was sure your screen said arriving in 5 mins...but sure he'll let you have it.

you took the seat diagonally behind him and sat quietly for at least 20 full minutes through the ride, occasionally looking at his prettily coloured hair. he was the one to break the silence.

"so your bag isn't that heavy after all?" he mocks you.

"well, isn't it basic courtesy to have a driver help you with your bags?" you heard him huff in an annoyed manner, causing your ride continue its silence until you arrived.

upon arrival, you immediately changed out to your more appealing outfit so that you could head to the pub, in search of a plus one. but the longer you stayed at the pub, you remembered exactly why you’d rather be a workaholic. so you gave up and decided to book an uber back home. too tired to bother, you went into the car that stopped in front of you, hoping that it was the right one.

"must be a tough day for a prissy princess like you, ey?" you hear a familiar voice from the driver's seat. your head shot up and you saw from the rear view mirror, the last face you'd wanna see. "oh piss off, nakamoto."

"call me yuta."

"i'm not in the mood."  you replied, before glancing to the front to steal a peek.

if you were being honest, you were really bothered by yuta on the ride home. you began noticing the little details about him. like the shape of his button nose, and how his hair isn't just purple, it's a really pretty ash purple. 'he's okay looking, huh?' you processed. and then it hit you. a decent looking man, who by chance you have been acquainted to, who is also a fluent japanese speaker and ,fortunately, owns a car. a sleek one in fact. and so you made a decision.

as he drove to the front of your hotel, you stayed still in the car with no intent of leaving. he turned around and lifted his eyebrows at your antics. you took a deep breath, thinking 'here goes nothing'.

"i have a proposal to make in which i am expecting you to accept. i need someone...okay looking, especially with a car, to be my partner for a day...or a few." you started. "you dont have to do much. just sit still, look pretty."

"why would i need to help you? i'm working tomorrow. besides-"

"i'll pay you."

"i'm all ears."

" i know you need the money, considering this job," he narrows his eyes at you. "so i'll give $600 for this event you attend and you get to keep the suit." his previously narrowed eyes now widened all the way at your offer. you gestured for him to give his phone. "i need you to pick me up tomorrow by 8am so we can go get your suit and my dress. don't be late.”

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8.07 am.  

of course he's late. even though you were afraid he'll decide not to turn up, you had to remain cool. but exactly 5 minutes later he arrives, in a floral print shirt with light brown bermuda shorts and a pair of slides, hair unkempt. ugly, you thought. but as you thought so, he winks at you and it crossed your mind, well maybe not at all.

"you're seven minutes late. how am i supposed to trust that you'll reach on time tonight?" you complained. he just shrugged and proceeded to lead you into his sedan car.

the both of you headed to the nearest shopping district to run your errands. after a few hours of shopping, your hands were filled with shopping bags yet you still weren’t sure what yuta picked out. he insisted that you should trust his sense and let it be a secret. yuta was leisurely walking with just a bag of items while you were struggling to balance with all the stuff you bought.

"if only someone was gentleman enough to help me carry my stuff especially since this man beside me, isn't one." you said it a little too loudly in hopes that it'll embarrass him.

yuta laughed it off, completely unphased by your actions. so you continued walking at a fast pace until you heard him jog towards you and felt his hand brushed against yours, causing you to pause. he somehow managed to maneuver the shopping bags so that it would rest on your interlocked hands, so it looked as if the both of you were carrying the bags together. he brushed his thumb against your fingers, which made your heart do a thing. he gave a smug look and you let go, leaving him to carry it instead.

you got in the car, avoiding any form of conversation with yuta, but on the way back, he kept stealing glances at every stop he took. his actions made you nervous, which wasn't super abnormal as you're never usually affected .

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7.48pm.

you could tell it was him by the way he knocks on the door. you opened the door slowly and-  

holy freaking grail.

he was stunning. oh so beautiful. you were in awe. he wasn't lying about his sense of fashion. maroon velvet suit with black innerwear which complements your black seude midi dress. his hair parted just enough to showcase his glowing forehead. earrings, 3 on one side and 2 on the other, contrasting his well-groomed look with a little bit of rebel. how intelligent.

"aren't you gonna let me in or are you not done ogling me?"

"n-no let's just uh- let's leave now. we're..ahem.. we can just be early..." you stuttered, pushing him out.

you arrived at your destination 20 minutes later and was astounded by the beauty of it. you turned to your left to look at osaka’s skyline, what a beauty. you turned right to look at yuta and you started to wonder, maybe everything in Japan is stunning. yuta offered you his arm and you slid into it like it was made just for you.

the whole conference was pretty boring but you had to keep yourself awake for your boss's sake. it wasn't until the dinner when you actually had a lot of fun. although yuta wasn't exactly a gentleman that night, you could tell he was trying. like when he took his food, it was a portion just enough for two. or when he pulled the chair out from the table intending to sit there but acting as if it wasn't a good enough spot so he offered you instead. you appreciated the subtlety more than you expected.

you noticed the speaker from earlier approaching your table and you stiffened.

"you know if you keep doing that, the whole hall will be able to tell that i'm a stranger to you." yuta whispered.

before you could answer him, you felt his hand rest on the crook of your back. he knew you were nervous so when you felt him caress your back gently, you appreciated it. he left as you were speaking to your boss’s clients, taking down notes for his future plans. the night wasn’t that bad, here and there you heard whispers about how gorgeous your boyfriend looked unlike you, but thats about it. after your exchange session, you searched high and low for yuta, silently hoping he wasn’t somewhere trying to hook up with some woman 10x richer or better looking than you are.

after searching for a good 15 minutes, you saw him near the fountain talking to someone. although you felt obligated to get annoyed, as your plus one, you felt warm. he looked way too engaged telling a story to a 7 year old girl. he turned to see you staring at him. he waved at you, at the same time getting the little girl to do the same. she didn’t seem too keen to do so.

“i think we can leave now. we need to prepare for tomorrow’s event.” you said, grabbing a hold of yuta’s elbow.

the little girl tugged at yuta’s sleeves and she whispers, “i don’t like her very much. mr nakamoto, can you continue the story?” to which you frowned and rolled your eyes, unintentionally. your actions caught yuta off guard and he burst out laughing at your child-like behaviour. or cute behaviour but yuta wont admit it

“i’m sorry, princess, but my grandmother here has forced me to leave with her or i won’t be able to return home for tonight. i’ll see you around!” the little girl chuckles and wave at yuta, not before giving you a glare.

“i hate kids.”

“are you jealous because a seven year old has more game with me than you do?”

“don’t flatter yourself, nakamoto.”

“count yourself lucky that i think you’re cute.”

well yeah, that stuck on your mind the whole night.

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9.36am

who in the right mind would have a formal event at 9 in the morning? there you were half awake, engaging with 10 people at one go, when its barely noon while yuta was at the back treating himself with the pancakes served. he was dressed formally as if he was supposed to attend a Sunday morning tennis match, when everyone else was in a polo tee and jeans. you’re sure he bought that outfit just so he could use it for another day, knowing he was able to keep it.

on that particular morning, you met johnny, the son of the CEO of a well-known entertainment company in Chicago. he’s tall, lean, very attractive, funny and the list goes on. if you weren’t married to your career, you’d so be into him. but you want to know who isn’t? nakamoto yuta. the moment he heard you burst a giggle instead of a laugh, he lifted his previously buried-in-pancakes face to scan across the crowd, seeing you with johnny.

he almost immediately threw away his half-eaten pancake and strut his way towards you but before he could do anything to get at johnny, you and johnny part ways much to yuta’s relief. throughout the whole event, you could feel his eyes on you, unconsciously looking out for any competition. it was funny though because when you try to look back he’d act as if he’s much rather be somewhere else. what a fool.

the event took up more than half of your afternoon so when you returned from it you were dead tired. yuta sent you to the door but seeing how GONE you were he needed to make sure you were fully awake while cleaning yourself. you took more than an hour as he waited on the sofa, he did sleep though. you sat beside him and watched him peacefully. his hair covering both his eyes, you were so tempted to touch it. purple never looked so good on a man. despite hesitating, you brushed his hair behind his ears, causing him to rest deeper into your palm. a soft smile crept up your lips as he did so.

“you should smile like that more often when you look at me. my heart does things when you do that.” he says with his eyes closed.

stunned, you pulled your hand away, forcing him to scram. he left with a smile on his face, satisfied with how flustered you were.

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

7.49pm

“what do you mean you cant make it? it’s the last event. i need you to be there with me-“

“i need to run some errands. i’ll try my best and make it in time.” yuta replies.

you weren’t gonna lie but a huge part of you grew dependent on him so when you were forced to attend it alone, it felt foreign.

and indeed it was. the entire time you were there, you started missing him. when things got awkward you realised there was no one to turn to. or when the speaker said something unfunny, you’d laugh, thinking about what yuta would say in response. it was as if the entire night revolved around him and you hated it because you only realised his importance when he wasn’t around.

as you were eating, you felt someone approach you, deeply hoping it was yuta. but as you turned, you saw johnny. he was dressed in a sleek black suit with a bow tie. what a heartthrob.

“where’s your lover boy?”

“he’s busy running some errands. such a momma’s boy.” you said while unintentionally sulking.

understanding that you were bored at the event, johnny decided to accompany you. for a moment you forgot about yuta and you were thankful for that. but as you were intending to grab a quick bite with johnny, you heard johnny saying something and before you could ask him to repeat, you peeked behind his tall figure to see a good looking japanese man looking at you. seeing that you were comfortable with johnny, he approached you and gave you a kiss on your cheek, lingering longer than expected. to say your heart skipped a beat would be an understatement. it was as if it your heart entirely stopped and then you were resurrected by the touch of his lips.

“you smell...nice. i’m sorry i’m late.” he pulled away and wrapped his pinky around yours. “oh, johnny! didnt see you there. if you dont mind, y/n and i have somewhere to be.” and then he led you away.

“why didn’t you call me?”

“surprise, isn’t it? i was intending not to come but i knew someone would want to hit on you.” he replied casually, pinky still wrapped around yours. “let’s get out of here while we can.”

as the two of you walked out, he put on a jacket, that smelt like him, on you. you gave him a look of bewilderment.

“yuta, it’s 30 degrees. i dont need your jacket.”

“just take it. this is in case i need an excuse to see your face again in the future.” you heartily laughed at him.

you would think he brought you to somewhere romantic, as you ran away from a formal event. instead he took you to a nearby fast food restaurant, claiming that that was the essence of a japanese trip. as he indulged himself in the cheeseburger, you felt a pang in your chest remembering how your journey with him had to end in a few hours. it was as if he could sense that you felt down. so being yuta, he tried turning the atmosphere around.

“this cheeseburger would taste wayyy better if someone wasn’t staring daggers onto the top of my pretty head.”

it didnt work, in case you’re guessing. it just made you feel worse because, damn you’re gonna miss this idiot. so in response, you shoved your milkshake away and groaned, so loudly it’s possible that the whole diner went silent because of you.

you peeked up and you saw him staring down at you with an eyebrow raised. you were so close to risking it all and confessing your feelings towards him but your ego wouldn’t let you do so. instead, you calmed your face and pretended as if nothing happened. it’s hard to do so especially when you saw how comfortable your legs intertwined under the table. even your sub-conscience wanted the both of you close.

the whole night was a blur. you remember subtle hand touching and embracing from both parties but nothing major happened. to be honest, you were beyond grateful. just a few more seconds before the coast was clear. you waved your goodbye to him. you tried to shut the door before you did anything stupid. but...you were too late.

3

2

1

“seriously? our last night together and that’s how you end it? do you have no heart or-“

“i’m sorry excuse me?”

“i think i was being pretty obvious with how i feel about you. i wouldnt have let you hold my hand for a prolonged period if i didnt like you, dont you think? if you expect me to give you a heartwarming confession, about how i’d love to spend more time with you and how i wouldnt mind if you’d like to date me, then you thought wrong.” you said in one breath.

“...”

“an ‘i like you too’ would help me not feel like an idiot.”

“urm, look, there’s a lot of things that i do like about you but i just dont think i can respond to your confession right now. i’m so sorry.” yuta replied softly.

and he left. this time he wasn’t late to leave.

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

1.27pm

you still felt like an idiot. the moment you woke up, as you ate your breakfast, when you packed your luggage, the whole time you felt like one. and you couldnt blame anyone but yourself. when you looked around, it was as if japan was stripped off its beauty, now that the one thing you associate that with is no longer within your reach.

even as you were on the way to the airport, you felt like a complete fool. when you arrived in japan and got your uber, the first thing you saw when you lifted your head was a pretty shade of purple. your uber back to the airport had a view that was an awful scene of badly dyed hair. how in the world were you going to forget the fact that you ever met nakamoto yuta?

as you arrived at the airport, you were so reluctant to leave. every step you took felt like there was an anchor weighing you down. of course, you were being dramatic because all you did was give him a confession. but believe me, because its someone with an ego like yours, it’s the end of the world.

you were waiting for the lift when a man with blonde hair grabbed your luggage from your hands. and he began saying something incomprehensible. so you let out a loud ‘hmm?’.

“i need to return some of your things and take back what’s mine.” you hear a familiar voice. you didnt want to believe it but the minute you turned your head, there he was. nakamoto yuta. but being you, the first thing you responded was, “why are you blonde?”

he groaned and pulled you to the side before you could say anything else. instead of responding he returned the suit that you gave him, as well as the sportswear and even his headband. he took out his wallet to return you the money you paid him for the events. he rummaged through his bag to ensure he returned everything you gave him and then he paused, as if trying to process whether he was going to do it and he gave the look of surrender. he opened up your suitcase to take back his jacket and a part of you broke. you felt as if he didnt want to see you again.

but before you could even begin to feel sad, you saw him crouch in front of you, hands on your back and your calves. suddenly, you were lifted. you hit yuta’s chest and he calmly responded.

“i told you i’m taking back what’s mine.”

“did you suddenly watch a rom-com last night and decide that this is the best way to win back my heart? because it’s not working.” you sulked but he gave you an innocent look. you finally understood what being wrapped around someone’s finger felt like.  

as you were nearing the exit, he put you down and held you with one hand, the other on the suitcase as he led you to his familiar car.

“i have a proposal to make in which i am expecting you to accept. i need someone...okay looking, who doesn’t need to have a car, to be my partner to introduce to my family.” yuta mocked. "you dont have to do much. just sit still, look pretty, so you might want to try a little.” then he looked at you and gave you his biggest smile as he mouthed “i’m sorry. please be my girlfriend.” there was no way you were able to say no.

and so he drove into the city of osaka, and you looked around only to realise, japan had never been stripped off its beauty. all that you saw was filtered by yuta, causing it to look ten times as beautiful. but thats the beauty of getting to know yuta because now life has never been more full of colour.

fin.

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[exceptionalism]

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The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

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Title : Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. Spring Song Original Title : 劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel]」Ⅲ.spring song Alternative Titles : Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel III.spring song Directed by : Yuki Kajiura Cast : Noriaki Sugiyama, Noriko Shitaya, Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda, Mai Kadowaki, Miki Itō Genre : Animation Countries : Japan

Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song release date fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full movie fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song reddit fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song dub fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray release date fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song australia And the President of the United States defends, rationalizes, or does nothing to stop this? I’d say that’s insane, but I’m too heartbroken. Because every step of the way, I’ve heard you defend, rationalize, or enable him and the politicians around him. Not since I was a kid have I craved to hear your strong voice more, to hear you say anything reassuring, inspiring, morally cogent. If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …

[grandwizardcreation]

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full m-o-v-i-e

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The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

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Title : Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. Spring Song Original Title : 劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel]」Ⅲ.spring song Alternative Titles : Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel III.spring song Directed by : Yuki Kajiura Cast : Noriaki Sugiyama, Noriko Shitaya, Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda, Mai Kadowaki, Miki Itō Genre : Animation Countries : Japan

Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song release date fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full movie fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song reddit fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song dub fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray release date fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song australia And the President of the United States defends, rationalizes, or does nothing to stop this? I’d say that’s insane, but I’m too heartbroken. Because every step of the way, I’ve heard you defend, rationalize, or enable him and the politicians around him. Not since I was a kid have I craved to hear your strong voice more, to hear you say anything reassuring, inspiring, morally cogent. If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …

[uruhabuns]

It’s all about the foundation (part 3) (makeup artist!reader x ruki)

A/N: HELLO I AM FASHIONABLY LATE AS USUAL BC I’VE BEEN SO BUSY AFTER EXCHANGE SETTLING DOWN AND TRYING TO FIND A JOB ;____; but yes, this could be the final part of this series (unless you guys want another part?), so i hope you guys enjoy reading this and please give a like or reblog if you’ve read <3

Part 1 / Part 2

Pairing: girl reader x ruki

Genre: fluff

After the main setlist, the boys came back into the dressing room to freshen up before the encore

You knew how stressful this time was, as idols usually had only 5 minutes before they had to go back to the stage

However, while the band were in the middle of playing main setlist, the stylists told you the band had 10 minutes before the encore, so you didn’t have to stress as much

But....you had to help touch up Ruki’s makeup, which was the hardest out of the members

Yikes that oily af skin and those blemishes

I’m not roasting him at all :)))

As Ruki went into the other makeup room to change into the tour goods, you grabbed the towel the stylists gave you to pat off his sweat later

As you were waiting, you felt your heart begin to race at the thought of doing Ruki’s makeup again.

Why were you nervous? He was just another client...a really charismatic and good looking client.

Your thoughts were interrupted when Ruki sat in the makeup chair you stood next to and saw that he was already changed into the tour shirt and black jeans, so you began to quickly pat his face with the towel

You then carefully wiped makeup remover across Ruki’s face, avoiding the eye makeup, to remove the foundation

Ruki felt his heart race slightly again at the distance between the two of you, and the light scent of your perfume as you wiped his face, but he quickly banished the thoughts from his head, since he needed to think about the upcoming performance

During that time, the two of you didn’t speak a single word to each other because were so concentrated on your work, and he was focused on the encore, so both of you didn’t have time to think about your feelings

You thoroughly reapplied the MAC primer, concealer, and foundation that were provided with your light technique that you used on idols, since MAC products could feel quite heavy on the skin

You then set everything with your holy grail Etude House Fix and Fix loose powder (of which you tried to hide from the senior stylists so they wouldn’t scold you for using a Korean roadshop product on Ruki)

Surprisingly, you managed to finish with two minutes to spare so Ruki could re-hydrate before the encore

FAST FORWARD TO AFTER THE CONCERT

Everything was packed up and finished by 11pm, and you were invited to go to dinner with the staff

At first, you were hesitant because it was late and you just wanted to go home and crash, but the senior makeup artists offered to pay for the food since you were the youngest there

So you agreed to go because free food

You joined them in their van, while the band members got their own van to the BBQ restaurant

After settling into a seat in the van, the other stylists were chatting among themselves while you scrolled through your Instagram feed

As you were scrolling down the “GazettE” hashtag to get to know the band better, Reita’s makeup artist nudged your arm

“Say, _______-chan, how did you find it today?”

Your cheeks turned slightly pink as you could only think of Ruki and how handsome he was. However, you shook off the thoughts before answering, “It was interesting. I’ve never worked with a visual kei band before, so the experience was quite different to what I’m used to. Especially because the makeup style was pretty different to idols.”

Aoi’s makeup artist giggled. “Was that all? I think Ruki-san seemed quite excited every time he saw you.”

Heat rushed to your cheeks and ears. Did you hear correctly? Ruki? Excited about you? Even though you wanted to know more about his reactions, you knew they were joking, so you only giggled and shook your head.

Reita’s stylist nudged her co-worker’s shoulder in disapproval. “Don’t say stuff like that in front of the rookie! You know how much trouble we’ll be in if a scandal breaks out.”

The other woman only rolled her eyes. “Oh, you know I’m only playing around. As if a scandal can break out from talking among ourselves in a private place. Even ________-chan knows, right?”

You felt a slight drop in your chest when she said it was only a joke.

You had no choice but to swallow and nod quickly.

Why did you feel this way towards a man you barely knew?

Before you knew it, the vans arrived at the front of the BBQ restaurant in Shinjuku

You got out of the van along with the senpai stylists, keeping close to them.

You looked around to search for the other staff and band members themselves, to which you saw them coming out of the vans a few metres away from you.

Your heart felt like it skipped a beat when you saw Ruki’s figure and blond hair

When he took a glance at you, you gasped softly and turned away to face your senpais

Ruki smirked when he saw your reaction.

The cute types, huh...there’s always something about them...

When everyone had gathered, the managers and band went in first, while the rest of the staff including you followed.

Because there were so many people in your group, you had to be assigned two tables

The band, managers, and some staff took one table, while you, the stylists, and other staff took the other

Of course you were a bit disappointed that you couldn’t sit near the band (ahem, Ruki), but you couldn’t complain

So you just sucked it up and sat next to Reita’s stylist

After all the orders were made, your senpais made conversation with you, asking how you found working with the band

You told them that the guys were really nice and pleasant to work with, and that they treated you well especially since you were new to working with them

Little did you know that a few seats away on the other table, Ruki was listening to what you were saying, especially to the things you said about him

Upon seeing Ruki’s expressions, Uruha nudged his arm with his elbow.

“You look unusually happy about something,” he teased. “Is it that girl?”

Ruki made a disgusted expression. “As if. She looks too young for me anyway. You know I’m not one of those love-at-first-sight people.”

Uruha chuckled in amusement. “Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourself that. But something tells me you’ve got a thing for her already.”

“Shut up.”

A few minutes later, you excused yourself from the table to go to the bathroom.

Ruki noticed this as a perfect opportunity to talk to you privately, but he decided to wait before going so it wouldn’t look like he wanted to follow you.

After you finished washing and drying your hands, you opened the bathroom door to see Ruki leaning against the wall as he was waiting outside in front of the door.

Your heart felt like it stopped. “R-Ruki-sa-?”

“Shh,” he hushed, putting his index finger to his lips, and covering your mouth with the other hand.

Your eyes widened at the sudden closeness and intimate contact. You could feel your face turning pink while your heart began to race.

“Call me Taka.”

You blinked in surprise as he pulled his hand away from you.

Taka? Is that his real name?

“T-Taka? Why-”

Ruki leaned closer to you, making your face heat up. “There might be fans around,” he said quietly, “You can call me by my stage name when we’re in a quiet place.”

You gulped, and nodded reluctantly, still uncomfortable with calling him by a name other than Ruki.

“Alright...Taka-san.”

Ruki gave you a small smirk, making your heart race again

You smiled and bowed your head shyly. “I-I’ll get back now-”

Ruki grabbed your wrist as you began walking off.

“T-Taka-san?” you said, facing him completely flustered at this point.

“Give me your LINE. I just wanna make sure that this isn’t the last time I get to see you.”

At that moment, your eyes widened. You felt like your breathing and heart stopped at the same time.

HOLY SHIT!!!! THE HOT CLIENT ACTUALLY SAID THAT TO ME. WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?! What does this mean?! How could someone as cool as Ruki want to see me again?

“Are you sure? I’m still a rookie makeup artist, so I don’t think I can-”

“Fuck the rules,” Ruki jammed in nonchalantly. “I’m not about that life.”

Your jaw dropped.

How could someone just disregard rules so easily like that? Doesn’t he care that the both of you could get into serious trouble if your seniors found out?

Not that you were complaining. Ruki had captivated you since you first saw him.

You swallowed a gulp again before pulling out your phone to exchange LINE IDs with Ruki.

After doing so, you excused yourself to get back to the table.

“Enjoy the rest of the night,” Ruki said to you.

“Thank you. You too.”

When you got back to your seat, the food had already arrived, and everyone on your table was waiting for you.

“_______-chan, you’re finally back!” Reita’s stylist said.

“Ah, I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Never mind that, your face is so red!” Kai’s stylist called out jokingly, “Have you been drinking in the bathroom?”

You clapped your hands to your cheeks. SHIT! 

“N-no, of course not!”

“I’m kidding. Sit down, you must be starving!”

You nodded. “Y-yes. I’m sorry again to make you wait.”

The night passed by without you or Ruki speaking to each other.

When it was time to leave, you went into the van with the rest of the stylists.

As soon as you sat down, you felt your phone vibrate to signal that you received a LINE message.

Taka: Text me when you get home

You furrowed your eyebrows. That’s it? I guess he is a man of a few words...

_______: Okay, I will. _______: It was nice meeting you today!

You didn’t get a reply after that, though you weren’t surprised

It was 1am by the time you were dropped off in front of your apartment block.

You said your goodbyes to the stylists as you left the vehicle, wishing them goodnight.

As soon as you got into the elevator, you suddenly felt the fatigue hit you all at once.

You were up since 6am, so you couldn’t wait to crash

When you got inside your apartment, you greeted your parents sluggishly. “Tadaima...”

“_______! Okaeri,” your mum called from the kitchen. “Did you have dinner yet?”

“Yeah, we had yakiniku, and the staff paid for it.”

“How was it today?” your dad asked from the dining table, looking up at you from the newspaper he was reading.

You only yawned. “So tiring...” you mumbled as you took your shoes off. “I hate working such long hours...”

“Yes, I know,” your dad replied, “But it’s part of life. How were the clients?”

“It was a visual kei band called the GazettE,” you answered, “They were really nice guys. Apparently they’ve been around since 2002.”

“That long?” your mum said, “They must be very good musicians. Anyway, don’t get involved with visual kei men. They only cause trouble for women from what I heard.”

You rolled your eyes as you made your way to your room. “As if I would. Besides, these guys are a lot older and more mature than other visual kei artists, and they have a big reputation to uphold, so I don’t think they would want to get involved with girls anyway.”

As soon as you got into your room, you put your duffle bag next to your desk before flopping onto your bed.

You suddenly remembered Ruki’s message, and grabbed your phone to text him.

_______: I just got home!

You then changed into your pyjamas before going to the bathroom to brush your teeth and cleanse your face.

After you had finished the rest of your skincare routine, you checked your phone to see that Ruki had replied.

Taka: Alright. Thanks for today. I hope to see you again soon.

_______: Me too. It was fun today!

Taka: It was. Lives are always like that. Taka: Who are you gonna work with next?

_______: I think I’ll be working with another Korean idol group, since they’re always coming over here

Taka: Well then, goodnight. You did well today.

_______: Goodnight, Ruki-san, rest well

You squealed into your pillow, kicking your legs up and down on your bed as if you were a high school girl in love

Though, you weren’t in love with Ruki; you just found him super attractive and charismatic

Let’s just say you went to sleep on cloud nine

On the other side, Ruki was lying in bed with his hands on his face in embarrassment.

He couldn’t believe what he did.

He literally told you in real life AND in text that he wanted to see you again, and made it sound like he was interested in you when he knew he shouldn’t be.

Ruki then remembered Uruha’s words earlier that day: “...if you do end up dating her, or someone like her, don’t break her heart. She seems too innocent for people like us.”

He didn’t realise how you could unearth the feelings he worked so hard to bury for so long. He didn’t want to risk it again, and he didn’t want to risk hurting you either. After all, you were a lot younger than him, so he didn’t want to take that innocence away from you.

But there was something about you that he couldn’t take his mind off from.

#mine. #ruki #the gazette #my writing #finally finished this part omg #do u guys want another??? a date w ruki maybe???? #👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀 #HOPE YOU LIKED IT!!

[frostiifae]

fehs problems vs fate go's problems? ive always seen fgo as the superior gacha because its writing is actually decent/sometimes VERY good (camelot!) but i know it has problems so like... which is worse in your humble opinion

well i mean you know already i think fgo is a dramatically better game overall… but idk it’s like, fate grand order isn’t an amazing game probably 85% of the time, 15% of the time it’s Camelot or Babylon or the Kara no Kyoukai collab event (which is fucking awesome, by the way), but the other 85% it’s just a pretty decent gacha game, and that makes it really tragic how short heroes still manages to fall comparatively 

being real fgo has two really serious weaknesses, one is the really inconsistent character design where some of them are awesome but a lot of them are just really gross and awful; the other is the inconsistent writing, which shows in grossness in characters like blackbeard etc and just the general cishet Bad Anime Fan pandering

and then, lesser weaknesses: 

 - the gacha in fgo is really unforgiving with no pity rates and with spirit origins being really hard to get for even big whales - i think you’ve already talked about the good ol’ Sold My Car For Jalter horror story, and others like it - the battle system isn’t super deep and also has some kind of weird idiosyncrasies, like the fact that you can’t see ‘star absorption’ as a stat on servants even though it’s a VERY important stat to understand, or needing to press ‘attack’ to see crit star distribution but not being able to go back to use skills afterward… but some of those things get fixed later in the game’s lifecycle, thankfully 

but compared with heroes… it’s easy to say that heroes has “bad writing” (and it does) but that doesn’t really tell the complete story. like… in my case, marisa was a character i had been looking forward to for a LONG time, even saying i might try to pull for her +10 when she was released (she’s a tempest trial unit, so of course i CAN’T do that, but oh well). once i finally got her, though, i really couldn’t do much with her. just… level her up, give her a skillset that sounded good, and then try to use her in any situation where it felt like she might work. that’s kind of all. it was honestly a let down, and that feeling repeating itself across a few characters contributed a lot to my decision to drop the game.

heroes has a lot of mechanics that compare straight across to grand order; tempest trials are like grand order events, complete with bonus servants vs. bonus heroes - but grand order events have a lot of writing and storytelling, commemorative CEs with charming character art in silly situations/costumes, and give away free welfare servants that are almost universally amazing - ryougi shiki, santa arturia alter, kintoki rider, scathach assassin, even chloe einzbern are all AMAZING top-tier servants that they just GIVE to you for free with max ascension/NP level materials. tempest trials tend to give you lackluster units and you have to spend a lot of materials just to get a +1 merge, meaning they’ll never really reach their full potential compared to a gacha hero. 

hero merit is basically the same as bond xp, except hero merit gives you feathers, but bond xp gives you new dialogue, expanded profile information, saint quartz, and a commemorative Craft Essence for a servant when you max it out. heroes has the accessory system now, which allows you to decorate your heroes with little trinkets you earn from events, while grand order has new arts for every ascension plus there will be event outfits later that you can earn and put onto your servants permanently, and while there are a more limited number of them, they’re designed specifically for that servant. 

there’s a pattern here - heroes just doesn’t really… do anything exciting. it has a lot of the same ideas as grand order, but it doesn’t seem to understand what makes those ideas fun or why players want to play their game at all. there’s no heart to fire emblem heroes. it’s empty and soulless by comparison. 

i worked really hard on my eirika, on my lachesis, on my kagero and my marisa, because they were characters that i really loved. the game only really provided my one way to show that love to them: leveling them and burning very expensive skills through inheritance to make them better. pulling for duplicate copies. it’s unfulfilling. i don’t get anything and the game doesn’t really change to reflect the love i have put into the characters that i care about. 

you can take one look at my support lineup in grand order and understand who my favorite servant is right away. same for ellie. same for you. 

i’m so excited to get jeanne alter’s bond CE. i know exactly who i’m going to Bond 10 after jeanne alter, too! tamamo! i’m gonna grail tamamo to 100, too! because i have that option. i can just pick characters i love and break the game’s rules to make them more powerful. the game gives us mechanics to demonstrate how much we love our favorite servants, and then the ability to show off how devoted we are to them and how much we are willing to invest into them. it fosters a community of celebration and excitement that heroes does not and probably never will have.

yeah, heroes is riddled with problems; pvp is a bad idea for gacha games, the power creep is literally ridiculous, event hero design is bad especially when children are involved, gross pandering dialogue, event heroes almost ALWAYS remark about how uncomfortable they are in their event outfits and people apparently LIKE that, the writing is forgettable at best… but all of those things are secondary to the core failure of fire emblem heroes, which is: it’s heartless. it’s a black hole for you to throw money into in the vain hope of feeling like you’ve done something for your favorite characters. 

maybe they’ll get better at that over time, but honestly, i don’t think it will make much of a difference, and i just don’t think they care enough.

#anwers #memorycakes #please uninstall feh #fire emblem heroes #fate grand order #fgo #fairyranting #whoof there are a lotta tags there.

[grailacademy]

Welcome to Grail Academy - Chapter Seven: Like Clockwork

Bernard sat impatiently on the edge of his bed, rapping his fingers against his knees. He was alone in the dorm room, getting more and more restless the longer that the scroll he was staring at did not ring. He told himself to relax, but it never really helped, no matter how many times he said it. Calm down. Calm down. It was very rare that something would have he so on-guard, but when it finally chimed, Bernard lunged for the device like a cat chasing a laser pointer. On the other line, a much hoarser voice vibrated.

“Mama?”

Madehold paced back and forth in her office, rubbing her chin in thought. “Do we really have a big enough budget that we can afford another Prom?” She questioned herself more than her secretary, who was sitting politely with a clipboard in her lap on the couch in the corner of the headmaster’s office. She ran the end of her pencil underneath the lines of numbers she was reading, then she reread them, and reread them again for good measure. “Apparently we do. Believe it or not, our school events seem to give the biggest morale boost to the students. Some friendly competition might be good for the kids.”

“Yes, but what about the little accident we had at the last Prom?” Madehold pointed to her eyepatch and tapped the corner of it incredulously.

“I’m sure it won’t happen again. We’ve set up stricter guidelines, per your request.”

“Good….I just hope it buys us enough time.” Madehold pulled her scroll out from her back pocket and squinted to read a new message through the bright light of the screen.

“We can only hope, ma’am.”

The principle tapped ‘send’ on a school newsletter and sighed. She watched the hands tick mercilessly on the clock sitting on her desk, then glanced out the window to look at a larger pair of hands turn on the face of the imposing silhouette of the clocktower that was built in the center of their campus. Gazing out the window of her office at the academy’s clocktower, she thought something to herself before speaking again. “That’s exactly why I’m worried.”

Esmerelda didn’t like this. It wasn’t sitting right with her. She couldn’t stand not knowing where her team was, especially in these final days before they were to showcase their talents at the Prom. She stood in a line of anxious students, waiting to submit their team ballots to the cardboard lockbox pinned up outside the nurse’s office. Team EBNY’s ballot was a wrinkled ball in Esmerelda’s hand, she had been wringing it unconsciously while she waited. It had been a month since their new teammate first settled in to his new environment, and for weeks on end he had been disappearing from classes. She didn’t know much about Yorick, but he didn’t seem like the kind to skip classes to frivolously. Nico she didn’t worry too much about, she was used to his routine by now, but the thought of his habits actually rubbing off on her partner made her itch. In 5 days, they would have to be ready for a battle, and she hadn’t even trained with any of them yet! As she slipped the ballot into the lockbox and began the walk back to the dorm, Esmerelda checked her scroll. Nico and Yorick hadn’t answered any of her messages, Bernard only responded to her text with “busy”, and she just chipped a nail as she frantically scrolled through the archives of her calls. “Oh, shoot….” She muttered, solemnly. Well, at least this gave her something to do once she got back to her room.

Miles away from Grail Academy, in a dark factory hidden from the rest of Calicem, a tall girl with a shaved head and a leather jacket strutted across the empty show floor. She checked her scroll for a message she was expecting before putting it away in her vest pocket. Her team followed behind her, the familiar pair of Rettah and Scarlet slinking next to their leader’s shoulders in an attempt to seem less afraid. A boy with a white scarf wrapped around his neck like a mask kept his hands stuffed in his pockets as he shared a concerned look with his three teammates. “Ahem, uhm….Excuse us.” The girl with the shaved head cleared her throat when the four stopped in their tracks. A voice snaked out of the darkness before them, comforting but suspicious. “Queenie….come closer, let me look at you.”

Queenie stepped forward. “We’ve done enough recon to deduce that the academy will be the most fortified during the Prom. Pardon me for speaking on my own behalf, but I would advise against attacking during the tournament.”

The voice again. “Then we wait until after. You’ve done well.” A black tendril reached out from the shadows of the building, curling like a finger under Queenie’s chin. The girl was shaking now, but held her head up high as she was caressed. Suddenly, the soft pace of the tendril switched to interrogative as the hidden figure redirected its attention. The tendril let go of Queenie and began to slither towards Scarlet. “And you? What have you gathered for my pet project?”

Scarlet sucked in air through his teeth as the strange tentacles crawled up his ankles like grape vines. “The faculty won’t be a problem, we’ve taken on tougher hunters. A majority of the teachers are either out of shape or don’t care, especially Ms.Madehold.” At the mention of that name, the cirrus around his legs immediately yanked Scarlet off the ground and swept him up, hanging him upside down.

“Who?”

The poor boy gasped in fear while he dangled like a dead leaf on a branch, and Rettah waved her arms to get some attention. “What Scarlet means i-is, the students hold much more potential. Especially that new kid, Yorick.” She laughed nervously until her friend was lowered gently to the ground, before continuing. “I managed to steal a glance at his file in the headmaster’s office. He could prove to be a real asset to us. To YOU!”

Scarlet, being released from his bindings, watched as the tendrils recoiled back into the safety of the darkness, slowly. But not before a stray one branched off and twirled the end of Rettah’s ponytail around, mimicking someone playing with her hair. The voice seemed calmer now. “Ah….wonderful. Will he and his team be competing in the Prom?”

The boy in white piped up to make himself heard. “Yes! From what we’ve heard around the halls, the most powerful teams will be in the tournament. EBNY, SAND, BRVI, even PWTR and SPIA-”

The figure interrupted him. “-And BRSQ.”

“I….Pardon?”

“You’ll be competing, of course. To get closer and better inspect my merchandise. I want him. Bring him to me, after the competition. Be discrete.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“There’s a good boy, Buck.”

BRSQ all turned around and began to leave, shaken by their interaction with this shadow in the corner of the factory. It called out to them once more, just as the parting of clouds exposed the light of the moon, and allowed it to shine light on the pale visage of a woman wrapped in tresses of silky black hair that writhed around her form.

“Oh, and don’t forget to have fun! It is Prom, after all.”

#rwby #rwby oc #rwby oc fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #team ebny #ebny #gral academy #welcome to grail academy #nico #esmerelda #bernard #yorick #rwby fanteam

[shark-myths]

Folie A Deux

I promised to write FAD meta like, forever ago. It took longer than I planned. Here it is, at last.

Folie is anthemic, artistic; it’s cynicism and heartbreak all layered up in failing hope. It’s Pete saying goodbye to his band and embarking on a new life as a husband and a father. It’s Patrick finding his confidence as a showman just in time for it to turn to ash on his tongue and prompt him to remake himself utterly. It’s Joe finally feeling like he has a role in FOB and creative ownership of his own band. It’s Andy, um, drumming. Super well. Without any particular emotional interpretation on my part because Andy’s, you know, pretty content to just play with his friends.

Without further blathering, allow me to present, at long last: a rambling, tear-filled, official Tryst Theory ™ interpretation of FOB’s fourth-and-almost-final studio album.

I am always struck most by the quality of obstruction in the albums produced during the Commercial Success/’Sell Out’ era. Pete begins obscuring himself for the first time during Infinity on High and especially Folie A Deux: the lyrics become increasingly senseless, more about cleverness and sound that saying things plainly. But he’s so honest during this era too. He tells us exactly what it feels like to be him, to be so pulled apart and scrutinized and sad, to be sick on his own hope. To be sick and fuzzy, made of stuffing, and far away on way-too-many anxiety meds. We get lines that don’t make much sense on the surface, like ‘I’m not a chance, put a heat wave in your pants,’ and we get the self-aware aggression of bops like I Don’t Care.

In the previous era, Pete didn’t really know what it meant, yet—being Pete Wentz. Being so public. Being the face of the band, being the bad guy and the heel. What it would cost. Now he understands that anything he touches, or looks at, or says at loud is going to change. Once he does it, says it, thinks it, feels it, it’s out of his control. It’s owned by someone else. Even his private body, his private phone. Even his decision to defend his friend from an aggressive bouncer onstage. The brand of phone he carries, the girls he texts, who he stands next to in photos, the cities where he plays shows and the cities he does not. Now he understands that his life is not his, but something the public will use to hurt him if we get bored. This is drugstore cowboy Pete. This is a Pete grown so heavy under the weight of his own misery and bullshit that he can barely go on. This is a Pete preparing to say goodbye.

Which is a long way of saying: Folie A Deux fucks me up.

 A little history (sourced heavily from Wikipedia):

The album was recorded from July-September 2008, beginning two months after Pete and Ashlee were married, and released in December 2008, shortly after Bronx was born. They started recording ahead of schedule, without telling the label, and deliberately limited their studio time. They wanted to recapture what they had felt during Grave, when they were racing against their drained back accounts to get the album set down. They wanted that simplicity and rawness, the feeling of being mixed-up kids half living out of a van and making music that felt vibrant and essential. Patrick told AP, “There was something really interesting about that creative process when we were starting out. The more time you have, the more potential you have for excess.” (He thought he dominated Infinity and wanted to pare himself back, reign himself in, for Folir.) They tried to emulate the process and feeling of Grave as much as possible: “first-thought, best-thought.” Joe pushed to be included more in collaboration and felt like he “owned the songs a lot more. It made me really excited about contributing to Fall Out Boy and made me find my role in the band.” Pete made an effort (this is him making an effort, okay) to keep his personal life more sequestered from the writing and use more metaphor and the conceit characters speaking lines, more like a stage musical. And, perhaps true to the feeling of Grave, Pete and Patrick fought painfully and violently over the record. It was personal and artistic for everyone. They felt it was their best work.

Fans tore them apart, of course. Booing anytime they played anything off the new record. The album undersold and public reception did not match the glowing critical reviews. They tried to say something important, to talk about society and convey real messages in their music. They were publicly rebuffed. Joe told Rolling Stone, “Some of us were miserable on stage. Others were just drunk.” The reception, the struggle, cemented what Pete had already decided to do: leave the band.

(Let’s not talk about the last song of what he thought would be their last show ever during which, instead of playing Saturday with his best friends and his me-and-Pat, he had the man who named the band in the first place shave off his signature Pete Wentz hair in a symbolic ritual of fucking morning, let’s not let’s not)

(but in case you want to)

 A little cover art:

I just want you to know that Pete Wentz has the original painting of that cover in his home. IN CASE YOU THINK THAT’S RELEVANT.

This image. With Pete’s furry history. With the costumes and feeling like a zoo animal and playing the role of the heel, with the way he said in the Folie Making Of video that being perceived in media is “like wearing a costume, you’re not who you are.” With his interest especially in bears, the talk of stitches and stuffing and seams, with the Lullabye track and ‘honey is for bees silly bear’ (and Black Cards’ ‘you’re my best friend, honeycomb head’) and the whole Winnie the Pooh vibe. With the devoted companionship and singular love exhibited by Winnie the Pooh and the way he turns back into inert, lifeless stuffing when you grow too old and you forget what he really is and see him as just a toy, empty and pliable, and the way only childhood wonder and innocence can return him to life. How the cover has not just one person on it, but a bear-boy plus one: a madness shared by two. A real bear, and someone who’s just pretending, or just trying to be. What a match, what a catch.

WHAT A PETERICK MASTERPIECE THIS FUCKING ALBUM IS

The liner notes are empty, by the way. For the physical CD. The liner notes are just pictures and names of band members, then production information and thanks to ‘fans, friends, and loves.’ Nothing else. No lyrics. No record. If that’s not foreshadowing—

 And now said masterpiece itself:

1. Disloyal Order of the Water Buffaloes

Okay, so let’s take a step back and imagine for a second the decision-making process that went into writing a magnum fucking opus Peterick anthem to open the album with. Are we all on the same page here? WHAT THE FUCK, were they TRYING to kill me

This album is the fucking Holy Grail of the drug use = Patrick metaphor, and we dive right into it with this one. Boycott love. Detox just to retox. DRAW YOUR OWN HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T PARALLELS. #trysttheory

For all that Pete tried to move away from autobiographical lyrics on this album, his view of himself is plain in this song: ‘perfect boys with their perfect lives, no one wants to hear you sing about tragedy.’

The line ‘fell out of bed, butterfly bandage, but don’t worry’ brings up my theories about what dreams mean. Falling out of bed and getting hurt is a clear consequence of dreaming so hard you forgot it was just a dream (or trysting with your best friend and forgetting there could be consequences, real people you can hurt and yourself included). ‘You’ll never remember, your head is far too blurry’ ties into w.a.m.s as well as Cooperstown and the idea of being blurry-headed, impaired because you’re fucked up on love or some other drug, and making choices you’d regret, if you could remember them. Making mistakes you’ll have to live with whether you remember them or not.

(Romantically speaking, water buffaloes are disloyal: Google suggests a single male water buffalo can sire as many as 100 baby buffs in a single mating season. It seems pretty obvious throughout this album that issues of infidelity were large in Pete’s mind while writing these lyrics.)

2. I Don’t Care

This song makes me think of Wilson (Expensive Mistakes) so much. Starting over again in Mexico, friends who don’t care about you, the blues-pop bounce to it and repeating riff? Sonically, they have a lot in common.

Pete may be playing on his previous reference to Closer (‘he tastes like you only sweeter’) with the opening line here—‘say my name and his in the same breath, I dare you to say they taste the same’—which is the saddest and most painful movie about heterosexuals you will ever watch, but writing that line and putting it on Patrick’s tongue? That may be the gayest thing that happens to me all night, guys, and I’m a queer girl with a bottle of wine and a long, long Friday evening ahead of me.

This song is so much a conversation Pete is having with the world about his fame and notoriety, imo. He calls it a narcissist’s anthem but I don’t think that’s it, exactly. I think—and the music video backs me up on this—it’s a coy wink at their own reputation, all the shit people are slinging about them and Pete specifically. We get a drug reference here, too: ‘take a chance, let your body get a tolerance.’

Also, Patrick is a nun in the video. Pete put Patrick in a literal fucking habit. What more do you need to me to say to prove definitely that Pete is desperately in love with him? This. Kid. In. A. Nun’s. Habit.

3. She’s My Winona

IF THIS SONG ISN’T A DISCUSSION OF HOW PETE HAD TO REVISE HIS PETERICK AMBITIONS WHEN HE FOUND OUT ASHLEE WAS PREGNANT

(There are so many suicide references in this song I want to join Pete and the band’s manager in cheering and celebrating all over again that our boy lived to 28. You can physically feel him resigning himself to living a long life in these verses.)

‘Hell or glory, I don’t want anything in between.’ I take this line as pretty directly about him and Patrick: he doesn’t care if they go to hell and it ruins the band, he wants to take the risk, because he thinks together they could be—glory. He wants to roll the dice. (Take a chance—I’m not a chance.) And ‘then came a baby boy with long eyelashes, and daddy said “you gotta show the world the thunder.”’ In other words, he wanted hell or glory, ruination or Patrick, but then along came his son. And his priorities changed. Of course they did. True love is one thing; raising your child is another.

‘We had a good run, even I have to admit.’

(And—here’s the thing—people ask me sometimes, what I think about Pete marrying Ashlee. “Do you think he married her just because it was the right thing to do?” No. I think he believed in love and family and forever. I think Pete believed it would work. I think he wanted it to. I think that’s why the trysting, and eventually the band, stopped: because Pete tried his fucking best. I think he loved her and loved the idea of a future for himself—the first time he’s ever really imagined that. The idea of somewhere to belong, a real family, one that he felt part of. I think he wanted more than anything for it to work precisely because it was so different from what he, or anyone else, ever expected for him. He said ‘I want to marry this girl’ and he meant it. He really did intend to love her forever, as best he could, and not love anyone else if he could help it.

But those aren’t good reasons to build a whole relationship on, a marriage on. And he was a mess, and in love with Patrick too, and hated and famous and fucked. He had no privacy, limited emotional maturity, a burgeoning substance problem and no sense of himself that wasn’t dependent on what the culture and the media and his fans and his friends reflected back to him and said was true. There was no way they could be happy together under those circumstances, and he’d have stayed forever anyway, I think. His interviews about that time—when he stopped shaving, then stopped showering; when he was a drugstore cowboy stay-at-home dad, depressed and giving up—he doesn’t blame Ashlee for wanting to leave. He hated himself enough to be miserable forever, but she didn’t. So of course it fell apart.)

4. America’s Suitehearts

This commercial headfuck of a song. Jerry christ, guys, someone throw me an anchor so I can drown myself. This caricature, the monstrosity and performance of celebrity, the way the band is reduced to wrestling alter egos, painted and pretend. No one’s being subtle with this song, this video. They are showing us exactly what they mean.

‘I must confess, I’m in love with my own sins.’

DO YOU MEAN LIKE BEING IN GAY LOVE WITH YOUR BEST FRIEND

DO YOU MEAN THAT SIN?

And this verse, though ostensibly about the vagaries of fame, sounds so much like him falling in love with Patrick while Patrick is oblivious:

‘You can bow and pretend you don’t know you’re a legend. Time just hasn’t told anyone else yet. I’m sorry, I just let my love loose again.’

For so many years, Pete believed his love was something he had to apologize for. 😭 😭 😭 😭

5. Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet

Okay, fuck this, I’m done

This fucking

This

UGH

Remember the paternity rumors at the time of Ashlee’s pregnancy? Look at this whole complicated, tangled-up song about infidelity and paternity and the idea of Ashlee cheating while Pete’s cheating too. ‘Keep a calendar, this way you will always know’ [who impregnated you]. ‘I will never end up like him. behind my back, I already am.’ I literally cannot

‘Does he know the way I worship our love’

6. The (Shipped) Gold Standard

do I even need to keep writing this or is the album now, itself, independently writing the tryst theory

my notes for this song just say ‘come the fuck on’

This song is about: living in LA and missing Chicago (and what it felt like in Chicago, who you were and who you were with); taking accountability for your own actions even when it does not satisfy your hedonistic urges (e.g., marrying your pregnant girlfriend and breaking off your illicit love affair with Patrick Stump), trying to remake your identity and change yourself like those are the same thing and you can get a new heart as easily as a new name; losing your luck and breaking up (‘tell that boy I’ll leave you alone now, like a stove, I’ll turn my love down); horseshoe crabs; and of course, that good ol’ famous-in-the-closet feel:

‘I wanna scream I love you from the top of my lungs, but I’m afraid that someone else will hear me.’

7. Coffee’s For Closers

I’m just crying by now I can’t type anymore

He’s using this whole album to break up with Patrick, to explain, to say goodbye

‘I want everything to change and stay the same. Time doesn’t care about anyone or anything. Come together, come apart.’

‘We will never believe again’

And: ‘kick drum beating in my chest again’ and that feeling, the one we’ve all felt in the pit at any show, any good one with that golden-vibe in the air, the one that makes your heart feel connected to the hearts of everyone around you, like you could be lifted on light and floating around the room, like the love is pouring out of you and rising like heat and linking up to the network of love flowing into and out of everyone else, when you feel it and know they do too and your whole body vibrates with the impossible imperceptible hum of your very atoms, your constituent fucking molecules lit up and stitched together by this, this, this. The feeling like you don’t need lungs because singing in breath and bellows enough, the feeling like the only reason you ever had a heart was so the drummer could pump it with their sticks. ‘Preach electric to the microphone stand,’ Patrick the conductor, Patrick the evangelist, Patrick the gospel of his fucking love. Pete’s saying goodbye to that feeling. Pete knows, he knows already, what he is planning to do.

Pete’s lying. Pete’s saying ‘I love the mayhem more than the love’ like all he’s really been out to do is make a mess, break hearts, take names. Like he is no more and no less than what all the tabloids say about him. (Never watch the Fresh Only Bakery videos on youtube. They are boring, for one, and also the saddest fucking Pete you will ever see.) Pete’s saying ‘I will never believe in anything again’ and he’s making Patrick say it too, because true-blue love was supposed to last forever, and then Pete got married to someone else.

‘Oh, change will come.’

8. What A Catch, Donnie

NO. NO

how the fuck dare this song even exist

So this is it. This is the goodbye. Pete has talked about how he wrote this song from Patrick’s perspective, and he recruited some of Patrick’s favorite artists and friends of the band to sing different lines in a medley of the band’s hits up to this point. This is like, the FOB song equivalent of a suicide note. (To follow this with a greatest hits album—! G O D)

The reference to Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway—their collaboration, his ultimate suicide, and the way Miss Flack looked on all his destruction and said ‘I still want you back’ is absolutely a testament to the way Patrick, and the rest of the band, forgave him and took him back in after the notorious Best Buy Incident. The gratitude for the whole band and what the band has done for Pete is tied up in this song. ‘You’ll never catch us’ smacks of trysting, and there’s something to the line ‘I’m the one who charmed the one who gave up on you,’ as the speaker in the sentence in meant to be Patrick and the ‘you’ is presumed to be Pete.

‘They say the captain goes down with the ship, so when the world ends, will God go down with it?’ is both Pete’s intention to go down with the band (which he’s planning to sink, or sees unraveling already in the painful writing process—we don’t know at what point he made his decision to destroy yet another thing he loved in penance for some deep, unknowable conviction of sin) and his gesture of setting them free. The Video of Which We Will Not Speak shows this pretty clearly. Pete saves everyone and everything he’s ever loved at the bargain price of drowning himself. He does it without ever even appearing in the aired version of the video. *broken sobbing*

(The links for the full version are not currently on Youtube, but you can read about it here: http://www.mtv.com/news/1618609/fall-out-boy-release-wrong-version-of-what-a-catch-donnie-video/)

What a match, what a catch. If I say anything else about this song, and how basically everyone who heard it knew it meant the band was going to break up, I will absolutely fall apart

9. 27

OH GOOD A SONG I CAN MAKE IT THROUGH WITHOUT CHOKING ON MY OWN TEARS

NOT

So here’s a lovely little ditty about how Pete Wentz did not kill himself and die at age 27 as he always thought he would! Hahahahahaha I’m fine it’s fine I’m so glad this album exists I’m so glad I’m TALKING ABOUT IT

‘If home is where the heart is, then we’re all just fucked.’ All three of them: Pete, Patrick, and Ashlee. And every FOB fan out there. Ahahaha. GUYS I’M NOT OKAY

We’ve got Peterick drug metaphors to rival the punch of Hold Me Tight Or Don’t: ‘I want it so bad, I’d shoot the sunshine into my veins… Doing lines of dust and sweat off of last’s night stage just to feel like you. Milligrams in my head, burning tobacco in my wind, chasing the direction you went.’

We’ve got desperation about growing and changing and losing that which they so valued in their sound and collaboration on Grave: ‘I can’t remember the good old days. Are all the good times getting gone? They come and go and come and go.’

We’ve got the pressure of keeping your love affair with your lead singer a secret lest you risk your fame, label representation, and fortune: ‘My mind is a safe, and if I keep it in we all get rich’ right next to the dirty, hollow feeling of having images of your body stolen and used to drag your name and reputation like you had no more heart than any other empty doll and losing the value of yourself in that process: ‘My body is an orphanage, we take everyone in.’

We’ve got the romantic comparison to cosmic entities, just like in Real Ones: ‘you’re a bottled star, the planets align. You’re just like Mars, you shine in the sky.’ And that tinge of disparagement and lonesomeness: ‘I’ve got a lot of friends who are stars but some are just black holes.’

10. Tiffany Blews

This song plays with a lot of fun moth/flame metaphors that I really enjoy, while also really amplifying the isolation and quick-burning nature of fame. I think that Pete gets a sick satisfaction from having Patrick sing out the worst things he thinks about himself, that he thinks everyone else thinks about him. (Pete, I think, is the little black dress that will be faded soon.)

Interestingly, we have ‘a roman candle heart keeps us far apart,’ which is a pretty direct link to the later Fourth of July. A heart that flares, explodes, and then burns out quickly certainly would be an obstacle to building a lasting relationship, no matter how much you loved someone…

‘Hate me, baby. Maybe I’m a piece of art.’

‘Dear gravity, you held me down in this starless city’ makes me think of the Moonrise Kingdom quote in Wilson (Expensive Mistakes): ‘I hope the roof flies off and we all get sucked into space.’ It’s the opposite, basically. Hoping to fall in love and get thrown up among the glittering cosmos rather than anchored someplace dark and starless. (Aside: I love how susceptible Pete is to grand, cheesy quotes? Like when, a few days after the release of The Last Jedi, he tweeted the heavy-handed noir line ‘I want to put my fist through this whole lousy, beautiful town.’ Like, look for that in a FOB song someday.)

11. w.a.m.s.

For the curious, Andy confirmed on Twitter that the title stands for waitress/actress/model/singer, a reference to the stereotype of people who run away to Hollywood to make it big but end up washing out and struggling as the starving artist/waitstaff type. If this idea of our boys citing bankrupt ambition does not make you emotional, you may not have a heart.

This song is incredibly relevant to the dreams meta linked earlier—‘when all the others were just stirring awake, I’m trying to trick myself to fall asleep again’ is very evocative of being in denial over the jarring reality of the end of the tryst. I think this song is about one of the last times Pete and Patrick slept together before breaking up.

‘My head’s in heaven, my soles are in hell’ again highlights that Pete’s wildest Patrick dreams are very different than where he actually finds himself; ‘let’s meet in the purgatory of my hips and get well’ is a pretty transparent request, isn’t it? Especially since pre-hiatus Pete really loved to use ‘hips’ as a signifier for sexual desire/activity. Let’s just fuck and pretend it’s all okay. Let’s lose ourselves in each other and pretend we can have it. Tell me I’m the only one, even if it’s not true. Let me get high on this memory one last time.

‘Hurry, hurry. You put my head in such a flurry, flurry’ is the urgency and compromised judgment of the tryst. ‘Oh freckle freckle’ can be read as Patrick’s forehead mole. ‘What makes you so special? I’m gonna leave you’ tells us what makes the last time so good: Pete knows it’s the last time. Pete knows he has to end it. But he’s so addicted-sick, ((stray-dog sick,)) he can’t stop. ‘I’m gonna teach you how we’re all alone’ doesn’t really sound like something a newlywed and soon-to-be-dad should be saying, does it? But there it is. How can he let go when he knows ‘how heartwarming it is inside your skin’?

The final nail in my coffin: ‘I’m a sunshine machine. I want to get stuck and be golden in your memory.’

We’ve talked about how Patrick = sunshine = gold, right. r i g h t

12. 20 Dollar Nose Bleed

Fun fact: this song is basically erotica to me ever since I wrote that recording booth smut about it! I can’t even listen to it without blushing and becoming uncomfortable. So there’s something you didn’t need to know about me that you… now know about me.

‘Permanent jet lag, please take me back. I’m stray dog sick, please let me in. The mad key’s tripping, singing vows before we exchange smoke rings.’ It is OBVIOUSLY my prerogative to interpret this as slightly depraved sexual longing, but I especially like the bit about singing vows without ever exchanging anything lasting or visible that implies commitment—this can be heard as a comment on the fickleness of commitment, or it can be heard as a comment about how deeply he is/was committed to Patrick even though they never had anything to show for it. Anything they could show for it. Even to each other.

Benzedrine is, of course, the very first pharmaceutical amphetamine (read about it here!). Many great artists and thinkers were influenced by the impossible energy it gives you, which is obviously relatable to someone who experiences natural mania, peddling his own prescription like a ‘medicine man’ (Wilson lyrics). I think the verse about Benzedrine and not letting the doctor in not-so-obliquely references the issue with medication compliance that Pete experienced and many people diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder also do: the meds for this disorder are really unpleasant. They dull you out, they give you tremors, they have really strong side effects, and they take away that amazing manic spark that so many artists credit with their success. Don’t let the doctor in. They’ll take away the only thing he really likes about being himself.

‘Have you ever wanted to disappear?’ is, I think, a glimpse of the unadorned real.

The spoken word bit at the end of this song really hammers together a lot of the themes of the whole album, the whole band, personal and political both. ‘You said you’re not listening and I said I’m wishing…’, only we don’t ever find out what’s really being said.

13. West Coast Smoker

I love the hell out of this song because there are few things in life that are hotter than Patrick singing the chorus. And fuck. Patrick saying curse words. I die every time. I think this is a kink I share with Pete Wentz. I think one day Pete Wentz and I will share a circle of hell. It will be called the ‘Underage Stump Mouth Rotunda,’ and we will all be very ashamed.

We’ve got a lot of the same themes: the ease of suicide and the conviction to live, the way shows feel and how it was when they were kids, drug use and overmedicated ennui. Pete was once the son, is becoming the father, is resolving not to become the holy ghost.

‘I’m the last of my kind’ and ‘when they made me they broke the mold’ and the finality of it all. (Contrasted with the modern era: ‘you’re the last of a dying breed.’ Pete has grown up and away from his recursive self-obsession, from his own myth. Pete learning to look inside others and stop dismissing himself, and everyone else, as fool’s gold.)

‘Your eyes are blocking my starlight’ to me really speaks to the person who is keeping him from Patrick, or the people—the fans, the Public, with their eyes on his every action.

14. Pavlove

I LOVE THIS SONG

Once again, we have a drug use metaphor: ‘she’s back to the bathroom for one more,’ ‘get addicted to this,’ and of course, the endless seeking for something to make ‘my chest stir/my head blur.’ And: ‘I’m not ready for a handshake with death, I’m just such a happy mess’ shows us, for once, what Pete has to live for—not just that he’s resigned to life, but the reason for it. This song is all tied up with the heady swell of live music and self-medication, and there’s no line more representative of my experience as a bisexual person than ‘I’m the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror.’

‘I want to make you as lonely as me so you can get addicted to this’ seems very directed at Patrick, doesn’t it? Because this is a Pete who needs Patrick too much, thinks Patrick doesn’t need him back, is terrified. Doesn’t know how to solve his problems except to flee them. So: he flees them.

 I MADE IT. I BARELY FUCKING MADE IT BUT I DID.

To sum up: Folie is an incredible, sweeping, beautiful album about the glory of Peterick and the band’s impending end, and it will break your heart. Hit me up with questions and requests, and as always, thank you for reading!

shark-myths out *mic drop*

#tryst theory #peterick #fall out boy #fob #pete wentz #patrick stump #pete wentz x patrick stump #lyrics meta #folie #america's suitehearts #prehiatus #small out boy #folie a deux #fad

[elefhantheroom]

where can i watch fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song

where can i watch fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song

➜WATCH NOW

The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

➜DOWNLOAD

Title : Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. Spring Song Original Title : 劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel]」Ⅲ.spring song Alternative Titles : Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel III.spring song Directed by : Yuki Kajiura Cast : Noriaki Sugiyama, Noriko Shitaya, Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda, Mai Kadowaki, Miki Itō Genre : Animation Countries : Japan

Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song release date fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full movie fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song reddit fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song dub fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray release date fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song australia And the President of the United States defends, rationalizes, or does nothing to stop this? I’d say that’s insane, but I’m too heartbroken. Because every step of the way, I’ve heard you defend, rationalize, or enable him and the politicians around him. Not since I was a kid have I craved to hear your strong voice more, to hear you say anything reassuring, inspiring, morally cogent. If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …

[additionalblog]

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The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

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Title : Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. Spring Song Original Title : 劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel]」Ⅲ.spring song Alternative Titles : Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel III.spring song Directed by : Yuki Kajiura Cast : Noriaki Sugiyama, Noriko Shitaya, Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda, Mai Kadowaki, Miki Itō Genre : Animation Countries : Japan

Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song release date fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full movie fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song reddit fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song dub fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray release date fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song australia And the President of the United States defends, rationalizes, or does nothing to stop this? I’d say that’s insane, but I’m too heartbroken. Because every step of the way, I’ve heard you defend, rationalize, or enable him and the politicians around him. Not since I was a kid have I craved to hear your strong voice more, to hear you say anything reassuring, inspiring, morally cogent. If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …

[gekijoubanauthore]

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fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream

➜WATCH NOW

The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

➜DOWNLOAD

Title : Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. Spring Song Original Title : 劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel]」Ⅲ.spring song Alternative Titles : Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel III.spring song Directed by : Yuki Kajiura Cast : Noriaki Sugiyama, Noriko Shitaya, Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda, Mai Kadowaki, Miki Itō Genre : Animation Countries : Japan

Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song release date fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full movie fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song reddit fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song dub fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray release date fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song australia And the President of the United States defends, rationalizes, or does nothing to stop this? I’d say that’s insane, but I’m too heartbroken. Because every step of the way, I’ve heard you defend, rationalize, or enable him and the politicians around him. Not since I was a kid have I craved to hear your strong voice more, to hear you say anything reassuring, inspiring, morally cogent. If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …

[spartacusherord]

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch stream

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch

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The final chapter in the Heaven's feel trilogy. Angra Mainyu has successfully possessed his vessel Sakura Matou . It's up to Rin, Shiro, and Rider to cleanse the grail or it will be the end of the world and magecraft as we all know it.

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Title : Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel III. Spring Song Original Title : 劇場版「Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel]」Ⅲ.spring song Alternative Titles : Fate/stay night Heaven's Feel III.spring song Directed by : Yuki Kajiura Cast : Noriaki Sugiyama, Noriko Shitaya, Ayako Kawasumi, Kana Ueda, Mai Kadowaki, Miki Itō Genre : Animation Countries : Japan

Our relationship is strained. It feels like it has been for a while. For the last four years, there has been an elephant in the room — I’d joke and call it an orange elephant, but I’m nervous that might end this earnest conversation before it even begins. Have I changed? I mean, yes, of course I have. I’ve gotten older. I’ve had two children. I’ve tried to read and learn as much as possible, just as you taught me. In fact, that’s sort of the weirdest thing. I don’t think I’ve changed much. I still believe, deep in my bones, all the fundamental things you not only talked to me about, but showed me when I was little. I believe in character. I believe in competence. I believe in treating people decently. I believe in moderation. I believe in a better future and I believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that the system we were given by the Founding Fathers, although imperfect, has been an incredible vehicle for progress, moral improvement, and greatness, unlike any other system of government or country yet conceived. I believe this exceptionalism comes with responsibilities. Politically, I’m pretty much the same, too. Government is best when limited, but it’s nonetheless necessary. Fair but low taxes grow the economy. Rights must be protected, privacy respected. Partisanship stops at the water’s edge. No law can make people virtuous — that obligation rests on every individual. So how is it even possible that we’re here? Unable to travel, banned from entry by countless nations. The laughingstock of the developed world for our woeful response to a pandemic. 200,000 dead. It hasn’t been safe to see you guys or grandma for months, despite being just a plane ride away. My children — your grandchildren — are deprived of their friends and school. Meanwhile, the U.S., which was built on immigration — grandma being one who fled the ravages of war in Europe for a better life here — is now a bastion of anti-immigrant hysteria. Our relatives on your side fought for the Union in the Civil War. Great-grandpa fought against the Russians in WWI, and granddad landed at Normandy to stop the rise of fascism. And now people are marching with tiki-torches shouting, “the Jews will not replace us.” What is happening?! Black men are shot down in the streets? Foreign nations are offering bounties on American soldiers?

fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song release date fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song full movie fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song watch fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song stream fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song reddit fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song dub fate/stay night heaven's feel - iii. spring song blu ray release date fate/stay night heaven's feel iii. spring song australia And the President of the United States defends, rationalizes, or does nothing to stop this? I’d say that’s insane, but I’m too heartbroken. Because every step of the way, I’ve heard you defend, rationalize, or enable him and the politicians around him. Not since I was a kid have I craved to hear your strong voice more, to hear you say anything reassuring, inspiring, morally cogent. If not for me, then for the world that will be left to your grandchildren. This does not feel like a good road we are going down… Look, I know you’re not to blame for this. You hold no position of power besides the one we all have as voters, but I guess I just always thought you believed in the lessons you taught me, and the things we used to listen to on talk radio on our drives home from the lake. All those conversations about American dignity, the power of private enterprise, the sacredness of the Oval Office, the primacy of the rule of law. Now Donald Trump gushes over foreign strongmen. He cheats on his wife with porn stars (and bribes them with illegal campaign funds). He attacks whistleblowers (career army officers, that is). He lies blatantly and habitually, about both the smallest and largest of things. He enriches himself, his family members, and his business with expenditures straight from the public treasury. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what else has happened these last four years that executive privilege has allowed him to obscure from public view. I still think about the joke you made when we walked past Trump Tower in New York when I was kid. Tacky, you said. A reality show fool. Now that fool has his finger on the nuclear button — which I think he thinks is an actual button — and I can’t understand why you’re OK with this. I mean, the guy can’t even spell! You demanded better of me in the papers I turned in when I was in middle school. I know you don’t like any of it. If you’d have had your choice, any other Republican would have been elected but Trump. You’re not an extremist, and you’ve never once said anything as repulsive as what people now seem comfortable saying on TV and social media (and in emails to your son, I might add). Four years ago, I wrote to you to ask you not to vote for Donald Trump. But this time around, that’s no longer enough. At some point, just finding it all unpleasant and shaking your head at the tweets, while saying or doing nothing more about it, is moral complicity. You told me that as a kid! That the bad prevail when good people do nothing. A while back I emailed a friend of mine who is an advisor to the administration. I said to him, why do you think my dad’s support of Trump bothers me so much more than yours? Because it does. This is someone who helped put Trump in office and wants to keep him there, but we’re still friends. Talking to him doesn’t hurt my heart the way it does when politics come up over family meals. The man’s answer was telling, and I am quoting. He said, “Because I am irredeemable, but your dad ought to know better.” Does that register with you at all? One of the things you taught me well was how to spot a scam. Double check everything, you said. Do your research. Look at what the people around them say. Look at their history. Remember when you used to quote Reagan’s line to me, “Trust, but verify”? I’ve been lucky enough to make a few trips to Washington the last few years. I’ve sat across from Senators and Congressmen. I’ve talked to generals who have briefed the president, and business leaders who worked with him before the election. This is a guy who doesn’t read, they said, a guy with the attention span of a child. Everybody avoided doing business with him. Because he didn’t listen, because he stiffed people on bills, because he was clueless. He treated women horribly. He’s awful, they said. I thought this was a particularly damning line: If Donald Trump were even half-competent, one elected official told me, he could probably rule this country for 20 years. I have trouble figuring what’s worse — that he wants to, or that he wants to but isn’t competent enough to pull it off. Instead, Washington is so broken and so filled with cowards that Trump just spent the last four years breaking stuff and embarrassing himself. I learned from you how to recognize a dangerous or unreliable person. If you don’t trust the news, could you trust what I’m bringing you, right from the source? Let’s trust our gut, not our political sensibility. Based on what I’ve told you, and what you’ve seen: Would you let him manage your money? Would you want your wife or daughter to work for him without supervision? I’m not even sure I would stay in one of his hotels, after what I’ve read. Watching the RNC a few weeks ago, I wondered what planet I was on. What’s with all the yelling? How is this happening on the White House lawn? Why are his loser kids on the bill? His kid’s girlfriend??? And what is this picture of America they are painting? They are the ones in charge! Yet they choose to campaign against the dystopian nightmare that is 2020… which is to say, they are campaigning against themselves. Look, I agree there is crazy stuff happening in the world. The civil unrest is palpable, violence is on the rise, and Americans have never been so openly divided. Sure, rioting and looting are bad. But who is to blame for all the chaos? The President. Remember what you told me about the sign on Truman’s desk? The buck stops here. (May we contrast that with: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”) In any case, what some crazy people in Portland are doing is not ours to repeatedly disavow. What the president does? The citizens are complicit in that. Especially if we endorse it at the ballot box come November 3rd. Besides, what credibility do we have to insist on the ‘rule of law’ when eight of the president’s associates have faced criminal charges? His former lawyer went to jail, too! And then the president commutes their sentences, dangles pardons to keep them quiet, or tries to prevent them from cooperating with authorities? When he’s fined millions of dollars for illegally using his charity as a slush fund? When he cheats on his taxes? When he helped his parents avoid taxes, too? I remember you once told me the story of a police officer in your department who was caught filling up his personal car with gas paid for by the city. The problem, you said, wasn’t just the mistake. It was that when he was confronted by it, he lied. But the cameras showed the proof and so he was fired, for being untrustworthy most of all. Would you fire Trump if he worked for you? What kind of culture do you think your work would have had if the boss acted like Trump? As for the lying, that’s the craziest part, because we can, as the kids say, check the receipts: Was it bad enough to call John McCain a loser? Yes, but then, of course, Trump lied and claimed he didn’t. Bad enough to cheat on his wife? Yes, but of course, he lied about it, and committed crimes covering it up (which he also lied about). Was it bad enough to solicit help from Russia and Wikileaks in the election? Yes, but then he, his son, and his campaign have lied about it so many times, in so many forums, that some of them went to jail over it. Was it stupid that, in February, Trump was tweeting about how Covid-29 was like the flu and that we didn’t need to worry? Yes, but it takes on a different color when you listen to him tell Bob Woodward that in January he knew how bad it was, how much worse it was than even the worst flu, and that he was deliberately going to downplay the virus for political purposes. I’m sure we could quibble over some, but The Fact Checker database currently tallys over 20,000 lies since he took office. Even if we cut it in half, that’s insane! It’s impossible to deny: Trump lied, and Americans have died because of it. A friend of mine had a one-on-one dinner with Trump at the White House a while back. It was actually amazing, he said. Half the evening was spent telling lies about the size of his inaugural address. This was in private — not even for public relations purposes, and years after the controversy had died down. That’s when he realized: The lying is pathological. It can’t be helped. Which is to say, it makes a person unfit to lead. Politics should not come before family. I don’t want you to think this affects how I feel about you. But it does make it harder for us to spend time together — not just literally so, since Trump’s bumbling response to the pandemic has crippled America and made travel difficult. It’s that I feel grief. I feel real grief — were the lessons you taught me as a kid not true? Did you not mean them? Was it self-serving stuff to make sure I behaved? Was I a fool for listening? Or is it worse, that my own father cares more about his retirement accounts — and I’ll grant, the runup of the market has been nice for me, too — than the future he is leaving for his children? Are you so afraid of change, of that liberal boogeyman Limbaugh and Hannity and these other folks have concocted, that you’d rather entrust the country to a degenerate carnival barker than anyone else? I see all this anger, what is it that you’re so angry about? You’ve won. Society has worked for you. My own success is proof. So what is it? Because it can’t possibly be that you think this guy is trustworthy, decent, or kind. It’s definitely not about his policies… because almost every single one is anathema to what Republicans — and you — have talked about my entire life. The one thing I hold onto is hope. I believe in America. I believe in the goodness of hardworking people like you and Mom. I know that this is not what you wanted to happen, that this is not the America you grew up in nor the one you would like for me and my kids to grow up in. I hold onto hope that you’re tired enough to draw the line. That you are not irredeemable as that Trump advisor allowed himself to become. The right thing is always the right thing, you’ve said. Even when it’s hard. Even when it goes against what your friends think, or what you’ve done in the past. The right thing is obviously to end this. To cancel this horrendous experiment with its cavalcade of daily horrors and vulgarities and stupidities and historical humiliations. America is a great nation. …