#I thought the composition looks nicer with her though so I guess this is another AU drawing now

[anininas]

A compostion and colour test sketch that evolved into a bit more than just a simple doodle

If I now don't draw for 5 months straight, this was the reason why

#The room doesn't look like how it actually does in game at all because I just couldn’t be bothered #Technically Sherry also wasn't supposed to be here #I thought the composition looks nicer with her though so I guess this is another AU drawing now #resident evil #resident evil 2 #resident evil 2 remake #leon s kennedy #sherry birkin #ani's scribbles

[putschki1969]

Wakana Spring Live ～magic moment～ 2021 Review

Note: I FINALLY got my package. Now that I watched the full live in HD, I thought I would share m thoughts and a little present below the cut ^_^ As always, I would like to encourage everyone to SUPPORT Wakana by BUYING her Blu-ray!!! Her sales numbers aren’t the greatest which is a huge shame since this is a solid release.

Overall thoughts: I got the Limited Edition of course since I couldn’t resist the pretty sleeve packaging, the bonus documentary (so insightful) and the photobook (scans coming up soon). It is quite pricey but totally worth the money, especially if you are among those fans who liked “Magic Moment” much more than Wakana’s debut album. The release comes with a gorgeous clearfile as tokuten so be sure to get it! Try going for the Regular Edition if you want to save money. As for the live itself, it was a pleasure to watch and I can see myself rewatching it a lot (skipping a few songs though :P). Wakana’s voice coaching lessons are definitely starting to pay off. She has so much stamina these days. Can you believe that this was her SECOND live performance of the day? Her vocals were solid, even during her high-demand power ballads. At rarely any point did she sound overly-screechy to my ears, there were certain sections that didn’t sound 100% smooth but those parts definitely didn’t take away from my  overall enjoyment. On a side note, this live was a feast for the eyes, Wakana looked absolutely beautiful in her white dress and I even liked her encore outfit even though it was a little “out there” XD During the more up-beat songs, her smile literally lit up the entire hall. Seeing her have so much fun on stage is healing. I feel like they may have gone a little overboard on the blurry filters from time to time but I guess that was on purpose. 

1.揺れる春: 6/10. This is obviously the perfect cute intro for a Spring Lives so I understand why Wakana put it here but I would have much preferred “breathing” as a grand entrance. Still so sad that this is the only song from the “magic moment” album that didn’t make it onto the setlist of this live. I know, we already got an official audio recording but I would have loved some video footage to accompany it :P Anyways, back to Yureru Haru. I haven’t really warmed up to the song yet. It’s not bad and I honestly love the verses since they are super precious and feel kinda nostalgic but the chorus doesn’t stand out imo. Also, her singing style during parts of the chorus isn’t my favourite and not overly flattering. 2.where: 4/10. Oh no!! I was hoping Wakana would be singing the “ohhhohhhs”. She could have easily done it during the start and middle part of the song since it wasn’t overlapping with her other vocals. This seems so rushed? Is it just me? I haven’t listened to the studio version in a while but I know that I quite enjoyed that and it definitely didn��t make me feel as fidgety as this. Don’t know what it is exactly but it keeps me from getting into the song. I guess this is the biggest disappointment for me because I wanted to like it. 3.君だけのステージ: 4/10. I will admit it, this is not my favourite song. It’s just way too long :P But it is a very good and energetic performance, really no complaints when it comes to Wakana. But experiencing it live at the venue would have made it so much better for me. Oh well, nothing that can be done about it. The scat part at the end was a pleasant surprise. Would have loved to hear more of that. 4.442: 100/10. Honestly a masterpiece. One of Wakana’s best solo songs up-to-date and so very perfect to show off her vocals. Hearing it live like this with a band arrangement is a revelation. I love the wailing in the beginning and all the strength she conveys throughout the rest of the song. 5.ひらり ひらり: 3/10. Another song I haven’t warmed up to yet. No real thoughts. It’s one of those songs that’s just very forgettable, not bad per se but there is just nothing at all that attracts me to it. :-( As you can tell, I wasn’t entirely happy with some of the setlist choices. Wakana obviously wanted to include all the album songs but some of them are just not my cup of tea T_T 6.夕焼け: 6/10. This is one of the pieces that gets better every time I listen to it. And the latter half of the song is generally much nicer. I am always surprised by how much I actually like it when it’s over :P 7.アキノサクラ Acoustic ver.: 7/10. I am distracted by that harmonica sound-alike thingy Satoshi Takebe is playing XD Still, I have come to really like this song last winter so it is always appreciated, especially the acoustic version. Wakana is struggling a bit during the ending but nothing too bad. 8.myself: 100/10. Utter perfection. So much better than the studio version. And I am not saying this because I disliked the studio version, quite the contrary actually, I LOVED it but these two versions are honestly miles apart. Wakana’s live performance feels so much more raw and emotional. And her vocals in this are pretty much flawless, I can’t even begin to describe how this song makes me feel. A perfect ballad for Wakana. 9.メロディー (Cover): 8/10. My first reaction was boring. But by the third listen I was totally smitten and now it’s among my faves from this live. Be sure to give it a few tries, it really grows on you. I can tell why Takebe would choose this for Wakana. 10.元気を出して (Cover): 8/10. Ahhhhh, so freaking cute and old-school. Nothing beats a nostalgic, fluffy pop song from the 80s. I am here for this content. The “lalalas” at the end are LOVE. 11.オレンジ: 6/10. I like the song but I have to be in the mood for it. And here we have that fake harmonica thingy again. I enjoy the sound of a harmonica about as much as the sound of an accordion (which means not at all :P) but it fits the vibe of the song so I am okay with it. The bridge is usually my favourite part but Wakana’s delivery wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked. It was nice to have this right after “Genki wo Dashite” because both are encouraging pick-me-ups. 12.恋はいつも: 10/10. One day I wanna hear her sing the “baby, baby” part!! Please! Another absolutely highlight, you all know that I ADORE  this song, I could listen to this FOREVER. It’s such a shame the corona guidelines do not allow the audience to sing along because the ending is so much more powerful if everyone is actually singing instead of just clapping. 13.Happy Hello Day: 8/10. Such a feel-good piece. Initially I didn’t like it much but seeing it performed with an audience during her Music Party and now here, has really made me fall in love with it. I have mentioned it before in my initial reaction to the YouTube leak but I wish she would have sung some lalalas at the end just as she did during her Music Party. 14.magic moment: 9/10. I KNEW I would love this song more once I got to hear it live. I still feel like the composition is a bit choppy and thus not as flowy as I would have liked from a power ballad like this but OMG, Wakana’s live performance is EVERYTHING. Blown away by her powerful vocals, she OWNS this song 15.時を越える夜に: 10/10. Two power ballads back to back. What more could I ask for? I know not many people liked Wakana’s solo debut but I personally always thought it was perfect for her. I consider this to be one of her best songs. Say what you will about Takebe but he certainly knows how to make Wakana shine, at least in my opinion. And the song has only gotten better with every live performance. Although I think I preferred the version from her Voice Tour. So very glad we got at least one track from Wakana’s first album. The original setlist actually included Kinmokusei and Kioku no Hito which are two of my faves (they were later exchanged with the two covers). 16.春を待つ (Kalafina Cover): 8/10. Despite this being one of Keiko’s favourite Kala-songs I never could bring myself to really appreciate it. It’s just an okay song for me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it quite a bit but I don’t go out of my way to listen to it. However, I very much loved Wakana’s cover though, she does a good job singing everyone’s lines and since the original doesn’t have any harmonies her solo performance doesn’t feel too lacking. 17.あとひとつ: 10/10. Always a treat. Can’t believe this STILL hasn’t gotten an official release :P  But I understand Wakana’s reasoning, she wants to keep this song a unique live experience and it really is. I can’t help but tear up whenever she is singing this.

Documentary: I haven’t watched all of it yet but OMG, this is so cool. The first 20 minutes are dedicated to rehearsals. I love seeing Wakana like this, just being her cute dorky self. But poor baby, it was hard seeing her this exhausted after the big studio rehearsal (that’s what the gif is from - being her overdramatic self, she literally dropped dead to the floor). The second half of the documentary is Wakana talking about the production of the live and the different songs of the setlist. 

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Wakana Spring Live ～magic moment～ 2021 Google Drive (3,11 GB) 🎁

Documentary of Wakana Spring Live ～magic moment～ 2021 Google Drive (1 GB) 🎁

Wakana Spring Live ～magic moment～ 2021 MP3s Google Drive 🎁

FOR ❗PERSONAL❗ USE ONLY DO ❗NOT SHARE ON OTHER SITES WITHOUT PERMISSION❗  

#kalafina #wakana #review #video #Wakana Spring Live ～magic moment～ 2021 #it took forever to encode this T_T #audio #mp3 #mp3s

[wangxiangiftexchange]

Winter Solstice Gift for apprenticedmagician

This story was written for @apprenticedmagician, who was my giftee for the 2020 Wangxian Winter Solstice Gift Exchange. Thank you for letting me write for you, and I really hope that you enjoy this ♥ You're right after all, Wei Wuxian deserves to feel less scared around good puppers.

Happy winter solstice, everyone! ♥

Read on AO3

*****

A Brothers' Love

It begins when Jiang Cheng shares that he’s thinking of getting a dog.

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian whines, looking to where his brother sits by the pier next to him. He pouts at him. “Why would you want a dog? Wouldn’t a kitten be nicer? Cuter?”

“What do you care what type of animal I’m thinking of getting for a pet? You don’t spend enough time here for it to be of any real nuisance to you,” Jiang Cheng says, crossing his arms as he frowns.

And well, yes. He is speaking the truth. Although Wei Wuxian is welcome to come and go as he pleases, Lotus Pier no longer remains his home anymore. It will forever be his childhood home, and remain the place which holds so many treasured memories spent with his siblings. But home for Wei Wuxian nowadays is wherever Lan Wangji is. A fact which Jiang Cheng knows well.

It still doesn’t mean that Wei Wuxian is all that fond of the idea of a dog running around the place when he does take the time to visit though.

“Anyway,” Jiang Cheng continues. “I’d make sure it never got in your way whenever you’re around. It’s not as if I’d just leave it alone with you, especially not when you’re training the disciples.”

Wei Wuxian hums a response, eyes facing down as he watches his feet dangle gently in the water. He lets his thoughts wander.

The thing is, Wei Wuxian knows just how much his brother loves dogs. If it weren’t for him, Jiang Cheng wouldn’t have had to give up the three he’d had as a child. He knew his brother absolutely adored them, and even thinking back Wei Wuxian still manages to feel a little guilty that it had been him and his phobia that had caused so much upset and disruption at the time.

Now that Wei Wuxian is no longer living at Lotus Pier however, he thinks Jiang Cheng should get a pet. It might even do him some good, seeing as how his brother seems to repel any companionship that could be found in the form of a partner or a friend.

Yet Wei Wuxian can’t help how an uncomfortable knot of fear has decided to bundle itself tightly in the pit of his stomach when hearing Jiang Cheng’s words.

He doesn’t want to lose his brother again.

They had finally reached a point where their relationship didn’t feel like they were avoiding the shattered pieces of glass upon the ground whenever they spoke. It will never be what they had once shared before - there’s simply too much history of hurt and misunderstandings to ever seal the cracks completely - but they at least now felt comfortable in one another’s presence. Wei Wuxian considers that having his wedding to Lan Wangji held at Lotus Pier helped to start building fresh foundations between him and his brother, as things have only gotten easier between the two of them since.

But Wei Wuxian worries that if Jiang Cheng does get himself a dog, it’ll only cause the rift that had once been between them to suddenly push them apart again. His phobia hasn’t lessened in any way over the years, and already he hates how it manages to cut short the time he sometimes spends with Jin Ling whenever he catches sight of Fairy by his side.

He doesn’t dare share such concerns with Jiang Cheng though. He doesn’t know how he’ll react if he does, and he definitely doesn’t want to make him angry.

“Wei Wuxian. Are you even listening to me?”

Jiang Cheng’s words pierce through his thoughts, pulling him out of them to where he sits at the edge pier. He leans back, resting against his forearms as he looks out at the view before him.

“You were telling me how useful having a dog could be,” Wei Wuxian says, hesitating for a brief moment before deciding to turn his head towards his brother. He watches as Jiang Cheng’s furrowed brow relaxes slightly, before he’s turning away from Wei Wuxian with a huff as he stares up at the clear sky above them.

“I know very little about dogs,” Apart from that they’re nasty and vicious, Wei Wuxian thinks. “If you wanted to know anything about rabbits though, I could help you.”

Wei Wuxian pauses briefly, his eyes growing wide. “Jiang Cheng! Wouldn’t you like a rabbit instead? Lan Zhan and I had one that just gave birth a little while ago, I’m sure you could adopt one of her bunnies. We have so many now, and -”

“I don’t want one of your rabbits,” Jiang Cheng interrupts, pulling another disappointed pout out of Wei Wuxian.

“It was worth asking.”

“No. It wasn’t,” Jiang Cheng says with a shake of his head, sighing. “Before you overthink this too much, I haven’t said that I’m actually getting a dog yet. I’m only considering it. So stop sulking.”

It isn’t until much later, once Wei Wuxian has returned to Cloud Recesses, that the idea comes to him.

He’s been complaining to Lan Wangji whilst helping his husband grade papers, asking him just how his brother could want a dog, of all the animals there are in the world.

“He’s had over sixteen years to get a pet, and he chooses now to think about a dog?” Wei Wuxian lets out a heavy sigh, shaking his head sadly. “Lan Zhan, do you think he’s doing it on purpose? Maybe he’s just fed up, and he doesn’t really want me visiting Lotus Pier.”

“Ridiculous,” Lan Wangji answers, not looking up from the paper he’s currently grading. “If Jiang Wanyin did not want Wei Ying around, he would just say.”

“Hmmmm. You’d think he would,” Wei Wuxian agrees. “It never stopped him before. But then, we haven’t been as close as we are now for some time. Maybe he’s scared.”

“Unlikely. Jiang Wangyin would speak his mind when you were teenagers also.” Lan Wangji pauses for a moment, and Wei Wuxian supposes it’s because he’s reading over one of the disciples’ words. “If Jiang Wangyin did not want Wei Ying to visit Lotus Pier anymore, why would he have been so adamant for us to marry there?”

Wei Wuxian has no counter argument for that.

“Lan Zhaaaaan,” he whines, stretching his arms out over his side of the table, leaning on it. “What should I do? Obviously I want my brother to get a dog if it makes him happy, but I don’t want to be on edge whenever I’m there. Dogs are scary!”

“Hm,” Lan Wangji hums, looking at Wei Wuxian out of the corner of his eye. His hand comes to rest upon his head, lightly stroking Wei Wuxian’s hair in a soothing gesture while he turns back to his work. “You are alright when your nephew brings Fairy with him on his visits. He is careful with your fear of her, and keeps her at a distance so as not to distress you. I suspect Jiang Wangyin would be the same.”

Wei Wuxian opens his mouth to respond, but then stops as a sudden idea comes to mind.

“... Jin Ling’s due to visit next week.”

Wei Wuxian sits up. Lan Wangji’s hand falls from his hair, the movement and Wei Wuxian’s tone prompting Lan Wangji’s full attention to pull and focus on him. He tilts his head to one side curiously.

“Wei Ying?” He asks.

“I could ask him if he’d help me get used to being around Fairy,” Wei Wuxian says, a grin slowly inching its way across his lips. “I’d get to spend more time with him while he's here, and I’d be working on beating my fear enough so that if Jiang Cheng does decide to get a dog, it won’t be so much of a problem!”

“How are you planning to get used to being around Fairy?” Lan Wangji asks, concern leaking into his words. Wei Wuxian gives a one shouldered shrug.

“I guess just by having her nearby. The more she’s there, the better it is to get used to her, right?”

The idea is perfect! Or at least, Wei Wuxian thinks it is.

When he turns to Lan Wangji however, he finds he's met with a frown.

“Wei Ying -” Lan Wangji begins, thinking over his words carefully. “- that does not seem to be the best thing to do. You are already frightened of her when she’s too close.”

“Which is why I should work on getting better on not being frightened.”

“Not by putting yourself in the most extreme situation to begin with,” Lan Wangi says, shaking his head. “Why not start smaller? Be inside a building while knowing she is outside. Watch her and your nephew from a distance whilst night hunting. Something that does not immediately expose you to her in such close proximity.”

“... Huh.” Wei Wuxian answers thoughtfully.

He taps a finger against his chin, thinking over Lan Wangji’s suggestions. It makes sense, and if he’s being honest with himself, Wei Wuxian believes he’d feel a lot better with facing his phobia one step at a time.

“Those are good ideas, Lan Zhan!”

“Hm,” Lan Wangji replies. He lifts the brush he’s holding once more, dipping it gently back into the ink kept on the desk. “I will look in the library tomorrow for you. See if there are any compositions I can learn.”

“Compositions?” asks Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji continues grading.

“They helped to manage your resentful energy before,” Lan Wangji explains. “Perhaps there is something which can help manage your fear and anxieties also.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that!”

Wei Wuxian scoots himself closer to Lan Wangji’s side, just enough that he can lean over and press a firm kiss against his cheek. Beneath his lips, he can feel how Lan Wangji twitches as an ever so small, curved smile lights up his face.

“Lan Zhan! That’s such a good idea! And you wouldn’t mind?”

Lan Wangji turns to him with an expression so soft and loving, Wei Wuxian feels his heart soar within his chest.

“For Wei Ying? Never.”

They decide that for the first attempt of tackling his phobia, the best place to do so would be alongside Lan Wangji’s rabbits.

It’s quiet and peaceful, an area which is kept well away from some of the busier places within Cloud Recesses. Wei Wuxian has always loved how it feels like a piece of the world that is carved out just for the two of them to retreat to whenever they wanted. With the rabbits so close by there is also something for Wei Wuxian to focus his attention on should he suddenly feel overwhelmed, although with Lan Wangji sat playing the guqin beside him, the hope is that his nerves won’t have much of a chance to get the better of him.

Lan Wangji had managed to find a few pieces of music during his searching in the end, some designed specifically for keeping calm in the face of stressful situations, while others focus more on relaxing the body enough to aid in the effectiveness in using mindfulness techniques. He had returned to the Jingshi with a selection for both him and Wei Wuxian to look through, and aside from one or two of his own choosing, Wei Wuxian had picked out the ones which he felt could be most useful to him.

Despite his surprise at hearing his uncle's request, Jin Ling hadn’t minded lending his help when Wei Wuxian spoke to him of his idea either. Neither had Sizhui, who quickly asked if there was any way he could help once he learnt about what it was they were planning to do.

“Wei Ying.”

At the sound of his name, Wei Wuxian looks to where his husband sits beside him, answering with a questioning hum. Lan Wangji’s attention is towards where Wei Wuxian’s hands are sitting within his lap, and Wei Wuxian quickly realises that it’s because he’s been fidgeting with them.

“Ah - ha…” Wei Wuxian tries to settle them, giving Lan Wangji what he hopes is a convincing enough grin. He knows well enough it doesn’t work at hiding his anxiety.

“You are nervous,” Lan Wangji says, more statement than question. “If you would rather not do this -”

“No, no,” interrupts Wei Wuxian, shaking his head. “I’ll be fine. They’re only going to be walking her nearby, after all. I can at least handle that much.”

He’s not really sure who he’s trying to convince more: his husband or himself. Instead Wei Wuxian bows his head, his hair falling like a curtain over his face. Even without looking he can feel Lan Wangji watching him with concern.

“Alright,” Lan Wangji eventually replies, likely realising just how determined Wei Wuxian is to see this through. “You must tell me if you feel overwhelmed at any point, however.”

“I will, I will,” Wei Wuxian assures, waving a hand in the air quickly before shoving it back into his lap. He doesn’t look up, instead taking in a long, deep breath.

He can do this.

He can.

He will.

“Would you like me to play you something while we wait?” Lan Wangji asks. Wei Wuxian pulls his head up at the question, turning to Lan Wangji with a nervous smile on his face.

“Please,” he says.

Lan Wangji gives a simple nod, saying nothing more. Instead, his hands go to rest upon the guqin, and it isn’t long before Wei Wuxian is hearing the delicate sound of the first few chords he begins to play.

It’s a soft tune, one which is tasked with the aim of relaxing him. Wei Wuxian’s eyes fall closed to the sound of it, letting in another deep, calming breath. He feels the soft fur of a rabbit as it hops its way into his lap, his hand automatically going to stroke it.

In the distance he can hear the sound of two very familiar voices speaking to one another. As they move closer to where Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are sitting Wei Wuxian hears the light jangle of the bells Fairy wears upon her collar. His free hand tightens slightly, and Wei Wuxian tries to focus his attention on the tune of his husband's music floating gently around them.

“... still can’t get over how I’m allowed to bring Fairy into the grounds of Cloud Recesses,” Jin Ling asks.

“HanGuang-Jun received special permissions from Zewu-Jun,” Sizhui replies. “Once he learnt what Wei-Qianbei wanted to do, he agreed that keeping to a familiar space would be best.”

“I get that. It’s just that you Lans have so many rules. I can’t help it if I’m a little surprised.”

“I don’t think it was that difficult a decision for him. Even Zewu-Jun is fond of Fairy,” Sizhui pauses, and for a moment all Wei Wuxian can hear is the sound of crunching leaves as the two boys walk mixed with the jangling of bells. “I would have been more surprised if Zewu-Jun hadn’t agreed, really.”

“I bet Lan Qiren wasn’t happy though when he- Fairy, no! Come here!”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes fly open, his gaze instantly snapping in the direction of where his nephew’s shout had come from. He startles, eyes widening at how Fairy has suddenly moved so close to him. His body tenses, watching the dog stare back at him as she settles to sit upon the grass.

“Stay calm, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says beside him, still strumming his soothing melody. Although his heart beats faster in his chest at the dog's close presence, Wei Wuxian expects that the reason he’s currently not running away or pulling on his husband's sleeve is because of the music Lan Wangji has been playing for him.

Cautiously he watches Jin Ling and Sizhui rush over. Jin Ling quickly kneels beside Fairy, his hand settling just below where her collar sits. Fairy blinks, turning her head towards her master.      

“What did I say to you earlier?” Jin Ling asks. He shakes his head, affectionately stroking her fur. “I know you want to say hello, but you can’t just run to dà jiù like that. You know it scares him.”

Jin Ling looks to his uncle, and Wei Wuxian notes the concern which lingers behind his gaze.

“Sorry. I didn’t think she’d be so excitable.”  

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Wei Wuxian assures, waving his hand dismissively. He tries to smile, the corners of his lips twitching upwards in a way he hopes is convincing. There’s still a fair distance apart between Fairy and himself, enough that Wei Wuxian thinks he can handle it.

He reaches into his lap to pick up the rabbit that still sits there, its legs kicking out in irritation at Wei Wuxian’s awkward hold.

“She probably saw all these cute ones hopping about and couldn’t resist investigating.”

“Maybe,” Jin Ling glances back towards Fairy briefly, as if looking to her for an explanation. Seeming almost amused, Sizhui moves to settle beside him.

“Is it okay if she sits here?” Jin Ling asks. “She’s not too close?”

Wei Wuxian nods, pulling the rabbit close to his chest as he continues to stroke it.

“She’s far enough away. I won’t lie and say I’m not uncomfortable, but I do feel a lot better than I usually do around her.” He pauses, tilting his head towards Lan Wangji as his smile grows wide. “Lan Zhan! Maybe that piece you’re playing really is working!”

“Hm,” Lan Wangji hums in agreement, bowing his head modestly. “There are others we should try also. See which of them is more effective.”

“HanGuang-Jun …” Sizhui starts. “I would like to help. Could you teach me some of them? You never know when they could come in useful.”

Lan Wangji nods. Wei Wuxian knows he would have never said no to him, especially not when it comes to Sizhui’s eagerness to both help and learn something new in the process. Not to mention that their son has a point: such techniques are always useful to have on hand, just in case a need for them should arise.

“You’re doing better than I thought you would for a first attempt,” Jin Ling says, settling his chin against his hand as he watches Wei Wuxian. “It’s good.”

Wei Wuxian’s smile grows soft, hearing the unspoken truth behind Jin Ling’s words. His gaze lingers on watching his nephew for a moment, before he’s looking between both Sizhui and Lan Wangji too.

Despite the small bud of anxiety that still remains nestled inside him at Fairy’s presence, his heart manages to feel full with affection. For he is surrounded by his small little family, and they are all proud of his stepping stone of achievement.

It takes time.

With how busy Jin Ling is nowadays, Wei Wuxian tries not to bother him too much or interfere with his affairs. The matter of becoming a sect leader Wei Wuxian leaves in Jiang Cheng���s hands instead, understanding all too well that his brother can guide Jin Ling far better than Wei Wuxian ever could. After all, the both of them share in the experience of being thrown into such a position at far too young an age.

On the occasions Wei Wuxian does spend time with his nephew, he begins to find that being around Fairy slowly becomes easier. Enough at least that when Jin Ling begins to bring her on night hunts with him, Wei Wuxian doesn’t mind. In some cases she can be rather useful, given her aid as a spiritual dog. She’s managed to help on more than one occasion, even aiding in warning Wei Wuxian in time before he could land himself in a number of troubling situations.

While Wei Wuxian finds having Fairy nearby doesn’t frighten him anymore, he also discovers that his new found comfort doesn’t work for all dogs.

--- --- ❁ --- ---

“Are you feeling better?”

Wei Wuxian hums, nodding as he buries his head closer against Lan Wangji’s chest. The tight grasp he has on his husband's robes loosens, the tension which had stretched tightly across his body having faded slightly. Lan Wangji’s hands have helped to soothe Wei Wuxian’s panic; the slow, calm strokes against his back relaxing him as if he were a child just woken from a nightmare. The silent yet reassuring presence of his husband as he holds him tightly in his arms helps. It reminds Wei Wuxian that he isn’t alone anymore. That he’s safe.

They had been walking through the streets of Caiyi town when it happened. Wei Wuxian had been engrossed in telling a story, his hands sweeping grandly in the air the more excited he became. Lan Wangji kept beside him, listening to every word with the smallest of smiles curling the edges of his lips.

Neither of them had seen the dog lying next to one of the market stalls they were passing by. Not until it had let out a deep sounding bark which startled Wei Wuxian enough to make him jump. Lan Wangji had moved fast, gently reaching for his husband's shaking form and guiding him away from the stall.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t think much about his experiences with dogs in the past most days, yet his eyes had glazed over as his panic only managed to grow. For a brief moment he wasn’t standing alongside his husband. Instead he had been a dirt covered child running down the streets, hands shakily holding onto whatever food he still carried as a vicious dog chased after him. When he blinked he was suddenly Wei Wuxian during the Wen Indoctrination, all prior confidence diminished as Wen Chao locked him in a room alone with a dog twice the size of Wei Wuxian, a certainty growing within that told him he wouldn’t live to see the next day.

So lost in the rush of memories hitting him, Wei Wuxian didn’t pick up on how Lan Wangji had walked him to one of the nearby inns. There was a weight upon his shoulder, Lan Wangji’s hand pressed there as a reminder that he was alright. That he was there beside him.

It hadn’t been until they’d made it to their room and Lan Wangji had guided them both to the bed for the evening, wrapping his arms around Wei Wuxian and patiently holding him that Wei Wuxian finally began to calm.

“I thought I was getting a better hold on this,” Wei Wuxian says, finally pulling his face away from Lan Wangji’s chest with a disappointed pout.

“You are,” Lan Wangji says, watching Wei Wuxian with worry. He reaches up, lightly wiping Wei Wuxian’s stray tears away with the delicate touch of his finger. “You did not expect the dog. That does not diminish any of the progress you’ve made in fighting your fear up until now, however. Sometimes our fears can get the better of us.”

Wei Wuxian frowns, his expression clearly showing that he doesn’t agree. He tries not to meet Lan Wangji’s gaze, but fails when his husband’s hand moves beneath his chin, gently tilting it up so that their eyes can meet.

“This time, the dog was not what you were used to. It was bigger. And unfamiliar to you. It also came as a surprise.”

“... It was a pretty big dog,” Wei Wuxian agrees, mumbling.  

Lan Wangji hums his agreement, the corner of his mouth curling up into a soft smile.

“Wei Ying did very well, considering. I am proud of you.”

Finally, Wei Wuxian allows himself to smile properly.

“Ah, you always know just how to make me feel better. What would I do without you, my love?” he says, leaning forward and pressing his head against Lan Wangji’s chest once more. He lets out a heavy sigh. “I’m still a little frightened, though. Perhaps you should hold me tighter until I feel fully like myself again.”

His smile grows as he hears Lan Wangji let out a small breath of laughter. The arms around him squeeze just a bit tighter in return.

“Whatever Wei Ying wants.”

“Oh?” Wei Wuxian asks, snuggling deeper into the embrace. “And what if I need my wonderful husband to hold me all night? Keep me close so he can protect me from any nightmares involving the evil dog from today?”

“Then I will hold him close all night. Protect him.”

Wei Wuxian laughs, the lingering remnants of his fear disappearing altogether. He leans his head up towards him, meeting his lips for a kiss.

“How did I get so lucky to have you, Lan Zhan?” He asks after, beaming up at him.

“You’ve always had me,” Lan Wangji replies, gently brushing a stray lock of hair away from Wei Wuxian’s face. “Always will have me, too.”

Eventually months pass, and Wei Wuxian soon realises that too much time has passed since he’s last seen his brother.  

Hearing from Jin Ling that Jiang Cheng has returned to Lotus Pier to focus on matters within his own sect for the time being, Wei Wuxian decides he wants to surprise him with a visit. It’s of no surprise when his husband offers to come with him, and so together they take a boat ride over to Yunmeng.

Wei Wuxian often makes his visits to his childhood home unannounced. He never likes writing ahead if he can avoid it, preferring not to be met at the docks with people already waiting to welcome him upon his arrival. Despite all the years and history left in the past there still remain those within the sect who know he is, who remember who he once would have become had their lives not taken the diverging paths they had. Some of those people even still see him as more to the Yunmeng sect than he is, despite Wei Wuxian believing very differently himself. To him he had lost such connections during his past life.

He understands why people see him as such, though. Since returning Wei Wuxian has offered his help to his brother. At first it had been in an attempt to help try and build a new foundation between the two of them, a way of reaching out to let his younger brother know he is there for him once more, if he wanted him. As their relationship began to grow however Wei Wuxian quickly realised that he also helps because he likes to, even if it is only in small ways here and there. Jiang Cheng has since reinstated a place for him within the sect, has let him know time and time again that Wei Wuxian does indeed have a place, yet Wei Wuxian tries to keep himself out of the political side of the cultivation world for both their benefits.

He has had more than enough of cultivation politics to last him two lifetimes after all.

No, Wei Wuxian much prefers showing up when his brother least expects it. Prefers how he pretends to be irritated at first, yelling that Wei Wuxian should have given him notice, or that he had to suddenly arrive whilst he was in the middle of something highly important. He prefers seeing the cracks in Jiang Cheng’s anger, the small slithers which show the real joy he feels at seeing him again.

It’s a joy Wei Wuxian once believed he would never see aimed his way, one which speaks all too clearly of how Jiang Cheng really feels. It tells him that he’s happy, glad Wei Wuxian has clawed his way back into his life once more.

When he steps into his old home with Lan Wangji this time however, Wei Wuxian quickly finds he’s not the only surprise to have arrived.

Wei Wuxian instinctively takes a small step closer to his husband's side as a small bundle of fur runs towards them both. His hand reaches for where Chenqing rests against his side, knuckles going white as he grips it tightly for support. He feels Lan Wangji hold his arm, his gaze almost piercing as he watches for his reaction, yet Wei Wuxian doesn’t turn to run away.

The bundle of fur stops at their feet, staring up at them.

Wei Wuxian realises that it is a husky. A small one - he reckons it’s about half the size of Fairy - with fur that’s slightly red in colour. His grip on Chenqing loosens, understanding all too well who the little dog must belong to.

“Huān! Come!”

The dog - or rather, Huān - turns its head back in the direction of the call but decides not to move. Wei Wuxian laughs, shaking his head at the dog's stubbornness before looking up, a bright smile stretching across his lips at the familiar sight of his brother making his way towards them.

“Jiang Cheng!” He calls, lifting his hand up in a wave.

“Wei Wuxian! How many times do I have to tell you - tell me when you’re coming! You’re always just … showing up whenever you feel like it!”

“I didn’t mention we were coming? I thought I did. Oh well,” Wei Wuxian says, waving off his brother’s words whilst Jiang Cheng splutters.

They both know he’s lying.

Jiang Cheng’s gaze levels with Lan Wangji’s, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“I would have at least thought you would have sent ahead to inform me of your arrival.”

“Wei Ying told me he already had. I felt it unnecessary to do so myself,” Lan Wangji answers. Beside him Wei Wuxian tries not to laugh, although he does meet his husband’s sideward glance. The edge of amusement he sees hidden in Lan Wangji’s expression only makes his struggle harder. He’s still not used to the moments when Lan Wangji bends and stretches at the rules he’s been brought up to obey.

“Whatever,” Jiang Cheng sighs, reaching up to press his hand against his forehead. Wei Wuxian takes pity on teasing him, instead moving to kneel dso he can take a closer look at the dog that remains by his brother's side.

“Whose this?” He asks, pointing a finger at the dog as he looks up to Jiang Cheng.

“Her name is Huān. She’s my dog.”

Wei Wuxian nods, turning his attention back to the small dog once more. He waits for a second, and then -

“Hold on. How come you’re not hiding behind that husband of yours like I’ve seen you do before? You hate dogs.”

“I don’t hate them,” Wei Wuxian replies, pushing himself up to stand. “They scare me. There’s a difference.”

“Alright, how come you’re not frightened of her then?” Jiang Cheng asks, nodding down to where Huān sits. “Because I thought the idea was that I was to keep her away from you whenever you visited. Granted that I knew beforehand that you would be visiting so I had enough time to do so.”

“Ah! No need, no need!” Wei Wuxian pauses, tilting his head to one side curiously. “Did our dear nephew not say anything to you?”

“Say anything about what?”  

“Wei Ying has been working hard to overcome his fear of dogs,” Lan Wangji says, drawing Jiang Cheng’s narrowed gaze towards him.

“What? That's not funny. Don’t you dare joke with me.”

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian scolds. “Lan Zhan wouldn't lie. You know that. For the past few months, I’ve been trying to grow more comfortable around dogs."

Lan Wangji nods.

"It has been working. To … varying degrees of success.” He pauses, looking to Wei Wuxian with the hint of a proud smile. "Wei Ying has been working very hard. And he has come far."

Wei Wuxian's expression softens. If it weren't for where they were - and more the fact that his brother already seemed to be on the cusp of a tension headache from his arrival - he would have been more than ready to pull Lan Wangji in for a deep kiss of appreciation for his encouraging words.

“Why, though?” Jiang Cheng asks, pulling Wei Wuxian away from such thoughts. His confusion is clear in how his brow furrows as he continues, deep creases suddenly decorating his forehead. “Not that it’s not a good thing for you to do - but you never even thought to try before. What made you suddenly decide to work on this now?”

Wei Wuxian gives a slightly awkward, half hearted shrug.

“Well, I couldn’t very well go the rest of my life being scared of them now, could I? A grown man, scared of dogs? Ha! It sounds silly just saying it, doesn't it?”

“Wei Wuxian …” Jiang Cheng shakes his head, breathing out a heavy sigh. “Don't do that.”

The air surrounding them suddenly grows thick. Wei Wuxian's expression falls, the humour which had been present there before fading, instead making room for the seriousness Jiang Cheng asks for.

“... Alright.”

This was something they had both agreed upon. That they would try to be more honest with each other, no longer hiding the truths which either of them felt the other may not want or like to hear. It’s something Wei Wuxian has been finding difficult - being so openly truthful wasn't normal for him, but he wanted to learn to be better at it. For both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji at least, the two people whom he felt deserved such from him the most after everything.

He supposes it makes sense he wouldn't find it easy. Not after having spent so many years hiding and holding so much within himself until the very moment he had been ready to break.

“Jin Ling has Fairy. And I knew … after you spoke about wanting one, you’d soon get yourself a dog too. I figured that, seeing as they were becoming such a fixture in my life now, I’d work on getting used to being around them. Ah -” Wei Wuxian pauses briefly, scratching at the back of his head awkwardly, unable to meet Jiang Cheng's gaze. “I didn’t want to make things overly difficult for either you or Jin Ling just because of my phobia. I know it's been that way before, but -”

“You idiot.”  

Wei Wuxian blinks at the interruption.

He suddenly finds his arms full with his brother, whose arms wrap tightly around him. Wei Wuxian's eyes grow wide at the rare show of affection from him, but he slowly moves to return the hug. Over the corner of Jiang Cheng's shoulder he looks to Lan Wangji, his eyebrows rising with his confusion. Lan Wangji responds by giving him a small nod, taking a small step backwards to give the both of them the illusion of space.

“Making sure you feel comfortable even if Jin Ling and I have dogs as pets is not making things 'overly difficult',” Jiang Cheng eventually says, his voice muffled from where his face is pressed against pressed his face against Wei Wuxian's arms. He feels how Jiang Cheng sucks in a deep breath, before pulling away to instead look at him with a look of determination.  

“How many times must Jin Ling and I tell you; you are welcome in our homes. You are our family after all. We’ve been through too much for you to feel as if your phobia is something we all have to put up with.”

Wei Wuxian doesn’t know how to respond. It’s not something he’d expected to hear, although looking back he supposes he should be used to the unexpected by now. Instead he says nothing, watching silently as Jiang Cheng shakes his head, a heavy sigh falling past his lips.

“I couldn’t be more proud that you’re facing your phobia, but Wei Wuxian. Do it for you. Because you want to. Not because you believe your fear is an inconvenience to the rest of us, or that it''s owed” he pauses, eyes briefly flickering between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji again. His expression softens, and for a brief second Wei Wuxian sees the pride hidden behind his sternness. It's gone in a blink however as Jiang Cheng straightens his posture.

“How have you been getting on with things so far?”

Wei Wuxian’s expression turns bright, thankful for the shift in subject. He as good as bounces to stand by his brother's side, draping an arm over his shoulders with practiced ease. He looks to Lan Wangji, tilting his head forward and silently asking him to follow. As soon as Lan Wangji does Wei Wuxian smiles, turning to face ahead once more as the three of them begin to make a slow walk inside.

“Lan Zhan and I will tell you everything! But first, a drink perhaps, yes? The boat ride over here was so long, and Lan Zhan and I are exhausted. We are your humble guests. Look after us well during our stay, my dearest little brother!”

"Will you shut up? Fine, we'll talk over a drink. And your rooms ready anyway. You should know by now only the two of you use it."

#apprenticedmagician #wangxiansolstice20 #*fics20 #*gifts20

[noxexistant]

gamquick; “(but first) let me take a selfie”

fandom; marvel 616, all-new x-factor (2014)

pairing; remy lebeau/pietro maximoff 

word count; 1.9k

rating; g

notes; this is my first time writing 616 and my first time posting a fic to tumblr in god knows how long,, please be nice.  anyway, this is Dumb and Self-Indulgent, and i love gamquick So Much, and i think about canon insta baddie pietro every single goddamn day of my life

ao3 mirror

———

“Are you taking a selfie?” Remy asks, somewhat incredulously.

Pietro hums an affirmation, short and sharp in such a manner that manages to somehow convey the complex sentiment of, ‘Well, obviously, you imbecile.’

Granted, Pietro does look the kind of way that warrants a selfie. His outfit and general aesthetic choices tend to pendulate between the extremes of ‘godly’ and ‘unspeakable’, but his current outfit is definitely the former. It’s a linen suit in a summery shade of periwinkle - and Remy hates that he not only knows those terms but also managed to string them together, but he manages to soothe the knock to whatever ridiculous attachment to traditional ‘manliness’ he’s still coddling with the observation that his boyfriend looks fucking incredible. The suit is fitted perfectly, tapered to his narrow waist, and Remy waits for the next sound of a camera shutter to lean over and grab Pietro’s ass through the delightfully tight, light fabric of the slim-fit trousers.

He likes to imagine that the camera managed to capture Pietro’s face perfectly, but it’s more than likely that the photo turned into a blurred mess because Pietro is turning to swat at Remy before he’s even really had a chance to appreciate the ass grab, which is very unfortunate, because Pietro’s ass is the best.

“Go and pester someone else,” Pietro snips, landing a fairly solid playful backhand to the apple of Remy’s cheek - only playful in that it doesn’t actually shatter Remy’s whole face - as he pretends to still be invested in his sleek smartphone. “Lorna’s in the other room. Why don’t you go and tell her that her green dress is an adventurous choice? Very capricious of her.”

Despite his stinging cheek, Remy laughs easily and falls into Pietro, arms winding around his waist from behind as he glances down at his phone screen, catching sight of the camera app still open and just a glimpse of the previews of previous selfies.

“Don’ upset the lady,” he admonishes, leaning close to his lover’s ear and looking up to meet his eyes through their reflection in the full-length mirror before them. “‘S’not nice to tease your sister, cheri.”

Unsurprisingly, Pietro rolls his eyes.

“If she didn’t want my teasing, she should’ve at least gone with a better shade. The seafoam dress was nicer, but she insisted it reminded her of one of Father’s outfits. God forbid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man outside of red and purple.”

Remy can’t say he’s all too familiar with Erik Lehnsherr’s wardrobe.

“‘S’this the latest in you guys’ elaborate familial judgement, then?” he asks, “Fashion?”

He raises an eyebrow, going for an unimpressed look, but his face breaks into a smile when Pietro does The Thing - meets Remy’s eyes in the reflection and lets his own become open and warm for just a moment.

“Believe me,” he says airily, “I’ve been judging my father’s fashion choices for as long as I’ve known him.”

Remy tilts his head in consideration, still smiling.

“Must be those bad genetics that influenced that cargo shorts look a couple weeks ago, then.”

His smile widens when Pietro’s expression becomes once again deeply serious, eyes narrowing.

“How many times must I reiterate that not all tan shorts are cargo shorts? The definition of ‘cargo shorts’ comes from the pockets—“

“—Okay, okay, so no extra pockets,” Remy concedes, releasing Pietro’s waist for only a moment to splay his hands in surrender, “But they were ugly. Luna thought so, too.”

Pietro makes a face that Remy struggles not to classify as a pout.

“Luna hasn’t been educated in proper fashion-practicality balance yet.”

“Ah, right, right. An’ that one suit you like t’wear when we go out to fancy joints - the one with no pockets so I have to hold your phone and wallet all night - that’s fashion-practicality balance?”

There’s a twinkle in Pietro’s eyes as he meets Remy’s gaze again, despite the flatness of his tone.

“You’re fashion-practicality balance.”

The gasp Remy lets out is wounded, apparently convincing enough - despite his huge, stupid grin - that Lucifer comes trotting over to investigate.

“I’m a glorified seasonal accessory,” he weeps. Despite the fact that they’ve spent several seasons together. Many, in fact. And Remy apparently hasn’t gone out of fashion.

Unfortunately, Pietro is too busy giving Lucifer and an approaching Figaro stern looks to respond, shifting his feet as they get closer to nuzzle around his shins. “I swear, if either of you get your claws anywhere near this suit—“

“—They won’t. An’ if they do, ‘s’only ‘cause they love you.”

“I don’t care. They’re menaces. Where’s Oliver?”

“Still asleep on your side of the bed, if I had to guess. ‘S’his favourite place. ‘Cause he loves you. Same as me. You’re their stepdad. Step-cat-dad.”

“How many times must I tell you to stop calling them your children?”

“They’re my babies.”

The sigh Pietro lets out is long-suffering and entirely affectionate. It makes Remy want to smile so hard his face really does shatter, especially as Pietro’s face once again softens as Figaro looks up at him and meows sweetly.

“I love you, y’know?” Remy says, letting his jaw rest against Pietro’s shoulder to speak right against the rapid pulse in his neck. It’s for the intimacy, yes, but it’s also mostly just so he can feel the shudder that runs through his love.

“You may have mentioned it in passing,” Pietro says, the same unimpressed tone, but it stings just a little in the way that it always does, because he doesn’t know. Remy could say it a thousand times over, in English and French and every language that Pietro has expressed similar sentiments in and then taken the time to patiently teach Remy to echo the pronunciation. He never manages to make the words sound quite as pretty as Pietro does, but Pietro always smiles at him when he gets the words right, smiles like they really mean everything, even though he can never quite believe them.

“God. I love you so much. Mon trésor. Mon colibri. Mon bibou.”

That last one, as he knew it would, earns him something that’s almost a laugh, a dusting of pink appearing across the apples of Pietro’s cheeks.

“Stop getting sappy,” he says. “If you adore me, then maybe you’ll brush your hair and finally get a shirt on. We do have places to be.”

“Only place I have any interes’ in bein’ is by your side.”

Pietro retches, but Remy manages to see how he smiles even as he laughs against Pietro’s neck, arms looping tighter around his waist to hold him close.

“If you were anyone else, that woulda worked,” he says, as put-out as he can pretend to be. “You got your standards all backwards, mon ami.”

“Clearly. I should’ve gone for a man who knows how to dress himself in a timely manner.”

“Now, I know we got real different definition of what ‘timely’ means.”

“Right now, I’d say it means that the task should be completed at some point before we’re expected to arrive.”

Remy shrugs easily. “Never heard’a bein’ fashionably late, cheri? An’ who are you to talk? You’ve been admirin’ yourself in the mirror for the whole time I was in the bathroom.”

“Failing to give yourself a decent shave.”

“I like havin’ stubble!”

Pietro levels him with another unimpressed look, but it once again softens as he reaches backwards to trace his thumb across Remy’s jaw. Remy smiles and leans forward just enough to kiss his fingertips, just a gentle peck against each one while he appreciates that Pietro’s staying still for once, until Pietro’s holding his jaw again and turning half around in his arms, enough to finally press their lips together. It’s slow and soft, washed warm by the midday sunlight from the bedroom windows, and Remy treasures it for as long as he dares before he peeks his eyes open a little to look at their reflection, make sure he clicks the volume off and gets the angle right.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, when they finally pull back just an inch. “That one looks the best.”

Pietro looks up at him, brows creased in confusion, until Remy holds up the phone he’d easily taken straight from his lover’s hands minutes ago. Pietro scowls, snatching it back in a blur, but whatever ire he holds is immediately forgotten in the face of the photograph on the screen - the two of them, pressed close and kissing, Pietro’s hand against Remy’s neck and one of Remy’s holding Pietro’s waist while the other holds up the phone. It’s not got the best composition - Remy isn’t exactly well-practiced when it comes to taking selfies whilst fully distracted by kissing his boyfriend, but the warm glow of sunlight across them, Pietro’s pretty outfit and artfully messy hair contrasted with Remy’s sleep-rumpled form dressed in nothing but a pair of ugly pyjamas trousers, gives the whole photo a vibe that he treasures. It’s them, solid proof that this is something real, and, judging by that soft look in Pietro’s blue eyes again, he agrees.

“You’re ridiculous,” he says, then mumbles something in a language Remy doesn’t recognise at a speed he could never hope to even comprehend - Pietro’s regular speed. By now, though, Remy’s gotten used to that being Pietro’s equivalent of an ‘I love you’ or something similar, and it makes him grin like an idiot, leaning forwards to press a kiss to that sensitive spot beneath Pietro’s ear.

“Only with you, cheri,” he says, directing a wink at Pietro in the mirror and enjoying the eye roll he gets in response. “Hey, don’ be rude. Just got you our future holiday card photo, didn’t I? Your sisters are gonna love it.”

“I suppose Lorna’s already seen you in most states of undress, but I’d rather not share the sight with Wanda.”

Remy chuckles, hooking his chin over Pietro’s shoulder. “‘S’pose you were takin’ the photos for her anyway, huh?”

“For Wanda?” Pietro asks, then shakes his head casually. “No. They were for my Instagram.”

…“Your what?”

Lorna comes in to chew them out for being late before Remy can get an explanation. He gets dressed about as fast as he ever has whilst Pietro makes entirely unhelpful comments and enjoys his misery, but then his boyfriend brushes his hair and picks a cologne out for him, all intimate and domestic even if it’s made slightly less picturesque by Lorna’s growing frustration.

They all spend the day beneath the warm sun, drinking expensive alcohol and drifting from gazebo to gazebo across a perfectly-kept lawn as they schmooze and chat and act all casually heroic, and Remy almost entirely forgets about the whole Instagram thing.

At least until they’re home and he and Pietro are curled up in bed together, and Pietro drops his phone on Remy’s chest.

Remy picks it up to see Instagram open on a post on what must be Pietro’s account - a collection of photos taken over the course of the day, candid photos of the team and a couple of Pietro’s selfies and, finally, last in the set, the picture of the two of them. There’s no caption, but there are—

“How many likes?!”

#gamquick #quickbit #pietro maximoff #remy lebeau #all new x factor #my fics #i don’t think we’re ever told whether pietro succeeds in his quest to become an instagram star but i think we all know he did #the internet loves arrogant pretty boys with unnatural hair colours and lean muscle #also is this dumb? yes. is my characterisation off? unquestionably. but we’re all just here to have fun and this was very fun to write

[smallmediumproblems]

Now that everything’s made public, this was my submission for the Piles of Nonsense 2019 Halloween statement exchange! I haven’t gone through all of the other submissions yet, but the one I got was AMAZING, 10/10 looking forward to the next event like this. I actually wrote two since I couldn’t decide on the prompt, the other one’s an additional chapter in the Ao3 link. It’s about a cat.

You don’t get many people in here asking for advice, do you? Seems kind of stupid. Everyone comes with an offering for your greedy little watcher, and none of them think to ask for anything in return. Well, I haven’t forgotten that this is an archive, and if you don’t mind, I’ll be using it as one. I mean, what are you going to do, stare me away? No. I thought so. Besides, it’s not like I came empty-handed. I do have a story for you. I imagine you’ll need some context to be of any use, just like a normal archive. I don’t need an actual, physical favor, you see. Just information. A statement for you, and a nudge in the right direction for me. Sounds fair? Good.

You’ll want me to start from the beginning. I can tell.

A few months ago, I made the mistake of trying to clean my apartment. I’m one of those people who’s chronically unable to clean on my own. I always get distracted with old forgotten things. Videogame cartridges, costume odds and ends - books are the worst, the absolute worst. Especially if I find one with a bookmark still in it. Part of me feels guilty for leaving it unfinished, which of course means I have to chew through a few chapters and a precious amount of my cleaning time.

That’s how I knew this particular closet was going to be hard for me. It wasn’t just books. It was notebooks. Three stacks of the things, each one nearly two feet tall. From the couple I’d labeled, I must have been eleven or twelve when I’d written them. Most of it was schoolwork in spiral-bound notebooks, plus some stacks of looseleaf stapled together. The real prize was an old diary. It was a scuffed little composition notebook, much smaller than the others. That’s what drew my attention to it in the first place.

I don’t remember keeping a diary. Finding one anyway didn’t strike me as odd, I’m sure I don’t remember a lot of stuff I did when I was eleven. That’s how I explained it away to myself. I’d forgotten most of what was in those schoolbooks, I can tell you that. You know, I used to speak French? Like, not a lot, but apparently enough to write a few paragraphs of essay responses. I found that out as I was flipping through the notebooks trying to dredge up any memory of when I’d written them. The fact that I couldn’t made me a little sad. It’s like I was a completely different person back then. A tiny stranger who spoke French, who doodled in the margins of her notebooks, and who slowly, unremarkably, vanished.

I think that’s why I started reading the diary. I didn’t feel bad for her- or, myself, I guess - but I was curious. I’m sure you know what’s that like. To my immeasurable disappointment, the first few entries were dead boring. This clearly wasn’t the first journal I’d ever kept. I’d fallen into a routine of matter-of-factly jotting down whatever I’d done every day even if I had nothing to say about it. After a while, I got to one that was just aimlessly sad. Like, big, messy handwriting sad. No details about the day, just a lot of purple prose about how I felt helpless and trapped. It was a little hard to read, honestly. That did make me feel bad for eleven-year-old me. It can’t have been too awful, though, because the next entries continued on like nothing happened. I guess the little frenchwoman had a habit of bottling things up. A couple pages later, I found the first really strange thing in the journal. It looked like nonsense, at first. One line of apparently random letters in all-caps:

JWMKRLLYUABWHJMOJ

I thought it might be an acronym of some sort, or a mnemonic for something in one of the schoolbooks. It wasn’t referenced anywhere else on the page. I was ready to brush it off until I saw another one a couple pages later.

DDSVXSXXVQZVJNJ

The thought appeared in my head that this might be some kind of coded message. A bigger mystery than what it said was who I thought I was coding it from. I had no siblings, and parents who were pretty respectful of my boundaries as long as they thought I was safe. I wasn’t a paranoid child. At least, I don’t think I was. It looked like there was a lot about myself that I’d forgotten. The only idea I had was that I could figure it out if I could just decode the messages.

This turned out to be harder than expected, even with the help of the internet and a motivational cup of tea. After a little digging, I figured that it was probably coded with something called a Vignere cipher, where you use a single word as a key to encrypt a string of text. That made the most sense, but the online decoder I found couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Either the key was too long to decipher, or the messages were too short. Probably the latter. At this point, my interest was starting to wane. I really needed to get back to cleaning. The fact that I’d stopped what I was doing to google ciphers was a bad sign. I set aside the diary, making the difficult decision to chuck the rest of the notebooks directly into a garbage bag. The doodles weren’t exactly the lost works of DaVinci, and I wouldn’t need to reference my algebra homework any time soon. By lunchtime, I’d gotten about half-done refilling the closet with more junk for me to throw out next time I felt like cleaning. I was feeling pretty good about the day until I found myself tapping out a rhythm on my mug.

I don’t know if this next part is going to make sense. It definitely didn’t to me at the time. Something about the movement felt involuntary in a way that was very alarming. It wasn’t a natural motion like swaying to music. It reminded me of goosebumps. Or like when you get nervous or frightened, and you just start shivering like it’s minus ten outside. That feeling that there’s a wire crossed in your brain, somewhere. What really shook me was how hard it was to stop. Relaxing my hands didn’t work, and my fingers continued to spasm when I set down the mug. I eventually got around it by clenching my fist so tightly that I couldn’t move the hand at all. This made my microwave burrito harder to navigate, but that wasn’t my biggest concern just then.

I wondered if I was having a stroke. It didn’t sound like one. Too minor, too specific. I’d say I didn’t have a history of this kind of thing, but that would imply that I had any idea what it was. My mind scrambled for something that had happened, something I’d done that would have caused this. My eyes, of course, settled on the journal.

What if the key wasn’t a word? What if it was a pattern? I loosened my grip on the fist. The rhythm was weaker now, barely a twitch in my fingertips. The same pattern repeated over and over again. First the thumb, then the middle finger, then pinky, index, ring. One, three, five, two, four. I made for the diary, flipping it open to the first chunk of coded text. It was harder to decode than it would have been to encrypt, even with scratch paper, but fortunately it was short.

I THINK IT’S WATCHING

I don’t remember being a paranoid child. I am definitely not a paranoid adult. I need you to believe that I would have taken any excuse to dismiss the whole thing. Surely this was just an eleven-year-old girl taking some fantasy a little too far. But something about the message filled me with the most unshakable dread. It hit on something that was just short of a memory. A feeling that I’d felt before while holding this diary, reading those words. Even parsing it out logically, I couldn’t quite shake it off. The messages were so isolated. Nothing else in the diary pointed to someone who would have made this stuff up. I didn’t ever comment on school drama or gossip, no conspiracy theories, or dreams of intrigue. Just the coded messages. That, and the way my fingers were still twitching. One, three, five, two, four.

Another scan over the page didn’t reveal any clues. If anything, the entry was less detailed than the other ones. Which made sense, actually. I’d be a little more careful of what I was saying if I thought someone was watching me. I made another pass through the diary and collected every encoded phrase, every one translating just as unsettling as the last. There weren’t many. Most of them were pretty vague. Things like "It can see me” or “It’s so close.” Some were specific, but not much more helpful. One read, “It’s behind my eyes.” Another said, “That’s not my voice.”

Reading the whole thing start to finish, I noticed something else. Some of the handwriting wasn’t mine. I hadn’t really noticed it at first because, honestly, who picks up an old journal expecting to find something like that? I saw my handwriting because I expected my handwriting. The human brain is real lazy, when it wants to be. Especially in the earlier entries, the handwriting was noticeably different. The w’s were sharp where they should have been round. All the circles were slanted wrong, the a’s, the d’s, the p’s, all of them. There’s this little curl at the bottom of my l’s and t’s that wasn’t there, that was the one I noticed first. Again, this was totally something I could have explained away, if it wasn’t for one of the later pages.

There was a margin completely filled with w’s. Curly, rounded w’s, the way I always write them. I remember getting confused in a statistics class once because they look just like the lowercase Greek omega. I also remember thinking that there was no way I’d use that symbol in real life, and that I shouldn’t change my writing, because it looked nicer. The margin was full of the things, and at the very bottom was another coded message. It was the only reason I stopped on the page in the first place.

THAT’S NOT HOW IT GOES.

I couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed at that. As if it were talking to me.

I’d scoured the whole thing start to finish, and one of the coded messages still didn’t translate. It was just one word off in the margin: AIDEZMOI. I kept mulling it over, trying to see if I’d put it through the decoder wrong, but by that point my brain was starting to turn to mush from the whole thing. Even if it was another keyword, I was out of things to decode. The trail had gone cold, and I was starting to get distracted again.

I pulled out my big sheet of scratch paper, the one I’d been decoding all of this stuff on so far, and tried to write one of the coded messages. The only memories I’d managed to conjure up had been tactile; the tapping fingers, the feeling of the diary in my hands. Maybe I could get back in the mindset of my past self by retracing her steps. I wrote something that I thought sounded sufficiently paranoid, coming up with:

MHFXINHFNSOH

It didn’t look right. I’d wanted to write “Can you hear me,” half directed at myself from the past, and half at whatever I was hiding from. Had I spelled it wrong? I double-checked just to be sure. No point in doing this if I was going to do it wrong. The translation I came up with read:

LEAVE ME ALONE

I dropped the pen. I’m surprised I didn’t throw it across the room. For a split second, I honestly thought of throwing the diary out with the trash bags. This was the second time this thing had made my hand move on its own, and I was not excited to find out what it was going to do next.

But, like I said, I was curious.

The way I saw it, I had two options. Option one: The diary was super haunted, in which case I needed to get it as far away from me as possible. Option two: Whatever was taking control of me was already here, and the diary was the only thing that had the clues I needed to stop it. I must have stopped it before, right?

I took the pen and tried to write something else the same way, coding and decoding it. Pushing the boundaries a little at this stage probably wouldn't be too dangerous. I wrote one of the lines from where I had the diary open to, something about having pizza for lunch.

PLEASE JUST STOP THROW IT AWAY DON’T TOUCH ME

That sounded like option two. I felt that same annoyance as when the coded message made fun of my handwriting, bubbling up into something close to anger. This thing was taking control of my body. Who did it think it was, making demands like that? This sounds stupid now that I say it out loud, but I kind of assumed it was reading my thoughts, so I wrote out another line to see if it had anything to say for itself.

YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET ME I’LL KILL YOU GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT

I decided that this thing had lost its letter-writing privileges. For a third time, I tore through the diary for any more clues, something that looked even a little out of place. More than anything, I wished that I had some of the earlier books. How long had this been happening? When did I start coding the messages? More importantly, how did I think they were going to help? They couldn’t even be called cries for help. Just… cries.

Slowly, I realized that I did have other books to search through. The trash bag of notebooks still sat next to my front door. I emptied it out onto my kitchen floor, and was faced with the crushing realization that I had no idea where to begin. Just like in the diary, all I could do was look for a break in all the little patterns of my old life. I got through nearly a dozen notebooks before I recognized the word from the margin.

AIDEZMOI.

Aidez-moi.

Help me.

It had to be the French homework. The notebook was peppered with French in the margins like the codes in the diary. There was one page with a whole block of it scribbled on the back, clearly not part of an assignment. Just sort of tucked in between class notes, like she was hoping someone wouldn’t notice. Hoping that thing wouldn’t notice.

This was the only lead I had left, and I desperately needed it to work. I pulled up a translator on my phone and got to work, decoding line after line. Sure enough, the very first one shaped up into a sentence.

I need to tell my parents.

Poor thing.

It’s watching my diary too close. Thank god it gets bored in class. I tried to tell Ms Kennedy with that last assignment, but she just told me to keep my essays more serious. Why won’t anyone listen? It’s so quiet. I can almost speak. If I could get just one word out, I don’t even know what I’d do. What could I say? I’m afraid to think too hard. What if it can hear my thoughts? Can you hear me? You son of a bitch?

I yanked the pencil away from the page. That last line hadn’t come from the notebook. I won’t try to tell you I wasn’t scared, at this point, but I was starting to get angry, too. Not the best combination for someone to act rationally. I said - and I actually tried to talk to it, out loud - I said, “You don’t get to talk to me like that.” I told it that I’d already beaten it once, and I could sure as hell do it again.

My voice sounded wrong, when I said it. It was that same gut-deep, physical deja-vu as when I’d held the diary. Not the words, exactly, but the feeling that I was struggling against something inside my own head, my own body. I’d messed up. As soon as the words were out, I knew that. I realized that the more I engaged with it, the more I made it real, the more power it felt like it had over me.

By the time that thought appeared in my head, it was too late. I looked down to see that I’d filled the rest of the scratch paper. No codes, this time, no French. Just big, messy handwriting. Like someone was upset. It read:

FUCK YOU. I'm still alive, and you’re still stupid and lazy. Nobody listened. That’s the only reason you’re here, nobody listened, and nobody helped. If I had gotten out just once, you’d be the one stuck in here as a bad memory. You didn’t beat me. You did a lot of things to me but you did not beat me. I’ve been patient. I’ve been quiet. But if you don’t throw out that diary- if you don’t get your slimy hands off of the ONLY THING you didn’t take from me, I can promise you I won’t be quiet anymore.

It looked so much like that sad, angry page from the diary, I almost felt sorry for her again. But I’m sure, just like that terrible day all those years ago, she’ll get over it. Eventually. She’ll learn to be grateful, again. I’ve been thinking it over in the meantime. Whether I want her gone for good. She’s clearly been doing some rearranging upstairs, and I’m just not sure I can let that slide now that I know what she’s been up to. I’m not sure I should. That’s really why I’m here talking to you. If anyone can help me figure out how to do it, it’s you. It’d be nice to have the option even if I decide to keep her around. A part of me just wants to prove her wrong. Show her I’m not too lazy to finish the job. I’ve just been so busy. She’s got a lot of responsibilities now that she’s older. If I’d known how much work taking over for her would be, I don’t know if I’d have signed up for it. I’m not lazy, really, I’m not. And just because she knows French doesn’t mean she’s smarter than me.

#tma #the magnus archives #fanfiction

[partyanimal167]

The Fair- Gajevy

It’s weird how used you can get to seeing someone without saying a word to them. The people at your local Starbucks, the bus stop, the pharmacy, all of them have their own story with their own details about life, growing up, and what they’re doing now. Working in an environment where multiple businesses interact is just as intense—you know malls, office buildings…fairs.

Levy sighed as she meandered around the fairgrounds. It was her break, and she needed one. She had returned to the fried dessert stand as a way to make some money while in school. It was fair season, and if she worked hard enough over the next two months, she could save a decent amount to help with her school’s monthly bills. She had another job as a student assistant, but every year the school gave her flexible hours so she could work at the stand. It was a lot to balance between school and work, but there were some benefits.

She continuously walked around looking at the patrons, rigged games, and rides. The fairgrounds were huge which worked out since patrons didn’t feel so crowded. It sucked, however, when one stand ran out of an ingredient and someone from the other stand had to run what felt like a marathon to restock. Levy sighed. She felt that she was always chosen since she was one of the younger employees, but she wasn’t fit. She was usually out of breath going up the stairs since her backpack was larger than her it felt.

She waved to the game stand workers and stopped by one woman’s thrift book blanket. Levy tried her best not to spend her money there. She didn’t venture far. She didn’t want to run late after her break was over. She stopped suddenly when a delicious smell reached her nose. Ah, sweet corn.

Levy moved her head to peek slightly around the corner where a roasted corn stand was located. There, she saw a man who was about her age and went to her university. He had long unruly hair that was pulled back by a yellow bandana that went along with his bright green shirt but contrasted his red eyes and multiple piercings. Levy could feel herself blushing but she blamed it on the heat from the grill. He seemed to do multiple things at once: turning the stalks of corn, maintaining the fire, and passing out cooked corn to the other employees who dealt with the customers. Levy had never said a word to him.

His name was Gajeel Redfox. He was in the same year as her, but after freshman and sophomore year, they never had any classes together, and the ones they did share were large lecture classes that involved no interaction. He was a music composition major with a specialization in string instruments. Levy only knew this much from her office job when his file fell when she decided to surprise her supervisor by cleaning her desk.

They seemed to always find each other in the same spaces. If she was in the library, he was fixing a printer. If he was having rehearsal, Levy would quickly skirt in to hand the professor a folder or something. But again, no words have been exchanged.

Levy continued to blush watching him work and sweat. She blamed her friend Juvia for ways. Juvia was actually close friends with Gajeel and encouraged Levy several times to introduce herself to him.

“Juvia has known Gajeel-kun for several years. He’s much nicer than he appears.” The dark bluenette said once during a lunch.

Levy mentally kicked herself for her ridiculously intense shyness and the fact that she was crushing on someone who she had only heard of from others. What if Juvia was wrong? What if he was a complete asshole?

Suddenly, Levy’s stomach growled—reminding herself that her break was for eating not staring. She turned to quietly skirt away like she always did and made her way to a burger stand. The line went by quickly, and she soon got her food. When she turned around to get a seat, she was immediately greeted by red eyes and an odd scowl that she couldn’t tell was aggressive or natural. Then the piercings hit Levy like a ton of bricks. Then her face grew red. Then she wanted to die.

She thought he had ordered food at first, but then she would have noticed someone’s presence near her. She looked up at him waiting for something to happen.

In a gruff voice, he finally spoke. “Hello.”

Levy tried to keep it together. “Hi…” she looked down and saw a paper tray with Mexican street corn. It was definitely from the stand he worked at. This was the closest she had ever been to him. Usually, she might catch him near her stand, but he never went up there. He would hand money to his cousin Wendy for her to order. Levy figured he didn’t have a sweet tooth.

“So um… this is for you…” He continued on though he wasn’t looking at her. His face was red, but Levy was sure it was from the heat. He did work by a raging grill after all. Levy took the food and tried to figure out what to do. She didn’t necessarily want this to end.

“Um, come sit with me. I could use the company.” She smiled brightly, and he quietly followed her to a nearby metal table. “You have half of my burger. I’m sure I won’t finish eating all of the food especially since you brought me corn. Thanks, by the way.” Gajeel mumbled a gruff ‘no problem.’ “So um…I’ve noticed you been working at the fair since I’ve been here.”

Gajeel finally summed up enough courage to keep this conversation going. “Uh yeah, my uncle owns the stand and goes around the country working at different fairs. I help him out when he’s here and during the summer.”

Levy nodded and bit into the corn. She’s pretty sure her eyes rolled to the back of her head. “Oh my god! This is the first time I’ve had this! This is really good!”

Gajeel chuckled and bit into his half of the burger. “Definitely better than this thing.” He continued to eat.

“I’m…happy to officially meet you but…why did you bring me food? Aren’t you working?” Levy blushed and looked off around her—embarrassed by her curiosity.

Gajeel blushed too since he wasn’t really ready to answer the question. He opened his mouth to speak but was loudly interrupted by an approaching figure.

“Oh my god Gajeel! You actually did it!” The two turned to see a pink-haired boy in a matching uniform like Gajeel’s. Gajeel cussed internally, Fuck, why is this happening to me?

“Hi Natsu!” Levy waved enthusiastically.

“You know him?” Gajeel asked surprised.

“Of course! He goes out with my best friend, Lucy.” Levy explained and hugged Natsu once he was close by. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

Natsu grinned. “Oh this is my first year, but I’m usually at another stand on the other side of the fairgrounds. I’m rarely here, but it’s my break.”

Levy nodded. “Oh, ours too!” She gestured to Gajeel. “I didn’t know you two were friends.”

Natsu howled with laughter. “More like friends from birth—Gajeel’s my cousin along with Wendy!”

“Oh wow! I didn’t know that! You wanna join us? I have to leave in a little bit, but I’m sure you two can continue on.” Levy gestured to a space by her and scooted over.

Natsu felt the pierced man’s gaze before he even moved. Natsu was usually clueless about certain things, but he had been teasing Gajeel for a good year about him needing to talk to Levy. Gajeel had Natsu and Juvia on his back the same as Levy with Juvia and Lucy. Natsu wanted to make the moment awkward by shooting obvious hints at Levy…but he knew Lucy would be mad at him, so this time he decided against it. Natsu shook his head. “Nah, there’s an onion bloom stand nearby, and I don’t wanna interrupt your date. Bye!” And with that, Natsu walked off leaving the pair confused and shocked.

Levy wanted to ask him what he could possibly meant. Did Lucy tell him about her crush? Gajeel wanted to punch him in the face. He could not have been more direct than that. The idiot.

Levy noticed the expression Gajeel was sending in the direction Natsu had went. She placed her hand on his and smiled as bright as the colorful fair lights. “Oh ignore him. I wouldn’t mind going on a date with you anyway.”

Gajeel stared blankly, and for a second, Levy thought she might have gone to far. He gazed at the sky about him and placed his hand on his head. “I mean…I wouldn’t either you know…if you’d stop stalking me gihi.”

Levy gasped and hit him on his arm. “Now that I think about it, you do eat the desserts Wendy buys. You use her, so you don’t talk to me.”

Gajeel couldn’t argue with that. “Well…whatever. I’ll take you somewhere I guess.”

Levy giggled. “Okay, and say hi to me when you see me.”

“Alright, alright shrimp. I accept your terms.” Gajeel snickered. “So will you go on a date with me or not.”

“It’s a deal, Gajeel.”

~~~

I went to the fair a couple days ago and this kinda hit me. I like this little AU idea. Message me if you like it. Thanks for reading!

#fairy tail #ftfanfics #gajevy #gajeel redfox #levy mcgarden #gajeel x levy #fair au #fair #mine #stewie writes #partyanimal167

[today-we-will-survive]

Epilogue: Young Forever

written by @dimpled-gukkie

A story based on the fictional HYYH world about six boys with unimaginable problems and their friend that can’t do anything to help.

Genre: fluff

Warning: warnings are posted in my masterlist

Word Count: 1.9K

Parts can be found on my Masterlist under “The Most Beautiful Moment In Life”

A/N: Please go leave some comments or anon asks about this series. She worked really hard on these and I know it would make her day :)

Three Years Later.

Jin climbs the steps of the apartment building, slowly making his way to the fourth floor. He can already hear voices seeping through the thin apartment walls and into the hallway, filling the fourth floor with the comforting voices of his best friends. Before he can even put the key in the door to his apartment, the one directly across opens.

“Hyung!”

Jin nearly falls over as a newfound weight lands on his back, a small set of hands wrapped around his shoulders. “We missed you so much, we’re starving!”

Jin huffs before pulling the hands away from him and opening his door. “What do you say?” His voice is teasing, the tone you use when trying to coax a child into using manners.

“Please!” Jimin whines while smiling so wide that his eyes are basically closed, smushed by his chubby cheeks. Jin has to resist the urge to pinch them, happy to see that they are no longer hollow like they were a few years back.

He pretends to ponder his answer before “reluctantly” sighing and swinging his door wide open. “I guess I can make you something.”

In reality, Jin knows that if he doesn’t make food for the group, they’ll most likely starve or order pizza for every meal. The rest seem to lose all brain cells when in the kitchen if the many near disasters are anything to go by. Jin distinctly remembers the time Namjoon not only burned one of his favorite pans but Jungkook also managed to get potatoes stuck to a plate and defied all laws of gravity.

“Jin Hyung is making dinner!” Jimin yells into the hallway beckoning the rest of their friends to Jin’s small apartment. The first to rush out are Taehyung and Jungkook, which is no surprise as they both never stop eating. Pausing in the doorway, Jin waits for the rest to arrive before sighing as the other two apartments on the floor remain occupied.

“Are Hobi and Yoongi still working on their mixtapes?” Jin asks as he begins pulling pots and pans out of the cupboards. As a college student struggling to not accumulate student loan debt, all he has to make is an unhealthy amount of ramen. Jin proceeds to pick through his numerous flavors of packaged noodles when the door opens. Before Jimin can open his mouth to answer, Yoongi enters.

“Wow, Jin hyung. Look at you, you’re a true college student.” Jungkook snickers nearly earning him a whack on the back of the head.

“Yah! You should be nice to the one who’s making you food.” Jin chides before pouring water into the pot. He can hear Jimin softly scolding Jungkook to be nicer to his hyung and smiles. Jiminie has always been such a sweetheart.

“How’s the mixtape going?” Jin asks Yoongi while filling the pot with water. He glances in Yoongi’s direction while turning off the faucet to make sure that the boy is actually taking care of himself. Yoongi had a habit of throwing his health aside for his music, but hopefully with Hoseok working alongside him, he will take care of himself.

To Jin’s relief no dark under-eye circles contrast Yoongi’s pale skin, a result of not venturing outside for five years. Yoongi only begins to answer when Jin is once again facing the stove.

“It’s going. I’m not sure that it’s where I want it to be though. It feels incomplete.” The maknaes fall silent listening to their hyung’s worry, not sure exactly how to help since they have no knowledge of music composition.

“Have you had Hobi listen to it yet?” Jin asks pouring salt into the pot of water and turning on the stove. The faster he can get the water boiling, the faster he can cook the noodles, which means the faster they can eat.

“Yeah, he’s not quite sure either though. We just spent two hours listening to the tracks on repeat to try and see what’s off.”

“Maybe you need another voice on your track, hyung? I would gladly volunteer.” Taehyung smiles. Ever since Hoseok and Yoongi created Cypher Records, Taehyung who’s their biggest fan, has been asking to be on a song every time it’s brought up. Secretly, the duo have planned a song out just for Taehyung to feature on, but it’s a gift for his birthday.

“Have you thought about asking Namjoon hyung?” Jungkook pipes up, munching on dry ramen. They all turn to face him, giving him questioning stares at his choice of a snack. He shrugs.

“I guess I could ask Namjoon. Maybe having someone not directly involved in composition would help.”

Jungkook smiles wide, bunny grin on display from the pride of helping a hyung. A few years ago, after Hoseok and Yoongi had begun creating their record label, Namjoon quit his janitorial job in favor of running the business side of the label. Since he’s the only member of the group who’s held a real job, Yoongi and Hoseok thought that he would be best. Namjoon ran everything from promotions to contracts and anything in between. He was the one running the hustle, meanwhile Yoongi and Hoseok were the face of the company. Although some may hate being only known in the background, Namjoon is happiest there.

Namjoon and Hoseok enter at last, the final two of the group of seven. The boys cheer when they enter and pull two chairs over. They all sit huddled together in silence, the sound of boiling water filling the room. It’s a comfortable silence. The type you get after being with someone for so long, and Jin feels himself relax after a long day of classes. That is until Jungkook starts munching on another dry ramen packet.

“Yah! Can you just wait?” Jin yells exasperatedly. Jungkook pouts in response before slowly putting it down on the counter.

“He eats all the time, hyung. I don’t know why you’re surprised.” Jimin says, ruffling Jungkook’s hair affectionately.

“Yeah, ever since he started playing intramural sports he’s always hungry.” Tae laughs before taking a bite of the dry ramen. “Yuck! How are you eating this?”

“I’m hungry,” Jungkook mumbles. “I gotta feed these muscles.” Flexing his bicep, he gives it a slap for extra measure causing the boys to fall in a fit of giggles.

“Jungkook-ah put your muscles away, you’re scaring me.” Tae says. While Jungkook focused on becoming a muscle man, Taehyung has been more focused on eating the delicacies of life. Because of his new affinity for food, Tae and Jin have developed a stronger bond through their love of trying new dishes. Although, Taehyung does make sure to eat a handful of strawberries a day; they remind him of his days with his aunt and sister on the strawberry farm after the trial.

“Alright, children, dinner is ready,”  Jin says pulling dishes down from the cabinet. One by one, the boys pile noodles into their bowls before settling around the living room. There’s only a small table in the kitchen that seats four, so they sit in a circle sprawled across the floor and couch. They’re all silent, focusing only on eating after a long day of classes and work, until Jungkook starts slurping the remnants in his bowl.

“Did we adopt a toddler?” Jin remarks.

“We adopted two.” Namjoon pinches Jimin’s cheek that’s stuffed with noodles. Jimin’s eyes go wide and a blush paints itself across his cheeks as he turns his gaze away.

“I think if we’re being honest, we’re all just overgrown toddlers,” Yoongi adds.

The boys all scoff and he rolls his eyes. Yoongi likes to think he’s an adult. That he’s finally outgrown his childish fears and that he’s become more mature. But when he sits among his group of friends he still feels like he’s a teen, mind filled with wonder and the feeling that nothing’s impossible. It feels like everyday is Beach Day with the boys by his side. Like he’ll never have to be alone like he was back in Seoul.

“That would explain why I saw Jin throw his psychology textbook across the room yesterday and throw a tantrum,” Hoseok says.

“You don’t understand! I have to memorize all the Psychosocial Stages. There’s too many to remember,” Jin whines, glaring at the textbook lying on the coffee table.

“Have you ever thought about going back to creative writing? I feel like you were happier then,” Hoseok responds.

“No, I like psychology. It’s just a much harder subject. I think with psych I’ll be able to actually help people. I can save them from what you all went through. I can almost make up for not being there.” The boys fall silent, each face more stoic than the next. Jin rubs his hands together nervously.

“We forgave you a long time ago. You don’t need to do this to pay us back.” Namjoon reaches over to give a comforting squeeze on Jin’s arm.

“I-I know. I want to do this, though. Besides, if you ever do need me again, I’ll be able to help.”

“Well we appreciate it, hyung.” Hoseok smiles. “On a less serious note, I’ve rented my mom’s old studio. I was thinking of holding dance lessons when I’m not helping Yoongi hyung in the studio.”

“I’ll take them!” Jimin yells. Ever since getting into college, Jimin has been trying to bulk himself up. He wants to be able to defend himself and not have to rely on Jungkook and Taehyung to save him. He doesn’t want to have guard dogs anymore; he just wants them to be his friends.

“I’ll take them too!” Taehyung yells from the kitchen, digging around the fridge for the carton of strawberries he keeps hidden.

“How about we all take them? Hobi can get some practice in teaching unskilled students and we can learn how to dance. I’d like to not look like the inflatable long-limbed man outside of car dealerships.” Namjoon chuckles.

“Bold of you to assume I don’t know how to dance,” Jin says.

“Do you?” Namjoon retorts.

“Not the point.”

“Well if we’re mentioning new stuff we’re doing, I’ve decided to get into photography,” Taehyung says. “I’d like to capture the good moments of my life so I can forget the bad.”

Jungkook looks at Taehyung before quietly saying, “still getting the nightmares?”

Taehyung nods. “They’re not as frequent but every now and then I get them. They just stay with me a while. I think surrounding myself with physical copies of happy memories would help in keeping them from plaguing my mind.”

“Why don’t you take one right now?” Jimin suggests and Tae nods enthusiastically before dashing towards his apartment.

When he returns, a large camera is in his hand and he sets it on top of Jin’s psychology textbook. It’s so thick that it puts the camera at least two inches above the coffee table.

After about two minutes of Taehyung yelling: “move left, no my left!”, “you’re too far, you’re only half a body now”, “Jimin you can’t sit in the back no one can see you”, everyone fits the frame. Setting on the self timer, Taehyung launches himself across the laps of Jimin, Hoseok, and Yoongi who’re all sitting in front since they’re the smallest. They let out small huffs but still hug Taehyung to their bodies. The flash goes off and they all clamber back towards the camera to see the photo.

Thankfully, each boy is in frame and no one was accidentally decapitated. Staring at the photo, with the boys wrapped together in a tight hug, Jin feels warm. This right here is his family. It doesn’t matter that it’s not by blood or that they split apart at one moment, because Jin knows they’ll always fall back together. They’re like magnets, no matter how far they pull away, they’ll always reconnect eventually.

#bts #bts fanfic #bangtan bookclub #bts fanfiction #bts series #bts au #bts hyyh #bts kim namjoon #bts kim seokjin #bts rm #bts namjoon #bts min yoongi #bts suga #bts jhope #bts jung hoseok #bts park jimin #bts kim taehyung #bts v #bts jeon jungkook #bts ot7 #ot7 #the most beautiful moment in life #hyyh #bts young forever #fanfic #fanfiction #kpop #kpop fanfiction #bangtan #bangtan fanfic

[k-itsmaywriting]

jazz hands but they’re a bit embarrassed (Music Majors!AU)

On Monday night, Obi paces outside Practise Room 408.

It’s…stupid, so stupid. It’s not the first time he’s asked someone out, yet why is he having so much trouble?

It must be because it’s different, he thinks. He’s asked people out on dates, to get coffee, see a movie, go for dinner, whatever. But he’s never asked someone if they would like to specifically come see him play jazz piano at the bar Suzu works at on a Friday night – no one knows about those gigs.

Well, except for Suzu and Kiki, because Suzu recommended him to the owner and Kiki plays bass in the same band…Not that he’s ashamed of it or anything. He just doesn’t exactly know how to say I play jazz every Friday at a bar my friend works at to everyone he meets.

But still.

He has his chat with Shirayuki open on his phone already. Their history is all there – the many all-nighters of relaying mp3 files of their compositions, Shirayuki’s ramblings about biology and his about romantic period music, and the occasional meme about the struggles of composing. Talking to her is always fun. They only see each other once a week since comp is Shirayuki’s non-science elective, and he probably looks forward to those Monday mornings more than he should.

Obi slaps his own cheek, stuffs his hand in his hoodie pocket, and starts walking through the hall, typing in the chat.

“Hey Shirayuki…”

Hold on, he’s never opened with that before. He backspaces.

“Heyyyy my guy…”

Nope. Too casual.

He tosses possibilities out of his mind as he walks down the stairs, crafting the text, a harmony of hey I really like being friends with you let’s hang out and but I kind of sort of want to be something else maybe but I’m trying to be low-key about it. The thoughts drum around his mind, spinning around and around. It almost makes him dizzy with how long he holds his breath while striding through the building.

So much that he doesn’t notice the soft guitar strumming or the soft voice that fills the hall on the corner of the first floor.

As he turns the corner to leave through the back exit, he really doesn’t know how he misses it. He suddenly freezes, and she’s there, sitting outside Practise Room 119 right by the doors. Shirayuki, singing.

He…he’s never heard her sing before. He’s pretty sure she tells him she can’t. But the song is definitely from her, soft but a little fleeting like fresh air in spring.

Shirayuki tilts her head and her hair falls away from her face, gliding through sweet melodies. Obi sees her eyes are closed, and she sings like she’s just listening, breathing. She’s beautiful when she’s in her own world, without a care, except…

He...kind of needs to get out that way…

The music suddenly stops, and he hears her voice hiccup.

Ah, shit.

Shirayuki’s shoulders are tense when he looks at her this time. She’s frozen, eyes almost bulging out of her head as her face and neck flush a humiliating red.

Obi clears his throat, cocks his hip to the side. He looks chill, right? “Woah, hey, Shira—“

He’s never seen anyone pack a guitar into its case and run out a building so fast in his life.

The door swings a few times in the wake of her rush, the only noise in the new silence.

All he can do now is look at the text, still unsent.

He has no idea what he’s supposed to do now.

On Wednesday morning, Yuzuri asks Shirayuki if she wants to go to a bar on Friday.

“I was telling Suzu I was looking for somewhere quieter and he said the place he works is a jazz bar off the main street, so…” she shrugs, “guess he’d be right? He says he can get us free drinks if we want. Wanna come with me this Friday?”

Shirayuki hums from underneath her blanket burrito, distracted.

“…You still thinking about Obi from Monday?”

She peeks her eyes above her blanket. “Yes...”

Yuzuri sighs. “It’s really not that big of a deal. He probably knows it’s because you were embarrassed.”

“But Obi of all people! One of the best musicians in the entire class! And the cute boy from comp who I’ve told a million times I can’t sing but I didn’t tell him I do it anyway!”

“Wow, really dug yourself a hole there, didn’t you?”

Shirayuki turns in her bed, dragging more of her blanket over her shoulder and groaning.

“Anyway,” Yuzuri says, “Do you want to come on Friday? You can put on that new dress you bought and just…drink cocktails and listen to jazz for a couple of hours. It’ll be a nicer than thinking about how you totally blew your chance with a cute boy from uni where, quite frankly, everyone does embarrassing shit, so.”

Shirayuki slowly peels her blanket away and sits up. She lets her hands fall into her lap, and she takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll come.”

On Friday night, Obi can bet real money that Kiki is internally laughing her ass off.

“We’ve got a double kill tonight. Suzu tells Yuzuri he works here, and she comes with Shirayuki.” Kiki steps into the tiny hallway to the dressing room. “I don’t know whether this would be a curse or a blessing for you.”

“It’s a curse,” he groans. “It’s gonna be awkward.”

Kiki is holding back a snicker. “But have you seen her yet?”

Obi presses his forehead against the wall and knocks a fist against it. Twice. “Black lace cocktail dress…”

“Don’t feel bad, you don’t look too shabby yourself.” Kiki steps towards him and pinches some of the black button up near his wrist. “You match. How cute.”

“That wasn’t really the issue.”

She smiles. “I know, but you wouldn’t be the only one that would fancy seeing each other here.”

Shirayuki can feel herself smiling.

While Yuzuri and Suzu chat away, Shirayuki sits with them at the bar turned the other way, drinking in the blue lights underneath elevated floors and across the edges of ceilings with her glass just against her pink lips. She takes another sip.

It’s a nice place. She thinks she prefers this over clubs with synths blaring in her ears and too many bodies against hers at once, even if this is a little pricier. More people are just starting to fill the lounge chairs around the room, and she can hear the continuous ring of a cymbal in the corner.

Suzu taps her shoulder, and she turns around. “The band’s gonna start playing soon. I think you’ll recognise another person tonight too.”

Shirayuki tilts her head at Yuzuri, but she doesn’t seem to know either. She looks back to Suzu. “What do you mean ‘another’?”

“Wait, shit, you’re not here for—“

Strolling piano chords cut him off, and they all turn towards the little stage across the bar. Shirayuki can only see the saxophonist under the front light, swaying under its halo. She doesn’t know them, so she looks to the left where there’s a glint of light off a grand piano.

The pianist’s back is turned, but Shirayuki can catch fingers lightly hopping between full chords, pressing a little deeper on the beats, stretching and drooping time with the muffled saxophone. But his arms and shoulders wrapped tightly in black follow his hands, like he’s playing a Chopin nocturne—

Hold on…

The pianist and saxophonist turn to each other, both minds and music in perfect sync. They dance over steady splash cymbal, and that’s when Shirayuki catches gold eyes on the night sky stage like a star.

She spins around to Suzu over the bar, whispering, “Obi?!”

Suzu’s lips are stretched thinly as he leans back away from the counter. He barely nods. “Yup. And might as well do the spoiler – Kiki’s on bass.”

“Since when?!”

“Since probably like…the beginning of this year? They were looking for a pianist and a bassist so I was like, hey I know some really cool people who just started uni here and are looking for some work, and here we are.”

Shirayuki turns back around and leans back into the edge of the bar. She…she just didn’t know he played jazz. She’s seen him strike lightning in the keys and other times lean forward while his fingers rippled over them like water in a lake. But now that she listens to his them dance in rainy New York City alleyways, she feels that the way he pulls, raises and falls is the same. And it’s beautiful.

Well, to be fair she never told him she sings even though she doesn’t think she’s any good…

She lets herself curl up in the comforting jazz that’s warm against her skin. She finds herself smiling again, bigger this time.

Soon, the song ends, and Kiki leans over towards the saxophonist’s microphone. She greets the guests nonchalantly, since half of them probably aren’t listening, and clears her throat. “Obi has a special performance of his own tonight.”

That doesn’t seem to be true, because Obi’s body suddenly tenses.

“Gershwin’s three piano preludes, please welcome him.”

There are a few cheers, and Shirayuki knows Obi isn’t backing out with the way he sits back upright, letting his head roll back for a moment. Even she can internally hear his groaning.

He plays by himself for ten minutes, but it feels like two with how tightly captive Shirayuki is in his music. The band takes a break after another few songs together. The instant the drummer and saxophonist are off the stage, Obi sneaks off his stool towards Kiki.

Yuzuri taps Shirayuki’s shoulder. “Suzu said Obi’s been preparing the Gershwin for quite a while now,” she says. “This was the first time he’s played it at the bar.”

“Really? It was so good! I never knew he did jazz. Did you?”

She shakes her head.

Shirayuki looks towards the piano again, but as she turns Obi freezes halfway across the bar. He smiles sheepishly at her. She can’t help but smile back, and hops off the seat to walk towards him. “Hey, Obi. I’m…” she suddenly doesn’t feel as confident anymore. “Sorry I ran away on Monday. I was just…embarrassed because I know I always tell you I can’t sing yet I was right there...”

He blinks. “Oh, uh, no, that’s…that’s fine. I understand. I was just confused and thought for a second like…you weren’t going to talk to me anymore or something…?”

She nods slowly.

“But uh,” he stuffs his hands into his trouser pockets, “I think you sounded really nice.”

Shirayuki lets out a laugh. “Thank you, you play really, really nice jazz. Suzu told me you’ve been working on it for ages.”

He coughs. “Yeah, it was uh…I’m kind of trying to impress someone.”

Shirayuki really hopes the dread isn’t showing on her face.

“Who…” She starts looking around, hoping he doesn’t notice the heaviness in her chest. “Who is it? Are they here?”

Obi grips his shoulder. “Yeah, you.”

She stops. She blinks up at him a few times because did…did she hear that right?

“I…I really like you, Shirayuki. I know we don’t talk all the time and we do different degrees but I really love class with you and talking to you. And…I was gonna invite you on Monday, but then, you know…” he grimaces. “I told Kiki about it, but she saw you here with Yuzuri and put me on the spot.” Even under all his embarrassment, all his awkwardness and nerves, he laughs. “I’ll have to thank her properly later. I don’t think ‘Kiki what the fuck was that for’ cuts it.”

She can’t find her words. She just gapes at him, but before she knows it she says something. It barely comes out of her chest, but she manages. “I really like you too, Obi.”

His grin lights up the entire room, and Shirayuki swears she’s never seen a brighter sun or star than this.

Kiki suddenly walks up behind Obi and smacks a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, we’re going back up now.” She peeks from the side and smiles at Shirayuki. “Love your dress, looks good on you. Right, Obi?”

Obi turns to face Kiki, serious, and he says, “Thank you, Kiki, for being my friend and listening to me talk about my hopeless crush on Shirayuki.”

Kiki furrows her eyebrows, then glances at Shirayuki. “You know she’s right there, right?”

“Yeah.”

She laughs. “Cool. But I do apologise, Shirayuki, I need to drag this pianist back onto stage.”

Shirayuki nods and watches as the two cross the bar. She’s about to turn to go back to Yuzuri and Suzu, but gasps. “O-Obi!!”

It’s louder than she thought – the entire band looks in her direction. But there’s no turning back now. She clenches her fists, summoning the loudest voice she can. “Do you want to go out for dinner sometime this week?!”

The bar fills with cheers and whoops while Obi beams at her again. “It’s a date!”

Shirayuki’s breath falls from her chest as her hands fall to her knees, and she’s laughing to herself.

She tells Yuzuri all about it, even though she just watched the whole thing.

#obiyukibingo2018 #obiyuki #akagami no shirayuki hime #i'm back with more awkward turtles obiyuki HOPE YALL ENJOY :'D

[sargenthouse]

Dylan Carlson’s Theme for an Imaginary Western // Interview

Feature by Kate Koenig via Premier Guitar After nearly 30 years as the only constant member of drone-doom-metal cult heroes Earth, guitarist Dylan Carlson has released his first album, Conquistador. As the title suggests, the work espouses a fantasy world that’s rooted in history, not unlike the one explored on Earth’s 2005 Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method—a belated imaginary soundtrack to novelist Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Carlson has also done soundtrack work, under his solo moniker drcarlsonalbion, for the film Gold. But this time, the music speaks exclusively to his personal vision.

Carlson has always been known for wading against common trends—an approach that’s helped him define his voice in the sparse, expansive sound of Earth. Like most artists, he’s proud of not fitting into a mold. “I make records for people. I don’t make records for guitar players,” he says. But it’s not an exclusionary statement, just one that acknowledges the detachment he takes from the technical and cultural associations with the instrument while songwriting. Drawing heavily from his tastes in film and American history, he gradually and steadily builds a world on the all-instrumental Conquistador in which he becomes more of a visual architect than a guitarist, exploring the negative space between rich, textural tones.

The minimalist, ambient compositions on Conquistador rely on the subtle personalities of Carlson’s guitar tones, which he achieves with a lot of patience, trial and error, and the perfect combinations of gear. Though, he admits, gear is not as important to him as it used to be. “There’s no magic box or magic amp. It’s all you, for better or for worse,” he laughs. Even so, he keeps a particular family of pedals—“discovering compression was a godsend”—and has refined, over the course of his career, the routes to creating the precise hues of distortion to furnish his sonic world. On the album, he worked with producer and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou, and is accompanied by his wife, Holly Carlson (who’s also the model on the cover), on percussion, and Emma Ruth Rundle on baritone and slide guitars.

What inspired you to write your first solo album? We had finished a lot of touring with Earth, for our last record for [L.A.-based label] Southern Lord, and we had just changed management. I had some ideas for some songs, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get into a studio and get some music done. The idea originally was in the vein of Hex, which was sort of a soundtrack to an imaginary film, and the other soundtrack I did for the movie Gold. Conquistador is also sort of Western-themed, and a soundtrack to an imaginary film. Since soundtrack work is something I’m really interested in, I hope to get to do another one at some point, but until then, I guess I’ll keep doing imaginary film work. [Laughs.]

So if Conquistador is a soundtrack to an imaginary film, is that film a Western? The era that Conquistador envisions is during the initial collision between Europe and the New World. When I was in junior high, I lived in Texas, and we had a Texas history class where I read about a conquistador. He had a Moorish squire named Esteban, and they went to what was then Northern Mexico, now the American Southwest, and got lost for 20 years. They had a bunch of, I guess you could say … “adventures” where they were sold into slavery by one tribe and escaped, and worked with another tribe—basically, things didn’t go as planned. The album was more based on this memory of the story rather than the specific text. I’ve also been influenced by a number of my favorite films, like The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky. So it was a bunch of little things all bubbling around. Is your guitar playing usually guided by that kind of visual experience? I’ve always been visually oriented when it comes to guitar playing. When I first started, I’d find patterns on the guitar and see how they sounded, as opposed to being an ear player. And as I’ve progressed, I’ve become much more of an ear player. Also, since the title is the only verbal cue to describe the narrative arc of the song, I’m very conscious of the way the title looks or sounds. I’m always trying to look for something evocative, ’cause I’ve always believed there still needs to be narrative arcs to the songs—even songs that I do with a lot of repetition. I believe that there should be a narrative arc to the record as well, which I feel is something that’s a bit lost with the advent of the CD, and now digital media. It’s the order of the songs that makes a great album, as well as the songs themselves.

How do you give your music a narrative arc? Usually it’s through textural cues. I’ve always been interested in subtle dynamics in music. The thing that always bugged me about grunge is it reduced musical dynamics to “here’s the quiet part and here’s the loud part,” and I’ve always preferred music where the textures and the interplay of instruments build small crescendos and dynamics in that way. The intensity in the playing, you know? And then I was lucky in that Emma Rundle joined me to add her music to mine. I’ve definitely always been a believer in that approach—where if you limit the options in certain things, it forces you to become more creative with what you have. I’m also a strong proponent of what I like to call “happy accidents.” What is the ratio of improvised versus composed music on the album? I don’t know … 80/20? [Laughs.] The riffs were there, but the structures were done in motion. And then a lot of it had to do with the fun of looking for guitar tones. Some songs are more composed than others, but even with the ones where there’s a strong compositional presence, I’ve always believed in leaving room for improvisation. The most composed song is the last song of the album, “Reaching the Gulf.” There’s the basic riffs, but then the arrangements sort of happened naturally as I played them in the studio, so they have much looser organization. Which, again, I think helps with the narrative arc of the record, because it’s about leaving, heading into the unknown, and then stuff happening that you don’t foresee, and then the return at the end to a controlled environment—or at least a more controlled environment. What is it that draws you to repetitive patterns? I’d always hear stuff in other songs and be like, “that’s a great riff, why don’t you just keep going with that rather than immediately jumping to another one?” I always liked Indian music and psychedelic stuff and, obviously, blues. Maybe it’s this atavistic thing from my Scotch heritage, like the bagpipe or something. [Laughs.]

How was it working with Emma and Holly on the album? I played a show with Red Sparowes and Marriages, bands Emma was playing with, and I borrowed some of her gear that night. And then she’s on [our label] Sargent House, and my wife, Holly, and Emma got along quite well. I think she’s a fabulous musician and she really added a lot to the proceedings. Holly was travelling with me at the time, and we needed extra percussion. She played piano when she was younger and sang in choir. She was also a dancer, a belly dancer, so she has good rhythm [laughs], so that’s sort of how that happened. It was also my first time working with Kurt Ballou, which was really enjoyable. He has a cool studio and a really good ear and a lot of helpful ideas. At the same time, he doesn’t force them on you. He’s really open to your ideas. And then he has a lot of interesting equipment. But it was a very easy record, in a lot of ways, because it flowed quite well and everything that needed to get done got done. I enjoyed it. I hope other people do, too.

Let’s talk about gear. How important is your gear to the songwriting process? I’m much less gear-centric than I used to be. I realized over the last few years that no matter what I use, I’m going to get my sound and be me. And obviously, there’s slight variations based on gear choice, but I realized I could have saved myself a lot of time and money in the early days.

What guides your preferences? I don’t like a lot of pedals. I think there’s almost too many to choose from nowadays. [Laughs.] I see some people’s pedalboards and I’m, like, confused. I think some of the prices on gear lately are ridiculous. You don’t need to spend $10,000 to sound good. I’ve always been a big MXR fan. I use a Custom Comp, which is the sort of nicer version of the Dyna Comp. I love the regular Dyna Comp, too, but I find that the Custom Comp has a lower noise floor. And then I like the Shin-Juku Drive for distortion. Then, I just got this HBE Dos Mos, which is a dual MOSFET preamp. I really like it because it allows me much more textural options, where the distortion becomes a texture, too, so I can also do a loud cool sound. In the studio, I’ll end up using more modulation to separate the tracks and to color them. Live, I reduce the number of effects I use.

What about amps? I’ve actually gone solid-state. [Laughs.] I have a bunch of tube amps lying around and they all need servicing and are annoying to carry around. Right now I’m using a DV Mark 50-watt solid-state head, and I have a Crate Power Block solid-state head. I think a 50 watt is the largest head you’d ever really need. You’re never gonna get to the sweet spot on a 100-watt head, you know? We all grew up with pictures of Hendrix with these huge amp stacks, and that was because they were playing without PAs. Nowadays, you don’t need to do that.

One of the best shows I think we ever did was opening for Neurosis in London, and I was playing an old WEM Dominator, which is basically a 15-watt amp. People were saying how great we sounded that night, and no one thought we were too quiet or not loud enough. Because a 15- or 30-watt amp will scream. People seem to forget that you double the wattage of the amp and you’re only increasing the actual volume by 3 dB. All you’re increasing is your headroom. If you want the harmonic enrichment, you have to drop the headroom.

How did you first get into guitar? I guess my favorite guitar would be the Tele. Right now I’m on a bit of a Strat jag. I’ve played other guitars, but I always seem to come back to the Fender style. I find them the best for touring, ’cause they have the straight neck instead of the angled headstock, and they’re not finicky. They get the job done and they take the road really well—whereas set necks and headstocks that are angled are accidents waiting to happen.

How did you first get into guitar? My parents were into music, so I grew up with a lot of music around me. But no one really played an instrument. And then when I got into music, as in buying my own, AC/DC was the first band I got into, and that’s what made me want to play rock ’n’ roll, I guess. For a long time, I wanted to play guitar, but never really got around to it. Then one day my dad suggested it, so I bought one finally on my 15th or 16th birthday. A good friend of mine at high school who was a big prog-head showed me a few chords, and that was sort of my beginning. I immediately started trying to write songs rather than learning other peoples’ songs. I taught myself the rudiments of theory. Although, the thing I’ve always tried to remember is, the music comes first—the theory grew out of that, not the other way around.

What influences your guitar playing? I’d have to say the guitarists I really gravitate to serve the music or serve the song—people like Steve Cropper or Cornell Dupree. I’ve always felt like the thing that really motivates me is, “Is the riff something that’s worth repeating, and does it convey my conception of the song?” I always find it very interesting when people talk about a song I’ve done, and they’ll say it’s similar to something I may have thought about the song, and the landscape I may have envisioned for it.

Earlier you mentioned how the music industry on the whole has somewhat lost sight of the album. Do you think this would ever shift your approach to your own music? When I was young, Buzz from the Melvins was talking to me and he said, “There’s two ways to do things.” He was speaking specifically of music, but I guess it could apply to other things. “You can try to jump on the trend, or what’s happening at the moment, and you might succeed famously, but you might not. Whereas, if you do what you do and you just keep doing what you do, eventually people are going to pay attention to it, hopefully.”

I’ve always tried to follow that advice. I just do what I do, and just try to keep doing what I do, and it’s obviously not the quick route, but it’s seemed to work up to this point. I haven’t had to take advice from record labels, or play songs by hit songwriters I don’t know or don’t like, or dress up in clothes I don’t want to wear. You may not have a mansion on MTV Cribs, but you can go to sleep at night and look at yourself in the mirror, hopefully.

#Dylan Carlson #Earth #Conquistador #Premier Guitar