#also i’m pissed they didn’t include this particular bit of this scene into the anime that would have been so cool

[krisget-thebanana]

Thinking about this scene

#look i know i make jokes about them as a pairing and stuff #but their entire dynamic actually fucks me up so bad #i wish i had the words to express just how not normal i am about them #soichiro being driven to the point that his life literally doesn’t mean anything to him anymore #because he believes that him being alive actively puts his family’s lives at risk since mello is still threatening him for information #I’m really tired i have no idea if what I’ve written here makes sense but holy shiiiitt dude #literally nobody talks about them ever but i’m actually so deranged about them #mello #death note mello #mello death note #mihael keehl #soichiro yagami #soichello #not really intended to be a ship post but anyone who appreciates their dynamic is my target audience ig #death note #also i’m pissed they didn’t include this particular bit of this scene into the anime that would have been so cool

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 26 part one

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes! 

I’m Coming Up So You Better Get This Party Started

The Lans arrive just in time to see Cousin Jin Zixun hassling Su She, and they wonder how he has the fucking nerve to come to a party that they are also invited to. 

Su she was invited by his new best friend Jin Guangyao, who deploys a full-on charm attack, wrapping Su She permanently around his little finger. 

Smoother than the Lanling weather that’s how he holds himself together Watch out, he’ll charm you 

Jin Guangyao grew up with women who earned their living by being charming, pleasant, and hiding their true thoughts from their clients, and he appears to have mastered this useful skill set. With Su She, he exudes confidence and authority, allowing the lesser man to bask in his attention.

With Zewu Jun he deploys helplessness and embarrassment, effectively controlling a man with much greater power than his own.

Lan Xichen confronts him about Su She's presence, and Jin Guangyao pretends he didn't know that Su She was ex-Lan. This seems super unlikely, given that JGY is good at collecting information that he can use to fuck with people, and also that he sheltered Lan Xichen from the Wens directly after Su She betrayed him.

Lan Xichen seems like he doesn't believe what JGY is telling him but then he decides to drop it, passive-aggressively saying that since JGY is uninformed, he's not guilty. Lan Xichen is actually assuming a lot here about his right to tell Jin Guangyao who to invite and who to shun, but JGY doesn't push back. Lying is so much simpler.

(more behind the cut!)

Su She wins for most unintentionally sarcastic-seeming toasting expression.

Jiang Cheng, Party Animal

Jiang Cheng arrives at the party, bringing his Jiang retinue and his bad temper. He super obviously casts around to try to find Wei Wuxian, who already told him he probably wasn't coming to the party.

Jiang Cheng is that guy who only comes to a party because the girl he likes said she was thinking about going, and then he spends the whole party saying "hey have you seen Mei Lin? She said she was going to be here but I don't see her."

Jin Guangyao formally congratulates Jiang Cheng on the Jiang clan's success in the hunt, and Jin Guangshan toasts him. As always, Jiang Cheng reacts to praise from authority figures like it's rain in the desert, smiling from ear to ear. He says that the Jiang Clan will donate the prey from the hunt to the other gentry clans. ...what?

Are we seriously saying that when these dudes go night hunting it's not just to remove dangerous bad stuff, it's for profit? 

Like, do they eat monsters? Wear their fur? Make leather from their skin? Carve jewelry from their claws? Is Jiang Cheng wearing a purple monster's skin right now? (There will be an art prompt at the end of this post)

Meanwhile, check out the way Nie Huaisang is looking at Jiang Cheng, wow.

Forecast: Hazing

Having gotten the single pleasant part of the banquet over with, it's time for the Jins to pick on the Lans. Cousin Jin Zixun goads Lan Xichen into taking a drink with him, knowing that this is (mostly) against Lan rules. Jin Guangyao tries to stop him by saying, hilariously, that it's bad to drink and fly on a sword, but CJZX waves this away and keeps pushing, saying that if Lan Xichen won't drink, it's an insult to him.

A random cultivator who is definitely on the Jin payroll backs him up, saying that teetotaling is for losers, and Captain Blowhard boisterously agrees. Loudly agreeing with powerful people is the Yao clan's signature martial arts skill.

Jin Guangyao looks embarrassed and helpless, which is, as mentioned before, his own signature skill. But he's just playing his own part in this piece of theater; everything happening at this party (so far) is happening for the benefit of the Jin Clan. Cousin Jin Zixun is an ass, but he's not actually a loose cannon, and Jin Guangshan is clearly enjoying the Lans' discomfort.

Why? This entire party, the hunt, everything he's done since the end of the Sunshot campaign, has been designed to increase and consolidate his power. His main goal is to get the Yin Tiger seal, but reducing the status of the Lans is also a good move for him. The Lans have been the strongest opponents to the use of resentful energy, and worked the hardest to conceal and contain the Yin iron in the past. If he wants to use resentful energy as part of his own cultivation, he needs them to chill. 

So this is a bit of a test; will they comply with the will of the larger group in order to avoid conflict, or will they refuse, which will allow him to label them as iconoclastic weirdos?. 

Lan Xichen takes a long look at his brother, who is expressing all sorts of emotions while keeping his face very very still. 

At a guess, he is thinking that this entire party is bullshit, that his brother's willingness to play along with these assholes is bullshit, that being viciously beaten for having a single drink in his life was bullshit, that Wei Wuxian not being here right now is bullshit.

Lan Xichen picks the "go along, get along" path, having his drink and using his magic skill of anti-intoxication to neutralize it, as he'd done previously when drinking with Wei Wuxian. 

Cousin Jin Zixun picks on Lan Wangji next, and since he cannot magically or even non-magically tolerate alcohol, there is a real risk to his reputation if he drinks. But Lan Wangji breaks rules when he feels like it, not when people tell him to. He pointedly ignores the offered drink while Lan Xichen looks worried. 

The rest of the party guests have a wide variety of reactions, none of them helpful, to these shenanigans. Jin Guanshan's son and heir watches with calm interest as the power dynamics play out.

All of this is actually not great strategy for the Jins. The Lans don't play little social games to gain power, because all that time they spend not drinking, not gossiping, and not doing other stuff? Is spent cultivating and practicing sword and musical battle forms. The Lan Bros are overwhelmingly powerful as individuals, and embarrassing them won't change that.

It's moot, ultimately, because Wei Wuxian chooses this moment to arrive.

Darkness Visible

Wei Wuxian actually made a big impressive stair-climbing entrance to Jinlintai a few minutes ago, with camera work echoing Lan Wangji's stair climb at the Wen Indoctrination Bureau from several episodes back. 

But nobody was around to see that, other than us, and when he appears at the party it's in stealth mode; he steps into the frame from out of nowhere, and drinks Lan Wangji's unwanted drink.

Lan Wangji responds by looking at him like this for the next several minutes.

Wei Wuxian doesn't have time for their usual sport of Extreme Gazing, though; he came for a reason, which is to find and rescue Wen Ning. He gets right to it, asking Cousin Jin Zixun where he's keeping him.

Jiang Cheng, who is the king of worrying about the wrong fucking thing, jumps up to try to stop Wei Wuxian from talking. Like, seriously, he's ok with the Jins trying to take his clan's special extreme weapon, but he's not ok with his head disciple being rude in order to fulfill a whopper of a life debt--Jiang Cheng's life debt, in particular--or being rude in order to preserve the clan's independence.

Jin Guangshan decides this is a good moment to bring up the Yin tiger amulet. Wei Wuxian pushes back, hard, pointing out exactly what Jin Guangshan is doing. He says he's setting himself up to be a new Wen Ruohan. 

Lan Wangji pays close attention to Wei Wuxian's reasoning here, and so does Nie Mingjue, unless he’s just trying to mask his confusion. 

Jiang Cheng is too busy being horrified to listen, apparently. Or he just doesn’t agree, preferring to be reduced to a secondary authority, rather than defy a primary authority.

Wei Wuxian is, of course, all about independence; he was literally born to be a rogue cultivator, despite being dubbed “patriarch” himself, not long after this. 

Let’s Go Crazy Let’s Get Nuts

Wei Wuxian gets tired of the scene and decides to lose his temper. He makes a show of being enraged, and he genuinely is angry, but I don't think he's out of control, this time.  

He acts like he's out of control in order to scare everyone, but he makes his points very clearly, reminding everyone that he has power they don't have, that he's good at killing, that he's not patient, and that his teeth are nicer than everybody else’s. 

Everybody in the room freaks out to one degree or another--except Jin Guangshan, who is apparently too pissed off to be scared.

It's hilarious that Jin Guangshan thought he was going to get Wei Wuxian to hand the Yin Tiger amulet over by creating a complex system of social pressure against him. Wei Wuxian's favorite way of responding to social pressure is to escalate it into violence, regardless of the consequences; he's been doing that at least since Gusu Summer School and probably a lot longer. Jin Guangshan should know this, given how many beatings his son has taken from Wei Wuxian over the years.

Wei Wuxian does a fantastically sexy scary, theatrical countdown, and Cousin Jin Zixun caves in and gives him the information he wants. It's worth noticing that even under threat of death, CJZX doesn't comply until he visually checks in with his clan leader. He’s genuinely a bad person, yes, but he’s a loyal soldier, which is what most of these clans value most. 

As soon as he gets what he wants, Wei Wuxian is perfectly, smugly, in control of himself again. Everyone in the room is still stunned and afraid, so Jin Guangshan has achieved that much, at least; nobody likes Wei Wuxian having the Yin tiger seal now, including Jiang Cheng. 

As he leaves, Wei Wuxian has one of those conversations with Lan Wangji in which everything is said in glances in the course of a couple of seconds. 

WWX: I love you, I have to leave you; I've got some shit to take care of and I won't be coming back to all of this. 

LWJ: I love you; I'm probably going to have to fight you; your funeral is going to be so upsetting

Wei Wuxian turns away from everyone, and you can see the weight settling on his shoulders, as he contemplates the choices he just made and the choices that are still ahead of him. 

Jin Guangshan, for the first and only time, loses his temper in front of everybody, literally flipping a table because he's so mad about what just happened. 

Art prompt: Jiang Cheng wearing an outfit made of a Chinese mythical creature. Bonus points if it’s a qilin. Bonus bonus points if Zhang Qiling (from DMBJ/Lost Tomb franchise) is standing next to him looking grumpy while Jiang Cheng wears an outfit made from a qilin. 

Soundtrack: Get This Party Started by Pink, Charm Attack by Leona Naess, Let’s Go Crazy by Prince. 

#the untamed #the untamed gifs #wangxian #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs #learn to count the yiling way #1900 words

[earthnashes]

LAST OF UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

I started playing the very second it was made available to play and just finished it last night at like 4 in the morning. And of course it destroyed me. I love this series man so much man. ;w;

SO! I don’t usually do this but I’m like, fuckin’ dyin’ to talk about it a lil bit so if ya have plans to play it, SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT. <:

-Aight so lemme just say right off the bat that this game is fucking. Gorgeous. The environments, lighting, visual design, the level design, everything was spot on. And don’t get me started on the CHARACTER MODELS. AND ANIMATION. Like bro that shit was lifelike in not just appearance, the characters emoted and carried themselves with so much life they felt legitimately real. They were all so unique too; characters had unique special ticks to just them (Like Ellie pinching her fingers when nervous or upset, or Joel standing taller and squaring himself when talking about hard subjects like he’s bracing himself for it, or Jesse giving his stunted headtilt when he talks) and expressed in a way that was just. Bruh. Aight I’mma stop but fuckin hell what they pull off with the characters in specific in LoU (both part 1 and 2) is just somethin’ outta this world.

-For anyone interested in playing it, the game is roughly 22-30 hours long if you’re just focused on the story, and much longer still if you take the time to explore and find all the little secrets. Some secrets include unique cutscenes and dialogue that are well worth the look; I haven’t found all of ‘em yet but I’m considering trying a completionist playthrough.

-Joel’s death fucking destroyed me. I’m in no way surprised he died, but it hurt regardless, just how quickly things went south for him and Tommy there. And ELLIE. FINDING HIM AND WATCHING HIM GET REKT WAS PAIN INCARNATE. Set the tone hella hard and I’m fuckin’ here for it.

-I’m not gonna lie I fully expected to dislike Abby given she rekt Joel, even though I figured it was for a pretty good reason before it was revealed her pops was the doc Joel killed. But damn. I really enjoyed Abby, a lot actually. From a gameplay standpoint I dare say I enjoyed her section more than Ellie’s since you were BLASTING ENEMIES with those fuckin’ GUNS of hers. And by guns I mean her arms’, jesus she was shredded. As a character, she felt a lot like Ellie from a different perspective and mindset, and I really appreciated the reflection the two of them had. Two sides of the same coin, basically. Also I really, really liked how killin’ Joel brought absolutely no peace to Abby at all, and you caught her beginning to regret it. And it kinda sorta acted as the catalyst to her shift in how she viewed the world. I think that’s a good portion why she latched onto Yara and Lev so hard. Perspective is everything, and there is always more than just one side of a story.

-In the same vein I had a blast learning more about Abby’s friend group, dynamics, how she lived, who she worked for and her past and everything. Of them all I think I liked Nora the most, but Mel and Manny were both reaaaalll close seconds. O:

-Speaking of, DOGS. DOGS DOGS DOGS. So many dogs man and you got to play with and pet them! Fuck yeah. That should be a rule in gaming; if you have a cat or a dog in the game, you should have a button to pet it. Also good gorl Alice is best doggy don’t fight me on this. uwu

-Jesse and Dina were the beez knees I fuckin loved them man. They were exactly the sort of folks I can see Ellie being best friends with. ALSO, this one isn’t major, but I really appreciated that there was no love-triangle here? Dina and Jesse dated, smashed, didn’t work out but they still remained good friends. Ellie’s first reaction to seeing Jesse is to confess that she and Dina kissed, and Jesse readily accepted the fact that Dina moved on (and he had too). It’s just refreshing. No bullshit love triangle there, just three people who really understood each other. Also jesus christ, I really didn’t want Jesse to die. Goddamnit. But I’m so glad they didn’t kill Dina too like, I was fully prepared to see her get fucked up. Base rule of LoU: anyone you like has a high probability of dying. ;w;

-BRO THINKING OF JESSE, ELLIE, AND DINA MADE ME REALIZE THE PARALLEL OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO MEL, ABBY, AND OWEN. Ellie’s triangle was essentially non-existent; no feelings of betrayal or anger, just understanding and love, like there was a deep-seated bond here that would weather anything. If Jesse had lived, I wouldn’t doubt he, Ellie, and Dina would have lived together to raise the baby together. Meanwhile Abby’s triangle had Owen seeming to unable to let go of the past he and Abby had together, that poor bastard was still in love with her, and how that supplemented the slow deterioration of all three’s friendship. I was sad to see Mel turn on Abby the way she did but like. I mean.  Dude was ready to leave Mel in the dust for Abby despite HIM GETTING MEL PREGNANT. Abby also kinda did drag everyone into this, even if it was of their own violation. Oof. Though it did feel like she was angry at both Abby and Owen equally, not just blaming Abby for everything there... or at least the romantic relationship part. Honestly probably one of the few times I actually enjoyed a love triangle in a story, or at least of this caliber.

-Isaac, the leader of the WLF? He was cool as fuck. I love how much character they packed into him without even showing him too much. Like there was a scene where Nora mentions she tried to question Isaac about Owen and she said “he gave her that fucking look and told her to drop it”. Hell, when he was talking to Abby, he isn’t that much taller than her but he felt like he outright dwarfed her with the way he carried himself and how they reacted to him. I love shit like that man. But anyway fuck Isaac. uwu

-Not gonna lie I kinda wish I got to see the leader of the Seraphites, but it was hella cool to learn that she had been dead already and how the Seraphites operated with and without her. I don’t think I found everything regarding that specific point in game, but it sounded a lot like a peaceful religious leader who’s words and teachings were twisted to suit the goals of corrupt members of the tribe. She was essentially an equivalent to Jesus, at least to the Seraphites.

-I honestly really loved all of the characters introduced but I have to admit that Lev and Yara were standouts. Yara’s one hell of a big sister, lemme tell you, and the lengths she went through to make sure Lev was safe really shooketh me. AND LEV. MY CHILD. MY SON. To those of you who are familiar with the LGBT+ controversy around the game, he and Ellie are what people are complaining about. Ellie because she’s gay, Lev because he’s trans.

Lev in particular was heartbreaking. His tribe were outright hunting him for who he was, as well as Yara because she chose to protect him. The mindset the tribe had was pretty much isolated to them though.

And jesus. That scene with him and his mother? Fuck.

-YARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA :( BRUH that scene pissed me off, fuck you Isaac, you bastard.

-THE SCENE. WHEN YOU PLAY AS ABBY. AND YOU FIGHT ELLIE. WAS SO FUCKING COOL. AND SCARY. Ellie man, that section really showed how efficient and smart she is. She legit tricked me a few times not gonna lie, like I thought she didn’t see me but she’d pretend she wouldn’t, only to ambush me with a FUCKING MOLY. Also the fact that the game outright says “hey uhhhhh you can’t actually take her head on, she’ll fuck you up in a heartbeat bro”. Welp. A really strange mix of horror and sadness and pride there. Hm. :/

-Mom!Ellie was so fucking sweet to see. And it made me catch a glimpse of hope that Ellie actively tried to soldier through for her fam’s sake. But she clearly had demons she had to confront and I’m angry at Tommy for disrupting her and Dina’s life, but it felt necessary. Still made me sick to my stomach to watch her go after Dina fucking BEGS HER TO STAY. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

-Speaking of Tommy, it was so sad to see how much he fell after Joel’s death. It really showed just how much he was like his brother though; underneath a gentle man is someone you best not trifle with, and is very familiar with doing horrific things to reach a goal. Because fuckin hell, Tommy is legit a badass. That sniper part was SO. COOL. Aaaaand terrifying. RIP Manny. :/

-Bro, I’m very curious to see more about the Rattlers but. They were fucked up in a special kind of way. There’s no telling what they did to those people they captured and enslaved. Seeing Abby in the state she was in after seeing her throughout all the game in tip-top shape was painful. That poor girl was literally skin and bones and... just beaten down.

-ELLIE AND ABBY’S FINAL FIGHT WAS SO SAD. I HATED (but I loved) EVERY SECOND OF IT. I was so scared Ellie had fully lost herself there, when she threatens an unconscious Lev to force Abby to fight, who at that point, very clearly didn’t want to. Honestly. Ellie clearly didn’t either, far as I could tell, but it felt like it was the only way she knew how to confront everything. Fight it, until you kill it, or you die. It also felt like Abby understood that since she was in Ellie’s shoes once upon a time.

-I don’t care what anyone else says I’m so happy Ellie let Abby go. I’m so glad she chose not to go through with it. For so long Ellie has been angry and resentful about a lot of things, and she never got a choice once throughout the majority of her journey. As much as I will 100% agree with Joel sayin “fuck this supposed cure, fuck the Fireflies”, it’s not fair of him, or the Fireflies, to just outright take that choice from her, that she didn’t really have one to begin with. She was justifiably angry with Joel and the moment she chooses to try and forgive him, he dies. Another choice stolen away from her. The fact that she chose mercy despite everything, and it was prompted by a memory of Joel, the very reason she was doing this, is profound to me. Like she finally understood why he did what he did, and why he said he’d absolutely do it all over again. Hell, she probably even reached the understanding that her and Abby really aren’t that different from one another in that aspect.

-Ellie returning to an empty home, with Dina and JJ gone, was heartwrenching. I fully understand why Dina left and she honestly had every right to, but it still hurt man. :C AND ELLIE. PLAYING THE SONG JOEL MADE/SUNG FOR HER. ALWAYS KILLED ME. But this instance in particular was something else man like fuck I balled like a baby. Especially when it was followed by the fact that Ellie and Joel were on the cusp of mending their broken relationship only for it to be ripped away man. Goddamnit.

-ELLIE AND JOEL DUET NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. FUCKIN HELL I love this game.

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

So, this isn’t really a review more than it is me just sharing some of my thoughts on the game, but if ya want me to give it a rating? 10/10. If not a perfect score? At least a 9/10.

The Last Of Us as a series is one that’s moved me more than any other game I can think of honestly (outside of Telltale’s The Walking Dead), and just like the first one, LoU2 left me thinking about it for hours after. It’s thought-provoking, it’s compelling, it’s fun as fuck, aaaaand it’s made me cry like a baby a good number of times. I also really appreciate the fact that, in this game, they actually show the consequences of your actions. Like, they made you consider the fact that you aren’t just killing grunts to get to the next enemy or mowing through mindless drones. You’re killing people, who have lives, and friends, and families.

We got to see Joel for who he was: a very broken man, with a very dark past, who has done very horrible things in this shitty post apocalyptic world, but he is a father, and protective, and loving and thoughtful, who will do anything, anything, to protect Ellie. Blood or not, Ellie is through and through his child. But Abby only saw a monster, and could you blame her? He killed her father, and countless others, and she never got the full story. Just that a man came in and killed the entire hospital, put an end to even the smallest possibility of finding a cure, killed her dad in cold blood, and walked away no problem. And then it cycles right back to Ellie, where Abby becomes her monster.

It’s just some grade-A storytelling as far as I’m concerned, and I’m someone who usually prefers happy endings. LoU always leaves me feeling bittersweet but goddamn do I love this series. I’m kinda hoping for a DLC, to be honest? Like LoU part one, where you found out about Ellie and Riley. I wanna see what happens to Ellie; I get the distinct feeling she returns to Jackson and hopefully scrounges out some semblance of a decent life there, after confronting Tommy and (hopefully) making peace with Dina. But we’ll see! uwu

#earthsong talks

[smolbeandrabbles]

One Thing Right - Andrew ‘Pope’ Cody x Reader (Animal Kingdom)

Author’s Note: So, whilst this is a stand alone - it can also be a little re-imagining of ‘Last Habit’ (Specifically how long it takes her to forgive him) - and was actually part of Last Habit, before that story took me another direction and left me with this-!

Heavily based on the restaurant scene from both the movie and episode 1 of the show (If you’re here for the Show!)

One Thing Right - Marshmello & Kane Brown

Disclaimer: Animal Kingdom characters/plot not mine / lyrics & gifs not mine / leap from “Last Habit” idea based on discussion with Ms. @mandy23b​  

Premise: Still frustrated with Andrew from a continuing argument, you’re determined to hold it together for a dinner event. In reality though, can you help doing anything other than forgiving him? Even if he doesn’t apologise?

Words: 6469

Warnings: Swearing / References to drug taking

_______

I've cheated and I’ve lied I've broke down and I've cried I’ve got nothing to hide no more I've loved and I've hurt Broken people down with words More grace than I deserve, for sure Known to be crazy, known to be wild Mama had herself a little devilish child Ain't no stranger to the troubles at my door You saw right through my pain Kept us patient while I changed Never even crossed your mind to walk away  When I was gettin' crazy, reckless, and wild Actin' like my mama's little devilish child It took a heart like yours to find its place I’ve been at the wrong place at the wrong time Chasin' all the wrong things most of my life Been every kinda lost that you can't find But I got one thing right Been the kinda guy girls' mamas don't like Runnin' with the wrong crowd on the wrong nights 'Cause I've been wrong about a million times But I got one thing right... you Yeah, I got you ---

It all started with a nervous, little, nonchalant proposal. The same way that Andrew always asked you to do anything with him. Like a ‘no’ was no big deal… As if you would ever say no in the first place, but the alternative never really seemed to cross his mind. “So, uh, the guys are doing some… wives and girlfriends thing next week… I dunno…” He tapped the sideboard and wouldn’t meet your eyes, “If you wanna come, then…” You raised an eyebrow; “Who are the ‘wives and girlfriends’? Surely that’s just me and Cath…? Cuz Kelly is no longer around…?” “Nicky…” “Who!?” Was Craig onto someone else already? Perhaps Darren, he was a sweetheart. Who else? “Jay’s girlfriend.” Ahhhhhh!!!! Jay. Yes, you misremembered for a moment that Andrew’s nephew was living with them now. In fact you hadn’t been over since then, so you hadn’t met him either. “Oh! Yeah, of course… Well, do you want me there?” He still wasn’t quite meeting your eyes but he nodded, “Yeah, I think so.” You smiled sweetly with a nod of your own; “Then, honey, of course I’ll come!” ***

Andrew drummed his fingers on the back of the empty chair next to him; and Baz knew it wouldn't end there. "She'll be here, mate. She wouldn't miss this." Andrew only stared at him across the table with a look that clearly asked him to shut up. This kind of thing was awkward enough for him, without worrying about where you were. He had been having second thoughts about going - only you wanted to be there, so he would put up with mundane social interactions for you. Also, if you were there and his social battery ran out - which it so often did - you usually came up with brilliant excuses to leave, or let him just find protection and comfort in your presence. Andrew, you've done enough... It's okay... You were always fine alone; more than confident with answering all the questions for him when it was clear he was no longer going to actively participate.

 Only you hadn't shown up yet, and he had to shuffle awkwardly in his seat, almost wanting to blurt out that you were an actual real person, you were just late. But why? You hadn't given him a reason. Andrew was getting more anxious by the minute, and his best friend had to watch this unfold growing exceedingly uneasy himself. What would Andrew do if that battery ran out and you weren't here yet? What would he do if you were a no show…?

 **

DAMN. Today, of all days, was clearly not meant to be yours. Not only had you been called into work to fix something on a weekend, but now traffic back into the city was beyond a joke and your cell phone provider decided that this particular route had next to no signal on it.

 So, by the time you got to the restaurant you were flustered and frustrated, and thought you couldn't possibly have made a worse first impression. It wasn’t just the first impression either, it was what you knew would be going on in Andrew’s head that worried you more. You’d been fighting- Well, okay fighting was pushing it because you and Andrew didn’t really fight, mostly because you couldn’t help but be a little worried about exactly what may happen if you really did get to fighting with him. But his brothers had a nasty habit of doing drugs – and Andrew wasn’t ever want to miss a little bit of participation, despite the fact that you’d told him time and again that you weren’t happy when he did so. When he’d invited you to this event last week you had been excited about it. You hadn’t exactly ever hung around his family in a group like that before, and the more you thought the happier you got. Andrew never invited you to things like this because they weren’t even his scene (you supposed you might have to thank Baz for that later), so to be included at all very suddenly added a new dimension to your relationship. So, now you were super excited to meet Jay and Nicky – and finally have another Cody Girl™ to hang out with. That was until yesterday morning when you’d caught him in your apartment with drugs and subsequently thrown him out, telling him you didn’t know if you were coming today. And if you were honest with yourself you were still mad at him. But you also knew Andrew, he’d probably quietly indicated you were coming ‘no big deal’ and he certainly wouldn’t have told anyone that you’d thrown him out, suggesting you weren’t going to make it – mostly because that would have been too big of a confession. You could imagine the questions, the ammunition it would give his brothers. Selfishly you supposed your reputation was on the line here, and you didn’t want to let him down. Even if he’d let you down, Andrew just meant too much to you. Honestly, you just really really wanted to meet the kids. Besides you could sit here in traffic and reason with yourself – it was dinner, which meant a maximum of 3 hours interaction - if you were still pissed about the drugs (you would be.) then you didn’t have to go anywhere with him afterwards. Seeing everyone else was a little more important than not going just to spite him. You took a deep breath, checking your phone again – still nothing. Well, if you were late then you were shaving yet more time off having to interact, if you were prepared to see it that way.

Baz, facing the door, spotted you first and was off like a rocket. Thank GOD for that! You were holding your mobile in one hand, bag slung over your shoulder, oversized white shirt unbuttoned nearly all the way to reveal a black vest top, tucked into a work mini-skirt. But you’d slipped from your heels into your pumps to drive, and your shades were in your hair. All in all, your face said you’d had better days, but really Baz was just glad you were here. He enveloped you in a warm hug, which you were only too happy to return. "Oh, Baz! I'm so, so, SO sorry!" "What the hell happened!?" "Work-! IT. When isn't it IT?" You huffed and folded your arms, "I feel like us casing the place that one time ought to have told ya it was time to leave." You scoffed, laughing, "It's a good place to work, I just can't believe today of all days it was such a MESS - and traffic!? I haven't see it that bad when it's rush hour! I mean what the hell!!" “Aw, honey, I’m just glad you’re here – we were worried.” – about Andrew, who was worried about you. You bit your lip, looking everywhere but Baz’s face and the table, “How is he?” “He’s… Andrew. Why?” “He didn’t tell you did he?” “No.” Baz would never go for the ‘tell me what?’ if it was something so obvious as the way you looked back to him. You took a deep breath, throwing your phone into your bag, “Okay.” And then more to yourself than to Baz, “It’s gonna be fine.” “Woah, you… you wanna talk about it-!?” He stepped backward with your step forward and held his hand out, concerned. You shook your head, “Not right now, thanks Baz.” And you really did appreciate his concern, “I just wanna meet everyone!”

 Andrew looked just as relieved as Baz did, swivelled in his seat now to watch you both walk through the restaurant, by this time Baz was already trying to lighten your mood and he’d made you laugh more than once; you were smiling – he was good at that. Andrew vacated his seat to take the last few paces to hug you himself; that movement was important – he knew exactly what he’d done, and you weren’t sure if you were supposed to accept his PDA as an apology. But something about him holding you in his arms softened you for a moment; "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry!" You mumbled into his shirt, "I really... I really AM sorry! It's been the morning from hell..." He shook his head, almost not caring; loving the feel of you holding him this close, your nails digging into his shirt. You gave him just the energy shot he needed. "It's okay..." He mumbled, though you felt that was probably far from the truth, "I'm just glad you made it safe..."

He let you slip from his arms, PDA wasn't his thing, so you knew this was because he needed it desperately only. Or you were right and it really was in apology. You kissed his cheek gently, feeling that would be the most comfortable, and rounded the table quickly to hug Darren. He was the baby, and looked and acted like it. He was like the good natured one who had yet to be fully dragged into this mess. You might have been a complete outsider, but Andrew told you as much as you were prepared to hear... Or that he knew you had to know. Usually that came with his more protective nature. That put you in solidarity with the youngest Cody sibling, and you felt you probably liked him the most – Darren liked you too; though you knew he was a little wary of your relationship. "What they got ya in for on a Saturday!?" He was referring to your attire, and you noticed Craig linger a little too long on the fact your white blouse had buttons undone to just the wrong side of inappropriate. "Oh. You know the company has to be running smoothly Monday morning and that’s that..." You sighed, “I’m so sorry.” He laughed, “Aw, you don’t need to apologise to me.” “No, only the whole damn table…” But Darren patted your back gently, “Well! Get on with it, we’re starving-!” You skirted the table while saying ‘Hi’ to Craig, Smurf and having an animated five minute conversation with Cath that had Baz rolling his eyes and sighing; "GIRLS! She's late enough!" Cath pushed him with a laugh, as you bashfully kept running around the table to where Andrew was still standing up, leaning on the back of his chair. At least there was something resembling a smile on his face as he watched you interact with his family. "Sorry, honey..." You almost smacked yourself, but realised there wasn’t really any stopping you, your heart was starting to overrule your head. You’d have to try to keep yourself in check – then again… He squinted slightly at the cute nickname, but pulled your chair out for you, to which you thanked him again as he pushed you in and reseated himself. "Can we EAT now!?!" Craig huffed, clearly on the less kind side of annoyed; "I was ready to order, like, 50 minutes ago!" You flushed and covered your face with your hands, "OH GOD!! I'M SO SORRY!" "He's just being a prick... Y/N... You're fine..." Baz's voice at least held a laugh, but you weren't sure it helped your feeling. Like he hadn’t already commented on it-! Andrew placed his arm around the back of your chair and shook his head at his sibling. Say something like that again and just wait until we get home. You liked that movement, it made you feel safe and comfortable. It was an assurance you sometimes needed in situations like this. Yet you knew you should still be mad at him; you were about to spend this meal incredibly torn…

"So!" You referred to the two teenagers sitting at the far end of the table. "You must be Jay and Nicky? I confess, what I know is little, although I have heard a bit. It's nice to meet you! I'm Y/N!" "Guess they might know a little about you, too..." Baz gave you an amused look that told you they'd be lucky if they'd even heard your name before you said it. Andrew shuffled in his seat in response to this, he needn’t have reacted at all - you had that kind of hunch yourself. The teens bashfully introduced themselves in answer to you as everyone ordered – in the back of your mind you were already thinking they were way too sweet to be involved here, and that adoption should be the way to go. You supposed that attitude shouldn’t surprise you, given the state of your family – your parents would have signed on the dotted line about 5 minutes ago. Still, you supposed you, in the remnants of a business suit, looked like the odd one out around the table – but that’s exactly what you were, and you were strangely comfortable with that. They were very sweet and shy, meaning you tried to make every question you asked kind and open – they didn’t have to answer if they didn’t want to. All you really wanted them to know was that you were decent; they were safe and you’d protect them at all costs. Besides, you reckoned Jay should know by now you were dating the most volatile man at the table. You’d like to say you knew that Andrew wouldn’t lay a hand on them – yet you also knew that he was capable of anything. You’d also like to say you were capable of stopping him, truth was, you were scared of what might happen if you got between Andrew Cody and something he deemed necessary to do. As you kept talking throughout dinner, and you tried to keep questions off yourself, you were aware of how close you were getting to Andrew. That was all subconscious because he’d barely moved an inch, but it was an act you loved doing. There was something very powerful about Andrew’s aura and you liked orbiting it; right now he was calmer – sure, his eyes still shifted around the room and to everyone in the table, yet everything about him was saying he was protecting you. Because even you were just waiting for Craig to come at you; he wasn’t exactly a fan of the fact that you didn’t come from the same place as them, that you came from a different class and social background. No prizes for guessing where he might have got that from. You got the feeling Smurf thought that you felt you were too good for them – not necessarily…. You’d seen the way she treated Andrew; the lost cause. The idea of wanting to get him out of this was something you thought about often. Though you also thought it was pointless when he was in your house doing drugs – but you would digress. In fact, you loved most people around the table. Really you felt a lot of them were better than the positions they found themselves in – if she really wanted your honest opinion. But you could only date one of them. And he was work, you’d give him that.

"What do you do, Y/N?" Eventually questioning did get back around to you, and you were trying to figure out how to answer before you were cut off. "Here we go..." Craig scoffed "What, jealous!? You can go it for me if you want!" Your eyes narrowed, arms folded He at least laughed; "No, No, I think I'm good - thanks!" You shook your head at him and turned back to Nicky's question, "I do IT." "Do IT?!" Baz repeated in a mocking voice "What? I do." He leant forward, "Nicky, she's just being polite and modest." "HA-!" Andrew shifted impatiently, which made Craig shut up again before he even started. Baz was allowed to finish his sentence; "She's a CIO." You leant on your hand with a small smile, "And CISO. If we're getting technical." "And that-!" Baz pointed to you, "Whatever the hell that is-!" Chief Information Security Officer, if he really wanted the answer. "That's why I said IT!" you laughed, “I head IT for a very small company, Nicky, it’s nothing.” “Enough to drive a Lamborghini.” This was exactly where things got complicated; where the divide showed, even though it didn’t matter to you. You were always uncomfortably aware of what it looked like to everyone else. “Will you guys stop!” You pushed Baz’s arm, but he was smirking and that only sent them all off laughing again. Causing you to hide in your hands for a second, shying towards Andrew – who despite still daring Craig to say another word with a frosty glare, had a hint of pride about him and the way he sat. Somewhere in the back of your mind you could almost hear the ‘That’s My Girl!’ that every other man around this table would likely say; his eyes flicked to yours, lips pressing themselves into a line that very nearly threatened smile. You were glad Andrew never got that far; not that it would have mattered anyway – because of course, you smiled back. Before you remembered why you were mad and your smiled faded for a moment. You lowered your eyes from Andrew’s face tracing them down his neck to his black buttoned polo shirt, then looked away from him entirely – realising you were just making yourself sad thinking about it. Still, he didn’t let you go; the slope of his body and the tip of his head as he watched the way your eyes traced him, he leant into you to keep you close – but he didn’t reach out. You didn’t expect that from him either. Andrew knew you were still mad at him; he could think about removing his arm from the back of your chair opting simply to pull you closer, but he wasn’t made that way. Andrew wouldn’t – at least not publicly and certainly not here.  Right now, he wasn’t even sure you wanted that – or if you’d simply push him away. Nevertheless, he noticed how torn you were and hated that it was him that had caused it. What a mess for a quick fix. Wasted and pointless. He ran his hand over his cheeks – suddenly imagining the feeling of your nails embedded in them as you lowered your voice to a sexy level of threatening. Andrew shifted in his seat again, this time away from you, and kept his hand there for a moment – you couldn’t help but notice the way his breathing change abnormally. You also realised all that had triggered in you was a smirk, absentminded enough for you to be shocked at yourself – yet you knew exactly why, and hell if you wouldn’t call it useful information…

Dinner continued until you were stuffed and couldn’t eat anymore, pushing your knife and fork neatly together you sat back, nestling gently into his arm that was back around your chair. Finally comfortable enough to seek the warmth of his body. By now he was staring at you, and he had been for quite a while, because that’s what Andrew did. You’d long since given up trying to guess, or even ask him, why he would choose to stare at you in the particular way he did. It was never any less intense than the way he would look at everyone else… yet it was so different – and this stare was strangely hopeful. You supposed he was considering whether or not you’d forgive him – then again, so were you. Turning your eyes on him you couldn’t help but gaze back; lost in another beautifully silent conversation. I’m here for you. But don’t you dare think I forgive you for what you’ve done just yet.   You knew he needed you here, and he must have known you knew that right now. You brushed your forehead gently to his, resting your hand reassuringly on his knee. It might take you a while to excuse him, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t love him. Everyone still pushed for dessert; at which point you swapped seats with Craig, bowing out – not without brushing your lips to Andrew’s cheek first, which very nearly startled him - to learn a little more about Jay and Nicky. Cath joined you a little later and with Jay joining in with his uncles, Smurf joined you in a girl’s conversation. It was nice to learn some more about her, and talk just a little about yourself without the whole table either wanting you to flaunt it, or scoffing at you for being a show off. You liked that you had the opportunity to chat with her in the quiet, which became quieter as Smurf and then Cath left you to it whilst they went back to the boys – clamouring for attention once more. Andrew was back to watching you, into his usual habit of making sure you were safe at all times and you were quite enjoying catching his eye every now and then. It’d make you smile and look away; a simpler form of flirting, but one you felt you probably both enjoyed. When he and Baz got up to pay the bill, Andrew walked behind you, brushing his hand over your shoulders. Fingertips pressing into your skin in a way that had you fixating on his touch and looking up at him as he walked away. You’d quite forgotten what you were saying and instead Nicky was left witness to that way you stared at each other, before he turned and they strolled to the counter – although you didn’t look away. Blinking a few times you cleared your throat; “Hey guys-!” They swivelled back, “Yeah?” You pulled your card from your purse and held it out, “I was late, it’s the least I can do.” Andrew waved away the suggestion, “No, Y/N, it’s okay…” “We got this – you can owe us later.” Baz added with a wink, and you figured he might spend the next five minutes trying to persuade Andrew onto a double date; which he would love of course.

Instead you watched them talk seriously at the counter for a minute as they split the bill; with the glances they both kept throwing to you, and the way Baz very nearly clipped him (about the only person who’d get away with it), you assumed that it was really an integration about the previous morning, causing you to look away quickly for fear of being dragged into it. Nicky giggled gently, and you realised she had continued watching you, “You really love him, don’t you?” You continued focusing on the table, although even her words had you smiling, and you very nearly laughed. “Yeah.” “How long have you been together?” That made your eyes raise to her - suddenly you realised you didn’t even know the answer. It wasn’t like Andrew was ever going to keep track of your anniversary – and to be honest being held up in a parking lot was not exactly something you wanted to remember the date of. “…Oh, uh…” You also couldn’t believe someone would want to ask you outside of your family; a lot of your friends thought Andrew was strange at best and would probably rather forget you were with him. You were grateful your parents foster kids more than made up for that. “…Just over a year?” you squinted, no, it felt longer than that - “Maybe closer to two?” then you smiled, genuinely, “Thank you for asking.” “I thought that was normal?” She tilted her head, making you laugh, “I don’t know if you’ve met him before today, but,” You looked around her to watch them still in heated discussion, “Andrew’s not exactly…” you paused, “He’s a little different. I think that’s probably why I like him so much. Then again, it’s not exactly something that gels with a lot of people,” you bit your lips together, “it’s a real shame - you know, if he was given the chance…” you trailed, “Sorry! That’s a lot for… the first time I’ve ever met you.” You place your head in your hands again, “Late and rambling, man, I must have made one hell of a first impression!” But she was smiling, and reached out to touch your hand, “I think it’s sweet – that you care about him like that, and I see the way you look at each other, he cares a lot about you too I can tell. He doesn’t take his eyes off you.” You weren’t sure if you should set her straight or agree with her; “That’s also a very Andrew trait, something to get used to for sure. I guess it’s okay if it doesn’t bother you…” “Does it?” God bless her innocent curiosity. “No. Except, nothing about Andrew bothers me.” “Should it?” Your eyes flicked back to him and then to her, and you said it as honestly as you could without really telling the truth; “He’s just… a lot to unpack.” ***

He stopped by your chair as they walked back, and everyone else started to rise, so you supposed dinner was over. As he’d helped you in, Andrew also helped you out. “You okay?” “Yes…” You gave him a gentle nod, “Thank you…” and you realised all at once that you really hadn’t had a verbal conversation yet. You wondered how you could just get back in your car and drive away after that. Andrew had to know you were still reeling a little – but it didn’t sit right with you, to just say goodbye and leave him to his own devices once again. Especially considering that could just drive him back in the direction you were trying to pull him from (or drag him – kicking and screaming if necessary). As you made your way from the restaurant - close but not touching; he wasn’t even trying to take your hand to keep up appearances (and sometimes Andrew did) – it was clear he was thinking along the same lines. Baz was the first one to turn to you, “How about it, Y/N? Drinks? I mean you can just park the car up and take off tomorrow if you’re worried about getting a DUI.” “Oh, no I really… I’ve had a day, you do not want me to take up any offer of drinking.” You waved your hands hoping he might drop it. “Aw come on – what!? You know how bad we get-!” No such luck. You indicated to the teens, “I would rather keep up appearances!” “It's cool, guys, I'll take her home." Andrew cut in before anyone else could protest your objection. You turned to him, wondering if a conversation in the place he’d done the crime was even a good idea. Maybe it was the only good idea. Of course, no one argued with that; "Okay, Andrew, see you later!" Although he waited for you to hug Nicky goodbye. You were good at bonding with people, and there weren't a lot of females in Andrew's life beyond his mother and Cath. So he knew you'd be particularly receptive to this teenage girl who had no idea quite what she was getting into. And that you'd likely want to protect her from that. Afterall, he’d watched you talk to her for at least the last hour, with that same sweet, caring smile on your face that you often gave him. Not that he thought he deserved it ever, perhaps even less than usual right now. And here you were again, being as naturally kind as you always were. "...It'd be cool to hang out too! I mean I dunno, maybe you're a little too cool for me!" You gave a gentle laugh that made her smile; "No, I'd like that!" "Awesome, well, you have my number now. Do not hesitate to call me. Especially if you happen to have to hang out with these boys again... In fact, Cath, you and I should have a girl’s night - Good Lord." "Don't tempt me!" Cath yelled from behind you, which made the three of you burst out laughing and all the boys look on a little confused. You hugged her tight and protective; she was so cute and utterly sweet. As the only other real outsider (and completely in the dark) you wanted to keep her on that side of things for as long as possible. It was your choice not to know anything, you didn't want her to have to know there even was a choice.

You waved them all off and walked with Andrew back towards the car park; he fell into the rhythm of your walk, studying every single other person on both sides of the road. He didn't hold your hand, but your skin was millimetres apart, his shoulder brushed against yours every few steps - as if to make sure you were still there; as if you'd be anywhere else. You were used to this by now, and if you were honest you loved it. There was something unvoiced about it all, how you were both aware the other was there and close, but there was no needed physical contact. Andrew was the most comfortable you'd ever been with a man in your entire life. And you weren't sure if that was ironic or not. "Are you driving?" "I don't have my car." You held out your keys, "Are you driving?" He took them gently, suddenly falling out of step with you, and then behind as he stopped. You paused a little further down the sidewalk and turned with a raised eyebrow; "What-?" He held the keys up, "You drove your Lamborghini to work!? AGAIN!?" This only went back to every other time he’d told you to be careful driving it around, should some opportunists try to car jack you… again. You folded your arms, somewhat impatient with his lack of answer; "Oh, I didn't realise I had to stop on the weekend too - now are you driving or what-!?" You knew he could stop the excited smile from crossing his face, but it escaped into his voice; "Yes!"

 ** Even though you still hadn’t spoken to him properly, it was all in his body language. For him it was the same, all in your actions. You didn’t have to let him do this – in fact you could just have turned to him and said that he wasn’t coming with you. Yet here he was, driving your gleaming silver Gallardo through Melbourne to your apartment. You noticed Andrew was making the most out of the opportunity by taking you the scenic route. All you could do was watch him. How comfortable he was – just you and him and driving. How careful and in control – a real force to be reckoned with, not that Andrew ever wasn’t that, but the whole aura of it was different. This time he couldn’t keep that small smile off his face – tiny sure, and if you weren’t looking you were bound to miss it, but it was there. You liked that he was comfortable, because you often watched him be so uncomfortable with everything. The social situations he was forced into especially; for that matter, Andrew didn’t often talk in social settings. He could still be the one in the room in control and be uncomfortable, his body language would tell you such. Here and now though, his energy was confident – and though he was alert to the conditions he was surrounded by on the road, Andrew was the most relaxed you’d seen him in a long time. You let yourself actively enjoy it. Because you wanted to revel in him when he was like this. It was a glimpse, a rare thing that you weren’t about to let slip away from you. You knew how much he loved this car, even when he was sitting passenger side, and when he actively showed it that was even better. Andrew was letting himself enjoy the moment as much as you were; just by watching him you’d been persuaded to smile, to coax your hand from your lap to entwine with his fingers. He didn’t look across to you – but his lips twitched and for half a second that smile was visible, before it dropped away again. Still, Andrew Cody didn’t let your hand go. ** You were back to being cold and silent by the time you were in the lift to your apartment; perhaps not by choice, but because you just couldn’t figure out exactly what to say. You weren’t sure how to approach it, and certainly hadn’t had time to think of such things. After all, you did kick him out of your apartment yesterday after screaming then using Andrew’s own ‘quiet & threatening’ tactic against him. You just knew that you couldn’t keep up the silence; part of you worried that if you did  Andrew would switch from understanding why (as you were sure he did) to thinking screw this and heading back home – where all that really awaited him was his brothers, alcohol and more drugs. Certainly not what you wanted. He was looking at you again though, and Andrew thought that maybe the air of friendliness you’d been displaying this evening had been for his family only. Just for dinner. He supposed it made sense, but Baz had told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to apologise to you, quickly. Andrew was just trying to figure out how best to do that – of course he’d been thinking about it, but you’d been regarding them both and he didn’t want it to come out like the only reason that he was saying sorry was because Baz had asked him to. No, he wanted it to sound as sincere and genuine as he felt. Usually silence was good for Andrew, he found a comfort there that he could seldom find anywhere else. Even around you. This wasn’t comfortable – not when there was so much unspoken between the two of you. You would often communicate without using words – but that wouldn’t even save you both now. He let you have it, 5 minutes of total silence, how you stood with your hands down on your kitchen counter staring at nothing. You could tell exactly what he was thinking, considering he was pacing up and down the room, and wouldn’t take his eyes off you. Until eventually Andrew sighed, making you raise your eyes to him; “Why… Why even bother turning up? Why would you want to be there today? With me. Why are you even okay with me?” He looked away from you, squinting in thought, “I understand the reasons you hate me right now. Which makes me not understand why you would…” He trailed, finding it hard to describe how he could know you weren’t happy – but you could still look at him like he was your world… Was there even a way to describe that? “Oh. Andrew…” You almost sounded desperate, but exasperated, your face softening and for a moment your heart bled for him – because he always felt like everything had to be understandable and logical; it was just how his brain processed. Just once sometimes you wished he would realise that your feelings for him really weren’t logical at all. You could never really hate him. “Look. I love you. And that’s never going to change, it’s just sometimes you make me SO mad!” You ran your hands through your hair with a small exhale, settling your eyes back on his infinite stare; “Because I see the good in you Andrew. And I want more people to see that. YOU might think he’s gone, and your family clearly do, but not me. I KNOW it’s there. I wouldn’t be with you if I didn’t see it. But you do things like this, and I just…” You gave a gentle shrug, unable to even explain it for yourself; “If I don’t believe in you, who will? It hurts me when you hurt yourself. And I feel sorry for you and… that is that.” His stare was measured, and his blink slow. You knew he wouldn’t say anything, Andrew just wasn’t built that way. But you wanted him to, right then more than any other moment you wanted words to spill from his lips. Andrew’s blue eyes left yours and he looked to the floor - that was a lot, all at once it was a lot for you to just say to him. It would be a lot to not respond to; then again, he wasn’t sure what he could say. He wasn’t good at expressing his feelings for you, Andrew never had been, but he knew he felt something – things he’d never felt for any other person, not even his own family. They were just so hard to say with conviction that sounded like he really believed them. You stepped from the counter and walked across the room to him, although he took several paces back, shying away from your touch. You wouldn’t take that as an answer, because you needed him right now – he needed you too. You took Andrew’s hand in yours; allowing him to maintain the gap but letting him know you weren’t about to let go. He shook his head slowly, still not meeting your eyes, and his next sentence was murmured – a thought to himself that maybe he hadn’t meant to say aloud; “I don’t deserve you. But you’re the only thing I’ve got right so far…” You tipped your head, unsure where exactly that had come from; “Andrew, I-” “I shouldn’t have done it. I know that.” Sorry. He was saying sorry, in a typically Andrew way of saying it. It’d take time for the actual word to come – or else maybe he’d simply show you. You framed his face with your free hand, tilting his head back up so those haunting eyes could meet yours once more. “…What…?” Andrew’s lips parted, no words came, before he swallowed and placed his hand over yours. For a moment you thought he might pull away once more, but he didn’t. His eyes simply searched yours for any way he might get away with never saying something so honest again. “I know you heard me.” You didn’t quite roll your eyes; instead pulling yourself to him, forehead against his – gently humming your agreement. I Did. You closed your eyes to the silence and lost yourself to the sound of his breathing. You knew exactly who this man was, and everything he was capable of – no matter how much you tried to burry that beneath your love for him, and no matter how hard you tried to save him from it. But, more importantly, Andrew Cody was yours - and you weren’t about to ever let him forget it.

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Thank you for reading-!😍

@happyskywhale @wltz-bby #MendoTagSquad

#Andrew Cody #Animal Kingdom #Ben Mendelsohn #Andrew Pope Cody #Pope Cody #Andrew Cody x Reader #Pope Cody x Reader #Andrew Pope Cody x Reader #Heres another really good song that I like for him!!! #The only two Marshmello songs I know are now Andrews! #Once again I think I've screwed up here... #But oh well. Here we are #I really tried this time but theres one or TWO places where I'm like /Shawn?/ Ben - your Shawn is showing #I've never been more frustrated with an edit #there were so many /and/s and /but/s in this damn thing I just wanted to scream #I hope it reads a lot better now #But it's kinda a far cry from Young God. #I wonder if Amanda is going to read one of my sentences and call it black t-shirt erasure ;) #140 #Elaiyna #OKay so he actually got out Before Ned did - which is totally on me.... Sorry writer Boi... You need better luck! #I thought Andrew was going to have to hold up the drafts at the bottom but he gets away with it-! #Happy Year-Since-That-Fateful-Comment Day! #(Part 3!)

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: “Pomp and Circumstance”

Welcome back, welcome back. I managed to miss last week’s title/summary leak, which for any other show would have been a blessing. With RWBY though I find myself not minding---even hoping for---spoilers, just so I won’t be quite so blindsided by things when I actually watch them. It’s a topsy-turvy world.

We’ll get to that in a bit though. For now, we open on the new Amity Arena immediately flying over the Schnee dust mine. I’m talking the group has barely made it back out into the sun before Ironwood’s men are arriving and setting up base. That’s some real eagerness to get the ball rolling. Funny how Ironwood’s entire plan is doomed to failure and eight of the people helping him to complete it haven’t mentioned that yet...

We get a shot of the Ace Ops triumphantly emerging with Qrow and RWBYJNR positively geeking out over how fantastic their take-down of the geist was. It was admittedly a great battle. The best scene I think we’ve had in a while. Sadly, that charm didn’t carry over into this episode. 

As the gang gushes over how fantastic they were Clover explains that it all comes down to the makeup of their team. They were specifically chosen to compliment one another and make up for any liabilities they might bring. Forethought like this brings back the age-old question of whether Ozpin’s own teams are as random as they appear. Does he really leave it to chance, who you first run into and what relic you happen to pick? Or was he subtly pulling the strings in order to ensure that complimentary teammates ended up together? Even if they don’t realize they’re complimentary at first. Ruby and Weiss are a perfect example of that. 

It’s a question we may never have answered. Especially as the Ozpin hate just keeps piling on and on. Before that though we’re given a ton of humor. Nora, continuing her role as comic relief, slides up to Elm and asks if she needs a new best friend. Their team name could be

I’d watch it.

More pressingly though, talk of team compositions and pairing up leads to a comment from Harriet that we need to unpack. Bear with me for a moment though because there’s something else I want to tackle first. It’ll connect back in a moment. Basically, I want to address my frustration last recap that Oscar was left behind with no explanation and the assertion by others that this was a ‘show don’t tell’ moment. It wasn’t. Providing your audience with no reasoning behind a decision is not the same thing as providing a visual explanation as opposed to a verbal one. On some level the choice to leave Oscar behind functions like an argument and I see this a lot in paper writing:

Student: This ad is really sexist

Me: And...? Why?

Student: I mean it’s obvious? All the women are wearing skimpy clothes and that one guy calls her a ‘bitch.’

Me: Perhaps obvious to you, but we can’t rely on the reader picking up on the same details and interpreting them in the same way. So you need to include that as evidence. In addition, you need to consider potential counter claims. What if I said some women choose to wear skimpy clothing because they feel empowered by it and that my friends often call me a ‘bitch’ as a silly endearment? How do we undermine those arguments in the context of your ad so you can more solidly prove that it’s still sexist? 

Student: Hmm

vs. 

Yang: We didn’t bring Oscar with us

Me: And...? Why?

Yang: I mean it’s obvious? He’s not ready for this fight yet.

Me: Perhaps obvious to you, but you can’t just bank on the viewer coming to that same conclusion. You also need to consider potential counter arguments. What if I pointed out that Oscar fought just as well as you during the premiere battle and that there’s now a history of you excluding him from every event you possibly can? How do you then undermine those points to prove that a) he really isn’t ready yet and b) that you actually left him behind because of his skill and not because you’re all still pissed at Ozpin?

Yang: Hmm

That was not a ‘show don’t tell’ moment. That was no tell combined with no show. A ‘show don’t tell’ would have been Yang going, “I don’t feel so bad now that we left Oscar behind” and then cutting to Oscar training with Ironwood, showing us that he needs to improve his skills as opposed to Yang just telling us, ‘He’s not ready yet.’ But we got neither. 

I bring this up a full episode later because here, in “Pomp and Circumstance” we’re given another shining example of precisely how bad RT’s ‘show don’t tell’ skills are. The Ace Ops. What are we shown? A group that is incredibly close with one another. They’re capable of anticipating each other’s moves and are able to follow directions with little to no prompting. They’re constantly joking, teasing, goofing off in a way that implies real intimacy. Clover proclaims, “What would you do without me?” demonstrating a familiarity that allows him to exude both confidence and playfulness. They’re close enough that he needn’t maintain the persona of their boss; close enough that he can play the part of their hero without anyone taking offense. In short, they act precisely like Team RWBYJNR.

Now, what are we told by Harriet?

“We’re not friends... that’s the job. We don’t confuse the two.”

Excuse me?

There has been nothing---NOTHING---in the last two episodes to imply that this team functions solely as a work group. Based on what we’ve been shown the idea that they’re not friends is laughable. What the audience sees and what the audience is told by a character do not match up. Kind of like how we’re told throughout the entirety of Volume Six that the group is heroic when we’re shown them repeating the actions of the villains. Kind of like how Qrow tells us that Ruby is different from Ozpin even as we’re shown her making the exact same choices. Here, we’re told that the Ace Ops aren’t friends yet shown that they clearly are and this disconnect functions solely as a means of---again---highlighting how special RWBYJNR supposedly is. Because we get a long shot of how devastated that mindset makes them

and then Ruby immediately rejecting the idea that you need to maintain a purely professional relationship in order to be a good team, begging the girls to go out sightseeing with her. Later Weiss proclaims to her father that they’re not merely friends, they’re family. As nice as the sentiment is, this is just another example of how RT is trying to paint RWBYJNR, RWBY in particular, as intrinsically better than all the other fighters around them. The takeaway is that the Ace Ops might be powerful, but without friendship they’ll never be as strong as our heroes... except the Ace Ops are clearly friends. Harriet’s cold and judgmental tone---You consider yourself friends with them?---makes no sense here. This would be an entirely different situation if we were actually shown an Ace Ops team that acted indifferent towards one another and if, later on, that professionalism and lack of knowledge about each other’s temperament, skills, etc. led to a problem. Ruby comes in with a, “See? I never would have made that mistake with my team because I’ve gotten to know them both on and off the battlefield. Being friends is an asset.” But we don’t get that, so all we’re left with is a message of, ‘RWBYJNR is super special even though they’re doing nothing different from the Atlas specialists. But trust us, they’re intrinsically better.’

That message got old, oh, two volumes ago.

In addition, can we please talk about the messy pacing? The group doesn’t want to go sightseeing with Ruby because they’re exhausted. Weiss and Yang act like their traveling and near death experiences happened last night, and later Qrow’s “the finally getting to Atlas part” comment reads as recent too, but as I mentioned in the previous recap, Pietro’s comment tells us that at least a few days have passed. Realistically a few weeks. So which is it? Has enough time passed to justify Pietro creating seven distinct upgrades and apologizing for having their weapons “so long”? Or has so little time passed to justify the group talking about their trip like they still haven’t had the chance to sleep after Penny’s tour? Yes, this stuff actually matters when you’ve got a laundry list of internal conflicts and the audience wants to know how much time the group has had to grapple with them. Has it only been a few days since the Ozpin drama, or a few weeks? Did Yang and Blake murder a guy the other day or last month? We’re simply not told. 

While consistency unravels Ironwood tells Clover that he needs the Ace Ops “on the ground” being “subtle” in their investigations... so maybe don’t bring Marrow. This moment, right down to the humor, is pretty identical to Blake deciding to leave Yang behind when she went to dismantle the CTV tower. Because “Stealth’s not really your... um...” Thing. If only the writing acknowledged these failings in a non-comedy context and encouraged the characters to learn from their mistakes. Marrow might have to listen to his boss and Yang will do anything Blake asks of her, but the rest of the time? ‘You’re really bad at missions that require subtly’ is just going to piss the group off. Even though it’s true.

As the Ace Ops take off Ironwood calls over the team leaders. Which is a bit of a weird choice considering he’s not asking Jaune and Ruby to keep secrets from their teams or anything. They’re literally just going to turn around and relay that info immediately  to YWBNR. So why not just tell them all at once? Chalk it up to not wanting to animate nine characters. Basically though we learn at least part of Tyrian’s motivations here. He’s been killing off prominent figures who oppose Ironwood, including Forest, trying to make it look like Ironwood himself is killing to keep them quiet. And it’s working. More points to Ironwood for throwing out, “I’m not really concerned about my public image” when Qrow accuses him of only caring about publicity. If Ironwood is secretly a horrible dictator who really doesn’t care about his people... he’s doing a very good job of hiding it. 

He’s also super chill about Jaune talking back to him about the embargo, a sharp contrast to Jacques’ “How dare you speak to me that way!” when Weiss takes a similar tone. Like the party way back in Volume Four, Ironwood is presented as the clear hero to Jacques’ villain. He lets subordinates point out difficulties and potential mistakes he’s makings. Instead of just, you know, abusing them. 

So yeah, Jacques is a thing. He shows up pissed that Ironwood commandeered his abandoned mine, but also he’s happy because he thinks Ironwood has screwed himself now. Jacques is gunning for a seat on the council and he hopes the military taking possession of private property, not matter how grimm-infested, will help. He accuses Ironwood of roping Weiss into all this, Weiss reasserts that it was her own decision to help, and we get a lovely moment of the team supporting her. 

I’d just like to point out though, this is all proof that Weiss would have been just fine if they’d sent her to Atlas. The fandom was up in arms over that suggestion, making wild claims about how Jacques would kidnap her or something, but this scene canonically undermines all of that. Turns out Jacques didn’t have spies everywhere, waiting to scoop Weiss up the moment she landed. However long the group has been hanging out in Atlas, he had no idea she was here until she was standing right in front of him (and even then it took him a long minute to realize...) Turns out Jacques can’t just do whatever he pleases with another human being just because he’s her father. In Ironwood’s presence, which Weiss would have ended up in if she’d flown with Cordovin’s blessing, Jacques can’t touch her. Hell, he can’t do anything even if Weiss was alone.  If Weiss is willing to dump racists in the trash with her semblance I think she’s gained enough confidence to do the same to Jacques if he dares try to hit her again. The moment the fandom went, ‘They clearly HAVE to steal military property/disable a CTV tower and risk this tenuous peace because poor Weiss would be done for if they just sent her to Atlas with an armed guard and a transformed Qrow and possibly Maria in a suitcase’ I was just, ‘... What?’ That was never a good justification and this scene just reinforces that.

The one (metaphorical) blow that Jacques manages to land is by telling Weiss how distraught her mother was when she left. I wonder if there’s any truth in that or if it’s pure manipulation. 

As he leaves Winter flies in, clearly avoiding her father. Weiss gets partway through calling her out on that before Penny lands in their midst. 

From here the episode really unravels. With the surprise half ruined, Ironwood takes the group up into the arena and presents them with their huntsmen licenses. Now, full disclosure. I said I wanted this back in the premiere. In fact, my exact words were,

“I don’t think the show would ever go for my suggestion of another school arc so they could finish their training, but at the very least we should provide some sort of loop-hole for these characters. Have Ironwood provide special licenses based on their heroics at the Fall of Beacon and their work since. Because right now we have a world that’s continually emphasizing being a huntsmen as a job, something you earn the right to call yourself, yet 95% of our group doesn’t have that right in the eyes of their society.”

And I still stand by that. In as much as I’m acknowledging that so long as the writing refuses to treat the group like the students they are, taking away that status is the next best thing. However, that was written before the story decided to re-emphasize precisely how not huntsmen-like the group is. Everyone remember that? It was a week ago, wherein the group was characterized like kids playing dress up, following the adults around, acknowledging that it feels like they’re real huntresses even though they’re not, and then they witnessed a fight that put their skills and maturity to shame. A part of me honestly is glad we’re not dealing with this as a moral issue anymore. The other part of me is going, “Really? You set up how the group is still a bunch of students and then turn around and give them licenses an episode later? Can we at least be consistent?”

It’s fine though. It’s done. Yay. They all have licenses. Even though they technically didn’t do the work required to obtain them. And they’re also still at least a year, probably two years, too young to have them. Considering that schools are a four year program. It’s fine. 

The group doesn’t even seem happy to have them though. In fact, they trivialize the moment. That word exactly: “It almost feels trivial now.” I don’t think RT intends for the characterization to come across this way but man does the group sound arrogant. Wow. We’ve been given a huge amount of power and privilege when we technically haven’t earned it, have actually done quite a lot lately that should have resulted in punishments over rewards, this is entirely out of the blue, something we’ve all wanted for most of our lives... so thanks, I guess? We’re feeling kind of iffy. Ruby at least makes some sort of comment about how Ironwood doesn’t need to do this, which just lets him re-assert that they all totally deserve it. Besides, he needs all the help he can get. Remember, we’re about to tell everyone about Salem!

Obviously no one pipes up during this speech. There aren’t even shared guilty looks. They’re just... letting their lie become a part of their ascent into full-fledged huntsmen. Oh boy.

Overall this party just feels depressing as hell to me. Yes, let’s celebrate in an empty, creepy arena that’s a traumatic space for literally everyone here. Made worse by the fact that no one acknowledges this. Once again Penny functions purely as comic relief. I thought that finally, finally we would get a conversation between her and Ruby. Hey, Penny! We’re taking selfies and eating cake in the very place where you were horrifically murdered! Maybe we should talk about that? 

Nope.

Instead we get a train wreck of a conversation between Qrow and Ruby. She brings up the fact that they’re all keeping secrets... and Qrow laughs.

The hypocrisy is really astounding here. Ozpin keeps a secret and gets punched into a tree, along with Oscar. Ruby keeps a secret and Qrow looks like he wants to ruffle her hair. She asks him if she’s just like Ozpin and he responds with, “Oz only trusted himself with the whole truth. You’re trusting others, just making sure they prove themselves first. I think that’s a pretty big difference.”

Okay. That’s one hell of a messy statement, but let’s take it at face value for a moment. So tell me, Ruby. Precisely what does Ironwood have to do to “prove himself” to you? How long do you feel you need to wait? One more mission? A dozen? A few weeks? Months? ...Years? There’s no surefire way for someone to prove that they’re trustworthy and if, after that person has already shared their own secret plan with you and continually treats you as an equal---please help me in this fight, feel free to talk back to me, here’s licenses so you’re legally a part of this team---you’re still iffy about their motivations... what more can they do? You might just keep waiting and waiting for some sort of sign, putting things off because telling them is so risky and you just want to be sure. You might even reach a point where you’ve known Ironwood for ages and you still haven’t told him because, well, you haven’t gotten that proof you were looking for yet. Especially if you were, say, in a time of peace where telling him only feels like a cruelty. Especially when you’ve been betrayed so many times before and are always fighting against those memories. Your little, ‘I’m just waiting until I know I can trust him’ could theoretically go on for decades because we can never absolutely know a person. Lionheart is proof of that. Ironwood might one day look to you and say, “How can you not trust me yet?” and you might respond with, “What have you done to prove to me, without a doubt, that I should?”

I’m reusing this: 

Ruby is in precisely the same position Ozpin was with his inner circle. Including Qrow. If Ruby is unsure that a military-minded, incredibly stressed man should have this information now, despite how trustworthy he might seem, why would Ozpin have been sure of that a year earlier? Ironwood was the same military-minded, stressed, seemingly trustful guy. If Ruby felt like she couldn’t rely on Qrow mere weeks (or even days) ago because he kept refusing to stay in contact (something that was established way back at Beacon. That’s not new) and falling into drunk, pessimistic stupors, why would Ozpin feel like he could rely on him in other ways? Especially when those “other ways,” telling them about Salem’s immortality, would lead to absolutely nothing good. Seriously. Has the group suddenly come up with a plan to defeat her, proving that Ozpin was wrong not to bring more creative minds into the fray? No. Has the group fallen apart for a long stretch and has only now made noises about moving forward for the sake of moving forward, something they’d already agreed to do as huntsmen fighting immortal grimm? Yes. All telling them about Salem did was make them more depressed and stressed, the two things that draw literal monsters to their door. That’s it. Their goals and motivations are precisely the same as when they started: keep fighting. Ironwood, on the other hand, has to know about Salem because his plan hinges on her mortality. Ozpin risked nothing by keeping this secret from the group. He arguably saved them a lot of grief. Ruby, on the other hand, risks countless lives and chaos across Remnant because she’s letting Ironwood inch closer and closer to telling the whole world, all in an effort to muster up an army that will accomplish nothing. 

Ruby is Ozpin in this scenario, but her secrets carry more weight than his ever did. This isn’t a group of teens feeling morally outraged that their leader told a lie; how dare you not tell us everything when we’re risking our lives... even though we’re always risking our lives and would continue to risk our lives whether you told us or not!  This is an incredibly powerful general about to change the shape of the entire world if he doesn’t learn the truth. The stakes are nowhere near comparable. Combine that with the fact that Ruby and her friends just finished taking the high road. That’s the kicker here. That Ruby doesn’t just admit, ‘Yeah... I’m like Oz. Because he was right. You do sometimes need to keep secrets and it is hard to trust people.’ No, no, no, they have to keep demonizing him. Ruby needs reassurance that she’s nothing like that evil secret keeper... even though we can all see she 100% is. She’s arguably worse now that she wants to play the victim to Ozpin’s secret keeping while simultaneously doing the exact same thing to Ironwood. She’s arguably worse since her secrets risks far more lives than Ozpin’s ever did. Where’s the fandom’s outrage over Ruby’s manipulation? Who’s punching her? When they bring up Summer, Ruby needs to characterize her death as “another Oz secret” wherein, like the fandom, she assumes he holds responsibility before there’s any proof of that. Even when Qrow admits that Ozpin has no more idea how Summer died than he and Tai do, he rescinds it! “But who knows what he may have hidden from us over the years.” Excuse me, but you all need to stop gearing up to assign blame without evidence, especially when you all are currently committing the exact same sins Ozpin did. We’ve been doing this since Volume 5:

Yang: I just learned that my uncle is the one who kept his semblance and bird transformations secret from me, but I’m going to blame Ozpin for it and demand “no more” lies. Even though up until now he’s never lied to us.

Qrow: I just admitted that your mother’s death is her own secret, but I’m going to subtly blame Ozpin for it anyway and remind you, as well as the audience, that he could be keeping an untold number of secrets from us. Truly a horrific thing when we, too, are keeping a bunch of secrets.

It’s also just a complete OOC moment that Qrow would be laughing about Ruby keeping secrets and hugging her as he tells her to press on while likewise maintaining his suspicion of Ozpin. Because Qrow’s whole beef with Ozpin is that he’s supposedly “wasted” his life while serving him. Everything he does is worthless because of Salem’s immortality. So if he’s now (randomly?) on team, ‘Do things because they’re right even if we can’t win in the end’... why is he still upset? If he can admit now that all this work---building new CTV towers and taking up everyday missions---is still super important, then why isn’t he thanking Ozpin? ‘Oh wow. I realize now how worthwhile this work is, regardless of whether Salem can be defeated. I guess I do owe you that gratitude for allowing me to do it all in the first place.’ Is no one ever going to acknowledge that Ozpin was right? About their work and about the need to keep secrets? You all are literally adopting his views, his mindset, and his choices. But nope. Nothing. It’s just an illogical mix of ‘Everything we believe is what Ozpin taught us’ with ‘But oh yeah screw that guy.’

The only reason Qrow is all buddy-buddy with Ruby’s secret keeping is because he’s in on the secret. Objectively speaking, if Qrow had a right to know about Salem’s immortality than so does Ironwood. They were both inner circle members. They both served Ozpin for (presumably) the same amount of time. With the exception of maybe hearing about the brother gods---and even then Qrow didn’t take that story literally---they seemed to have the same level of clearance. Ironwood has done just as much to “prove” his loyalty as Qrow ever did, but he doesn’t want to admit that telling someone this kind of horrific info is just plain hard. So Qrow, like the entirety of RWBYJNR, makes it about their own status as heroes, adopting a ‘we’re totally different’ mindset. I get to know about Salem’s immortality. Ironwood though? No, no, we’re justified in keeping it from him. People just aren’t allowed to keep things from us.

It started off with Yang’s ‘How dare you keep secrets only I’m allowed to do that’ nonsense and has now spread to the entire group. We had an entire volume of people verbally and physically assaulting Ozpin in the name of his lies. Now Ruby does the exact same thing and gets hugs and praise for it. I spoke too soon last episode. The hypocrisy is unreal.

I honestly didn’t think RWBY was still capable of frustrating me to this extent, but here we are.

Oh, and so long as we’re riding this frustration train... where is Oscar? 

He was not acknowledged once in this episode, let alone invited to the party. You know, the one that he could have really easily been flown in for now that the danger is gone. The one that Winter, Penny, Marrow, Elm and Vine all make an appearance at, but not the guy they’ve been traveling with and who is way more invested in his ‘friends’ getting their licenses than some random Ace Ops members. From here on out I’m officially calling BS on anyone who tries to justify the group/the writing excluding Oscar. There was no reason not to invite him to a planned celebration specifically designed to give this team, a team he’s a part of, a bit of downtime. Sorry you didn’t get an armor upgrade, or get to go on the mission, or get to attend the after party. Everyone just kind of forgot you exist or couldn’t be bothered to explain why you’re missing. RWBY really just doesn’t like him or Ozpin and boy, does it show. 

The remaining plot is minimal. The group pulls up a mission board and Jaune gets roped into escorting school children, a mission with absolutely “no danger” in it. So if we actually get to see him completing this, you know they’ll be danger. As they continue choosing their first jobs as huntsmen we return to Jacques, brooding in his office. Whitley makes a brief appearance to announce that Watts has barged his way into the manor. We learn that everyone apparently thinks Watts is dead---that helps explain why they’re still using his code. A dead guy  isn’t much of a threat---and Watts tells Jacques that he can help him regain his lost wealth, get a seat on the council, and screw over Ironwood. Through the pretty silly line of “Have your cake and eat it too.” I like that expression, but it’s hard to make it sound sufficiently threatening...

And that’s where we end! A rough ride this week, folks. Can’t complain about the break...

Until next time. 

Minor Things of Note

Watts’ comment about how Whitley is the spitting image of Jacques makes me think of cloning. Like, I don’t think the writing would actually go there, but it’s a potentially cool option. Evil billionaire with access to fantasy technology has two rebellious daughters before finally just cloning himself a ‘son’...

Where is Maria? What is she doing? Can we please stop abandoning important characters and then having the cast acting like they ceased to exist?

#rwby #rwby volume 7 #rwby volume 7 spoilers #mymetas #rwby recaps

[cassiopee-utopia]

The day I run into you #1/3

Hello! This is my first fiction

/!\ English is not my mother tongue! Many mistakes are probably in this story and I deeply apologize for that. Please feel free to correct them if you see some, it will help a lot! 

Summary : A short story (3 chapters) about the day a young student randomly run into Timothée Chalamet in the streets of Paris. 

Enjoy!!

xx

Chapter 1: Meet me at the corner

(2,3k words)

Today I’m randomly walking in Paris as I like to do it when the weather is good and I don't have anything planed. This way I can discover new places of this huge capital I live in during my studies. For now, I'm doing a four-months internship that will end in a month or so. I'm doing it in a fashion press office and I'd say I quite enjoy it.

Currently I am in the 16th arrondissement. This neighborhood isn't really animated as only the richest people live here. But I guess sometimes it's nice to get away from the unrest of the city and just take a walk in a calm area.

As I have been walking straight for a long time, I decide to turn left at the next street corner. And well, let's just say that decision changed my day.

Indeed, the moment I turned is also the moment an idiot coming from the street I was heading towards decided to turn at full speed exactly in the opposite direction and one thing leading to the other: boom *collision*. That's the moment I ran into you.

- Ouch, I say trying to get up.

- I'm sorry, I'm very sorry, I didn't see you, sorry… says the man I bumped into.

I can't see his face as he is trying to pick up all the books he dropped, but weirdly I have the impression that I know this voice.  

- Here, that's also my fault you know, let me help you picking up this mess, I propose.

- Thanks, but you don't have to.

He finally raises his head in my direction and boom *2nd collision*, but in my mind this time. Timothée Chalamet is just in front of me.

For a moment my brain decides to just, stop working. I fix my gaze on him and say nothing.

- Are you okay?

- Um.. Yes.. Um.. I am, I say getting a grip.

I look to the books I’m holding and hand them to him:

- Your books.

- Thank you. So, um, where were you heading before we…

- Nowhere in particular, I say smiling, I just like to walk around in Paris. Discovering new places, etc.  

- Oh, then you should know some good secret places, right?

- I guess, I say a little confused, well maybe, I don't know, depends on what you call "good secret places"… And you, um, where are you going, if I can ask?

- To my hotel, I need to put down those books I just bought.

- By the way, what's all this?

- Just some French novels. I like to buy some when I’m in Paris. It's to practice my French and my French culture I guess, he say giggling.

- That's nice! So… um…

I absolutely don't know what to say next and don't want this conversation to end but luckily, he made me THE offer of the year.

- You said you wanted to help, so maybe you could help me bringing my books to my hotel?

As I already almost collapsed in front of him, I try my best to not have my third "collision" of the day and focus. Unfortunately, all I manage to say is a quick:

- Yes.  

- Great! I take one half and you take the other, he say handing me the books I previously gave back to him. My hotel is this way, come on.

I take the books, nod and follow him quietly.

We continue walking in silence for a few blocks and then he finally asks:

- So, um, I don't even know your name.

- Oh, yes, I am Rachel.

- Well, nice to meet you Rachel, I'm Timothée.

At this moment I don't really know what to do. Do I tell him the truth and say that I know who he is and that I was basically fangirling him a few months ago, risking to seem totally crazy to him ; or do I pretend the opposite? It could be credible, I mean, he's not that famous yet, everybody doesn't necessarily know him, it's not like he was Leonardo Dicaprio or Brad Pitt. But this second option would also include me lying to him, and besides the fact that I don't like to lie, he doesn’t deserve to be manipulated. Moreover, it's not like we're going to become friends or something, as soon as we'll get to his hotel, he will nicely invite me to leave, so I guess I have nothing to lose.

- Yeah, I kind of know who you are. But don't worry, I'm not a crazy fangirl! I say giggling.

Gosh why did I have to say that too! I'm such an idiot!

He takes a moment to think about the stupid shit I just said and then he answers:

- Well, then you should know how funny I am!

That was not expected but I'm glad he doesn't care that I know him, and that he takes it with humor. I decide to take this opportunity.

- Um… that's not what I actually heard…  

- What did you hear then?

- That you were that type of young actor with an enormous ego and basically no talent, I say with a very serious tone.

He stops dead with a very offended look and says:

- What!?!

I look at him, keeping my seriousness as long as I can and suddenly burst out laughing.  

- Hey! That's not funny!!

- Oh trust me, it is, I say still laughing.

He rolls his eyes and stops:

-So, here's my hotel, I would have invited you to come in with me but since you're so unkind to me…

- Oooh… Look who's all offended!! I answer with a slight smirk.

- Fine, if you keep it that way… he say turning his back to me and going toward the entrance.

- Wait wait! Okay, I'm sorry, but you know it was just for fun right? Who would have known Timothée Chalamet was that touchy!

He stops, turns around with a big smile of satisfaction.

- And that manipulative… I add walking in with him.

After taking the elevator we arrive in his hotel bedroom. Contrary to what I thought, it's not a giant suite, it's just a big room with a little "living room area" with a table, a big sofa and two armchairs. The curtains are closed but the room is still quite luminous as it's the middle of the afternoon. The decoration is pretty standard, but the luxury and the quality of the bedroom is still visible.

- You can put down the books on the table, Timothée indicates me before taking off his shoes.

I do so and stay besides the table, not knowing what to do next, and starting to feel a little bit embarrassed. Luckily for me, this guy seems to always have something to say.

- So, why don't you say to me what you really know about me without making some bad jokes like you did earlier, he says sitting on his bed.

I roll my eyes, sit in front of him on the couch and answer:

- Why do you want to know what I know about you? I'm pretty sure you're not going to learn anything as it's just some random facts about you.

- Well, let's just say I'd like to know what fans think and know about me, to know if there are false information circulating about me.

- Okay, first, who said I was a fan? (Of course I was one, but that's something that he didn't need to know for now). But if you really want me to do that then fine.

I started to tell him things I knew about him, like the fact that he is half-French and that he used to spend some holidays near St Etienne. Obviously I didn't tell everything I knew as he asked because I don't want him to see me as one of these crazy fangirls, even if in a way, I kind of am or was one myself. I also took advantage of this conversation to make fun of him a few times, mentioning that "peach scene" or that "Statistics rap" thing for example.

We kept talking about him and eventually about me for a while.

Then, still in our conversation, as I am exploring the room with my eyes, my look stops on the little space between the two closed curtains. I squint in order to identify what there is behind it and finally understand what it is. At this moment I am not listening to Timothée anymore. I just get up and walk in the direction of the window.

- What are you doing? I think he asks.

Still focus on what I am doing I open the curtains with an abrupt gesture, revealing the most beautiful thing: a perfect view on the Eiffel Tower.

I know it's totally cliché but as I am not a real Parisian since I've only been living here for less than a year, I really love that monument and it's one of my dreams to have a view like this.            

As I open the window to go on the small balcony, Timothée joins me.

- How can you close the curtains when you have such a beautiful view? I ask.

- I just took a nap before I went to buy my books.

- A nap? Oh, what are you, 70? I say giggling.

- No but I have jet lag, he answers a little pissed.

- Oh yes, that's right, sorry… I didn't even ask you why you're here.

- For fashion week.

- Really!? That's so awesome, I love fashion! I wish I could go to a show one day, I say leaning on the guardrail of the balcony in direction of the magnificent view. So, what were you saying just before I got to the window?

- I was talking about my upcoming movie that I'm not supposed to talk about, he says sitting on the floor.

Even if we are in late June and that the weather is sunny, it isn’t too hot so we could stay on the balcony and continue our conversation. I sit like him on the floor and answer:

- Um, you're telling me secrets now? I guess that's a good point for me then… I look away from him and add in a low voice: too bad you're already taken.

- Taken? Taken by what? He asks confused.

I look back at him and roll my eyes as I have to say it out loud.

- Taken by a girlfriend named Lily.

He smirks and says while playing with a twig he found on the ground:

- Guess you don't know everything about me then.

- What do you mean?

- Lily and I broke up months ago.

- Oh, I say without being able to prevent myself from letting out a small smile, smile he immediately notices:

- You know, it's not good to be happy about other people's breakups, he says smirking.

- I… I'm not happy… I'm really sorry, um, you two were… you were a cute couple… I say embarrassed.

- You know I'm teasing you right?

- What!? Hey! That's not funny! I say punching him in the arm.    

- Haha, that was for you're little joke earlier.

As an answer I just make a face to him, which makes him laugh even harder.

We kept talking for a while when suddenly he got up after looking at his watch.

- Shit!! The fashion show!! It's in half an hour!

- It's today!? I ask following him inside.

- No, it's right now. I really have to go. Haider Ackermann may be my friend, he doesn’t like when people are late, especially when we're talking about work… his work!

- Oh, um… I should get going then…

- I am really sorry to abandon you like that but even if we talked about it earlier it completely went out of my mine. Sorry.

As he is searching in his suitcase, I realize that my little dream with Timothée is now over.

- Okay, goodbye then… it was nice meeting you… I say going to the door.

- Um, yeah, really nice! He joins me in the front of the door. Sorry again, and thanks for the books, he says pointing them, even if in the first place you are kind of the reason they ended up on the ground. He giggles.

I giggle softly too and look up straight in his eyes as intensely as I can, maybe to trigger a reaction in him that would be favorable to me, at this point, any reaction would be good. But after ten seconds nothing happens. So I look down quickly, quite embarrassed, and then look up at him again and say in French:

- Au revoir Timothée (Goodbye Timothée).

He smiles and I immediately open the door and go out before saying something stupid. As I close the door, I realize I won’t have any souvenir of this incredible meeting, no photos, nothing. Just the images I would always keep in my mind. When I walk away from the door towards the elevator, I’m starting to regret not to have insisted a little more, like asking for his number or to see him again after the show. But no, my big lack of self-confidence decided to do nothing, and now it is too late. But then, from nowhere, the impossible happened. I hear the door I closed a few seconds ago opening again.

- Rachel, wait!    

I turn back to him.

- Do you want to come with me? To the show?    

Continue reading ! -> second chapter here: Chapter 2

#timothee chalamet #fanfic #Timothée chalamet imagine #timmy #timothee blurb #timothée imagine #timothée chalamet fiction #timothée chalamet story #short fiction #short story #timmy chalamet #first fiction

[dailytomlinson]

After Louis Tomlinson’s recent show in Madrid, some fans got the chance to meet him. One girl wanted to talk to him about his song Two of Us , which he had written after the death of his mother. The girl had lost her dad, and wanted the singer to know how much his lyrics had meant to her. He’d never had that in his band One Direction, he says. “We wrote cool songs, but they were love songs. It only goes so far, and to have someone say that I could help them with my…” He pauses. “It blows my mind, that shit. I was proper proud.”

It has been a hard few years. Tomlinson’s mother died in 2016, just as he was about to launch his first solo single. In March this year, his 18-year-old sister was found unconscious at her flat in London and couldn’t be revived. We will come to that, but, professionally, Tomlinson was struggling too. One Direction – that supernova of a boy band – broke up in 2015. Or announced they were taking a break. Or “‘hiatus’ or whatever word we use”, he says with a smile.

At the time, Tomlinson, now 27, was finding his place as a songwriter. “I wasn’t singing a lot, I wasn’t the frontman. Without being a sorry little bastard, I thought: ‘How do I do better, how do I make something of myself, an identity?’” In the last 18 months of One Direction, he says, “I felt like I knew who I was in the band, and I felt a real worth for who I was.” The break up, he says, “rocked me. I wasn’t ready for it. I felt like I was getting to be a better songwriter, singer, a more confident performer, and all of a sudden, when I felt I was finally getting some momentum …”

We meet at a bar in north London. Tomlinson greets me with a hug as if I am one of his fans (I am not, particularly, although I am by the end). He seems open but not vulnerable, and more self-aware and modest than you would expect from a man who was once part of the biggest boy band in the world. He is friendly and relaxed, dressed in a black tracksuit, with a beer in front of him.

Tomlinson’s personal tragedies also meant his solo career has had a bit of a stop-start quality, but now it looks as if there is focus and momentum. He released his single Kill My Mind earlier this month; an album will follow next year. Kill My Mind is an indie-pop delight, not so huge a departure as to alienate his fanbase, but it sounds like the music he grew up listening to – Oasis and Arctic Monkeys – and his South Yorkshire accent brings more than a hint of Liam Gallagher-style northern vocals. He sounds confident on them, more so than on the previous singles he put out, a couple of fairly forgettable collaborations. “I think, in hindsight, that was me trying to find my place in the industry and making music I thought I had to make to get on radio.

“I had this epiphany when I was thinking about the music I grew up with,” he continues. “I kind of had a bit of a word with myself and worked out what I want – to be happy and proud of what I’m doing. I love those early singles, but I never really felt proud of them, because it didn’t feel too true to me.”

As a child, growing up in Doncaster with his mum Johannah, who raised him alone until she married Tomlinson’s stepfather, he loved performing. “I liked to be the class clown, I liked to make people laugh, to show off, all that.” When his younger twin sisters were cast on TV dramas, he would sometimes go along as their chaperone, earning £30. “Where I’m from, we don’t have anyone who’s been on TV or anything like that, so it was super-exciting,” he says. He ended up picking up work as an extra. “The pinnacle of my acting career was one line on an ITV drama. I don’t even know if they used my scene,” he says with a laugh.

When he was 15, he joined a drama group in Barnsley, which his mum would take him to when she could afford it. “I think I was confused, thinking I wanted to act when actually what I wanted to do was perform.”

At school he joined a band, where they sang Oasis and Green Day covers, and when The X Factor came up, he made it on to the show in 2010 on his third attempt. He queued from 3am to make sure the producers wouldn’t have audition fatigue before they saw him, and he got his goal – to get in front of Simon Cowell “and just have a professional opinion on how I am as a singer. I was so flustered. Going from school performances to performing in front of professionals, TV cameras, a 3,000-strong audience. I wasn’t present. I sang terribly. I remember coming away from it thinking: ‘I wonder if I’ve got through as one of those lads who looks all right but isn’t really a good singer.’”

Yet he ended up in One Direction, the band the show put together in its 2010 series. For six years they sold tens of millions of records, broke America and each made a rumoured £40m-plus fortune. Their fans, Directioners, are another level of devoted. I don’t know how he coped with the attention, or the pressure.

There were really only a few times when it got too much, says Tomlinson. They were in Australia and a local news station had got a helicopter and a photographer was trying to get pictures of Tomlinson in his top-floor hotel room. “I think I was naked, or just in my boxers, and even in my hotel room there was no escape. I could feel the pressure.” He tweeted about it – “your standard bratty celebrity tweet” – and was attacked. “At times it did stress me out but never was I allowed to whinge, allowed to be a human and say: ‘Today has got too much for me.’ I found that difficult at first.”

But he is keen not to sound as if he is complaining. “There was much more positive that outweighed that.” And he never blames the fans for their intensity. Theirs is a special relationship, he says. “So many people have bullshitted about what they feel about the fans, but they’re like family to me.”

Even when Directioners have got a bit too ardent – there is a conspiracy theory, for example, that he and his bandmate Harry Styles have long been in a secret sexual relationship – he seems more bemused by it than annoyed. Although he is wary, he says, of adding “fuel to the fire” by talking about it. “I know, culturally, it’s interesting, but I’m just a bit tired of it,” he says. The HBO drama Euphoria recently showed an animated sequence of Tomlinson and Styles together, as imagined by a smutty fan-fiction writer. Was it annoying that a show had taken something fairly niche and given it new mainstream life? “Again, I get the cultural intention behind that. But I think …” He trails off, trying to work out what he wants to say. “It just felt a little bit … No, I’m not going to lie, I was pissed off. It annoyed me that a big company would get behind it.”

Why does he think he never went off the rails during the band’s heady period? “My mates and my family, really. It’s from my upbringing and where I come from. If I went back to Doncaster and I was dripping in Gucci or whatever, I’d probably get whacked. I’m always very conscious of not acting too big for my boots. It’s the people around me who keep me sane and normal, because they give me insight into real life. Some celebrities, in pop in particular, only surround themselves with amazingness, and all they see is good, good, good, which is lovely, but you don’t understand the real world then. I have the luxury of my mates around me, just reminding me how fucking good I’ve got it, really.”

The day of One Direction’s final concert in November 2015, Tomlinson and his bandmate Niall Horan sat together “and had a little cry, because it was such a journey we had been on. That day in general was so poignant. As much as you try and prepare yourself, it’s a whole other thing when it comes.” Because they had worked so much with few days off, he assumed that a break would be exciting. “But it wasn’t like that. When you’re used to working however many days, it’s all that more evident when you’re not doing something. Especially in the first six months. My life became –and I don’t mean this to sound derogatory – very normal, from being a life of pure craziness.”

At the same time that Tomlinson was trying to work out what to do with himself, his mother, to whom he was intensely close, had been diagnosed with leukaemia; she died in December 2016. He performed his first single on The X Factor just a few days after her death, then seemed to half-heartedly continue with his solo career, releasing another single in 2017. It would be another two years – during which he became a judge on The X Factor – before he released Two of Us, a raw and beautiful (and under-rated) song.

“After I lost my mum, every song I wrote felt, not pathetic, but that it lacked true meaning to me,” he says. “I felt that, as a songwriter, I wasn’t going to move on until I’d written a song like that.” He knew he needed to get it out of him, but there was a lot of pressure – he felt he should be an experienced songwriter before he attempted it. Two songwriters he worked with played him the chorus. “It was like the song I always wished I’d written. I went in and put my personal touch to the verses. It was a real moment for me in my grief, and as part of the creative process, because it felt like it was hanging over me.”

Earlier this month, an inquest found that his sister Félicité had died of an accidental overdose; she had been taking drugs, including anxiety medication, since the death of their mother. He has been through some terrible times, I say, which must put a perspective on a pop career. “Exactly,” he says, a little quieter than before. “That whole dark side I’ve gone through, it sounds stupid to say, but it gives me strength everywhere else in my life, because that’s the darkest shit that I’m going to have to deal with. So it makes everything else, not feel easier and not less important, but, in the grand scheme of things, you see things for what they are, I suppose.”

His fans have been crucial, he says. “I’m sure every artist says this, but I do believe it. We’ve been through some dark times together and those things I’ve been through, they carry a weight, emotionally, on the fans as well. And I felt their love and support. I remember really clearly when I lost my mum, that support was mad.”

What have the experiences of loss he has been through taught him about himself? He thinks for a second. “I keep going back to it, but I don’t know if it’s a combination of where I grew up and my mum’s influence, but I just have this luxury of being able to see the glass half-full no matter what.” He is the oldest of his mother’s seven children, which is grounding and means, he says, “there’s no time for me to be sat feeling sorry for myself. I’ve been to rock bottom and I feel like, whatever my career’s going to throw in front of me, it’s going to be nothing as big or as emotionally heavy as that. So, weirdly, I’ve turned something that’s really dark into something that empowers me, makes me stronger.”

He gets up to go to the toilet, which I think is his polite way of asking me to move on, although when he gets back he says, by way of a final word on the matter, “I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. That’s not how I feel for myself. Somehow it fuels me.”

One Direction will get back together one day, he believes. He still speaks to the others. “We’re not texting each other every day, but what we do have, which will never go away, is this real brothership. We’ve had these experiences that no one else can relate to.”

Styles has become quite the superstar. The others seem to have steady solo careers. Tomlinson says he’s embarrassed to admit that, when he first went solo, he would have been devastated had his album “only” reached No 3, so used is he to everything he did with One Direction going to the top. Is it hard not to measure himself against his former bandmates? “Oh, naturally,” he says. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I’ve never been competitive like that, but, naturally, you think: ‘If they’re getting this then I deserve that.’ I think, the longer time goes on, I can see it for what it is and just be proud of them.” And success means something else to him now. “It means I’m happy with what I’m doing.”

#louis tomlinson #pop and rock #one direction #music #the x factor #press #240919 #kmm press #the guardian #Guardian Life & Arts #tw death #stunt mention

[littlemisskookie]

Loveless: Chapter 5

Loveless: Index Ship: Reader | OT7 Description: Spy/Men in Black!AU | You worked at an institution that dealt with aliens- aliens that were the fictional creatures we were told were from fairy tales. The job entailed love only for it, and nothing else. That’d all change when a mission goes wrong. Warnings: Smut!! Finally!, Sub/Dom Themes, Choking, Hair Pulling, Rough Sex, Oral, Fingering, Spanking, Pussy Spanking, Slapping, Dirty Talk, Sir!Kink, Degrading Names, Intercourse, Comedy Word Count: 5,652

"Dang, now I wish that I was the one who waited in the car."

"Taehyung did, too, you idiot. You don't see him getting laid, now do you?"

"Guys I'm right here."

You opened your eyes, blinking as you tried to get used to the light. You were faintly aware of the body you were pressed against you, your form hugging Namjoon's, who was still in a deep sleep, soft snores escaping his parted lips. Surrounding your bed were six men.

Your vision cleared, seeing a few of them scruffed up, with bandages or wounds, but nevertheless alive.

"Oh my god!" you exclaimed, jumping from Namjoon's side to hug the men, wrapping your arms around each as you cradled their faces and examined their wounds, a rush of relief and happiness filling you. "I'm so glad you're ok! I was so worried and I tried to convince Agent B and V to go back because I didn't want to abandon you and I didn't know if you were alive and I- fuck, I'm just really relieved."

You wrapped your arms tightly around Jungkook at that moment, turning back to examine his face. "How's the leg?" you question, your thumb brushing over his busted lip. It wasn't much, just a bit of a cut, and he's had worse, but you couldn't help but fret.

Jungkook simply chuckled. "Good as new. Jin snuck me into one of the medical centers and got it taken care of."

You should've figured. Bullets were nothing for someone as brilliant as Jin, and you had no doubt he'd be able to fix all the scrapes and cuts you eight had gotten once you settle in. 

Namjoon coughed from behind you, seemingly awake from when you had gotten up. "Er, Y/N, I'm sorry to tell you this but I think you ought to get back into the covers."

"What?" You look down, realizing you're still in the panties and shirt you had slept in the night before. You hadn't thought of it last night, simply grabbing clothes that were prepared in the drawers, and you didn't even think of it when you went to Namjoon's room or talked to Taehyung, seeing as it was dark and everyone was too tired to realize.

You dive back under the covers, your face red, slowly realizing what the conversation earlier was about. "Uh, that wasn't what it looked like. Nothing happened last night."

"Sure about that? I know Agent B here can be quite the perv when he feels like it," Hoseok comments, hitting Namjoon lightly on the shoulder.

Namjoon scowls, red-faced as well. "Uh-huh, sure. Seriously, she just couldn't sleep last night, so-"

"You kept her occupied?" Jimin snickered.

"Helped tire her out?" Jungkook joined in.

"No, trust me, nothing happened. I know from my mission with Agent B in Columbia that he doesn't exactly know how to keep quiet," Taehyung assures everyone.

"As if you were any better in Australia!"

"Look, I had a crush on Ariel when I was younger. What else was I supposed to do when I was face to face with a mermaid? Not fulfill my fifth-grade fantasies?"

"You jacked off to The Little Mermaid when you were ten?" Yoongi questioned.

"Actually now that I think about it, it was Ursala. But I didn't come across any squid ladies in Australia," Taehyung corrected himself. "And no, I didn't jack off to a Disney movie!"

"And all this time I thought Jimin was the one with the tentacle fetish," you whisper to yourself.

"I do not have a tentacle fetish!" Jimin fired back.

"I saw the anime girl body pillow, Jimin. I know you watched tentacle porn."

"Everyone's watched it! It's just one of those things you look at out of curiosity. Kind of like 'Why do people get turned on by this?' the same way you wonder how someone finds feet or pissing sexy. It was a one-time thing and I didn't get a boner from it. Also, you keep Jabami Yumeko out of this!"

"Literally everyone in Kakegurui is gay, idiot," you say, rolling your eyes. "She even wears the lesbian ring."

"What's a lesbian ring?" Jungkook asked.

"If a woman wears a ring on her thumb she's gay."

"I don't think her wearing a thumb ring makes her a lesbian," Jimin cut in.

"Yeah it does, look it up!" You huff, shaking your head. "The whole point of that show is gambling lesbians."

"Man, you guys are weebs," Hoseok grumbles under his breath.

"Whatever, she's hot, ok?" Jimin rolled his eyes.

"You're just saying that because of that one scene where she acts like a cat," Taehyung cuts in.

"Dear god, not you too." Hoseok facepalms.

"That scene was pretty hot. Not that I'm a furry or anything," you admit.

"GUYS!"

Everyone turns to Yoongi, his gaze burning as he glares at everyone. He pulls out a thick stack of paper, tossing it onto the bed. "If everyone here is done talking about the newest 'waifu' or whatever it is you losers call it, I think it'd be best to discuss what we've brought back from the agency. More accurately, stolen."

You pick up the first piece of paper, furrowing your brows. "Yoongi, what are these?"

"Your medical records. AKA test results."

-

It was a weird sight, seeing eight people sitting on the ground, surrounding a coffee table, paperwork covering every inch of surface area. One might think it was a college study group. But no, each letter contributed to describing the torture and pain you went through during the experimentations, detailing your DNA and comparing past records. It described everything from the new strains caused by whatever had been injected into you to the consistency of your discharge. You had to give it to the EAA bastards- they were thorough.

You were in the middle of wondering when they held a ruler up to your vagina to measure it in centimeters when Namjoon cuts in. "At least we can confirm what had happened that night. It appears here that Jashwi injected her own DNA into Y/N."

"Like her own venom or something? Did she infect her like a vampire?" Jungkook pondered. "Like Twilight?"

"I don't think so." Hoseok shook his head, glowering down at the paper in his hand. "If that were the case she'd be fully changed into one of them. She's still human, but it does appear that she's slowly changing. Or at least a part of her is. Kind of like combining if that makes sense?"

"Is that why she doesn't seem to be getting any better?" Jin held up a particular document, though you didn't bother trying to strain your eyes to read the tiny print from a distance. "According to these, they tried to revert her and cure her with anything they had. She didn't seem to benefit from any nutriment, from food to medicine."

"Maybe it's because they're looking at it from a human perspective," Yoongi wondered aloud. "You said before she was changing, or at least a part of her has. What if what changed, or at least one of the things, was what she fed on?"

"Well, she doesn't seem to feed on food. So the bright side at least is that we have more rations for ourselves," Jin shrugged.

You socked him in the arm. "Gee, that's one way to look at it, asshole."

"What? We've got to be optimistic!"

"We have to remember everything Jashwi told us about her people. About the Anancites," Namjoon hums. "Does anyone remember any information that might be useful?"

"She's a scientist who used to rule her planet apparently. And her boyband was called a rapture," Taehyung offered. "Oh, and they shared a telepathic bond. Apparently."

"They're able to manipulate elements and have powers. Jashwi possessed the power of water, so if you're going to get any superpowers, Y/N, it'll probably be that." Jimin smiled at the thought. "Hey, you'll be like an avatar!"

"I don't think I have the strength in me to even walk down the block, much less bend water," you tell him truthfully.

"Anything on feeding?" Namjoon questioned.

"She said it was mutually beneficial for both parties. So I doubt it'd be anything like cannibalism or sucking blood. We can rule vampire out," Hoseok offered.

"What if we look through the documents and see if they list any similarities between the newly injected DNA and a species we're familiar with?" you questioned.

"Brilliant!" Namjoon fished through some of them, but it turned out to be Taehyung who found the right sheet of paper. 

Taehyung analyzed the information, taking it in as he tried to decipher it. He was an engineer, not a biologist by any means. "Ok, I think this is it. I'll look for what's the most similar. She's definitely not a mermaid, but if she is able to bend water that would be close enough, in my opinion."

"Negative towards any ghosts. That includes poltergeists, ghouls, and banshees. Same for anything of the fairy clans. Rules out gnomes, pixies, elves, dwarves, and whatever tiny freaks you can think of," Jungkook continued, leaning over to examine the paper from behind Taehyung's shoulder.

"Skip to what seems closest, why don't you?" Yoongi inquired.

"Closest seems to be the succubi and incubi. Sirens are close as well." Taehyung's brow furrowed. "But the Anancites didn't look anything like those..."

"I think you've got to look at what seems similar. What do they all share in common?" Hoseok asked. 

Silence consumed the room. Everyone thought the same thing, but no one wanted to say it.

"Sex," you say. "It's obvious. The succubi and incubi feed off of sexual energy and having sex with humans. Sirens sing to sailors about love and sex to draw them to kill themselves."

"But none of those species benefit the other when they're feeding." Namjoon wore a puzzled look on his face, as though trying to wrap his head around the idea. "The sex demons feed off the humans and take their energy from them, and sirens eat the dead bodies of the sailors who jumped overboard."

"That's why the Anancite DNA isn't completely similar, perhaps. There are small differences. Besides, sex typically, or at least should be, beneficial for both parties," you offered.

"Wait let me get this straight," Jimin said, pausing. "You're trying to say that instead of feeding off of food or blood, there's a possibility you feed off of... sex?"

Your face turned red. "I mean, this is a whole new species, Agent P. We're lucky it's even something that is... obtainable. Besides, I never said that, but it's a possibility. And a high one, at that. You never know until you try."

There's another moment of silence. At that moment you wanted to die.

"So... one of us will have to have sex with you, is that it?" Hoseok questioned.

"Don't say it like it's going to be a burden!" you snap.

"I don't know, you're pretty bony right now. You'll probably poke one of us in the eye," Yoongi chuckled.

"I'm not going to elbow anyone doing doggy style, you absolute twat," you fired back.

"Wait, so we're seriously going to do this?" Jungkook questioned, his eyes wide as he looked about the room.

"I mean no one's running a train on her or anything. Not yet," Jimin joked. "But from the looks of it... yeah. I doubt we'll just be able to walk out and get her a guy. It'll have to be one of us."

"Why don't we ask her then?" Taehyung looked over to you, and at that moment you realized you had to answer.

"Oh, ok, so... Fuck, it's weird with all of you staring at me!" You made eye contact with each man, their gazes pinned on you. "Look, to put it lightly I wouldn't mind it being anyone. I like all of you equally, as friends and... in an attractive way. I'm not opposed to anyone, so..." You could feel the heat rising to your cheeks, and you buried your face in your hands, embarrassed by your confession.

"Alright... That's good to know," Namjoon said, coughing awkwardly.

"Alright? Dude she said she wanted all of us to nail her!" Jimin whisper joked.

"Not at the same time, idiot!" You tossed some papers over to him but were unable to stay mad at him for long, despite his ribbing.

"You sure that wouldn't be weird for you or anything? Like, sleeping with a coworker?" Jungkook questioned.

"Former coworker. And no, I slept with Jimin," you answered.

"You too?" Taehyung offered a hand, and you high fived him.

"Wait, what the fuck?" Jin questioned, eyes bugging out of his head. "You both slept with Jimin?"

"Technically three," Yoongi offered, raising his hand slightly. 

"Wait, who here has slept with Jimin?" Hoseok questioned, having you, Taehyung, and Yoongi raise your hands.

"Guys, can we not reveal my sexual exploits?" Jimin whined, face beet red.

"You deserve it, asshole," you tease, sticking your tongue out. 

"Where'd you do it?" Taehyung asked, his eyes glimmering with questions.

"Office, over the desk. You?"

"I was drunk so it was behind the bar. Not bad, though."

"Nice," you offered, nodding as you turned to Yoongi. "And you, Agent Dick?"

"Uh, I don't kiss and tell," Yoongi grunts.

"Thank you!" Jimin lets out a rush of relief, a sigh escaping his lips as he prayed for you and Taehyung to quit oversharing.

"Sure thing, bottom," Yoongi responded.

"He was a bottom for you?" you and Taehyung questioned in unison, shocked.

"Ok, enough about Jimin whoring himself out to everyone in the agency," Hoseok interrupted. "Aren't we supposed to talk about... er... Y/N?"

It was silent again.

"Alright, I'm going to go to my room for a bit because I think this is a decision you guys should make on your own. I have a feeling it'll be even weirder if I'm here, and I know I won't be able to make the decision. Seriously, though, I'm completely cool with whoever, so surprise me or whatever. It's not weird unless we make it weird, right? I'll let you guys decide amongst yourselves. Surprise me!"

You departed, leaving the boys to themselves.

"So... I guess we should ask first if anyone doesn't want to..." Namjoon trailed off.

"Sleep with Y/N?" Yoongi offered bluntly.

"Er- yeah," Namjoon coughed awkwardly. There was no show of hands, and he only sighed. "Guess that doesn't make anything easier. Figured."

"Wouldn't the logical choice be Jimin if they already had sex?" Hoseok questioned. "They already had sex, that would make her more comfortable with it, wouldn't it?"

"Things got a little awkward afterward," Jimin admitted. "We survived, of course, but... Well, my concern is if everyone would be alright with the prospect of something like that? It'd be weird, wouldn't it? A group and two of them are screwing. Seven guys and one girl."

"I think it's a bit too soon to propose a gangbang," Jin admitted. "Besides, I'd like to think most of us will be able to handle ourselves. We're adult men."

"But what if feelings get hurt?" Jimin questioned.

There was a moment of silence.

Taehyung could feel a few eyes on him in particular. He glowered, staring back. "As though any of you are any better. We're all here for a reason, so don't be hypocrites. Besides, I could separate my feelings from helping. There's no guarantee."

"No one said anything about that," Jungkook said, embarrassed. "And we know. We'd all have to separate our feelings. It'd be unfair to Agent Q otherwise."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

"What about you, Namjoon?" Jin questioned. "You've known her longest."

Namjoon blushed, his ears turning a bright red. "W-W-Well, I mean, I... Well, what about you? You've been flirting with her and telling her you wanted to nail her for years."

"I'm not denying it," Jin said, raising his hands in defense. "And I'm not going to say no if it's me, either."

"But?" Yoongi inquired.

"But I think there's a few in this group who would... I don't know, be more deserving? That sounds wrong, but you know what I mean. She's not a prize, and we shouldn't attach our own reasons or feelings to this, but there are better options I guess."

"What do you mean by that?" Yoongi pressed on, narrowing his eyes.

Jin sighed, giving up at trying to figure out his words. "I don't know... Wait, why do you want to do this anyway? You bicker with her all the time. You act like you hate her anyway."

"I clearly don't hate her if I'm here. Besides, as much of a dumbass as she can act once or twice, I'm attracted. It's purely biological," Yoongi shrugged.

"Alright, it definitely can't be you," Hoseok said, shaking his head. 

Yoongi shrugged again, uncaring. "I'm alright with whatever, same as Agent C. The difference is that I don't think anyone has more right to this 'opportunity' as some of you might think of it to be. The fact is we all are attracted to her and I'm not going to call anyone out but everyone here has feelings or something strong enough to have brought them here in the first place. We'd want to sleep with her regardless. It's only a coincidence this could help. I do think we have to try to separate our feelings, however. Jungkook was right- it's not fair to Y/N. You heard her- she can't pick between any of us. I don't think even sex will change that. We can't pretend like we just want her as a piece of meat either since we all care about her. We aren't dimwitted enough to believe that lie, and neither is she. So we'll take what we can get and keep going along. The most important thing though will be to act civil, regardless of who it is."

"Yoongi's right," Namjoon nodded. "About all of that. No one is more or less deserving. The important thing is to do this without feelings and act civil. Like it's all just business."

Jungkook raised his hand, earning a sigh from Namjoon. Once he had the attention, he coughed, clearing his throat. "We still need to decide who it is, though."

Hoseok sighed, "We're well aware."

"So why don't we just... not pick?"

"What do you mean?" Taehyung questioned, furrowing his brows.

Jungkook pulled out a stack of cards, pulling them out of the box to shuffle them. "Does everyone here know how to play Speed?"

-

"I've gotta admit, I'm a little surprised you're the one they chose."

Hoseok shrugged, closing the door behind him with his foot. "You won't like the method we used. Trust me when I say it wasn't a vote."

"Oh?" You quirked a brow, interested. "How'd you guys decide?"

"We played cards."

"Let me guess- Agent Z?"

"How'd you know?" Hoseok questioned, truly impressed.

You simply shrugged, "Lucky guess, I suppose."

"I like the robe, by the way," Hoseok said, pointing to the fluffy white robe you adorned. He felt his ears get pink, knowing that you were more than likely wearing nothing underneath.

"Thank you! Provided by the hotel instead of the CIA, though they've got an old lady outfit stored inside the fake plant in the bathroom, so there's that. I'm sure if I spend a bit more time I'll be able to find at least five more prepared disguises. And just so you know I completely intend on stealing all the shit I can in this hotel before we have to skip ahead to the next one."

He nodded understandingly but was only half listening to what you were saying. Typically he was a very good listener, but he was still trying to process what was happening. The fact it was him of all people. Jin had been flirting with you since the beginning of time. You knew Namjoon first, and you had already slept with Jimin. Taehyung had basically been in love with you since the two of you met. Sure, Hoseok was very attracted to you, (and more) but he wasn't familiar with the act of screwing a colleague. He had determined long ago that wouldn't happen between the two of you, yet here he was.

"Sit here," you say, patting the spot next to you on the bed. Hoseok does so, nervous but compliant. You squint your eyes, your hand coming up to hold his face as you analyzed him. He suspected you would kiss him, but instead, you keep staring at him, as though searching.

"What're you doing?" he questioned, confused.

"Reading you."

"What, like a psychic?"

"No, it's just..." You paused, licking your lips before flitting your eyes back to his. "Hoseok, you can do anything you want to me tonight."

He froze. That was not what he was expecting. 

"I'm giving you full control," you continue, taking one of his hands in your own before bringing it to the back of your head. He lets his hand rest on the back of your neck for a moment. "I want you to be in charge. I'll do whatever you say, and you can do whatever you want. No restrictions."

"Didn't think you'd be into this kinky stuff," he said nervously, heat rising to his cheeks.

"Didn't think you'd be, either," you say. Before he can analyze or read into your words, your lips are pressed against his. His lids flutter closed, your lips bruising against his with a certain amount of ferocity. He feels himself getting into a rhythm, his hand slowly snaking up your hair. You keen at his touch, moaning into his mouth when he makes a tight fist, yanking at your hair.

His eyes bug out, and he lets go. "Shit, sorry, I-"

"Do it again," you say, returning his hand to your scalp.

"W-What?"

"I meant it when I said I wanted you to take control," you tell him, staring him dead in the eye to show how serious you were.

"Yeah, but I don't want to hurt you, and I respect you and-"

"I know that A. I do. It's because you respect me that I want you to take control. I want you to dominate me. To hurt me," you inform him, sighing at the sight of him frozen at your words. You take a deep breath to explain yourself. "Have you ever felt as though you weren't in control? Like many of the choices in your life weren't really made by you, but for you? Like you're sort of just following others' whims?"

"Yeah," Hoseok admitted, thinking back to his mistakes. His parents dying. Stumbling upon a secret agency. Having his childhood ripped out from under him as he was trained not to feel, but to kill. "I have."

"So wouldn't it feel good to exert a bit of control over one aspect of your life? Even if it's just for a few minutes? Even if it's just over sex?"

What you were saying made sense. "What about you, though?"

You smiled, as though expecting the question. "For me, I put the control in someone else's hands. They get to have the control and I won't have to deal with it. I put myself in the hands of someone I trust."

"You trust me that much?"

"I do," you confirm, a coy smile on your lips. "I meant it when I said you could do whatever you wanted to me. I'll do whatever you say. I want you to take control. To dominate me. To hurt me."

"Fuck, you're a masochist," he hissed, finally getting a firm grip on your hair and tugging it back, making you arch into his touch as you hissed in pain.

"Only if you're a sadist," you responded, your lips returning to his in a searing hiss.

He groaned, flipping over to roll on top of you, continuing to kiss you as he pressed his body against yours. It was messy, a clash of teeth and tongue, and he keened at the feeling of you following his movements, letting him control the movements. 

He had sex with women before but never before were they so blunt and open about what they wanted. Typically they just assumed he'd know or communicate small things. He'd have to guess he was doing something right, listening to what little they'd give him. 

But you... it was as though those few seconds that were spent staring at him, reading him, were put to good use. It was as though you had read what carnal desires he had suppressed deep down, and unleashing it.

You moved your hands to touch him, but he slapped your hands away, pinning your wrists above your head. "Don't touch me," he growled. A bit of panic spread over him, unused to talking to you, one of his closest friends, in that manner. 

Instead, you looked at him in a lustful manner, your eyes glazed as you nodded obediently. "Yes, sir."

Fuck, he felt his dick twitch at that.

He let go of your wrists, and true to your word, you kept them in place. He straddled your hips, slowly undoing the knot on your robe and opening it. He sucked in a breath, seeing you fully naked. The number of times he had jerked off to the thought of you like this, naked beneath him, was stupendously high. He couldn't believe that all of his darkest fantasies were coming true. You, so submissive, so unlike yourself, ready for him to do whatever he wished with you.

"You're beautiful," he whispered beneath his breath, slowly spreading your legs wider as he shuffled between them. You were wet already.

"Didn't take you as the mushy type."

You yelped, a sharp gasp escaping your lips as he swatted your mound, the sound of the harsh slap echoing throughout the room. You attempted to close your legs together, but he kept them spread open with his own, giving you another punishing slap. 

"Would you rather I call you a dirty slut?" he questioned between gritted teeth.

From the way you bit your lip, letting the tender flesh roll from between your teeth, he took it as a yes.

He gave you one more firm smack before he started rubbing his hand up and down your folds, gathering your wetness. He hummed, pleased, letting your engorged clit slide between his fingers as he continued to tease you. "I think you like me spanking your pretty pussy. Calling you a slut."

You nodded eagerly, hips bucking up for a bit more friction in contrast to his light touch.

"You'll take what I give you," Hoseok growled, his other hand coming to your lower stomach to pin you down as he inserted a finger, pumping it into you. As expected you gasped, trying to buck your hips again, only to have Hoseok keep you pinned to the bed. "Understood, slut?"

You failed to answer, moaning as he inserted another finger, scissoring you.

Hoseok glared at you, the hand on your stomach reaching up to your throat, squeezing lightly as a warning. "I believe I asked you a question. I expect an answer."

You hummed, and he could feel the vibrations against the palm of his hand. "Yes, sir," you said, compliant once again. "I'll take what you give me."

"Good girl," he said, letting go of your throat. He went down, laying on his stomach as he hitched your thighs over his shoulders, pulling you closer to him. He maintained eye contact with you, his lips making contact with your bud. You gasped at the feeling, eyes rolling back at his movements as his tongue ran through your folds. "Eyes on me," he reminded you, nails digging into your thighs.

He continued, tasting every drop you had to offer, amazed with how good you tasted. Your heels dug into his upper back, trying to draw him impossibly closer. He enjoyed seeing you like this, trying to maintain eye contact despite how you yearned to toss your head back and let your eyes roll to the back of your head. You let out wanton moans with every swipe of his tongue, mewls escaping your lips as he sucked harshly on your clit.

He removed one of his arms from under your legs, inserting two fingers inside of you once more, making a come hither movement. The stimulation of your g-spot with the feeling of his mouth on your clit was becoming too much. Your hands reached down, curling into his hair as you tugged at his scalp similarly to how he did yours.

"Fuck, I'm go-gonna-"

Suddenly it all stopped, Hoseok pulling back from between your legs, watching as your orgasm was ripped from you, dying with each second he didn't spend buried in your head. He watched how desperate you seemed, staring him in the eyes as he licked his fingers of your arousal, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Helplessness was a good look on you, he had to admit. It made his cock twitch in his pants, seeing you like this, knowing it was all because of him.

"I told you before: you take what I give you." He's quicker than you can process, flipping you over on your hands and knees as he gathers your hair in a ponytail, cranking it back as his hands give bruising slaps to both cheeks. "And I also believe I told you not to touch me."

"I'm sorry, sir!" you wailed, the battery continuing as he made sure to redden each cheek, the spanks raining down on you. You were sure you wouldn't be able to even sit down properly tomorrow, each seat you take a reminder of his reprimand. "I won't do it again sir! Fuck, fuck, I'm sorry!"

"I know you are," he said in a soothing voice, rubbing soothing circles in the places where he did the most damage, his voice soft. He gently rolls you over, wiping away some of the tears that had come along with your punishment. "You took it very well. You're such a good girl for me, aren't you?"

"S-Sir, please," you sniffed, enjoying the feeling of his thumb wiping away the tears as you tried to compose yourself.

"What is it?"

"I want you to fuck me."

"Anything for you." He was quick to pull his pants off, with his boxers following closely after. You spread your legs invitingly, a sound of impatience escaping your lips as he teased you, running the head of his cock along your folds. Finally, he slides in, both of you letting out a moan of pleasure. He could feel every ridge of you as you squeezed tightly around him, and you focused on the pleasurable burn of him sliding into you for the first time.

"You're so big," you cooed, your lids fluttering. It had admittedly been a while since you slept with anyone. Partially because of business and partially because of the fact you were kept in a fucking lab.

Hoseok begins to pump himself into you, his grip tight on your thighs as he fucked you with earnest. You wrapped your legs around him, your heels pressing into him as though to drive him deeper into him. He was already impossibly deep, kissing your cervix with every push. It was when he began to stimulate the bundle of nerves that you were really becoming undone.

"Fuck, Hoseok, Hoseok, Hoseok!"

"That's right, scream my name," he grunted, drilling deeper into you. He reached behind, his hand sliding behind your head to yank at your hair once more, a knowing smirk gracing his features as you let out a familiar hiss of pleasure. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? To be my little slut?"

"Yes, sir, fuck!" You were becoming depraved, mouth gaping open as your eyes rolled back. "Harder, please."

Your wish was his command, and before long his hips slammed into your own, no doubt with a bruising force. Hoseok's hand wrapped around your pretty little throat, squeezing harder than before, restricting airflow.

"Are you gonna cum for me?" he questioned, his other hand toying with your clit as he maintained his pace, brutally abusing your g-spot. It came up to give you a slap across the cheek, his cock twitching inside of you at the sight of you letting him. "Are you gonna cream all over me and get nice and messy for me?"

You nodded eagerly, thighs shaking around him as you tilted your head back, back arching with grace as you came. Hoseok fucked you through it, letting go of your throat. The influx of oxygen only increased the pleasure, the orgasm having been built up from being denied before.

Hoseok now chased his own high, using your body as a toy as he felt himself nearing climax. You simply stared at him with that hazy look in your eye, letting him use you, true to your word.

Let go, Hoseok.

He felt himself spill into you, his breath heavy as he drained himself into you. You took all of it, eyes trained on him as he collapsed beside you.

He looked over to you, his fingertips brushing over your neck. "Damn, you're definitely going to have marks in the morning."

You shrugged. "Let them know I like choking. Who doesn't? I'm pretty sure it's in with the college kids nowadays. Besides, if you think that's bad, you should see what you did to my ass. I won't be able to sit for a week."

"Sorry, was that too much?"

"Not at all," you cooed, toying with the strands of his hair. "It felt good to let go, didn't it?"

"Yeah, it did."

"I'm going to pee, and I suggest you do too. Then round two."

"Yeah... Wait already?"

#jungkook #hoseok #jimin #taehyung #namjoon #seokjin #jin #yoongi #suga #rm #rap monster #j-hope #jhope #jeon jungkook #kim seokjin #kim namjoon #kim taehyung #park jimin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #bts rm #bts namjoon #bts rap monster #bts jungkook #bts v #bts taehyung #bts jimin #bts jhope #bts j-hope #bts hoseok

[hlupdate]

Louis’ full interview for The Guardian - 25/09/19

After Louis Tomlinson’s recent show in Madrid, some fans got the chance to meet him. One girl wanted to talk to him about his song Two of Us , which he had written after the death of his mother. The girl had lost her dad, and wanted the singer to know how much his lyrics had meant to her. He’d never had that in his band One Direction, he says. “We wrote cool songs, but they were love songs. It only goes so far, and to have someone say that I could help them with my …” He pauses. “It blows my mind, that shit. I was proper proud.” It has been a hard few years. Tomlinson’s mother died in 2016, just as he was about to launch his first solo single. In March this year, his 18-year-old sister was found unconscious at her flat in London and couldn’t be revived. We will come to that, but, professionally, Tomlinson was struggling too. One Direction - that supernova of a boy band - broke up in 2015. Or announced they were taking a break. Or “‘hiatus’ or whatever word we use”, he says with a smile. At the time, Tomlinson, now 27, was finding his place as a songwriter. “I wasn’t singing a lot, I wasn’t the frontman. Without being a sorry little bastard, I thought: ‘How do I do better, how do I make something of myself, an identity?’” In the last 18 months of One Direction, he says, “I felt like I knew who I was in the band, and I felt a real worth for who I was.” The break up, he says, “rocked me. I wasn’t ready for it. I felt like I was getting to be a better songwriter, singer, a more confident performer, and all of a sudden, when I felt I was finally getting some momentum …” We meet at a bar in north London. Tomlinson greets me with a hug as if I am one of his fans (I am not, particularly, although I am by the end). He seems open but not vulnerable, and more self-aware and modest than you would expect from a man who was once part of the biggest boy band in the world. He is friendly and relaxed, dressed in a black tracksuit, with a beer in front of him. Tomlinson’s personal tragedies also meant his solo career has had a bit of a stop-start quality, but now it looks as if there is focus and momentum. He released his single Kill My Mind earlier this month; an album will follow next year. Kill My Mind is an indie-pop delight, not so huge a departure as to alienate his fanbase, but it sounds like the music he grew up listening to - Oasis and Arctic Monkeys - and his South Yorkshire accent brings more than a hint of Liam Gallagher-style northern vocals. He sounds confident on them, more so than on the previous singles he put out, a couple of fairly forgettable collaborations. “I think, in hindsight, that was me trying to find my place in the industry and making music I thought I had to make to get on radio. “I had this epiphany when I was thinking about the music I grew up with,” he continues. “I kind of had a bit of a word with myself and worked out what I want - to be happy and proud of what I’m doing. I love those early singles, but I never really felt proud of them, because it didn’t feel too true to me.” As a child, growing up in Doncaster with his mum Johannah, who raised him alone until she married Tomlinson’s stepfather, he loved performing. “I liked to be the class clown, I liked to make people laugh, to show off, all that.” When his younger twin sisters were cast on TV dramas, he would sometimes go along as their chaperone, earning £30. “Where I’m from, we don’t have anyone who’s been on TV or anything like that, so it was super-exciting,” he says. He ended up picking up work as an extra. “The pinnacle of my acting career was one line on an ITV drama. I don’t even know if they used my scene,” he says with a laugh. When he was 15, he joined a drama group in Barnsley, which his mum would take him to when she could afford it. “I think I was confused, thinking I wanted to act when actually what I wanted to do was perform.” At school he joined a band, where they sang Oasis and Green Day covers, and when The X Factor came up, he made it on to the show in 2010 on his third attempt. He queued from 3am to make sure the producers wouldn’t have audition fatigue before they saw him, and he got his goal - to get in front of Simon Cowell “and just have a professional opinion on how I am as a singer. I was so flustered. Going from school performances to performing in front of professionals, TV cameras, a 3,000-strong audience. I wasn’t present. I sang terribly. I remember coming away from it thinking: ‘I wonder if I’ve got through as one of those lads who looks all right but isn’t really a good singer.’”

One Direction in 2012 (from left): Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne and Harry Styles. Photograph: IBL/Rex Shutterstock Yet he ended up in One Direction, the band the show put together in its 2010 series. For six years they sold tens of millions of records, broke America and each made a rumoured £40m-plus fortune. Their fans, Directioners, are another level of devoted. I don’t know how he coped with the attention, or the pressure. There were really only a few times when it got too much, says Tomlinson. They were in Australia and a local news station had got a helicopter and a photographer was trying to get pictures of Tomlinson in his top-floor hotel room. “I think I was naked, or just in my boxers, and even in my hotel room there was no escape. I could feel the pressure.” He tweeted about it - “your standard bratty celebrity tweet” - and was attacked. “At times it did stress me out but never was I allowed to whinge, allowed to be a human and say: ‘Today has got too much for me.’ I found that difficult at first.” But he is keen not to sound as if he is complaining. “There was much more positive that outweighed that.” And he never blames the fans for their intensity. Theirs is a special relationship, he says. “So many people have bullshitted about what they feel about the fans, but they’re like family to me.” Even when Directioners have got a bit too ardent - there is a conspiracy theory, for example, that he and his bandmate Harry Styles have long been in a secret sexual relationship - he seems more bemused by it than annoyed. Although he is wary, he says, of adding “fuel to the fire” by talking about it. “I know, culturally, it’s interesting, but I’m just a bit tired of it,” he says. The HBO drama Euphoria recently showed an animated sequence of Tomlinson and Styles together, as imagined by a smutty fan-fiction writer. Was it annoying that a show had taken something fairly niche and given it new mainstream life? “Again, I get the cultural intention behind that. But I think …” He trails off, trying to work out what he wants to say. “It just felt a little bit … No, I’m not going to lie, I was pissed off. It annoyed me that a big company would get behind it.” Why does he think he never went off the rails during the band’s heady period? “My mates and my family, really. It’s from my upbringing and where I come from. If I went back to Doncaster and I was dripping in Gucci or whatever, I’d probably get whacked. I’m always very conscious of not acting too big for my boots. It’s the people around me who keep me sane and normal, because they give me insight into real life.” He lives with his girlfriend, Eleanor and his best friend, Oli. “Some celebrities, in pop in particular, only surround themselves with amazingness, and all they see is good, good, good, which is lovely, but you don’t understand the real world then. I have the luxury of my mates around me, just reminding me how fucking good I’ve got it, really.”

With his mother, Johannah, in 2015. Photograph: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images The day of One Direction’s final concert in November 2015, Tomlinson and his bandmate Niall Horan sat together “and had a little cry, because it was such a journey we had been on. That day in general was so poignant. As much as you try and prepare yourself, it’s a whole other thing when it comes.” Because they had worked so much with few days off, he assumed that a break would be exciting. “But it wasn’t like that. When you’re used to working however many days, it’s all that more evident when you’re not doing something. Especially in the first six months.” He spent time in Los Angeles with his son, who was born in 2016, after his relationship with a stylist, Briana Jungwirth. “My life became -and I don’t mean this to sound derogatory - very normal, from being a life of pure craziness.” At the same time that Tomlinson was trying to work out what to do with himself, his mother, to whom he was intensely close, had been diagnosed with leukaemia; she died in December 2016. He performed his first single on The X Factor just a few days after her death, then seemed to half-heartedly continue with his solo career, releasing another single in 2017. It would be another two years - during which he became a judge on The X Factor - before he released Two of Us, a raw and beautiful (and under-rated) song. “After I lost my mum, every song I wrote felt, not pathetic, but that it lacked true meaning to me,” he says. “I felt that, as a songwriter, I wasn’t going to move on until I’d written a song like that.” He knew he needed to get it out of him, but there was a lot of pressure - he felt he should be an experienced songwriter before he attempted it. Two songwriters he worked with played him the chorus. “It was like the song I always wished I’d written. I went in and put my personal touch to the verses. It was a real moment for me in my grief, and as part of the creative process, because it felt like it was hanging over me.” Earlier this month, an inquest found that his sister Félicité had died of an accidental overdose; she had been taking drugs, including anxiety medication, since the death of their mother. He has been through some terrible times, I say, which must put a perspective on a pop career. “Exactly,” he says, a little quieter than before. “That whole dark side I’ve gone through, it sounds stupid to say, but it gives me strength everywhere else in my life, because that’s the darkest shit that I’m going to have to deal with. So it makes everything else, not feel easier and not less important, but, in the grand scheme of things, you see things for what they are, I suppose.” His fans have been crucial, he says. “I’m sure every artist says this, but I do believe it. We’ve been through some dark times together and those things I’ve been through, they carry a weight, emotionally, on the fans as well. And I felt their love and support. I remember really clearly when I lost my mum, that support was mad.” What have the experiences of loss he has been through taught him about himself? He thinks for a second. “I keep going back to it, but I don’t know if it’s a combination of where I grew up and my mum’s influence, but I just have this luxury of being able to see the glass half-full no matter what.” He is the oldest of his mother’s seven children, which is grounding and means, he says, “there’s no time for me to be sat feeling sorry for myself. I’ve been to rock bottom and I feel like, whatever my career’s going to throw in front of me, it’s going to be nothing as big or as emotionally heavy as that. So, weirdly, I’ve turned something that’s really dark into something that empowers me, makes me stronger.” He gets up to go to the toilet, which I think is his polite way of asking me to move on, although when he gets back he says, by way of a final word on the matter, “I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. That’s not how I feel for myself. Somehow it fuels me.”

1D face the fans: the band’s last performance was in 2015. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar One Direction will get back together one day, he believes. He still speaks to the others. “We’re not texting each other every day, but what we do have, which will never go away, is this real brothership. We’ve had these experiences that no one else can relate to.” Styles has become quite the superstar. The others seem to have steady solo careers. Tomlinson says he’s embarrassed to admit that, when he first went solo, he would have been devastated had his album “only” reached No 3, so used is he to everything he did with One Direction going to the top. Is it hard not to measure himself against his former bandmates? “Oh, naturally,” he says. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I’ve never been competitive like that, but, naturally, you think: ‘If they’re getting this then I deserve that.’ I think, the longer time goes on, I can see it for what it is and just be proud of them.” And success means something else to him now. “It means I’m happy with what I’m doing.” Kill My Mind, by Louis Tomlinson, is out now on Arista. His debut album will be released in 2020

#tw death #tw drugs #stunt mention #louis tomlinson #250919

[louistomlinsoncouk]

Louis Tomlinson on loss and love: ‘The dark side I’ve been through gives me strength’

The One Direction singer has had to battle a series of personal tragedies while launching his solo career. And it’s his fans and friends who have kept him going.

After Louis Tomlinson’s recent show in Madrid, some fans got the chance to meet him. One girl wanted to talk to him about his song Two of Us , which he had written after the death of his mother. The girl had lost her dad, and wanted the singer to know how much his lyrics had meant to her. He’d never had that in his band One Direction, he says. “We wrote cool songs, but they were love songs. It only goes so far, and to have someone say that I could help them with my …” He pauses. “It blows my mind, that shit. I was proper proud.”

It has been a hard few years. Tomlinson’s mother died in 2016, just as he was about to launch his first solo single. In March this year, his 18-year-old sister was found unconscious at her flat in London and couldn’t be revived. We will come to that, but, professionally, Tomlinson was struggling too. One Direction – that supernova of a boy band – broke up in 2015. Or announced they were taking a break. Or “‘hiatus’ or whatever word we use”, he says with a smile.

At the time, Tomlinson, now 27, was finding his place as a songwriter. “I wasn’t singing a lot, I wasn’t the frontman. Without being a sorry little bastard, I thought: ‘How do I do better, how do I make something of myself, an identity?’” In the last 18 months of One Direction, he says, “I felt like I knew who I was in the band, and I felt a real worth for who I was.” The break up, he says, “rocked me. I wasn’t ready for it. I felt like I was getting to be a better songwriter, singer, a more confident performer, and all of a sudden, when I felt I was finally getting some momentum …”

We meet at a bar in north London. Tomlinson greets me with a hug as if I am one of his fans (I am not, particularly, although I am by the end). He seems open but not vulnerable, and more self-aware and modest than you would expect from a man who was once part of the biggest boy band in the world. He is friendly and relaxed, dressed in a black tracksuit, with a beer in front of him.

Tomlinson’s personal tragedies also meant his solo career has had a bit of a stop-start quality, but now it looks as if there is focus and momentum. He released his single Kill My Mind earlier this month; an album will follow next year. Kill My Mind is an indie-pop delight, not so huge a departure as to alienate his fanbase, but it sounds like the music he grew up listening to – Oasis and Arctic Monkeys – and his South Yorkshire accent brings more than a hint of Liam Gallagher-style northern vocals. He sounds confident on them, more so than on the previous singles he put out, a couple of fairly forgettable collaborations. “I think, in hindsight, that was me trying to find my place in the industry and making music I thought I had to make to get on radio.

“I had this epiphany when I was thinking about the music I grew up with,” he continues. “I kind of had a bit of a word with myself and worked out what I want – to be happy and proud of what I’m doing. I love those early singles, but I never really felt proud of them, because it didn’t feel too true to me.”

As a child, growing up in Doncaster with his mum Johannah, who raised him alone until she married Tomlinson’s stepfather, he loved performing. “I liked to be the class clown, I liked to make people laugh, to show off, all that.” When his younger twin sisters were cast on TV dramas, he would sometimes go along as their chaperone, earning £30. “Where I’m from, we don’t have anyone who’s been on TV or anything like that, so it was super-exciting,” he says. He ended up picking up work as an extra. “The pinnacle of my acting career was one line on an ITV drama. I don’t even know if they used my scene,” he says with a laugh.

When he was 15, he joined a drama group in Barnsley, which his mum would take him to when she could afford it. “I think I was confused, thinking I wanted to act when actually what I wanted to do was perform.”

At school he joined a band, where they sang Oasis and Green Day covers, and when The X Factor came up, he made it on to the show in 2010 on his third attempt. He queued from 3am to make sure the producers wouldn’t have audition fatigue before they saw him, and he got his goal – to get in front of Simon Cowell “and just have a professional opinion on how I am as a singer. I was so flustered. Going from school performances to performing in front of professionals, TV cameras, a 3,000-strong audience. I wasn’t present. I sang terribly. I remember coming away from it thinking: ‘I wonder if I’ve got through as one of those lads who looks all right but isn’t really a good singer.’”

Yet he ended up in One Direction, the band the show put together in its 2010 series. For six years they sold tens of millions of records, broke America and each made a rumoured £40m-plus fortune. Their fans, Directioners, are another level of devoted. I don’t know how he coped with the attention, or the pressure.

There were really only a few times when it got too much, says Tomlinson. They were in Australia and a local news station had got a helicopter and a photographer was trying to get pictures of Tomlinson in his top-floor hotel room. “I think I was naked, or just in my boxers, and even in my hotel room there was no escape. I could feel the pressure.” He tweeted about it – “your standard bratty celebrity tweet” – and was attacked. “At times it did stress me out but never was I allowed to whinge, allowed to be a human and say: ‘Today has got too much for me.’ I found that difficult at first.”

But he is keen not to sound as if he is complaining. “There was much more positive that outweighed that.” And he never blames the fans for their intensity. Theirs is a special relationship, he says. “So many people have bullshitted about what they feel about the fans, but they’re like family to me.”

Even when Directioners have got a bit too ardent – there is a conspiracy theory, for example, that he and his bandmate Harry Styles have long been in a secret sexual relationship – he seems more bemused by it than annoyed. Although he is wary, he says, of adding “fuel to the fire” by talking about it. “I know, culturally, it’s interesting, but I’m just a bit tired of it,” he says. The HBO drama Euphoria recently showed an animated sequence of Tomlinson and Styles together, as imagined by a smutty fan-fiction writer. Was it annoying that a show had taken something fairly niche and given it new mainstream life? “Again, I get the cultural intention behind that. But I think …” He trails off, trying to work out what he wants to say. “It just felt a little bit … No, I’m not going to lie, I was pissed off. It annoyed me that a big company would get behind it.”

Why does he think he never went off the rails during the band’s heady period? “My mates and my family, really. It’s from my upbringing and where I come from. If I went back to Doncaster and I was dripping in Gucci or whatever, I’d probably get whacked. I’m always very conscious of not acting too big for my boots. It’s the people around me who keep me sane and normal, because they give me insight into real life.” “Some celebrities, in pop in particular, only surround themselves with amazingness, and all they see is good, good, good, which is lovely, but you don’t understand the real world then. I have the luxury of my mates around me, just reminding me how fucking good I’ve got it, really.”

The day of One Direction’s final concert in November 2015, Tomlinson and his bandmate Niall Horan sat together “and had a little cry, because it was such a journey we had been on. That day in general was so poignant. As much as you try and prepare yourself, it’s a whole other thing when it comes.” Because they had worked so much with few days off, he assumed that a break would be exciting. “But it wasn’t like that. When you’re used to working however many days, it’s all that more evident when you’re not doing something. Especially in the first six months.” “My life became –and I don’t mean this to sound derogatory – very normal, from being a life of pure craziness.”

At the same time that Tomlinson was trying to work out what to do with himself, his mother, to whom he was intensely close, had been diagnosed with leukaemia; she died in December 2016. He performed his first single on The X Factor just a few days after her death, then seemed to half-heartedly continue with his solo career, releasing another single in 2017. It would be another two years – during which he became a judge on The X Factor – before he released Two of Us, a raw and beautiful (and under-rated) song.

“After I lost my mum, every song I wrote felt, not pathetic, but that it lacked true meaning to me,” he says. “I felt that, as a songwriter, I wasn’t going to move on until I’d written a song like that.” He knew he needed to get it out of him, but there was a lot of pressure – he felt he should be an experienced songwriter before he attempted it. Two songwriters he worked with played him the chorus. “It was like the song I always wished I’d written. I went in and put my personal touch to the verses. It was a real moment for me in my grief, and as part of the creative process, because it felt like it was hanging over me.”

Earlier this month, an inquest found that his sister Félicité had died of an accidental overdose; she had been taking drugs, including anxiety medication, since the death of their mother. He has been through some terrible times, I say, which must put a perspective on a pop career. “Exactly,” he says, a little quieter than before. “That whole dark side I’ve gone through, it sounds stupid to say, but it gives me strength everywhere else in my life, because that’s the darkest shit that I’m going to have to deal with. So it makes everything else, not feel easier and not less important, but, in the grand scheme of things, you see things for what they are, I suppose.”

His fans have been crucial, he says. “I’m sure every artist says this, but I do believe it. We’ve been through some dark times together and those things I’ve been through, they carry a weight, emotionally, on the fans as well. And I felt their love and support. I remember really clearly when I lost my mum, that support was mad.”

What have the experiences of loss he has been through taught him about himself? He thinks for a second. “I keep going back to it, but I don’t know if it’s a combination of where I grew up and my mum’s influence, but I just have this luxury of being able to see the glass half-full no matter what.” He is the oldest of his mother’s seven children, which is grounding and means, he says, “there’s no time for me to be sat feeling sorry for myself. I’ve been to rock bottom and I feel like, whatever my career’s going to throw in front of me, it’s going to be nothing as big or as emotionally heavy as that. So, weirdly, I’ve turned something that’s really dark into something that empowers me, makes me stronger.”

He gets up to go to the toilet, which I think is his polite way of asking me to move on, although when he gets back he says, by way of a final word on the matter, “I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. That’s not how I feel for myself. Somehow it fuels me.”

One Direction will get back together one day, he believes. He still speaks to the others. “We’re not texting each other every day, but what we do have, which will never go away, is this real brothership. We’ve had these experiences that no one else can relate to.”

Styles has become quite the superstar. The others seem to have steady solo careers. Tomlinson says he’s embarrassed to admit that, when he first went solo, he would have been devastated had his album “only” reached No 3, so used is he to everything he did with One Direction going to the top. Is it hard not to measure himself against his former bandmates? “Oh, naturally,” he says. ��I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I’ve never been competitive like that, but, naturally, you think: ‘If they’re getting this then I deserve that.’ I think, the longer time goes on, I can see it for what it is and just be proud of them.” And success means something else to him now. “It means I’m happy with what I’m doing.”

Kill My Mind, by Louis Tomlinson, is out now on Arista. His debut album will be released in 2020.

#louis tomlinson #press #kmm: the guardian #kill my mind promo #25sep19

[violadiaries]

Food Wars Rant

OK so someone please talk to me about this, ‘cause either this is a very interesting hidden thing or just plain assholery… (is that a word? XD)

What I want to talk about here is the exams during the Hokkaido trip… You know where Azami wanted to get all of the independent thinking people expelled…

And my focus here is the off screen matches, while Yukihira was up against Hayama. 

More under the cut

Being a fanfiction writer I’m probably over thinking stuff here, but if I were Azami and I wanted to get rid of some students I would put my strongest against their strongest, just to make sure they definitely get expelled, right?

So we know Hayama probably insisted going up against Yukihira, so he and Erina had pretty much plot armor there as well as Megumi (who is part of the main 3 as well) Takumi by extension lucked out by being at the same location. But thinking here would be, to put one of my strongest against two of their, so one of the top 4, the plot armor they had decided on Rindo. So basically all of the relatively important first years (and while I don’t really have a particular problem with him, I still don’t know shy Mimasaka had to be in the regiment… Like come on…) have 'survived’ through plot armor.

That brings is us to my former thinking and the rest of the rebels. As mentioned I would let my strongest go against theirs, we have 3 third years left, so naturally I would put them against the three strongest rebels which would from my point of view be: Kurokiba, Alice and Hisako, Hisako and Alice both were in the quarter finals of the autumn elections and Kurokiba even in the final on par with Yukihira.

Now the thing here is… The only one of there three going up against a third year is Hisako, who loses against Saito Somei the at that time fourth seat of the Elite 10. But we also know who the other two (Tsukasa and Momo) were up against from this evidence

the current third seat Momo was up against Ikumi and strangely enough the first seat, a guy even Yukihira struggled with was put against Isami.

No again I might be over thinking things here but at first I was really pissed, 'cause this seemed plain unfair to me. But then a thought occurred to me.

If Azami was really going with my trail of thought, and you can’t tell me he didn’t know who would be where, he definitely knew. So does that mean those three are the ones perceived most dangerous to him out of all of the other rebels? I’m sorry but looking at the autumn elections I think this is highly unlikely. Though we don’t know exactly what happened in the stagiere and after that, so it could very well be that.

Hisako is pretty much self explanatory 'cause Azami knows how close she is to Erina… But the other two are kind of weird. You’d think he would either choose the two next strongest or two pretty important persons to Erina as well. 'Cause he couldn’t care less about the others and who is important to them, but completely destroying persons close to Erina would fit with the other shit he’s done up until that point.

So why Isami and Ikumi?

Both have next to no emotional value for Erina, Isami even less than Ikumi. Except something did happen off screen between the autumn elections and that, which resulted in those two becoming more of a threat, so he couldn’t take risks.

Storytelling wise I couldn’t really imagine that, but on the other hand, some things even before the Regiment de Cuisine felt mind of, empty, rushed and unfinished, (and I won’t even start afterwards where a lot of characters where completely sidelined) so the possibility is there.

!Minor Spoiler for the 2nd year!

It is canonically established that Isami together with Hisako are the two that are most likely to enter the Elite 10 next, though that still doesn’t explain Ikumi.

!Spoiler End! 

So back to my statement at the top, it either being a really interesting hidden thing, or pure assholery, ‘cause looking at it there are two possibilities no

1. We had some really nice, huge growth off screen (which is very, very possible) especially for Isami and Ikumi, but probably for Hisako as well. So they rose to a level to become a real threat for Azami, so he had to pit them against someone who would definitely win. 

2. For some reason or another they didn’t want to take the obvious choices of Alice and Kurokiba, who were shown to be more of a threat, as explained somewhere up there, and went for two random characters which happened to be Isami and Ikumi (which by all means makes no sense, ‘cause Ikumi was pretty high on the popularity polls so she is popular with the fans, just as Hisako is, and Isami by lesser extent). Like I said I can completely understand Hisako being there as a bigger threat, so I’m not complaining there, but I’m confused with Isami and Ikumi

The second doesn’t really makes sense to me, because I feel there is a reason to every action an artist /a writer includes in their work and if it is just (like 95% of my poems ‘I am depressed and need to word it somehow / vent somehow’, but especially in a bigger work / story. So, yeah I don’t really believe in coincidences there. 

But then again there is also the chance that maybe something was supposed to happen with that, that we get a bit character building for characters that are not the core 3 maybe, but in the end…we didn’t, cause reasons. And as I said, there were some scenes in the Anime (and Manga) where I felt that things really just seemed unfinished to me and were never picked up after that again. Or stuff I would have had loved to get an explanation for. Or maybe some more backstories. And literally a ton of other stuff.

But as I mentioned I could be really overthinking things here, but this has bothered me since I first saw the page. (I kinda looked it over in the anime though :’) )

So yeah this is my rant on this topic,, as I’m sitting at home sick and depressed…and alone. Hope you had fun reading this :’)

Love, Isami…

#food wars #food wars shokugeki no soma #food wars manga #Food Wars: Shokugeki no Souma #Shokugeki no Soma #shokugeki no souma #isami aldini #hisako arato #mito ikumi

[laila-rk]

Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit

I will admit I went into Jojo Rabbit with reluctance and in an already bad mood. I was planning on watching Little Women which I was very excited for but didn't make it in time, so it kind of felt like 'settling' for another film already. When the film began I was annoyed when the blatant rip-off Moonrise Kingdom aesthetic that I had expected from the trailer came to fruition. I don't personally see why a director would desire to rip off another's aesthetic and how they could be so conspicuous about it, but hey ho. So the entire first forty minutes or so I will admit I spent sitting in my seat silently pissed off and trying to talk myself out of my terrible mood. The film did nothing to assist me in this task. I ended up actually having to tell myself to try to see the film from a child's perspective, because frankly I don't see how anyone beyond the age of about ten could really take much from this film. Other cinema goers didn't seem to have the same issue — seemingly every person in the theatre was in hysterics at all the really badly written, juvenile script/ jokes. I despair.

Where to begin really? Rebel Wilson manages to be unfunny throughout, with every line seeming to be delivered with too much surrounding silence as if in anticipation of audience laughter. It felt like Pitch Perfect and all the jokes fell flat. The lead boy (Roman Griffin Davis) is strangely angered throughout, without any real impetus. I don't assign any blame to the twelve year old actor for this, rather the script and character writing was really badly done. Sam Rockwell, though one of the better performers, seems to be a tacked on character with no real point beyond serving as a vague father-figure to fatherless Jojo and as a precautionary "not all Nazis were bad people" add on. Scarlett Johansson I frankly felt sorry for throughout.

Jojo is a young member of the Hitler Youth. He is sufficiently indoctrinated but is small and cowardly. Some older Nazi boys tell him to kill a rabbit and when he can't do it, they call him rabbit as a joke. But Jojo confides in his imaginary friend, Hitler, who tells him it's okay because he would have his people be comprised of all 'animals' so to speak — the courage of a panther, the cunning of a fox, something something... you know, because Hitler was well into diversity. None of this matters though, because where the film is set up initially at the Hitler Youth training camp, and we feel as though we are in for a long slog of trying not to detect Wes Anderson's Fort Lebanon in this camp, the film bizarrely turns into another film when it randomly changes its mind and decides to set itself largely in the boy's home. It feels very much like the opening is from another movie and just stitched on the beginning.

Actually, despite the Wes-rip off, I would've preferred it to remain at Not-Camp-Ivanhoe, because what it turns into is Boy in the Striped Pyjamas meets Tracy Beaker. It has all the cheap tactlessness of a BBC film, including cheap looking costumes and predictable cinematography. There's a bit where Johansson tells Jojo (her son) that love feels like butterflies and soon after we get a camera pan down to Jojo's stomach where, yes, cgi butterflies reside. It felt like that bit where you go inside Tracy Beaker's head and see her 'famous' mum stepping out of a limo. It was embarrassing to watch.

Jojo falls in love with a Jewish girl, which feels like an unnecessary thread of the story, partly because it seems to be assuming the audience is also in the Hitler Youth and needs teaching that Jewish people do not in fact have horns and hang upside down like bats — actual line from the film— and partly because the girl is established as a stand-in for Jojo's dead sister. So that's weird.

Scarlett Johansson has to try to carry a scene off in which she impersonates Jojo's father who is said to be fighting in the war and has been absent for two years, therefore suspected as a deserter. Johansson awkwardly smears her face with ash from the fireplace and with this 'beard', begins to mimic Jojo's dad in such a way as to paint him as some kind of angry drunk, or rather just a stereotype of a 40s German father? We aren't sure. There's a lot of horrible awkward dancing in this scene and throughout, because Jojo's mum equates dancing to freedom and... well, that's about as profound as the film manages to get. The scene is really hard to watch and it just feels like the camera remains too long on an actress who isn't totally convinced of her role, and who could blame her really when the script is so embarrassingly flimsy?

The Hitler character, played by director Taika Waititi, has his moments. The performance is flamboyant and self-deprecating which does make for the occasional funny moment, in particular a part where he feigns confusion at public perception of himself as a 'psycho' as if he has no idea why this would be. The problem is that this should have been woven throughout and actually the film strays from this character too much in favour of following the Jewish girl who Jojo's mother has been hiding. This doesn't work because for some unknown reason, the girl is made to be frankly a smug brat. I'm not sure if this was in some kind of attempt to imbue the character with some form of liberation (she immediately grabs the Nazi boy and physically shoves him around a lot). It doesn't really come across as liberated though, if anything it makes it hard to empathise with the character as she behaves like a robot. She just comes across as an unbearable character who seems to have literally zero gratitude for the person who has been hiding and feeding her. That's not to say the Jewish character doesn't have EVERYTHING to be angry about, but human nature does dictate that one might be a little more emotionally nuanced and experience small moments of joy when everything else is bad. Instead, Elsa is perpetually angry to the point of essentially bullying the German child who is far younger and smaller than herself. This might make sense if she was even awarded some kind of emotional liberation at the end beyond her predictable escape when the war ends, but all she is permitted to do is another stupid dance on the doorstep (signifying Jojo's mother's idea of freedom, not even her own).

The film's redeeming quality is actually the performance by Archi Yates as Yorki, unfortunately perpetually referred to as 'the fat kid', as if that's a funny enough line to repeat throughout. His performance is naive (the actor is eleven years old), but it works because his timing is great and he delivers the lines as if he is familiar with the intended style of comedy; he actually delivers his lines with wit, where all the adult actors around him fail. He also seems to speak with a British accent where everyone else flits between a half baked German accent and their own real accent, which in between seems to fall into some kind of Welsh accent. Just do the German accent properly or don't bother with it! A scene in which Stephen Merchant arrives as Gestapo begins with a lot of 'Heil Hitlers' and ends with Merchant seeming to forget what he's doing and falling into his usual west country voice.

I don't have much else to write about this film because it's not enjoyable to bang on about the bad qualities of a movie and I do think there is something to be said for the director/writer's bravery in making a film about Hitler as a boy's imaginary friend.

I think the film would've been better off with less of a comedy vibe and by following in real earnest the experience of a member of the Hitler Youth; what his psyche would've been. Unfortunately the film is too babyish for any adult (Dukes at Komedia crowd notwithstanding), which means it is really only funny to kids, and I'm not sure what it does for a child without real prior knowledge of Hitler's Germany. The termination of the boy's friendship with Adolf manifests in his literally kicking Adolf out the window and telling him to 'fuck off', but actually this doesn't do much to negate the established charm/ charisma of the Hitler character. You don't ever really get that sense of revenge or satisfaction at Hitler's expense, if anything you feel a bit sorry for the neurotic clown incarnation of Adolf, who after all is a figment of the boy's imagination. I don't demand any kind of moral lesson from art, but it would seem that this film would be obligated to contain one, and yet it remains dubious as to what it even is... are we allowed to like this Hitler character? Are we even happy when he's gone? Wasn't he the only funny thing about the film?

The movie ends with the Rainer Maria Rilke quote “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Which left me with the final reflection that indeed I did have to let this film happen to me and was rewarded with the beauty of the final credits rolling and the liberating sensation of being able to leave the cinema to go get pizza.

Sadly this film immediately goes to the bottom of my Oscars nomination list (nominated for Best Picture. Ouch!). Interesting to note that Ra Vincent of LOTR/ The Hobbit fame (anyone else watch all those making ofs?) did the production design for this film. At least his name in the credits left me with some feeling of warmth towards it.

#jojo rabbit #taika waititi #hitler's germany #hitler #oscars2020 #oscars #oscar nomination #best picture #film review #film critic #films #movies

[sage-nebula]

I hope you dont mind my asking, but wouldn't GF have decided to remove the national dex long before LGPE released? I can see those games selling well confirming to GF that "pokemon sell well regardless of cut features" but it feels strange to blame it on LGPE when the development time on the games would suggest they made this choice awhile ago. (Not to defend lgpe lack of content) Sorry if this is a bother, I just feel like I'm missing something and would really like to understand your reasoning

For almost any other game I would agree, however for Pokémon in particular:

The National Dex (insofar as the ability to transfer old pokémon over) was never going to be a Day One feature. It’s never a Day One feature in the first games of the generation. Even if they wanted to make it one, in this case they couldn’t because Home isn’t releasing until 2020. As I’ve said in other posts, if they wanted to patch in the NatDex, they’d have the time to do it. Technically speaking, they’d have the time to do it, especially since the fanbase would be willing to wait (even if there’d be a few whiners here or there) the extra time.

Since it’s not a Day One feature, it’s something that can be worked on later in the development cycle (/can even continue to be worked on after the development cycle, or at least it could be if this series were treated with the respect of, say, The Legend of Zelda series). Again, I’m not talking about DLC that’s already on the game card that needs to be activated later, I’m talking about DLC that’s patched in, content created after that you download either to the harddrive or (though I don’t know if Switch DLC works this way specifically) onto the game card itself. Given the type of content they generally want to show early in the release cycle (the general theme / concept of the games, scenes of the various areas in the region, new ‘mon), and the fact that this would be a feature added post-release anyway, we can make a safe bet that the NatDex is something they’d work on much later in the development cycle, possibly even in the last year since, again . . . they’d have that time if they wanted to use it (and if this series was treated with genuine respect).

The Let’s Go games were stated by Masuda to be the future of the franchise if they sold well. They featured a Pokédex that was limited to only the Kanto ‘Dex, plus Meltan and Melmetal. They released in November 2018, and indeed, they sold well. In early 2019 (February, IIRC) Sword & Shield were released. While of course I don’t work at Game Freak and thus can’t say for sure, I would place money on the idea that if they were even a bit on the fence about adding the National Dex, the fact that Let’s Go sold so well despite being limited to 153 ‘mon pushed them right over the edge to, “Cut the National Dex from Sword & Shield, there’s no point in working on it.” I mean, why should they expend the effort if people will buy the games anyway? Especially when President Ishihara went on record saying that long-time fans only cared about “new pokémon and features” around the time of Let’s Go’s release. Sure, they might have already been thinking about cutting the National Dex beforehand, but Let’s Go no doubt assured them that it was a safe and correct call to make.

So that’s what I mean when I say that Let’s Go’s positive sales figures sealed all of our fates. To be entirely honest, before the National Dex announcement, I was certain that we wouldn’t see the shockwaves from Let’s Go until Gen IX. But Sword & Shield having a limited ‘Dex just like Let’s Go, and having special feature ‘mon behind $60 paywalls like Let’s Go, and having core features stripped out like Let’s Go, and the fact that it’s starting to look frighteningly like the starters won’t be able to evolve like in Let’s Go . . . the effect is pretty apparent. Sure, some of this stuff was present even before Let’s Go (namely the whole “let’s ditch useful features in the name of simplifying things” tack that Masuda has been married to for years now), but in the wake of Let’s Go, it’s success, and what Masuda said would happen if it was successful, it’s really hard not to see the link.

(Note just in case anyone read too quickly: I’m not saying the starters WON’T evolve. I’m only saying that I’m starting to fear that’s the case since we’re less than a month away from release and we haven’t even seen second stage evolutions yet. Maybe they’re just trying to keep starter evolutions a surprise, that’s entirely possible, but it’s also highly suspect, and Game Freak destroyed any trust or good faith I had in them a while back.) 

As a final note, the reason why I say that the Pokémon games aren’t treated with respect is . . . well, there are a few reasons:

Game Freak stated themselves that they put their B Team on Sword & Shield while their A Team worked on Little Town Hero. They also said they wanted to create something, “as exciting, or perhaps even more exciting” than Pokémon. They’re tired of working on Pokémon, and it shows. Which, I mean, I get it, it’s been 20+ years, but in that case tell Nintendo so that they can shift the main games over to another studio. I get that Game Freak was created for the sole purpose of making Pokémon, and maybe Taijiri-san is pissed at how you’re disrespecting his baby (I would be), but for the good of the series, if you don’t want to work on it, give it to someone who does. Don’t just shift it onto your bare bones secondary dev team.

These games are in a hellish development cycle where a new one is popped out every year. Contrast this to The Legend of Zelda where, while we’ve had some anomalies where assets were able to be largely reused and so games came out only a couple years apart (see: Ocarina of Time to Majora’s Mask) --- even that had two or three years before releases, not one the very next year. Most mainline Zelda games spend five or six years in development. I’m fully aware that we will likely be waiting until something like 2022 for Breath of the Wild 2, and I am prepared to wait that time because I know the game we get will be incredible. Granted, I’m going to be dying every single time they announce a release date to push it back, but it’ll be a death I’m grateful for because I will know that the end product will be worth it. The Pokémon games used to have a similar luxury. While there were a grand total of five games released during that time (with “five games” being used loosely, given that one was a slight upgrade and the other four were really two games with slight differences between versions), Gen IV lasted for a grand total of four years. We had Diamond & Pearl in 2006, Platinum in 2008, HeartGold & SoulSilver in 2009, and then finally, Black & White in 2010. By contrast, Gen VII didn’t even last three years, technically. I mean, this November would be its third anniversary, but that’s when Gen VIII officially starts instead. To be fair, it could be argued that Gen IV didn’t have a full four years since it came out in September 2006, and Gen V came out in September 2010. But even if you make that argument, it still had a full year on Gen VII, and to be honest, that showed. The Sinnoh games are far and away not my faves, but they were still full of content. HeartGold & SoulSilver are often considered to be the best remakes in the entire franchise, and considering the content that was cut from OmegaRuby & AlphaSapphire and Masuda’s reasoning for why that content was cut, I can’t exactly argue with that even though I did genuinely enjoy ORAS. And the games that Gen IV ushered in? Controversial opinion, but I think that the Pokémon games peaked with Gen V. Black & White not only initially had a ‘dex that was nothing but new pokémon (and yet STILL included the Nat Dex later, because in Masuda’s own words he felt it cruel to keep people from playing with their faves forever!), but it also introduced a METRIC TON of new mechanics, some of which we no longer get to use (Rotation Battles? Game Freak doesn’t know her). Who knows what exactly Game Freak did with that extra year, but it was clearly a lot of work given how wonderful the games were in Gen IV and Gen V. The extra dev time showed.By contrast, Gen VII got 2.5 years (or 3 if you’re being generous). Every single game released during this gen had massive content cuts, even when comparing to Gen VI, which also had massive content cuts. Mechanics were stripped away, and Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon technically didn’t have a NatDex either, but at least you could still have all of your ‘mon in them at a later date if you wanted to. Now with Sword & Shield, we don’t even have that, despite the Switch being far more powerful than the 3DS. (We also don’t have Mega Evolution for whatever godforsaken reason, even though the Kanto Mega Evolutions at the very least were already used in Let’s Go, the fuck, Game Freak). Pokémon games print money and always have, and Game Freak has taken this and their lack of interest in the series to the depressing but I suppose logical extreme of “do whatever and they’ll buy it anyway.” There’s no love here, there’s no respect here. They just don’t care anymore, and as someone who does care an awful lot, it’s super upsetting to me.

And while people have tried to argue that the games can’t be delayed because of the anime or the card game or whatever else:

The games come first. They’ve always come first. I know some people mistakenly think that the anime came first and that the games were created later, but that is 100% false. Pokémon started as a game series and the anime was created to advertise the games, straight up.

Filler episodes exist, and the PokéAni is no stranger to them. The Orange Islands arc was an entire arc of filler created to pad time between Gens I and II. The Delacora Islands (or whatever they were called) was a filler arc meant to pad time between Gens V and VI. Arguably the majority of the Sun & Moon anime was filler, given its slice-of-life genre, meaning the anime was even less of an excuse not to delay Sword & Shield. You can’t tell me people wouldn’t have been happy with another year of the Alola crew running around getting into random adventures. People would have eaten that up and loved it. We could have had it all.

I’m not even going to dignify “but the card game” with a response lmao. This isn’t Yu-Gi-Oh!. Sure, the card game makes money, and probably a decent amount of it (merch sales probably make up the franchise’s greatest source of income, and as someone who easily spent several hundred dollars in two weeks at the PokéCenters in Japan---including over $100 in one trip to a PokéCenter while I was there, and we went multiple times---I am a big part of that), but they come up with bullshit new expansions all the time and could easily keep doing it. Again, not a reason to delay the games if the games need more time in development.

So all in all, at the end of the day, Game Freak is no longer treating these games with love and respect, which makes them an awful lot like the villains in the games they create. The Let’s Go games were harbingers of disaster for the games, and we were told this very plainly, and just about no one listened. In fact, I legitimately lost friendships with people who got mad at me for making Facebook statuses about how they should buy Let’s Go used if they absolutely had to have them because how DARE I believe Ishihara when he said that Let’s Go were considered core titles, and how DARE I believe Masuda when he said that Let’s Go would usher in the last twenty years of the franchise. Clearly, I was just being an ugly bitch. (I wish I was exaggerating, but this actually happened, I got blocked over it, it was ridiculous.) And now here we are as a result, with no hope of things getting better unless Nintendo forcibly rips Pokémon out of Game Freak’s hands, which I don’t even think they can legally do given that they only own 1/3rd of the IP. (The other 2/3rds belong to Game Freak and Creatures Inc., as I understand it.) 

TL;DR:

Pokémon is still my favorite fictional fantasy world, but as someone who has always loved the games first and foremost, the current state of it depresses me to no end.

#this kind of got off the original topic but i hope it's coherent at least #pokemon salt #pokemon negativity #long post for ts #Anonymous

[applegelstore]

My sis and I are through with the actual main plot of KH3, so I can officially go back to scheduled ToZ fangirling now. …Well, I promised Cray a bit of fix-it-fanart, so after that, I guess.

Hit the cut for a resume. It got super long and has endgame story spoilers, so you might not want to stumble upon it by accident.

Another extra big shoutout (again!) to @crazayrock for bearing my liveblogging on Discord, screaming without context and occasional spoilers. And linking me fluffy Soriku doujinshi. Here, have my favourite, spoiler-heavy excerpt of our conversation:

Okay anyway, let’s get started: GAMEPLAY

Kingdom Hearts 3 is BEAUTIFUL. The gameplay is so smooth and intuitive that you can immediately get to playing like you’d never done anything else; in fact so smooth that I doubt I will ever be able to pick up the first game ever again. It’s always been fun, but the looooooong years’ gap actually did wonders to the gameplay.

The keyblade form changes are fun and keep things fresh, you can do flashy triangle button shit every other minute, and shotlock is still insanely useful without being a game-breaker.

It seems easier than the first two main games, though?

The gummi ship is still a pain in the ass to steer, but I do enjoy the open world-like travel options (even if there’s not… much to discover except heartless lasering the shit out of you). I’m also eternally grateful that they kept the gummi ship thing from KH2 where you can just use a new gummi ship once you got the blueprint and don’t buy actual fucking legos as in the first game.

Thank you, Square. Not thanking you for the dumb cherry flan game, though.

The Caribbean being basically an open world stage was delightful! Apparently what our resident island kid needs is a big ship and tropical islands to plunder.

VISUALS AND STUFF

PRETTY LIGHTS EVERYWHERE

The long gap between the games also did wonders to the visuals.

There’s finally, FINALLY a few towns with actual NPCs you can talk to. Why it took the team so many years and the Gods know how many games is beyond me. The magic effects are beautiful, the animations smooth (honestly you can hardly tell apart cutscenes and fully rendered CGI scenes in this day and age of the PS4. I’m probably the only person still amazed by this because the only games I played on PS4 before were a few hours of Child of Light and of course Tales of Zestiria and Berseria. No, I still haven’t played FFXV but that’s a topic for another day). How far videogames have come.Even space finally looks like space, lol. Not really high-end what the PS4 can do I assume but god, it’s such an amazing and much needed upgrade from the terrible textureless colourful tubes you flew through before.

No excuse for the terrible battleship thingy before the Keyblade Graveyard, though. I got lost and beaten up so many times and crashed against more walls than I can count.

Nothing beats the World that Never Was, but the Keyblade Graveyard also has creepy cool potential, as does the beautiful but ghosted City in the Sky.

Still not getting what’s with JRPGs and very Definitely Final Dungeons (TM) that are basically space. …………or heaven. Or nothing. I’m getting the bad kind of original NGE TV series ending vibes. But. Okay.

The soundtrack is splendid

.……I miss Traverse Town and Radiant Garden, however.

Which brings us to:

THE WORLDS

I guess I can live with no more Final Fantasy characters being there (although I always loved that), and the meta jokes in Toy Story world really got me. Seeing Disney characters calling the KH villains call out on their shit was delightful. …the KH characters lampshading their own games’ sloppy dialogue writing was delightful.Still, those Disney worlds are always so much more in my head than what I actually get to play. This has been bugging me ever since the first game and it still does. I do not expect or want to replay the entire movies, but would it hurt to give the cutscenes some goddamn background music? Whenever there’s cutscenes, either the world’s usual BGM keeps playing or the music stops altogether. Together with the shortened dialogues and generally drastically shortened plots with odd cuts, that leads to scenes that are awkward at best. They never even remotely have the impact the movies had. You just sit there and think “oh wow that is so silly and awkward”.

Dancing scene in Corona? My favorite scene in Tangled. Zero impact on me without the lovely BGM (at least they made it a minigame so the moment isn’t over after 3 secs). Just for example. You can ask me like, world by world, but I can think of only exception off the top of my head and it’s not helping:

Let it Go of course. Listen guys, I actually love the song. But it’s so overused (and Frozen is an overrated movie at best that doesn’t deserve its hype in the slightest) that I can’t even really enjoy it being there. Like.


IF THAT’S OKAY WITH YOU,WHY DIDN’T YOU INCLUDE LITERALLY ANY OTHER ORIGINAL SONG FROM THE ORIGINAL MOVIES. Instead of BGM just not being there entirely, or in odd, cringey re-renderings that nobody wants to listen to (*cough* Atlantica *cough*).

Why torture me and not give me the one good scene from At World’s End (the up is down scene) when you had the chance?Kingdom Hearts is also prone to super lazy level design and wasting chances at wonderful scenery for no apparent reason other than I suppose empty cliffsides are quick to render. All games before did that, and KH3 is, sadly, no exception. We get to see a bit of Corona and Athens and they finally have NPCs, too, but you cannot even get near Arendelle. You cannot enter Elsa’s palace. You spend the entire time there climbing around in the snowy mountains of Norway, and unfortunately it looks less interesting than one would expect from the lovely concept art that the film unfortunately never used.You cannot enter Rapunzel’s tower although Sora can apparently parkour his way up even without her help.

………In short, the places you can go are, again, very limited, and a lot of interesting places and scenes you never get to see.

And to follow the plot you still only need the stuff that does NOT happen in those Disney worlds because they’re all beach filler episodes. It’s always been like that, but I keep wondering whether I’m the only one bothered by that. I’m also still salty they didn’t introduce a single new world from a 2D animated movie.

Also, as I said, I miss Traverse Town, it felt so warm and welcoming and beautiful.

And I get behind The World that Never Was missing although I loved it there, but why not give us back Radiant Garden? Destiny Islands since they’ve been restored? Disney Castle?

As much as I love the series, it never fucking lives up to its own potential. Idk whether it’s made more difficult by copyright issues or whatever, I just know that it bugs me.The first two games also had like twice as many worlds.

PLOT

I mean it’s never been deep; however, it’s complicated. No analysis or whatever from me because plot analysis and meta writing bore me like seven hells, just my emotional reaction: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 
Okay, bad news. I got into it expecting nothing, and still got disappointed. I don’t actually enjoy the prospect of writing essays about it, but here’s my tea with it; in not particular order:

1) the pacing is terrible. Nothing happens for like 30 hours and then suddenly like 20 characters’ arcs are (naturally poorly) resolved within the last few hours of cutscenes. Build up anyone? At least they actually did pick up Maleficent and the box thing again. …In the epilogue.

2) Speaking of build ups, Sora’s breakdown could have been developed nicely and steadily over the game to feel natural, and instead it’s hinted at in the beginning by everyone picking on him, but then it’s never further developed and comes out of fucking nowhere. Like. For real? It felt terribly OOC.

3) Why on earth have they shown 90% of the plot in the trailers already, and why are those scenes so massively disappointing in context

4) Kairi. Oh god, Kairi. What are we gonna do with you. I want to love her, I really do, but she’s a prime example of shittily written female leads. Mostly because she’s not leading. It’s not her fault. She’s just a fictional character. But honest to God, Nomura, why. Her screen time is almost nonexistent, and she’s entirely use- and helpless whenever she’s on screen (which isn’t often). Her ONLY point in the plot is being rescued because she is fucking useless. Why. Just why. Why waste her character like that. All we know is that she’s shoehorned into being the token love interest, but she has zero plot relevance and there is even less build up of her relationship with Sora. It’s all tell and NEVER show; and not even much telling, either. She has literally zero direct interaction with in the entire game before they share their paopu. The question remains: why are straights like this

5) On a related note: look, I don’t even ask for (or expect, or even hope) my ship to be canon. Squeenix doesn’t exactly have a rich history in queer representation. I’m totally fine with Sora and Riku being best friends. BUT. Building up Sora as the most important person in Riku’s life (and arguably, vice versa) over the course of several games, just to then hardly have them interact in the finale and then SUDDENLY bring back Kairi into the equation, who hasn’t interacted with him since the ending of KH2 (except for one unsent(?) letter) is just piss poor writing, period.I actually love Cray’s suggestion she gave me over Discord: let Sora, Kairi and Riku all share a paopu together (and let them group hug, too, you cowards). It would have been the perfect message to send (Sora as truly all-loving hero, and loving all your friends equally; romantic love isn’t more important than platonic love and doesn’t need to be singled out). Really sad that this isn’t what happens. Apparently that wouldn’t have been no homo enough.

LET THE DESTINY TRIO GROUP HUG YOU COWARDS


Do Riku and Kairi even interact once in the whole game?


HOW IS THIS A TRIO, IT’S JUST A SHITTILY WRITTEN LOVE TRIANGLE

6) Time travelling is a bitch, Christ. It doesn’t solve plotholes or can be played for drama, it just adds MORE plotholes. It just got WORSE. The cloning blues and people not aging doesn’t help, either.

7) Just so you know, I care absolutely zero for wild fan theories. You’re not Nomura. I want a statement from the man who wrote this shit himself why on bloody earth Sora dies when he apparently successfully found and brought back Kairi (and since nobody aged a day, apparently it didn’t even take that long lol). DUDES, THIS IS KINDA PART OF THE PLOT, AND YOU DON’T BOTHER TO EXPLAIN IT INGAME???? And how was Ienzo/Zexion able to revive Naminé while Kairi was still missing/dead/whatever…?

Okay so in short the writing is worse than ever and that’s saying something.

However, let’s try to find something good in this trainwreck; it wasn’t all bad. There’s some really nice scenes which sadly are better enjoyed without any context at all.

So, guess my favourite scenes.You had time enough, here’s the solution:

1) Purifying uhm er rescuing Aqua. Poor girl. She deserves the rest. Poor, poor Aqua. The only properly wirrten female in the whole damn franchise. Also the only person other than Riku who fucking gets shit done.

2) The Gayblade (TM)

3) Happy Axel in the reunion with his kids. Oh god, the poor chap deserves it so much. Thank you, Nomura. I don’t care that it makes pretty much no sense. Make him happy. Give him his friends back. Just give Axel all his friends and let him happily set things on fire. Hi I love Axel

4) The party at the beach cutscene before the credits roll. Axel and Xion get clothes. Half the organization is on our side now. I almost teared up at the Wayfinder trio saying goodbye to Eraqus’ forceghost. Hey come on he’s the voice of Luke Skywalker

5) Sully yeeting Vanitas

6) Woody calling out Xehanort that nobody loves him

7) Jack Sparrow bad breathing Luxord

I wish we had gotten:

1) justice for Kairi

2) a happy Zexion, the poor emo kid. Well maybe now he will be, with all the orga members who changed sides now, lol.

3) I will never trust mobile games ever again so I don’t want to play KHUX but I would have loved to learn about the Keyblade Wars :;))))


WHAT WAS THE KEYBLADE WAR ABOUT CAN WE SPEND MORE TIME IN THAT COOL CITY IN THE SKY WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH MIKLEO
I MEAN THAT EPHEMER KIDDO


WHAT’S WITH THE MASKED DUDES AND DUDETTES FROM THE MOVIE


WTF WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM AFTER THE MOVIE???? WHERE THOSE KEYBLADE USER NAMES ACTUAL MOBILE GAME PLAYER NAMES??? Next game? PLEASE?

I really, REALLY hope the epilogue means we will get Xiggy/Luxu as our new big bad and we learn more about the five dudes and dudettes from the movie. Please. PLEASE. I’m so up for it. Them finally pickung up the bit with Maleficent and the mysterious box again? Hell yeah.

The secret movie was really unexciting in comparison, although I laughed very hard at the “Verum Rex” scene in Toy Story world. Maybe that’s why it was much cheaper to unlock than in KH1 and KH2.

4) give Ven a drink

DLC ideas I would actually pay for because I’m a sad human being: 1) more Disney worlds 2) Japanese audio 3) at least one of the following as permanently playable characters: Riku, Kairi, Axel, Ven, Aqua. At least as a guest member as in KH2. THIS SUCH A BIG STEP BACKWARDS I’M FUMING

FINAL THOUGHTS

Kingdom Hearts 3 is a hella lot of fun, beautiful, and also moving when it sets its mind to it. Unfortunately it doesn’t always do so. I don’t feel like it wasn’t worth the wait; it was. However, I’m very salty how rotten the writing is. I do not mind logical fallacies, I do not mind the cheesiness and cringeyness; however, I do mind how so many interesting characters do not get the screentime they deserve, and Kairi is a very bad joke.

I’ll probably find more to nitpick about (Gods. Just. Don’t come up with dub excuses why Sora is lv 1 in each game. JUST LEAVE IT BE. You don’t explain why Donald and Goofy are lv 1 again, either. JUST. LEAVE. IT. BE. The sacrifice was dumb and not even moving, I’m just still furious that Kairi’s ONLY point in the plot is being so useless that it’s literally getting herself KILLED and she needs constant rescuing to the point that Sora has to sacrifice himself for her, effectively. Kairi deserves better, Sora deserves better, I deserve better than to think about this absurdity.…I’m just… gonna cherry-pick the good bits from the lore and try to pretend the finale didn’t exist, I guess. GODS.

#long post #random rambling tag

[snkpolls]

SnK Chapter 103 Poll Results

The chapter 103 poll closed with 2,013 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Another month, another chapter that left people feeling excited! 98% of poll takers rated chapter 103 from good to excellent!

I just cant wait for the next chapter. I'm so HYPED

I like that Isayama for the first time since rts showcased a fast-paced action-packed chapter. Too many questions rn, but imo zeke is 100% w/ paradis, falco won’t die and the female titan will appear, regardless of its inheritor. Eren’s transformation was jizz-worthy

This chapter was both so thrilling and yet so frustrating.  On one hand, so much is happening in just the right amount of panels and it seems Isayama has learned the art of pacing in this arc more successfully than others.  I'm a sucker for tragedy, so the conflicted misery of what is going on is satisfying given the history of the series.  On the other hand, I am still very frustrated in figuring out what exactly is going on, what is being implied, specifically anything involving Zeke

I don’t know what to say. I feel so empty. But the chapter is great!

This month it was a tie for most emotional moment between “Falco trying to encourage unconscious Reiner” and “Armin finally appearing, looking haunted”. We are happy to see that people who love both sides of the conflict were able to have a good emotional tug with this chapter! 

Pretty much every panel that included Falco.  This poor, traumatized child who ran into a literal war zone to get help.

Why are all my waifus getting killed.

With Reiner having no will to live, I guess he’s just going to stay in that crystal thing. Why do we have so many shifters in crystals now (Annie, Lady Tybur and now Reiner)?

I absolutely loved the scene between Falco and Reiner. That was one of the most emotional and sweet moments in SNK. Reiner was ready to sacrifice himself to save the child. I truly love how warm and protective he is towards children. I hope that both will survive. I want Reiner to find happiness and see how great person he really is. He made mistakes but regrets them. He learnt his lesson. Now is time to move on.

This one was a landslide win with Armin’s entrance taking the victory. It seems that months of waiting to see his return finally paid off! We’re sure many of you guys are hoping to see his Colossal form next month!

Eren transforming three times within a half an hour is incredible, but the most amazing part of the chapter was Armin's entrance as the colossal titan. The explosion looked catastrophic, can't wait to see it animated!

I literally screamed when I saw Armin, I’m so happy to see him with the Survey Corps, but his face worries me slightly. I’m also sad we didn’t get to see his titan form.

Not as epic as the last one but so glad to see Armin again. Sasha's sniping skills and Eren mindblowing everybody (Porco in particular) were the best parts.

While the majority of you guys are certain Zeke is only acting on his own agenda, there’s plenty of division on whether he could be siding with Eren alone or with Paradis as a whole. One thing that does seem certain to the majority is that he’s definitely not working in Marley’s favor. 

Zeke probably thinks he and Eren are the same because they were both manipulated by Grisha or so he thinks. If he realizes that Eren probably doesn't hate their dad, Zeke's attitude towards his brother will possibly change. 

Zeke's the one with most awareness that the cycle will repeat so long as shifters exist, his unique perspective is knowing what Grisha taught him as well as having the total trust of the Marley from a young age, and having physically gone and seen the island and witnessed their struggles with the titans, and met Eren who is the direct result of Grisha's continued plans.  There is no one who should be more impartial and aware that this is a unending cycle, it seems he's finally coming to terms with having to do something about it after all his life simply being a pawn of people in what he assumed was a more influential position than him.

Every chapter I say "This is definitely the chapter we finally see what Zeke is up to" and every chapter it just gets more confusing...

I seriously doubt that Zeke is working with Paradis. One thing would be to act like an enemy but he literally killed a bunch of SC soldiers, I doubt the SC would be ok with that. Also, Levi looked PISSED AF! I doubt Zeke died and he's still suspicious but I'm betting on him having his own ulterior motives.

I don't think Zeke is working with the SC. It was hard to answer these questions when the options contradict my feelings and understanding of the chapter so much.

So. Good ol' Zeke. He's like David S. Pumpkins; he's his own thing. I'm still of the belief that he's working towards his own objective but now I'm more open to the idea that he may have something set up with SC via Eren as his point of contact (who, of course, is definitely working with/for SC). But it's clear that even if they are both aware of the chain of events unfolding before their eyes, both sides have something they want badly in the end and will probably "betray" each other without hesitation to get it at some point.

The survey corps has a plan but Zeke and Eren also have a separate plan they're not aware of. And on top of all of that Zeke has his own plan for his own personal agenda.

Zekerets

The general consensus is that there’s more in store for Zeke in this story, even if it means he managed to transfer his consciousness to his Eldian ass. ;) Most of you are positive we will be seeing more from Zeke in future chapters!

If Zeke is dead, I will watch the live action movie 10 times in a row

Levi cut Zeke out of the Beast Titan's neck while everyone was distracted by Armin's transformation. Then after Zeke made his getaway, Levi blew the shit out of the rest of the nape to destroy the evidence and make everyone think Zeke was dead.

Zeke escaped upwards using 3dmg right as levi was supposed to attack him, causing zeke to be assumed KIA

Well, looks like Zeke has been vaporised, playtime's over kids, let's head back home now!

I find it hard to believe that Zeke got taken down this easily again. I also find it odd that we don't see the clothing he's wearing inside his titan, but we do see what the others are wearing in their titans. Looking back, it seems that's the way it was before, too. But I think it would be a cool plot twist if he had 3DMG equipped this time, considering he did take Mike's 3DMG a while back.

While the majority believe that Levi is working along with Zeke, there is division on whether Levi has decided to let go of his promise to Erwin to kill Zeke. Over half of the voters believe that Levi still intends to kill Zeke when all is said and done, but a good 31% of you believe that he may have decided to let it go for the greater goal.

If the Zeke-Survey Corps alliance isn't real then Isayama must be the biggest troll ever. Also, I believe Levi has always shown that he'll do what's best for humanity/Eldia (even if it means doing unpleasant things) so I don't think the alliance is as far-fetched as other people believe.

Still waiting for that sweet Levi's Revenge™

Levi!   I love how emotional Levi gets when it comes to keeping his promise to Erwin; nothing can get a rise out of him anymore or get him to max rage except Zeke.  I hope we find out sooner rather than later what Zeke is up to, but there is no way that Levi is going to let him walk out of this alive, even if he is part of the current plan.  

Regarding Levi wanting to Kill Zeke, while he'd prefer to kill him by his own hands we already know he'd be willing to feed him to someone so the Titan power isn't lost. I personally think Zeke agreed, since he has a a year left at best,

While there was a small shift in ratio, the majority of you guys still believe that Pieck is not totally trustful of Zeke. There have been plenty of analyses floating around believing that she may have seen Zeke leaving the Beast Titan after Levi’s attack. 

The question about Pieck being mistrustful of Zeke isn't worded very well because if I answer yes it makes it seem like I'm part of the 70% and haven't changed my mind when I'm in fact part of the 30% and haven't changed my mind.

This question was mainly for fun, but Lady Tybur decidedly wins the award for Best “Bitch Please” Face™. Hopefully we get more fun looks from her next chapter! 

Imma let you finish, but Lady Tybur has the best side eye in all of SnK

Ms. Tyber has the best death glare!

There’s some division on this question, but it’s a near-tie between Armin getting involved in the fight and the Paradis crew’s ticket out of Marley showing up. 

They'll drop sour cream bombs

At this point John Cena might as well show up.

Annie will arrive (let me dream)

I think time is running for them to scape "safely", but not necessarily through a zeppelin

I think what Jean & Zeke mean by "It's almost time/times running out" is that Eren needs to make contact with Zeke before the Colossal Wall Titans arrive so Eren will be able to control them. If Eren doesn't touch Zeke before the Wall Titans arrive, everyone including the SC & Eldians will die.

I believe that the question about the lights up are relationed with Hanji, after all, Armin is too distance. In fact, I think that the thoughts about an escape through a zepplin are a little bit awkward.  And I think that zeke escaped using the DMT, wich he took when he said goodbye to piecke and porko, before eren showed up.

Most of you still believe that Jean is clinging onto his humanity (and with good reason after he called Floch out in the previous chapter for being too zealous). The expectation is that he will avoid harming Falco or that someone else will step in and do the dirty work instead. 

I noticed that jean is only attacking the shifters on shiganshina battle arc. which can tell a lot about his war ethics and strategics. he’s only fighting those who declared war on them first, almost as if trying to ignore those who got caught up into it.

Jean will kill Falco. I think becasue it's a callback for that girl from MP that Jean couldn't kill from Uprising

Last month nearly all of the scores were tied with both pessimism and optimism about Annie’s fate. This month, there seems to be more optimism, but most people are still hanging out in the area of uncertainty. We hope to get a clear answer soon!

Since Eren said that the crystal was, as expected, unbreakable AFTER pointing out it was like Annie's, I take that to mean he has tried chewing Annie's crystal open but failed like he did this time. I'm not sure why so many people seem to be taking this to mean that he was able to eat Annie when the scene actually reassures me that he hasn't

I had absolutely no hope for Annie being alive, but seeing Lady Tybur being conscious while inside the crystal changed my mind. Annie could still be alive. And if she is, she spent YEARS in the crystal while being aware of her surroundings??? I am shook

It has already been hinted several times that Annie would eventually return. I don't think Isayama would forget about her, and if it appears to be true, that she's returning next chapter, I hope to see her work with the Survey Corps, or a backstory/flashback, which explains the reason why she'll be working with the Survey Corps from now on.

Almost 35% of you are ready to just see Lady Tybur kick the bucket already, but a good 28% of you would at least like to see her have a chat with Eren first.

why do so many people want lady tybur to die?? i don’t understand?? she’s cool and has done nothing wrong to anyone like ever??? she’s even called a villain?? excuse me tell me one villainous thing she did?? she’s a decent human being but i guess how dare she beat eren’s ass up and defend her people... 🤦🏻‍♀️

Eren needs to swallow her whole (insert lemmy face)

Over 60% of you believe that the Survey Corps’ goal is to kill the enemy titan shifters.

I strongly disagree with having only 2 options in the "capture or to kill them?" question. The real answer, is, I believe, either one. If they can deprive Marley of a weapon and add it to their strength, is clearly the ideal. But, if the choice comes down to kill or they escape, they'll absolutely just kill them. Depriving your enemy of a weapon is always a better choice than letting them continue attacking you with it, in the hopes you could take it later.

I still maintain that the goal was to avoid any and all combat with the shifters; hence Pieck and Porcos trap. (Why bother setting the whole thing up? Why not just kill them?) My guess is that capturing them for their titan powers was the next step, although that's obviously failed. I feel like the end game here is to gather all the titan somehow and unite them for...??? Something??? World peace??? Shit, that sounds like a good idea. Unrealistic but good.

It’s a near-tie between believing that either Zeke orchestrated capturing Porco and Pieck or believe that he did it as a larger plan with the Survey Corps.

Maybe Zeke wanted to isolate Pieck and Porco in the trap, to save their lives?

Most of you seem to have given up on figuring out Trapdoor-kun’s identity. But a fair chunk of you think it could have been a current day Eldian restorationist! There’s still a good amount of you who believe it’s Connie as well.

Hiroyuki Sawano

Erwin it was erwin. You thought he was dead? You fool he's not!  He's immortal,  he's still here and  with the strength of his eyebrows he will kick everyone's ass.

I really don't care at this point

One thing is certain, at least 65% of you guys believe that the Jaeger Brothers have the best Eldian asses! It seems nice booties run in the family! 

I can forgive people supporting  Marley, but WHO THE HELL VOTED ON ZEKE ASS?????

Everyone who chose zeke’s Titan as having the best ass is a furry goodbye

Levi is jealous of Zeke's Eldian ass.

porco got a nice ass uwu

That question.... I don't care about titan's butts -_-

I like Eldian asses

Predicting who Isayama kills off has always been difficult, but over half of you believe that Pieck is going to be toast in the next chapter, with Jean following in  second, Porco a distant third.

Gabi you better not be aiming that rifle at my husbando Jean also can everyone of Paradis and Eldia have a party at the newly created bay, I want the warriors AND the SC to live please and thank you

Pieck and Porco will likely die next chapter 😪

I swear to god Flocke if you lay even one finger on little Falco or Gabi I will personally hunt you down, you'll be lucky if I find you first though. Because other wise the Armored titan will kill you dead. You will then, rest in pieces.

Protect Jean and Falco 2k18

pieck cant die, nor can any 104th  members

At 57%, a majority are thirsty for answers on the Paradis Crew’s last 4 years. 

I need Paradis flashbacks but first I'd like to be sure no one major dies, thanks.

I stg we'll have that fucking Paradis flashback right before Levi's death. Fucking Isayama.

I really don’t want a crap ton of flashbacks I’m Ngl I just kinda wanna get moving I know the q and a said stuff but like that’s my thought at the moment.

I really hope the next chapters a flashback to paradis i mean it would be neat for the 104th chapter to be a flashback ABOUT THE 104TH

As expected of the redditors, you’re still the overwhelming majority of the poll takers! ;)

ANY OTHER CHAPTER THOUGHTS YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE?

So chomping down on Lady Tybur's crystal won't break it and apparently neither will the thunder spears. We still haven't seen Eren try to use his hardening ability to break it but honestly, I think his only option now is to use the coordinate. It could be revealed soon that only the person inside the crystal can break themselves out and by using the coordinate, Eren can order her to do so. After all, we've seen Eren control mindless titans, but would unlocking the full powers of the founding titan allow him to control shifters as well?

Bertholdt's death was such a surprise to Porco... When Reiner returned to Marley, he gave his full report about what had happened, so if he was aware of Bertholdt's death, then he would have reported it, thus leading to Porco knowing that Bertholdt was already dead. Does that mean that Reiner has no idea that Bertholdt is dead? Was he hoping that Bertholdt managed to escape and was still alive on Paradis?

"Friendship ended with mr Kruger, now Reiner is my best friend." - Falco

Personally I'm not a huge fan of action heavy chapters like this as they take a few read throughs to get a good picture of what's going on. Although I do think the intention at the minute is to make us feel a bit lost as to motivations and who is supporting who. So I'm going to roll with it and be surprised when the reveals happen.

I think Porco will get Marcel's confession memory soon.

Even if it's all a plan made by Zeke and Scouts, the fact that SC soldiers still died , unaware of the bigger plan, makes me really sad. It's like with the plan to capture Annie back in the Giant Trees forest and Stohess. Back then it was Erwin who organized the plan, now it's Hanji's turn?

I. WANT. ANNIE. TO. RETURN.

I want Bert to Mufasa the fuck out of Reiner

Zeke is lucky he had royal blood as a bargaining chip to convince Paradis to team up. Otherwise he stood no chance if they had to fight for real. I don't think Zeke is a master planner, maybe he has an end goal, but he isn't a genius who has planned every step to get there. He gets lucky and bailed out by others and his conveniently relevant Senju DNA too often to be a keikaku master.

GIB COLOSSAL NO-LONGER-COCONUT

In before Jean's thrust into mortal danger via Gabi and Armin shows up to save his ass at the last second YET AGAIN

everyone simmer down like people in this fandom need to steal some of erens drinks from his apparently extensive alcohol stash like gdi I’m losing it guys I have a family and stuff I have alife and y’all losinf it and making me go crazy too like w t f.

Honestly, I was over the moon when Levi took down Zeke, but it did seem a little too easy...I highly doubt Zeke would go down easily. Also, Armin's haunted expression broke my heart. You can see the pain in his eyes, and that makes me even more curious about what's happened on Paradis over the last few years.

In my first read i thought that Armin had a ponytail and i got excited. Some users corrected me and when i re-read the chapter i found it was just his hand. I feel betrayal

Eren has more stamina than the Energiser Battery Rabbit: he can just keep on going, and going, and going...

I spent the entire chapter going "Get back in the damn titan, Porco!" I died with the panzer squad. RIP me."

Low key I have had no idea what’s been happening since 101

#snk polls #snk poll #snk spoilers #poll results #thanks everyone who participated! #long post

[bizarre-dollhouse]

Yana Toboso’s Writing Style: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I’LL STOP WRITING LONG WINDED KURO POSTS WHEN I’M DEAD.

I do my best to stay out of Kuro discourse because...I just hate it and find it’s usually about stuff that’s pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things. But within the past several months I’ve noticed a new point of contention is the author herself, which I think is an actual good point of contention because it opens up an interesting conversation about the work as a whole and how/why Kuro is the way it is (aka good, bad, and...tonally confused to say the least). 

And just to make things perfectly clear, this is an opinion piece about Yana Toboso’s strengths and weaknesses as a mangaka. This is not me telling people that they’re viewing the series all wrong and that I’m right. I just want to open up a discussion (in fact, I welcome people disagreeing with me, I just want it to be clear that this is not an attack on other people’s opinions, it’s just my opinions).

Lots of text under the cut.

I’m going to start with what I like about Kuro, since I’ve been reading it for like, 5 years and own 25 volumes of it (including one I just bought like 2 weeks ago). 

The Good:

What I think is by far Yana’s biggest strength is her characters. They all have very distinct personalities, but aren’t just one note. There’s also a lot of them; one thing that struck me when I reread all of Kuro was just how big the cast is and how it feels even bigger because a very large portion of the cast have their own arcs, whether it be during the course of the series or in their backstories (or both). 

Even the villains are a really good variety of comedic, evil/scary, and sympathetic (except maybe the first mobster guy but the first arc kinda sucks anyway and is mostly just for plot establishment. And I guess the curry contest guy kinda sucks too but that arc is all about Soma and Agni so I can give it a pass). Baron Kelvin is piss-your-pants terrifying in his appearance, actions, and behaviour, but still has a backstory that isn’t at all sympathetic but makes you understand his motivations. 

I think that’s the key for all of the villains/characters in general; everyone has motivations that make sense even if they’re not relatable. 

I also think the fact that most people in the fandom want spin-offs (about the reapers, Vincent and Dee, the servants, the season 2 cast, etc.) is indicative of how good these characters are. There’s a sense that most of them could hold their own story.

I also think that the characters interact well with each other, whether it be in a fun way or a more serious way. Narrowing it down to the 2 mains, one aspect of Kuro that keeps me coming back is how Ciel and Sebastian work off of each other with their dialogue and general attitude towards each other. They’re both in a weird position where they kind of hate each other (Seb finds Ciel annoying and troublesome while Ciel is always a little afraid of Seb) but also need each other (Ciel needs protection/a weapon of mass destruction, and Sebastian needs food). Due to this weird situation, they’ve developed this comedic dialogue that’s kind of born from their repressed emotions. TBH the way they work off of each other has made them my favourite sherlock/watson duo.

The only flaw with the character writing I think is Sebastian, who’s kind of inconsistent. But chapter 137 served as a kind of reminder that his human personality is 100% an act (aside from maybe his cat fascination...). But yeah, for the most part Kuro has a top notch cast.

Another thing I think Yana is really good at is foreshadowing. This might be a touch contentious, but I maintain my earlier stance that a big reason people hate the 2ct being canon is because of expectations and the fact that it’s a cliche is western culture (and personal taste, of course). Rereading the series was unbelievable because there were so many “AHA” moments and “how could I have been so blind?” moments. I think any plot twist that makes you go back and read a series and say “ooooh thaaaat’s what that waaaaas” like 90 times had some good set up to it. (Actually rereading the Campania and the Green Witch arcs made me feel like it might have even been too obvious...but a lot of people still didn’t catch it so, kudos). 

Even in the Curry arc there’s tidbits of foreshadowing for the servants backstories, and I’m sure other speculation that’s going on right now will have some pay off in future chapters (some of it, anyway). All in all, the series made for a great second go because of all the little hints that can be caught once you know future plot points.

Yana Toboso also has a lot of really good ideas. The execution can go either way, but the concepts of most (definitely not all) of the Kuro arcs are like...really great. Some of them are these alternate spins on history that come from these creative supernatural elements (side note: I like how the zombies in the kuro-verse bite people because they want to consume a soul, but can never succeed. It’s both creative and a little fucked up). Or then there’s something like the Green Witch arc that plays out like a Scooby Doo episode but it’s got all of this weird stuff about war and poison and psychology and dreams and other good shit. Even though I think the cricket match went on for way to long, I’ll admit that the idea of this evil genius murderous noble achieving his goals by cheating at the worlds most boring sport is kind of funny.

I hate the boyband arc though I’m sorry that was not a good idea i hat--

Despite some fan-servicy bits (which I’ll talk about A LOT later) Kuroshitsuji feels like a passion project. This is pure speculation, but if you read the extra behind the scenes bits in the manga volumes, Yana talks about all of the books she read to prepare for this, or how she actually took cricket lessons with her editor despite the fact that they were awkwardly old to be in beginner lessons. She also did a shit ton of work for anime-only character designs and other promotional stuff while still publishing a chapter every month.

Even without the “behind the scenes” stuff, the amount of references that can be found in her work and the fact that she never misses a month even when she’s publishing bonus chapters gives off the sense that she cares about this.

Though again, 100% speculation.

I also hugely appreciate the mixture of comedy and tragedy in Kuro. (It opens up some problems, but we’ll get to those later). It’s not a slog to get through but it also doesn’t feel...pointless? I guess?? It’s mostly a dark comedy with action-y moments that then becomes a genuine horrific tragedy. It’s kind of hard to explain why I like this combo, but if it helps anyone relate to what i’m saying, it’s like the tone shifts in Angel Beats and how that show is both enjoyable and a total cry-fest. Same with Kuro except with different genre trappings. There’s a sense that anything could happen since it’s not all tied to one tone. Tone pieces definitely aren’t a bad thing, but I like the huge variety that can be found in this one series.

That being said...

The Bad:

I’ve said this approximately 37359767 times on this blog, but I’ll say it again.

Kuroshitsuji has a pacing problem. A really bad pacing problem.

There’s literally an arc where Ciel goes to a school, makes some enemies Mean Girls style, plays sports, and then finds out the bad guy is the same bad buy from the last arc who’s plans have changed only slightly. This is one of the longest arcs in the series.

This. Strikes me as a bad idea from a structural standpoint. The arc isn’t really a bad idea, but it’s like...a 2 volume idea, y’know?

I’ve already talked at length about how bad the pacing of the blue cult arc was so i won’t repeat myself but, yeah. Unbelievable waste of time also huge missed opportunity for a Phantom of the Opera spoof like are you kidding me ALL OF THE PIECES WERE THER--

A lot of people complain about the Green Witch arc’s pacing since it’s really long and has a weird act structure (which it is and does respectively). This is something that doesn’t bother me at all but I feel like it’s worth bringing up since it bothered a lot of people, so maybe it’s something I just don’t see.

Also even though I like the mix of comedy and horror/tragedy, sometimes it doesn’t flow very well. This is especially apparent in the boyband arc, where the jump from stupid to serious is break-neck, and the lack of interesting events that happen in the school arc.

Kuroshitsuji is also at a disadvantage being a monthly publication instead of a weekly one, which makes the stretched out parts feel even more stretched out. It isn’t tailored to this release schedule (although I wouldn’t know how to fix this particular problem other than to just...tighten things up pacing wise). 

Yana also has a tendency to expect her readers to read her mind. What I mean by this is that she’ll say things on twitter/her blog like “Sebastian is the main character of Kuro” or “Ciel and Sebastian have no emotional connection,” and like a million other things.

....She says it like it’s obvious but if you go on tumblr or forums or anywhere...clearly not everyone sees these things and will often ask questions about her posts because they seem so not-obvious. 

Which is super weird because (if I remember correctly), she once said that people can interpret her work however they want, but she seems to be actively discouraging that.

This is another thing that makes me think Kuro is a passion project. It’s like she feels the need to make sure everyone sees everything that she’s thought of...but it doesn’t work if it’s not actually weaved into the narrative, then it’s just confusing.

This bothers me a lot because as a university English Major I’ve had “Death of the Author” drilled into my brainstem and Yana’s actively fighting me on it. Please make things more obvious in your story if you want readers to understand them.

Of course there’s a bunch of supernatural inconsistencies like “if Sebastian/the reapers/this supernatural thing could do this, why couldn’t they do this? how does this work?” (like, it’s implied that the reapers can make themselves invisible to humans if they want...so why do Grell and Ron show up to the Campania in full visibility? All the time?). Stuff like this is a problem with literally every supernatural story ever, so I try not to harp on it, but it’s there.

Tiiiiiiime for the most contentious topic.

The Ugly:

I’ll say this a bluntly and straightforward as I possibly can: Kuroshitsuji is kind of perverted. 

It is.

While the rumour that Kuroshitsuji was supposed to be a yaoi has been thoroughly debunked, Yana did used to draw BL staring young boys under the name “Yanao Rock.” 

....Yeeeaaaah it unfortunately comes through in Kuro. The unbelievably infamous corset scene is played as a joke, but it is the most perverted joke in the history of the universe.

One thing that blows my mind (in a bad way) is that one panel where Ciel’s having an asthma attack (you all know exactly what I’m talking about) and it can be so easily seen as looking pornographic when out of context. There’s also that recent cover page (I believe for chapter 136?) where RC and OC are lying in a kind of state of undress and they look really pretty even though the context is horrifying. 

Also that scene of RC swallowing the ring is drawn really pretty which is...a weird scene to have drawn really pretty.

i’ve heard people say that this all means nothing and we’re all reading too much into it, which I don’t buy for a second. I’ve also heard people say it’s for fujoshi fan service to which I’m kind of like....maybe?

This is based on 100% speculation, not at all fact, but I think the most obvious explanation is Yana is drawing beautiful boys in weird positions because she’s good at/likes drawing beautiful boys.

I’m not saying this is a good thing or an ironclad excuse, because it’s noooot. It comes across as pretty tasteless, especially given recent developments. It reminds me of the snake arc in Bakemonogatari or the weird shit that’s in the Made in Abyss manga; like this sexual shit feels very odd in these stories but there’s a sinking feeling that the author threw it in for their own enjoyment, like they were maaaybe trying to be sneaky and failed.

That being said, in that one particular scene in chapter 135 that actually deals with legit sexual abuse, I...didn’t think that sexualization felt perverted outside the context of the narrative (IT DEFINITELY WAS PERVERTED WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE NARRATIVE, DON’T GET ME WRONG). And this isn’t just going off of Yana’s bullshit tweet because, like I said earlier, these things should be clear to the audience within the work itself. It was nasty as fuck, but I could see a scene being portrayed similarly in something like Berserk or Game of Thrones or any grim dark story, and no one being as mad at the creator BUT

BUUUUUUUUT that’s the issue! Kuroshitsuji is not Berserk or Game of Thrones! The issue with the series being a tonal cluster-fuck is that scenes about explicit sexual assault don’t fit in a black comedy formula so it feels weird. THIS ISSUE IS EXACERBATED GREATLY BY THE LACK OF TACT DISPLAYED IN OTHER SCENES THAT CAN BE READ AS/ARE SEXUAL. Yana made it really hard for this scene to be okay by being all loose with tone and the visual presentation of younger male characters earlier in the series.

Huge problem. Very unfortunate.

Conclusions:

I felt compelled to make this post because Kuroshitsuji is a series where the artist is not abstract. With most shows or movies people say “that movie was good” or “that show was bad” or whatever. But in Kuro discourse it’s always “Yana Toboso did bad” or “Yana Toboso did good.” 

I’m not saying this is bad....(in fact it’s probably good since Yana (and K-san) are being rightfully complimented/dragged based on the merit of their work) It is interesting, though, that Kuro discourse made a sliiiight shift from the work to the author. So, this was me trying to tie the author and the work together.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

#kuroshitsuji #black butler #Yana Toboso #text