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welcome-to-green-hills · 3 years

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Sonic the Hedgehog Movie 2: POTENTIAL TEST SCREENING

A couple weeks ago, a Reddit User under the name “Madethis4Sonicmovie2” created a post discussing their test screening experiences on the second Sonic the Hedgehog film. Throughout the discussion post, the Reddit user explains that they are not a Sonic fan. Most of what the user writes was how they’ve interpreted the scene and their understanding of the lore through some games that they’ve played. That, and they also try to compare some of the scenes to DBZ, a franchise that they’re much more familiar with. The user also make it a point to state that they view themselves as a “harsh critic,” though do apologize for it. They’re also not used to critiquing children’s media, which they also state a few times in their post. If they’re not clear on what they saw in their test screening, they ask for the reference meaning to the Sonic Community. The Reddit user also says that they did see the first film and greatly enjoyed the second one better.

Even though they believed for the film to be a generic kid’s film, they believe that this film will appeal to fans and non-fans more than the first one did.

There wasn’t much of a summary to go other than reading about the emotions and some of the trivia that they’ve seen. Most of the film was still in its post-production stage. Some scenes were not complete while others needed tweaking on lighting and shading on the CGI characters. The overall impression that they’ve received from the film was that it was very enjoyable with much more world building. Because it’s done a good job with explaining certain scenarios to the audience, the Reddit user believes that it wouldn’t be hard for outsiders of the fandom to understand. The only thing that some audience members would struggle with in the film were the inside jokes that long-term fans would understand.

With this in mind, this is what the Reddit post detailed. Keep in mind that these are spoilers.

Key Notes:

The moral of the movie is “if you believe in yourself, then anything is possible!” On a side note, the Reddit user believes that this theme applied more to Tails rather than Sonic, stating that Tails has a moment where he gains enough courage to help Sonic fight.

Though the Reddit user does debate that Sonic has more confidence in himself than he did in the first film. He’s still the “Sonic” seen in the first film, him being a kid, but he’s learning to understand the role of being a superhero.

There is placeholder music and licensed music in the film as well. No mention so far of Crush 40 appearing in the film.

The Reddit user explains that Jim Carrey nailed the role! They also explain that Dr. Robotnik is a complete maniac.

(This is an open definition to viewers. It could range from comical to something darker).

Dr. Robotnik invents a teleportation device.

Dr. Robotnik also dresses in black clothing like he did in the first film.

The Reddit user supports this remark by detailing a scene where Dr. Robotnik loses his cool a bit when returning to Earth and complains about how he was outsmarted by a “rejected Dr. Seuss character.”

Dr. Robotnik does create Badniks and references them as “Badniks.”

The Reddit user gave the example of the motorbug looking like a motorcycle with a ladybug exterior. Buzzbombers look more like wasps.

There is a “robot version of Eggman.”

Metal Sonic does not make an appearance. The Reddit user does believe that G.U.N. may have hinted that they’re building Metal Sonic.

It’s also important to note that there were no mentions of Silver and AmyRose in their screening.

There are heavy nods to Sonic Lore, specifically with the echidna tribes. Most of the lore is explained in either flashbacks and/or with echidna lore.

Most of the time is spent on Earth, but we do see other planets. Sonic and Tails do travel all around the world.

The Reddit user also says that we see more of Sonic’s world when Dr. Robotnik tries to teleport back to Earth.

There are heavy nods to both inside and outside references of the Sonic Franchise. Due to their experiences with the franchise, they inform other Reddit users that they couldn’t share and explains all of the references.

However, they were very happy with Sonic fans when hearing their feedback and learning what some references are.

At this time, the voice actor/actress for Tails is still undetermined. The Reddit user said “it was like Tom Holland, but with a higher-pitched voice.”

Sonic makes a remark saying, “You’re too slow!”

Sonic makes a remark saying, “I’m not a rat! I’m a hedgehog!”

Knuckles makes a remark saying, “Knock, knock scrambled egg.”

(The Reddit user explains that this scene in the movie was also very enjoyable).

Sonic and Tails bond over how they know Longclaw in the film. The Reddit user explains that this is their favorite scene in the movie.

Knuckles has an American-like accent, not a British one.

Sonic encounters Tails on a run, but “freaks out” when he sees another alien creature like him. Sonic also freaks out when he sees that Tails can almost match his speed while running.

There is a funny scene of Sonic enjoying his alone time at home, even showing a montage of all the things that he shouldn’t do when Tom and Maddie are at home.

(Think of the montage scene from Home Alone (1990′s).

The Reddit user explains that Knuckles was exiled from the clan for freeing Longclaw as a prank with friends.

There is an artist in the movie that tries to draw Sonic. To Sonic’s discovery, he sees that the artist drew his 2019 design and plays “Gangster’s Paradise” on the radio.

The Reddit user states that they believe that this is the crew’s nod to the original design.

The Reddit user says that there were scenes in the movie that they felt like were more of a placeholder in the film. The reference to Gremlin Sonic being one of these scenes.

Tom and Maddie do go to Rachel and Randall’s wedding.

There are several action scenes, but the Reddit user explains that the most enjoyable ones are when Sonic and Tails fight Knuckles a couple of times.

And with the action scenes, there are many Quicksilver references that Sonic does as well.

On top of that, the Reddit user explains that each character has their own unique abilities. (For example, Sonic is associated with having powers cater to the element of lightning).

Longclaw is alive in the film, but she’s aged and weak.

Longclaw sends Tails to Earth to retrieve Sonic due to her wanting him to safe.

Sonic stays at home on planet Earth, but is supplied with many rings to travel back and forth to visit Knuckles Tails, and Longclaw.

Sonic being a living chaos emerald could be true, but the Reddit user explains that an emerald was sealed inside of Sonic after being born.

Chaos emeralds are not referenced as “Chaos Emeralds” in the film, they were referenced as just “emeralds.”

However, the Reddit user does recap that there might be a name and they didn’t catch it.

Super Sonic is not referenced as “Super Sonic” in the film, but as something else.

Super Sonic can fly in the film and doesn’t need all seven Chaos Emeralds to go “super.”

Sonic references Tails as “Miles” a few times that they meet, but later gives him the nickname “Tails.”

There is a post-credit scene. The Reddit user believes that it’s a heavy nod to Shadow the Hedgehog due to the there being multiple clones modeled like Sonic that G.U.N. has made.

Due to this post-credit scene, the Reddit user holds hopes that there will be a third movie soon.

As of now, the Reddit post is still available for you to read. The Reddit user is mindful of the NDA and purposely phrased some of their spoilers to be vague, but knows that their thread may be removed soon. I know that these may sound fake, however, there have been individuals in the past who have viewed the first film and proved to be right. Like many of you, I hope that this is a real but I will remain cautious. If these facts resurface as being false, let’s not attack the individual. The only that should matter is that we’re excited for the second film. Be mindful that they’re a human being as well. Treat others the way that you would like to be treated.

What are all of your thoughts so far of the film? Share your thoughts and opinions! And if you’ve spotted something that I’ve missed, please share with me! I’m very excited to know!

((SOURCE)).

#SonicMovie2Spoilers #Sonic Movie #Sonic Movie 2 #Sonic Wachowski #Sonic the Hedgehog #Tails the Fox #Knuckles the Echidna #Dr. Robotnik #Dr. Eggman #Ready4Round2WithTheBlue #Sonic the Hedgehog Movie 2022 #POTENTIAL SPOILER

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somnianus · 3 years

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On Chinese and Eastern Dramatic Acting vs Western

Part 1 Part 2

Mostly in ref to the Untamed/Word of Honor, but applies to a lot of East Asian works-

I’ve been getting the sense that people I know from the west (also being Asian-American myself) often interpret Chinese/Japanese/Korean drama and theatre to be too corny/cheesy/over-acted. A quick search on some internet forums confirms this. Maybe it’s because I used to watch a lot of C-dramas when I was a kid (Legend of the Condor Heroes/Return of C Heroes/Journey to the West/The Reincarnated Princess/etc), I personally did not notice that the acting was over the top.

I don’t really speak for the quality of acting of these actors because I barely follow them in their careers, but I do know that some of them are immature actors or don’t have much formal training (which may cause the cheesiness above). However, Eastern dramatic acting in general does seem like a common complaint, so I decided to look into it - this is all coming from someone who JUST recently got back into watching C-dramas btw, doing my own research so don’t mind me if there’s some incorrect things down here, I am by NO means at all an expert in drama and theater (lol):

^Villains are often depicted with very exaggerated facial expressions (Above, Xue Yang, The Untamed)

Part 1

1. Chinese concept of mo vs western equivalent of “mimesis” or “imitation”

From this, an excellent chapter on Chinese theatrical concepts vs Western concepts.

Mo plays a significant part in traditional Chinese theatre, usually held to be antithetical to the realism of Western theatre because of its emphasis on theatricality.

Mo means mimesis or imitation, but in a very different sense from the Western concept. One of the first Chinese scholars to use this term, Fu Sinian, used it to compare Western theatre to Chinese theatre:

Presenting a real event and performing an entertaining show are not compatible. The former emphasizes imitation (yige zhong mofang^b); the latter stresses spontaneity and entertainment. The former performance produces a lifelike image; the latter has nothing to produce. The former puts emphasis on the plot; the latter puts emphasis on theatricality. Therefore they are completely contradictory to one another.

This guy actually goes onto critique Chinese theater, saying it should be more like Western realism, so that there will “be no singing, and the acting will imitate people’s real gestures.” However! Other Chinese critics tried to approach Western vs traditional Chinese drama as two DIFFERENT but still valid forms of art. For example, Yu Shangyuan (1927) said western performance is “writing realistically” (xie shi) and chinese performance as “writing suggestively” (xie yi). Western dramas really rely on an accurate/semi-accurate representation of life and realism. Traditional Chinese drama and acting relied on the “symbolic and imaginative.”

Then what is mo? It is the emotional display, the emotional revelation, that is shown on stage. Starting from the Yuan dynasty, the Chinese drama was thought to be a continuation of poetry rather than its own independent stage art.

Poetry is where the intent of the heart goes. Lying in the heart, it is “intent”; when uttered in words, it is “poetry.” When an emotion stirs inside, one expresses it in words; finding this inadequate, one sighs over it; not content with this, one sings it in poetry; still not satisfied, one unconsciously dances with one’s hands and feet. [anonymous, 1975, from Shi Daxu 200 BCE]

Chinese drama with dancing and singing, was the most expressive product of poetry. The importance of mo cannot be stressed enough - it is the measure by which traditional Chinese drama was judged, how well this drama make you feel? Love, pain, loss, guilt, happiness? Plot becomes something that doesn’t matter as much (more on that later).

^Beijing/Peking Opera - highly stylized, emotive, “unrealistic” performances

To emphasize how central and important this concept is, it’s thought that a good Chinese playwright never fails to “seize a highly dramatic scene to stage an elaborate presentation of an emotional state.”

Love is of source unknown, yet it grows ever deeper. The living may die of it, by its power the dead live again. [Peony Pavilion, Mu dan ting]

This quote really shows how important it was to show these emotions on stage, to inspire the audience to feel deeply. Chinese critics believed that the best part about drama was how efficient it is to display emotion. Playwrights should “depict extreme bitterness, extreme happiness, extreme silliness, and extreme sobriety; imitate these feelings to the utmost (miao mo jin xing^p).”

Such performances are not necessarily accurately mimicking reality, but they are obtained through the “revelation” of a character’s internal emotional world.

2. Mo vs the depiction of reality or theatrical truth

The Chinese concept of aesthetic truth relates a lot to theatrical truth. In a lot of traditional Chinese art, painting, poetry, etc, aesthetic truth is not empirical, and doesn’t have to be accurate to life, or realistic. It’s a “truth that lies beyond mere superficial likeness.”

To the Chinese artist, an accurate resemblance between art and reality is not only superficial but often distorting. Chinese artists hold a dialectical view on the “form” (xing) and the “spirit” or “content” (shen) of an artistic object. According to them, xing and shen are not always complementary. On the contrary, they often stand in opposition to one another. (referenced in the chapter above)

Traditional Chinese artists would rather represent the object with the wish that their representation matches its spirit, or abstract identity, than its actual form because a “photographic image is a shallow image.” It’s easy to draw a picture of something realistically, but it’s much harder and more satisfying to depict its nature, its feeling, its spirit.

This also naturally affects theater and dramatic performances.

Dramatic writing can be divided into two types: “a painting-like work” or a “transformed work,” in which the latter has higher artistic value because it reaches more towards the essence of dramatic object. Realistic imitations are fine, but they’re not really enough to reveal the mo or true feelings of something.

In addition, traditional Chinese dramatists believe that “all dramas are nothing but allegories. One need not ask about their origins in actual life.” You might be able to see, then, that these older playwrights and critics really fancied the overdramatic depictions of emotions.

a. The Chinese notion of theatrical truth/aesthetic truth vs European

Onto what we, as part of the Western audience, are more used to:

For Italian neoclassical critics, the pleasure of a drama hinges on how accurate, how realistic, the depiction is. Castelvetro, the leading Italian Neo-Classical critic and creator of the concept of “the three unities,” claims thus:

We cannot imagine a king who did not exist, nor attribute any action to him.

Another Italian critic, Robortellus, said that a creative/imaginative story with no “verisimilitude” (truthfulness, in this context, realism) is less appealing than one that imitates a real-life event:

Thus if a tragic plot contained an action which did not really take place and was not true, but was represented by the poet himself in accordance with verisimiltude, it would perhaps move the souls of the auditors, but certainly less.

So basically, it’s fundamentally the opposite of Chinese theater. Italian dramatic works prized being realistic, being properly adapted from reality and real events. Chinese dramatic works, however, enjoyed the emphasis on heartfelt emotional demonstrations, or mo. Even in critical writings, the word “truth” is used, but it is usually used to modify the word “heart” or “emotion.” It is very concerned with the internal, the truthfulness of heartfelt emotional expression.

Taken these contexts, you can see why the Chinese stage/dramas are wholly “unreal” as Tao-Ching Hsu puts it. Everything, the makeup, the costumes, the props, is expressive and suggestive rather than imitative.

b. Bejing/Peking Opera, jingju

A famous example is the Beijing/Peking Opera, jingju. The makeup and costumes themselves are fantastical representations. The colors and patterns suggest different moods, temperaments, characters, and even changes in emotions. Actors would make distinct movements to depict distinct emotions with varying levels of energy. The stage itself may be sparse, because it is not as important as the expression of emotion and drama.

The stage is sparse not because of the lack of technology or funding, but because it leaves room for the actor themselves to fully express their internal thinking/feeling/emotions. Characters can cross hundreds of miles in a few steps or may take the whole stage to cross a supposed road. This representation looks “unreal” to a realistic-minded audience, but it is very genuine to a Chinese audience.

Summary (so far)

This crucial understanding of the concept of mo (the emotional revelation), and the way traditional Chinese drama depicts life and stories, informs how their modern works are also portrayed. Coming from a Western dramatic background, where realism and plot are the most important aspects of a work, it can be very confusing, right? Even Chinese scholars began to judge their own dramatic works through a Western lens.

How does this traditional background affect modern Chinese dramas and works? I think it still has a very large effect, even though much of Western ideals about dramatic works have been heavily integrated into modern Chinese dramas.

Part 2: On Theatricality and how it transfers into Chinese Cinema

#cdramas #theater #acting style #beijing opera #the untamed #word of honor #kdramas #jdramas #theatricality #east asian cinema

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cryptidmads · 3 years

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good evening nsr community, i went through the ama from today and came back with an armful or two of lore. there’s a bunch more than last time, and i included bbj as well as the npcs. cozy up, check under the cut, and prepare for a long read. enjoy!

today's ama featured wan hazmer and daim dziauddin again, as well as concept artist ellie and animator ben fong.

BUNK BED JUNCTION (FT. DK WEST)

- mayday and zuke live in the sewers because they're an underground band. it's a pun - there were originally two variations of bbj leaving the sewers - one with mayday hi-fiving gigi (which had a 95% chance of happening), and one with zuke awkwardly fumbling and attempting to hi-five gigi (which had a 5% chance) - one of the inspirations for mayday and zuke were the two main characters of samurai champloo (zuke was jin, mayday was mugen) - someone asked about if the rest of the cast had their own shadow puppets. ben suggested a lemur for mayday, while ellie suggested a zucchini for zuke. she may have been joking. - mayday's guitar solos were done by different people, but zuke's drum solos were all done by bruno valverde. - zuke was the one who implemented the canister thing into mayday's guitar. - someone asked who of the cast are the introverts and who are the extroverts. mayday is an extrovert, zuke is an introvert. - the team does have a bit of lore for mayday and zuke and how they met, but they want to save it in case of a future project. - mayday was inspired by both genevieve from company of thieves and the unbreakable kimmy schmidt. - ben did the animation for mayday swinging the hammer in the workshop. - haz recalls seeing some fanart of mayday being brought up as a rich girl. he doesn't remember the artist, but he does like the idea. - the japanese version has zuke say he has a phd rather than a master's degree. this is apparently a mistake. - the pattern on zuke's pants was inspired by jolyne cujoh and prosciutto from jojo's bizarre adventure. - zuke's toilet seat collection came partially from a story from one of the environmental artists where one of their high school friends pranked another friend with a toilet seat. - zuke does a lot of reading and is naturally inquisitive about things like tech and mechanics. - dk west's shadow puppet abilities might run in the family, and zuke may have it as well. - both zuke and dk west are connected by percussion (zuke with the drums, west with the hand claps) - zuke and west weren't always designed to be related -- west was originally designed as "some guy who comes and goes," but was made into zuke's brother later on in production - dk west is an extrovert.

DJ SUBATOMIC SUPERNOVA

- djss' dj name is obviously a stage name, but the team didn't have a real name for him in the script or anything. - haz joked that his name is bob salad. that's not canon but from what i seen the chat loved it lol - haz brings up the symbolism of djss spinning the planets around himself and how it represents that he thinks of himself as the center of the universe. - ellie helped design the districts, and something she noted about dj's is that it's supposed to look the "slummiest" because he cares more about himself and less about things like blackouts. - dj had some lines cut from his boss fight. those lines? mini lectures towards bbj during every phase. they were cut because the team felt like they were too much for the game, but they want to share them one day. - daim says that dj could be either introverted or extroverted becuase of how much time he spends alone looking at the stars. - dj was never planned to have an approach segment, but funk fiction wasn't told that, so he made him an approach theme anyway. - dodo ice pops are traffic light flavoured, which is a popular ice cream in malaysia. it's strawberry, pineapple, and lime flavored.

SAYU AND THE NERD SQUAD

- three of sayu's creators were based on staff members at metronomik. remi (voiced by ben) was based on one of the programmers and one of the environmental artists (ellie calls him "the lovechild of two dudes"), tila was based on (and voiced by) ellie herself, and dodo was based on danish mak (another environmental artist who also voices him). - sofa wasn't based on anyone in particular, he was more of a "general otaku guy" according to ellie (though haz joked that ellie could just say he was based on him). - dodo is daim's favorite npc -- he also designed him! - sayu was ellie's favorite character to design. she loves drawing mermaids. - the progression in sayu's fight where you go deeper into the "ocean" is supposed to be a metaphor for going deeper into the internet/the deep web. - ellie suggested that if sayu were to have a shadow puppet, it would be a cat. - as for the introvert/extrovert debate, daim says sayu is technically comprised of 4 introverts. sayu herself is the extrovert mask they wear. - sayu's ahoge is a submarine periscope. remi looks through it in one of the cutscenes. - sayu's not a mech. she's remotely controlled by her creators from their computer room. - the backstory between remi and tila is meant to show that artists can come from all sorts of backgrounds.

YINU AND MAMA

- yinu's promotional video was one of the first ones done before they brought in lzbros, so it originally looked different from how it looks in the game now. - yinu's mother's eyes are yellow because she spends most of the fight focusing on yinu (who is mainly yellow). when her eyes go blank white, it represents that she's momentarily forgotten what she loves the most. when her eyes become yellow again after the fight, it means she's remembered yinu and her piano playing. - the way ellie describes natura is that yinu is a plant and her mother is very protective of her, and one of the distinctive features is that there are a lot of domes with plants inside, particularly on the roofs of the houses. - yinu's commercial was not intended to reference little miss fortune. the commercial was shown in 2018, while LMF came out a year later. - yinu's mom turning into a giant tree monster isn't exclusive to her just being angry at bbj. apparently the whole plant thing runs in the yinu family.

1010

- 1010's concept as a boy band had been around since before the team started production, but they were the last to be fully designed -- their designs weren't finalized until way later on. - 1010 were ellie’s least favorite characters to design. she doesn't like drawing guys OR robots. - 1010's early designs had them wearing tuxedos. - 1010 do have memories. - the inspiration for the butt plates came from one of ben's gundam figures from his collection in the metronomik office. thanks ben. - ellie's favorite member of 1010 is purl-hew/blue. - eloni/green is apparently the rapper of the group. - the jingle you hear from the carousel in metro division is a carnival remix of 1010's boss theme. - the numbers underneath 1010's names on the autographs are completely random.

NEON J

- neon j is a dancer. daim explains that in addition to being in the navy, dance has always been his true passion. - in the final phase of 1010's fight, he was originally supposed to control the dance moves of the factory as he was fighting you, but it was cut due to limited resources. - daim designed neon j based on ellie's designs for 1010. - neon j's factory's dance moves were all animated by ben -- no mocap needed. the factory was also his favorite thing to animate. - daim says that "neon j is to tatiana as soundwave is to megatron." basically he is extremely loyal to tatiana. - neon j was one of earliest members of nsr. - neon j seeing 1010 as his sons wasn't planned, but daim loves the concept so much that he could see it being canon. - daim says neon j's brain is "probably" still inside the monitor head. somehow. - neon j is an extrovert. - haz likes the idea of neon j being blind and using his sonar to "see" things. ben joked that the screen worked like giant glasses. - neon j originally had red dots that would pop up on his face when the sonar moved by that were meant to represent acne, and that would've been the reason why he's mostly behind the scenes.

EVE

- in mayday's side of the room when eve splits up bbj, the hands all over the walls are meant to be there to show how eve is angrier at mayday than she is at zuke. - the time signature for the music in mayday's room during the fight is 6/8, whereas in zuke's room it's 4/4. - ellie suggested a platypus shadow puppet for eve. the rest of the team seems to be on board. - eve was ben's least favorite character to animate. he said he struggled with animating her dance moves because it was something he'd never done before, and he still doesn't think he did a good enough job. - eve was born with her split skin tone. - apparently eve's near scrapping had something to do with costs. haz was the one who stopped it from happening. - eve's outfit was partly inspired by beyonce, while her jacket was partly inspired by ariana grande. the team took some inspiration from bjork, as well. - the sleeves on eve's jacket were apparently limbs at one point. - eve is an introvert.

NPCS/OTHER CHARACTERS

- part of tatiana's symbolism is how she used to be a rock star, but her flame/passion slowly burned away, and now she's just a rock, referencing how she was literally on fire as the rock star kul fyra, but now looks burnt out. - daim thinks kliff is older than tatiana, probably over 50. - in addition to the neon j dance lore mentioned above, kayane rambling about neon j after the 1010 fight was supposed to be connected to her watching neon j dance. - ben and haz's favorite npc is mia, and ellie's is dj zam. - dj zam was inspired by one of ellie's college friends, who she says "makes you feel comfortable to be around". - ellie thinks dj zam's neck tattoo says "i love mom". - amal the unicorn was inspired by lady amalthea from the 80's animated film "the last unicorn". he was originally written to be a real talking unicorn, but it was changed partially because his horn wasn't in the right spot on his head. - zed was based on game designer dzaid and has hyperacusis, a hearing disorder that makes it difficult to deal with everyday sounds. - yiruk's name is an anagram of kiryu, the protagonist of the yakuza games. - chef sunshine's design is a homage to julia child. she originally had a bigger physique, but was changed to match lylia's bubbly performance.

#no straight roads #nsr #nsr ama #madison speaks #mayday nsr #zuke nsr #dk west #dj subatomic supernova #nsr sayu #yinu nsr #1010 #neon j #eve nsr

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spencers-renaissance · 3 years

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storm-darkened or starry bright

Summary: Spencer contracts HIV. It all falls apart after that.

Tags: angst, illness, hurt!spencer, hurt/comfort, worried derek, depression, mutual pining, getting together, angst w a happy ending

TW: vomit, implied/referenced sex and addiction, disordered thinking, depression as a result of medical diagnosis

Pairing: Derek Morgan x Spencer Reid

Word Count: 6.5k

Masterlist // Read on AO3 // Bad Things Happen Bingo

(I've tagged my usual moreid taglist in this fic, but I won't be offended at all if this is too heavy for you!)

Title from "Where All My Books Go" - W.B. Yeats.

Originally inspired by J_Ballinger's Swift, Fierce & Obscene which is just a brilliant piece of art.

you said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn’t say it out loud — richard siken, litany in which certain things are crossed out

It starts with the flu.

He calls into work sick and he makes himself comfortable in bed, preparing to ride it out. It is the middle of January after all, and their last case saw them in Ann Arbor, shivering their way through each crime scene and a police station with abysmal heating.

His lymph nodes are swollen, and he’s running a moderate fever — 102 the last time he checked — and the cough he’s had for a couple of days is definitely getting nastier, but he uses the time to catch up on the documentaries he’s had stored on his DVR for the past couple of months. He tries to see it as a positive: he never gets time to rest like this. Warm soup, chamomile tea, and some Nyquil should be the end of it.

He makes the most of it. He gets better. He goes back to work, and life goes on.

“It’s not like you to get sick, Reid.”

Emily doesn’t mean anything by it, it’s about as innocuous as a comment can possibly be, but something about it makes his heart stop for a second. Because the thing is, she’s right. The last time he was actually sick was the anthrax poisoning three years ago, which can hardly be blamed on his body itself. He hasn’t been sick with a virus since he was a child — certainly not anything more than a mild winter cold.

His world turns upside down in the middle of a Tuesday, a couple of them gathered around Derek’s desk laughing about nothing in particular, the easy camaraderie of a close-knit team without a time-sensitive case on their minds.

Three and a half weeks ago: a night heady with alcohol in a gay bar in downtown DC, a charged encounter with a man just Spencer’s type, a whispered invitation back to his place, not making it past the bathroom…

He pales, suddenly feeling violently ill at the prospect of what’s happened, how badly he’s fucked up this time.

“Spencer, are you okay?” Emily asks, suddenly noticing his appearance. “You look really pale… maybe you’re not ready to be back at work yet.”

Forcing himself out of his stupor, he manages to open his mouth without vomiting. “I don’t feel so good,” he says, and even to him his voice sounds weak and distant. Blood roars in his ears, and all he can think is what that blood could very well be tainted with.

Far away voices discuss something he doesn’t pay attention to before Derek’s placing his hand on his shoulder, drawing him back into the discussion. “I’m gonna drive you home, okay?” Emily isn’t standing at the desk anymore, but he doesn’t think to look around for her, just locks eyes with Derek: noticing his brows knit deeply in concern, worry clouding his dark, striking eyes.

He lets himself be led down to the garage. Later, he won’t remember any of the winding car journey home, Derek’s worried sideways glances, his attempts at making conversation, tucking him into bed, his hesitancy to leave and go back to work. He’ll just remember the weight of his realisation, the sinking acknowledgement of what this means.

What it makes him.

⭐️

The next day, he wakes up ravenously hungry. He doesn’t remember anything after the dreaded realisation, but he remembers that he came to it only minutes after eating lunch: meaning he’s gone over eighteen hours without food. Somehow, he manages to pick himself out of bed and stumble to the kitchen, pouring himself a bowl of cereal. He finishes it all and doesn’t taste a single bite.

He texts the group chat Penelope had made for the whole team last year, ignoring the dozens of anxious messages from his team already filling his phone. Won’t be in.

Almost on auto-pilot, he gets dressed, picks up his phone, wallet, and keys, and walks to his nearest metro station. He counts four stops, gets out of the carriage and walks up the stairs onto the street, weaving through exactly three streets until he finds himself staring at the sign for his Urgent Care clinic.

Words — not ashes, as some small part of him anticipates — manage to spill from his lips as he tells the doctor everything from the unprotected sex he vaguely recalls having on the night of Saturday the 12th of March to his brief flu-like symptoms to his sickly realisation yesterday. Vaguely, he thinks there’s some sort of sick humour in being able to recall exactly what day he had sex, but not the details of the sex itself. Alcohol and dilaudid are the only things that have ever been able to interfere with his memory.

He obediently opens his mouth for a saliva swab, lets the nurse prick his finger and collect a drop of his blood. He wonders if she knows what they’re testing him for. He wonders if she thinks he’s as dirty as he feels, if she’ll violently scrub her hands after smiling politely at him, if she’ll roll her eyes when she talks to the other nurses, lamenting his stupidity.

The sounds of the waiting room melt into the background as he waits for the test to be conducted, and judging by the tone of the nurse who gets his attention when it’s time to return to the doctor’s office, it’s not her first attempt.

He mutters a distracted apology as he gets up from his seat, but she just smiles sympathetically. It shouldn’t get his back up in the way it does.

“I’m afraid you have tested positive for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Dr Reid,” she tells him, her voice gentle but straight-forward. He’s at least glad she doesn’t try and soften the blow. It’s not a blow that deserves to be softened. “I know this is a shock, but—”

“It’s not a shock.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s not a shock,” he repeats insistently; impatiently. “I knew it was coming. It’s my own fault.”

“Playing blame games isn’t going to help anybody here, Dr Reid,” she says firmly, meeting his eye. “Whether you were expecting it or not, this would knock anyone off-kilter, and I’d be remiss not to acknowledge that.”

She waits for his reluctant nod before continuing. “The good news is that we’ve caught it early enough to contain the infection. Your CD4 levels are very good, and you do not meet AIDS criteria. I’ve referred you to Dr Frederiks at George Washington University Hospital. He’s an expert in Infectious Disease and specialises in HIV/AIDS treatment. He can see you tomorrow at ten o’clock.”

He arrives back at his apartment almost $300 out of pocket, having gained nothing but a positive HIV diagnosis. The FBI has brilliant healthcare insurance but Spencer ticked the ‘no’ box on the insurance form. He can’t risk anybody knowing about this.

He texts Hotch and tells him he has a doctor’s appointment in the morning and will let him know whether he’ll make it in for the afternoon. Then he lays on the sofa, and cries.

⭐️

“HIV is a chronic illness,” the doctor explains at four minutes past ten the next morning, “a latent infection. Not a death sentence. Medications have come leaps and bounds in the last ten years, and the regimes aren’t anywhere near as rigorous as they used to be. With your CD4 levels this good, your life really won’t be much different than it was a few weeks ago.”

Spencer’s never had much interest in medicine — after all, there’s a reason he’s not that kind of doctor — but he knows this much. He doesn’t tell the doctor that he’s wasting his time explaining the basics of the disease, just stares blankly at the point in between his eyes, staring at the small crease in his skin, the way it moves as he speaks.

“It’s likely that you’ll die of something else, Dr Reid, decades in the future. When managed correctly, HIV is rarely deadly.”

This seems irrelevant: it doesn’t matter to Spencer what he dies of. Whether his immune system gives in or he’s shot in the line of duty or drops dead in the street from an aneurysm he doesn’t see coming, he’ll be dead.

He still doesn’t say anything.

“For the first six months of infection, the risk of transmission to sexual partners is high,” he continues, unfazed by Spencer’s lack of response. “Are you in a relationship?”

“No.” It’s the first word he’s spoken since he entered this office. His voice breaks. He can’t have the person he wants: this feels like the nail in the coffin of a relationship dead on arrival.

A look of sympathy crosses Dr Frederik’s face. “In any casual encounters you may engage in, you’ll need to be extra careful. Do you have the contact details of the person you contracted this from?”

His voice is steadier this time. “No.”

“Do you have any suspicion that you were deliberately infected by them?”

“No,” he answers, because he doesn’t, but it occurs to him that he’ll never actually know. He doesn’t remember if they used a condom; if he even wanted to use one. (All he remembers is his muscles and the way he pretended he was Derek, the amused look on the other man’s face when he whispered his name like a prayer.)

“That’s fine,” the doctor smiles encouragingly. It feels patronising. “We’re going to start with a triple combination of medications: tenofovir and emtricitabine combined with dolutegravir. HIV is an adaptable virus and easily becomes resistant, so it’s best to attack it hard and fast as early as possible to give you your best chances at an undetectable viral load in the next year. Which, I might add, Dr Reid, is a completely reasonable goal. At that stage, you will not be all that infectious. You’ll have bloods drawn before you leave to estimate your baseline kidney and liver function as well as overall health. In three months, you’ll have another test, and in six months, we’ll assess how well the drugs are working for you.”

Spencer nods, his eyes not leaving the crease between Dr Frederik’s eyebrows.

“Make those appointments with my secretary on your way out, and contact me if you have any concerns.” He pushes a brown paper envelope across the desk. “Inside you’ll find a copy of your positive test result, your prescriptions, and a number of leaflets on the condition as a whole.”

He squashes the urge to push the envelope back across the desk and nods again.

“Pick up the medication before the end of today and start them either tonight or in the morning,” he advises, before standing up from behind the desk and walking towards the door.

Spencer follows obediently, nodding once more and forcing a grimace onto his face, before walking down the hallway towards the secretary, another stranger he has to share his secret with. Swallowing down the urge to either scream or vomit, he fiddles with the envelope in his hands and bites the bullet.

⭐️

He tells Hotch that he won’t be in that day, and he goes home and forces himself to get it together. He showers first, the hot water washing the grime of the last few days down the drain, but he can’t do anything about the lingering layer of shame clinging to his skin. For the first time since the realisation, he forces himself to look in the mirror. A thin, pallid man with bags under his eyes and the look of someone harbouring a secret looks back at him.

His hair has grown out a little in the last few months, actual curls visible around his face (memories flash across his mind of breathy gasps; a hand buried in his hair, pulling ever-so-gently but they’re gone before they’re even remotely tangible), and he lost a little bit of weight he couldn’t afford to lose during his symptomatic period.

But, as frustrating as it is, it’s not what he sees. Not really. He sees Spencer Reid, possessor of five degrees, soon to become six, expert analyst in the FBI, the man who listens to jazz when he studies and watches documentaries for fun and solves crossword puzzles on the metro.

Something inside him shifts as he’s reminded of his humanity in that moment. It’s the most okay he’s felt in the last forty-eight hours.

He’ll take it.

He goes back to work the next day with little fanfare, getting warm smiles and ‘glad you’re feeling better’s from the team before they’re plunged headfirst into a new case, as it so often goes. They fly to Vermont, and part of him is glad for the distraction: no more talking about his illness, no more self-pity — he’s forced to try and bridge the gap between Dr Spencer Reid, Before and Dr Spencer Reid, HIV Positive as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

He does what he’s good at: offers relevant, detailed facts, profiles the victims and the unsub, cites studies that help them get to the bottom of the case, and for a moment he allows himself to forget about the virus coursing through his blood and the feeling of shame he can’t quite shake no matter how clean he scrubs his skin.

They get to the hotel late that evening and Spencer takes his second dose of medication, individually popping each tablet from it’s sheet into his hand. The pharmacist he spoke to yesterday told him that from his next medication order they can put all three tablets into a blister packet for him, but for now he’s stuck punching through three different plastic packets every night. Derek asks him to join them at the bar for a drink, but Spencer turns him down. He’s barely been able to look him in the eye.

If, in some rare and far flung universe, Derek did want to date Spencer, he wouldn’t want to date HIV positive, ex-addict, reckless and unsafe Spencer.

He wouldn’t want to date a man so heartbroken and lovesick that he got black-out drunk and slept with someone — most likely without a condom — just because he bared a passing resemblance to Derek. Contracting the Human Immunodeficiency Virus in the process.

No.

Spencer spends the evening staring into the mirror instead, desperately trying to find the man he was four days ago under the burden of broken suffering he seems to have picked up along with the diagnosis, the positive test, the sympathetic doctors.

When he hears the others come up past midnight and pile into their hotel rooms, laughing and chattering among themselves, Spencer still hasn’t looked away.

The use of the case as a distraction only works until 11am the next day. He’d had trouble falling asleep, and he’s powering through the day fuelled by black coffee and raw determination alone, but those motivators — as effective as they can be — can’t stop his legs from shaking as he stares at the geo-profile, searching for what they’re missing.

It sucks, but he’s glad for the warning the shaking gives him. He finds a chair and sits down, which is likely the only thing that stops him from collapsing when black dots swim in his vision and he’s suddenly vomiting down his front.

“Reid!” Hotch cries, running from the other end of the police station to where he’s sitting, panic clear on his face. They’re the only two from their unit currently in the station, but Hotch quickly locates an officer and turns to him. “Call an ambulance.”

“No,” Spencer manages to protest, although it only makes him want to be sick again, “‘m fine, promise.”

“What’s going on? I thought the flu had passed? Healthy people don’t spontaneously vomit and almost pass out, Reid.”

Somehow, his addled brain manages to concoct a decent enough lie. “Keep thinking I’m better,” he mumbles, leaning forward to put his head between his legs as Hotch places a hand on his back, “and then I’m not.”

“You’re sure this is just the flu?” Hotch asks, concerned but at least appearing to believe him.

“Certain,” Spencer lies.

Hotch nods once before shaking his head at the officer on standby with a phone to call an ambulance. “Well, you can’t work the case like this,” he sighs. “We need to get you back to the hotel, okay? You can rest there. God, Reid, what did the doctor say?”

“Bad case of the flu. Gave me some strong Tamiflu and told me I’d be fine in a couple days.” He gasps the words out in between intense waves of nausea, clasping his hands together in an iron grip.

He absolutely can’t let Hotch catch on. In the nine years he’s worked at the FBI, he’s managed to conceal his sexuality below layers upon layers of closeting, and he’s not about to be forced out now. It started as a purely protectionist strategy — law enforcement in the early 2000s didn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it came to tolerance — but then he just felt forced too deep, felt the web of lies spun too tightly around him to even begin to unpick them.

Terror seizes his heart at the idea of his team knowing who he really is: not because he expects homophobia or backlash, but because he’s not sure he’s ready to live that openly yet. He’s never been good with change, and this is no exception.

It doesn’t help that the whole team is all too aware of his past addiction. He dreads the thought of them thinking he’s using again and, worse, so irresponsibly that he managed to contract HIV.

Hotch gets a rookie officer to drive him back to the hotel, and she keeps sending him nervous glances, most likely worried he’ll stink up her immaculately kept squad car with his spontaneous vomiting. Both he and the car make the journey unscathed, although he knows he probably looks as green as he feels as he drags himself up the stairs — could there possibly be a worse time for an out of order elevator? — and somehow manages to make it to the bed before he collapses.

Unfortunately, his restful slumber doesn’t last long. He’s woken up not half an hour later with the intense need to be sick again, and he races to the toilet, where he spends the next two hours: intermittently slumped over it, being sick into it, and lying on the cold tiles next to it.

It feels like a punishment. If Spencer was a religious man he’d be certain God was smiting him for his sins, but instead he’s left instead pondering karma or fate or some other theory he doesn’t really buy into either. Logically, he knows it’s just a combination of guilt and regret — he made a mistake, he’s suffering the consequences; there’s no fate or religion or karma involved — but his delirious, out of sorts mind struggles to hold on to that.

Reason doesn’t make the nausea any less crippling, after all.

Eventually, he must manage to pass out on the bathroom floor, because he’s being shaken awake by a pair of gentle hands, and when he finally opens his eyes, it’s dark outside.

“Spence?”

Shit. Derek.

His eyes fly open and he fights to sit up, to make himself more presentable. The smell of vomit lingers in the air and he remembers that he didn’t even put the toilet seat down, let alone flush it. (At least he thought to change out of his vomit-covered shirt. Thank God for small mercies.) He blushes, and thinks he must look a pretty picture of red and green as he finally meets Derek’s eyes.

“God, Spence, how bad is this flu?” he asks worriedly, smoothing his hair with the palm of his hand. Despite himself, Spencer finds himself pressing back into the touch, relishing any contact he can get.

Then it hits him: he’s dirty. He can’t contaminate Derek like this.

“You should leave,” he asserts hurriedly as he pulls away, hating that desperation is so obvious in his voice. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve cleaned everything up, and I used gloves. I’ve been in contact with you the last couple of days, so if you were going to get me sick you would’ve already. I just want to be here for you.”

Spencer squeezes his eyes closed so tightly they hurt. He wants nothing more than to fold himself into Derek’s arms, let himself be comforted by the man he wants to spend the rest of his life with. But he can’t. There are so many reasons that he can’t.

“No,” he says, not opening his eyes, resenting the tear that slips out and spills down his cheek. “You can’t. I’m… I’m not safe to be around.”

He doesn’t really mean to say it, but it escapes anyway, and he opens his eyes just in time to see the confusion cross Derek’s face. “Not safe to…? Spencer, what—”

“I just… I need to be alone.”

“No, you don’t,” Derek says softly, bringing a hand to his hair again, and he knows that HIV isn’t transmitted through sweat or vomit but he’s dirty, and Derek is so so good, he can’t be responsible for tainting him. Derek doesn’t relent, though, not even when Spencer pulls away from his touch and shrinks in on himself, leaning against the toilet. “You need to allow yourself to be comforted. You need to let me help, Spencer.”

Suddenly, he feels incredibly tired: the energy seeping out of his body, and he’s boneless against the toilet, absent even of the effort to hold himself upright.

“Come on, let’s get you into bed.” He puts his arms around Spencer’s rolled up body and lifts him, holding him close to his chest as he carries him from the bathroom to the bed.

Spencer doesn’t just let him, he curls into his embrace, clinging to the material of his t-shirt like it’s his only grip on reality.

(Later, he’ll blame the fever, but deep down he knows that just once, he wanted to play pretend, and just once, he didn’t have the energy to stop himself.)

⭐️

The side effects take weeks to finally leave, his body having a hard time adjusting to not only a deadly virus in his bloodstream, but some of the strongest drugs on the market inhibiting his natural enzyme production. Eventually, though, he’s back at work properly, selling a story about a simultaneous gastro-intestinal virus making the flu exponentially worse.

He’s not really sure everyone believes him, but nobody questions it out loud, so he avoids everyone’s eyes and takes it as a win.

Nobody gets close enough to try, anyway. He pushes everyone away, holds them at arm's length no matter how much they kick and scream and claw their way closer to him. It surprises him how persistent Derek is, and for a moment he feels a sad flutter of hope in his stomach and he’s forced to stamp it down: Derek sees him as a brother, a friend, a colleague, not a potential romantic partner.

And it would be irrelevant, even if he did. Derek wouldn’t want him as any of those things if he knew what he was hiding. Ever since his lapse in judgement on the case in Vermont, he’s refused to spend any time alone with Derek, and he hates the hurt he sees in his eyes, hates that he can’t scream at him that this is for his own good. But he can’t know. Because Spencer is still ruled by his relentless selfish desires, and he can’t let Derek go, no matter how hard he tries to.

Kept at arm’s length at least means he’s still touching his shoulders.

He muddles through the next few months on his own, returning to his quiet apartment every night and eating a sad, lonely dinner on his sad, lonely sofa before punching his way through a blister pack, taking his tablets, and going to sleep. He turns down drinks invitations, declines phone calls, ignores text messages. He pretends he isn’t home when there are knocks at his door.

He takes showers that are too hot and cries on the metro, scrubs his fingernails and his face, and when he got a shallow knife wound on a case last month, wouldn’t let a single member of the team near him. Whispering his status, shame-faced, to the attending EMT.

This is it, he thinks one night, as he opens the microwave and takes out the mac-and-cheese ready meal he’d bought on the way home that night. He doesn’t even like mac-and-cheese. It was just the only thing left in the store at 8.30pm. This is my life now. Standing in my kitchen at 9.15pm, not being able to remember the last time I was actually happy.

(He does remember, really. It was Sunday the 13th of March, 9.37am: Derek had ruffled his hair and joked with him as they waited alone in the conference room to find out what was so urgent they were being called into work on the weekend for. Spencer could still feel the aftermath of his Saturday night tryst, and pretended for a brief few minutes that that encounter was with Derek, and those jokes were actually flirting. But then the case took over, then the flu symptoms, and then. Well.)

Before he can carry the mac-and-cheese into the living room, though, there’s a knock at the door. Everyone had mostly given up on turning up unannounced, so it catches him off-guard, and something in him, some vain flicker of hope, or maybe a masochistic desire to hurt even more, propels him forward until he’s opening it and coming face to face with Derek Morgan.

“Spencer,” he says urgently, and panic immediately grips Spencer as he wonders what could be so wrong that he’d need to show up out of the blue, but Derek must see it on his face. “Nothing’s happened, don’t worry, I just… I need to speak to you.”

A knot of something that Spencer can’t quite place tightens in his stomach as he stares at the myriad of emotions playing across Derek’s face, but he steps aside to let him in anyway. He closes the door behind them and feels a flash of embarrassment at the state of his apartment. It’s completely clean — his already rigorous attitude towards germ and cleanliness have only intensified in the last few months as paranoia plagued his mind relentlessly — but it’s barren of any joy, and it couldn’t be more obvious.

The furniture is drab and Spencer’s packed away all the photos and trinkets that used to litter the entire place because they just made him too sad to look at. The only life that remains is his books, and the sheet he’d hung to cover them up in a fit of rage a couple of weeks ago still hangs there limply. He hadn’t wanted to see his books: didn’t want the temptation of touching them and tainting them. What if he got a papercut on one of the pages and his virus-ridden blood spilled across the words he treasures so dearly?

He watches as Derek surveys the place with a sad expression on his face, before recollecting himself and turning back to Spencer.

“I know you’ve been pulling away from us, Spence,” he says, almost breathless as he takes a seat on the sofa. Spencer doesn’t know what to do with his body, so he settles on remaining where he is: stock still facing the couch, his hands buried deep in his trouser pockets. “We’ve watched you become a shell of who you used to be, and we’re all worried about you—”

“I don’t—”

“No, just let me speak. Everyone is worried, and I am too, but… I’m also… I’m hurt, Spencer. You’re pushing me away, turning me down every time I try to get close to you, and it’s painful because you’re my friend. You’re my best friend, and you mean the world to me.”

I wouldn’t if you knew my secret, he thinks miserably, but he doesn’t say anything.

“More than anything, though, it hurts… because I’m in love with you.”

Spencer stares. He’s hallucinating, he has to be.

“And I know — well, I don’t know because we’ve never talked about it — but I know you’re probably straight and even if you were interested in guys, too, who’s to say you’d be in love with me back? But I had to tell you because our relationship is heading south anyway, plummeting straight for the ground, and I figured it couldn’t hurt, I just… say something? Please?”

He doesn’t mean to say it.

“I’m HIV positive.”

It’s Derek’s turn to stare. Spencer can’t meet his eyes, and suddenly feeling like he needs to Get Out, he rushes to the kitchen and picks up his rapidly cooling mac-and-cheese. He gets a fork out and faces the countertop, away from Derek, as he starts to shovel unsatisfying bites into his not-hungry stomach.

It can’t even be a full minute later that he hears footsteps behind him. “You have AIDS?”

He sets the mac-and-cheese back on the counter. “No,” he answers, not turning around. “I tested positive for HIV; I don’t meet AIDS criteria. My CD4 levels are apparently very good, and the medication I’m taking is proving effective in controlling and managing the virus. I don’t have side effects anymore, and I don’t feel any different than I did before I contracted it.”

There’s a beat of silence. “And this is why you’ve been pulling away from us?”

Spencer hesitates before nodding shamefully, his eyes burning a hole in his dinner. “I didn’t know how to tell anyone, and I—” He’s cut off by a heaving sob. It catches him by surprise, but suddenly he’s choking on emotion: everything he’s been through, everything he’s been dealing with alone for so long a burden he no longer knows how to carry.

“Oh, baby,” Derek breathes, rushing forward and turning Spencer until his face is pressed into his neck and their arms are wrapped around one another. The nickname only furthers his emotion, falling apart completely in such a way that makes him unsure he’ll ever be put back together again. “I’m so sorry.”

He lets Spencer cry it out until his sobs recede and his tears slow, and he feels confident enough to pull away and meet Derek’s eye properly again. It feels like a reconnection; a reconciliation of sorts, and his breath catches at the emotion on his face. He’d expected a meddle of sympathy and disgust, but all he finds is compassion and love, tinged by a sadness Spencer supposes probably comes from watching the man you’ve just professed to love fall apart like that.

Oh wait. Derek just told him—

“You love me?” His voice comes out quieter and shyer than he’d hoped, and not nearly as incredulous as he’d intended, but Derek softens anyway.

“Yes,” he says emphatically. “So much. And if you think you telling me this is going to change how I feel even a bit, then you’re dead wrong, Spencer.”

It’s suddenly too much to think that everything he’d feared happening for the last few months was wrong, and he’s gasping for breath again, sinking to the ground to bury his face in his hands.

“Spence?” Derek asks worriedly, following him to the floor. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No… please, you’ve done nothing wrong.” He takes a deep breath, trying to recenter himself, ground himself in the reality that’s unfolding before him, no matter how different it might look than that of his anticipation. “You know, the man. Um, the man I… contracted this from. I slept with him because he looked like you.”

He looks up and meets Derek’s eyes again, searching for anything in them to confirm that he was thinking all the thoughts Spencer feared and coming up empty. “I was so heartsick that I got blind-drunk and slept with a complete stranger because it was the closest to you I ever thought I’d get and then I was just so scared of what everyone would say when I found out. I know logically that HIV doesn’t make someone dangerous or unclean, but I just couldn’t shake this feeling of shame, you know? I was constantly panicked that I’d pass it to one of you. Besides, I’m not even out to the team, and I know the implications of a disease like this: gay or an IV drugs user — I didn’t know how to deal with the fact that I was both. I’m clean, and I’ve stayed clean, I just…”

“Hey, I get it,” Derek says gently, reaching out a hand and cupping Spencer’s cheek gently. “I think if I was in the same boat I probably would’ve reacted in exactly the same way. You can’t be blamed for bowing to a social stigma this heavy, Spence. I’m just sorry I didn’t realise what was going on sooner. And even sorrier, for that matter, that I didn’t tell you I was in love with you before this even had a chance to happen.”

Spencer smiles a little at that. “Hey, I didn’t tell you either. I don’t blame you at all. Neither of us were out and confessing something like that is no small feat.”

“I suppose so.”

Spencer shifts a little in his position on the floor, the raging storm of emotion that he’s been drowning under for the past four and a half months quieting for the very first time. He breathes deeply for a few seconds before working up the courage to ask the question he really wants the answer to. “I know you said that this doesn’t change the way you feel—”

“And it doesn’t.”

“Yeah,” Spencer nods, because suddenly he gets that. He isn’t sure what took so long. “But does it make you not want to be in a relationship with me?”

“Spencer, no.” Derek’s voice is urgent as he makes intense eye contact with him, raising a gentle finger to his chin. “It doesn’t change a single. thing. I don’t know much about HIV, I’ll admit, but I do know that these days you can get to a point where it doesn’t transmit to partners. And we can be really safe about it. I’ll do all the research to make you comfortable, but Spencer, even if it did mean that we could never have sex, I’d still want you. I want you so badly, pretty boy.”

He can hardly believe his ears. “Really?”

“Really.” He swipes his thumb across his cheek, catching a falling tear. “I’m hopelessly, desperately in love with you, Spencer. I have been for years. You can ask, Penelope: she’s been putting up with my pining like a saint, but I’m not sure she could’ve taken it much longer.”

“I’ve been in love with you for years, too.” Another tear falls as the prospect of what’s about to happen really sinks in.

“Can I?” Derek murmurs, as he inches closer ever so slowly.

“Please,” Spencer whispers, barely finishing the word before their lips are colliding and a flurry of butterflies break out in his stomach as his chest glows with the warmth of a kiss he’s long been aching for. Derek’s hands find his waist, his jaw, his cheek, his hair, exploring his body ever so softly as he kisses him with the same inquisitive gentleness, managing to take him apart with just his lips and his hands.

“God,” he whispers as he finally pulls away, pressing his forehead to Spencer’s as he struggles to hide his wide grin. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve dreamed of that. I’m gonna be like a teenage girl tonight, running my fingers across my lips as I remember every minute of it.”

Spencer giggles at that. “Well you can rest easy in the knowledge that I’ll be doing the same.” He pulls away slightly and looks down for a second before looking back up into Derek’s earnest gaze. “I’ve never been kissed like that before.”

“I’ll kiss you like that every day for as long as you’ll have me.” He doesn’t hesitate to lean back in, connecting their lips again as they melt into one another’s touches, and it makes Spencer laugh later that the most intimate and passionate encounter of his life so far happened on the kitchen floor.

They pull apart as soon as it heats up a little bit, and pain flashes across both of their expressions at the thought of why.

“There’s this thing called PrEP,” Spencer says, still a little ashamed of his situation, that Derek has to be protected against him before they can take this any further. “It’s medication that you take before and after sex with a HIV positive person that blocks the virus from entering your bloodstream if you were to somehow contract it. And we can wear condoms. And once I reach an undetectable viral load, it means the virus is untransmittable, and you won’t contract it even if we’re unprotected.”

Derek blinks. “Wow, that’s… that’s better than I thought.”

“Really? You’re still okay with all this?”

He softens. “Pretty boy, I am so okay with all this, and I’m sorry that you spent so long thinking otherwise. We have time to figure all this out, but what matters is that right now, I have you next to me, and we love each other. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” He smiles, and leans forward to kiss Derek chastely. “I do.”

“Now, how about we bin that disgusting mac-and-cheese and order some Chinese?” he suggests, matching Spencer’s smile. “We could eat it in bed and watch one of those documentaries you’re always talking about.”

Spencer laughs fondly. “You want our first date to be eating takeaway and watching a science documentary in bed?”

“Well it sounds perfect to me.”

“Yeah, it sounds pretty perfect to me, too,” Spencer whispers, the happiness in his chest feeling warm and inviting, begging him to bask in the moment for as long as he can.

They’ll work out the specifics later — they’ll get Derek started on PrEP and attend Spencer’s appointments to measure his viral load, they’ll have important and serious conversations about the risks to both of them, they’ll work out what their relationship means for work, how they’ll begin to repair the damage the last few months have done to Spencer’s mental health — but right now, none of that matters.

All that does is: the buffet of Chinese food Derek lays out on a blanket on Spencer’s bed, the documentary about bees playing on the TV, and the thrilled little glances thrown each other’s way, the stolen kisses and casual touches, the love palpable in the air around them. And later, when the food is eaten, and the documentary is playing the credits: Spencer’s tired head resting on Derek’s loving chest, and the syncing of their heartbeats as they fall asleep to the sound of each other.

This shouldn't have to be said but please do not use fanfiction as sex education and PLEASE practice safe sex. As far as I know, all the information included in this fic is correct, but I have no personal experience with HIV/AIDS, and this is very much written from an outsider's perspective - albeit a thoroughly researched one.

taglist: @criminalmindsvibez @suburban--gothic @strippersenseii @takeyourleap-of-faith @negativefouriq @makaylajadewrites @iamrenstark @livrere-blue @hotchseyebrows @jellejareau @reidology @i-like-buttons @spencerspecifics @bau-gremlin @hotchedyke @tobias-hankel @goobzoop @marsjareau @garcias-bitch @oliverbrnch @im-autistic-not-stupid (taglist form)

#cm #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #criminal minds writing #derek morgan #spencer reid #moreid #moreid fic #moreid angst #hurt spencer reid #derek morgan/spencer reid #derek morgan x spencer reid #spencer reid/derek morgan #spencer reid x derek morgan #my writing

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gunterfan1992 · 3 years

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Interview with Half Shy (the songwriter of “Monster”)

For the last few months, I’ve been collecting information for a second edition of Exploring the Land of Ooo that will also cover the production of Distant Lands. This means that I’ve started to look into the new songs that we have been graced with this year, and this of course includes “Monster,” the beautiful track from the masterpiece that is “Obsidian”. And so I reached out to the song’s writer, Half Shy, who was kind enough to chat with me via email about the songwriting process!

(Photo courtesy of Half Shy)

In many ways, Half Shy is living the creative Adventure Time fan’s dream: She got asked by Adam Muto himself to write a song for “Obsidian” after he heard her music through Bandcamp! (I’ve dabbled in fan music before, and the fact that someone from the show might listen to it just blows my mind.) What an opportunity; I am so excited for her!

Since a second edition of my book won’t be coming out until after all the Distant Lands episodes air, I thought it would be best to share my Half Shy interview now. Read on for the fascinating behind the scenes story of how Half Shy and “Monster” came to be..

GunterFan: What is your origin story? How did you get involved in music, and how did the Half Shy project come to be?

Half Shy: I’ve been making music pretty quietly since I was in high school with a keyboard and guitar. I played one or two shows a year after college when I could find a friend or my brother to get up on stage with me, but I don’t really have that performer gene in me naturally. I get too much in my head and forget what the lyrics are to the song I wrote, or what the next chord is. Total brain freeze. So that whole experience is a bit of a mental drain. It’s something I think I’d like to dig into and figure out, but right now I’m really enjoying the time writing.

Even playing a song for my friends I still get pretty nervous. That’s where the name Half Shy comes from. I’ve always been interested in making things that by their nature draw a bit of a spotlight, but at the same time, I am just really quite nervous about the attention.

I recorded my first songs under my old name Hey V Kay in my bedroom and started putting them up online one at a time. When I got enough I thought about packaging it up into an album, but then got really distracted by learning how to fix up motorcycles and going to automotive tech school. When I eventually got back around to it I named the album Gut Wrenching.

After a few years I realized that I didn’t want the day-in-day-out life of a mechanic, I just wanted to know how to fix cars for myself and to have that knowledge in my back pocket. I got back into making music but grew frustrated at the process of writing and recording songs. I felt like I wasn’t able to capture the ideas I had in my head. Like trying to draw on your computer with a mouse. Doable, but it’s not going to come out like you’d hoped.

So these last couple of years I’ve focused more on learning the technical aspect of it, from the initial ideas and lyrics, to the recording and mixing. During that process I put out Bedroom Visionaries, and while writing I happened upon the name Half Shy in an old Thesaurus which felt instantly right. Learning all of that has been fun, I even went as far as to create my own book to solidify a daily writing routine (lyricworkbook.com). All that has been a bit of a tangent from actually making much music though. I should be getting my books in December from the press so I’m really looking forward to getting back into making more music instead of dealing with printing presses, setting up websites, and sourcing ribbon suppliers.

GF: What is the story behind "Monster"? How did the show get in contact with you?

HS: I keep a log of “Song Starters” with neat things I’ve heard in the world, and I would look through it every now and then and notice just how many came from Adventure Time. Eventually I thought well, I have to make a song about this show that just keeps breaking my heart. It was around the time I was nearly done with the first [Adventure Time-inspired] song “In My Element” that I got an email from Bandcamp saying “someone bought your album (Bedroom Visionaries).”

I get maybe one or two of these a month at most so I love to go in and say hi to the person and say thanks, be curious about who they are, [and] what they’re all about. Turns out it was Adam Muto, the executive producer of the show. (I asked and he has no idea how he happened upon my stuff. He guessed that I must have tagged something #adventuretime and he just happened to see it.) So I sent him an email saying, “Hey wow thanks for checking out my tunes. Also... holy crap you’ve made the best show I have ever seen in my life.” [I] played it real cool like. After finishing up writing my second [Adventure Time-inspired] song “Betty” I couldn’t help but fangirl real hard [and I sent him another message saying], “I’m sorry this is probably awkward, but I really love your show and I wrote these songs about it.” He was incredibly kind and shared them with his Twitter Universe, and a while after that I got a random email from him saying basically, “Hey, I’m working on this thing I can’t talk about, would you be interested?” I was like… well you know I’m pretty busy working at a sign shop so I’m gonna have to pass on this once in a lifetime opportunity (J/K. Obviously I fan-girl squealed and said yes immediately).

We chatted a bit about what the project was going to be and the direction. He mentioned there [would be] two Marceline songs in the special, [and he asked if I] would I be interested in giving the love song a try? Trying real hard to suppress my instant imposter syndrome I was like, “Yea, totally I’d be into giving that a shot!” So I read through the story and loved the idea of the dragon mirrored in Marceline, thinking through how they’ve both built up a protective shell, how she grew tough for a reason, but now she can open up and be vulnerable with PB.

From there I wrote the initial demo with the first two verses mostly intact and we went back and forth a few times editing it down into the final version. I recorded the final parts for the show in my little home studio in Seattle.

GS: When you were writing the song, what emotions, thoughts, or ideas were you channeling? Was there any sort of memory of event that you were trying to artistically "catch" or "recreate" with the lyrics or music?

HS: As far as channeling an emotion, generally I’d say just the experience of existing as a human. It can be so hard to open up and be vulnerable. I can remember that feeling even as a young kid—getting really excited about something and having someone completely trash it or look at you like, “Why are you so interested in that? It’s dumb.” [It causes us to grow] a little more weary to share ourselves because we know that hurt and embarrassment. The pain of being misunderstood is something I think a lot of us can relate to. Then having to decide whether to keep sharing those vulnerable parts of yourself or think, “They’re just not going to get it, I’m going to get hurt, so why bother?” and then stop putting yourself out there. You lose a lot with that thick armor though. You might feel protected, but you’re not feeling a whole lot of anything else other than the weight and chafing of it (I had a whole lot of armor-related metaphors that I didn't end up using.).

I struggle with this in songwriting too. I’m not the bolt-of-lightning type. There are pages and pages of cliches, total garbage, bad jokes, and cheesy lines that I have to get through in order to get to something that I am excited to put out there into the world: “Here I did this thing, I know it’s a little (this or that), but I made it... What do you think?” It’s hard to open yourself up to hearing the other end of that question.

I filled about 5 little pocket notebooks just thinking through the story, ideas, and trying to get this song right. I wanted it to feel familiar and honor the past songs of the show ([e.g.,] using the ukulele and referencing a few of the familiar chords from “I’m Just Your Problem”) but also be pretty open and vulnerable and different for [Marceline]. [I wanted to] show that she’s going through some tough emotions but also figuring herself out and growing.

GF: I feel like “Monster” is, at its core, an ode to the “Bubbline” ship. How do you feel about your song being intimately connected to one of the most famous LGBTQ+ relationships in animation? Do you have any general thoughts on Marcy and PB, Bubbline, etc.?

HS: Oh, I’m a total fan girl of Bubbline. The whole story of how Rebecca Sugar and Muto slowly morphed it into this deeper relationship is just great. As a part of the LGBTQ community myself it really means so much to see the representation of characters like yourself portrayed in an intelligent way. Growing up I was too young to fully understand what was going on but I saw Ellen getting cancelled, and [I] heard people around me saying they’d never watch her show again after she came out. That stuff sinks in as a kid and so to have these characters who are not only intelligent, but funny, complex, and unapologetically strong who also happen to be queer is really great. I love that the story here isn’t about their orientation, but that they’re people struggling with how to be open and vulnerable in a relationship.

It feels like something sci-fi and animated shows do so well—to show that ridiculousness of limiting who a person should and shouldn’t love. Marceline is a 1000+ year old half-demon/vampire and PB was born from the Mothergum of an apocalyptic radioactive world, but you’re going to get hung up on them loving each other? It sort of brings it into perspective in a really interesting way.

GF: Do you have any other thoughts about the experience that you'd like to share?

HS: Just how lucky, thankful, and honored I feel to be a part of my favorite show, writing a song for one of my favorite characters. It’s also incredibly cool how the people on the show are so willing to connect and collaborate with their fandom. Everyone [on the production crew] was very open and a real joy to work with.

I’d like to give a huge “Thank you!” to Half Shy for agreeing to participate in this interview; she really was quite amiable! If you’d like to hear more of her music, check out her website and her Bandcamp. You can also follow her on Instragram here and on Twitter here. And of course, here is Half Shy’s awesome video of “Monster”.

#adventure time #atimers #adventure time distant lands #atdl #half shy #monster #bubbline #marceline #marceline the vampire queen #bubblegum #princess bubblegum #pb #adam muto #interview

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echodrops · 3 years

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I’m obviously late to the tumble party... but I stumbled across your Notagami Essays posts and they are absolutely Fabulous! Love your writing and the amount of detail you go into :)

So I figured you may be a good person to ask - if you just had to guess (bc as far as I know it’s never been officially confirmed?) but if you had to take a guess or give a rough estimate, how old do you think Yato was when he first met Sakura? We know he’s estimated to be at least a thousand years old, we know he’s - from the start of the series to present - estimated to be somewhere between 18 and his early 20s (physically)... but I can’t find a single thing/discussion/post/stickynote/whatever where it talks about how old he might have been when he first met Sakura - let alone the emotional/psychological effects of Sakura coming into his life and introducing healthy mindset/morals/maternal-influence etc. etc. (obviously no mom and Father’s neglect played a big role in him not knowing how inappropriate it was for him to ‘accidentally touch’ and yell “boobs!” but you can also just say he was so young he didn’t know how inappropriate that was?) My point is: how old do you think Yato was (physically anyway) at the time of their meeting? and Do you know of any discussions or care to share your opinion on how being the no more than the age of blank affected his mental/emotional understanding of Sakura teaching him a new narrative?

Sorry this is a random out of the blue ask 😅😓 if I rambled on and you don’t feel like answering, I get it, just figured it was worth asking :)

I fell down a serious rabbit hole trying to see if I could figure out the answer to this question about Yato’s age but unfortunately I’m mostly coming up empty-handed.

The answer to this question actually depends on two different pieces of information which--as far as I can remember--we’ve never actually been given for certain.

1) We would need to know when Yato was actually born.

The manga has kind of hinted at a total (not physical) age for Yato in the flashbacks which showed him as a young child during the Heian era (putting him somewhere in the vicinity of a little over 1000 years old) and Father not making masks before ~1100 years ago, but the problem is we still don’t know how many years might have passed between this scene (the youngest we’ve ever seen Yato):

And the next flashback scene, where Yato meets Nora:

If gods age normally when they are children, these two scenes might be only a handful of years apart. But if gods don’t age normally, then these two scenes could be decades or centuries apart, which leads to the other missing piece of information (under the read more to save people’s dashes):

2) We would need to know the aging process for gods who are just born/reincarnate.

Up to this point in the manga, we’ve only seen two gods reincarnate--Ebisu (who reincarnated too recently to really help answer this question) and Takemikazuchi. The implication of Takemikazuchi’s backstory is that his shinki forced him to reincarnate and then hid his reincarnation from all of Heaven. The only way they could have kept other gods from noticing that Takemikazuchi had reincarnated would have been by not allowing him to go out at all until he had grown enough to match his previous reincarnation in appearance. This seems to suggest that gods probably do age normally when they are children--hiding Takemikazuchi away for ~20 years seems a lot more likely than being able to hide him away for centuries, after all... (I also feel like I have very vague recollection of some scene in the manga where someone comments on Takemikazuchi not having been around for a “few years,” but it’s been so long since I reread I can’t recall if this is a real moment from the manga or just me misremembering.)

Overall, however, based on what we’ve seen in the manga, my guess would be that when they’re young, after just being born or being reincarnated, gods age pretty normally. This would suggest that, for the first few years at least, the physical and mental ages of reincarnated/newly born gods actually overlap; baby Ebisu acts like a little kid because he is, in fact, both mentally and physically a little kid.

That would mean that, for all intents and purposes, Yato’s physical and mental ages lined up when he was young and meeting Sakura, and he acted like a little kid because he really was just a little kid, god or not.

(Detour for a second though:

This line always struck me as interesting in that it might, just might, give us a more specific timeframe for Yato’s “birth”: although the constellations, of course, are visible in the sky every single year, this particular combination of concepts (kanoto-tori, yin metal rooster) is known much more commonly as one of the sixty years on the cyclical Chinese calendar, also used in Japan. Counting back on the calendar, 961 A.D. was a yin metal rooster year and would align just about right for what we know about the timeframe in which Yato later met Sakura (~970ish). Just referencing constellations doesn’t mean Adachitoka was pointing to a specific year, but it might have been another hint as to the timeframe of the flashbacks.

Okay, detour over.)

Anyway, without 100% confirmation on either of those pieces of information--when Yato was born and whether gods age at the same rate as humans after reincarnating--I don’t think it’s really possible to pin down Yato’s “real” age (physically or mentally) at the time he met Sakura. We mostly just have to estimate.

Personally, based on his size and behavior at the time, I’d put him somewhere between seven and maybe up to ten, but the way Adachitoka draws characters kind of makes it impossible to judge their ages by appearance; Yato is about the same size as Nora when he meets Sakura, implying that he and Nora were around the same physical “age” at that time; meanwhile, Nora is later portrayed as being roughly the same age as Yukine, suggesting she was maybe 12-13ish years old when she died. So, despite being drawn tiny, it’s possible Yato was meant to be anywhere from a little kiddo (6-7) to all the way up to Nora’s age by the time he met Sakura.

But all that said, I think what you were really asking about was more the mental state Yato would have been in when he met Sakura and how his young age would have impacted his ability to change his world views, right? The answer to that is... complicated and could be approached a lot of ways. Coming from a background of working with and educating social work students, there are several common psychological theories of child development that might apply here, for example.

I’d recommend checking out Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development, though.

(Pulled from here.)

I don’t have time to explain the entire theory with the complexity it might deserve, but the basic idea is that, as children develop, they experience a series of crises or challenges that they must overcome. Successfully overcoming each challenge results in successful psychological and social development; failing to overcome a challenge in childhood will result in long-term negative impacts later in the child’s life. (There are plenty critiques of this theory too, so don’t take this as gospel or anything--just a theory worth thinking about!)

Given Father’s lack of interest in teaching Yato basic concepts of humanity, I would put Yato at approximately the “Initiative vs. Guilt” stage when he met Sakura. At this level of Erikson’s theory, children struggle with asserting themselves and developing a healthy sense of how their personal desires might conflict with the expectations and rules set out by others. In this stage, giving a child positive feedback for their actions teaches the child that those actions are “right,” while giving negative feedback teaching the child that their actions are wrong. In order to overcome this particular challenge, children need to begin taking initiative and aligning their actions with social standards; the child acts, and the parental figure reacts--through this process, children learn “I can do X thing but I cannot do Y thing.”

When you hear things like “Children are cruel,” most often what people are referring to is that it takes time for children to learn empathy and to experience guilt when they cause harm to others; children do not natively understand the repercussions of their actions. It’s only through a process of testing the boundaries, of receiving praise or punishment, that children define what is “right” versus “wrong,” and begin to feel bad when they do something deemed wrong.

And this is pretty much word-for-word what we see Sakura teaching Yato.

If they have healthy role models and caretakers during this phase, children develop successfully. Successful children in this phase get their first taste of personal responsibility; unsuccessful children are (supposedly) plagued for years afterward by a sense of guilt and shame when their actions produce disapproval from everyone around them.

Yato... doesn’t exactly make it through this development stage unscathed, because he receives conflicting definitions of right and wrong from his Father an Sakura:

Which ultimately results in, years later, the Yato we know and love who still does his Father’s bidding to kill humans even though it fills him with a horrific sense of guilt:

Through his time with Sakura, I think it could also be argued that Yato moves into the next stage of Erikson’s theory as well, getting into the “Industry versus Inferiority” crises.

Meeting Sakura brings out Yato’s true, deep down desire as a god: to help people. (I think it’s important to note that this isn’t something Sakura teaches him--it’s a quality Yato already possessed; it was explicitly Yato’s desire to please people that led to him murdering in his father’s name.)

Once he learns what makes people happy, Yato immediately pursues that with intense focus:

The primary goal of this phase of psychosocial development is to experience a sense of confidence in one’s actions. When children practice their skills, pursue areas where they are praised, and gain new skills and aptitudes through mentoring from healthy role models, they gain confidence in their ability to excel, to fit in with peers their age, and to create meaningful things. By encouraging Yato to pursue positive behaviors--playing peacefully with other children, appreciating natural beauty, and creating useful things like boots for the needy--Sakura moved Yato toward successfully completing this phase and developing a sense of confidence in his actions and his ability to achieve positive things in the world.

Of course, Father cannot have that (because confident children with a sense of self-worth are much more difficult to abuse), so he puts an immediate end to Sakura’s influence over Yato in the most insidious way possible: although he clearly manipulated the situation to achieve Sakura’s death, out loud, he blames Yato, implying that Sakura’s death was all Yato’s fault, the results of Yato taking unwanted action “industry” and yet failing--creating a sense of “inferiority” instead.

This, of course, haunts Yato all the way to the present, as he--again and again and again--blames himself for things outside his control or failing to live up to expectations that no one in his situation (still being manipulated) could possibly hope to get “right.”

Finally, you could say that Sakura’s presence is Yato’s life is ultimately what sows the seeds of the manga’s main plot up to this point, with Yato’s quest to create an entirely new identity for himself as a god of fortune instead of a god of calamity. Personally, I would say that Yato is currently still in this phase of development, still working out how to define himself and who he will ultimately become once he is finally free to decide on his own path in life. It was Sakura’s gentle influence--his desire to become the kind of god who could make her smile--that eventually sparked his conflict and finally led Yato to the brink of catastrophe. If he wishes to become the god Sakura told him he could be, he can no longer suffer his father to live.

So, long story longer, I think it can be argued that Yato meeting Sakura at such a young age is EXACTLY what made it possible for him to change, and exactly what has led to his crisis in identifying himself and redefining his sense of right and wrong.

Uhhhh... I hope that answers your question!

#noragami #noragami meta #noragami spoilers #noragami manga #psychosocial development #Yato #Sakura #Father (Noragami)#speculation

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mysticdragon3art · 3 years

Text

Smaugust 2021 day 23. Little Claude playing with his young wyverns.

8/23/2021. Dip pen, Liquitex Ink "Naphthol Crimson" (not pre-mixed, so ink looks more pink than red), Copic markers, Prismacolor Premier marker, flat brush, yellow-orange mix of Liquitex Ink (adjusted on Photoshop).

I think the paper warped from the water-based inks. So Claude's face is a little blurry because the paper wasn't as flat against the scanner.

I originally was going to draw 3 scenes, for symmetry. Claude and the wyverns at different ages/stages of life, running around. But I only have time for young child version.

Referenced emus running for the wyvern legs. lol Referenced S.H.Figuarts Body-kun Rihito Takarai version for Claude.

So much for trying leading lines and framing composition today. x_x;

I wish I didn't run out of paper on the right side. I wanted the wyvern tails to create more leading lines, or at least give a sense that they were running/flying after Claude.

#smaugust #smaugust 2021 #dragon #dragons #wyvern #wyverns #fan-art #fanart #fe3hfuukasetsugetsu #claudeVRkhalid

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flourchildwrites · 3 years

Text

It’s an ordinary Tuesday for most of the hospital occupants as well as the passersby scurrying on the street below. As Rei ends her call with a reputable cab company, she gazes out the window to watch their comings and goings one last time. From the comfort of her windowsill, she likes to imagine the colorful lives they lead in contrast to the hospital's endless reserve of rooms drenched in muted earth tones. The exception is, as always, a vibrant arrangement of Japanese gentians that sits in her windowsill, sticking out like a sore thumb.

But this Tuesday is different. Her doctors say that this day marks a milestone in her recovery. For what it’s worth, Rei is inclined to agree. She’s packing her bags to leave the hospital. Unlikely though it once seemed, Mrs. Todoroki is going home.

Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia

Relationships & Characters: Todoroki Rei/Todoroki Enji, Himura Family, Todoroki Family, Todoroki Shouto

Genre: Flashbacks, Parent-Child Dynamics, Healing, Hopeful Ending

Trigger Warnings: Implied/Referenced Canonical Child and Spousal Abuse

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 2,993 words (Complete)

A/N: I'm so excited to share the fic I wrote for @todofamzine! I would like to thank the Winter Dawn mod team for being the best damn moderators I have ever worked with and @robinoxel for collabing with me and creating art of Rei to go along with the fic which you can find here. This fic was written before the recent chapters featuring the Todoroki family were published. I did my best to imagine what might have happened during Rei and Enji's past, and any canonical divergence you see is just that: canonical divergence coming from a simpler time. Flashbacks are in italics. I hope you enjoy this fic!

Home is a curious concept for Rei Todoroki. For the better part of a decade, she’s passed her time in a series of well-furnished hospital rooms with bland walls and bleached sheets. Her accommodations are not so cold as to be unwelcoming: extra blankets and plush pillows are a perk of her long penance, not to be taken for granted in spaces like these. But the walls are nearly bare, every wire is tethered taut, and someone somewhere is always—always—watching.

Oddly enough, she’s going to miss that.

What she will find waiting on the other side of the recovery divide is still a mystery.

Rei folds her life into two suitcases. One shirt and a pair of pants lay neatly on top of the open case, but beneath the surface, she allows some disorder. The hairbrush she used this morning is stuffed in the middle. Prescription bottles with rattling pills hide between layers of cloth, and there are deep wrinkles in the fabric below, not unlike the tired lines etched under her middle-aged eyes. She’s almost finished, almost ready to relegate the sterile smell of the hospital to nothing more than a memory, but there’s one last thing to pack.

Some of her photographs are framed; others are faded. A few photos are torn, and still, there’s the odd bit of charring on the edges of one or two pictures, courtesy of young Touya’s wild ways. Rei can’t help but smile at her collection of fond memories.

Her eyes flit to an old, framed newspaper clipping, and echoes of Rei’s glory days wrap around her like a favorite cardigan. In the picture, her stance is commanding; her arms are outstretched. A sheet of ice streams from her fingertips as her pale hair fans out from the force of the chilly blast. The sidekick Frostbyte is strong and vivacious, a match for any villain she might encounter in the small locality she protects. The headline beneath her picture speaks volumes: New Sidekick Frostbyte Freezes Crime Rates!

It’s a warm memory, something Rei wants to tuck in her chest and carry with her wherever she roams. She picks up the frame and places it safely in the top compartment of her baggage. Another image, a picture already tucked in her suitcase, draws her attention.

Rei doesn’t know why she keeps the picture. She isn’t sure why Fuyumi pulled the image from the family albums for her in the first place. Perhaps both Todoroki women are sentimental for what was and what might have been. Looking at the staged photograph now, Rei sees hope in the lineless eyes of her younger self, a blushing, traditional bride in a pure white shiromuku. And there’s Enji by her side, a tall, prideful hero made uncomfortable by the humble formality of the Shinto shrine.

The smile fades from Rei’s face; it is replaced by well-earned worry lines as she glances sideways at the blue flowers on her windowsill. She’ll never know how Frostbyte appeared on Enji’s bride-to-be radar. Neither will she ever be certain if her family, eager to capitalize on her early success as a sidekick and drowning in debt, put her profile into the matchmaker’s hands. Either way, the request was made and answered before the young woman could give her blessing.

Looking back, it feels like their first meeting happened lifetimes ago, as if the entire event is witnessed through a pane of frosted glass. But Rei remembers every detail, down to the tea stains on her mother’s best table cloth and the nervous buzz in the pit of her stomach. The scene plays out as though she is on the outside looking in, forever separated from the optimistic young woman she used to be.

...

The Todoroki family seems pleased.

In between courses, Rei’s mother hisses this sentiment in her daughter’s ear. Her father sits politely through dinner, speaking when spoken to and wearing his deference on his sleeve. Enji appears to be nice, though fixated on his work and the pro hero rankings. His mother and father are cordial, especially considering their lofty status; however, their impeccable etiquette is not important. The Todoroki family fortune is the reason her mother and father agreed to this meeting.

The older couples beam at their children when, somehow, dinner devolves into dessert. Their eager matchmaker announces that Rei and Enji should spend a few moments alone to speak candidly about dating with marriage (and children) in mind. Rei, for one, isn’t sure how to feel. She cannot know how a conversation of this nature is supposed to go.

Nevertheless, she stays the course and flashes Enji an accommodating smile as they take a seat on the bench in her family’s small garden. The summer heat does not agree with Rei, but her favorite flowers, bell-shaped blossoms the color of sapphires, are in bloom. They bring her comfort, and Rei doesn’t hesitate to tell Enji that these are her favorite to jumpstart the obligatory small talk.

He doesn’t respond in kind.

“I saw your rescue in Hasetsu,” the young man observes, changing the topic. “The way you fortified the building with your ice quirk was impressive, and I understand there were no casualties.”

Rei does not reply. She merely nods in assent, wondering if he really wants to talk about the ins and outs of their careers when marriage is on the table. For the first time, she glances upward and looks at Enji Todoroki. Impressive height, flaming hair, and cerulean eyes speak for themselves, but there’s also a hint of something sweet and smoldering in the night air that’s coming from him. There’s no denying that the rising pro hero is, as the tabloid papers are fond of saying, a hot commodity.

But the blush that dusts Rei’s cheeks isn’t only from physical attraction, nerves, or the thick material of her best dress. There are worries and concerns, curiosities that Rei thinks should be sated. Her thoughts spill from her lips before she can catch them.

“Why me?” she asks, bolder because of the plum wine passed around the dinner table. “You’re Endeavor. Surely, you have people lining up to-”

“Did no one speak to you about this before our meeting?” Enji interrupts.

The grin wilts from Rei’s face. “What do you mean?”

Enji sighs. He stands and steps forward; his figure illuminates, outshining the moon. His glow erupts into a burst of hellfire, and Enji’s arms are engulfed. The sleeves of his fine suit are ruined, but he doesn’t appear to care. Rei is startled, yet she only feels a gentle heat radiating from the star before her. Enji’s command of his quirk is incredible.

“Power like this comes with a cost,” he remarks bluntly.

He turns to face Rei, and the blaze surrounding his arms contracts, burning brighter. When Enji grimaces, her eyes widen with the realization that he is overheating.

Rei can relate.

“With a quirk like this, my body can only withstand the heat for so long. I assume that it is the same for you and your ice.”

The puzzle pieces connect as reality settles on her shoulders. Their pairing isn’t about temperament so much as temperature; their powers are polar opposites that cancel and complement. Enji reaches out to take Rei’s hand, and instinctively, she drops her body temperature to combat his blaze. Frost meets hellfire, steam rises, and the garden is flooded with fury. When the cloud clears, Rei and Enji remain hand-in-hand. No burns. No ice.

But it is neither luck nor good fortune. It is calculated equilibrium, a quirk marriage through and through.

...

She remembers that there were three dates, three opportunities to be seen and photographed at hotspots near his agency and hers. Matching stories were crafted for the hows and whens of their contrived romance. While they dated, the Todoroki family lawyers drafted an airtight prenuptial agreement.

The contract arrived on a Friday evening, Rei recalls, along with a small package that contained an engagement ring worth more than six months of her salary. The advice from her mother was particularly memorable.

...

“Answer him,” her mother’s voice pleads. “The sooner, the better. Remember your family is counting on y-”

Rei stops the answering machine. She doesn’t need to hear the rest. The older woman’s lecturing tone grates on Rei’s nerves. The pressure from her father is more subtle, but it’s still there. She isn’t sure where the family debt came from; however, she doubts that the schools she attended were inexpensive. Plus, her mother never hesitates to tell her that she should give them more of her paycheck, though the salary of a sidekick is barely enough.

She rolls her weary eyes and tosses the package on the low table of her small living space. Paperwork spills across the surface; the ring box nearly falls to the floor. Rei wants nothing more than to sink into her futon until her next shift rolls around. But Endeavor is not a patient person.

Rei runs through her internal debate once more.

True enough, Enji will be hard-pressed to find a better match than Rei, not for the ends he has in mind—a child with a combination of their quirks. Likewise, Rei knows that she will never rise as high as him on the hero billboard chart. It’s not that she doesn’t want to make a difference, but her countenance is naturally understated. Rei would like to live a quiet life, helping others and supporting her family.

And someday, she’d like to have children too.

Yet, the possibility of a loveless marriage is a difficult pill to swallow, especially since the concept of romance is nebulous in Rei’s mind. Her parents swear that love can take root and grow with time, and Enji is nothing if not dedicated to his goals. Moreover, Rei is not so naive as to pretend that a comfortable life with a steady income isn’t attractive in and of itself.

One last glance at his profile cements her answer. She doesn’t revel in bargaining for a better future as she slips on the engagement ring and signs her name on the dotted line of the prenuptial agreement. Rei calls her parents to share the news and phones Enji to tell him she’s accepted.

As she lies down on her futon to rest, Rei swears that she will plant a garden at their first home, filled with flowers to admire and founded on promises worth keeping. She imagines pretty blooms decorating a harmonious house alongside the pitter-patter of little feet which grow into the large shoes Enji wants filled. Rei consoles herself: if she does a good job of bringing up the next generation of Todorokis, her children will have the luxury of choosing love instead of a contract.

...

Rei admits that hanging up her hero costume was an easy thing to do after the marriage. It was even easier to watch her hardened muscles soften into feminine curves as life took root in her belly. Her parents were proud; Enji was satisfied. Any lingering doubts were pushed aside by the demands of motherhood.

And when Touya’s quirk proved disappointing, Rei tried harder to fulfill her side of the bargain. She can scarcely remember a time in her twenties when she was not waiting for her child’s quirk to manifest or swallowing prenatal vitamins over an anxious lump in her throat.

Fuyumi was born on a crisp December morning eleven months after Enji declared Touya unsuitable for further training. Like clockwork, Natsuo was on the way after their sweet daughter failed to manifest a fire quirk before she turned four. Then, Rei cannot forget how Enji became impatient. Natsuo had not reached his second birthday when her husband decided that he was also a failure. As Rei thinks back on the arrival of her last child, hindsight’s perfect vision highlights chilling insight.

...

“It’s a boy!”

Strong cries rebound off the walls of the delivery room. Rei breathes a sigh of relief as her body shudders from the efforts of her labor. At the end of her bed, the hospital staff congratulate her on another healthy baby as they pass the newborn to his mother. The comforting feeling of an infant pressed against Rei’s chest will never grow old, and she savors this moment with Shouto, mumbling words of love as she holds him. Deep down, Rei realizes that her fourth pregnancy was hard, and secretly, she dreads what her husband will think if this child also has a head full of snow-white hair.

Enji often tells her that he knew the other children were failures the moment he laid eyes on them. On this subject, husband and wife will never agree, but Rei is content that he leaves their upbringing to her. She’s done her best to temper Touya’s attitude, bolster Fuyumi’s confidence, and keep Natsuo laughing.

Rei glances down at the fresh face of her newborn son and is perplexed by the contradiction she sees between his halves. Trembling fingers weave through his hair. Fine white and crimson strands part down the middle. Yet, Shouto’s hair is not his most striking feature. A pair of mismatched eyes blink up at Rei. One is bright turquoise, and the other is a somber gray.

The contrast is uncanny.

“Heterochromia iridum,” the doctor pronounces as if on cue. “That explains his eyes. Usually, it’s a benign condition, nothing to worry about. Considering his hair, I’d say it’s all genetic, possibly related to his quirk.”

Through a blissful haze of oxytocin, Rei registers Enji’s hand on her shoulder. He laughs in an abrasive chuckle that overtakes Shouto’s cries.

“Finally,” he exclaims, “a masterpiece.”

If the doctor and nurses think Enji’s behavior is untoward, they keep the observation to themselves. Rei is too exhausted to fight the relief she feels. She allows her husband to take the newborn baby from her arms instead of insisting that she nurse Shouto straight away as she did with her other children.

“You did well this time,” he mutters.

Rei smiles wearily at the compliment, but it does not sit as well as she believed it would.

...

In retrospect, Rei understands that there was no singular moment that caused the trouble which followed. Rather, it was a collection of compromises that seemed, at the time, to be for the best. Rei gathers the rest of her photographs. Carefully, she thumbs through the small stack and is reminded of all the seeds she and Enji planted in their garden.

Undoubtedly, her children are her greatest love, and she tucks the loose photos in her purse for safekeeping, holding their cheerful likenesses close and the good memories closer. Looking around, Rei realizes that she’s finished packing—all except the vase of Japanese gentians sitting on the windowsill.

Rei prepared for this. She spoke at length with her therapist about the baggage she intends to take into the next phase of her life. Some of it is essential. Never again will she let herself slip so far as to harm someone she cherishes. No more will she suffer the company of people more concerned with ends than means. But when it comes to Enji, Rei is of two minds, torn between the past and the present. Scarred and repentant, he is not the person he once was.

Neither is she.

A brisk knock on the door stirs Rei from her reverie. She turns to address the nurse and is happy to find a familiar face.

“Your discharge papers are ready, and your cab is here, Mrs. Todoroki,” he says cheerfully, already taking her bags. “Are you sure you don’t want your family to escort you home?”

Rei shakes her head.

“They offered, but I want to do this by myself.”

“Fair enough.” The nurse shrugs.

He takes a step toward the windowsill and reaches to collect the flowers when Rei makes her decision. With a gentle expression but a firm palm tilted upward, she halts his kind gesture.

“The flowers stay,” Rei says confidently. “I don’t have room for them anymore.”

It’s a short walk from her old room to the hospital’s front door, but the journey took Rei over a decade to complete. She slips into the back of the cab and passes the driver a slip of paper with the name and address of her new accommodations—a small, refurbished apartment with a low table, comfortable futon, and no answering machine. It's a perfect place for someone starting over.

Rei knows that if she turns around for a last look, she will see Japanese gentians standing guard on the windowsill, but she lets this opportunity pass. As the cab speeds away, Rei commits herself to the good habit of not looking back.

“That’s a nice address, Miss. Where are you headed to?” the driver asks.

It’s been a long time since Rei was called anything other than Mrs. Todoroki. Caught in the small thrill, she doesn’t correct him. She’s grateful for the crowded city’s veil of anonymity and, within it, her second chance.

“Home,” she answers honestly, feeling freer than she has in decades.

#bnha #todoroki rei #todoroki enji #endeavor #todoroki shouto #todoroki family #todofamzine #trigger warning for implied/referenced canonical child and spousal abuse

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